The Pale Companion (2 page)

“And not right, Jack.”

Then, looking round at God, the newcomer proceeded. “Snoffair. You respek Abel ’n’ his burnt off’ rins yet Cain and his fruits you do not respek.”

“He says God doesn’t respect –” whispered Jack.

“Shut up,” I said. “I can understand drunk as well as you.”

“His fruits you – do – not – respek – no,” said the man, menacing his Maker with the bottle in his fist. The white-bearded God retreated a step or two. His frown deepened. By now, Abel was upright once more, the side of his face streaked with the sheep’s-blood which gave colour to the first murder. The trio of players – God, Cain and Abel – looked affronted. Perhaps I’d been wrong in supposing them green. It was rather that they weren’t prepared for interruptions of any kind. They were obviously used to being watched and listened to in respectful silence.

“Fruitsh!” declaimed the drunkard, getting into his slurring stride now and spitting over those lucky enough to be close to the stage. “Fruitsh he hearned honesht by sweat hizbrow and work hissand. Cain ish simple man, Cain ish farmer.”

He waved his arm towards the individual who had the part of Cain, and for a moment I wondered whether he’d mistaken the player for the person.

“Me – simple man – farmer – like Cain.”

“That’s right, Tom,” yelled someone to my right. “We know you.”

“Why does God not respek farmers? Why does he not respek Cain here?” enquired our plaintive drunk.

“Cain was a killer,” hissed someone to my left.

Various noises (assenting, dissenting) from the crowd.

“Shall I tell how he does not respek us?”

More cries and whispers.

Now, this was a group of country folk in the market square. To an outsider, they might appear as so many hobs, clods and clowns. But they seemed to me to be urging on our friend Tom in the expectation of a good show. In this respect at least, they were very like our London audiences at the Globe.

“Thish what he does. When we want rain – sends drought. And when we want shun . . . whassee send?”

He paused as if expecting a reply. When none came, he said with satisfaction, spluttering over the front rows, “Rain – hail – tempesht.”

By now, it was almost completely dark in the square. I’d been wrong to suppose the players didn’t possess a torch between them, for suddenly a couple of brands flared up at the edges of the stage. I don’t know who lit them and wondered that they wanted to illuminate the proceedings. The smoky brands cast a lurid, wavering glow over Cain and Abel and God who had grouped themselves uneasily about farmer Tom.

“God does not deserve our praise –”

At this there was a collective intake of breath from the crowd. Tom appeared to be on the edge of a blasphemous remark. I was slightly uneasy myself. Next to me, I sensed Jack tense where he stood.

“Not our praise, I shay, but our –”

He got no further because Cain clubbed farmer Tom from behind. This was the very weapon with which he had murdered his brother in play (though not in jest) and if it was not a full-fledged cudgel but a trumpery thing for the stage it was nonetheless weighty enough to fell the farmer. Tom dropped his bottle, pitched forward and almost toppled off the scaffold.

In the darkness there was a stirring.

“Leave him be!” shouted one and another said, “He speaks true.

“You’ve done for Tom.”

This was not the case, fortunately. Almost straightaway Tom pushed himself upright and gazed groggily round as if uncertain where he was or how he’d come there. Then, regrettably, God intervened. Feeling perhaps that he had been slighted by the farmer’s words, he came forward and pressed his thumb onto the hapless Tom’s forehead, to leave there the mark of fallen, sinful man. But Tom took exception to this treatment and swung out at God with his fist, and at once bedlam broke loose on the stage as the Paradise Brothers piled onto the protesting farmer. They were big men. Arms and legs flailed, there were thumps and groans and oaths.

This was the moment the crowd had been waiting for. The moment when the pieties of drama were finally sent packing by the pleasures of riot. A bunch of onlookers clambered onto the swaying stage to assist in the confusion. Bodies tussled in the dark, illuminated by the flaring torches. The few simple props – a handful of branches representing the underwood where Abel’s body was hidden, the canvas rock behind which God had bided his time – were soon being employed as weapons in the fight. Some of those who hadn’t yet joined in were obviously considering doing so, while others were trying to hold them back, and smaller scuffles were breaking out around us.

I tugged at Jack Wilson’s sleeve.

“Time to leave,” I said.

I’d seen enough trouble in the streets of London – with her apprentices steeped in liquor and her superannuated veterans with no skills but those of riot – to know that the best place to be in a brawl is elsewhere.

“Let’s wait and see what happens,” said Jack.

“No, Jack,” I said.

“It’s getting interesting.”

“No, Jack,” I repeated before saying in a manner that, in retrospect, might have been a little lordly. “Nothing interesting can happen. These people are rustics and bumpkins. Just look at them. Witness their taste in plays. Witness the way they have responded to one.”

“What was that, my friend?”

The voice came from my right. A thick voice. A rustic, bumpkinish voice.

“Nothing at all,” I said, shifting to the left and leaving Jack, if he was so inclined, to face the music. But the press of people and the darkness made it difficult to find my way out and I felt myself being grabbed by the collar.

“Repeat your words, friend,” said the voice over my shoulder.

“Let me go first.”

“What, and have you run off into the dark. Repeat your words.”

The grip on my collar tightened. I could feel the gentleman’s raw breath on the back of my neck. I was aware that the two of us were rapidly turning into a little knot of interest for those whose attention wasn’t fixed on the stage.

“Which words?”

“The ones about us country folk.”

“If you already heard them why do you want me to repeat them?”

“Because – I – say – so.”

With each word, he jerked me violently backward and forward by the collar.

“Very well,” I said, trying to be dignified about it. I was about to offer some crawling apology to him and his rustic ilk when a silly idea seized me. Though at first I’d wanted to get as far away from the stir in the square as possible, now I felt aggrieved that my words (admittedly slightly injudicious ones) had been snatched out of the air by some eavesdropping yokel. Why should I apologize to this oaf, even if he was breathing down my neck and twisting my collar? Why shouldn’t he have the benefit of my real opinion?

“I said that my friend and I were surrounded by individuals of a certain stamp, to wit –”

“I’ll to-wit you, my friend, if you don’t speak plain English.”

“– to wit, clods, hobs and lobs . . . ouf . . .”

He kneed me in the back and I fell forward onto the cobbled ground.

“I haven’t finished . . . louts, clouts and clowns . . . ooh! ah!”

That was when he kicked me in the ribs.

And some of those roundabout joined in. Whether they’d heard what I said and were genuinely offended or whether they simply saw a man curled up on the ground and couldn’t resist laying into him, I don’t know. As kickings go, it might have been worse. They kept stepping in each other’s way so their feet got tangled up and then in the dark they missed me and struck one another. Two or three of them were women, no doubt as provoked as the men by my aspersions on their rusticity.

There’s another thing. I’m a player (Nick Revill, at your service) and a player has to know how to take punishment both simulated and real. Why, once when I was doing a brief stint with the Admiral’s Men and watching a rehearsal – ever eager in those days to pick up any tips I could – I tumbled out of the gallery of the Rose playhouse and into the groundlings’ area. I sustained nothing worse than a few bruises and a burst of applause. And when a player thwacks a player on stage with sword or club, although the blows may not be meant they are not altogether innocent either. So I knew that the secret in a situation like this, where one could do nothing to help oneself straightaway, was to remain supple and passive.

“What – do – you – say – now?” came a voice that I recognized through the roaring in my ears as that of my initial assailant, raw breath.

I said nothing. I tasted blood in my mouth. I wondered what had become of my friend Jack Wilson.

My muteness must have satisfied the little knot of men and women because I sensed them draw back from me. The circle became ragged as one or two quit the scene, perhaps ashamed at what they’d participated in and wanting to avoid trouble. This was my chance. I staggered to my feet and limpingly made off.

No-one tried to stop me. The square was still crowded and thumping noises and swearing continued from the stage. Evidently the battle between players and people wasn’t over. I slipped down one of the lanes that led from this public space.

I didn’t know Salisbury. The inn where we of the Chamberlain’s Company were putting up for the night was somewhere on the edge of the city but exactly where I couldn’t have said. Jack Wilson and I had arrived in the market-place during the last hours of daylight and our attention had been caught by the preparations for staging an open-air drama in a corner. We’d stayed to watch, even though the action unfolding on the bare scaffold was the fustiest, mustiest morality stuff, all to do with Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel. To give us all a taste of what we might expect, the play was preceded by some kind of sermon from the bearded, furrow-browed figure who was later to take the part of God (and whose name I subsequently discovered was Peter Paradise, leader of this fraternal threesome). He hectored and ranted and called us “brothers and sisters” like a puritan. He told us we were accountable to none but God and to have no truck with earthly power and wealth. That’s all very well for you, I thought, carting your few paltry possessions from place to place and no doubt living on crusts doled out at back doors, but some us have got livings to make and patrons to please.

Several times Jack and I sneered at the backward taste of the inhabitants of this town. If it hadn’t been for the surprisingly high quality of the playing we’d have gone off to join our fellows at the Angel Inn. But a professional always takes pleasure (sometimes of an envious kind) in watching another professional, even when he’s working with inferior material. So it was in this case.

Because we were only a little short of midsummer the west yet glimmered with some streaks of day. But then I remembered that we’d entered the town from the east, which was the side the Angel lay on, so I changed course and turned down another street and then once more until I found myself back in the market-place. Usually I have a good sense of direction, know my east from my west, &c., but the beating I’d sustained at the hands (or feet) of the locals had muddied my brain. Warily, I skirted the square. The fighting seemed to have stopped but people were still milling about in the gloom. I spat to clear my mouth of blood. One side of my face felt raw where it had scraped the cobbles. I wasn’t hurt – or not much – but I’d be glad enough to get back among my fellows and to slide into bed. Though not before I’d roundly rebuked friend Wilson for his flight from the field.

Fortunately, there was one way to establish my rough whereabouts in the town. There is a great church here in Salisbury, greater than any such edifice in London, indeed the greatest church I have ever seen. As tall as Babel tower, it looks roomy enough to house half the town. Its spire shoots heavenward like an arrow, as if impatient to be rid of the earth. Crossing the last few miles of downland that afternoon, we’d kept our eyes on the spire glinting in the sun and guiding us to our destination for the night. This mighty church lies a little to the southward side of the town. So, I reasoned, if I kept it on my right hand I’d be able to find my way back to the street of the Angel Inn. There were a few passengers out and about in the side-streets but my recent experiences of how they regarded outsiders – admittedly, an outsider who had said some provoking things – made me reluctant to ask for directions.

Down the end of the road which I was now travelling I could glimpse, above the roof-tops, the arrow-like spire, its slender form slipping upward into the twilight. So . . . if I crossed into this small street . . . and then turned left . . . no, right . . . or perhaps straight across and down that alley? I gasped as a sudden pain seized me in the side. I was not hurt, not much hurt, but I had to rest for a moment to recover from the insolence of the beating I’d received. If I got my hands on that raw-breathed fellow who’d kneed me in the back and then encouraged the bystanders to add their pennyworth, he’d know what it was to . . .

All at once I found myself on my knees in the middle of the highway, retching. A yellow and red taste in my mouth. Bile and blood. But not much. Ah, that was better. Nevertheless, I needed to stop for a moment to consider the way forward, or rather the way back to the Angel Inn, otherwise I’d be wandering around Salisbury until daybreak. There was a convenient doorway . . . yes, that one over there, with a sheltering porch. I crawled on hands and knees to the porch and hid myself in there.

It was dark, it was secure, and I must have fallen asleep for a few moments, because the next thing I knew was that a light was hovering in the air in front of me.

I put up my hand to shield my eyes. The lantern was shifted to one side but a firm, dry hand grasped mine and pulled it away from my face.

“Let’s have a look at you.”

Through half-closed lids I was aware of a large looming face.

“Ah yes,” it said.

“What?” I said.

“You are not from these parts.”

“Oh God, you’re not going to beat me up too?”

By now I’d fully opened my eyes and realized that my question was absurd. Crouching down in front of me was a man of middle years with a greying spade beard and mild grey eyes. He was wearing a nightgown. I was able to see so much because, in addition to the lantern which he’d placed on the ground, the door to the house was open and there was another figure in the entrance, dressed in white and holding a candle.