Shakespeare's Scribe (22 page)

Though I knew little about the demands of honor or of duty, I was well acquainted with the demands of the body and, unprincipled as it may seem, these were what finally swayed me. If the company took me back, I would at least have decent food to fill my stomach and a soft place to lay my head. Besides, if I did not rejoin them soon, Sal Pavy would surely usurp all my old roles.

All that remained was to find the players. If they had managed to put on a performance in Worcester, as scheduled, they might have made enough to pay for lodgings, so I checked at the first inn I came to. My friends were not there, but the host directed me to another inn, the Wheat-sheaf. By the time I found the place, I was faint with hunger and fatigue and, despite the warmth of the evening, shivering in my wet clothing.

As I stepped from the dark outdoors into the main room of the inn, the light of the candles fairly blinded me. The smell of roasting meat filled my nostrils. Supporting myself against the doorframe, I surveyed the room, hoping to see a familiar and welcome face. To my painful disappointment, I recognized no one there.

Or nearly no one.

As I turned to leave, I caught sight of a figure that made me stop and stare: a fat-bellied man with an eye patch. Though he had his back to me, I was certain it was the same familiar-looking fellow I had seen weeks before, with Lord Pembroke's Men, and again at the tavern in Leeds, playing cards with Jamie Redshaw.

He was engaged in a game of cards now, with three other men. Piles of coins on the table told me that there was gambling involved. Apparently the one-eyed man was not faring well, for there was not a single coin in front of him. As I watched, he pulled something from his wallet and dangled it before the others, evidently offering it as a wager, in lieu of money. In the light of the small chandelier that hung over the table, the object in his hand glinted gold, and I gave a gasp of surprise, for even at that distance, I knew at once what it was—my mother's crucifix.

26

F
or a moment I stood transfixed while my brain, muddled by exhaustion, tried to work out what this meant. The cross had been in the company's treasury trunk; when Jamie Redshaw had stolen the contents of the trunk, he must have taken it, too. That meant he was here somewhere, or had been recently, long enough to lose the cross to the one-eyed fellow.

This realization set me in motion. I strode unsteadily across the room to the quartet of cardplayers and leaned over to get a closer look at the crucifix. There was no mistaking the ornate design. “Where did you come by that?” I demanded.

The man turned to me and, though his face was shadowed by his hat brim, I saw his one good eye widen in an expression I could not quite read. “What business is it of yours?” he said, between teeth that were clenched around a pipe stem. His voice was not the sort I expected from an actor. It had a rough, hoarse quality, as though he'd strained his vocal cords by shouting or was suffering from the grippe.

I knew I had heard that voice before, but it wasn't until he removed the pipe from his mouth and turned his head further, so the candles illuminated his face and neck, that I realized with a shock who it was that sat before me.

The eye patch and the amount of weight he had put on had fooled me. But the long, livid scar on his throat gave him away, for I myself had bound up the wound that caused it. “Nick?” My voice, too, came out sounding husky and uncertain.

He pushed back his chair and stood. “So, you haven't forgotten me, eh, Horse?” The grin on his face was not the sort that said he was happy to see me.

Hearing the old name with which Nick used to taunt me banished any doubt that it was, indeed, him.

“I—I heard you were dead.”

“Well, that just goes to show, you can't believe everything you hear.”

He pulled the eye patch aside. The eye beneath it was cloudy white, and the skin around it embedded with small, scablike flecks of black that I took to be grains of powder from the pistol that had backfired in his face. “Needless to say, I'm no longer playing girls, with this face … and this figure.” He patted his expansive belly.

“But you're acting, still? Wi' Pembroke's Men?”

He laughed unpleasantly, and the other men at the table joined in. “Sometimes we call ourselves that. This week, however, we're the Lord Chamberlain's Men, right, fellows?”

“That's right,” said one of his companions, a bald fellow with a red, bulbous nose. He raised his mug of ale. “Don't you recognize us? I'm Will Shakespeare, and this here's Burbage.”

“And this”—Nick stepped nearer me and clapped a rough hand on the back of my neck—“this is Horse. He's with a company who also call themselves the Chamberlain's Men. Isn't that a coincidence?” He seized a clump of hair on the nape of my neck and pulled my head back. “Where are your friends now, Horse?”

“I—I don't ken,” I said.

“What do you
ken
, exactly?”

I jerked my hair painfully from his grasp. “I ken that crucifix belongs to me. How did you come by 't?”

Nick glanced at his companions, then shrugged. “Dishonestly,” he said. “Would you like it back?”

I swallowed hard and nodded. “Aye.”

“Well, then.” His hand went to his waist and came up with a dagger. “You'll have to take it from me.” He thrust the dagger at me, and I stumbled backward. “What's wrong, Horse? You don't want it after all?” He dangled the crucifix before me, daring me to reach for it. I glanced toward the door, gauging my chances of escape. “You want to leave, instead, is that it?”

“Aye.”

“You want to return to the Chamberlain's Men, no doubt, and spill your guts about what you've learned. Well, I have a better idea.” He advanced on me, the blade of his dagger moving in a slow circle that held my terrified gaze. “I believe I'll just go ahead and spill them right now. And this time, Horse, it won't be sheep's blood.”

I kept retreating from the threat of the dagger and the menacing grin, until the backs of my knees came up against a bench. I lost my balance and sat down hard on my hucklebones. Before I could scramble to
my feet again, Nick was leaning over me, with the blade at my throat-bole. “No, no,” he said, “I've just had an even better idea. Remember
Titus Andronicus
?” He jabbed the point of the dagger against my chin. “Stick out your tongue.”

“Nay!” I choked.

“Neigh all you want, Horse. It won't save you. Come now, let's have your tongue.”

Though my vision was blurred with pain and panic, I could see an indistinct shape move up behind Nick. Then the dagger jerked to one side; I felt it slice my skin and, though there was no pain at first, I cried out in alarm.

Nick was pulled backward, struggling and cursing. I slumped forward, holding my bleeding chin. I had to wipe away the tears that filled my eyes before I could discover who had dragged Nick off me.

It was Jamie Redshaw. He had seized Nick's right arm by the wrist and twisted it up behind his back so far that the point of the dagger threatened to puncture the back of Nick's skull. With a bellow of pain and rage, Nick let the weapon drop. I had presence of mind enough to snatch it up and put it in Jamie Redshaw's hand.

He pressed the edge of the blade to Nick's throat and turned his hostage around so they faced the rest of the Mock Chamberlain's Men. “Stay where you are, gentlemen,” he said calmly. “If we all keep our heads, then your comrade will get to keep his.”

The bald, red-nosed man laughed. “In truth, we'd just as soon you did the blighter in.” Casually he got to his feet and drew his rapier. “All the more money for the rest of us, you see.” At his cue, the other men of the thieves' company closed in, too, with their weapons before them.

“Run, Widge!” Jamie Redshaw called over his shoulder.

“Nay!” I replied. “Not wi'out you!”

“I'll be right behind you! Now go!”

I turned to flee and then, remembering the crucifix, turned back and yanked it from Nick's grasp, snapping the delicate chain. As I headed for the door, I saw Jamie Redshaw plant a foot in Nick's back and send him reeling forward into his companions, who very considerately turned their swords aside to avoid impaling him.

With Jamie Redshaw at my heels, I dashed across the highway, nearly breaking an ankle in the deep ruts, and into the safety of the dark woods. “Hold!” called Jamie Redshaw softly. I slowed, and he caught up with me. “They'll not pursue us, I'm certain, for they're a lazy lot of louts. Let's sit down a while.” Groaning slightly, he sank to the ground next to a
broad beech, and I sat beside him, on a cushion of dead leaves that had escaped the rain under shelter of the tree.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“No, it's just the old wound acting up. What about you?”

“It's not a bad cut; I've stopped the bleeding. It would have been much worse, had you not come along. I should have done more to save meself, but I was too frightened.”

“It's good to be frightened. It keeps you from being over confident.”

“That's exactly the same thing Mr. Phillips told me about acting. You didn't seem frightened.”

“I didn't have a knife at my throat. You acquitted yourself well enough—and even better back in Worcester.”

It was the first word of praise I had ever heard from him and I held on to it as tightly as I held the crucifix. “How did you happen to be here, at the same inn wi' those miscreants?”

“I thought it might be worth my while to join their company—just temporarily, until some better opportunity should present itself.”

“Join them? But … they're thieves!”

“Well,” he said nonchalantly, “no one is without faults.”

“How long ha' you been in league wi' them?”

“Just since your Mr. Armin chased me off. Oh, I had made their acquaintance before that and, as you may have guessed, sold them a few of your handbills.”

“Oh.” I had hoped he might reveal that the robbery was all their idea, that he had been only an unwilling accomplice. “What will you do about the money?” I said.

“The money?”

“What you took from the Chamberlain's Men.”

“Oh. I'm afraid that's all gone.”

“Gone?”

“I had a streak of ill fortune with the cards.”

“You gambled it all away?” I said incredulously. “There must have been twenty pounds in that trunk!”

“The trunk? I never touched the trunk. I took no more than a few shillings from the gatherer's box.”

“But … you brained Jack! We found your stick!”

“It's no longer my stick. Three or four days ago I wagered it on a hand of cards, and lost.”

“To whom?” I asked, though I was sure I knew the answer.

“Richard.”

“Richard?” I echoed in surprise. “Who is Richard?”

“Why, the very villain who so nearly cut your tongue out.”

“Oh. That's not his true name. It's Nick. He was once wi' the Chamberlain's Men.”

“And now he's taken to robbing them and burning their wagons? Nice fellow. I expect he deliberately left the stick behind to divert suspicion from him and his companions.”

“No doubt. Tell me, in your time wi' them, did the name Simon Bass ever come up?”

“It did. I gathered that most of them were once players in a company run by Bass. How did you know that?”

“I'll tell you sometime,” I said. “In the meanwhile, is there aught we can do to recover the money?”

“We might try asking very politely. Or, on the other hand, we might kill the lot of them.”

Irked by his lack of concern, I said, “What about your honor? Do you not wish to clear your name?”

He laughed. “I'm afraid my only hope of having a clear name lies in taking a new one. Besides, you can tell your fellow players that I'm not the culprit. They'll believe you.”

“I can't go back to the Chamberlain's Men,” I said glumly. “Not after all that's happened.”

“Of course you'll go back. What else can you do?”

I hesitated, like a player who is reluctant to say a line he has been given because he is uncertain how the audience will react to it. Finally I forced myself to say it. “I might go wi' you.”

In the darkness I could not make out Jamie Redshaw's face, to read his reaction. I could only wait anxiously for his reply. It was a long time coming. At last he said, “No. You would not care for the sort of life I lead. I go where my whims or the whims of Fortune take me, and when I've overstayed my welcome, I leave. I get my living by whatever means I may. I cannot afford to concern myself with how honest it is. And I have as many ways of losing money as I have of making it. No,” he said again. “It's no life for a lad like you, who can amount to something.”

Though I listened to his words, I did not hear them. What I heard was that he did not want me. “But,” I said, my voice trembling now, “even an I could return to the company, I could never go wi'out you. You're me father.”

Jamie Redshaw blew out a long, heavy sigh, as though he had come face-to-face with something he had been making every effort to avoid. “As I said, honesty is not always my first concern.”

If I had been stunned when he first claimed kinship with me, I was stricken now. “You—you lied to me, then?” I managed to say.

“Let us say, rather, that I misled you.”

“But—” I held up the crucifix, which I still clutched in one hand. “You kenned me mother's name. You kenned it was carved on the back of this.”

“A cozener's trick, nothing more.”

“A trick? How—?”

“You recall the little man with half an ear? He and I were confederates, helping one another to relieve coneys of their excess coins.”

“Coneys?”

“Gulls. Marks. Victims. He saw in you an opportunity for us to ally ourselves with a renowned—and profitable—company of players. I don't think he expected me to leave town with them.”