The Pale Companion (3 page)

“I . . . I was on my way to the Angel Inn. Perhaps you can direct me to it?”

I made to get up, and the man hooked his hand under my arm and helped me to my feet.

“The Angel is in Greencross Street. A few dozens of paces from here.”

“Thank you, then I’ll be on my way.”

But I made no move and I don’t think the grey-bearded man expected me to.

“Will your company be anxious that you’re late?” he said.

“Company?”

“Your fellow players.”

“Not them,” I said. “As long as I’m there for the setoff tomorrow morning they’ll not trouble themselves about where I am tonight. They’ll think I’ve found me a – ”

Some sense of delicacy made me break off, and the grey-beard said, “In that case you’d better come inside and take some refreshment. Can you walk unaided?”

“Thank you, yes.”

“Follow me then.”

He led the way into the house, the figure with the candle having by this time disappeared. He ushered me into a parlour, delaying in the passage for a moment to call out “Martin!” Candles were already burning on a table where a pile of papers and a clutch of pens were neatly arranged. I guessed I had interrupted my host in the middle of some business. He motioned me to a nearby chair. As I sat down I groaned involuntarily.

“My dear sir, you are hurt.”

“Not at all,” I said “or only slightly. A loudmouth’s penalty.”

“There’s blood upon your face. A little blood.”

“Only mine.”

A stocky man appeared in the doorway.

“I can offer you cider,” said my host, “or perhaps purging beer would be better for your case.”

“Cider,” I said rapidly. I wasn’t at all sure what purging beer was and didn’t like the sound of it.

The grey-bearded gentleman gave the order to the servant and then sat down at the table. He pushed a couple of candles nearer to me, apparently for my convenience but really, I think, to make a more careful assessment of what he saw.

“You were about to ask who you had the honour of addressing,” he said.

I was, but even so his quickness took me by surprise and I simply nodded.

“My name is Adam Fielding, citizen of Salisbury.”

This time I nodded more slowly.

“Nicholas Revill,” I said formally. “I’m –”

I stopped because he’d raised his hand.

“Wait.”

He leaned forward and squinted through the candle-smoke. As he cast his grey eyes up and down my front I became a little uneasy at his scrutiny. I wanted to wipe away the blood from wherever it was staining my face but didn’t move.

Then he sat back and smiled.

“Don’t worry, Master Revill. It’s only a little occupation of mine.”

“What is?”

“To, ah, see what someone is before he speaks what he is.”

“And what do you see, sir?” I said, prepared to humour this kindly gent.

At that point Martin returned with tankards of cider for his master and me. Fielding waited until the servant had gone and I’d had my first sip. Until I tasted the cider I hadn’t realized how tired and thirsty I was.

“This is made from my own apples. Pomewater. But you were asking what I could see.”

I nodded, then abruptly remembered that he’d mentioned my “company” on the doorstep. How had he found out about them?

“Well, Master Revill, you are a player, one of a travelling group newly arrived from London and currently lodging at the Angel Inn on Greencross Street.”

I almost spilled my cider.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said my host. “This I knew already. I am a Justice of the Peace for this town. One of our duties, as you surely know, is to license and superintend the visits which players make.”

“We are not playing here, your worship,” I said, to show that I knew the proper form of address for such a dignified gentleman. “We’re only travelling through.”

“No, the only company licensed to play these many weeks is the Paradise Brothers. They put on Bible stories and old morality pieces.”

“I know. I saw them in the market-place.”

“And you belong to the Chamberlain’s Company, so I imagine you’d have little time for the kind of thing which the Paradise Brothers present.”

“They are – professional enough,” I said. “How do you know I belong to the Chamberlain’s?”

“No magic,” said Fielding, although I sensed that he was enjoying taking me a little by surprise. “In a town like this, probably a small town to your London eyes, a Justice of the Peace makes it his business to know what is going on. Besides, the sister of my man Martin is married to the landlord of the Angel.”

“Oh,” I said, vaguely disappointed. “So that’s it then.”

Again the parlour door opened. This time it was the figure who’d stood, candle in hand, at the front doorway while I lay slumped there. She crossed the floor and moved towards where I was sitting. She was wearing a night-rail that concealed her shape but her face in the diffused light had a youthful sweetness, a quiet beauty. She carried a tray containing a bowl of water and a small pot and one or two other items.

Fielding had his back to her but smiled to hear her approach.

“My dear,” he said, “this is Nicholas Revill, who has fetched up on our doorstep. Master Revill, my daughter Kate.”

I made to rise, but she put a restraining hand on my arm.

“Please, Master Revill, stay still. I can see that you are tired – and that you have injured yourself.”

Ah, the softness and understanding of women!

“My own fault,” I said, “the injury, I mean.”

Kate the daughter placed the tray on the table. She dipped a cloth in the bowl of water and dabbed at my face to clear the crusted blood. I bore up bravely, though in truth I might have withstood her ministrations for longer, much longer. I could smell her sweet breath. All this while Adam Fielding, her father, gazed approvingly at her and her actions. When she’d done with the cloth, she turned once more to the table and dipped her fingers into the small pot. She smeared the unguent on one side of my face, explaining that it was a tincture for bruising and cuts, made with plantain leaves. It stung slightly. But this too I might have borne for longer, much longer. Her slender fingers seemed to have a healing touch of their own. I could sense the warmth of her body beneath the white night-rail she wore.

I wondered whether she was doing this of her own accord or whether her father had sent her off to fetch these salves when he first saw me at his door. I rather fancied – that is, I hoped – she was doing it of her own accord.

“There,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said, wondering whether to make some crack about how I’d been looking for my night’s lodging but had found the Angel in another guise and place. However, I kept my mouth closed, perhaps because her father was still looking at us though he had so far said nothing. Also, there are some women who are immune to my wit.

“I’m going to bed now, father,” she said. “Don’t stay up too late talking to our visitor.”

This remark, which on paper looks rather impudent, even from an adult child to a parent, was delivered fondly and received with an indulgent smile by Fielding.

When she’d gone, he said, “Now where was I?” but in a way that suggested he knew exactly where he was. Sure enough: “Ah yes, I was telling you about yourself. Humour an old man if you would. There’s more, you see.”

“More, sir?”

“More, Master Revill. Let us see. You are not originally from London but have lived there for a year perhaps. Your roots are in the west, further west than here . . .”

“From a village near Bristol. And it’s two years in London,” I said, a little aggravated that my voice still betrayed my origins. Fielding must have a good ear.

And a good eye and brain as it turned out.

“You’ve been walking today at the front of your company,” he continued, “with the wagon full of props and costumes trundling at the rear, where it was probably accompanied by the more senior players. You, though, would have kept pace with a fellow player of about your own age.”

“Go on,” I said, half smiling and sipping at my cider.

“You also thought occasionally and fondly – but not over-fondly – of she whom you had left behind.”

I sat up a little straighter at this.

“Because you are away from the city, thoughts of your parents most likely crossed your mind too –”

How on earth did he know that?

“– particularly of your father, the parson.”

At this I almost dropped my tankard on the floor.

I didn’t have to voice the question which appeared on my face.

Adam Fielding, Justice of the Peace, looked gratified at the effect he’d produced.

“You have an informant,” I said hopefully, “not a servant’s sister but a cousin or a grandfather in the church perhaps?”

He shook his head

“Then how?”

“It’s surprising how much information we give away gratis and unawares, Master Revill.”

“I said nothing, next to nothing, your worship.”

“There’s no such thing as saying nothing. Let me explain. I know already that you are a member of the Chamberlain’s Company spending the night here at the Angel. Therefore you must have completed your journey to Salisbury this afternoon. I’m familiar with the disposition of travelling companies, how the costumes and so on are borne in wagons while the poor players stumble along on foot.”

“We players are the least of it,” I said. “Our tire-man tells us again and again that people pay to see his robes, not our bodies.”

“As a youthful member of the Company, you’d have walked a bit quicker than average. And it’s unlikely you’d walk alone. Players are naturally gregarious. Also, I can see that the chalk kicked up from the way is still dusting your shoes while your front and leggings are pretty clear of marks – which certainly wouldn’t have been the case if you’d been walking at the back. There you’d’ve had to contend with all the dust thrown up by the others.”

“Well and good,” I said. “But how did you know my thoughts – some of my thoughts?”

Fielding smiled and took a long pull from his tankard of cider.

“The woman you left behind, you mean?”

“Oh there may be one,” I said, thinking of my whore Nell.

“Any young man who’s been in London a year or so will have furnished himself with a paramour – unless there’s something strange or unnatural about him. And there doesn’t look to be anything strange or unnatural about you, Master Revill.”

(Was this a compliment – or a slight slight? I couldn’t tell.)

“When he’s away, a young man’s mind will naturally turn to the girl he’s left behind. On the other hand, after that year or so with her and on a journey out of the city he will be ready for other adventures too. He’ll consider her fondly – but not over fondly, I think.”

“I – yes, you’ve described my state almost exactly,” I said, remembering how little, really, I’d thought of Nell on our three days’ tramp from London, and becoming almost ashamed of this.

“That’s because I’ve been in it myself,” said Fielding. “I too left a woman behind when I quit the city for the first time.”

“What happened to her?”

“Ah . . .” was all he said.

“You said my father was a parson.”

“I was right?”

There was something almost touching in his eagerness to be proved correct.

“Yes, you’re right enough, he was.”

“Was?”

“Both my parents perished when the plague struck our little village . . . I was away at the time.”

“And so you were preserved.”

“It was God preserved me, my father would have said. But how did you know his calling? You must have secret powers of divination.”

“No magic, no mystery. You confirmed my guess by your surprised reaction when I mentioned it. But even before that, you said you’d come from a village near Bristol. Now, you’re obviously an educated young man, and education in a village is normally confined to the offspring of the parson, the squire or the schoolmaster.”

“So why shouldn’t I be the squire’s son – or the schoolmaster’s?”

“You might have had the schoolmaster for a father. But the squire, I think not. Forgive me, Master Revill, if I say that the son of a man of, ah, substance will usually find himself discouraged from joining a band of players.”

“True enough,” I said. “There’s not much respect in playing even nowadays – or much revenue either, for a squire’s son.”

“So why do you do it?” said Fielding, looking at me shrewdly over the rim of his tankard.

“I’m not sure. Perhaps the best I can say is that it’s with me as it was with my father, a calling.”

I regretted the words almost as soon as they were out of my mouth and was only glad that none of my Company was about to catch them. I could already hear the scorn which such high sentiments would receive – and deservedly.

“Though not such a high a calling as your father’s. You will save no souls from the eternal bonfire,” said the Justice of the Peace. “Nor will you guide any up that steep and thorny path to salvation.”

“I leave that to others, like the whatyecallem Brothers in the market-place this evening. I’m content merely to divert people on the way up or down, whatever their destination. It’s none of my business.”

“Well, that is what you think now,” said Fielding.

“And what I also think now, sir, is that I have an early setoff to make tomorrow morning so, if you don’t mind, I should be on the way back to my inn and my fellows. Not that they’ll trouble themselves over my absence –”

“Because they’ll conclude you’ve found one of our Salisbury whores for the night,” said Fielding.

I coloured slightly. “I forbore to say it on your doorstep but yes, that’s probably what they would think.”

“I thank you, Master Revill, if you were protecting my daughter’s ears but I think she would have been amused rather than otherwise.”

I stored away this piece of information for future consideration (and possible use) while I rose from the table. Adam Fielding accompanied me to the door, making small host-like queries about my well-being. He told me how to find my way to the Angel Inn and then shook my hand.

“I’m surprised you haven’t asked where we’re going tomorrow,” I said. “Or perhaps you know already.”