The Pale Companion

by Philip Gooden

  Another thought struck me: if you regularly played God, then how long would it be before you really played God, as it were. How hard would it be to grow into the belief that one was God’s agent on earth, entitled to loose off time’s arrow prematurely? No, not how hard but how easy? To bring to a close a life of which you – and more importantly, God – disapproved?

  I stopped in my wanderings through the little copse which bordered this edge of the estate. Was I seriously saying to myself, I said to myself, that the Paradise Brothers had taken upon themselves the right to judge, to condemn and to punish. I looked about. Nearby was the cottage of Sam the bailie, where I examined the noose which had pinched Robin’s neck tight. If so – if the Paradise trinity had taken upon themselves the right to judge – then how did Robin fit into the scheme of things? I had Fielding’s opinion that everything was connected and my own instinct told a similiar tale.

  Robin’s ramblings about the devil recurred to me. Talk of the devil might well be offensive to someone who thinks he’s God. Offensive enough to make one want to close the speaker’s mouth? I considered the expertise of the Paradise Brothers, their handiness with rope and harness as they hoisted each other aloft. When had the trio arrived at Instede? Was it before or after the woodman’s body was discovered? A little before, I thought. Some dark suspicions hovered on the edge of my thoughts.

  Then I heard giggling and other sounds from a dense pack of undergrowth. I tensed, but relaxed after an instant. I recognized the deeper laugh that underpinned the giggling.

  “Will?” I said.

  A small girlish shriek, then silence, then a male voice: “Nick?”

  “No, a wood spirit come to curb your licentious activities.”

  “Go away, Nick. Audrey and I are discussing country matters.”

  Another bout of giggles. However much distress she felt for her employer’s death, Audrey had evidently come unclammed.

  I crept away.

  Well, I suppose it’s reassuring to know that some activities persist regardless of time’s arrow.

  The air of Instede was getting oppressive. Sudden death seemed to hang about us, just as the house was hung with swags and bows of black. For all the beauty of the place there was something rotten at its heart, as I’d said to Kate.

  The day before the funeral I set out to escape from the estate. While preparations continued for Elcombe’s interment, Instede House was possessed by a gloomy stir and I felt my own face set in a miserable mask. It was hard to remember what it was like to laugh or smile. I exaggerate, but not much. As I wandered through the grounds I even thought of whistling – but it would have been an act of defiance not a natural thing. And it’s as well I didn’t because moments later I glimpsed Lady Elcombe with her son Cuthbert and Kate Fielding, deep in talk. I was pleased enough that she had youthful company until I noticed Oswald making for the group. The stick-man bent forward to whisper in my Lady’s ear, no doubt to recall her to her mourning duties, and she broke away from the others. I passed Adam Fielding too, looking grim and furrow-browed like the rest. He scarcely gave me good morning.

  Well, I thought, a moment comes when you’ve had enough of the world’s woes and of tasting the cup of grief, particularly if it’s not your own preparation. The world – or the unwoeful part of it – goes on. Thank God.

  My spirits lightened as I strolled down the great ride which formed the main approach to Instede. It was like slipping out of a prison or, in Cuthbert Ascre’s image, through the bars of a gilded cage. I was heading nowhere in particular but soon found myself in the hamlet of Rung Withers, which lay just outside the estate boundaries. After the magnificence of the great house, there was a comfort in the homely cottages with their pinched windows and lop-sided doors. Even the hovels spoke of plain Englishness while the midden at the entrance to the village exuded an honest, direct stench in the mid-morning sun. There was a modest church and a no-nonsense tavern which rejoiced in the name of Ye Clod Pole, a farrier’s, a bake-house and so on. Gossips clustered in the high street (the only street) and occasional wagons trundled through. The straightforward feel to the place reminded me a little of my home village of Miching.

  Yet it was not so easy to escape from trouble after all. Not the Instede variety this time but a return of the Salisbury business. I spied an individual weaving down the street in my direction. There was something faintly familar about his gait. What was it? In his right hand there was a bottle which, even in mid-stagger, he tilted towards his mouth. But it was form’s sake only and nothing emerged, not even a dribble. Then there came out of his mouth another kind of dribble: “Snoffair. Snorright. Snoffair.” Where had I heard that before? Why, for sure, from the Salisbury scaffold when the Paradises had for a moment been upstaged by this inebriate. It was the soused farmer – Tom, was he called? – who’d been clouted over the head by Cain. Obviously, drunkenness with Tom was not just an evening treat but a morning requirement.

  He wasn’t causing heads to turn as he passed down the high street. They were used to him. Perhaps he lived here. I made to steer clear of him. As we passed each other I saw him casting his little eyes about in that watchful way drunks sometimes have, always on the alert for anyone making aspersions on their sodden selves.

  “Hey youse.”

  I didn’t look back.

  “I said youse – stranger.”

  Yes, apparently he was talking to me. I put on speed to travel through the village, hoping that, like a bad-tempered cur, he’d leave me alone when I got out of his domain. But no such luck.

  “Stop, youse.”

  So I did stop and turn about to give him a piece of my mind. By now half a dozen of the gossips and other passengers had gathered in the hope of an argument or something worse (and what could be better from their point of view than something worse?). The gentleman came swaying up to me. With his piggy eyes, he looked no more fetching in the glare of day than by the flaring torches in Salisbury market. I moved back, keeping out of reach of that empty bottle, fists handy in case he swung out with it. He shambled to a halt within a few feet of me and I was enveloped by the vapour of small beer. He held out a scroll.

  “’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. F
or 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 wa
s 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.”