“Someday you will know, but there are in far corners of the world vast repositories of knowledge, places where books are stored and dreams are held waiting. Some have been destroyed … the libraries of Alexandria and Cordoba, the temples of Samothrace … these are gone. Others remain. Somewhere there is a niche for what I have learned.”
“Come with me then,” I said. “I go to London, then to France and Italy.”
“What is it you want?”
“Knowledge … skill with a sword … and wealth enough to return and rebuild the home I lost. It was my father’s wish. And it is mine, also.”
He was quiet for a time, as if thinking. “Well, I will come with you to London. Perhaps we each can show the other a way to go.”
A door had opened … a door that would never again be closed…
17
By what means I should make a fortune I knew not, yet it was in my mind to do so. What I had told before was true, that I wished to buy again the land my father had owned and to rebuild his house, burned by our enemies.
To accomplish this would be no easy thing, for above all they must not guess I was my father’s son, and one of that family they hated. But that was the least of my problems. The first was to obtain the wherewithal to even live, to exist.
Although I was but a lad, my travels had changed me more than a little. I had grown taller, stronger, and more agile. Also, I had grown wiser. I determined to pass myself off as older than I was, for in this way I might obtain preferment, or at least respectable attention.
Yet what was I to do? I had no trade, no skills but that of swordsman, and no means by which to earn my way. I was not minded to become a thief or a rogue, but to remain a gentleman, in action as well as in origin.
The small sack Fergus MacAskill had thrust upon me contained gold, sufficient to last me until I obtained some sort of employment, and longer. I had a few coins of my own, left from my trading days, and so I had no immediate fear of starvation.
Thinking upon it, I discovered yet some hope from my experience, for had I not followed the byways and lanes as a trader? Traveling with the old man, I had learned much, and now I might, discreetly, put the knowledge into practice. I suspected there was a deal of money to be made by buying and selling in a modest way. First, I must find a haven, a small harbor of security where I could take the time to look about, to avoid the press gangs which haunted the streets searching for men to man the Queen’s navy. I must see into what niche I might fit myself.
This old man seemed to know the London streets. He led the way to a small tavern in a cul-de-sac off Chancery Lane, not far from Fleet Street. “It is a place little known,” he explained, “and does not wish to be known. There are a few of us who frequent the place, and the custom we provide is sufficient.”
“It is an odd keeper of an inn,” I commented, “who does not wish to better himself.”
“This man is well off, and those who provide his custom do not wish attention, but rather to remain unnoticed. In such a city there are men who come and go upon errands of their own.”
There was a common room with a great fireplace and several tables and benches for those who came to drink and dine. There was a door that led to a hall where there were rooms, and a winding stair, very narrow, that led to rooms above.
The host was in the common room when we entered, otherwise the room was empty of people. He looked around but seemed in no wise surprised. I was sure he knew my companion but he made nothing of it.
“This one,” my friend gestured to me, “is a friend. Make him welcome, whenever.”
He sat upon a bench near the fire and I did likewise, glad of the warmth for it was cold without. “I and Jacob Binns,” he said, the first time I’d heard a name put to him that I could recall, “and this be Tatton Chantry, a young gentleman.”
“They be calling me Tom,” the host said, bowing slightly. “There be a room o’erlooking the street; would it please you?”
“It would, indeed, and now we’ll have some’at to eat and drink.”
Now I looked about me. Although small, the place had an air of comfort and well-being. Occasionally I noticed through the window that someone would go by outside, but it was not a busy place, hidden as it was by the taller buildings behind and around it.
“Long ago,” Jacob Binns said, “this was a monastery. This floor and a part of the walls were of it, but additions were made and some of the old places walled up.” He spoke softly that none might hear. “There are ways in and ways out, and much is hidden beneath the street.”
“You are a puzzle,” I said. “I believed you an honest fisherman.”
“Honest, at any rate, and a fisherman when it suits me, but a pilgrim always.”
“I do not wish to become involved,” I said, “in any plots against the Queen. We in Ireland have been ill used, yet I wish for nothing so much as to be back, safe upon my native soil.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “I am engaged in no plot. If what I do seems sometimes strange it is because what I am is beyond the ken. I travel much, but the shrines to which I make my pilgrimages are not those of God, nor of the devil. Someday, and in another time, you will know more of this, but for the now it is enough.
“You must waste no time, but choose a way for yourself, and it may be that I can help.”
For three days then I roamed the city, learning a little of the streets and lanes, the taverns and the river front. Meanwhile I thought much upon what I might do. Surely there had never existed a more exciting town than London. Queen Bess, hard though she might be on my own people, was a good queen for her own and it was difficult not to be caught up in the contagion. The British had that spirit that comes to new nations or to those born anew, and all seemed possible, no dream seemed beyond realization.
Her ships were upon every sea, a challenge to the power of Spain. In all the streets and byways a new energy seemed alive in the people. But as always in such times, there was much crime. No man or woman was safe upon the streets, and all went armed and prepared. First, I had to know my way about, and to capture the language. Oh, yes! I spoke English and well, had spoken it all my lie long, but I soon discovered there was a language of the streets that held words and expressions of which I had never heard. I went often to places where bards and actors went, to listen to their talk, and loitered along the lanes to pick up what I might. I haunted the bookstalls wherever they might be. Most of them were in Saint Paul’s or close about it.
For all in London seemed to be learning, captured with a tremendous zest for knowledge that comes to growing, expanding countries. For a month I did little but wander the streets and read: cheap novels, plays, broadsides, and poetry.
I saw little of Jacob Binns, nor had I any idea what it was in London that engaged his time. He had recovered slowly from the exhaustion that attended our near-drowning and its aftermath, and then had begun disappearing for hours at a time. Nor did I concern myself with it. His business was his own, and if he wished he would tell me.
There came a day when I was seated in a tavern and a young man came over to my table. “Sit you alone from choice? If not, I’ll join you.”
“Do.”
“You are a foreigner, and so am I. Although there’s a-plenty of them about, the Londoners are not happy with foreigners these days.”
He looked at me thoughtfully. “I am Tosti Padget, and I am of Yorkshire although I am told that my mother was Frisian.”
“And I am Tatton Chantry.”
He seated himself across the table and I ordered a glass for him. My guess was that he was two to three years older than the age I was using, and a shabby, attractive young man who seemed cheerful, perhaps because of the ale.
“You are a student?”
“Aren’t we all?” he asked, smiling widely. “But yes … I was at Cambridge, and suddenly there was no more money and I had to make my own way.
“My father,” he added, “was a yeoman who aspired to better things. He wanted educati
on and preferment for me, and sent me on to Cambridge. He died suddenly and it was discovered that he had o’erreached himself. After he was buried I had nothing.”
“Your mother?”
He shrugged. “I never met her. She ran off, I hear, with some company of actors or something of the sort. My father never spoke of her except to say she was a good woman, that he was too dull for her.”
He took a swallow of the ale. “That surprised me, for I never found him dull. Plodding, yes. He knew how to get forward and he worked at it, bettering himself and his business. Had he aspired for less for me he might have made it.”
“And now?”
He shrugged again. “I am nothing. Occasionally an actor of small parts, a writer of ballads and broadsides, a cadger of meals or drinks, a seller of tips upon races, but never yet a thief … although I have known a few.” He had about him an extravagant manner with wide gestures and a conversation filled with exclamations. He seemed a decent fellow, although beneath his seeming confidence I detected an uncertainty, perhaps a doubt of himself or of his ability to cope with the times. “To be an actor,” he continued, “is to be a vagabond, admired on the stage, despised off it, always at the risk of the mob’s displeasure, forever vulnerable. Fortunately, I have a landlady who lost a son, and is tolerant, a mistress who is without loyalty, and companions whose pockets are empty as my own.”
We finished our glasses, and I saw in him a desire to linger. He struck me as lonely, as one without roots and destination. And I? My roots have been rudely torn up, and I had fled, so though without roots, I did have destination. Where I was going now I did not know, but eventually I would go home again.
“Do not be misled,” I commented. “This is a new England today. It is not only those who were born to the nobility or the gentry who will rule in England tomorrow, it is also those of the yeomen who have ambition.
“Look you,” I said, “they farm much land, they are the new merchants, and from them will come our new leaders. There is a place for us if we have ambition and will try for it.”
“But how?” he said. “Words are easily spoken, deeds are another thing. I have no money, I have no position, I have not even the style of dress to attract a wealthy girl … I have nothing.”
“You write ballads? Is there nothing in that?”
He laughed grimly. “Less than nothing. All copyrights are held by the Stationers’ Company, and they pay a pittance. They control all and there is nowhere else to go. A man ekes out an existence only if he can do other things as well. A dramatist does scarcely better, for he must sell his copyright to the theatrical companies, and if he gets as much as six pounds he is fortunate. No, my friend, it is no way to earn a living.”
He glanced at me again. “You have education, yet I cannot place you. Your voice has a curious inflection.”
“I am only a fortnight from the Hebrides,” I said.
“A Scot? Ah, that accounts for it.”
“My father was a scholar of sorts,” I said. “Not a teacher, except of me, but a scholar in the old way. He knew the old languages, and the old scripts, and could use a dozen alphabets, all from the Gaels or the Irish.”
“I have heard of Ogam.”
“Aye, and it was but one. Most of the old Irish books were lost, he told me, and there was much in them of which we now know nothing.”
It struck me that perhaps he was not eating as often as he would prefer, so I ordered a meat pie for each of us, and another glass.
True it was that due to Fergus MacAskill and my careful hoarding of the few coins that came my way I was for the moment secure, but already I had learned how slender is the threat that holds one from poverty and despair. Today a man may walk among his fellows esteemed by all, and having about him more than he needs of food and drink, but tomorrow all may be lost. To understand that lesson, I had only to remember my own father, and my own home. If for the moment I had something, I had always to remember how little it was, and must forever be looking about me to find some means of augmenting my fortunes.
We ate well. My guess that my new friend might be hungered proved true. During the silences I thought much on what he had said of playwrighting and ballads. My father had written a bit here and there, and sometimes as a child I had with him made up verses as we wandered over the hills, amusing ourselves with careless, casual rhymes.
Why not attempt this myself? At least, it would provide some small returns to hold off for a little longer the moment when I should again be without anything.
“How then do they live, these poets and playwrights? If their works offer so little, how can they exist?”
He broke a bit of bread from the loaf. “A patron. The secret is to find a wealthy patron who will, if you dedicate your works to him, provide you with a sum of money, or put you on a retainer. But a thankless thing it is to weave pretty rhymes for some empty-headed dolt who scarce realizes what it is you do.
“Yet I have tried. God knows, I have tried! None of them deigns to prefer my verses. They either did not reply to my offerings or they reply only with empty thanks and no money. And a poet cannot live on good wishes.”
That night when I returned to the inn, Jacob Binns was there. With rest and proper food he had recovered his spirits as well as his appearance. He had gained weight and seemed stronger. Yet he was, as I could see, a very old man.
He listened as I explained my thoughts. “It be a good thing if it can be done,” he said, “and I know of a printer, a young man from Stratford-on-Avon by the name of Richard Field. He was once apprenticed to a very old friend and I can bring you together.”
“It would help,” I agreed.
He studied me thoughtfully. “Is this what you wish to do? It is only a bit better than a beggar’s life, and in the end you will have nothing. For you depend upon the whims of others, and whims change like a weathercock.”
“Jacob? Have you heard aught of Fergus or the others? Did they make the shore?”
He shook his head. “Lad, you know there is little news of what takes place in the Hebrides, or even the Highlands, for the matter of that. I have talked with peddlers and traders and such like but have heard nothing. Yet he was a strong swimmer, lad, and if any could have made the shore it was he.”
“He was like an older brother to me, or a father. He taught me much, and I wish—”
As we sat talking thus in the common room of the inn, of a sudden the door opened and a man entered. A man? A lad, rather, but a tall, well-made lad, only a bit older than myself.
He saw me and I saw him, and although each had changed we knew each other at once. When Rafe Leckenbie and his men had attacked us, one young man had spoken a word for me and to me. This was that man!
“You!” he said. “You are here, and he is here, and you are the one thing that has rankled him most, that you escaped him. He meant to kill you.”
“Rafe Leckenbie is here?”
“Yes. He’s here. He was in much trouble there, and he ran off, and some of us with him. I, too was in trouble—and because of him.”
“Leave him then. Be your own man.”
” ‘Tis easy said. He would kill me, as he will kill you. You have only one chance! Fly! Escape before he knows you are here!”
“Go to him,” I said, “and tell him you saw me. Tell him I shall be glad of a meeting, whenever he wishes.”
“Do not be a fool! He has one of the largest mobs of rascals in London! Thieves, cutpurses, and outlaws of all kinds!”
“Then perhaps I shall meet him,” I replied, “for I am often about London and we have an old duel left incomplete.”
“He is the greatest swordsman in England, perhaps in all Europe! Look you, I meant you no harm then, nor do I now, but Leckenbie is evil, totally evil.”
“And you yourself? Why do you not leave him?”
Despite his drawn cheeks and tortured eyes he was a handsome enough lad, I suppose, but he shook his head. “He would only follow and kill me, and I have no wish to
die.” He sighed. “Yet even that might be better than this. You do not know him. He lets no one escape him, neither friend nor foe.”
When he had gone Jacob Binns studied me with his wise old eyes. “You have an enemy, lad, and I have word of him. Do not think you will face him alone.”
Then he hesitated. “Tatt, do you go to this tavern,” he wrote a name for me on a bit of paper, “and give it to Robin Greene.”
“The playwright?”
“He is the one, a bold, handsome man, tall and with a red beard. A dissolute man much given to drink, a very gifted man who has wasted his gifts, but an able one, and shrewd enough. Tell him nothing about yourself before you met me in the Hebrides. It is well that he think the islands your home … but tell him about Leckenbie. Tell him first that you come from me or else he might not talk at all, or might even be rude. He is a very abrupt and sharp-tongued man.”
He handed me a note on which was written:If there is a fight let it be man to man. Speak to Ball. The note was signed simply,Binns. But after the signature there was a figure set in a triangle.
“Waste no time,” Binns advised, “and do not try to escape Leckenbie. You cannot.”
Oddly, at the moment, I was not thinking of Rafe Leckenbie, nor of any danger for me, for my thoughts were upon this old man with whom I had escaped from the sea.
Who was Jacob Binns? What was he?
18
When I came upon Robin Greene it was in the Belle Savage on Ludgate Hill. He sat alone at a table with an empty glass before him and a half-empty bottle. He wore a green cloak, a flat hat of green velvet, and his face was somewhat flushed from drinking.
He looked up as I entered and his eyes fastened upon me. He started to speak, but I was already crossing the room toward him.
At a table a dozen feet away sat four roughs, one of them a lean, savage-looking man who was also watching me.
I walked directly to Greene’s table and placed the note before him. There was an ugly look in his eyes as I walked up and he seemed in an aggressive, quarrelsome mood. “I come from Jacob Binns,” I said.
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