The Alchemist of Souls: Night's Masque, Volume 1 (5 page)

  At least she had not started her monthly flows yet. She knew from eavesdropping on the maids' gossip that she ought to expect it very soon, indeed it ought to have happened by now. She was relieved, of course, since keeping her sex a secret was hard enough already, but the waiting was an agony. Without a mother or sister to advise her, she had no idea how women dealt with the business.

  No time for gloomy thoughts – there was still work to be done. She unlocked the nearest chest and lifted out the gown that lay inside. She had meant to check all the costumes back in Sheffield before they were packed, but everything had been a great rush as usual. There, the lace around one cuff was loose. She held the gown up to the light, scanning the ornate fabric for other damage.

  She wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to wear skirts again. It had been – what? – five years now. Would she feel awkward and foolish, like the apprentice actors when they first put on a woman's costume? Or would it be like going home?

  An appreciative noise from the doorway made her turn. Gabriel Parrish was leaning on the door post, toying with the fashionable blond love-lock that hung over his left shoulder. At barely twenty he was the youngest adult actor in the company, a former boy player who – unlike most of his kind – had successfully made the transition to male roles.

  "Aren't you a bit old for such ambitions, Jacob?"

  "Sir?"

  "An apprenticeship. A little late to make a lady of you, I fear."

  "Y-you mistake me, sir. I have no desire to be a player, nor ever did."

  "Really? Why not?"

  "I have not the art for it, sir. Pretending to be someone else… I cannot imagine how it is done."

  She looked away, afraid he would see the lie in her eyes, but she could not tell him the real reason: that if once she put on women's clothes, walked and talked in her true nature, everyone would see she was Jacomina Hendricksdochter, not Jacob Hendricks as she had long pretended.

  "A pity," he said. "You have the fairness of complexion for women's roles, even at your age."

  That was true enough. Though not as fair as Parrish, she had long been able to rely on her pale colouring to explain her lack of a beard. All the disguising in the world could not put hair on her cheeks, at least none that would bear close examination. Actors, of all people, knew what false whiskers looked like.

  He stepped closer and put a hand under her chin, lifting it until her eyes met his own. His breath smelt of violet comfits.

  "How old are you?" he asked.

  "S-s-seventeen, sir."

  His eyes narrowed. "Are you sure? Perhaps your mother miscounted."

  "I d-don't know, sir." She blinked back tears. "I have not seen her this past five years. Nor my father neither."

  "I'm sorry." He released her. "Think yourself lucky. I never knew my parents."

  Coby didn't know what to say. Was he flirting with her, trying to use this similarity between them to forge some connection? Before Parrish joined the company a few months ago, his name had been a byword for the beautiful boy player adored by men and women alike, indulged and showered with gifts and flattery. He also had a well-deserved reputation for preferring the attentions of his male admirers. For both reasons she had avoided his company as much as possible.

  "Parrish!" Master Naismith's voice echoed up the stairs like cannon fire.

  The actor froze, and Coby took advantage of the moment to slip past him and out onto the landing.

  "Hendricks!" Master Naismith shouted up. "Have you seen Parrish?"

  "He is with me, sir," she replied, leaning over the banister, "unpacking the costumes."

  "Well tell him to get his pretty arse down here. We have a play to read through before the morrow."

  Parrish materialised at her shoulder.

  "I come, sir, I come!" He patted her on the shoulder and headed downstairs.

  Coby went back inside. She would have to be more careful than ever around him now. As long as he believed her to be younger than her years, he might think her merely a late bloomer. As for his other interest, the only way to put him off completely would be to tell him her secret, but that she could not do. In a foreign land full of sin and wickedness, a poor, friendless girl had no other way to guard her virtue but deceit.

  "Lord Jesu, forgive me," she whispered.

 

"Come on, boy!"

  "Sir?"

  Master Naismith glared at her.

  "I have a meeting with Master Cutsnail at noon – or have you forgotten?"

  "No, sir, of course not, sir," she replied, hurrying after him.

  "Cutsnail" was not the skrayling's real name, of course, but most Londoners found the foreigners' language almost impossible to pronounce, so they warped their names into something more familiar; preferably something bawdy, or at least humorous. Merchant Qathsnijeel was one of the lucky ones.

  They walked in silence along Thames Street. Between the houses, Coby caught a glimpse of the river, spangles of sunlight dancing on the green waters. She trudged along behind her employer, wishing they could take a wherry downriver. Behind his back, the actors often said Naismith's purse-strings were tighter than a nun's lips.

  At last they came to London Bridge, where the traffic condensed into a solid mass of humanity flowing even more sluggishly than the river beneath their feet. Coby could see little of the shops and houses on either side, only the towers of the gatehouses that blocked the thoroughfare at intervals. Master Naismith shouldered his way through the press, leaving her to slip along in his wake.

  After what felt like half the morning, they reached the far end and passed through the Great Stone Gate into Southwark. Before them stood the wide road leading south-eastwards towards Canterbury, but Master Naismith turned left along St Olave's Street, parallel to the river. They continued at a quickening pace, and as they neared the far end, the church bells began to toll the hour. Master Naismith broke into a trot.

  The last house in the street was a large timber-framed building, much like any other guild-house in the city. The only thing that distinguished this one, at least from the outside, was the sign hanging over the door. The rectangle of wood was carved with a design of dots, triangles and curving lines, all picked out in gold leaf. The abstract symbols meant nothing to Coby, but their very alienness made their meaning clear: here was the Distinguished Company of Skrayling Merchant Venturers.

  The actor-manager paused for a moment, hands on thighs, panting like a hound. Sweat ran down his forehead into his bushy eyebrows. Coby pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and he mopped his face gratefully.

  "Never get old, lad," he told her, wheezing. "'Tis a most grievous business."

  He straightened up, grimacing, and walked up to the front door of the guild house. Coby trailed behind, nervousness at meeting the senior merchant warring with avid curiosity. The skraylings kept to themselves for the most part, and though she had been able to learn their pidgin easily enough in the marketplaces of Southwark, the foreigners were still something of a mystery to her.

  Just inside the front door stood two skrayling guards armed with heavy staves, ready to eject anyone not on legitimate business. They seemed to know Master Naismith, however, and waved him inside with but a passing glance at Coby.

  The main hall was packed with skraylings hurrying to and fro between the tables that lined the walls. At each table sat a merchant, a painted sign before him. The clack of counting blocks and the sibilant growl of the skraylings' native tongue filled the air. It was all disappointingly mundane: no invisible servants, no heaps of enchanted gold, no one suddenly appearing out of thin air or disappearing into it.

  Master Naismith led her away from the dealing room through a side door and up a flight of stairs to a long corridor lined with identical-looking doors. Naismith turned left and went down to the far end. Pausing before the last door on the right, he knocked gently.

  The door was opened by a young skrayling wearing hornrimmed spectacles. His silver-streaked hair was tied back in a neat queue and he wore a clerk's plain brown tunic and breeches rather than the patterned garb of a merchant. The tattooed lines on his forehead gathered into a frown.

  "Naismith," the actor-manager said. "Cutsnail and I talk trade."

  The clerk gestured for them to enter, saying something to his master in Vinlandic.

  Master Cutsnail's chamber took up the whole of the upper floor of one side-wing of the building. Three large glazed windows looked across the gardens to an identical wing opposite; the other three walls were lined with tapestries from floor to ceiling. Some were European in design, others bore similar patterns to the merchants' garments. The chamber was stiflingly hot despite its size, and the air was heavy with the musky scent of the foreigners.

  The clerk gestured to their feet.

  "Take your shoes off," Master Naismith told Coby in a low voice.

  "I have a hole in my stocking toe, sir," she whispered back.

  "No matter." He cast a meaningful glance at the expensive carpets covering the floor.

  Cutsnail was sitting cross-legged behind a low table. He stood as they approached and greeted them in the skrayling fashion, head turned to the right and palms displayed. Master Naismith bowed English-style, and Coby followed suit.

  "Sorry us late," the actor-manager said. Tradetalk was not the most elegant of languages, but it got straight to the point.

  Cutsnail grinned, fangs half-bared in an expression that meant he accepted the apology out of courtesy but was still displeased. He gestured for them to sit, and the clerk brought over a pitcher full of
aniig
, a herbal infusion which was as popular with the skraylings as beer was with the English. The liquid clinked and splashed as the clerk poured it into three elegant Venetian drinking glasses, and Coby realised with a start that there were small chunks of ice in it. Ice in June? Now that was real magic, and of a most welcome kind. She thought guiltily of Pastor Jan's sermons on the subject of witchcraft. Surely there could be no harm in such a useful practice?

  Cutsnail raised his glass, and Coby followed his lead, sipping the cold liquid. She knew better than to drink it too quickly. It might not make a man drunk like beer, but it had a potency of its own which might equally lead to incautious behaviour. She did not want to shame her master in front of this powerful foreigner.

  Master Naismith's Tradetalk extended only to the common courtesies and he relied on Coby to translate for him in matters of business. After the obligatory exchange of pleasantries about the latest trade fleet and the state of the Queen's health, Cutsnail got down to business.

  "The theatre building progresses well?" he asked, eyeing Naismith across his glass of
aniig
.

  "Very well. The timbers are all in place and the labourers begin work on the walls this week. And I have the plans you asked to see."

  Naismith passed a leather document-tube to the skrayling, who shook out the roll of paper and spread it on the desk, weighting the corners with sea-polished stones.

  "This is to make things rise up from underground, yes?"

  "Indeed," Naismith said. "This is for the trapdoor under the stage; a similar device is used to lower players from above."

  He gestured for Coby to explain further. She gathered her thoughts; this was going to push her grasp of Tradetalk to its limits.

  "It uses weights, as you see here," she said, pointing to the diagram's counterweight mechanism. "All I do is pull this handle, and the trapdoor slides to one side and the platform rises up to replace it."

  "And this?" Cutsnail stabbed a thick grey fingernail at another part of the diagram, where the rope connected to the counterweight spiralled around a groove cut into a tapered spindle.

  "Ah, that is the cunning part," she replied, suppressing a grin of pride. "The teeth on the wheel make it turn at a constant speed, but because the drum is like so –" she formed a tapering shape with her hands "– it lets out less and less rope as it turns, slowing it down so the platform comes to a gentle stop."

  "And you made this?"

  "I designed it, yes. There is none other like it in all London."

  She did not add that the mechanism had been inspired by memories of learning to spin wool at her mother's knee. Boys were not expected to know such things.

  Cutsnail made an approving sound. "How soon will the theatre be ready?"

  Master Naismith gazed at the ceiling. "There's still all the plastering and thatching, and the painter can't start work on the stage until that's finished, because of the dust, so I'm afraid it won't be until September at the very earliest."

  Cutsnail bared his teeth.

  "It must be done for August."

  Naismith frowned at Coby and she nodded in confirmation.

  "August?" Naismith shook his head. "That will not be easy."

  "It must be done."

  "May I ask why?"

  Cutsnail hesitated. "It is not yet widely known, but my people are sending an ambassador to England, and your Prince Arthur has proposed a contest of plays in his honour."

  "A contest?" Naismith smiled. "Then you are indeed in luck, sir. Are not my men the best actors in London?"

  Coby rephrased the question as a statement. She did not think her employer would appreciate her issuing a formal challenge to his business partner.

  "That is why I wished to invest in your new theatre," the skrayling replied. "But it must be ready for the ambassador's visit."

  "Surely performances of such grandeur will be played at one of the royal palaces?"