Desmond went redder than his towel had already made him. He turned to me: ‘Try a curtsey, Peter.’
I tried, and failed – I'd never noticed how it was done. I tried again, sticking out one leg in front of me, and sinking down on the other heel. For a moment I rocked uncertainly, then I lost my balance and rolled over in a rather dirty patch of the yard. The way they laughed didn't improve my temper.
‘It's just practice,’ I said, ‘and it would come easier when I was dressed up for it.’
‘That's right,’ said Desmond kindly, as if he was sorry he'd laughed. ‘There's more in acting than dropping curtseys.’
‘I should hope so,’ the boy agreed immediately. His face changed suddenly to a most tragic expression, which, in my jealousy, I might have described as that of a dying duck in a thunderstorm. Only – luckily for me – noticed in time that Desmond's eyes were alight with interest as the boy recited:
‘Set down, set down, your honourable load –
If honour may be shrouded in a hearse…’
Then, after a few lines, he broke off, ceased to be a wailing widow, and changed to a kittenish maiden from some comedy or other.
‘Stop!’ said Desmond. ‘Where did you learn to act, boy?’
The boy looked away. ‘Does it matter, sir?’
‘I suppose not… You've talent. We could use you. What's your name?’
‘Kit – short for Christopher,’ answered the boy.
‘Kit what?’
‘Kit Kirkstone,’ he said without hesitating, but with something in his voice which told me he was lying. I said so. I was still angry because he had called me a liar, and all the angrier because he had been right.
‘He's making that up,’ I interrupted. ‘Kirkstone isn't a surname; it's the name of a pass between the mountains, over to Patterdale.’
The boy looked at me, his blue eyes flashing with fury and his little nose wrinkling up with contempt. Then he swung round on the actor with a charming smile.
‘All the more reason why my name should… pass!’
It was a poor sort of pun, but in those days we thought a lot of puns: they were the favourite form of humour, and no playwright could have written a page without them. Desmond laughed.
‘The boy's got wit, too!’
‘Kit the Wit,’ I muttered.
Desmond gave me a glance which silenced me. ‘Kirkstone will pass,’ he chuckled. ‘We ask no awkward questions here. The present is what matters, not the past. You two boys must be friends; we are all friends in this company.’
I put my hand out at that, and Kit took it. I gripped his till I saw the tears start in his eyes, but I stopped before hurting him as much as I should have liked to do. It seemed suddenly rather mean and cowardly, for he was inches shorter than I, and although he might, like me, be stronger and tougher than he looked, I felt pretty sure he wasn't. There was something just a bit soft and girlish about him, and I suppose it was that, along with his impudence which put me off.
But he could act! Give the devil his due. He could act!
We had no performance to give that day, but we were busy from morning till night. The Two Gentlemen of Verona was to be acted again in two days' time, when our southward journey had brought us to Lancaster. Kit was set to learn the part of Julia, the heroine who leaves home disguised as a man, to find her lover. I was to be Lucetta, her maid.
When I remember all the other pieces I acted in afterwards, I realize what light, thin stuff The Two Gentlemen was. The plot was just the usual mixture that I saw served up in the theatre, time and time again, in play after play. Oh, those disguised heroines! How sick we got of playing them! Of course, there was a reason why the author always fell back on the old trick. We boys had to take all the women's parts, and it was hard to make us look right. It was easy, in a way, to step out of our hooped skirts and farthingales into the tight hose we wore in ordinary life – and then pretend to pretend what we really were. That sounds complicated, but you know what I mean.
Kit Kirkstone didn't need any help of that kind.
He was the only one of us all – and there were three other boys, old stagers, in the company – who really looked like a woman when he was dressed for the part. He had everything – the walk, the head-tossing, the eye-play, the hand movements… all the gestures which I had to be taught, slowly and patiently, because I had never observed them in real life from the women around me.
Desmond corrected him once on some small point; I forget even what it was, and I fancy he did it more to prevent the boy from getting any more conceited than he must have been already.
‘No, no!’ said the actor suddenly. ‘Not like that – no woman in the world ever did it that way.’
Kit turned on him, scarlet-faced, hands on hips. ‘I know perfectly well how to do it!’ he retorted.
That wasn't the way to talk to Desmond. He heaved his great bulk out of his chair and towered above Kit terrifyingly.
‘You contradict me?’ he boomed. ‘I – who have been twenty years in the London theatre? How should you know better, you – you farthing?’
‘I – I'm sorry, sir,’ Kit apologized, cooling and dropping his eyes. ‘Only I – you see, I have five sisters at home, and I've studied them, and imitated them… I was so set on going to London and being an actor… and I knew this was the best way for a boy to start, and…’
He stopped, as if he had already told us too much. I wondered how much was true. It was quite likely he had run away from home to join the company, and that would account for his rather mysterious behaviour. Plenty of decent people did disapprove of the stage even then, and it was more than probable that if Kit's father knew where he was, Kit would be hauled home and given a warm greeting where he did not want it.
He was a strange lad. His clothes were poor and fitted badly. I don't think, when he joined us, he had a penny in his pocket. Yet, when he made some notes on the margin of his play-script, he wrote a hand that would have rejoiced my master at Keswick. He had the speech and manners of a gentleman.
He would talk freely about some things, such as the books he had read, but not a word of himself, his family, school, or where he lived. From one remark he let out, I guessed he had been to London once before, but as soon as I asked a question he became as dumb and stubborn as an old ram. That night he slept on the other side of the wagon from me. I began to suspect that he was not only a little beast, but a dirty little beast as well, for I never saw him wash the next morning. He said he had got up early and washed before anyone else was awake, but that is a tale I have heard often – and told myself more than once in cold weather.
We were starting for Lancaster in an hour or two. Mrs Desmond poked her motherly head into the wagon.
‘I don't want to meddle in anyone's business,’ she said, ‘but there's a man starting north who says he'll carry letters anywhere within reason; he's going all round, peddling his goods, and he's honest, for we've met him before. If you boys care to write a line to your people, just to tell them you're all right…’
‘Thank you, Mrs Desmond,’ I said, and Kit said, Yes, he'd write too.
So we got ink and pens and paper quickly, and wrote, lying on our stomachs in the wagon. I worded my letter carefully, lest it should fall into wrong hands. On Mrs Desmond's suggestion, I told them they could write back to me, care of her, at the Flower de Luce Tavern in Southwark. Then, when it was safe for me to go home, they could send word.
Kit wrote quickly, as if he were an author and his living depended on his speed with the pen. By the time I had written my one letter, he had finished two. We went together and got them sealed.
‘Shall I take them to the man?’ I offered, hoping to read the addresses.
‘No, thanks, I'll go. Shall I take yours?’
I wasn't having that. I was Peter Brown to the company, but the letter was addressed to Mrs Brownrigg, and I wasn't going to risk his seeing it.
‘Don't be standoffish,’ I said. ‘You needn't think I'm inq
uisitive.’
More to annoy him than anything, I snatched his letters and started to walk away. But I had gone only a pace or two before he was on me like a tiger-cat, ripping them from my grasp, and streaking round the corner before I could catch him.
I had held them in my hand only a moment, but there had been time to read the address on the one uppermost. It was directed to ‘Sir Philip Morton, Lonsdale Hall, near Keswick.’
7. Who is Kit Kirkstone?
WHO was Kit Kirkstone? Why was he writing to the only real enemy I had in the world?
The questions racked my brain for the next few days and prevented my enjoying what would otherwise have been a wholly delightful experience – the slow, halting journey from one strange town to another, the happy-go-lucky company of the actors, and the adventure of strutting before an audience in scarlet and yellow and lilac finery, bright enough for the Court itself.
Kit Kirkstone spoilt it for me. The others said I was prejudiced against him, but surely I had reason?
I couldn't imagine what game he was playing. If he knew all about me, why didn't he go straight to the first magistrate and denounce me? That wouldn't have been difficult. In each town where we played we had first to secure a signed permit from two Justices of the Peace. It happened sometimes that one of us boys went with Desmond to call at their houses. Kit had every chance to see magistrates if he wanted to.
But nothing happened, and, after we had passed through half a dozen towns, I gave up wondering when the constable's hand would fall on my shoulder. Kit showed no special interest in me – or in anyone else for that matter, for he lived a strange aloof existence, with his nose buried in any book he could lay hands on. The other boys, Tom and Dennis and Harry, tried to get him to join in our games; we had quite a lot of fun between whiles, what with football, wrestling, and swimming. Kit wouldn't join our swimming parties even on the hottest day, and I guessed it was because he couldn't swim and was afraid. He flared up at that in a moment:
‘I can swim the width of Ullswater, anyhow!’
Even at the narrowest part of the lake, I reckon that would be a good quarter of a mile, so I told him I'd believe it when I saw him do it. He just shrugged his shoulders and walked off in a huff. After that, the other boys sided with me. They weren't too pleased, anyhow, at an outsider like him walking straight into the best parts, though Harry didn't mind much now his voice had broken and he was tall enough to play male characters.
Well, as I say, Kit Kirkstone showed no interest in me. I imagine he had sent news of me to Sir Philip, and was leaving the rest to him. If he cared to send after me – and if his messenger could ever catch up with the zigzag wanderings of our company – no doubt there would be trouble in store for me. But at least Kit was making no trouble himself, so far as I could see.
I never saw him write another letter, though I kept my eyes open. If I saw another addressed to Sir Philip, I meant to read more than the name on the outside.
Meanwhile, as the weeks passed, there were other more pressing anxieties.
The farther I travelled from Cumberland, the less I worried about Sir Philip, and the more I began to share in the continual daily cares and disappointments of an actor's life.
It is a hard profession. That summer and autumn, as our wagons rumbled down the western side of England, we barely paid our way.
True, the towns got bigger as we went south, and the autumn fairs brought big crowds together. But the crowds were more critical – and a lot of us didn't act well enough to bear much criticism. It had been all right in Cumber-land and Westmorland and the hill-towns of Lancashire, for Desmond was almost the first manager to lead a company into those regions, which Londoners thought of as savage, barbarous deserts on the fringe of the Arctic. But Chester hooted when they saw Richard the Third's army represented by two men and a boy, and Worcester hissed us off the stage when we gave them the good old comedy of Ralph Roister-doister, while at Stratford everyone went off to a cockfight, leaving us to play to an empty yard.
Sometimes, when a town had a strong Puritan flavour, we couldn't even get permission to act at all. At one place the parson preached an hour's sermon against us – I know, for we were there on the Sunday, and attended church to show what a decent, well-behaved crew we were.
It was no good. According to the preacher, we were responsible for all the evils which afflicted modern England.
‘When Britons ate acorns and drank water,’ he thundered, ‘they were giants and heroes. Yet, since plays came in, they have dwindled to a puny race!’
Then he went on to explain that even the plague was our fault. Plays cause sin, he reasoned. Sin causes plagues. Therefore, plays cause plagues. That was the gist of his argument, though he wrapped it up in long words and texts.
When we struck a town like that, it meant no money to share out, it meant trying to sleep with no supper in your belly, and a night by the roadside instead of the comfort of an inn. Not that that made any difference to me; I always slept in the wagon, and so now did all the other boys. It saved a penny or two.
So we struggled on towards London, hoping that October would be fine and golden, not a month of flooded roads and fog.
But we were unlucky. The rain came – not rain as we know it in Cumberland, violent slashing rain like a charge of cavalry, giving way after a while to blue skies and vivid sun, but a dismal drip-drip on the flat sodden fields, endlessly day after day. So, too, drop by drop, our spirits oozed away. Faces and hearts fell as steadily as the rain itself.
We came to Oxford, with high hopes of drawing a big audience of scholars. But the Vice-Chancellor banned us, and we weren't allowed to set up our stage within the boundaries of the city. Undaunted, Desmond led us out to Abingdon, a market town in Berkshire only six miles away. He counted on a good crowd of the townspeople, together with scholars and citizens from Oxford who would make the journey if only to spite the Vice-Chancellor of the University.
But the luck was against us. The rain pelted down harder than ever, and the little wooded hills which rise from the Thames just there were blotted out by a yellow curtain of fog. There was almost no shelter for the audience, and barely a couple of dozen turned up. We called off the performance.
Half the company wanted to finish the tour there and then. It was no good, they argued. The season for open-air shows was over, the weather had broken, and it would be better to have the final share-out now, leaving each member to make his own way back to London as quickly as he liked. It was a waste of time to go on like this. They would only get back to London to find all the companies made up for the winter season and no parts left.
We all sat round a doleful little fire at the inn, and the smoke kept eddying back into our throats, choking us. I looked round at all their cross, gloomy faces and felt that my own fate was being decided.
Tomorrow I would be out of work.
I would be one of the thousands walking the roads of England… townsmen and countrymen alike, but mostly countrymen…. I'd seen them every day, especially since the harvest had been gathered and there was less casual work to be found on the land. Some said it was the fault of the enclosures, driving men off the common lands. Some said sheep were to blame – one man can herd a great flock of them over an acreage which would give work to a dozen if it were under the plough. One man (and a learned one, an Oxford scholar) told Desmond it was all due to the Spaniards bringing too much silver from America, though how that put men out of work in Berkshire I couldn't understand.
Anyhow, the point was that I should soon be one of these workless, unwanted people, tramping along with winter at my heels.
Not only winter, but the Law.
The Law is harsh enough, God knows, to the ordinary man who finds no work. He is harried with heavy penalties, and if a crime is committed he is the first to be suspected. If suspected, he is as good as condemned, and if condemned, he is whipped and branded on the right ear. If he gets into trouble a second time the penalty is worse, and for a thi
rd offence it is death. There used to be hundreds of men hanged every year in the old Queen's day, and I doubt if many of them deserved it.
But I knew I should be in danger without that. The Poor Law says that an honest man who cannot find work may get relief from his own parish – but only from his own. Abingdon would not pay me a penny if I fell destitute there, nor would London. They would send me back to my own parish in Cumberland, to be helped by my neighbours – which would have been a fair enough arrangement if it hadn't meant delivering me straight into the arms of my enemy.
No, whatever happened, I thought to myself, I must never beg, never reveal myself as a pauper. Better to die of cold in a ditch…
The endless argument went on. At last I couldn't stand it any longer. I knew I had no voice in the matter – we boys held no shares in the company and couldn't vote – so I got up quietly and slipped from the room. The rain had stopped and the sun had peeped out, the first time for days, to bathe the town in red and gold.
I walked down the street with its cobbles flashing in the sunset, and stood on the long, narrow bridge. The Thames was brimming under the arches. There were swans. I looked across the vivid meadows, all silvered with floodwater, to a low hill that was golden with autumn woods. Suddenly I felt terribly home-sick – home-sick for the golden woods above Derwentwater, for the brimming silver floods lapping at the school-yard wall, and for my home at Lonsdale, with the low grey house bedded into the fell-side, and the beck laughing at the foot of the slope, and mother cooking something tasty on the hob. (They don't know how to eat in the south.)
If there had been only myself to think of, I would have started back that night and chanced the worst Sir Philip could do.
Cue for Treason Page 5