Shakespeare's Scribe (14 page)

Through the night I heard Sam thrashing about restlessly and, when I put my hand on him to still him, I felt that he was soaked with perspiration; though the air in the room was close and warm, it did not account for such a surfeit of sweat.

In the morning he was too weak to come down to breakfast, so I took him up a bowl of porridge. Once he'd gotten it down he seemed stronger and in better spirits. Even so, when we set out for the Merchant Adventurers' Hall, he seemed hardly able to keep himself upright. “Are you going to be able to go on?” I asked.

“I'll manage,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“After the performance, I'll tell them you need to see a physician.”

“The company can't afford that,” he said. “Can't you give me something?”

“How can I? I don't ken what's wrong wi' you.”

He stopped and put a hand that trembled slightly on my arm. Softly he said, “It's not the contagion, is it, Widge?”

“Nay,” I said, trying to sound confident and trying, too, not to shrink back from his touch. “Nay, I'm sure it's just some fever or other.”

I took Sam's place at the entrance, collecting the patrons' pennies. I had expected, after what we learned the night before, to see our audience dwindle drastically. But either the news of the plague deaths had not yet reached everyone's ears or else they had all determined to take in one last performance before the privilege was denied them, for folk were flocking to the theatre in greater numbers than ever.

The box grew so heavy with coins that I had to set it at my feet and collect the money in my hand—until I came to think that someone in the throng might, in passing their money to me, also be passing on the plague. I opened the lid of the box, then, and asked each one to drop his money in.

Sam, who was playing several small roles, held up somehow through the first three acts. But in Act IV, he came on as Biondello, spoke his line—“O master, master, I have watched so long that I am dog-weary”—and collapsed upon the boards. I froze, unable to think of how to thribble my way out of this.

But Sal Pavy, in his guise as Bianca, was quicker-witted. “Ah, sir,” he said to Ned Shakespeare as Lucentio, “you work your men too hard by far”—a clever bit of improvised pentameter. Then he paraphrased Sam's lines, still in perfect meter: “I spy a person coming down the hill will serve the turn.”

I had presence of mind enough to change my line—“What is he, Biondello?”—to “What is he, Mistress, pray?” Sal Pavy replied with Biondello's part. When he and Ned left the stage, they dragged Sam's limp form with them. The audience must have thought it was all in the script, for it fetched a laugh.

Though we revived Sam with tincture of myrrh, he was too weak to go on, so we worked around his absence. He still refused to see a physician. “All I need is to rest a while,” he assured us. The sharers, wanting to push on to the next town where we might perform, had him ride atop our rolled-up bedding in the careware, and this time no one objected, not even Jack.

The pace of the procession was more brisk than usual and I could see that Jamie Redshaw, with his stiff gait, was finding it difficult to keep up with the carewares. “There's no need to tax yourself,” I told him confidentially. “We'll catch up wi' them on the hills.”

When we fell a bit behind the others, I said, “Did you take in the morning's performance, then?”

He nodded but offered nothing further.

“Well?” I prompted. “How did you like it?”

He cast me an amused glance. “I suppose what you mean is, how did I like you?”

I felt myself go red. “I did not want it to seem as though I were angling for compliments.”

“You did well,” he said. I waited for him to go on, but he said nothing more on the matter. I tried to dull the disappointment I felt by telling myself that, of course, being a soldier he had likely had little experience with the theatre and did not know what to say. But I had used that same sort of reasoning over and over to excuse his lack of fatherly affection toward me, and it was wearing thin.

It was well before dark when we spied the town of Harrogate ahead of us. We were spied in turn by a man—a merchant, from the look
of him—approaching on horse-back. To my surprise, he at once wheeled his horse about and headed back toward town at a gallop.

“Now that's a bad sign,” said Ned Shakespeare.

“Perhaps 'a merely forgot something,” I suggested, “and had to go back for 't.”

“Perhaps he's gone to get up a welcoming committee for us,” said Jamie Redshaw.

We did indeed find a committee of a dozen or so men waiting for us, but they did not have a welcoming air about them. They stood blocking the road, their legs planted wide, their arms crossed, as though daring us to try and pass.

17

W
e pulled up the carewares, and Mr. Heminges and Mr. Armin rode forward to talk with the apparent leader of the group, a lanky man wearing the leather jerkin of a constable. The discussion appeared to be a heated one. Finally the blockade of bodies opened up and let our little troupe move on. The townsmen looked no more cordial than before, however, nor did they disperse. In fact they walked alongside us, as though escorting us.

Jamie Redshaw smiled in a friendly fashion and tried to exchange a few words with one of their number, but the man would not respond; he only stared straight ahead, with a scowl on his face. We came to an inn, but the sharers marched us on past it. We did not even pause until we were all the way through the town and into the countryside again. Then Mr. Heminges signaled us to halt, dismounted, and gathered us prentices and hired men about him.

“Why did they not let us stay?” demanded Ned Shakespeare.

“It's the contagion, isn't it?” I said.

He held up his hands to silence us. “P-please. G-give me a chance to tell you. We were p-preceded, it seems, by another troupe of p-players.”

“Pembroke's Men!” cried Ned.

“No, apparently they were no legitimate c-company at all, only a company of thieves. They p-passed themselves off as players, of course. They'd had ill luck, they said, and asked the m-mayor for money for f-food and lodging, to be repaid out of the b-box from the next day's performance. They p-paid the innkeeper with promises as well, and then left in the m-morning with all the advance money and without g-giving a performance—save the one with which they d-duped the mayor. Naturally he was n-not anxious to be t-taken in again, by us.”

“But we have papers!” protested Jack. “Did you show them our papers?”

“Of c-course. But these rogues had p-papers, too—very official looking, and very f-false.”

“When were they here?” asked Jamie Redshaw.

“They left j-just this morning.”

“Then we should not be wasting time,” Jamie Redshaw declared, smacking his walking stick impatiently against his palm. “We've got to catch up with them.”

Mr. Heminges smiled wryly. “We are not s-soldiers, Mr. Redshaw, looking to d-do battle with the enemy.”

“But if we don't overtake them, they'll spoil every town for us before we get there!”

“I r-realize that,” said Mr. Heminges, a trifle more sharply. “But we c-can assume they will stick to the smaller t-towns, where n-no one is likely to know the real P-Pembroke's Men. We'll t-try our luck in more p-populous places.”

Jamie Redshaw shook his head disapprovingly. “Avoiding them will solve nothing. I'd confront them now, before they do more harm.”

“Ah, but you see, you're n-not in charge of this c-company, Mr. Redshaw,” said Mr. Heminges pointedly, and walked away.

I had watched the preceding scene with great discomfort. Though I felt my father's reasoning was sound and I wanted very much to ally myself with him, I was at the same time reluctant to speak out against the sharers.

While we were stopped, I got into our small stock of medicinal herbs and prepared for Sam an infusion of willow bark, a popular antidote for fever. But he no longer had a fever; he was trembling all over with chills. “How are you?” I asked as I covered him with my cloak.

“Oh, Lord, sir!” he said, and laughed shakily. Mr. Shakespeare's “answer to fit all questions” had by now become a familiar jest among the members of the company. “I heard what happened,” he added. “Where will we go now?”

“Leeds, I expect. We should be there in a few hours, and then you'll have a proper bed.”

“I'm all right,” he murmured. “Don't fret about me.”

Jamie Redshaw had taken advantage of the pause to light his pipe. As I jumped down from the careware, he asked, “How is your friend?”

“Not so good as I hoped, nor so bad as I feared.” Softly, so Sam would not hear, I added, “Would that I could examine his legs for red marks; it would give me a better idea of what we're dealing wi'.”

Jamie Redshaw puffed at his pipe a moment. “Whether or not it's the plague, you mean?”

“Aye. ‘A's got his woolen hose on yet, from the play. An I ask him to remove them, ‘a may guess that I'm looking for signs of the contagion. I've no wish to alarm him. It may be naught but the ague.”

“He shows no other symptoms, then? No pustules?”

I shook my head. “Pray that ‘a does not, for an ‘a does, every one of us is in danger of being next.”

Mr. Armin reined in his black mare and waited for us to come up alongside him. “This stretch of road between Harrogate and Leeds is a desolate one,” he said, so all the hired men could hear. “Keep your weapons handy. No one is likely to try to rob a group of this size, but we can't be too careful.”

“I ha' no weapon,” I reminded him.

“How can you say that?” he replied in mock surprise. “Is the road not full of rocks?” He urged his mount on to the head of the procession again.

“Rocks?” said Jamie Redshaw.

“Aye,” I said, embarrassed. “We had a skirmish back in Newbury, and I pelted our attackers wi' stones. You'd think the company would trust me wi' a sword. I've been taking lessons in scriming for most of a year.” Though I managed to sound resentful, secretly I was just as glad that no one expected me to exercise my sword-fighting skills except upon the stage. Sal Pavy, I noticed, had not called his lack of a weapon to anyone's attention. I glanced down at Jamie Redshaw's belt. “But … you've no weapon, either.”

“Ah, that's where you're wrong.” He shifted his walking stick to his left hand, gripped the carved lion's head in his right, and, in one swift sweeping motion, drew forth from the stick a thin blade two feet or more in length.

“That's clever,” said Ned Shakespeare. “Where'd you come by that?”

“I won it in a game of primero.”

Will Sly eyed the abbreviated blade. “I should hardly think it a match for a full-length weapon.”

“Nor is it meant to be. It's the element of surprise that makes it effective.”

“So, you're a fair hand at cards, then?” asked Ned.

“A bit better than fair, I should say.”

Ned smiled slyly. “Shall we test your prowess when we reach our lodgings?”

Jamie Redshaw made an exaggerated bow. “At your service, sir. Presuming that we do, in fact, find lodgings.”

As the afternoon waned, it began to look as if we might not. The sun approached the horizon, and still there was no habitation in sight, only vast stretches of deserted moorland on either side of the highway, dotted with clumps of furze. The only signs that any soul had ever passed this way before us were the wheel ruts, a few crumbling horse droppings, and a tilted, weathered stone cross beside the road, erected ages ago, I supposed, by some religious order to give comfort to weary travelers. Jack fumbled in his wallet for a penny and placed it atop the cross.

“What's that for?” asked Ned Shakespeare.

“Protection,” said Jack.

Ned laughed and gestured at the bleak, treeless landscape around us. “From what? Do you really think it likely that a band of brigands will rise out of the ground and attack us?”

Jack scowled. “You never know.”

For once Jack proved to be right about something. No more than ten minutes had passed when I heard a startled cry of “Ho!” from Mr. Armin at the head of the company. I jerked my head in that direction. To my astonishment, a dense patch of furze that lay near the road seemed to be opening up, unfolding like some huge drab and ravaged bud bursting into bloom. From its center emerged not a blossom but a group of five fierce-looking armed men. One of them held a wheel-lock pistol aimed directly at Mr. Armin's chest.

“Dismount!” ordered the bandit, a big-bellied fellow with a filthy, pockmarked face; his bushy black hair and beard were tangled and full of furze twigs. His leaner but equally grimy confederates spread out, swords drawn, to block the road.

Though I was taken aback, I was not as terrified as I would once have been. I had been with the ruthless Falconer when, unaided, he dispatched or disabled half a dozen brigands with astonishing speed and skill. Mr. Armin had proven himself even more able with a sword than Falconer. I expected that, with the help of the others, he would make short work of these shabby thieves.

Sure enough, instead of swinging from his saddle as he had been commanded to, Mr. Armin spurred his horse forward, at the same time jerking back on the reins so that the animal reared up, front hooves flailing. But the man with the gun, instead of dropping it in panic, calmly took a step backward and fired. The pistol gave off a puff of smoke and a loud report. The black mare gave a sort of shriek and toppled sideways, blood spurting from her neck. Mr. Armin tried to throw himself free, but one foot must have caught in its stirrup, for his leg became pinned underneath his fallen mount.

Despite his bulk, the black-haired man moved swiftly. In an instant he was straddling the fallen rider and had the blade of a dagger pressed against Mr. Armin's throat-bole. “Now the lot of you,” he shouted, “dismount and drop your weapons, or watch your friend bathe in his own blood!”