The Pale Companion (26 page)

“’syours.”

It was.

“My Lysander,” I said recognizing this tight cylinder of paper by the tell-tale tear at one end.

“Lyshander?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

The scroll was neatly secured with string and marked NR on the outside together with the initials of earlier Lysanders. Of course my lines were of no particular use after the
Dream
performance, but on tour you’re supposed to keep your part carefully and give it back to the book-man on the return to the Globe. Fair-copying a player’s lines is a chore and, if you lose your copy or drop it in your supper, the book-man is entitled to deduct the cost of replacing it from your wages. As the drunk – now transformed from a lout into a good Samaritan – thrust the scroll at me, my hand automatically flew to the pouch on my belt. It had come undone, causing Master WS’s words to fall out onto the dusty high street of Rung Withers.

“’sallright, Lyshander,” he slurred, apparently thinking I was actually the part I played.

I took the scroll from his grubby hand. Fortunately my purse was still inside my pouch and I fumbled for a penny to reward sottish Tom for his services to the drama. He held the coin up to the sun’s rays, bit it (something which I’d never seen anyone do before), then lurched off without another word in the direction of Ye Clod Pole to spend the penny before it might evaporate. The small knot of people in the street broke up, disappointed at this peaceful outcome. All except one man who now approached me.

“You must be Master Revill,” he said.

“And you are Parson Brown,” I said.

It was the priest. The small, plump priest of Rung Withers, Lady Elcombe’s comforter. I’d seen him during the wedding feast and subsequently at the great house.

“How did you know me, sir?” I asked. He didn’t have to ask how I knew him. For one thing he was wearing the dark colours of his trade.

“I was struck by your playing the other night. I asked your name. From Justice Fielding. Before the terrible business.”

Now, although the context of this compliment was the tragic affair at Instede House, it was still a
compliment.
And a player would accept compliments from the very devil. So if a parson praises your playing you have an almost holy obligation not merely to accept but to revel in it. Besides, I still have sufficient respect for the cloth to be – to be honest – a little in awe of it. My father, you see . . .

“You enjoyed the play?”

“No, Master Revill. Or if I did, it was so overshadowed by what came after that enjoyment would be out of place.”

I felt rebuked, a little.

“Of course,” I said. “Forgive me for asking.”

“That is no slight on you players. You did a good job. Do not reproach yourself now.”

This was better. There seemed something open, something confide-able about this short, round individual. So within a brief space of time and under the prompting of a couple of questions, my life history was tumbling out of me. How I’d been born and raised not so far from here in the parish of Miching, had had a parson for a father, how my parents died during a visit of the plague after which I’d gone to make my fortune in London, not that you’d ever make a fortune on the stage, no you couldn’t expect that, only plain wages, but it was an honest or perhaps honourable calling, I’d say, even if my parson-father didn’t approve of the playhouse. I babbled on. Perhaps it was the effect of being away from the oppressive air of Instede.

“There’s no great harm in the playhouse, I think,” said my new companion as we strolled together through Rung Withers. I noticed that he was greeted cheerfully and with just a dash of respect by the passers-by.

“The pulpit is often the enemy to the stage,” I said.

“Not provided the good are rewarded. The wrongdoers punished. Then pulpit and stage are fashioned from the same wood.”

Parson Brown had a clipped way of speaking. His was an educated accent, of course, but underneath it there was a strain of something neither local nor London-y.

“They always are, the wrongdoers are always punished,” I said, remembering a similar conversation with Cuthbert Ascre., “Or almost always. Though sometimes the innocent must suffer.”

“Then we must believe they have their reward in heaven, Master Revill.”

“Yes. You have been at Instede recently?”

“There’s a poor house. A poor house.”

“Poor? Oh, I see . . .”

However clipped his manner, Parson Brown spoke in tones of genuine pity. This was the man who’d uttered a few words over the corpse of Robin the woodman. “There is much need of consolation,” he added.

“My father did not have such a, ah, range in his parish of Miching. From great house to hovel. From high to low-born.”

“Perhaps it was more that he did not distinguish between them.”

“Because they are all the same in God’s sight, you mean,” I said, attempting piety.

“I don’t suppose they are the same,” said this odd cleric. “Who’s to say that God’s not in favour of the low-born. In their hovels. Tell me of your father’s parish.”

So I did, haltingly, in fragments. Of my father’s sexton John, of Molly who lived at the end of Salvation Alley, of my boyhood friends like Peter Agate. Parson Brown and I walked slowly up and down the Rung Withers high street. And at the end of my recital all he said was, “I had a parish like that once – in the north.”

So that accounted for the trace of an accent in his voice. Any more conversation was interrupted by the reappearance of Tom out of Ye Clod Pole. He’d evidently drunk his way through the penny I’d given him and now burst onto the street in search of fresh charity. He was still clutching the empty bottle as if it was a kind of charm.

Slurred shouts resounded down the street. It was Tom’s battle-cry: “Snoffair. Snorright. Snoffair.” Then, spotting Parson Brown and me, he cried out, “Snoffair, parson. Taint right.”

I was surprised by the speed and decisiveness with which Brown acted, at least considering his tubby shape. As I stood and watched, he approached Tom, saying conciliatory things like “Of course it’s not right.
You’re
right.” Then when he was within a couple of feet of the drunk, he reached out abruptly and wrested the bottle from the other’s hand. Tom hardly seemed aware of what was happening. Then the priest put a friendly hand on the drunk’s arm and, braving the clouds of small ale which now hung almost visibly about the man, he led him gently up the high street, talking low all the time. Before he went he waved cheerfully in my direction to signify our meeting was over.

Where he took the sot I don’t know. He might have walked Tom round the houses and then pitched him into the centre of the stinking midden. He might have shown true Christian charity by taking him back to his own dwelling. He might have seen him safely incarcerated in the village lockup. Whatever Tom’s destination I couldn’t but be impressed with the docile way he’d allowed himself to be escorted away by the parson. What was it Brown had said? “There is much need of consolation.”

The funeral of Lord Elcombe was a sombre affair. I mean, particularly sombre because of the violent circumstances of his demise and the fact that his elder son was still awaiting trial for his murder. The date of the Salisbury assize drew closer but before the son could be found guilty and hanged, the father had to be sealed up in the family vault till doomsday. And before that, all the inhabitants of Instede must pay their formal respects to their late master and employer. On the morning of the funeral, we stood in a solemn line which stretched from the lobby of the couple’s apartment and down the stairs. Elcombe’s coffin, covered with a black velvet pall decorated with his coat of arms, stood in an inner chamber. The rooms leading to it were draped with black baize and the mirrors in them had been turned to the wall. The summer light streaming through the great windows struck the walls, and stopped dead.

As I shuffled along in the mute file of my fellow Chamberlain’s walking past the coffin, I couldn’t help reflecting on the previous occasion when, together with Adam Fielding, I’d passed through these very rooms. Then a wedding had been in prospect; now a funeral was in preparation. Some of the same high-ups – those counties and cities of England – who’d been invited to the ill-fated nuptial had come back to Instede for the burial, although these great guests would pay their respects to Elcombe after the common folk. I noted that neither Marianne Morland nor any of her family were here. Whether they were staying away out of tact or grief or whether their absence indicated that whatever else the match might have been it hadn’t been a love one, I didn’t know.

Standing at a short distance from the covered coffin and with the light from a window at their backs were Lady Penelope and Cuthbert. Not far away was Parson Brown. He inclined his head slightly when he caught sight of me. I wondered anew at the range of his ministry, from powerful lords and ladies to village drunks. Oswald the steward was not far away either. He was inspecting the face and manner of every man, woman and child who walked by the coffin and paused for a second to cross themselves or bow the head before passing on. Oswald already had one minor victory in the bag. He had succeeded in ridding the estate of the Paradise Brothers. Shortly after Peter’s encounter with him in the barn, the trio had loaded up their handcart and trundled off the estate although I’d heard that they’d merely set up again somewhere on its fringes. The steward was in the right, of course. The occupants of Instede should have other, more pressing business on their minds than the antics of those pious rousers.

As it came my turn to approach the coffin, I glanced at the widow and her son. Lady Penelope’s face was concealed by a veil while Cuthbert’s normally equable features were frozen into an unreadable mask. He looked impassively at me. Brown pursed his plump lips. Crossing myself at the head of the swathed bier, I moved on. I noticed that Laurence Savage was not with us players; evidently his loathing for Elcombe extended beyond the grave. Or perhaps he was afraid that he couldn’t comport himself with sufficient seriousness near the coffin but would skip with pleasure at the death of the man who had destroyed his little brother.

Once outside the Elcombes’ quarters I was accosted by Adam Fielding, who was waiting his turn to go in. Kate was with him. She looked beautiful; mourning became her. We hadn’t spoken since the previous day when, wandering by the lake, we’d glimpsed that object in the water.

“Nicholas,” said Fielding.

“Your worship.”

“A sad occasion this. And the interment will be sadder still.”

His expression showed that this was no mere form of words. He looked genuinely grieved.

“Yes,” was all I found to say.

“You are leaving soon?”

“There’s no reason for us to stay once the funeral’s done. The Chamberlain’s will have completed their duty after that, our seniors say. We shall go early in the morning, so as to get a full day’s travelling.”

“You will stop in Salisbury tomorrow?” said Kate.

“Probably. I don’t know.”

“At the Angel?”

“All those arrangements are in the hands of Richard Sincklo.”

“Well,” said Kate, “wherever the rest of your company lodges,
you
will stop in Salisbury tomorrow night with us. At our house.”

“You are too kind,” I said, feeling absurdly pleased by her words, which were more order than invitation.

“But first, Nicholas,” said her father, stroking his beard and looking grave, “I have a request to make.”

“Sir?”

“You know your fellow players well?”

“We work and breathe and sleep together. That should be enough.”

“Then, after the funeral, you could select me some three or four among them, trustworthy men, reliable ones? Yourself included of course.”

“They’re all trustworthy. Well, pretty well all.”

“Of course, Nicholas,” said Fielding, a spark of light appearing in his expression for the first time. “All trustworthy, all reliable. But the ones you pick, they must be strong too.”

“There you show your ignorance if I may say so, sir. A player has to leap and dance and fight for a living. Strength is a first requirement.”

“I am glad you stand up so strong for your profession.”

I noticed a glance of amusement passing between father and daughter.

“After the funeral this will be?”

“There’s a feast which we must attend for form’s sake. But as soon as you can decently gather your little band after that, we will set off while the others are distracted in feeding their grief.”

“Set off where? And why do you need this little band?”

“I would prefer not to say yet,” said Fielding.

“There are plenty of strong men hereabouts on the estate who you could doubtless recruit for yourself.”

I was pushing him, to get at his intentions.

“I would rather have players.”

“For a little drama?”

“Oh, there may be drama,” said Fielding. “But not of the kind you’re familiar with.”

Seeing I wasn’t going to get anywhere with my questions about the purpose of this expedition, I confined myself to more ordinary enquiries as to the time and the place we should meet.

Somehow I wasn’t surprised by what Justice Fielding told me. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about it either but it was too late to back out.

If the funeral was sober the feast which followed was more sober still. My experience of these events is not extensive. As a boy I preferred to be out in the fields or even hunched over my books rather than watching my father officiate at a burial but I have at least noticed that, while the interment may be a grave enough matter, a lighter mood often prevails later in the day. Indeed, to see and hear some people in the wake of a funeral, especially when they’ve been well fed and liquored, is enough to persuade you that you’re eavesdropping on a new race of immortals. They act and talk as though they will never die themselves, so loud and swaggering do they grow. And, come to think of it, I recall as a child at a country feast going upstairs to escape the press and buzz, and discovering the new widow Blakeman all hot and fresh in the . . .

Well, that’s another story, not fit or necessary for this moment.