The Pale Companion

Book 3: Nick Revill

by Philip Gooden

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

'Highly entertaining' Sunday Times Midsummer 1601. Nick Revill and his fellow actors in the Chamberlain's Men are journeying across the Wiltshire Downs for a country-house presentation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It should be a pleasant, well-paid jaunt to celebrate a noble marriage, but things go wrong from the start. On a brief stopover in the market town of Salisbury, the locals make clear their dislike of actors by beating up Nick, a painful experience relieved only by his meeting with the local magistrate Adam Fielding and Fielding's beautiful daughter Kate. When the Chamberlain's Men arrive at their destination, Instede House, they enter a tense family atmosphere. Lord Elcombe is pushing his older son into a marriage that the son seems set against, while in the nearby woods a wild man called Robin talks in riddles of long-hidden family secrets. In another quarter of the great estate lodges a traveling band of fire-and-brimstone morality players called the Paradise Brothers. The first death, when it occurs, looks like suicide, but Nick isn't so sure, and he finds himself investigating alongside the company of Adam Fielding. Then a second murder happens right under Nick's nose . . .and turns the Dream into a nightmare. Praise for Philip Gooden: 'The witty narrative, laced with puns and word play so popular in this period, makes this an enjoyable racy tale' Sunday Telegraph 'The book has much in common with the film Shakespeare in Love - full of colourful characters . . . but the book has an underlying darkness' Crime Time 'Welcome to Elizabethan England where... Gooden will give you a gratifying taste of the danger and excitement of that lusty place and time' Publishers Weekly

Release date: March 5, 2020

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 256

Sample

The murderer straddled the prone body. He watched his victim closely, alert for the slightest sign of life. There was a twitch from an outflung arm, a spasm in a sprawled leg. The man who was still standing raised his club in the air, ready to bring it down once more on his victim’s head. But there was no need. The other was safely dead, and all those little shifts and shivers were no more than the dregs of life departing from him. A dark thick red pooled from where his skull had been stove-in.

The murderer, who had been wholly absorbed in his task up to this point, now began to take in his surroundings. Dusk was falling. Shadows were gathering in corners. He glanced uneasily to the right, then the left. There! What was that crouching in the underwood? Whose were those gleaming eyes? Did they belong to a beast of the field – or a human witness? He moved uncertainly in that direction before some sound spun him round to face danger from the opposite quarter. He lifted his club, then lowered it once more.

He waited. Flicked a glance down towards the corpse. Started to realize the need for concealment. Awkwardly, still clutching the club tightly enough to throttle it, he bent down and nudged and tugged the body towards a nearby bush. No time to dispose of it properly. He would leave it to be buried in the maws of kites and crows, of bears and wolves. They would do his filthy work for him.

The murderer left the body part-hidden under the foliage. He turned round and, stooping slightly, began to exit from the scene of his crime. He walked on tiptoe, as if frightened the ground was going to swallow him up. Suddenly he halted.

Slowly … slowly … he directed his gaze upward as the realization struck home. Above was the arch of the sky, a deep darkening blue. The murderer had been looking in the wrong direction all this time. His yellow beard jutted out from his chin. If I have an enemy, his posture seemed to say, then that enemy is looking down on me from above. At this moment. While I have been thinking myself invisible, he has been watching me. My every move. Worse, he has read my every thought and inspected the chambers of my heart. He has seen my hollowness, my arrogance and anger. Everything was conveyed in the murderer’s huddled shoulders, in the limp helplessness of the club swinging between his knees. He seemed to be at once looking upward and downward, to be apprehensive and abject.

Now fear and dread overcame him. He turned back to regard the evidence of his crime, improperly concealed. Tremors ran through the murderer’s frame. He made to fling the club away but the haft of it seemed to stick to his hands, to refuse to be released. Then he made to fling himself away. He turned in circles which grew wider and wilder by the instant. He spun round until he collapsed on the ground. Only then did the club fall from his nerveless fingers. He clutched his face with his hands.

What have I done? God hide me from the knowledge of what I have done, from the knowledge of myself.

Oh hide me from God.

But it was no use. At that moment God entered from the right.

At first the murderer, hands covering his face, could not see his Maker. Then, becoming aware he was not alone, he peeped between parted fingers.

God spoke.

He said: ‘Where is your brother?’

The murderer scrambled to his feet, looked at God in amazement. What brother? his look seemed to say.

But God, undeceived, repeated the question.

‘Where is your brother?’

‘I know not,’ said the murderer. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’

‘What have you done?’ said God.

And the murderer followed God’s eyes as he looked towards the bush where the body was barely concealed.

‘The voice of your brother Abel calls to me. The voice of your brother’s blood calls to me from the ground.’

The murderer said nothing but tumbled to his knees. As God’s sentence fell from his lips, Cain’s head slumped forward until his forehead was resting on the ground with his body arched awkwardly above.

‘Now you are cursed by the very earth which has opened her mouth to receive the blood of your brother Abel. You are cursed among men, Cain, and the earth shall no longer sustain you. You will be a stranger to it.’

Cain’s entire body now pressed down on the ground. Our first murderer seemed to be clasping his mother, the earth. But God was. unyielding.

‘You will be a fugitive and a vagabond on this earth. No place shall be a home to you.’

‘All men will turn against me,’ moaned the man on the ground. ‘All shall curse me, and one will slay me.’

He raised his head to look imploringly at his Maker. His beard, bright yellow, the sign of Cain and Judas Iscariot, seemed to gather the last flecks of the disappearing light.

‘Not so,’ said God. ‘You are doomed to wander out your days and no man may end them before I have determined. Whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall multiply seven times over on that man’s head.’

And in the gathering dusk God moved forward to put on Cain the mark of sin whereby all men would know the first murderer for what he was and that his punishment was God’s alone, not to be usurped by humankind.

God extended his thumb to brand Cain on his forehead.

Then somebody laughed.

It wasn’t a pleasant laugh but a wild, mocking cackle. It came from somewhere to my left and nearer the front. God stopped in his progress towards Cain and seemed put out. Darkness was closing in fast and the crowd was a mass of blocky shapes and shadows. The stage in front of us was unilluminated. Obviously, the Paradise Brothers had expected to arrive at the end of their Cain and Abel drama before night closed her curtains round all of us. I doubt that they had so much as a single torch or brand between them. They were bare, unsophisticated fellows, these three players – but for all that, they had a kind of authority. The Paradise brother enacting Cain, for example, had presented a nice mixture of rage and bad conscience. God too had been well personated, although the player’s appearance helped. He had a great white beard and a stern brow. Now he gazed into the gloom that filled the market square as the laughter rang out once more, laughter that was raucous and disturbing.

At first I’d thought the cackle was a sign of impatience with the drama unfolding on the makeshift scaffold which was erected in a corner of the square. Someone who’d grown tired of the familiar Bible tale of brother-bashing, and was eager for a jig or a spot of bawdy instead. Certainly, in London the audience wouldn’t have permitted so many minutes to pass without a dance or a dirty joke. But then that’s the city for you, and we were in the country.

Now there was a disturbance in the crowd as someone pushed his way right to the edge of the scaffold and hoisted himself onto the platform before turning outwards to face the audience. God stood where he was, his right arm held out ready to give Cain his mark. The fratricide still knelt, his forehead tilted up to meet his brand of punishment.

And, even as I waited to see what was going to happen next, I wondered at the inexperience – the greenness – of this little company of players. That they could be put off their action by the mere fact of someone getting up on their makeshift stage. That they did not roundly tell this individual where and how he might dispose of himself. We of the Chamberlain’s Company occasionally encounter persons – drunks and show-offs mostly – who believe that our Globe customers prefer to see them rather than the players. These people, who want to usurp our places on stage, are soon seen off by an outstretched arm, an outstuck foot or a ribald remark.

But here in the market square these country players were transfixed. Like the crowd, they were waiting to see what the intruder would do next. Even the actor playing dead Abel had twisted round from his position at the edge of the platform to see what was happening. Jack Wilson, standing next to me, nudged me in the ribs in a this-is-going-to-be-good gesture. The individual who was now standing centre-stage staggered slightly and produced a bottle from the folds of his upper garments.

I felt disappointed. A man playing drunk can be amusing enough on the boards but a real drunk is a different kettle of fish, the more tedious in proportion as he believes that what he has to say is of any importance.

Sure enough.

‘Snoffair. Snorright. Snoffair.’

He stopped, perhaps to allow us to ponder the wisdom of his words.

Jack Wilson whispered in my ear, ‘He thinks it’s not fair, Nick.’

‘And not right, Jack.’

Then, looking round at God, the newcomer proceeded. ‘Snoffair. You respek Abel ’n’ his burnt off rins yet Cain and his fruits you do not respek.’

‘He says God doesn’t respect—’ whispered Jack.

‘Shut up,’ I said. ‘I can understand drunk as well as you.’

‘His fruits you – do – not – respek – no,’ said the man, menacing his Maker with the bottle in his fist. The white-bearded God retreated a step or two. His frown deepened. By now, Abel was upright once more, the side of his face streaked with the sheep’s-blood which gave colour to the first murder. The trio of players – God, Cain and Abel – looked affronted. Perhaps I’d been wrong in supposing them green. It was rather that they weren’t prepared for interruptions of any kind. They were obviously used to being watched and listened to in respectful silence.

‘Fruitsh!’ declaimed the drunkard, getting into his slurring stride now. and spitting over those lucky enough to be close to the stage. ‘Fruitsh he heamed honesht by sweat hizbrow and work hissand. Cain ish simple man, Cain ish farmer.’

He waved his arm towards the individual who had the part of Cain, and for a moment I wondered whether he’d mistaken the player for the person.

‘Me – simple man – farmer – like Cain.’

‘That’s right, Tom,’ yelled someone to my right. ‘We know you.’

‘Why does God not respek farmers? Why does he not respek Cain here?’ enquired our plaintive drunk.

‘Cain was a killer,’ hissed someone to my left.

Various noises (assenting, dissenting) from the crowd.

‘Shall I tell how he does not respek us?’

More cries and whispers.

Now, this was a group of country folk in the market square. To an outsider, they might appear as so many hobs, clods and clowns. But they seemed to me to be urging on our friend Tom in the expectation of a good show. In this respect at least, they were very like our London audiences at the Globe.

‘Thish what he does. When we want rain – sends drought. And when we want shun … whassee send?’

He paused as if expecting a reply. When none came, he said with satisfaction, spluttering over the front rows, ‘Rain – hail – tempesht.’

By now, it was almost completely dark in the square. I’d been wrong to suppose the players didn’t possess a torch between them, for suddenly a couple of brands flared up at the edges of the stage. I don’t know who lit them and wondered that they wanted to illuminate the proceedings. The smoky brands cast a lurid, wavering glow over Cain and Abel and God who had grouped themselves uneasily about farmer Tom.

‘God does not deserve our praise—’

At this there was a collective intake of breath from the crowd. Tom appeared to be on the edge of a blasphemous remark. I was slightly uneasy myself. Next to me, I sensed Jack tense where he stood.

‘Not our praise, I shay, but our—’

He got no further because Cain clubbed farmer Tom from behind. This was the very weapon with which he had murdered his brother in play (though not in jest) and if it was not a full-fledged cudgel but a trumpery thing for the stage it was nonetheless weighty enough to fell the farmer. Tom dropped his bottle, pitched forward and almost toppled off the scaffold.

In the darkness there was a stirring.

‘Leave him be!’ shouted one and another said, ‘He speaks true.’

‘You’ve done for Tom.’

This was not the case, fortunately. Almost straightaway Tom pushed himself upright and gazed groggily round as if uncertain where he was or how he’d come there. Then, regrettably, God intervened. Feeling perhaps that he had been slighted by the farmer’s words, he came forward and pressed his thumb onto the hapless Tom’s forehead, to leave there the mark of fallen, sinful man. But Tom took exception to this treatment and swung out at God with his fist, and at once bedlam broke loose on the stage as the Paradise Brothers piled onto the protesting farmer. They were big men. Arms and legs flailed, there were thumps and groans and oaths.

This was the moment the crowd had been waiting for. The moment when the pieties of drama were finally sent packing by the pleasures of riot. A bunch of onlookers clambered onto the swaying stage to assist in the confusion. Bodies tussled in the dark, illuminated by the flaring torches. The few simple props – a handful of branches representing the underwood where Abel’s body was hidden, the canvas rock behind which God had bided his time – were soon being employed as weapons in the fight. Some of those who hadn’t yet joined in were obviously considering doing so, while others were trying to hold them back, and smaller scuffles were breaking out around us.

I tugged at Jack Wilson’s sleeve.

‘Time to leave,’ I said.

I’d seen enough trouble in the streets of London – with her apprentices steeped in liquor and her superannuated veterans with no skills but those of riot – to know that the best place to be in a brawl is elsewhere.

‘Let’s wait and see what happens,’ said Jack.

‘No, Jack,’ I said.

‘It’s getting interesting.’

‘No, Jack,’ I repeated before saying in a manner that, in retrospect, might have been a little lordly. ‘Nothing interesting can happen. These people are rustics and bumpkins. Just look at them. Witness their taste in plays. Witness the way they have responded to one.’

‘What was that, my friend?’

The voice came from my right. A thick voice. A rustic, bumpkinish voice.

‘Nothing at all,’ I said, shifting to the left and leaving Jack, if he was so inclined, to face the music. But the press of people and the darkness made it difficult to find my way out and I felt myself being grabbed by the collar.

‘Repeat your words, friend,’ said the voice over my shoulder.

‘Let me go first.’

‘What, and have you run off into the dark. Repeat your words.’

The grip on my collar tightened. I could feel the gentleman’s raw breath on the back of my neck. I was aware that the two of us were rapidly turning into a little knot of interest for those whose attention wasn’t fixed on the stage.

‘Which words?’

‘The ones about us country folk.’

‘If you already heard them why do you want me to repeat them?’

‘Because – I – say – so.’

With each word, he jerked me violently backward and forward by the collar.

‘Very well,’ I said, trying to be dignified about it. I was about to offer some crawling apology to him and his rustic ilk when a silly idea seized me. Though at first I’d wanted to get as far away from the stir in the square as possible, now I felt aggrieved that my words (admittedly slightly injudicious ones) had been snatched out of the air by some eavesdropping yokel. Why should I apologize to this oaf, even if he was breathing down my neck and twisting my collar? Why shouldn’t he have the benefit of my real opinion?

‘I said that my friend and I were surrounded by individuals of a certain stamp, to wit—’

‘I’ll to-wit you, my friend, if you don’t speak plain English.’

‘– to wit, clods, hobs and lobs … ouf …’

He kneed me in the back and I fell forward onto the cobbled ground.

‘I haven’t finished … louts, clouts and clowns … ooh! ah!’

That was when he kicked me in the ribs.

And some of those roundabout joined in. Whether they’d heard what I said and were genuinely offended or whether they simply saw a man curled up on the ground and couldn’t resist laying into him, I don’t know. As kickings go, it might have been worse. They kept stepping in each other’s way so their feet got tangled up and then in the dark they missed me and struck one another. Two or three of them were women, no doubt as provoked as the men by my aspersions on their rusticity.

There’s another thing. I’m a player (Nick Revill, at your service) and a player has to know how to take punishment both simulated and real. Why, once when I was doing a brief stint with the Admiral’s Men and watching a rehearsal – ever eager in those days to pick up any tips I could – I tumbled out of the gallery of the Rose playhouse and into the groundlings’ area. I sustained nothing worse than a few bruises and a burst of applause. And when a player thwacks a player on stage with sword or club, although the blows may not be meant they are not altogether innocent either. So I knew that the secret in a situation like this, where one could do nothing to help oneself straightaway, was to remain supple and passive.

‘What – do – you – say – now?’ came a voice that I recognized through the roaring in my ears as that of my initial assailant, raw breath.

I said nothing. I tasted blood in my mouth. I wondered what had become of my friend Jack Wilson.

My muteness must have satisfied the little knot of men and women because I sensed them draw back from me. The circle became ragged as one or two quit the scene, perhaps ashamed at what they’d participated in and wanting to avoid trouble. This was my chance. I staggered to my feet and limpingly made off.

No-one tried to stop me. The square was still crowded and thumping noises and swearing continued from the stage. Evidently the battle between players and people wasn’t over. I slipped down one of the lanes that led from this public space.

I didn’t know Salisbury. The inn where we of the Chamberlain’s Company were putting up for the night was somewhere on the edge of the city but exactly where I couldn’t have said. Jack Wilson and I had arrived in the market-place during the last hours of daylight and our attention had been caught by the preparations for staging an open-air drama in a corner. We’d stayed to watch, even though the action unfolding on the bare scaffold was the fustiest, mustiest morality stuff, all to do with Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel. To give us all a taste of what we might expect, the play was preceded by some kind of sermon from the bearded, furrow-browed figure who was later to take the part of God (and whose name I subsequently discovered was Peter Paradise, leader of this fraternal threesome). He hectored and ranted and called us ‘brothers and sisters’ like a puritan. He told us we were accountable to none but God and to have no truck with earthly power and wealth. That’s all very well for you, I thought, carting your few paltry possessions from place to place and no doubt living on crusts doled out at back doors, but some us have got livings to make and patrons to please.

Several times Jack and I sneered at the backward taste of the inhabitants of this town. If it hadn’t been for the surprisingly high quality of the playing we’d have gone off to join our fellows at the Angel Inn. But a professional always takes pleasure (sometimes of an envious kind) in watching another professional, even when he’s working with inferior material. So it was in this case.

Because we were only a little short of midsummer the west yet glimmered with some streaks of day. But then I remembered that we’d entered the town from the east, which was the side the Angel lay on, so I changed course and turned down another street and then once more until I found myself back in the market-place. Usually I have a good sense of direction, know my east from my west, &c., but the beating I’d sustained at the hands (or feet) of the locals had muddied my brain. Warily, I skirted the square. The fighting seemed to have stopped but people were still milling about in the gloom. I spat to clear my mouth of blood. One side of my face felt raw where it had scraped the cobbles. I wasn’t hurt – or not much – but I’d be glad enough to get back among my fellows and to slide into bed. Though not before I’d roundly rebuked my friend Wilson for his flight from the field.

Fortunately, there was one way to establish my rough whereabouts in the town. There is a great church here in Salisbury, greater than any such edifice in London, indeed the greatest church I have ever seen. As tall as Babel tower, it looks roomy enough to house half the town. Its spire shoots heavenward like an arrow, as if impatient to be rid of the earth. Crossing the last few miles of downland that afternoon, we’d kept our eyes on the spire glinting in the sun and guiding us to our destination for the night. This mighty church lies a little to the southward side of the town. So, I reasoned, if I kept it on my right hand I’d be able to find my way back to the street of the Angel Inn. There were a few passengers out and about in the side-streets but my recent experiences of how they regarded outsiders – admittedly, an outsider who had said some provoking things – made me reluctant to ask for directions.

Down the end of the road which I was now travelling I could glimpse, above the roof-tops, the arrow-like spire, its slender form slipping upward into the twilight. So … if I crossed into this small street … and then turned left … no, right … or perhaps straight across and down that alley? I gasped as a sudden pain seized me in the side. I was not hurt, not much hurt, but I had to rest for a moment to recover from the insolence of the beating I’d received. If I got my hands on that raw-breathed fellow who’d kneed me in the back and then encouraged the bystanders to add their pennyworth, he’d know what it was to …

All at once I found myself on my knees in the middle of the highway, retching. A yellow and red taste in my mouth. Bile and blood. But not much. Ah, that was better. Nevertheless, I needed to stop for a moment to consider the way forward, or rather the way back to the Angel Inn, otherwise I’d be wandering around Salisbury until daybreak. There was a convenient doorway … yes, that one over there, with a sheltering porch. I crawled on hands and knees to the porch and hid myself in there.

It was dark, it was secure, and I must have fallen asleep for a few moments, because the next thing I knew was that a light was hovering in the air in front of me.

I put up my hand to shield my eyes. The lantern was shifted to one side but a firm, dry hand grasped mine and pulled it away from my face.

‘Let’s have a look at you.’

Through half-closed lids I was aware of a large looming face.

‘Ah yes,’ it said.

‘What?’ I said.

‘You are not from these parts.’

‘Oh God, you’re not going to beat me up too?’

By now I’d fully opened my eyes and realized that my question was absurd. Crouching down in front of me was a man of middle years with a greying spade beard and mild grey eyes. He was wearing a nightgown. I was able to see so much because, in addition to the lantern which he’d placed on the ground, the door to the house was open and there was another figure in the entrance, dressed in white and holding a candle.

‘I … I was on my way to the Angel Inn. Perhaps you can direct me to it?’

I made to get up, and the man hooked his hand under my arm and helped me to my feet.

‘The Angel is in Greencross Street. A few dozens of paces from here.’

‘Thank you, then I’ll be on my way.’

But I made no move and I don’t think the grey-bearded man expected me to.

‘Will your company be anxious that you’re late?’ he said.

‘Company?’

‘Your fellow players.’

‘Not them,’ I said. ‘As long as I’m there for the set-off tomorrow morning they’ll not trouble themselves about where I am tonight. They’ll think I’ve found me a—’

Some sense of delicacy made me break off, and the grey-beard said, ‘In that case you’d better come inside and take some refreshment. Can you walk unaided?’

‘Thank you, yes.’

‘Follow me then.’

He led the way into the house, the figure with the candle having by this time disappeared. He ushered me into a parlour, delaying in the passage for a moment to call out ‘Martin!’ Candles were already burning on a table where a pile of papers and a clutch of pens were neatly arranged. I guessed I had interrupted my host in the middle of some business. He motioned me to a nearby chair. As I sat down I groaned, involuntarily.

‘My dear sir, you are hurt.’

‘Not at all,’ I said ‘or only slightly. A loudmouth’s penalty.’

‘There’s blood upon your face. A little blood.’

‘Only mine.’

A stocky man appeared in the doorway.

‘I can offer you cider,’ said my host, ‘or perhaps purging beer would be better for your case.’

‘Cider,’ I said rapidly. I wasn’t at all sure what purging beer was and didn’t like the sound of it.

The grey-bearded gentleman gave the order to the servant and then sat down at the table. He pushed a couple of candles nearer to me, apparently for my convenience but really, I think, to make a more careful assessment of what he saw.

‘You were about to ask who you had the honour of addressing,’ he said.

I was, but even so his quickness took me by surprise and I simply nodded.

‘My name is Adam Fielding, citizen of Salisbury.’

This time I nodded more slowly.

‘Nicholas Revill,’ I said formally. ‘I’m—’

I stopped because he’d raised his hand.

‘Wait.’

He leaned forward and squinted through the candle-smoke. As he cast his grey eyes up and down my front I became a little uneasy at his scrutiny. I wanted to wipe away the blood from wherever it was staining my face but didn’t move.

Then he sat back and smiled.

‘Don’t worry, Master Revill. It’s only a little occupation of mine.’

‘What is?’

‘To, ah, see what someone is before he speaks what he is.’

‘And what do you see, sir?’ I said, prepared to humour this kindly gent.

At that point Martin returned with tankards of cider for his master. . .