Sword of Shame (38 page)

I walked back to the main door which was sheltered by an ornate porch that looked more recent than the rest of this section of the house. I half expected my approach to have been spied on and the door to be flung open before I could rap on it. But nobody was watching or waiting on the other side. There was a great knocker on the door, but it was swathed in cloth to muffle its sound, the usual sign of sickness in a dwelling. I raised the knocker and let it fall with a dull clack. After a time the door opened to reveal a stoutish, middle-aged man wearing a grey-white cap.

‘Come in,' he said.

He spoke wearily. Was he a servant too? He didn't look like one. I went in and he shut the door firmly behind me.

Inside, it wasn't quite as I'd visualized it. A sizeable, old-fashioned chamber, panelled, yes, but with a high
ceiling and a gallery at one end, reached by a flight of stairs. From the actor's point of view, and at first glance, it would do well. A large dining table was set to one side of the hall. There was a welcoming fire in a chimney-piece opposite to the front door and a few tapers had been lit to ward off the growing gloom of the afternoon. Another man was standing by the fire, leaning against the carved chimney-piece. There was a woman sitting in a chair nearby. None of them said anything but all three looked at me with curiosity and, I thought, a touch of wariness. Back in London I'd been told that the head of the household was called Roger Maskell–and one of the Globe shareholders added that he had the reputation of being a jovial old fellow. Neither of the two men here fitted that description. For one thing, they didn't have enough years on them.

‘Nicholas Revill at your service,' I said, dipping my head slightly and feeling that they needed a lesson in manners. ‘I'm the player.'

‘Player? The
player
?' said the woman in the chair. She did not speak with recognition but rather with bemusement.

‘From the King's Men. Of London.' I put a tiny emphasis on
King's
but to no effect. To look at the expressions on the faces of these three I might as well have dropped down from the moon.

‘You're here to see Elias?' said the one who'd opened the door to me. He had moved across to stand by the woman, holding the back of the chair where she sat. Now my eyes were more accustomed to the light indoors, I noticed that what I'd taken for a greyish cap was in fact his natural hair but cut very short and fitting as snugly to his head as a baby's caul. While I was wondering who Elias was–for he certainly couldn't be the Roger Maskell I'd been told of–the
individual by the chair said, ‘You're here to see the old man?'

‘I suppose so,' I said.

As if this was a cue in a play, it was an old man that now entered the room by a side door. He was clutching a stick and shuffling along with an odd sideways gait. Somehow sensing a newcomer, he steered himself in my direction. The others watched as he approached. When he was a few feet away, he halted and peered at me through the spectacles perched on the tip of his long nose. He was very thin and stringy, as if he was already rehearsing himself for death. Presumably this was old Elias. I did my best to smile. I went through the motions of introducing myself all over again although without adding the ‘King's Men' bit. In response the old man cupped his hand to his ear and said, ‘Revill?' as if I was some strange species of animal.

‘You won't get anywhere with him,' said the man standing by the fire. It was the first time he'd spoken. I wasn't sure whether he was addressing me or the old man. The remark would have fitted either of us. The bespectacled individual continued to stare at me, like the boy at the gate. I decided that this wasn't Elias after all. For two pence, I would have turned on my heels and made my way back to Cambridge, leaving my horse behind and going on foot if necessary. But a growing impatience–even anger–at the manner in which I was being treated made me stay. And say what I said next.

‘Look, I don't know what you imagine my business to be. But I have been given a task to do on behalf of my company of players and I would like to talk to the head of this household. Then I'll leave you to your own devices. Happily leave you.'

Now it was the woman's turn to intervene. She got up from her seat near the fire. ‘I'll take you to Elias,' she said.

As she rose I saw that she was younger than I'd first thought. I followed her to the foot of the stairs that led to the gallery, assuming we were going to go up there. Instead she picked up a taper from a small table and made to turn a corner that led into the depths of the house. I put out a hand to detain her.

‘Madam, I…' I began.

‘Not yet.'

She nodded in the direction of the hall. I looked back. The three men were in the same positions: one leaning against the chimney-piece, the stout individual still clutching the back of the chair even though it was empty, and the old one with the stick and spectacles stooped in the middle of the hall. The stout one said something like ‘Give our greetings to Master Grant', but since the remark made no sense to me and I was unsure whether I'd heard him properly, I didn't respond.

The woman and I walked down a passage and came to a kind of lobby where the taper's uncertain light showed a couple of doors.

‘Elias is in that room,' she said, gesturing with the hand that held the candle. She spoke in a whisper. I lowered my head in case she was going to say anything else but she remained silent. I remembered the muffled knocker on the door.

‘Is he sick?' I said.

‘Sick enough,' she said, then added under her breath, ‘And like to die, they hope.'

They? She must have meant the three men out in the hall. I grew even more uncomfortable.

‘Then there's not much point in seeing him…' I said, ‘…if he is so ill…I really wouldn't want to disturb him…I have come only to convey my shareholders' respects and to enquire if the master of the house has any preference for the play which he would like us to perform here next summer.'

‘Play?' she said.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Play. The King's Men can do things at the last moment of course. We're very good at last moment things. Though all in all, and taking the rough with the smooth, it's best to know in advance what the patron requires. That way we can ensure we have everything we need before we set off from London.'

I was babbling away like this, in a half whisper and scarcely aware of what I was saying, because I had a growing sense that something was terribly wrong.

‘Elias likes plays,' she said after a pause, ‘but I do not know of any performance next summer. Indeed I am surprised that he should be thinking so far ahead. A performance in
this
house?'

‘Madam,' I said, ‘you have me altogether at a disadvantage. I have come here on the understanding that Mr Maskell wants us to stage a drama for himself and his, er, family next summer. Mr Roger Maskell. For a wedding perhaps. A private performance is often desired at a wedding.'

‘Maskell?'

‘Yes, Maskell.'

She laughed, a low sound, quite an attractive one, but my guts did a little dance to hear it.

‘Why, we are all
Haskells
in Valence House. I am a Haskell too. There are no Maskells here though I believe there is a family of that name on the other side of Cambridge. You have taken a wrong turning. You have come to the wrong house, Master Revill.'

Somehow the fact that she'd got my name right after hearing it only once made my blunder even more humiliating. Of little use to complain that I'd been directed here by that helpful fellow from one of the university colleges. Too late I remembered that he'd been somewhat hard of hearing and that I'd had to bellow the name in his ear. He must have misheard me
when I asked for the whereabouts of the house and family. Had picked up
Haskell
and not Maskell. Told me they lived in Ickleton, south of Cambridge. Even drew a chart of how to get here, which I followed faithfully. Nobody's fault but my own. I was glad of the near-darkness of this lobby. I went red in the face and started to sweat.

Fool, Revill! Twenty times over, fool!

How my company would laugh if they ever got to hear of this misadventure (which they wouldn't, I determined there and then). I must leave the Haskell home straightaway, ride or walk back to Cambridge through the dark and snow, find the whereabouts of the
Maskell
dwelling and conclude my business there tomorrow.

But my business here was by no means done.

I don't know whether it was the conspiratorial way we'd been keeping our voices down, or the fact that the Haskell woman was quite a lot younger and more attractive than I'd first taken her for, or the general strangeness of the whole situation, but the next thing I found myself saying was: ‘What do you mean, they hope he's like to die? Who are they? Who is Elias? Who are
you
?'

These questions were a bit direct, perhaps. But then I'd blundered in so deeply by now that a bit of outright curiosity hardly counted.

‘I am Martha Haskell,' she said. ‘Elias is my uncle and the head of this house. My father was his younger brother. The men downstairs are part of the family too, distant cousins.'

‘They are here because they think your uncle is…dying?'

Again she laughed that low, fetching laugh. Was she heartless? I didn't think so, instinctively I didn't think so.

‘Elias has always been a mischievous man. My uncle
is not well, there is no doubt about it. But he has played this game before. About three years ago, it was put abroad that he was on his death-bed and the cousins flocked here like so many carrion birds. He wanted to see who came to curry favour and was pleased at the expressions on their faces when he recovered. They brought gifts as tokens–of course they couldn't ask for them to be returned afterwards. Some of them even altered their wills in his favour, hoping to outlive him by many years.'

‘Has the gentleman no wife?'

‘She is long since dead.'

‘No children?'

‘No children,' she repeated.

‘You mentioned your father just now. What about him?'

‘All dead and gone. I am the closest in blood to Elias.'

‘Well then…?'

What I meant was that she should surely be the one to inherit this ramshackle estate when Elias Haskell decided to stop his games and die for good. But considering that Martha and I had only met a few minutes earlier and that I'd already shown a deal of curiosity, this might be a step too far even though we were still talking by conspiratorial candlelight.

At once there came a voice from within the chamber which she'd identified as Elias's. The voice was thin and querulous but penetrating.

‘You've been whispering out there long enough. I can recognize your tones, Martha, but who's that with you?'

‘You'll have to go in and see him now, Nicholas Revill,' she said. ‘Explain how you confused your Maskells and your Haskells. He might be amused.'

She didn't sound very hopeful of this last proposition.
But it was the least I could do, for her if not for the individual who lay beyond the door. Besides I was curious to meet this mischievous person who exaggerated his illness in order to tease his would-be heirs. It was the kind of far-fetched thing which might happen in a play.

She put her free hand on my arm and directed me to open the door. I crossed the threshold. The first thing that struck me about the room was the smell, a kind of warm, musty smell, as of a place which has been long occupied and rarely aired. By now my eyes were adjusted to the indoor gloom, even though there was little light inside the chamber.

A fire slumbered under another ornate chimney-piece. The chamber was full of furniture: chests, tables, an old coffer-seat, and other items piled into dark corners. There must have been a window in the facing wall but heavy curtains shut out the winter evening. Everything looked old and fusty. The largest and fustiest item was a great bed with bulbous foot-posts supporting the tester overhead. Under an ornate coverlet was a figure half sitting, half lying, propped against a mound of pillows. A large woman wearing a brown overdress was leaning in a familiar manner against the bed, wrestling with the pillows. I was surprised to see two people in the room, since I hadn't hear any sound of conversation from outside. I halted some way from the bed, the momentary sense of conspiracy which Martha and I had enjoyed now gone.

Elias Haskell waved a stringy arm at the woman, who was kneading his pillows with her powerful hands. ‘That's enough, Abigail. I am quite comfortable.'

‘Thank you, Abigail,' said Martha.

The woman did not go immediately but delayed to fiddle with some items, a bowl and a few stoppered
bottles, which were disposed on a table by the side of the bed. She scowled at me as she passed.

When the servant had left the room, Martha Haskell said, ‘Uncle, here is someone come to see you,'

Elias was wearing a white night-cap. His eyes were dark pools in a long-nosed face. All of this was fairly plain to see, for a pair of candles were burning in the recesses at either side of an intricately carved head-board. The whole scene made me think of a shrine or a tomb.

‘What have you brought me?' he said.

‘Nothing.'

‘Nothing will come of nothing.'

‘I expect nothing, sir,' I said, ‘since I find myself here under…false pretences.'

‘At least you admit it.'

The voice might have been thin but the mind behind it was sharp. Elias Haskell looked unwell but he did not have the appearance of someone on the verge of death.

‘This is Nicholas Revill, uncle,' said Martha. ‘He's a player. He took the wrong turning.'

Swiftly she explained the circumstances by which I'd arrived at the Haskell rather than the Maskell household. It made me appear foolish all over again, but I suppose I deserved it at least once more. I looked around the room in my discomfiture and moved nearer to the fireplace. I noticed that a large H, wreathed with fruits and foliage, was the central ornament in the chimney carvings. H for Haskell, presumably. Above the fireplace a great sword was displayed, while on either side of it there hung a tapestry. One tapestry depicted Judith holding up the decapitated head of Holofernes, while the other showed St Christopher carrying the Christ child on his back across the river. I looked towards the bed to see Elias smiling slightly.