The Pale Companion

by Philip Gooden

  I stumbled into a group that included Jack Wilson and Laurence Savage, who had been the hindmost man in the column apart from myself.

  “Why, Nick, what’s the matter with you?” said Laurence. “Are you all right?”

  Jack grinned, perhaps not displeased to see me discomfited. (I’d spent much of the morning ribbing him about his flight from the market-square.)

  “Yes,” I said breathlessly. “Fine.”

  “If you didn’t look so hot and bothered, I’d say that you must have seen a ghost,” said Laurence Savage.

  “I – I thought there was something in the woods.”

  Jack and Laurence and a couple of the others gazed back at the point where the path entered the clearing. On either side the blank green walls of the wood returned their stares. A gentle breeze ruffled the topmost branches. Overhead the sky was clear and calm. The eye of heaven beamed down benevolently.

  “What sort of thing?” said a third member of the group, Michael Donegrace, one of our boy players.

  “Oh I don’t know,” I said, slightly embarrassed now. “All imagination, I dare say.”

  And indeed now, sitting in the open with my friends and fellow players, and helping myself to some of the proffered bread and ale, and feeling the sun drying my sweaty face while my heart and lungs settled back into their normal rhythm, I did consider that it was all imagination. (Probably.) For sure, when I’d actually scrutinized the trees, I had seen nothing. A man alone in the middle of a wood, even on a fine summer’s morning, may see and hear all sorts.

  “I expect it was the gentleman you had the discussion with in the square last night,” said Jack. “A woody spirit if ever I saw one. He probably wanted to continue your talk – with the aid of a branch torn from the nearest tree.”

  The others laughed, and I saw that my little escapade had got round the circle. Only Nick Revill shooting his mouth off again. And now he says he’s seeing things in the woods. I decided to keep quiet.

  I smiled, joining in the laughter against myself, shrugged and lay down on the grass. The sun warmed my face and, at intervals, the breeze cooled it.

  After a while our rest was finished so we rose and resumed our walk.

  Nearly there, Richard Sincklo informed us. He had surrendered his position on the wagon to Thomas Pope, another of the seniors, as we covered the final stages of our journey.

  We arrived a couple of hours later. The woods had thinned out but we had not returned to the open uplands of the first part of the day. Rather we’d passed through more comfortable-looking pastures and a small village called, someone said, Rung Withers. I don’t know how he knew this. A few of the locals came out to gawp and we waved cheerfully back. Eventually we came to the borders of a large estate and knew without being told that this was our destination.

  In the distance we saw Instede House. It was set on a slight rise in the ground as if to say, look at me. To one side there glimmered a little lake.

  “Do you suppose that our Queen has slept here?” said Laurence Savage to me as we paced together behind the property wagon.

  “I don’t know. I suppose she has. They say she’s slept in every great house in the land.”

  “That is why these great men build such great houses,” said Laurence. “So that she may find a palace wherever she turns in her kingdom.”

  “She will not be journeying much more, I think,” I said.

  I thought of the ageing figure I’d been presented to a few months previously.* The greatest of ladies – but also now an old woman. I was awed at being in the same chamber as our sovereign. But even though I was tongue-tied much of the time, I could see that close beneath her silver skin lay the skull. No, our Queen Elizabeth would make no more drawn-out progresses through her realm. For some reason, I forbore to talk about my interview with the Queen. It was partly because of what had happened afterwards but it was also because – as I knew from my friend Nell’s sceptical reaction – that people’s first inclination if I mentioned it was to disbelieve that a mere player might be summoned to meet the sovereign. Yet, such things we’d talked of in our brief discourse, the Queen and I!

  “Sorry?” I said. Wrapped up in my memories, I hadn’t heard Laurence’s words.

  “I said, this is the imposthume of much wealth.”

  He waved his hand in the direction of Instede House, which however steadily we marched towards it didn’t appear to be getting much larger. Not that it wasn’t large enough already. It glinted like a jewel on our horizon. Now we were passing the little lake.

  “I don’t quite –”

  “Master Shakespeare’s words, not mine. The imposthume of much wealth and peace. You remember Hamlet?”

  “How could I forget him?” I said. And then the lines came back to me, something said by Prince Hamlet near the end of the action as he’s about to depart for England. On the subject of Fortinbras and his reasons for going to war. As if too much prosperity and tranquillity cause men to hanker after their opposites. Wondering if I was ever to be allowed to escape from that play, I quoted our playwright’s own words:

  “‘This is th’imposthume of much wealth and peace,

  That inward breaks, and shows no cause without

  Why the man dies!’”

  “Why, Nicholas,” said Laurence, “you have them off pat.”

  “A proud swelling,” I said, regarding the great edifice before us. “Yes, I suppose that would describe it.”

  “A monstrous carbuncle,” said Laurence.

  “But an elegant one,” I added.

  “No doubt,” he said. “A fair testament to foul pride and vanity. Elcombe’s pride.”

  I was taken aback to hear Laurence Savage speak in this fashion. Despite his surname, he was usually the mildest-mannered of men. He had a round inoffensive face, with an incongruous cowlick of dark hair falling over his forehead. His features were oddly characterless – one of the things that made him good on stage, I suppose. When he spoke, his words were almost invariably gentle, even appeasing. Witness the way he’d enquired whether I was all right after I stumbled out of the forest. By a paradox familiar to players, his personal mildness made him fitting for dark roles, parts such as the poisoner, the smiler with the knife, the man you would not suspect.

  So his comments about Lord Elcombe’s “foul pride and vanity” took me by surprise. Since Elcombe, the owner of Instede House, was our patron for the moment, and we were dependent upon his hospitality and goodwill for the next few days, it seemed unwise – or at least premature – to speak in such critical terms of the gentleman. I was curious at the causes of it, particularly as I knew next to nothing of our host.

  “What do you know about Elcombe?” I said as we walked up the long straight ride leading to Instede House.

  “Know?” replied Laurence. “I know that he is a great man, which is to say a proud one. He is the possessor of this fine pile before us, which he inherited from his father though I believe he has mightily improved it. The said father was a youngster at the court of the old king and cut from the same cloth as that luxurious monarch.”

  “It was another age,” I said.

  “Then to bring you up to the present,” resumed Laurence, “the current Lord Elcombe possesses an older son by the name of Harry and a younger one by some other name. The said elder son is contracted to marry a young woman whose name I cannot at present call to mind if I ever knew it, and the nuptials are to take place in a few days’ time, and an obscure company of players called, let me see, the Chamber-pots has been invited to participate in the nuptials, or rather in the revels which are to garland them, by putting on a performance of a play by someone or other, Master Shake-shaft or Sceneshift, is it?” He paused for breath. “There, will that do?”

  “Well enough,” I said, “though you have omitted the name of the play.”

  “Oh, a Madsinners Night’s Dram or something similar.”

  “Almost to the letter,” I said. “But where is the foul pride and vanity her
e? I do not see it. The son of a rich man is getting married. Banquets and feasts will be had, and crumbs will fall from his table, and poor folk like we players will stoop to gather them up. Now tell me if you know anything else of Lord Elcombe, besides all this which is common knowledge?”

  “I have no knowledge which is out of the common,” said Laurence evasively. “Except one thing perhaps.”

  I waited, knowing that this is the surest way of getting a man to tell you you a secret. There was a pause, then Laurence asked an odd question.

  “Do you know who is playing your Demetrius?”

  Now, the part I was playing in our play (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, of course) was that of Lysander, one of the young lovers who flee to the Athens woods. There are a brace of young men, Lysander and Demetrius, as well as a pair of girls – Hermia and Helena – for them to fall in and out of love with. The Dream is stuffed with lovers but you’ll recognize us, boy and girl both, by our youthful, unfledged quality. I didn’t know who was playing Demetrius, as it happened, but assumed that it had to be one of the four or five of our Company whose looks and general address fitted them for the part.

  So I said to Laurence, “No, I don’t know who’s Demetrius. It’s not you, is it?”

  Laurence almost laughed at this, which I took for a negative. (In truth he would have been most unsuitable for a young lover.)

  “Who is it then?”

  “Ah.”

  “Tell me, Master Savage.”

  What I didn’t know about three minutes before, and hadn’t lost any sleep over not knowing, abruptly became very important. Forgetting my recent belief that the best way to get information is not to press for it, I badgered Laurence to tell me: who was playing Demetrius, my co-sufferer and rival in love?

  “Ask Richard Sincklo,” he said. “He’ll tell you.”

  “Which means that you could, just as easily.”

  “No, you ask Sincklo, it’s his job.”

  And with that I had to be content, even though the question continued to nag at me.

  Like a hill which you’ve been walking towards for hours and which seems to grow no larger and then suddenly swells to fill your vision, so it was with Instede House. All of a sudden we entered the formal gardens that were laid out around the mansion. Once, great houses were built like castles – in fact, once great houses were castles – and it is perhaps a measure of the fat and pursy times in which we live that powerful men feel safe now and no longer need to fence themselves in with moats and battlements. Concealment has been replaced by ostentation. Maybe I was infected by Laurence Savage’s impatient, even contemptuous attitude towards Instede and its owner, for these were among the first thoughts that went through my mind as we covered the final distance towards the house.

  The great oblong face seemed more glass than wall, although the cold sheen of the windows was offset by the warm stone of the frontage. At the corners were little towers: slim, elegant features that my lady might have sketched out for the builders after they came into her mind while she was lounging in bed one morning. Before we could get too near to the main entrance, a liveried figure approached our little convoy and spoke to Master Pope, who was sitting up on the wagon beside William Fall. No doubt the servant was enquiring after our business. Anyway, we changed direction and moved parallel to the house and then turned again to go down one flank of Instede. It was like circumnavigating some island in the main, I imagine, searching for a favourable landing-point. I have been in some of London’s great houses – have even been a guest in one or two – but they seemed pinched and constrained in contrast to this magnificent edifice. Eventually, after rounding yet another corner, we fetched up at an entrance which was suitable for players and other riff-raff. That is, it was slightly less grand than the rest.

  We found ourselves in an inner courtyard. Our seniors, Messrs Sincklo and Pope, now engaged in earnest conversation with a stick-like individual whom I took to be a steward. I stood back with Laurence Savage and Jack Wilson and the others, happy enough to wait for instructions. Oh, we knew our places.

  Eventually, the property wagon drawn by Flem was led off by one of the servants while the steward beckoned us with a haughty long-armed wave to attend him. Sincklo and Pope went first and we followed. We entered by a low doorway, which restricted us to single file, and then almost immediately started to mount some stairs. I’ve never climbed so many stairs in my life. One flight was succeeded by another until it seemed as though we must be due to scrape heaven. At last we fetched up in a long dusty dormitory which, by its slanting ceiling, roughcast walls and squinty windows, occupied the very topmost storey of Instede. Lines of trestle beds stretched down both sides of the room. This, we gathered from our superior conductor, was our place. His name was Oswald Eden and it was apparent from his words and manner that he had a low view of players.

  “Well, gentlemen, dispose yourselves as you please. You are generously housed here, above your deserts though it may be.”

  He had a dry voice, like dead leaves scraping across a yard. His arms, I noted, were almost abnormally long. They fitted his stick shape.

  “Account yourselves fortunate,” added this magnanimous man.

  I was surprised that our seniors didn’t bridle under this treatment. If Master Shakespeare or Dick Burbage had been with us, surely they would have put the fellow in his place. Why, they’d only have to tell him that we had played – and played regularly – before the Queen and her Court to assure him of our quality. And after all, we weren’t interlopers; we had been invited down to this remote (albeit grand) pile. But Sincklo and Pope seemed to accept the steward’s highhandedness. Perhaps it amused them. But me it angered, and I said as much to Laurence Savage.

  “The man is often mightier than the master,” he replied. “Though in Elcombe’s case the master is mighty enough.”

  Anyway, the steward soon left us alone to settle into our new quarters. At the top of this great house the air hung hot and heavy, where it had been stewing all day underneath the leads. Motes of dust swayed idly in the sun’s beams. It was the kind of afternoon that seems a rehearsal for eternity. Two or three of our number lay down on the narrow beds to resume their interrupted woodland sleep. But Richard Sincklo would have none of this and soon called us to order.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “welcome to Instede. I know that Lord Elcombe is a good friend to us players and to the Globe playhouse, and would wish me to say so on his behalf.”

  “That’s more than he knows,” said Laurence Savage to me in a fairly audible aside.

  “We must remember,” continued Sincklo, “that although we are accustomed to be the centre of attention, the cynosure of all eyes, for as long as we’re here at Instede we are a sideshow to the principal attraction. We are in this place to assist at the celebration of a wedding and cannot expect to be centre-stage.”

  I wondered whether he was saying this to excuse the off-hand treatment which we’d already received and which was probably a foretaste of more off-handedness to come. Richard was a rather formal, cautious man, apt to think before he spoke and to speak only when necessary. I suddenly saw that staying and playing in a great man’s house might not be the simple proposition I’d imagined. Leading a band of players into what was a kind of foreign territory might require the skills of an ambassador. Perhaps this was why the Burbage brothers had selected Sincklo to be our senior on tour.

  “Nevertheless,” he continued, “I know that I can depend on the Chamberlain’s to give a good account of themselves whatever the circumstances. We are here to practise our craft and to earn our living. We are here to spread our good name even further abroad and to justify the sharers’ trust in us.”

  At this, he nodded in the direction of the other senior, Thomas Pope, who was himself one of the sharers – that is, an individual who had put up some of the cash to buy the Globe when our Company moved south of the river. Thomas smiled and slightly inclined his head at Richard’s words. I felt my heart swell to b
e a member of this fine Company in which men could give and receive compliments with such grace.

  At the same time there was a little niggling in my mind as I continued to wonder what Laurence Savage had meant by his cryptic remarks concerning the part of Demetrius in the play. However, this was not an appropriate moment to ask Richard Sincklo, who continued: “We have a chamber on the ground floor of this great house which has been put at our disposal for practice and rehearsal and, though we are all tired and dusty at the end of a long day’s journey, our craft will be tireder and dustier still if we do not attend to it. After all, it’s several days since we last rehearsed. So I say to you that we shall begin our business in half an hour.”

  Such was the discipline and good-will of our band that there was not even a murmur of protest at what Sincklo had said, although inwardly no doubt quite a few (like me) were regretting being called to arms quite so soon. As often happens in rehearsal the tiredness dropped off me like a snake’s skin. Jack Horner took the part of Demetrius. I knew, though, by the manner of his playing and by his frequent recourse to the scroll containing Demetrius’s lines that this was not his part. He was standing in for someone else. I could have asked Jack but our friendship had somewhat cooled of late, and I didn’t want to give him the impression that I didn’t know what was what. Equally, I could have spoken to Richard Sincklo but he was preoccupied and furrowed-looking. I decided to leave the question since it would be apparent enough who was playing Demetrius when we got down to the real rehearsals. It was a little mystery I would have to live with for the time being.

  Anyway, by the end of our practice I could have run through ten more plays and a dozen jigs to round them off with. And this despite the fact that I have a not inconsiderable part in the play. I shall say more of both play and part (really quite a big one) later on in the story. What I want to relate now concerns what happened later that evening.

  As Master Sincklo described, we’d been provided with a chamber on the ground floor of Instede House. Once our play practice was done we were fed and watered, or rather aled, in a neighbouring room. In the glow of a rehearsal which has gone off properly – and with that pleasant tiredness which is well earned and soon to be relieved by a good night’s rest – and in the consideration that the Chamberlain’s Company’s stay on Lord Elcombe’s great estate might, after all, be a satisfactory affair – I felt like taking the air late on this summer’s evening before climbing the stairs toward heaven and my trestle bed.