The Tainted Relic (47 page)

I’d had breakfast not so many hours earlier but I felt a sudden hunger at the sweet, crisp aroma of roasting pig. Later, I promised myself, we would visit Ursula’s stall for a taste of her wares. Later, after we’d concluded our business at Bartholomew Fair.

‘And look there,’ said Abel. ‘You mentioned marks, Nick…there’s a whole crowd of ’em.’

From our position by the railings that edged the fair, I looked. On an open patch of ground was standing a handsome ballad singer with fair, curled hair surmounted by a red cap. He’d just finished a song and was nodding and smiling at a little gaggle of spectators who, by their own smiling and scattered applause, showed that they appreciated him almost as much as he appreciated himself. He raised his hands placatingly as if they were compelling him to offer one more number. Oh, very well…if you insist. He tossed his red-capped head like a frisky colt before bending once more over the lute that was strung round his neck.

‘I’ve seen him before,’ said Abel. ‘He calls himself Ben Nightingale. You could say it’s his stage name. But Ben Magpie would be more fitting.’

After a few moments’ fiddling with his instrument, all done to heighten audience expectation, the singer called Nightingale struck up to his own accompaniment. He had a pleasant voice which carried clearly through the other shouts and cries in the area. The words were distinct.

My masters and ladies, good people draw near,

And take to your hearts these words you do hear,

Look well to your purses, of robbers beware,

At ’tholomew Fair, Bartholomew Fair
.

Cling fast to your goods and tight hold your purse,

Or else you had better been starved by your nurse.

Here are bad men a-plenty, all worthy the noose,

But none, say I, worse than Master Cutpurse.

And so he wound on with his execrable verses. But the bystanders seemed to be enjoying it, nodding in agreement with the sentiments or laughing at the foolishness of those who allowed themselves to become victims of ‘Master Cutpurse’.

‘
He
should be hanged…’ I said.

‘A bit severe,’ said Jack.

‘…for rhyming “noose” and “purse”.’

‘This piece of his is called “A Warning against Cutpurses”,’ said Abel.

‘Very public spirited of the singer,’ said Jack.

‘Oh, very,’ said Abel. ‘But see the individual at the edge. That one there. His name is Peter Perkin.’

Slightly to one side of the group there stood a short man, his head bent sideways to scoop up the singer’s words. He was squinting as if to concentrate the better on the sound. But I noticed that, beneath half-closed lids, his eyes were darting to and fro. He was dressed as though he’d just come in from the country for the day. There were even a few stems of straw sticking to his rustic hat. Aha, I thought, I bet I know what those straws are for…

All the time the red-capped singer was running through half a dozen stanzas, each of them reflecting on the iniquity of cutpurses and the need for honest citizens to be on their guard, Perkin kept his head down. And as the singer thrummed on the lute strings to signal the end of his piece and the audience’s hands hovered over their pockets and pouches, the short fellow’s eyes flickered ever more rapidly. When Nightingale concluded with a flourish, this bystander was foremost in the applause. I noticed, however, that he didn’t dive for his own purse.

The singer removed his cap and moved among the audience, smiling in the way that all performers smile at the end of the show. To judge by his expression, each coin dropped into the upturned cap appeared to come as a genuine surprise. Why, it seemed to say, you mean that I am to be paid for what is purely my pleasure! As the little audience began to disperse and he was tipping the coins with a practised movement into his own purse, I saw him motion very slightly with his head to his confederate, Peter Perkin. You wouldn’t have guessed that there was anything to connect the two of them if it hadn’t been for that briefest of gestures. This second gentleman casually took himself off in pursuit of a couple of well-padded dames. No doubt, once he’d relieved them of what they were carrying, he would track down others whose fat purses he’d noted while he was pretending to listen to Nightingale.

You had to admire the slickness of the operation. The singer drew the crowds and took their honest tribute once he had rounded off his session with a song against the cutting of purses. Meantime his associate kept watch on where those purses were stashed. It saved time later on if he knew exactly which part of the body to target. Even some bumpkin clinging for dear life to his wordly wealth wouldn’t be secure. It’s wonderful how a straw gently tickled in the ear will cause anyone to let go of what they’re clutching, and our friend in the rustic hat had his armoury of straws.

A cruder pair of thieves would have robbed the spectators there and then while they were listening. But there was a double disadvantage to this: the singer wouldn’t have been paid for his pains if their purses had gone missing and so a little profit would have been forfeit, and–perhaps more important–some suspicion might have been directed at him for distracting the crowd. This way, Ben Nightingale was free to set himself up in another quarter of the fair. It was a trick which he and his accomplice might play two or three times that day, depending on how greedy they were.

There was a court of justice which sat within the precincts of Bartholomew Fair for the duration. It was called Pie-Powder Court. Even though its business was mostly restricted to trading matters (short measures in the ale-tents, coltsfoot mixed in with the tobacco), common thievery and cutpursing certainly fell within its jurisdiction. So we might have marched boldly up to the justices in Pie-Powder and alerted them to these rogues who had the temerity to sing a warning about the very crimes they were about to commit. And yet not one of us–not Jack nor Abel nor I–was going to do anything about it. Every man (and woman) is responsible for his own property. As the old proverb has it: ‘Fast bind, fast find’. And hadn’t Ben Nightingale sung an explicit warning to his patrons,
Look well to your purses, of robbers beware
? We had quite enough to do to look to ourselves. Besides, we had other business at Bartholomew Fair.

We were searching for a relic.

At least, that was how WS had described it to me. A ‘relic’.

I liked to think of William Shakespeare as my friend. He’d shown kindness to me from the moment I joined the King’s Men when they were still called the Chamberlain’s. Some of the other Globe shareholders held themselves a little apart from the run-of-the-mill members of the company. Whether it was because of their age or their temperaments or the heavy responsibilities they bore, the Burbage brothers, John Heminges and the others tended to be aloof. But WS had been ready to talk from the first, to give advice and even to make confidences. Or so it seemed at the time to this junior player. And there had been occasions when he had rescued me from the consequences of my own folly or rashness.

Because I’d been grateful to him and because I had a high esteem for the man, I was always prepared to listen when WS asked me to do something, even regarding any request as a privilege. But this was an especially odd request.

At the end of the play the previous day, WS and I had fallen into conversation. We’d been performing in a piece called
Love’s Triumph
by the playwright William Hordle. The
Triumph
had lived up to its name and the audience at the Globe clapped and cheered at the end while we did our jig. When we came offstage we were running with sweat–it was a muggy afternoon–but more than content with our reception. I was looking forward to a drink in the Goat and Monkey once I’d got out of my costume in the tiring-house.

Our costume man is Bartholomew Ridd, a fussy fellow as those in charge of stage clothes tend to be, I’ve noticed. Like others of his trade, he seems to think that the purpose of plays is to display his finery. Actors are no more than clothes-horses. He’s very hot on damage, ready to rebuke anybody whose outfit catches on a nail or is accidentally sullied with a spillage of beer. For some reason Master Ridd is particularly suspicious of me and always takes a personal interest in the condition of my costume when I’ve come offstage. I used to get annoyed with this but now I try to humour him. Anyway, all this meant that, as usual, I was one of the last to leave the tiring-house.

In the dim passageway outside I almost collided with William Shakespeare. We walked together towards the side door that gave on to the alley known as Brend’s Rents. I couldn’t have explained why, but I had the sense that he’d been waiting for me.

‘Off to the Goat and Monkey, Nick?’ he said when we were outside in the alley.

‘Just for a quick one–or a quick two,’ I said, wondering whether he wanted to accompany me there. The Goat, not a very salubrious alehouse perhaps but the players’ local, wasn’t the sort of place usually frequented by the shareholders. We walked in its direction. There were a few other people around. It was that stage of the day when business is more or less done but the evening’s pleasures have yet to begin.

William Shakespeare and I had to proceed carefully at certain points in the walk. This area of Southwark around the Globe playhouse and the bear garden is criss-crossed by channels and ditches that feed into the river. Bridges carry one over the dirty streams. They are often little more than a single warped plank, and to cross them requires concentration.

‘Hot work onstage this afternoon,’ said Shakespeare.

‘But enjoyable.’

‘Oh yes, enjoyable.’

I glanced at my companion. He hadn’t taken a part in
Love’s Triumph
–indeed, WS took little part in playing these days–but he generally spent his mornings and afternoons at the Globe. The mornings were given over to rehearsals and (for the shareholders) business matters while the afternoons were for performances. Even though his acting days were mostly done with, WS liked to be in attendance at performances, ready to offer a word of advice or encouragement. I sometimes wondered when WS actually
wrote
his plays. I visualized him sitting up late into the night in his lodgings in Mugwell Street north of the river, covering the paper by candlelight, his hand flowing smoothly across the blank sheets. Unlike some other writers I’ve known he never came to work with inky hands.

‘A good writer is that William Hordle,’ said WS.

‘We’ve already done his…let me see, his
Love’s Diversion
and
Love’s Despair
and now there’s been his
Love’s Triumph
,’ I said, asking myself where this conversation was headed.

‘With every play he grows better–and William Hordle was good to begin with,’ said WS, who was generous in his assessment of other men’s work. ‘He skipped the rough apprentice stage. Hordle jumped over that
hurdle
, you might say.’

Experience had taught me to ignore WS’s puns, which varied from the passable to the terrible. Instead I said, ‘Like you, William? You never were an apprentice?’

‘Why do you say so?’

‘It is reported that you never blotched a line.’

Now it was WS’s turn to glance at me. The sun was in our faces. His eyes were shaded by his hat and I couldn’t read his expression. But then, he was a man who was always hard to read. We came to one of the narrow bridges spanning a channel which we had to cross single file. The smell of the river is never agreeable in high summer but the aroma of a Southwark ditch is enough to flatten a fishwife. If you fell in–and people did fall in from time to time on their way to the bear pit or from the tavern–you’d be unlucky to drown in the couple of inches of sludge that adhered to the bottom but you’d quite likely be smothered by the stench.

When we were safely across, WS stopped and took me by the arm.

‘Those reports are wrong,’ he said. ‘I had my rough apprenticeship, when I bodged and blotched with the best of them.’

This talk of apprenticeship was interesting. I’d always been curious about Shakespeare’s early life in London. But WS wasn’t talking now to satisfy my curiosity. Just as I’d sensed that our encounter outside the tiring-house hadn’t been accidental, so I realized that we had now come to the nub of the matter. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted to tell me, though. That Shakespeare could have made mistakes like any other tyro playwright was hardly surprising, for all his reputation now. But what did this have to do with the man who was famed as the creator of Falstaff and Prince Hamlet?

‘Nick, enough of this beating about the bush. I have a request to make. You’ve been to St Bartholomew’s Fair?’

‘Not this season.’

‘Maybe you are intending to go?’

‘Maybe,’ I said. I had been meaning to wander through the fair, as it happened, but was slightly reluctant to confess this to WS for fear that he might consider me a gawping provincial. The traders at Bartholomew are Londoners while those who come to buy (or to be fleeced) tend to come from outside town, for this is a fair that draws people from all over the kingdom.

‘Well, if you should happen to find yourself in the region of Smithfield…’

He paused, waiting to see whether I would flat out deny this possibility. When I said nothing, Shakespeare continued, ‘If you were to visit Smithfield, I say, I would be most obliged if you could call on a certain gentleman who is set up at the fair. A book vendor.’

‘Of course, but why?’ I said this with genuine curiosity. I’d no objection to being asked to do my friend a favour but was unable to see why he couldn’t cross the short distance to Smithfield and call on the bookseller himself. In addition, there was a trace of discomfort in his voice, something very unusual in WS.