The Shakespeare Stealer

by Gary Blackwood

  “Aye…mostly.”

  Bass chuckled. “Neither is Falconer the most considerate of traveling companions, I warrant. Have you eaten?”

  “Aye.”

  “Good. Good.” He shoved his papers aside, took up a pipe, and filled the bowl of it with tobacco from an earthenware jar. “Then we can get right down to business. You’ll be wanting to know what’s expected of you.”

  “Aye.” Though my seat was comfortable, I shifted about nervously.

  “Very well.” He went to the fireplace, touched a taper to a live coal, and lit the pipe. “The first thing I expect is that you say ‘yes’ rather than ‘aye.’ Your task will not require you to speak overmuch, but I’d as soon you did not brand yourself as a complete rustic. Understood?”

  “Aye—I mean, yes.”

  “Excellent.” His manner, which had become prickly, turned cordial again. “Now. When you go to London—”

  “London?”

  “Yes, yes, London. It’s a large city to the south of here.”

  “I ken that, but—”

  “Let me finish, then ask questions. When you go to London, you will attend a performance of a play called The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. You will copy it in Dr. Bright’s ‘charactery’ and you will deliver it to me. Now. Any questions?”

  I scarcely knew where to begin. “I—well, how—that is—they will not object? The men who present the play?”

  “Only if they discover you. Naturally you will be as surreptitious as possible.”

  “And an they do discover me?” I asked, thinking of the sermon-copying affair.

  Bass blew out a cloud of smoke which made me cough. “The Globe’s audience is customarily between five hundred and one thousand. Do you suppose they can watch over every member of it?”

  “I wis not.”

  “You wis not. Of course they can’t. You will use a small table-book, easily concealed.” He rummaged through the riot of papers on his writing desk. “You see how easily it is concealed? Even I can’t find it.” Finally he came up with a bound pad of paper the size of his hand. “There. Keep it in your wallet. You have a plumbago pencil?”

  “Ay—yes.”

  “Any further questions?”

  “An I might ask…for what purpose am I to do this?”

  Bass turned a penetrating look on me. “Does it matter?”

  “Nay, I wis not. I was only curious.”

  He nodded and scratched the balding top of his head. “You’ll know sooner or later, I suppose.” He puffed thoughtfully at his pipe, then continued. “I am a man of business, Widge, and one of my more profitable ventures is a company of players. They are not nearly so successful as the Lord Chamberlain’s or the Admiral’s Men, but they do a respectable business here in the Midlands. As they have no competent poet of their own, they make do with hand-me-downs, so well used as to be threadbare. If they could stage a current work, by a poet of some reputation, they could double their box.”

  “Box?”

  “The money they take in. And my profit would also double. Now someone, sooner or later, will pry this Tragedy of Hamlet from the hands of its poet, Mr. Shakespeare, just as they did Romeo and Juliet and Titus Andronicus.” He jabbed his pipe stem at me for emphasis. “I would like it to be us, and I would like it to be now, while it is new enough to be a novelty. Besides, if we wait for others to obtain it, they will do a botched job, patched together from various sources, none of them reliable. Mr. Shakespeare deserves better; he is a poet of quality, perhaps of genius, and if his work is to be appropriated, it ought to be done well. That is your mission. If you fulfill it satisfactorily, the rewards will be considerable. If you do not—” He gave a wry smile. “Well, Falconer will make certain that you do.”

  The anticipation that had been growing in me turned suddenly sour. “I—I did not ken ’a would go wi’ me.”

  Bass laughed. “Did you suppose I would send you off to London on your own? You can’t even speak the language properly. I might just as well send you to Guiana.” He patted one of my sagging shoulders. “Don’t look so inconsolable. Falconer will take good care of you, and you can learn a lot from him. Besides, looking on the bright side, this time you’ll have a horse of your own.”

  So the room that was to be mine was mine for two nights only. The following morning, we set out for London. Though my legs had not quite recovered, by shortening my stirrups and leaning back in the saddle, I could ride without too much discomfort.

  Naturally, Falconer set a brisk pace. Mr. Bass had no doubt instructed him not to delay, and he, in his fanatical fashion, took this to mean that we should drive our mounts and ourselves to exhaustion.

  I was better fed this time, for Libby had provided me with all manner of victuals—fruit, meat pies, clapbread. She had also found time to wash and mend my workaday clothing, and patch my torn shoe. When I thanked her, she had waved my words away. “Tush, it’s no more than is expected of me. Don’t you go getting yourself into trouble in the city, now.”

  Trouble? I thought. In London? Ever since I could remember, I had heard Dr. Bright and others speak of London in tones usually reserved for talk of the Heavenly City. As the Earth was the center of the greater universe, so London was the center of our miniature universe. And I, Widge, orphan and lowly apprentice, was moving toward that center.

  Sore legs be damned. I dug my heels into my horse’s ribs and urged her into a gait that, for a short time, outstripped even Falconer. I had gone no more than a mile when a hare scampered from the brush and across the roadway. My mount reared, nearly spilling me from the saddle. Falconer came abreast of me. “What’s the trouble?” he demanded.

  “A hare,” I said, shaken. “’A ran across me path.”

  “That’s all? From your face, anyone would guess it was a dragon at least.”

  “Do you not ken it’s a bad omen?”

  “I take no stock in omens. Men make their own fates.”

  “Not prentices,” I muttered. I urged my horse forward, but not with quite the same eagerness as before.

  6

  Despite our haste, it took us two full days to reach London. Our passage was uneventful, and our conversation limited. We slept the night in Bedford, and in late afteroon of the following day, I first caught sight of the rooftops of the great city on the Thames.

  The volume of traffic had swelled threefold. We passed carts and wagons of every size and description—full ones on their way into the city, empty ones coming back. Apparently, London had an enormous appetite for goods of every kind, from livestock and vegetables to timber and stone. In my poor parish, most of what we used came from the farms roundabout. It was curious to think of carting in food and materials from all over the country.

  We approached the city on Aldersgate Street. All around us lay fields and orchards; I might have imagined I had never left home had I not looked dead ahead, where the thousand buildings of the city, with their red tile roofs, lay ranged in rows within the ancient stone wall, so densely packed that those which lined the river seemed about to be nudged into it by those on the hill above.

  “Close your mouth,” Falconer said, “before your soul flies out.”

  Embarrassed, I clamped my mouth shut and urged my horse forward. By the time we passed through the wall at Aldersgate, the sun had set, and the streets were growing dark. There was much less bustle and clamor than I had expected. I was, in truth, a bit disappointed.

  We had gone no more than a hundred yards before a man carrying a pikestaff and a bell and leading a mastiff on a leash stalked up to us. “You’re to lead your horses within the walls!”

  Falconer reined in. I watched him anxiously, wondering how he would respond to this order. To my surprise, he swung from his saddle without a word, though his bearing spoke of resentment and disdain, and walked on, leading his mount. I dropped to the cobblestones and hurried after.

  My eyes were on Falconer, not on my footing. I stumbled into a deep depression in the ground and
landed painfully on one knee. The watchman burst out laughing. “You’re a green one, an’t you?”

  I was tempted to reply that, where I came from, we did not leave holes in the street for people to fall into. But I thought better of it and limped off with my horse in tow. Now I saw that the depression was in fact a ditch that ran the length of the street. I also became aware of the noisome stench arising from it.

  Falconer growled, “Must I watch you every moment, like an errant sheep?”

  “I couldn’t help it. I fell in that ditch.”

  “Then you have reason to act sheepish. That’s the sewer.” He waved a hand at me, as though to keep me at a distance. “Be sure you walk downwind of me from here on.”

  I saw at once that Falconer was no stranger to London. He made his way through the streets with such an air of assurance, indeed of arrogance, that those few townfolk still abroad gave him a wide berth—or perhaps it was due to the air about me.

  Even in the dark, the buildings that towered over us were impressive. Some were a full four storeys high; in one block, the fronts of the buildings were decorated with beaten gold. To our right, a huge cathedral was silhouetted against the rising moon. As I stared at it, the bells in its square steeple rang the hour of compline.

  “Stop gawking, and move your pins!” Falconer called. “That’s the curfew bell!”

  “London has a curfew?” I asked incredulously. The largest and most cosmopolitan city in England, the symbol of freedom to thousands upon thousands of country youths, compelled its citizens to be off the streets at nine o’clock?

  Falconer strode on without replying. We passed the public stocks, which were empty, then came upon a spot where three streets diverged, like a trident. Falconer took the right-hand prong, and we walked another several blocks before we stopped under a sign which depicted St. George slaying a rather pitiful-looking dragon. “This will be our lodgings,” Falconer said. “If we should become separated, find your way here. Just ask anyone for The George, near the Four Corners. Understood?”

  “Aye. The George, near the Four Corners.”

  “Otherwise you are to talk to no one. Is that understood?”

  “Aye.”

  He handed me the reins of his mount. “Take the horses through that archway to the stable.” I started off, but his voice made me turn back. “One more thing.”

  “Aye?”

  “Stop saying aye.”

  “I will,” I promised. Yes, I told myself as I led the horses into the courtyard. Not aye, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Anything that would make me appear more like a Londoner and less like a green country woodcock, I was more than willing to adopt. But if I truly did not wish to be sniggered at, my first task would have to be to change my reeking clothing.

  The main room of the inn, where we supped, was enormous, with a wide fireplace and half a dozen massive tables. At each sat four or five patrons, some eating, some drinking, some playing at dice.

  As I sat opposite Falconer, gobbling my bread and herring, a quarrel kindled among the dice players. Two men sprang to their feet, their hands reaching for their rapiers, but a third man stepped between them. There was a moment’s heated discussion, then one of the antagonists stalked from the room, wearing a grim look. Falconer seemed to take no notice of the scene. “There was nearly a fight!” I whispered.

  “There will be one yet,” he said. “They’ve merely chosen another time and place.”

  “You mean a duel? Over a game of dice?”

  He shrugged, and his hood moved a little, revealing the long scar that traversed his cheek. “Some men will fight over nearly anything.”

  We finished our supper in silence. When Falconer started up to his room, I hastened after him. He waved me away with an impatient gesture, as if I still stank, though I had done my best to wash thoroughly. “You will make your bed in the stables, boy.”

  I backed away, surprised and a bit hurt. Simon Bass had led me to believe that my part in this “mission,” as he had called it, was an important one. But to Falconer I was apparently no more than an unskilled and incompetent prentice, not fit to converse with or share a room with. In truth I was, except perhaps for my diet, no better than his horses.

  For three days we sat idle at the inn, waiting for the Lord Chamberlain’s men to perform The Tragedy of Hamlet. There was a different play each afternoon, and Hamlet would not be presented until Tuesday. I spent much of the time watching the traffic that thronged the streets. Every conceivable conveyance passed by, from rude carts to fine coaches, and every conceivable class of person: ragged street urchins begging for farthings; fat merchants in sensible clothing; young dandies in doublets so extravagantly slit and slashed as to appear ready to fall off; dozens of prentices my age or younger, all wearing the same style of woollen cap.

  The cries of street vendors mingled in a kind of exotic music: “Quick periwinkles, quick, quick!” “Fine Seville oranges, fine lemons.” “I ha’ ripe cowcumbers, ripe!” “Sweep! Chimbly sweep, mistress, from bottom to top. No soot shall then fall in your porridge pot!” “Ha’ you any rats, mice, polecats, or weasels, or any old cows sick o’ the measles?” I occupied several hours transcribing these cries, partly because they were so colorful, partly to exercise my stenography.

  I had never witnessed a play, except for a few short interludes played on the bed of a wagon in the town square at May festival, so I had little idea of what to expect. How long would the performance last? Half an hour? Six hours? How rapidly would the players speak? What about their actions; should I transcribe them as well? What if they recited in Latin, or Greek?

  I longed to ask Falconer all these things, but I knew what his reply would be. He would glare at me and tell me to wait and see. So I sat about the courtyard and the stable, and like a good prentice, I waited.

  On Tuesday, after a midday meal of fried fish and oysters, we set out for the theatre. We followed a narrow, unpaved street downhill to the Thames, and I was suddenly presented with a whole different aspect of the city.

  Here were no gold-plated buildings or great cathedrals, only shabby rows of houses, cheek by jowl. With no space to spread sidewise, they had arched over the street, like the trees on that desolate stretch of road where we had met the outlaws, nearly meeting above our heads, shutting out the sun.

  There were no street vendors here, nor prosperous merchants, only sullen wives emptying their slop jars into the street, sometimes missing the scrawny, shoeless children playing there, sometimes not. Falconer strode heedlessly along, as if daring anyone to empty a chamber pot on his head. No one did. One house had been boarded up, and a crude wooden cross nailed to its front door. Beneath the cross were scrawled the words LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US.

  “Is that a church?” I said.

  Falconer gave a derisive laugh. “That’s a plague house, boy.”

  I shuddered. Though the plague had not been widespread in our parish, Dr. Bright had treated enough cases for me to know why that plea for mercy had been painted upon the door.

  Ever since we left the inn, my stomach had been growing distressed, and the stench that hung in the stagnant air of that street did nothing to improve it. I laid the blame on the fried fish and oysters I had eaten, but it might have been due to nervousness. Suddenly I was unsure that I was up to the task of copying a whole play. And if I failed, Falconer would not be pleased. I would have pleaded illness, but I knew that Falconer would brook no excuse short of my writing hand being lopped off—and even then he would probably insist that I transcribe left-handed.

  At the end of the street, a set of narrow stone steps led to the water’s edge. Falconer took them two at a time. I followed more cautiously and caught up just as he was handing several pennies to a waterman with a small wherry-boat.

  “Get in,” Falconer said.

  “In the boat?” I had never imagined the theatre would lie across the river.

  “No, in the water,” he said acidly and, I hoped, sarcastically.

  It was no us
e protesting that I had never set foot in a boat in my life, and did not care to now, or that if the craft were to capsize I would be lost, for I had never learned to swim. There was nothing to do but to swallow my fear and step into the insubstantial bottom of the boat, which was all that lay between me and the Land of Rumbelow, that is to say a watery grave.

  I took my place in the stern and sat gripping the gunwales with white-knuckled hands while Falconer climbed in, rocking the boat sickeningly, and the wherryman cast off.

  Without the solid earth beneath my feet, my stomach grew even queasier. Before we were halfway across, I felt my dinner coming up. I tried to hold it back and, failing, thrust my head over the side of the boat and threw my fish back into the Thames, whence it had come. Unfortunately, I leaned out a bit too far. The boat listed suddenly, and I toppled over the side.

  7

  My head broke the surface of the water. But I had submerged only as far as my neck before something snatched the belt of my tunic and yanked me back aboard. It was Falconer. He set me forcibly in my seat and there I remained, sick and shamefaced, with water coursing from my hair, for the rest of the trip.

  As we disembarked on the south bank, I said, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For saving me life.”

  “I saved your master’s investment, that’s all.” He headed down a wide road away from the river, and I trotted after.

  “I’m sorry to have heaved up in the river.”

  Falconer snorted derisively. “There’s enough garbage floating there already; a bit more will scarcely matter.”

  We were walking now in the company of a dozen or more theatregoers. The nearer we drew to the theatre, the more dense the crowd became. The people were of all positions and persuasions, from court ladies with coiffures that rivaled their skirts in volume to rank-smelling tanners’ prentices. A number of the crowd turned down the lane that led to what I assumed was the theatre, but Falconer kept on straight ahead. “Is that not the theatre?”