Fools and Mortals
I crouched instinctively and held my breath. I could see no one. The dogs were baying and yowling, their feet scratching and thumping on the shed walls. I edged inside, pulled the gate shut, and latched the bolt, doing both as quietly as I could, then groped in the canvas bag to find the comfort of the pistol’s hilt. In front of me were the rickety benches, snow-covered now, which stood on crude wooden platforms held aloft by rough scaffolding. Beyond the benches was the pit where beasts suffered and died, while to my left, between the fence and the stacked high benches, was Strawbelly Sam’s small house from which the smoke rose thick from a brick chimney. Between me and the house, and built against the stout fence, were the beast sheds. ‘Quiet, you sodden bastards!’ I heard Strawbelly Sam shout inside the nearest shed, then heard him hammer a cage bar with the stick he always carried. The noise quietened a little, though the dogs went on whining. One of the cockerels bred for fighting crowed, but the birds were all kept on the yard’s farther side, safely locked away from the dogs. I waited. No one came from the dog shed, but why would they on this freezing morning?
I stood and walked towards the sheds, my boots crunching in the unspoiled snow. I heard the mutter of voices, then a door slamming. The dogs were still restless, whining and growling. Did they sense me? I was close to their shed, edging between its wall and the nearest scaffolding. I wanted to be anywhere but in this place. Why had I not told my brother of my suspicions? Then he could have assembled a half-dozen men, all armed, and we could have come here in force. The noise of the dogs was making me tremble. I wanted to be home or in the great hall at Blackfriars, and that made me think of Silvia.
And thinking of Silvia reminded me of my mother, long ago, when she had been amused by a question I had asked when I was just eleven or twelve years old. How does a man find a wife, I had asked her, and she had laughed and looked at me, her hands white with flour. ‘You don’t find her, Richard, she finds you!’
‘She does?’
‘As like as not,’ she said. She had been gazing through the kitchen window at the apple tree in our back garden. ‘Girls set their caps at a likely man,’ she had said, no longer laughing. ‘Look at Will and Anne!’
‘Will and …’
‘God help them both,’ she had interrupted me, plainly regretting the words. She began rolling the pastry.
‘Did you set your cap at Father?’ I asked.
‘Oh I did, I did! Your father was a fine young man. A very fine young man. He had all his hair back then!’ She laughed again. ‘I bumped into him leaving the church, and pretended it was an accident, which it wasn’t, but it made sure he noticed me. And he did!’
Had Silvia found me? I saw nothing shameful about that, indeed I wanted it to be true. I wanted it desperately. And why was I thinking of marriage? I hardly knew her, I just knew I wanted her. And I had never contemplated marriage before because it seemed something far off that would happen to a person I had not yet become, a person I did not know. My brother had married young, and his experience was no encouragement, but suddenly, in the snow, listening to the dogs as I stepped slowly nearer to their shed, I felt the burden of growing up. I had been a boy in the company, and I had stayed a boy too long. I was a good player, I knew that, but there were few parts like Uashti. The younger boys played the characters I had once portrayed, and I was being stranded, neither boy nor man, and it was past time I cut my hair short and let my beard grow. And that, I thought, was why I was here in Scavenger’s Yard, because I would do a favour for my brother that would force him to treat me like a man. I would be Romeo.
I could hear voices now. Bad-tempered voices. There was a woman’s voice, and I remembered that Strawbelly Sam had a wife, Marion, who he treated like one of the animals. She was a drab creature with stringy hair and sunken cheeks, but she gave as good as she got from her sullen husband. ‘I do feed him, sir!’ I heard her say resentfully.
‘You feed him slop,’ a man insisted, and I recognised the voice of Christopher deValle, the Earl of Lechlade’s man of business, and a self-proclaimed Englishman from scalp to arsehole. ‘You feed him the same muck you give to your animals,’ he went on harshly, ‘so feed him properly, woman.’
The voices dropped, so I heard no more. I was at the door that led into a short passage that connected the dogs’ shed to the larder, and then to Washington’s lair. The house lay beyond the bear’s cage. There were at least three people in the house, Strawbelly Sam, his slatternly wife, and deValle, and I suspected there was a fourth. I needed the three whose voices I had recognised to leave, and then what? I had not thought it through. When we perform a play we rehearse the moves we will make onstage. The actors move about the stage, and the people watching probably give those moves no thought, they look so natural, but in truth they have been planned and practised, yet now I realised I had not planned at all. I had thought it enough to get inside Scavenger’s Yard and then snatch whatever opportunity presented itself. I stood, freezing and uncertain, not sure how I could overcome three, maybe four people.
Get inside the sheds, I told myself. There were places to hide inside. There was nowhere to hide in the snow-covered pit with its scaffolding, and, besides, as soon as deValle left, the dogs would be released.
I pressed the latch on the door. It clicked as the heavy wooden lever inside rose. I stayed still, listening for movement, but heard none. I pulled the door open, flinching at the grating sound of the hinges, and then, my heart beating like a trapped bird, I stepped inside, closed the door, and the stench of dog turds and rotting carcasses hit me.
The dogs saw me through the opening that led from their shed and immediately started howling again. There were at least a score of them, all safely caged, and all snarling and slavering, all barking and howling as they scrabbled with their paws at the iron bars. They were big dogs, with jaws like vices, with yellow eyes and dirty teeth, all malevolence and hunger. They hurled themselves at the bars as I crossed to the larder, and so vanished from their sight. The larder stank. It was where Strawbelly Sam kept food for the animals. There were dead cats, two dead dogs, some stinking cuts that could have come from any beast, all hanging on hooks, a massive blood-stained cleaver on a wooden table, and, at the larder’s far end, a small room that was the close-stool built so that it drained directly into the River Fleet. I darted inside and managed to close the door just as Sam burst into the larder and started bellowing at the dogs to be silent.
The smell of the close-stool room would have felled a carthorse. I held my breath as long as I could, waiting until the dogs subsided, and I watched Strawbelly Sam through a crack in the wooden door. He was like a bent gnome, as malevolent as his mastiffs. He had a harelip that his scanty moustache could not cover. He hammered his heavy cudgel against the cage bars, and, when the mastiffs quietened, went back to his house that lay beyond Washington’s lair.
I waited until I heard the door shut, then followed him.
The next shed, built alongside the house, was the smallest, and most of its space was taken by the great cage in which Washington lay. In the gloom he looked like a mountainous heap of dirty fur, but he saw me or smelt me, and raised his massive head. His eyes gleamed, looking oddly red in the shadow. He yawned, or perhaps it was a snarling threat, and I could see his teeth, all broken off and filed flat so that his massive bite did not kill his tormentors too quickly. I slipped past his cage and stood in the small passage outside the house.
And knew I had guessed right.
‘It’s the rats,’ Strawbelly Sam was saying, ‘they get the dogs excited. Bloody rats.’
‘He is not here,’ I heard deValle say firmly, ‘to feed your damned dogs. He is not your servant, you disgusting piece of gristle! He’s your guest. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’ It was Marion’s voice. She sounded sullen.
‘You will feed him,’ deValle said, ‘and feed him well!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And your job, young man, is to make that copy and to make it quickl
y!’
‘I’m trying, sir.’ And I almost smiled, because that was Simon Willoughby’s voice.
‘Four pages so far?’ deValle sneered. ‘That’s not trying!’
‘The candles are bad,’ Willoughby whined, ‘and the quills are split.’
‘Who gave you the quills?’
‘I did,’ Strawbelly Sam said in his slurred voice, ‘and there’s nothing wrong with the quills, sir! Made them myself from cockerels’ tail feathers. Good quills those, sir!’
‘Can you write, man?’ deValle demanded.
There was a pause as Strawbelly Sam contemplated his answer. ‘Not exactly, sir, no, sir,’ he said eventually, ‘not write, not as you’d notice.’
‘Then what do you know of quills? The boy’s right. These are vile quills!’ deValle snarled. ‘You’ll buy him proper quills. Today! Now! And ink.’
‘Sir Godfrey sent the ink,’ Strawbelly Sam said sullenly.
‘It’s toad piss, not ink! You’ll buy new quills, good ink, and candles. Today! This morning! Now!’
‘Yes, sir.’
There was a pause, then the sound of coins being slapped onto the table. Behind me Washington growled and stirred in his cage. I was ready to leap back into the larder if I heard footsteps beyond the door.
‘When both plays are done, lad, you’ll have the use of his lordship’s house,’ deValle went on in a kindlier tone, ‘but this is the safest place for you till the copies are made.’
‘Yes, sir, I know, sir.’ Simon Willoughby sounded utterly miserable.
‘And buy food,’ deValle went on, presumably to Marion, ‘something fit for a Christian to eat.’
‘My pottage is good, sir,’ she protested.
‘Your pottage is slop expelled from the devil’s arsehole,’ deValle said. ‘And bake some fresh bread, woman, not that green muck.’
I heard movement, and edged backwards, but it was evident the three were going towards the further door that led to the yard’s main gate, where, I assumed, deValle’s horse waited. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow, Master Willoughby,’ I heard deValle say, ‘and I’ll expect progress.’
‘You shall have it, sir, I promise.’
‘You’ll open the gate, man,’ deValle ordered Strawbelly Sam, ‘and then walk to the city to buy quills. We want the first copy this week, not next year!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’re being paid good money for this,’ he reminded them.
‘Yes, sir,’ Strawbelly Sam said again. ‘You’d best come and bolt the gate, Marion,’ he added, then I heard the creak of a door, receding footsteps, and the slamming of another door. The three were gone, and Simon Willoughby was alone in the room.
Two of Sam’s dog sticks were leaning in the passageway. Each was about a yard long, each a stout shaft of wood topped by a rusty iron bracket. They were used in the pit when the dogs had fastened their teeth into the bear’s flanks and would not let go. Strawbelly Sam, or sometimes Buttercup, would ram the iron bracket into the dog’s mouth and lever it open to force the dog away. I picked one up. It was heavy, then I waited a few more heartbeats. My heart was thumping. I heard the scrape of a chair or stool, and the sound almost made me jump in fear. Then, as if I was going onstage from the tiring room, I took a deep breath and opened the door.
Simon Willoughby was sitting by the fire. He turned. He saw me. His eyes widened, and his mouth opened.
And I hit him with the dog stick before he could make a noise.
I did not think, I just swung the heavy stick, and the iron bracket slammed into the side of his head. In my panic I had swung it too hard because he gasped and fell from the stool, blood oozing from his ear. Then he just lay motionless. Had I killed him? I gazed at him, aghast, remembering Thomas Butler lying bleeding in far Stratford. Then Simon Willoughby twitched and moaned and I reckoned he was alive, but would have a royal headache, and I crossed the room to the table beneath the window, and there were the two plays.
As simple as that! There was a pile of papers that I scooped up, pausing only to look at one random page. I read:
Ro: O blessed blessed night, I feare being night,
All this is but a dreame I heare and see,
Too flattering true to be substantiall.
Iul: Three wordes good Romeo and good night indeed,
If that thy bent of loue be honourable?
Thy purpose marriage
It was enough. These were the stolen plays, and I pushed the fat sheaf of papers into the canvas bag, then heard movement behind me and turned to see Simon Willoughby trying to stand. Blood dripped from his long hair. ‘Richard!’ he croaked and I kicked him hard in the head. He gasped, and, to silence him, I kicked him again.
‘Quiet, you bastard!’ I hissed, surprised by my anger.
I heard the squeal of hinges as the yard’s outer gate was pulled open. It was time to leave. I kicked Willoughby again, then left by the door I had entered and ran into Washington’s cell, and there I had an inspiration. I unbolted the bear’s cage, opened its door, and prodded him with the dog stick. He stirred, lumbered up on his forefeet and I dropped the stick and ran through the larder to the door. The dogs saw me as I dragged it open and began their howling, then I ran through the snow, unbolted the gate and dashed out into the pasture.
I had done it! I had the plays!
I paused, listening. The dogs were howling.
I had done it!
Thy purpose marriage! Silvia!
Then Marion screamed.
And I panicked.
Dogs! Why had I not thought of them before? All Strawbelly Sam needed to do was release the dogs, and I would be hauled down in the pasture and the snow would turn red with blood as the animals tore me apart.
I ran blindly, stumbling westwards across the field, pushing through a hedge and still running, always listening for the howl of dogs getting louder. They did not come. Washington must have saved me, because the dogs were not released, and I reckoned that Strawbelly Sam could not get past the bear to reach the dogs’ cages.
So what had made Marion scream? The sight of Simon Willoughby bleeding? Or the discovery of an angry bear loose in the sheds? I ran on, stumbling on snow-covered hillocks. The sky was dark with heavy-bellied clouds. It would snow again soon, I thought, and the sooner the snow covered my footprints the better. Leather Lane was just beyond the next hedge. If I could reach it then I could run south and lose myself in the alleys and taverns of Holborn.
Then I looked back and saw Christopher deValle.
He was on horseback and he was pursuing me. The horse was big and black, deValle wore a great black cloak, and in the snow, horse and rider looked like a dark avenging devil. I could see deValle savaging the horse with his spurs, see the snow being hurled up in clumps by the big hooves, and I knew I could not reach Leather Lane, let alone Holborn, before he caught me.
I stopped. I knelt in the snow and fumbled in the canvas bag. God help me, I thought, but the pistol was pointing downwards. Was it still loaded? I dragged it out. It was heavy. I needed both hands to level it, and my hands shook. The black devil was getting closer. I could see deValle’s mouth open as he shouted at me, though I heard nothing of what he said. My ears were filled by a keening noise of fear and despair.
I pulled back the lever that held the flint. It was stiff, compressing the steel spring that would drive it forward. DeValle must have seen the gun, but he did not stop. I saw his spurred boots savage back against the horse’s flanks, saw him draw his rapier, and I was shaking, filled with panic and fear, my eyes half closed against the snow’s glare, and when he was close I aimed the gun at the horse, saw the barrel shaking, and pulled the trigger.
It was too stiff. I pulled again, almost screaming with terror, and this time the trigger moved, the flint snapped forward, the pan-lid slid back, the serrated wheel spun around to make the sparks, and nothing happened. I tried to throw myself backwards, away from the horse.
Then the gun fired.
The
noise was huge.
Filthy-smelling smoke billowed from the barrel. Wadding burned and died on the snow.
There was a scream.
I thought at first it was me screaming, then realised it was the horse that had swerved and reared. I had fallen into the snow, thrown back by panic and by the surprisingly strong kick of the pistol. I was sprawled helplessly, and saw the glint of horseshoes high above me. I think I did scream then, fearing those bright hooves would hammer me, but then the stallion slewed sideways. DeValle dropped the rapier and clung to the horse’s mane as it fell sideways into the snow. He shouted in pain as the horse, which had fallen on him, scrambled to its feet. There was blood on its scalp, more blood trickling down its face, and a few red drops scattered on the snow, but it stood, whinnied, and trotted away, its wound apparently trivial. But deValle was cursing; his right leg bent at an odd angle. His hat, which sported two long black feathers, lay a dozen feet away. ‘You bastard!’ he said. He lunged towards his fallen rapier, but I kicked it away, and he hissed in pain as he put weight on his broken leg.
I thought about borrowing his horse, but as soon as I approached the beast it trotted away. I took deValle’s hat instead, and saw there was a hole through its crown. I dusted the snow from it and walked towards the hedge. DeValle tried to get to his feet, but moaned as his leg collapsed beneath his weight.
‘You’ll die for this!’ he shouted.
Then I was gone through the hedge, the thorns ripping at my cloak. I paused to look back, and saw deValle crawling towards his horse. I was shivering, but it was not from the cold. Then I ran down Leather Lane.
I would play Romeo!
NINE
I REACHED BLACKFRIARS as the church clocks were striking eleven. Snow sifted slow past the city’s bell towers and steeples, whitening the roofs and turning to grey slush in the streets.