Master Skylark: A Story of Shakspere's Time by John Bennett (reading list .TXT) 📗
- Author: John Bennett
Book online «Master Skylark: A Story of Shakspere's Time by John Bennett (reading list .TXT) 📗». Author John Bennett
“Be off with thee!” cried Carew, sharply. “That is my affair. Nay, Nick,” said he, laughing at the boy’s, astonished look; “we shall not burst. What we do not have to-night we’ll have in the morning. ’Tis the way with these inns,—to feed the early birds with scraps,—so the more we leave from supper the more we’ll have for breakfast. And thou wilt need a good breakfast to ride on all day long.”
“Ride?” exclaimed Nick. “Why, sir, I was minded to walk back to Stratford, and keep my gold rose-noble whole.”
“Walk?” cried the master-player, scornfully. “Thou, with thy golden throat? Nay, Nicholas, thou shalt ride to-morrow like a very king, if I have to pay for the horse myself, twelvepence the day!” and with that he began chuckling as if it were a joke.
But Nick stood up, and, bowing, thanked him gratefully; at which the master-player went from chuckling to laughing, and leered at Nick so oddly that the boy would have thought him tipsy, save that there had been nothing yet to drink. And a queer sense of uneasiness came creeping over him as he watched the master-player’s eyes opening and shutting, opening and shutting, so that one moment he seemed to be staring and the next almost asleep; though all the while his keen, dark eyes peered out from between the lids like old dog-foxes from their holes, looking Nick over from head to foot, and from foot to head again, as if measuring him with an ellwand.
When the supper came, filling the whole table and the sideboard too, Nick arose to serve the meat as he was used at home; but, “Nay, Nicholas Skylark, my honey-throat,” cried Carew, “sit thee down! Thou wait on me—thou songster of the silver tongue? Nay, nay, sweetheart; the knave shall wait on thee, or I’ll wait on thee myself—I will, upon my word! Why, Nick, I tell thee I love thee, and dost think I’d let thee wait or walk? nay, nay, thou’lt ride to-morrow like a king, and have all Stratford wait for thee!” At this he chuckled so that he almost choked upon a mouthful of bread and meat.
“Canst ride, Nicholas?”
“Fairly, sir.”
“Fairly? Fie, modesty! I warrant thou canst ride like a very centaur. What sayest—I’ll ride a ten-mile race with thee to-morrow as we go?”
“Why,” cried Nick, “are ye going back to Stratford to play, after all?”
“To Stratford? Nay; not for a bushel of good gold Harry shovel-boards! Bah! That town is ratsbane and nightshade in my mouth! Nay, we’ll not go back to Stratford town; but we shall ride a piece with thee, Nicholas,—we shall ride a piece with thee.”
Chuckling again to himself, he fell to upon the pasty and said no more.
Nick held his peace, as he was taught to do unless first spoken to; but he could not help thinking that stage-players, and master-players in particular, were very queer folk.
DISOWNED
Night came down on Stratford town that last sweet April day, and the pastured kine came lowing home. Supper-time passed, and the cool stars came twinkling out; but still Nick Attwood did not come.
“He hath stayed to sleep with Robin, Master Burgess Getley’s son,” said Mistress Attwood, standing in the door, and staring out into the dusk; “he is often lonely here.”
“He should ha’ telled thee on it, then,” said Simon Attwood. “This be no way to do. I’ve a mind to put him to a trade.”
“Nay, Simon,” protested his wife; “he may be careless,—he is young yet,—but Nicholas is a good lad. Let him have his schooling out—he’ll be the better for it.”
“Then let him show it as he goes along,” said Attwood, grimly, as he blew the candle out.
But May-day dawned; mid-morning came, mid-afternoon, then supper-time again; and supper-time crept into dusk—and still no Nicholas Attwood.
His mother grew uneasy; but his father only growled: “We’ll reckon up when he cometh home. Master Brunswood tells me he was na at the school the whole day yesterday—and he be feared to show his face. I’ll fear him with a bit of birch!”
“Do na be too hard with the lad, Simon,” pleaded Mistress Attwood. “Who knows what hath happened to him? He must be hurt, or he’d ’a’ come home to his mother”—and she began to wring her hands. “He may ha’ fallen from a tree, and lieth all alone out on the hill—or, Simon, the Avon! Thou dost na think our lad be drowned?”
“Fudge!” said Simon Attwood. “Born to hang’ll never drown!”
When, however, the next day crept around and still his son did not come home, a doubt stole into the tanner’s own heart. Yet when his wife was for starting out to seek some tidings of the boy, he stopped her wrathfully.
“Nay, Margaret,” said he; “thou shalt na go traipsing around the town like a hen wi’ but one chick. I wull na ha’ thee made a laughing-stock by all the fools in Stratford.”
But as the third day rolled around, about the middle of the afternoon the tanner himself sneaked out at the back door of his tannery in Southam’s lane, and went up into the town.
“Robin Getley,” he asked at the guildschool door, “was my son wi’ thee overnight?”
“Nay, Master Attwood. Has he not come back?”
“Come back? From where?”
Robin hung his head.
“From, where?” demanded the tanner. “Come, boy!”
“From Coventry,” said Robin, knowing that the truth would out at last, anyway.
“He went to see the players, sir,” spoke up Hal Saddler, briskly, not heeding Robin’s stealthy kick. “He said he’d bide wi’ Diccon Haggard overnight; an’ he said he wished he were a master-player himself, sir, too.”
Simon Attwood, frowning blackly, hurried on. It was Nick, then, whom he had seen crossing the market-square.
Wat Raven, who swept Clopton bridge, had seen two boys go up the Warwick road. “One were thy Nick, Muster Attwood,” said he, thumping the dirt from his broom across the coping-stone, “and the other were Dawson’s Hodge.”
The angry tanner turned again into the market-place. His brows were knit, and his eyes were hot, yet his step was heavy and slow. Above all things, he hated disobedience, yet in his surly way he loved his only son; and far worse than disobedience, he hated that his son should disobey.
Astride a beam in front of Master Thompson’s house sat Roger Dawson. Simon Attwood took him by the collar none too gently.
“Here, leave be!” choked Roger, wriggling hard; but the tanner’s grip was like iron. “Wert thou in Coventry May-day?” he asked sternly.
“Nay, that I was na,” sputtered Hodge. “A plague on Coventry!”
“Do na lie to me—thou wert there wi’ my son Nicholas.”
“I was na,” snarled Hodge. “Nick Attwood threshed me in the Warrick road; an’ I be no dawg to follow at the heels o’ folks as threshes me.”
“Where be he, then?” demanded Attwood, with a sudden sinking at heart in spite of his wrath.
“How should I know? A went away wi’ a play-actoring fellow in a plum-colored cloak; and play-actoring fellow said a loved him like a’s own, and patted a’s back, and flung me hard names, like stones at a lost dawg. Now le’ me go, Muster Attwood—cross my heart, ’tis all I know!”
“Is’t Nicholas ye seek, Master Attwood?” asked Tom Carpenter, turning from his fleurs-de-lis. “Why, sir, he’s gone got famous, sir. I was in Coventry mysel’ May-day; and—why, sir, Nick was all the talk! He sang there at the Blue Boar inn-yard with the Lord High Admiral’s players, and took a part in the play; and, sir, ye’d scarce believe me, but the people went just daft to hear him sing, sir.”
Simon Attwood heard no more. He walked down High street in a daze. With hard men bitter blows strike doubly deep. He stopped before the guildhall school. The clock struck five; each iron clang seemed beating upon his heart. He raised his hand as if to shut the clangor out, and then his face grew stern and hard. “He hath gone his own wilful way,” said he, bitterly. “Let him follow it to the end.”
Mistress Attwood came to meet him, running in the garden-path. “Nicholas?” was all that she could say.
“Never speak to me of him, again,” he said, and passed her by into the house. “He hath gone away with a pack of stage-playing rascals and vagabonds, whither no man knoweth.”
Taking the heavy Bible down from the shelf, he lit a rushlight at the fire, although it was still broad daylight, and sat there with the great book open in his lap until the sun went down and the chill night wind crept in along the floor; yet he could not read a single word and never turned a page.
A STRANGE RIDE
Rat-a-tat-tat at the first dim hint of dawn went the chamberlain’s knuckles upon the door. To Nick it seemed scarce midnight yet, so sound had been his sleep.
Master Carew having gotten into his high-topped riding-boots with a great puffing and tugging, they washed their faces at the inn-yard pump by the smoky light of the hostler’s lantern, and then in a subdued, half-wakened way made a hearty breakfast off the fragments of the last night’s feast. Part of the remaining cold meat, cheese, and cakes Carew stowed in his leather pouch. The rest he left in the lap of a beggar sleeping beside the door.
The street was dim with a chilly fog, through which a few pale stars still struggled overhead. The houses were all shut and barred; nobody was abroad, and the night-watch slept in comfortable doorways here and there, with lolling heads and lanterns long gone out. As they came along the crooked street, a stray cat scurried away with scared green eyes, and a kenneled hound set up a lonesome howl.
But the Blue Boar Inn was stirring like an ant-hill, with firefly lanterns flitting up and down, and a cheery glow about the open door. The horses of the company, scrubbed unreasonably clean, snorted and stamped in little bridled clumps about the courtyard, and the stable-boys, not scrubbed at all, clanked at the pump or shook out wrinkled saddle-cloths with most prodigious yawns. The grooms were buckling up the packs; the chamberlain and sleepy-lidded maids stood at the door, waiting their fare-well farthings.
Some of the company yawned in the tap-room; some yawned out of doors with steaming stirrup-cup in hand; and some came yawning down the stairways pulling on their riding-cloaks, booted, spurred, and ready for a long day’s ride.
“Good-morrow, sirs,” said Carew, heartily. “Good-morrow, sir, to you,” said they, and all came over to speak to Nicholas in a very kindly way; and one or two patted him on the cheek and walked away speaking in under-tones among themselves, keeping one eye on Carew all the while. And Master Tom Heywood, the play-writer, came out with a great slice of fresh wheat-bread, thick with butter and dripping with yellow honey, and gave it to Nick; and stood there silently with a very queer expression watching him eat it, until Carew’s groom led up a stout hackney and a small roan palfrey to the block, and the master-player, crying impatiently, “Up with thee, Nick; we must be ambling!” sprang into the saddle of the gray.
The sleepy inn-folk roused a bit to send a cheery volley of, “Fare ye well, sirs; come again,” after the departing players, and the long cavalcade cantered briskly out of the inn-yard, in double rank, with a great clinking of bridle-chains and a drifting odor of wet leather and heavy perfume.
Nick sat very erect and rode his best, feeling like some errant knight of the great Round Table, ready to right the whole world’s wrongs. “But what about the horse?” said he. “We can na keep him in Stratford, sir.”
“Oh, that’s all seen to,” said the master-player. “’Tis to be sent back by the weekly carrier.”
“And where do I turn into the Stratford road, sir?” asked Nick, as the players clattered down the cobbled street in a cloud of mist that steamed up so thickly from the stones that the horses seemed to have no legs, but to float like boats.
“Some distance further on,” replied Carew, carelessly. “’Tis not the way we came that thou shalt ride to-day; that is t’ other end of town, and the gate not open yet. But the longest way round is the shortest way home, so let’s be spurring on.”
At the corner of the street a cross and sleepy cobbler was strapping a dirty urchin, who bellowed lustily. Nick winced.
“Hollo!” cried Carew. “What’s to do?”
“Why, sir,” said Nick, ruefully, “father will thresh me well this night.”
“Nay,” said Carew, in a quite decided tone; “that he’ll
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