Alms for Oblivion (20 page)

“Why, Master Revill, it’s you. I didn’t know it was you.”

“I – thank you, Master Chesser. If you hadn’t shouted out . . . what happened?”

By this time I was on my feet, shaky and uncertain.

“I do not know, master. The cart swept past me in the mist and I called out a warning in case there were any Christian souls between it and the river.”

“We’d better go and find out whether there’s anybody down there apart from me.”

We discovered the whereabouts of the cart by smell. It wasn’t so far off. A sweetish, vinous scent hung in the vicinity, more agreeable than the usual river odours or the brassy fog. By
chance, the cart had slewed to one side and on to a relatively level patch of cobbled ground near the waterfront. Then, thankfully without running down any passers-by, it had fetched up against a
pair of stubby stone stumps used for securing ropes or boat cables. The sturdily made cart was undamaged. But a couple of wine barrels had slipped under the straps which fastened them and tumbled
off the back. One had shattered. Its contents pooled like spilt blood across the cobbles, running into the crevices and mingling with the scum and dirt. If this had occurred on our side of the
river, the Southwark side, the householders would already have been out with their cups and spoons, even with their rags and clouts, to scoop and sponge up the dregs, mud and all. But here, on this
respectable shore, the inhabitants were more restrained. In fact there was nobody at all on the scene apart from Chesser and me, no passengers embarking or disembarking.

I still felt light-headed and unsteady from my near escape. The scent of the red wine was in my nostrils. But I could work out what had happened. It wasn’t difficult. This open area next to
Burleigh House and at the top of Paul’s Wharf was used by carters and carriers as a convenient space to leave their conveyances for a time. This wasn’t because they were waiting to
ferry their goods across the water – London Bridge was near enough and free as well – but because carters whose business lay on the north side were amusing themselves on our southern
shores with diversions like brothels, plays and bear-baiting. Empty carts were sometimes abandoned here for hours, often with a hobbled horse standing patiently between the shafts. Given the slant
of the ground down towards the river, the wise carrier made sure that the wheels of his cart were securely blocked. Anyway it was usually empty conveyances which you saw here rather than the laden
ones. To leave a load of wine barrels unattended for even a quarter of an hour was unwise – or would have been unwise in certain quarters on the Southwark side. Then I told myself to stop
judging everything by the lower, more lax standards of my own neighbourhood. Over on this northern shore, folk were different. They were restrained, they were law-abiding. (But a murder had occurred
in a street near here two nights ago.)

Even so it was odd, this incident of the abandoned cart. The second odd incident of the morning, after the Troilus sleeve.

The more I considered it the more odd and troubling it seemed. The carter must have left his conveyance for a few moments, unhitched his horse perhaps. Was it lamed? Perhaps he was waiting for a
fresh horse. Perhaps the carter had gone off for a quick pot in a tavern or a piss in a corner, carelessly leaving his cart without blocks wedged under the wheels. Then it had begun to roll
downhill of its own accord. It would naturally tend towards the wide indentation in the slope, the foot-worn channel. It had started to roll. Or been given a little shove by someone . . .

When he returned from his piss or his pot, the carter would be surprised not to find his cart where he had left it. He’d be angry, he’d be worried, wouldn’t he? In his position
I would have been. He’d start searching for his conveyance. So where was he then, this irate or anxious carter? I scanned the mist in an uphill direction but no one emerged. The only sound
was Chesser’s steady breathing. He had recovered fast from the excitement of the past few minutes. He was in good condition, for an old man. His senses were sharp too. Sharp eyes and big
ears. Players are tough creatures, even superannuated players. He was saying something.

“What, Master Chesser?”

“A miracle, Master Revill.”

“Oh yes, and thank you again.”

“Thank God rather.”

“I do. I have.”

Seeing that there was nothing we could do about the cart or its contents and since there was no one harmed, I remembered my original mission and began to make my way up the slope again. Master
Chesser kept pace beside me and I was glad of his company, to be honest. Not only because he’d almost certainly preserved me from injury, even from death, but because his presence, almost
anybody’s presence, would have been welcome in this white solitude.

“It was not my doing but God’s,” he said.

“You were the one who was here to help though, Master Chesser.”

“But who directed my footsteps to this place?”

Who indeed?

A suspicion that I’d been trying to keep down was growing in my mind. It wasn’t that Chesser himself had been responsible for the runaway cart – if so, why should he call out a
warning? – but that
someone
had been. To my active brain what ought to have been a street accident became a murder attempt.

“Did you see – anything?”

“No more than I have already said I saw, Master Revill. The cart flew past me as if it had wings.”

“Strange that it should have been left unattended.”

For answer, Chesser shrugged and indicated two or three other carts which almost blocked the neck of the alley we were trying to pass through. There were no drivers. However, these conveyances
were empty, apart from a few pieces of dirty sacking and staves of wood in the bottom.

“The question you should be asking, Master Revill, is why you have been preserved by God.”

As we emerged into Thames Street, I refrained from saying that there were more immediate considerations on my mind, considerations such as: who was trying to kill me? But it would be churlish
and ungrateful not to let Chesser have his say. Which he proceeded to have. Forgetting that he’d told me once already, he again recounted how the devil had appeared to the players during the
Derby production of
Faustus
, a terrifying occasion for which he now thanked God, for was it not a warning to him and to his company to abandon their sinful ways? And now I, Revill the player,
should treat this runaway cart as a warning from God. I too must depart from the paths of vice. Specifically, I must quit the Chamberlain’s and resolve to live a purer life.

I might have pointed out that I did live a (relatively) pure life. Meant harm to no man, unless he meant harm to me. Kept my hand out of others’ pockets. Kept it, by and large, out of
women’s plackets. Enjoyed or suffered from thoughts that were no more outrageous or unlawful than the next person’s. Had not visited a whore-house for weeks – and even then my
visit had not been in the way of trade but, rather, in the course of friendship. To my own ears I sounded a dull fellow. But all this abstinence from sin would have meant nothing to Chesser, not as
long as I stayed on the stage.

“What does Thomas Gally say in this affair, he who works for Philip Henslowe?” I said, adding, “I’ve seen the two of you together.”

“Master Gally encourages me in my work,” said Chesser.

I bet he does, I thought. The work of sowing doubt and uncertainty among Henslowe’s rivals.

“What is your work?”

“God’s work.”

“A species of preaching?”

“As you say.”

“But you don’t preach among the members of Master Henslowe’s company, the Admiral’s?”

“A man can only do as much as God gives him strength for. I consider your Chamberlain’s to be more deeply mired in sin.”

“This preaching is new work for you, Master Chesser. I have not seen you at it with the Chamberlain’s before.”

“A man may be a little brain-sick, sir. I spent some time in Beth’lem Hospital. I was cured with rods until I grew weary of them.”

There was something dignified but also curiously matter-of-fact in Chesser’s tone. He’d gone mad for a spell and been committed to Bedlam asylum, no doubt because he’d been
worrying other people elsewhere in this town by his ‘preaching’. As for his claim to be cured, who knew?

“I see,” I said.

“If you fear for the Admiral’s Company, Master Gally tells me that he is doing his best to redeem them.”

“I don’t fear for them. They can look after themselves. What does Gally do? Perhaps he leads them in prayer.”

“You are not serious, Master Revill. It is you that I fear for. I fear for your eternal soul.”

This rebuke was a bit reminiscent, in tone if not in substance, of Bartholomew Ridd telling me off for not caring enough about the Troilus sleeve. On the one hand, I hadn’t taken
sufficient care of a detachable sleeve; on the other hand, I was neglecting my immortal part. The rebuke was more acceptable coming from Chesser, however, if only because he had so recently saved
me from losing something between a sleeve and a soul. To wit (as WS would have said): my life.

However, Chesser hadn’t finished. He wanted to impress on me the wickedness of my acting crew.

“Why, man, your shareholders are not content just to take pennies from honest citizens, or to distract apprentices when they should be at work, or to encourage licentious encounters
between men and women in the audience. Although they do these things too.”

“Master Chesser, while I am greatly in your debt for what happened back there on the wharf I cannot lie down while you attack my Company. We do not ‘take pennies’ like thieves.
We are given the pennies by those honest citizens in return for diverting them.”

“Oh, but you are thieves, sir. None more than your shareholders.”

“How so?”

“They stole an entire playhouse once.”

This was not a madman’s remark, although it might appear like that. Rather it was an allusion to the dismantling of the old playhouse known as the Theatre in Finsbury and its resurrection
across the water as the Southwark Globe back in the winter of ’98. Not much good pointing out that the shareholders owned all the timber and fittings of the Theatre (even if not the ground on
which it stood). If Burbage and the rest wanted to take a playhouse with them when they moved they were quite entitled to do so. In Chesser’s eyes, though, this was a most notorious theft. No
wonder we were mired in sin.

There really was no answer to this accusation of playhouse-theft, and indeed I wondered whether the theft of an entire building was covered by any statute. I would have to ask my friends in
Middle Temple. Chesser followed this up with a reference to the stealing of souls. My patience with the old man and my sense of obligation to him were wearing thin. It hadn’t taken long. Time
for a parting of the ways.

“I am going on to Paul’s Yard, sir, about my private business now.”

Chesser took the hint, or it may have been that he was heading in a different direction anyway. Commending my soul to God and with a reminder that I should quit the stage forthwith, he
disappeared to the right towards Old Fish Street and into the fog. Immediately he’d gone I felt guilty. He was a harmless old man, a little addled but harmless, wasn’t he? He was
entitled to respect as an ex-player, and now he had a much deeper claim on me. I thought, with some shame, of the way in which the boatmen had briskly bundled him out of the Goat & Monkey.
Well, next time I saw Master Chesser I would speak soft and considerate. I’d even buy him a drink, as long as he wasn’t in the company of Tom Gally.

But the association between those two was seemingly explained. Henslowe’s agent was making use – unscrupulous use – of poor Chesser to distract and unsettle the opposition. I
wondered how many of my fellow players had been accosted by the Bedlam man and informed of the extra devil in
Faustus
and enjoined to leave the stage straightaway. Yet, if Gally was
resorting to such threadbare means of undermining a rival company, that surely argued desperation on his part. Not so much a murderer as a petty intriguer.

As I paced out the last few hundred yards to Paul’s Yard, my thoughts turned back to the runaway cart and my near escape from its iron-rimmed wheels. I discerned a plot. Perhaps it was
this perpetual fog. Unable to see anything clearly, one fancied that one saw anything and everything.

It couldn’t have been planned in advance, this ‘accident’. Nobody knew that I intended to cross the river at all, let alone at that point and at that time. If the cart had been
deliberately set on its downhill course in my direction – the hand of man, as it were, rather than the hand of God – then it must have been done on the spur of the moment by someone
who’d come over the river at the same time as me. I’d been alone in the boat with the disagreeable ferryman, the one who’d tried to overcharge me. But there were other ferries on
the water. Two or three at least had offloaded their passengers while I was arguing with the ferryman.

Wasn’t it possible that I had been followed across the river in another boat, that my ‘opponent’ (for want of a better term) had run up the steps in order to get ahead of me in
the fog? That, coming by chance across an unattended but heavily laden cart, he had seized on the opportunity to dispose of Revill in a single, clean ‘accident’? Perhaps he’d been
waiting behind the cart, crouching by the board at the hinder end, ready to leap out at me, before he realized that a simpler means was at hand. He could hear me coming up the slope now, my argument
with the boatman over and done with. Quick! Angle the cart slightly so that it runs down the slanting path. A task which would call for a bit of strength but could be done with stout shoulders and
desperate hands. Quicker now. He’s coming! Remove the wedges holding the wheels. Jump back as the cart begins to roll.

It was only my good fortune that Chesser had been lurking somewhere on the scene; that, seeing and hearing the cart trundle past, he’d had the presence of mind to shout a warning.

Was this how it had happened?