The Playmaker (28 page)

A stunned pause followed, then Kit was on his feet. He fetched me a backhanded slap across the jaw that dealt far more insult than injury. Under its sting I realized I could take him, for though he was taller and older than me, we weighed near the same. What's more, I
longed
to take him—my fist ached to make solid contact with that proud nose, that disdainful eye, but Robin caught hold of it. I heard him babbling, “For God's sake, Richard, remember thyself! Kit, sit down and take his measure. Play the man, Kit, whatever he meant—”

Kit's own words thrust at me under Robin's parries: “—Sniveling puppy—been asking for this since we met—Lay off!” Through a haze I saw him toss back his cloak and lay a hand
on his sword hilt as his comrades ducked. I threw my empty tankard, having no other weapon at hand, and enjoyed the brief satisfaction of seeing it bounce off his head. A cry rose from all sides as his blade flickered in a half-circle over the board, then I felt it glide across my left arm near the shoulder, slicing doublet and shirt and drawing a little freshet of blood in its wake. Furious, I lunged for his sword hand and caught it around the wrist, squeezing hard while I punched him in the ribs with my other fist. Robin was shouting, the boys cheering; the next moment strong arms wrapped around us as one body and hustled us into the chilly night. The voices of grown men scolded: “None of this, you young hotheads—take your quarrel to the streets!”

Then we were alone, the six of us, a little circle of quicksilver under a sky glittering with stars. Kit and I panted like runners and eyed each other with a pure hatred. “I'm not done,” said he.

“Nor I.”

“Then let us find cover, where we won't be disturbed.”

“Kit!” Robin wailed. “Richard! What are you about?”

I heard myself say, “Follow me. I know a place.” Then I turned before anyone could challenge me on it, quickly leading the way to Gracechurch Street. They fell in behind me, their steps ringing on the cobblestones. Robin stuck to Kit at first, pleading with little effect. My arm had begun to sting, though the cut was not deep— he had only meant to score me like a sausage. I shook out a handkerchief and bound it on the move. We turned south on Gracechurch, where we almost ran head-on into a company of the
watch. With one accord we pulled up our cloaks, but they had more urgent concerns this night than curfew breakers and passed us by with scarcely a look.

Robin left Kit's side and darted to me as we approached the Bridge. “Where are we bound?”

“Southwark.”

“That's good. We can drop this mad scheme and make for the Bear Garden. There should be enough savagery there to let your bloodlust.”

“I have another place in mind.”

“Richard, listen to reason. He could kill you with that sword.”

“He won't use that sword if I've none.” I snorted. “He's too much the prince.”

“With his fists, then. He's angry enough.”

“Well, what am I? Prankish?”

“Refrain for me then—tomorrow's my birthday.”

“Oh. And the world must stop because you turn thirteen.”

“Well, if I mean nothing to you, think what the Company will say.” Clearly, Robin's taste for adventure faltered when it broke the boundaries he had set for it. No disaster, for him, equaled that of losing his position in the Company, and he predicted dire consequences for all of us if Kit or I did any lasting harm to each other. He made the point over and over, and I stopped listening as we crossed the Bridge. Traffic seemed undiminished, even as the midnight chimes tolled down upon us. Many of the foot travelers and all the ladies were masked, turning black, egg-smooth faces in our
direction, faces in which only the eyes lived. Laughter rang out on every side—a sharp, rasping laughter that sawed the nerves. From the riverbank came a sudden barrage of short, popping noises, followed by a scream.

I spoke up loudly enough for all to hear. “We'll need torches, where we're going.”

Until then our way was light enough, but this would not be so in east Southwark. Nat, Hal, and Jamie appointed themselves light bearers; one grabbed a torch from a bracket beside a door, another from the Bridge tower, another picked up a discarded club half-trampled in the river muck that, when dried, managed to hold a fitful flame. Thus, our lights hissing and sputtering like our tempers, we passed the noisy sailors' taverns and the quiet bitter streets of the elderly poor, arriving at last at the gate of the house that used to belong to my aunt: now a ruin. I felt a stab of remorse owing to the last time I was here at night. It made me pause, but then I pushed open the gate and stalked up the flagstone path as the boys behind me fell silent. At the doorway I hesitated again. The cut on my arm was throbbing. Behind me a voice spoke, so bleached and flat I could not tell whose it was: “What is this place?”

The front hall, damp and black, closed around us like a mouth. I listened intently but heard no sign of the beggar who had made his home upstairs. The others crowded in, light from their torches leaping up the stained walls. “There was a pile of rubbish in the great hall,” I said, my voice huddling close. “If it's still there, we can light it to see by.”

The charred pile was well picked over. Working silently, we raked pieces together and threw some broken timbers on top, then one of the boys put his torch to it and held it there until a wave of flame rippled along a horizontal board. We watched, as though charmed, while the flames spread, licking at half-burned sticks, pieces of furniture, shutters, blackened books, shards of glass. Kit shook himself free of the spell first. He unbuckled his sword belt and let it clang on the floor, then threw off his cloak and began to unlace his doublet.

“Let us not drag this out,” he said. “We must draw up terms.”

Robin hastened to take charge, as though by commanding the action he might control the damage. “Do you agree to no interference?”

“Just so. This matter is between the two of us only.”

“Then take heed,” Robin insisted. “Whatever you do, no blows above the neck. If you deal a split lip or black eye I'll run home straight and swear I never saw you this night. And don't cripple each other, or the Company will have your heads. Whoever is down for five counts loses the match. And if—”

“God save us!” one of the boys gasped. He was staring fixedly at a point beyond Robin's head, and all of us followed his gaze toward the rough oval burned in the ceiling. At the far end of this opening our eyes caught a movement, and a sound—a lonely creaking sound, the protest of old timbers groaning under an unaccustomed weight. The draft created by our fire had caused the motion of an object hung from the rafter of an upstairs room.

It was a long shape, ill-defined at first until its slow rotation revealed a pair of slipper-shod feet. Casting upward, my eyes took in a long gown, such as a scholar or clerk might wear, stiff arms, spread fingers, a belted waist … the face remained in shadow.

“Richard,” Robin whispered. “What
is
this place?”

I grabbed the nearest torch and bounded up the stairs. With all five pairs of eyes on me, I crept along the edge of the charred floor and stopped near the body, torch aloft. And waited, my heart pounding violently, for the revolving form to reveal itself.

He turned toward my light as though irresistibly drawn: the jutting cheek bone, the high-bridged nose, the skewed mouth, the bulging, light-colored eyes of Matthew Merry.

I threw the torch on the bonfire below, bolted for a window— mangling the beggar's canvas bed once again—and threw up the pint of ale that had set so uneasily on my stomach.

Nat, Hal, and Jamie bolted. Kit and Robin stayed to see me home. Robin was almost undone, but Kit pulled together quickly and by the time we crossed the Bridge, he seemed in complete possession of himself. As for me, though I felt somewhat steadier after losing the ale, a solid core of dread remained.

Of course I had to tell them something, and what I said was mostly truth: that the house belonged to my aunt, a secret papist who had fled during the unrest of that summer, and I had made one visit since to see what remained of it. But I claimed ignorance of the hanging man, or of anything that might have transpired
there after the house was looted. After a few questions, they pressed for no more and seemed convinced that I was as ignorant as they. It might have been the finest acting work of my life thus far.

We all agreed the man had died recently, like that very day. “He's stiff, that's why,” Kit explained. “This should be reported.”

Robin quaked at the thought, though to say true he had not stopped quaking since we left Anne Billings' house. “Not by us!”

“Who then, pray?”

“What does it matter? The Company will hang us up by the thumbs if we tangle ourselves in a murder.”

“Who said murder? Why not a suicide?”

I did not think so. I had seen many criminals hang and knew how they struggled. Even a suicide would struggle at the last, and I had seen no signs of that—no clawing, no mark of fingernails at the neck, no clenching of the jaw. Merry's face looked almost serene, as though he had submitted peacefully. My guess, after thinking it over in the clear night air, was that he was knocked senseless and then strung up. But I said nothing.

“Murder or suicide matters not,” Robin whined. “It's a coil that we are best out of.”

“Calm yourself,” Kit reassured him scornfully. “I can drop a word where it will never come back to us.”

“Where is that?”

“Do you want to know, truly?” Robin emphatically shook his head. “Thought not. Leave it to me.”

At the corner of Coleman Street Kit parted from us, turning south rather than north, and I understood he was on his way to “drop a word.” Obviously, his world extended past the bounds of the theater, but at that moment my curiosity was dead. I watched him go, then turned homeward with Robin, who couldn't leave his worries alone, and couldn't keep them quiet.

The next day, news was all over London: the Queen's agents had uncovered the fountainhead of a deadly plot against Her Majesty, and by quick work had taken him into custody. This man had long been suspected, and the discovery of the body of one Matthew Merry, fellow conspirator (who had apparently hanged himself in remorse), furnished all the evidence needed to capture and convict him. On the body of Master Merry were papers confirming the guilt of Martin Feather, a respected attorney of Middle Temple. Three conspirators were arrested along with Master Feather, but others remained at large, and citizens were requested to step forward with what they knew of Peter Kenton, Anne Billings, John Beecham. …

A trial followed swiftly, wherein the guilt of all was confirmed. And thus Martin Feather was condemned to die on 12 November, the year of our Lord 1597.

T
HE
O
RNAMENT OF
D
ECEPTION

od was merciful to him,” Starling said for the fifth time at least, speaking of Matthew Merry.

For the fifth time I agreed, my “aye” a dense puff of steam upon the cold air as I stamped my feet in the crust of snow covering Tower Hill. Far better for the law clerk to be killed outright than suffer the state punishment for traitors: to be hanged until the life was near choked out of them, then cut down, disemboweled, and quartered while still living. Three other conspirators had already come to this miserable end: the poor steward at the Lion and Lamb, a boatman who ran messages, and a servant of the late Lord Hurleigh, who had been hiding Martin Feather on the nobleman's estate. Feather himself was a gentleman, and entitled to a gentleman's execution. A well-aimed
stroke of the axe would finish him, and afterward his head would ornament the Bridge tower in the shameful place reserved for traitors.