The Lost Prophecies (34 page)

But I sensed that Abel was disappointed. Perhaps it was because Thomas Cloke was really his friend, not mine, and he valued the other’s good opinion. A few weeks ago they’d got chatting in another players’ tavern, the Goat & Monkey, and, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, fallen into a sort of companionship.

There was a pause. Cloke noticed the letter, which was still lying open on the table. The letter from my supposed uncle, Nicholas Revill. Maybe he made out the urgent words scrawled at the end, ‘Please come’, and the added name of Margaret Revill. Maybe his curiosity was pricked. I wished I’d folded up the letter and put it away in my pocket before Cloke clapped eyes on it. Too late now, as he said: ‘What’s this?’

I was already reaching for the letter when Abel, perhaps eager to placate the other man, said: ‘Nick here has discovered he has an uncle living near Shipston. The strange thing is, he never knew of the man’s existence until this very morning. And now his uncle is dying.’

‘Is that so?’ said Thomas Cloke.

He turned to look at me. I shrugged. I was irritated with Abel for giving away so much. This wasn’t really any of his business and it certainly wasn’t Cloke’s. I shoved the letter into my doublet and launched into a few words of explanation, hoping to kill the subject.

‘Interesting,’ was the only remark that Cloke made.

‘We are thinking of journeying to Shipston,’ said Abel, ‘to visit this unknown branch of the Revill family. But we shall have to be quick about it since Nicholas’s uncle is on his deathbed.’

‘
We
?’ I said.

‘Have you finished playing at the Globe, then?’ said Cloke.

‘The King’s Men are preparing to go on the road for the summer,’ said Abel. ‘There’s a final performance tomorrow afternoon and then we are packing up for our summer tour.’

‘Just a moment, Abel,’ I said. ‘What’s all this about
we
going to Shipston?’

‘I thought you’d like me to come along with you, Nick. I don’t mean to intrude on your family concerns, but I thought you might value my company on the road. Maybe I’m wrong.’

‘Naturally, I’d be pleased to have you with me.’

‘It’s not as if we have to travel much out of our way because, you know, we are due to play in Warwick in – what is it? – ten days’ time.’

This was true. Like the other London companies during the later part of the summer, the King’s Men loaded their costumes and a handful of props on to a couple of carts and trundled into the provinces to give the bigger towns a taste of what the capital of England enjoyed for the rest of the year. We favoured a different part of the country each summer and now, in the August of 1605, it was the turn of Warwick and Coventry. By chance this was also the region where our principal author and shareholder, William Shakespeare, had grown up. There’d been talk that we might be playing in Stratford itself.

I noticed that Tom Cloke, who’d been silent for a few moments, was looking from Abel to me and back again. When he spoke it was with an unusual tentativeness.

‘Here is a fortunate coincidence, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Abel, you know that I have cousins who live on the way to Warwick. It has been in my mind to visit them for some time. What would you say if I joined you on the journey? Safety in numbers, eh?’

‘That’s a good idea,’ said Abel.

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘Let us drink to it,’ said Cloke, snapping his fingers at the potboy once more for our cups to be refilled. ‘Drinks on my slate, of course.’

And so it was settled that the three of us would set off the day after tomorrow, once we’d given a final performance of
The Melancholy Man
at the Globe. I didn’t greatly relish the idea of Thomas Cloke keeping us company, but I could think of no plausible objection, even if he had muscled his way into our trip.

I had the obligation to visit my dying uncle and doing so as soon as possible. Abel Glaze was offering to accompany me out of friendship, and, as he’d pointed out, we were due to travel in that direction anyway. We’d simply be getting a head start on others in the company and, once I had called in at my uncle’s house, I could join Abel and the rest of the fellows in Warwick. And if Cloke also had family to visit in the area, then it made sense for him to ride with us. The roads were more secure and easier to travel in high summer, but there was something in his comment about safety in numbers. Three men on the road made a more forbidding prospect for thieves and highway robbers.

Nevertheless, I wasn’t altogether at ease. There was an element in Thomas Cloke I didn’t trust even if I couldn’t put my finger on it.

It was the third day after the three of us had set off when I started to feel real suspicions that everything wasn’t as it should be. There was nothing amiss in the sunny weather or the state of the roads. They were dry and the hooves of our hired horses threw up plenty of dust, but all that was preferable to the mires of winter and spring. The travellers we passed going towards London or the ones we overtook waved cheerful greetings or at least regarded us with the minimum of suspicion.

There was nothing wrong with my companions either, or with me, I hope. We got on well enough. Abel Glaze and I were old friends dating back to the days when the King’s Men went under no more ambitious a title than the Chamberlain’s. The two of us talked quite a bit of players’ shop, which Tom Cloke was happy enough to listen to, occasionally chipping in with some comment of his own. I had to admit that Cloke was fair company. He was generous with his purse, buying us our supper on the first two nights because, as he said, he’d wished himself on us and we were entitled to some compensation. Overall, I was enjoying the journey, not thinking much about the deathbed that awaited me at the end. I’m no great rider, but my horse was biddable enough and we proceeded at a gentle jog.

We were following the usual road out of London on the way to the Midlands – the one through Slough and on to Oxford via Wallingford before heading further north. It was the route that William Shakespeare took on his journeys home. I’d mentioned to WS that Abel and I were leaving London early, explaining about my dying uncle and adding that I’d first heard of this man’s existence scarcely more than twenty-four hours earlier. WS was all quick feeling whenever he heard such news affecting one of his company, and he grasped my hand in farewell.

‘It is hard to gain and lose a member of one’s family in the same instant, Nick. But you are doing the right thing by going. One should not neglect family.’

A shadow passed across his face, and I recalled the company talk about WS: that he did not often go home to Stratford despite acquiring a large house in the town some years ago and – although he would not have said so himself – despite being one of its most notable citizens.

From the moment when Abel Glaze, Tom Cloke and I gained the open country beyond the fringes of London, I observed that Cloke was watchful. Not just on the more deserted or heavily wooded stretches of the road but when we arrived at the hostelries where we put up each night. These places were nothing special, and we chose them at random. But before we sat down to supper our companion would survey the other guests and travellers almost as if he was searching for someone whom he knew – and feared to see. Only when he’d established that there was no such individual amongst the itinerant merchants and the locals in the room would he breathe more easily and go about ordering food and drink. If someone came in, he stopped eating or drinking for an instant to glance at them. But it was more than a casual glance, if you know what I mean.

On our first night we shared a room with several other travellers, and Cloke gave them the same scrutiny. The same on the second. On the third night the three of us had a tight little chamber to ourselves, mostly occupied by the large bed. This time, with no one to be suspicious of inside the room, Cloke spent some minutes gazing out of the window after supper. It was growing dark. He beckoned to me. I was just taking off my boots and outer garments before lying down. Abel Glaze was already asleep and snoring his head off. I went to the window.

In a conspiratorial whisper Cloke said: ‘Do you see those men over there, Nicholas? Under the trees.’

I squinted through the leaded panes. The inn, which was called the Night Owl, was on the outskirts of Wallingford. The town and its castle were to one side and to the west was the river, while wooded countryside crept up near the inn. The dust of the road seemed to glow with a light of its own. There was a stand of trees opposite the Night Owl. Tom Cloke said: ‘There! Do you see?’

The glass in the window was old and lumpy, and the light outside was fading. If it hadn’t been for a sudden spark as someone in the group struck a tinderbox, I don’t think I would have noticed the little knot of men standing in the shadows of the trees. Then I made out the pale blur of faces, the movement of hands.

‘Yes, I see them,’ I said.

‘They were at supper downstairs.’

‘I don’t know, I can’t see clearly enough from here. Anyway, so what if they were?’

‘They are looking up at our room,’ said Cloke.

I could feel his breath on my cheek as we crowded at the little window. His agitation was plain. Such is the power of suggestion that I became convinced for a moment that the group outside was indeed looking up in the direction of our chamber. Like my companion, I grew uncomfortable. An owl hooted in the trees. But then one of the men in the group laughed – the sound carried quite clearly on the still evening air – and common sense returned, to me at least. It was a natural laugh, not a thief’s, not a conspirator’s.

‘They’re having a quiet smoke before turning in for the night, that’s all.’

The little red embers of their pipes pulsated in the dark. I counted four embers. I clapped Tom Cloke on the shoulder and went back to undressing for bed. I lay down next to Abel, who was still snoring. Cloke stayed at the window until it grew completely dark outside. Before he joined us in the bed, I heard him go to the door and softly rattle the latch as well as sliding the bolt back and forth a couple of times. I thought he was going outside but he was only checking that we were secure. Eventually, the bed creaked as Cloke got in. I feigned sleep even as I sensed him lying wakeful beside me. The owl hooted again. I wondered why our travelling companion was so alert, so nervous.

The morning after we left Wallingford, Cloke seemed to relax. I made some reference to the pipe smokers we’d glimpsed from the window of the Night Owl and he shrugged it off. Abel looked curiously not at him but at me. We paused in Oxford to hire fresh horses and rode a few miles further from the city walls as far as Woodstock to take advantage of the fair weather and the longer hours of summer light.

We were getting close to the dwelling of Tom Cloke’s cousins, whose family name was Shaw and who lived beyond the small town of Bloxham in a place called Combe House. The three of us had one more shared night in an inn, and then the next day we’d be parting company as I went on to Shipston on Stour and Abel made his way to Warwick to wait for the rest of the King’s Men. Occasionally, I thought of the dying uncle whose name I shared. But since I had never met him or his wife Margaret, my thoughts did not go very far. I hoped to arrive in time, but it was all out of my hands.

The Green Dragon at Woodstock was comfortable, as befits a hostelry in a town where there is also a royal palace, and we drank and ate heartily. Cloke thanked us for sharing our journey. He bought us supper and I felt well disposed towards him, and not merely because I knew I wouldn’t be seeing him beyond the following day. He wasn’t such a bad fellow after all.

The next morning, however, his nerves seemed once again to have got the better of him. We were leaving the Dragon early, impatient to get to our various destinations. It was crisp, bright August weather, with a hint of autumn already in the air. Cloke was in the stableyard of the inn when Abel and I got there. He’d already taken down Abel’s bag in addition to his own and had offered to take mine too. A man in a hurry. Now he was talking to the ostler, who was bringing out our horses. Tom started when he saw us, his friends and fellow travellers, draw near. The sun was at our backs, streaming over the wall of the yard. Perhaps he hadn’t recognized us at first. Who was he expecting? Yet, close to, he looked more guilty than alarmed.

‘Something wrong, Tom?’ said Abel.

‘Nothing,’ said Cloke. ‘I am anxious to be going, that’s all.’

We passed through Bloxham, with Tom Cloke telling us that the spire of St Mary’s was the highest in Oxfordshire, although these were almost the only words he uttered during the morning.

The country grew more hilly and the roads emptier. Tucked away down in a side valley I noticed a splendid house, standing alone. I was wondering whose it might be when, to my and Abel’s surprise, Tom Cloke suddenly straightened in his saddle and pointed.

‘There’s Combe,’ he said. ‘It is the home of the Shaws, my kinsmen.’

We reined in for a moment to examine the prospect. I knew that Tom Cloke came from a well-to-do family but, if this place was anything to go by, he’d been reticent on the subject of his cousins’ wealth.

In the noonday sun that hung over the west-facing valley, Combe House was set like a jewel against a backdrop of trees and water. The warm stone glowed and the windows sparkled. There was a moat, and a gatehouse approached across a bridge. I guessed Combe House dated from the reign of Queen Elizabeth’s father, a time when prosperous families began to move away from the safety of towns and to construct country dwellings with the appearance of mansions rather than castles.

‘You will stop for some refreshment before you go on your way,’ said our companion. It was more of a command than a request. ‘The horses will need watering.’

There was no disagreeing with that, and I for one would be glad to dismount for an hour or so and stretch my legs, as well as having a bite to eat. We turned our horses off the main road and started down the winding path that led into the valley. The path was wide and rutted with the tracks of wagons and carriages. We made a gradual, sinuous descent through copses of trees.