The Pale Companion (34 page)

“I think you mean I should see
you,
Nicholas.”

I could not meet her eye, and found myself growing red like a schoolboy. This was the moment surely. Seize it, Nicholas. Kate meantime bent forward to apply some ointment to a particularly vicious flesh-tear on my forearm.

“Of course I do,” I said.

“Well, I will come and see you play. That is, unless you endure any more adventures in the interim. You might not survive another adventure.”

She looked up at me with those clear, candid eyes.

“No adventures, I promise, until you are come to London.”

Greatly daring, I leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. The touch, the taste stayed with me for several hours afterwards. Or rather, I tried to ensure it did by allowing no drop of liquid to pass my own lips – just like a green, lovesick schoolboy.

Around the dinner hour, Adam Fielding returned from the gaol, where he had been in conference with the two justices who had originally ridden over to Instede for the inquest on Lord Elcombe and who had committed young Harry Ascre for trial. Armed with the depositions which he’d gathered from Lady Elcombe and (the now defunct) Oswald, as well as myself, he had succeeded in persuading his fellow magistrates that the charges against Ascre should be abandoned.

Adam Fielding had saved my life. For I had no doubt that, if he hadn’t had crept up behind Oswald Eden and caused him to topple to his death, the steward would have launched his stone missile at the unprotected head of one N. Revill, whose pate is no harder than the average mortal’s. It was not likely that Oswald would have missed at such close range, and – even if he hadn’t disposed of me at the first strike – he could have finished me off straight after. Then I would have remained lying outdoors in the midst of the stone rings on Salisbury plain, for crows and other carrion to peck at.

Approaching the mighty stone rings, Fielding had sighted Napper the nag cantering in circles. Worried that I’d fallen off and injured myself, he had put on speed. (When he told me this, I was touched by his concern and forgave him for his mockery of my poor horsemanship – like sitting in a chair, indeed!) Next Fielding spotted Oswald’s horse, tethered on the outskirts. Whether he recognized it or not I don’t know, but the sight made him uneasy. Dismounting, he walked in the direction of the voice which carried over the grass. Curiously, it echoed the question on his own lips: “Are you there, Master Revill?” Then, seeing the black stick-figure stalking among the stones, he had grasped my danger and set to stalking Oswald himself. For all his years, Adam Fielding was a fit, limber man. To clamber atop a six-foot high slab was no great challenge, to creep up behind a man preoccupied with his own quarry was a reversion to child’s play.

I owed him my life.

Afterwards, we’d walked and ridden back to Salisbury from the stone rings, with Fielding and I taking it in turns astride his dignified palfrey. The late Oswald was draped over the crupper of his own mount, the pale one he’d arrived on. There was no sign of my Napper. I guessed he was half way back to Instede. If I owed Fielding my life I owed the nag a debt too, for he’d enabled me to slip away more or less undetected as Oswald rode up. Now the steward’s head lolled on one flank of his mount and his feet waggled on the other. My legs were still shaky and it seemed to take a particular effort to put one in front of the other during my spells of walking. Fielding was uncharacteristically quiet, so it was a silent little trio, two living and one dead, that paced city-wards across the plain while the thumb-print of a waning moon rose into the sky. We reached Salisbury in the middle of that summer evening.

I was relieved that arrangements were in the hands of an important citizen of the town. I was relieved I did not have to face such things as the bestowal of the body, the sending off next morning of a messenger to Instede with the news of Oswald’s demise, or the inevitable explanations required from various quarters. My fellows were lodging at the Angel Inn in Greencross Street and were due to set out on their return to London later that day. I spoke to Richard Sincklo and outlined some of what had happened without going into much detail. I asked that I might remain behind a day or two longer since my witness might be required. My friends like Jack Wilson and Laurence Savage were eager in their questions and I promised them that I would unfold the whole story when we were together again at the Globe.

But what was the whole story?

Fielding explained that, like me, he considered Oswald to have been somehow implicated in the series of Instede deaths. The steward had claimed no more than that he’d been aware of his master’s meeting on midsummer’s night with his cracked older son. But there was a closeness between them – Fielding held up his hand with the index and middle fingers wrapped about each other – a closeness which suggested Oswald knew much more than that simple fact about Elcombe’s plans and intentions. Whether he, that is Elcombe, had gone out to silence Henry the simpleton, and so keep the way clear for the second son’s marriage to proceed . . . or whether he had attempted to bribe or trick the natural into leaving the estate . . . but had himself perished in the course of the business . . . whatever had occurred, Fielding was sure that Oswald had been up to the hilts in it.

“Oswald couldn’t be certain what you’d seen that night,” said Fielding. “After he’d given his testimony, he was suddenly seized with the belief that he’d given himself away. Or that you might have said more to me than you’d let on. Accordingly he decided to waylay you on the way back.”

“And then you?”

“I dare say. Travellers are robbed on the plain from time to time. Wild rogues and rakehells. It would have been easy enough for Oswald to cover his tracks.”

“He must have been very devoted to the memory of his master.”

“He was. But devoted mostly to the memory of himself. Also, I believe that he had ambitions . . .”

“In the direction of the Lady Penelope?”

“Yes, Nicholas. You too noticed that.”

I hadn’t before that instant, but sometimes you don’t realize what is the case until you say it aloud.

“He was at her side after her husband’s death, often at her side. Everyone saw that. He kept her husband close company too. But a steward!”

“There is precedent,” said Fielding. “The Duchess of Suffolk married her Master of the Horse.”

“And Master Shakespeare created an ambitious steward in one of his plays. But he was a figure of fun.”

“That was not Oswald. Well, Nicholas, I am in high hopes that young Harry Ascre will be freed tomorrow and returned to his family. At least something will have been salvaged out of this wreck.”

Something was salvaged. Adam Fielding’s hopes were realized.

Young Ascre was released to go back to a house in mourning. Lady Elcombe might be relieved that she had two out of three sons left, even if the eldest had been momentarily restored only to be snatched away. But then how deep could her grief be for a simpleton she hadn’t seen since he was a baby? Given what was known of that unfortunate’s life (and the hand he’d played in procuring his father’s death), it couldn’t altogether be regretted that he now lay in the family vault.

No doubt the family would knit together, eventually. Lady Elcombe might expect to remarry in time, when her widow’s weeds turned to purple. Harry Ascre wouldn’t be compelled to marry Marianne Morland, wouldn’t perhaps be compelled to marry anyone at all. Cuthbert might be able to indulge his passion for the stage . . . though I judged this unlikely. With noblemen, such passions are essentially pastimes.

Nicholas Revill’s hopes, on the other hand, weren’t realized.

I must confess that my heart had swelled at the invitation from Kate Fielding to spend the night at the Justice’s house in Salisbury. I’d thought – such was my green-sickness – that she desired to have me on her home territory, there to take advantage of a young player. Yes, all right, I know, the wish was father to the thought . . . but you must admit it was not completely out of the question.

True, when her father and I arrived home in the middle of a midsummer’s evening, shaken and exhausted and leading a horse with a corpse draped over its cropper, this did not seem the most propitious beginning to a romantic idyll. And then the next day there were my wounds to worry over, when Kate seemed all too happy to play the nurse’s part but nothing else. I’d kissed her! (But the kiss had not been returned, really.) After that there was only a little more business to attend to. I had to give a formal deposition before the two justices respecting Oswald Eden and his intention to brain me, and to testify that Adam Fielding’s arrival had saved my life.

I heard too, by the way, that Peter Paradise, being informed of his brother Eden’s death, had charitably attributed it to the hand of God. The Paradise “Brothers” were now on the road to Exeter, there to inflict upon the citizenry their violent sermons.

Meanwhile I had to get back to my business of playing. My fellows would have reached London already and I was eager to see my city again. Before I quit Salisbury, however, I extracted a promise from Kate Fielding that she would visit the Globe playhouse to see the Chamberlain’s when she was next in town. And I got from her what I’d been angling for in return, that is, an invitation to visit her at her aunt’s Finsbury house. All was not lost, quite.

I enquired at the Angel Inn and discovered that a party of carriers was leaving the next morning to travel to Kingston. I was reluctant to cross the open countryside by myself. Ordinary prudence urged company, and my late experience made it seem more desirable. Accordingly, I hitched myself to their wagon. The wagon was metaphorical only, for the carriers were using pack-horses to transport their gammon and razes of ginger and turkeys and the rest, and their progress was slow. Nevertheless I fell in with them easily enough and they were glad enough too – if I don’t flatter myself – to have a real live London player in their train. At Kingston we parted company near the river, and I made my lone way over the last few miles.

As I drew nearer London the air thickened. There were straggles of tumbledown houses by the road and the countryside wore a battered, put-upon air as if it knew that its time and tenure were strictly limited. Coming up from the south, I passed close to Broadwall where I’d spent a few uncomfortable months lodging with the weird sisters the previous winter. Then I took an eastwards turn and found myself on this fine afternoon strolling along Upper Ground by the river and in the direction of Paris Garden and the bear-pit. Familiar sounds – church bells, shouts from the watermen, the trundling of carts – greeted me. The passengers I met seemed to wear an extra air of sharpness and intelligence, which I could only attribute to their Londinity (to coin a vile phrase). The river sparkled as though God had newly laundered it. You would hardly think that the waves concealed all manner of filth and detritus. And, indeed, on that afternoon I did not think of it, I was only too pleased to be back on my native ground.

At long last, over the tops of the lesser buildings, I sighted the high white sides of the Globe playhouse. Seeing it there, glowing in the sunlight like the fabled walls of Troy, brought a lump to my throat. It reminded me of my first glimpse of it on my first arrival in London. Then it had been the height of my ambition to stand on those bare boards and play my part. And now . . . well, not all dreams are beyond reach.

And now I was crossing the small bridges which spanned the many channels on this side of the Thames shore, and now I was ambling up Brend’s Rents, and within a few moments more I was home again among my fellows.

*
see
Death of Kings

“
L
ook, Nick, I have something to show you.”

“Oh Nell, haven’t you shown me enough already?”

“Not that, this is different.”

I tried to summon up enthusiasm but in truth I was a little wearied after a strenuous bed-bout. This was by way of being a welcome home, and I must say that Nell greeted me as if I were an Odysseus returning from a twenty-year absence. Or so it seemed to me. We went at it with a will in my lodgings in Dead Man’s Place.

Not long before, my lascivious landlord, Master Benwell, had also given me a particular welcome home. He was all agog to hear of my adventures among the country gentry, particularly as he’d picked up something about the tragic happenings at Instede House. Indeed, the death of Lord Elcombe and the thwarted marriage of Harry Ascre and Marianne Morland was hot in people’s mouths. That’s what happens when tragedy strikes the high and mighty . . . the low and meek rub their hands with glee and lick their lips. I assured Master Benwell that he’d hear about it in due course, and made a mental note to refer to it the next time he grumbled that I was only paying a shilling a week in rent.

To Nell I had given a truncated version of the Instede events. I left out almost any mention of Kate Fielding – although I wasn’t as troubled by my friend’s jealousy as I would have been in our earlier days together. Nell was oddly uninterested, however. Perhaps she thought that country folk, of whom she (like me) was one, went round all day hanging and drowning themselves or stabbing each other with sundials.