We weren't stopped at all. I heard the driver shout to someone: ‘Found him yet?’ but the answer was lost to me in the rumble of wheels. ‘What you want,’ said the driver, ‘is a bloodhound.’ He drove on without slackening speed.
The actors chattered like magpies for the first mile or two. Then someone began passing round a quart pot of ale, and after that it was singing, one song after another.
In spite of the bumping, I dropped off to sleep. My last memory was of all the actors singing:
‘Come, Night, and lay thy velvet hand
On glorious Day's outfacing face…
Away rumbled our wagons down the winding road between the twilit fells, and Night laid her velvet hand on my face so that I slept like one of the dead. The second half of my plan was never fulfilled.
5. Someone Was Watching
WE never got to Kendal that night.
We took a wrong turning in the dark, and wasted an hour getting back to the proper road. A wheel came off the other wagon, and, as it was in front and the road just there very narrow, we all had to wait till the damage was repaired. Finally, as it was a warm night, the company decided to camp where they were till daylight, thus saving the expense at the inn. They would still arrive at Kendal in good time for the afternoon performance.
I knew nothing of this till afterwards. I woke to hear a great discussion going on near by. I realized at once that the wagon had stopped.
‘Don't be a fool, William,’ the motherly woman was saying.
‘I tell you there's something inside, Jane!’ The fat man sounded pathetic, like a frightened child.
‘Of course there's something inside –’
‘Something that moved and made a noise!’
‘It's that play that's got on your mind. I always said there were too many ghosts in Richard the Third –’
‘Listen, Jane! Now, that isn't fancy!’
I couldn't stand the chest any longer; luckily, it was a roughly made thing of boards bounded with iron, and some air got through the cracks, otherwise I should have been suffocated hours before. I tried now to push open the lid, but I was so cramped and weak that I could hardly move it.
Suddenly the lid lifted, there was a gasp of amazement, and there in the yellow lantern light was a plump woman's face hanging over me like a harvest moon.
‘Well, I'll be hanged! Come here, William, and see what the fairies have left us!’
Without waiting for her husband, she slipped a massive arm under my shoulders and raised me till I was sitting up like a sick baby in its cot.
‘Don't stand gaping, all of you,’ she shouted over her shoulder as the others came clustering round. ‘Get me some of that water, quick, and a bowl of stew. And, William, just a thimbleful of that wine, if you can spare it.’
In five minutes, sitting beside a cheerful fire on the grass, I was myself again. I started to stammer explanations and apologies, but William Desmond cut me short with a grand gesture.
‘Not a word, boy, not a word! Least said soonest mended. We met you on the Kendal road. We cannot remember ever having seen you before. You have an honest look. It naturally does not occur to us to associate you with the youthful criminal of Penrith. No one can ever accuse my company of knowingly harbouring a fugitive from justice.’
‘They can accuse us,’ interjected his wife bluntly, ‘but they can't prove it.’
So I turned to my supper again and cleaned up a second bowl of excellent stew. I was still terribly tired, but I had a wonderful feeling of relief. They were all so kind, not only Mr and Mrs Desmond, but the others sitting round the fire. I felt I had reached safety.
I looked round at the scene, over the rim of my bowl. I didn't know quite where we were, for I had never travelled so far from home. But the moonlight showed me low ridges of moor on either side of the road, with a hint of higher fells to the westward. Our wagons were drawn up in a dip, where a beck came rippling across the road. The horses were tethered a few paces away, finding what feed they could among the rough moor grasses.
Safety? It seemed so, in that warm circle of fire-glow. But I couldn't help wondering.
When you are used to being alone on the fells, I think you get very sensitive to the presence of other people. You feel it particularly when you are being watched.
I got a queer feeling as I sat by the fire that we were being watched.
I don't mean that just I was, but the whole troupe. Of course, the actors were watching me as I finished my supper, and I expect they were wondering all sorts of things about me. But I don't count the straightforward look of a friendly stranger who has just met you.
No, it was as though someone was watching us secretly, from outside the circle of the fire. Someone crouching in the tall, dew-wet bracken, watching with two bright eyes that fairly bored the darkness.
It was a queer fancy, but there was nothing I could do about it. You could have hidden an army in those rustling acres of bracken, so there was little enough chance of finding one man. I shivered – but that was only the chilliness which comes with lack of sleep. William Desmond suddenly burst out, after studying me in silence for a couple of minutes:
‘Can you sing, boy?’
I started. I felt quite unlike singing just then, but I was prepared to do my best if required to earn my supper.
‘Tomorrow,’ he explained rapidly, ‘we are doing The Two Gentlemen of Verona. There is a song, an exquisite song. We always have it sung by a page-boy. But have we a page-boy in the company who can sing a note?’ He looked round at them all defiantly, but no one spoke. ‘George's voice is like a broken pot. Young Francis, who could sing like an angel, ran away and left us at Lancaster – frightened, miserable little puppy, of these mountains! We're left so short-handed there's scarcely a play we can put on if it has more than two female characters in it.’ He turned to me again. ‘Could you learn this song and sing it for us? Nothing else to do at all.’
‘Who is Silvia? What is she,
That all our swains commend her?’
It seemed an easy song, with only three short verses. I promised to do my best. I was glad to make some return, even if it was so small, for the kindness the actors had shown me.
The important thing now was to get some sleep, so I curled myself up on a great roll of tapestry in the wagon and went off so soundly that I never woke when they harnessed the horses at dawn and moved on again.
When I did open my eyes the sun was up and the morning was full of bird-calls. I raised myself on my elbow and looked over the wagon-side.
We were still moving between ridges of moorland, but I guessed we were not far from our destination. I could see the broad backs of Mr and Mrs Desmond – he was driving that wagon – but most of the company were walking along in twos and threes.
‘Hi!’
There were black figures suddenly on the shaggy grass skyline to the left, men waving their arms, horses with manes and tails streaming darkly against the dazzling gold of the morning.
‘Hi, there! Stop!’
The cry came thinly down, as cries do in mountain air.
There were four men, I could see, as I peeped cautiously over the wagon-side.
‘Drive on,’ said Mrs Desmond to her husband, very tensely. The wagon had never stopped, anyhow. We rumbled on.
‘I'll drop off,’ I began, ‘and run up the other –’
‘You'll do nothing of the sort,’ she said, without turning her head. ‘Lie where you are, pull some things over you, and don't make a sound.’ I did as she told me; there was no arguing with Mrs Desmond, as I was beginning to learn. I couldn't get into my coffin again because it was in the other wagon, but I hid myself as best I could among the other baggage. My last glimpse of the horsemen showed them galloping aslant the hill, to cut us off at the next bend. We hadn't a dog's chance of outdistancing them.
Sure enough, it was barely two minutes before I heard the clatter of hoofs in front and the whine of our wheels as we came to a standstill.
‘What's this?’ Desmond shouted in his lordliest tone. ‘We're overdue in Kendal as it is. What do you mean by…’ His voice faded. He had jumped down from the driving-seat and walked up the road. I could hear the voices of the strangers, but I couldn't make out a word. Then I heard footsteps coming back. Desmond was grumbling.
‘My dear sir, I assure you –’
‘I should prefer to have a look, all the same.’
‘Do you doubt my word, sir?’ stormed the actor.
‘Not at all, not at all. But the back of your wagon is open; someone might have crept in without your knowing.’
I wished I had run for it. It was too late now. I knew that in a stand-up fight my new friends would have been more than a match for the four strangers, but it would have been unfair to let it come to that. I could not let them all go to jail for me, and that was what it would mean in the long run, since no jury would believe the word of vagabond actors against that of the local gentry. If they discovered me now – and only a miracle could prevent it – I would swear that I had hidden myself in the wagon without anyone's knowledge.
‘Very well,’ said Desmond suddenly, as if weary of the argument. ‘Look, if you want to.’
I don't know what else he could have done, but I must admit that I felt a pang of disappointment in him. I heard a man spring on to the tail of the wagon.
‘There is someone hiding here!’ he burst out in triumph, and instantly dragged me out; even I was taken aback by the suddenness with which his hand fell on my shoulder.
‘But it's only a boy!’ said an older man, looking at me with disgust.
‘Of course,’ said Mrs Desmond without a second's hesitation. ‘It's that idle young scallywag, Sammy. Always hiding and going to sleep to dodge the work!’
‘Hop out, you little devil!’ her husband ordered me. ‘Do a little walking for a change.’
I hopped out obediently, and the four strangers never gave me another glance. They went along to the other wagon, but of course they found no one there. They remounted, and I must say they apologized for the trouble they had given us before cantering off along the road again. Desmond called after them:
‘If we do see the lady we'll send word to the Hall.’
‘What was all that about?’ I asked eagerly as I swung myself into the wagon again.
The actor laughed. ‘They were searching for a young lady. She ran away from home during the night some family trouble, I expect, though, of course, they weren't letting us into their private affairs.’
‘Eloped, probably,’ said his wife sentimentally. She had seen so many romantic Italian comedies, had Jane Desmond, that she could never think of love without going as sloppy as porridge. It was the only thing wrong with her, to my mind; she was a kindly, great-hearted woman, and after knowing her a week or two I would have fought to the death for her as I would have done for my own mother.
I didn't worry my head about the incident any more. We were coming down from the hills now, and Kendal lay below us in the rich green bowl of the valley. In an hour or two I should be making a real appearance on the public stage. I ran through my song several times to make sure I had it by heart.
We set up our stage in the yard of an inn. It was a poor pitch compared with the one at Penrith, and the inn rooms were so inconveniently placed that most of us had to dress in the wagons. Mrs Desmond told me I could sleep in the wagon that night if I liked, and I accepted gratefully. My future was still uncertain, and I was glad to save the cost of a night's lodging.
Well, there isn't much to tell about the rest of that day. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. I didn't have stage-fright or anything funny. I walked on with the others when they told me, wearing a vivid yellow doublet which was rather tight across the shoulders, and when the music started I sang my song. People clapped – not a lot, but enough to make me feel quite pleased, and Mrs Desmond gave me a great slap on the back when I came off. My doublet thereupon split with a swishing noise, and she cursed like a carter, but quite cheerfully, as she rummaged for needle and thread.
‘Lucky you haven't to go on again,’ she said, pricking me between the shoulder-blades. ‘What do you think of the play?’
‘Very nice,’ I said politely.
‘I'm glad young Shakespeare's turning to comedy instead of those noisy histories with a battle every ten minutes and an execution or two between to keep up the interest. There's enough of that in real life, I say, so give the public something light like The Two Gentlemen. As for tragedy, they might as well stop trying to write it, now poor Kit Marlowe's gone…’
‘Who was he?’
‘The best of the bunch! You should see his Doctor Faustus – we still do it sometimes, you know. Or his few of Malta. The plays he wrote! He was no older than this young man from Warwickshire, but what's Shakespeare done or likely to do compared with him?’
‘What happened to Mr Marlowe?’ I asked.
‘Stabbed to death,’ she answered, with a sigh. ‘We never heard the whole truth of it, and I doubt if we ever shall. But, there… Let's change the subject. You've a nice voice, Peter. Weren't you nervous at the thought of all the people watching you?’
‘Oh no,’ I said, and it was true. I hadn't minded about the people in the yard. Only once, as I sang the last verse, Id suddenly felt that same queer feeling of someone watching me – not the frank, open stare of the crowd, but the intense gaze of someone watching from a hidden place.
Of course, that was all so fanciful that I couldn't possibly explain it to her, so I said nothing. I soon forgot all about it.
We had a jolly evening after the performance, for the actors, having saved their night's lodging by camping on the road, were determined to make up for it and spend the money on a better supper than usual. They all congratulated me on my tiny part in the show, and Desmond said:
‘Why not stay with us for a bit, Peter? It'll only be for a month or two; we're working our way back to London before the winter sets in. Then goodness knows what'll happen to us all, but who's worrying now?’
Who's worrying now? Not a bad motto, I thought to myself. I accepted the offer. As I fell asleep that night on my bed of baggage, I murmured happily: ‘I'm going to London; I've got work; I'm an actor!’
It was an exciting thought, but no amount of excitement would have kept me awake that night. I slept soundly till nearly dawn, when, I suppose, some noise startled me, for I sat bolt upright, blinking round in the grey light.
I knew at once that I was no longer alone in the wagon. If I had doubted that for a moment, the doubt would soon have been settled. Before I could even turn my head a voice spoke softly but emphatically in my right ear:
‘If you make a sound, I'll stick this knife in your gizzard!’
6. Rivals on the Road
YOU know that awful feeling when your heart seems to jump, and stop – as though it were hanging in the air mid-way between its proper place and the ceiling? That's how I felt.
‘Promise you won't yell?’ said the voice again. I could tell now that it was a boy's voice, young, but deep and musical. There was something in its tone which suggested that my gizzard wasn't really in such great danger.
‘All right,’ I grunted, twisting round on my elbow.
The boy was kneeling behind me, and sure enough he had a small dagger which made a streak of white light in the gloom. I could see that he was small too, and perhaps a year or two younger than myself. I felt secretly ashamed of my fear.
‘What are you doing here, my lad?’ I said roughly, remembering that I was now a member of the company and in charge of their baggage.
‘The same as you,’ he retorted cheekily. ‘Getting some sleep.’
‘But I'm one of the actors.’
‘Since when?’
I could have knocked his block off – cheerfully – for that, but it wouldn't have been fair. I told him to mind his own business. He just smiled, looking me up and down as though I were something on four legs, with a tail, in Keswick M
arket.
‘I think I'll become an actor,’ he said lazily.
‘Huh!’ snorted. ‘It's not so easy.’
‘It can't be so very difficult… if you are.’
I asked him if he was looking for a thick ear. He said, No; he was looking for work. I assured him he wasn't the only one; the roads of England were strung with beggars like beads on a thread. As for work as an actor… well, I didn't tell an outright lie, but I rather suggested that there were no vacancies in William Desmond's company.
Don't think that, in doing this, I was just playing dog-in-the-manger. I was scared of having another Cumber-land boy in the company; I wanted to get right away from Cumberland for the present and break all links, otherwise the news of my whereabouts might filter back to Sir Philip Morton. Also, this boy had such colossal self-confidence that he would probably be a startling success and quite push me out of my present place in the sun.
He looked at me with that mocking, impish grin of his, and said drawlingly:
‘My word, you are a little liar.’
I knew then that he had been the unseen watcher that night by the roadside. That he had been close to us ever since, creeping nearer and nearer, peeping at us from hiding-places…. He must know considerably more about me than was healthy.
But I wasn't going to be called a liar by anyone, so I jumped up and swung my fist, but he ducked under my arm and leapt off the tail of the wagon. I followed. There was a pump in the yard, and I felt it would be a good idea to hold his head under it for a minute or two, before booting him out into the street. But I never did so, for William Desmond was bending under it himself, sluicing his red neck in the icy water – a thing I never saw any of the other actors do.
‘What's this? What's this?’ he demanded, straightening up and looking from one to the other of us.
‘This little fool –’ I started.
‘– wants to join your company,’ interrupted the boy, and dropped Desmond a curtsey that wouldn't have disgraced the Queen's waiting-women. I saw Desmond gape. Before he could speak, the boy added hurriedly: ‘Tell him to try that; I bet he can't. He's like all the other boys in your company, Mr Desmond – dress 'em up as much as you like, they don't look like ladies, but boys in skirts.’
Cue for Treason Page 4