Alms for Oblivion Read online

  I saw myself, as if from the outside, leaping over stones skidding on the downhill path, rounding blind corners, the dead silence of the village masked by my panting breath and the blood thudding in my ears. I’d been absent, trying to get a position with a troupe of players, a hopeless excursion, nothing came of it (except that my absence saved my life). While I was away the plague struck. My father and mother, the parson of the village and his wife, died. So did most of the rest of the village. I don’t know how many exactly. I didn’t stop to find out. After I witnessed my neighbours’ bodies being forked into a common pit, after I saw the red cross splashed on my parents’ door, I ran and ran. I spent that night shivering and weeping on some open high ground above the Bristol Channel. I almost caught my death of cold.

  But I wasn’t the only survivor from our hamlet. The Agates were the wealthiest family in Miching, living in a residence that maintained a proper distance from the village folk. Their manor – called Quint House – was set apart, on a place where the ground rose. The parson and the squire and the schoolmaster stand out even in a modest village, by reason of their education or their rank and riches. It could be said that they cling together, having no true equals among the other inhabitants. In particular the parson may well cling to the lord of the manor when the parish is in the gift of the latter. Peter’s grandfather, also called Peter, had been the patron of Miching parish. Many years before, he had bestowed the living on my father. In turn my father often bestowed compliments on old Peter Agate. In my hearing he many times called him a good man, a pious man. My father meant what he said. For one thing, old Agate was dead by then and there was no advantage in flattering him. And for another, my father despised the idea of flattering. So, if he said grandfather Agate was pious, it was the simple truth. I never knew old Agate but I formed a mind-picture from my father’s description, of someone with a stern, unyielding face and a manner to match. A bit like my father, I suppose.

  And, just as in most villages the parson, the squire and the schoolmaster consort with each other, so their offspring are expected to play together. In Miching we had no schoolmaster – though my father occasionally took that part – so squire and parson made an elevated society of two (although everybody knew who occupied the higher rung on the ladder). Peter and I were thrown together from early on. He was the sole boy in a family of girls while I had no living brothers or sisters. We even looked a little alike, I suppose. We stayed friends as we grew up, although never so close as in those boyhood years. On countless summer evenings I had made the journey down the slope from Quint House, never thinking that the world needed to be any bigger than the few dozens of acres which separated church and manor.

  The Agates’ distance from the village was life-preserving, as it turned out. The plague’s a funny thing. Its dragon’s-breath will strike down everybody in one dwelling and leave a neighbouring one unscathed. So it was with the Agate place and its occupants.

  It wasn’t until a month or so after I’d fled from Miching that I discovered that the family of my friend had survived. It was perhaps remiss on my part, even cowardly, not to have enquired after them but I’d assumed they were dead. The end of my own parents seemed like the closing of the book of my past life, one which I had no wish to open again.

  I was in Bristol but ready to depart for London, there to make my fortune. And like every young man off to make his fortune in a capital city, I was sure I’d soon be rich and famous and, the next moment, just as certain I’d soon be dying – of hunger and poverty, or after a violent attack by robbers – in a ditch in the city suburbs. It was in one of these gloomy moods that I encountered Peter Agate in a tavern by Bristol docks. We met like ghosts, each thinking the other dead.

  After we’d recovered from the shock of seeing one another we exchanged stories, speaking in quiet and hesitant tones as if imparting secrets. Unlike me, Peter had been at home when the plague came calling. He had no idea how he and his family had escaped the common fate of the common folk a small way down the hill. True, a handful of the villagers hadn’t been affected either but the Agate household was preserved whole and entire, down to the humblest servant. They’d lost some of the field-workers, though, and this was the reason why Peter was in Bristol, hiring hands on his father’s behalf. He told me something which I didn’t know and which shook me a little. It was that my father had, like me, been absent from the parish when the plague struck. Unlike me, though, he had not been abroad on a frivolous errand but staying at a remote farm, tending to a dying man. While he was away the pestilence took possession of Miching. Hearing this, he could have chosen not to return. But he did return. My mother was still there, of course. So were all his parishioners. When they died, so did he.

  After Peter finished his story, I sat in silence for a time. Then I ran swiftly through my own narrative. Perhaps I was a little ashamed at my flight from Miching, compared with the way Peter had continued to stay on there, compared with my father’s courage in returning.

  Still, all that village life was behind me now. I was going forward not back, forward to a new life in London. To be a player, I told him. Going to fortune or to ruin. (Strange that I never considered a middle course, involving neither.)

  We stood for an instant that spring evening outside the waterside tavern, saying farewell. The air was cold but there were still some gleams in the sky. My earlier gloom had lifted. I’d felt my spirits rise as I described to Peter my planned pilgrimage to London and its playhouses. I had already fallen in with a gaggle of Bristolian carters who were setting off eastwards at first light. I might accompany them as far as Trowbridge. After that I was ready to take whatever travelling companionship fortune threw in my way. As for Peter, since he had concluded his father’s hiring business he might have returned to Miching straightaway but I think he meant to try what Bristol had to offer by way of diversion for a day or two. He seemed fired up by drink to try his chances in a big town. Me, I had my ambitions set on an even greater town. We clasped arms about one another, briefly, awkwardly, as if we were going to tussle like boys. I don’t think we ever expected to see each other again.

  And now here was my childhood friend come to London. Come, it seemed, to see Revill. Naturally I couldn’t help wondering why.

  These speculations occupied my mind as I threaded the foggy thoroughfares to my work-place. Few people were abroad on this unhealthy morning. The fog was so dense that the white flank of the Globe loomed up in front of me quite unexpectedly. But I brightened up to see it, like a sailor sighting the cliffs of home. I made my way quickly inside to the tire-house, which was the costume-room and the only indoor area large enough to hold the whole company of players, if in rather crushed conditions. We were there not for a full-scale rehearsal (that would have taken place outside on the stage) but for what Dick Burbage called a chamber practice, an early run-through of unfamiliar material. In any event, we were not performing this piece in the Globe playhouse at all but in a different venue, perhaps a more select one, as I shall shortly explain.

  As soon as I walked into the smoky, damp-smelling room my good cheer evaporated. There was a hush.

  “Oh, Master Nicholas,” said Dick Burbage. He was standing like a schoolmaster on a little dais to one side of the room. This was his customary position when he supervised a rehearsal.

  “Dick?”

  “In your own good time.”

  “I am ready,” I said, brandishing the scroll which contained my part.

  “You may be ready, but are you sorry?”

  “Sorry . . .? Oh yes, sorry for being late.”

  “Did you get lost in the fog?”

  There was some laughter at this from a few of my fellows, a combination of pleasure at my discomfiture and relief that they weren’t dancing on the end of Burbage’s tongue.

  “In the fog? Why, was I missed?” I said, laying a little stress on the last word. Oh, the sword-like flash of wit on a damp, foggy morning (and for the second time too). There were a few belated
groans and jeers as the joke penetrated. Personally I considered that it was worthy of taking its place beside one of Master Shakespeare’s lesser puns, almost worthy.

  Burbage looked slightly put out and I could see him debating inwardly whether to tear me off a strip or whether to pay me back in kind. Fortunately he chose the latter.

  “Beware, Nicholas, otherwise it will be a fine morning for you despite the fog – or the mist.”

  By his half-smiling he seemed to say that, on this occasion at least, he wouldn’t be levying the shilling which was often imposed for lateness at rehearsal. This fine, this tax on tardiness, was not fine; it was a whole day’s pay, whose loss one could resent. Nevertheless you had to respect Dick Burbage’s public display of good humour. He and the other shareholders in the Chamberlain’s, and the rest of us, had reason to feel apprehensive at the moment.

  “Now,” said Burbage briskly. “To work. Your cue from the Prologue, Nicholas, is:

  . . . do as your pleasures are:

  Now good or bad, ’tis but the chance of war.”

  So I began, assuming the appearance and pose of love-sickness:

  “Call here my varlet; I’ll unarm again:

  Why should I war without the walls of Troy

  That find such cruel battle here within?”

  Et cetera.

  Afterwards Burbage told me I looked liverish rather than love-sick. But I think that it was his way of having the final word.

  When we’d finished our chamber practice Dick Burbage gave the time for our afternoon rehearsal, which was to be on the other side over the water. He coupled this with a warning about lateness (directed at N. Revill, I felt). Then he left us to our own devices for a couple of hours. So I hastened to meet my old friend, sure that he would inform me of his reasons for coming to London. Peter Agate had done as I’d suggested and searched out the Goat & Monkey ale-house to drink away the remaining hours of that fog-bound morning. In between nervous gulps of ale, he told me why he had left home and come to London. He intended to find his fortune on the stage. Why this disturbed me I don’t know, but it did.

  “You want to be a player!”

  “Is there anything so surprising in that?”

  “Well, no.”

  “After all, Nick, I have only to look at you.”

  “Don’t take me as an example.”

  “Why not?”

  If my tone was dubious, Peter’s showed an uncharacteristic sharpness. He was normally gentle and conciliatory. Either the drink was getting to him or this project of becoming a player was very close to his heart. I picked my next words carefully.

  “First of all . . . ”

  “Yes?”

  “You realize how . . . difficult it is to turn player?”

  “For a country dweller?”

  “For anyone, it doesn’t matter where they’re from.”

  “So, difficult for everyone – except you, perhaps.”

  I was divided between the desire to suggest how smooth my progress had been since coming to London (although it hadn’t all been smooth) and the contrary wish to play up difficulties and obstacles (although it hadn’t been that difficult either). In the end I split the difference and made do with a shrug.

  “All right,” I said, “let’s suppose that you eventually do join a company of players . . . ”

  “Yes, let us suppose that,” said Peter. “Eventually.”

  “But the story’s not over. Even when you are secure as a member of a company, you’re still at the mercy of that company’s fortunes. You may be the finest troupe in the world but that doesn’t exempt you from a run of bad luck – and bad luck’s bound to come sooner or later, when your seniors choose the wrong plays, when the plague comes calling, when the Council decides to close you down, when you lose your patron . . . ”

  This was an oblique reference to our current situation in the Chamberlain’s but I didn’t want to say too much to Peter and checked myself. However, the comment seemed to go over his head.

  “If and when, if and when,” said Peter. “These are just the chances of life, Nick. You’re sounding like a worried old man. If you’re talking chances now, look at us. We’ve both survived the plague while those around us have fallen.”

  I shifted uncomfortably on the bench in the Goat & Monkey. The place was almost empty, apart from four boatmen playing primero at a distant table and a couple of men talking earnestly together in a corner. One of them had a lined, chalky-white countenance. The other I recognized. It was Thomas Gally, Philip Henslowe’s agent, though largely self-appointed to that position. Gally had taken to hanging about on the fringes of gatherings of the Chamberlain’s Company at taverns and elsewhere. He was playing the part either of a spy or a tempter, we supposed. (This was the reason I’d jumped to the conclusion that my unknown visitor that morning had come with an offer.) There was rivalry of a friendly sort between us and the Admiral’s but it was rivalry on a knife’s edge and might turn hostile at any moment. In Tom Gally’s case, this sense of threat was enhanced by a strange mannerism he had of holding his index finger close to his right eye and squinting down it from time to time in the direction of the person he was talking to, as if taking aim with a pistol. At the moment his finger-gun was pointing at the white-faced old man opposite him.

  I looked back at Peter Agate’s eager, almost pleading face and realized with alarm that he wanted my approval for his plans to become an actor. It wasn’t enough that I didn’t object; he wanted my active agreement. While he was waiting for it he clutched at his tankard. Perhaps it was Martin Bly’s ale that was fuelling this itch to play.

  “Our cases are not the same, I think,” I said, struggling to find words to put my reasons into. “I had neither mother nor father remaining in our village, and no brothers or sisters in the first place, nor anyone I truly cared about – apart from you, Peter. There was nothing and nobody left for me there. You have a mother and a father and a gaggle of sisters.”

  “My mother died last year.”

  “I am sorry to hear it.”

  This was no mere form of words. I was sorry. I remembered Margaret Agate, not least because she’d often bestowed more kind words and smiles on me in a day than my mother provided in a twelvemonth.

  “Your father though?” I said.

  “Is still living.”

  “That’s well.”

  “Is it? To tell the truth, my father and I had a bad falling out over precisely this, my intention to become a player.”

  “I fell out with mine too. But I still say our cases are different, Peter. I had nothing . . . to look forward to. You have that . . . gaggle of sisters only.”

  “What you mean to say is that there are no males in my family apart from me and so it’s in my own interest to stay put in Somerset and wait for my father’s property to fall into my hands. That’s what you mean to say.”

  “I would not put it so nakedly but, yes, I suppose so. You have no need to trouble about the future. You have property and land stored up for you.”

  “And that should be enough?”

  I suddenly saw how feeble a position I was trying to argue him into. Was I suggesting that my boyhood friend ought to remain rusting in the village of his birth for the rest of his life? That no dream or ambition was required of him except to step into his father’s shoes at the moment of God’s choosing? I asked myself how I would have reacted to such advice. The answer was, badly.

  “I’m sorry, Peter. You’re seeking advice from the last person who should be trying to persuade you against something you’ve set your heart on. I spoke from honest friendship when what I should have done is wished you luck. I hope it’s not too late to do that.”

  For the first time since I’d joined him on the ale-house bench Peter’s expression relaxed. He placed his tankard on the table and put a reassuring hand on my arm. I noticed that both the men in the corner, Tom Gally and the chalky-faced one, had stopped their conversation and were now looking attentively in
our direction.

  “That is what I hoped you’d say.”

  “It’s not exactly strong encouragement.”

  “It’s not strong discouragement either, like my father’s.”

  “He disapproved, eh?”

  “When I said we’d had a falling-out, I was understating things. You remember my father?”

  “Both your mother and father I have affectionate memories of.”

  Though I didn’t remember him as clearly or fondly as I did his wife, Anthony Agate had always appeared to my young eyes as an easy-going fellow, the sort who’d fall in with a son’s plans – or at least not oppose them too vehemently.

  “Something happened after my mother’s death,” said Peter. “Until then my father had been tolerant enough. His good temper even survived the pestilence. He could not thank God often enough for preserving our household. But when my mother died it was as if his old self went underground with her. He was like a gloomy, raging ghost in the house. My young sisters were afraid to be in his presence and visibly shook if he spoke to them. Not that he wanted anything to do with them. Me, he threatened with words and even struck on occasion if I went counter to his wishes.”

  “As when you said you wished to be a player?”

  “Only to hint of that caused a storm. He said players were scum and the devil’s droppings and worse. I saw that I could never win him round, any more than I could uproot an oak. And there were other things besides which were wrong in our house. So I decided that there was no other path except . . . evasion, escape.”

  “What about your sisters? I can remember them although they were all quite small when . . . Anne and young Margaret and . . . ”

  “And Katherine. Katie. Believe me, Nicholas, I often think of them.”

  Peter bit his underlip. He picked up his tankard and put it down again uncertainly.