Mask of Night Read online

  Thomas Pope instructed us to test out our voices with a few lines so as to get accustomed to the echoes and resonances. It would be a little different when the hall was full of people but still it gave a good idea what we, or rather what the room, was capable of. I observed that Doctor Fern and his wife, together with the younger man and woman, watched all this activity with interest.

  Thomas Pope himself busied around in the part of Juliet’s nurse and, inside a second or two, had brought that garrulous figure to life. Dick Burbage spoke to an imagined Juliet in the gallery – he was too old for the young lover but you forgot that fact within a few lines. Shakespeare delivered a handful of lines as Friar Laurence although I didn’t know whether he intended to take the part for himself on this occasion. When it came to my turn, I did a bit of Mercutio. Abel Glaze, who was due to play the apothecary among other roles, had already mastered his brief scene and gave a good impression of that unfortunate tradesman, driven by poverty to sell a deadly poison to Romeo.

  Everything seemed set fair for the actual production of Romeo and Juliet, which would take place in about a week’s time in the presence of the Constants and Sadlers. Two mornings would be put aside for rehearsals in the house on Headington Hill. But before we performed privately for the benefit of the two families – whose enmity, by the way, seemed essentially a matter of history – we were to present the same play in the yard of the Golden Cross Inn. Any rough edges could be planed away. The number of public performances in town would depend on the popularity of the piece.

  Well, as I’ve said, we weren’t due to practise on this fine spring morning (our schedule was less pressing than at the Globe) and so were free to dispose of ourselves in the few hours before the two o’clock performance of The World’s Diseas’d at the Golden Cross. The Company split up into separate groups, with William Shakespeare and one or two others remaining at the Doctor’s house. I had the scroll of my part as Mercutio with me and was planning to return to the town and, if the sun lasted, find a secluded spot down by the river to continue memorizing my lines.

  Abel Glaze and I spent a bit of time admiring the view from the Ferns’ garden. Before us was a panorama of pinnacles and towers, gleaming in the bright air. From this distance the stone took on the appearance of lacework. Then we walked down the Doctor’s drive and turned out of his gate on to the slope which led towards the town.

  All at once there was a clattering and loud shouting behind us. Looking round I saw, some fifty yards further up the hill, a woman lying face-down in the road, together with a horse and cart slewed towards the opposite side. The driver had almost toppled off his perch. The woman wasn’t moving and for an instant I thought she was dead until she shouted something, but still without moving. I couldn’t make out the words or even whether she was hurt or simply distressed and angry. Righting himself, the carter jumped from his seat and made as if to help the woman but he thought better of it and went instead to retrieve a sack which had tumbled into the roadway. Rather than pick it up he dragged it awkwardly to the cart before heaving it into the back.

  Abel Glaze, quicker or more charitable than I, ran up the slope. I followed. By this time the woman had rolled over on to her back. Her bonnet sat like an upturned helmet in the centre of the rutty road. She groaned when she saw us. It was plain what had happened. There were mud marks and grease across her skirts where the cart or its wheel had struck her and knocked her over.

  “Are you all right, mistress?” said Abel, crouching down.

  “Where is he?” said this woman. “I’ll see him.”

  She was a red-faced individual, and not just on account of her supine position. Even though she was lying injured on the ground she radiated determination. There was a smirch of mud on her cheek. I didn’t think she was badly hurt.

  “Should we help?” I said, kneeling down on the other side of her.

  Her eyes, small currant-like objects, swivelled between Abel and me.

  “Yes,” she said, raising her head, then, “No.”

  At which she lay back and groaned more loudly than ever. I’d forgotten about the carter but now a reluctant shadow fell across the scene as he drew nearer.

  “I know you,” she said, looking over my shoulder. “John Hoby.”

  “Oh, Mistress Root,” said the carter. “Oh dear.”

  He stood there, holding his cap in his hands and twisting it in his fingers.

  “I – I – didn’t recognize – Mistress R-R-Root . . . ”

  “And what if you had,” she said. “It would be all right, I suppose, to knock down poor old harmless women in the street as long as you do recognize them.”

  “I ca-ca-called out.”

  “And I did not hear you, you muddle-headed measle. I am deaf on one side.”

  “Mistress – you – you were wandering . . . ”

  “Yes! Wandering! Was I wandering!”

  I moved back slightly, driven by the force of her shouts. She remained lying in the roadway. For sure she could not be badly hurt.

  “ . . . w-w-wandering about the r-r-r-r – ”

  The carter, twining his fingers more furiously in his cap, was unable to get the word “road” out through his teeth. He had a wen or growth of some kind on his exposed neck, about the size of a tennis ball, which bobbed in time with his efforts and made him look even more ridiculous. He made a series of whooping sounds and then gestured helplessly around him. By now a handful of passers-by, on foot or horseback, had slowed down or even stopped altogether so as to savour the scene. Abel Glaze had moved back as well, sensing that this Mistress Root was well able to take care of herself. Most likely she was enjoying the commotion.

  “I suppose a poor old lady is entitled to wander down the road, you clay-brained coxcomb.”

  The carter didn’t know what to say. His mouth opened but no sounds came out.

  “I know you, John Hoby,” said this woman again. She hadn’t moved an inch from her position on the road. “You will pay.”

  The carter looked round helplessly at his horse and cart. The horse, a piebald nag that didn’t look in much better condition than its driver, was browsing on the grass at the verge. The driver looked back at the fallen woman. It seemed as if he might burst into tears.

  “A thousand plagues on you, you onion-eyed oyster,” said Mistress Root, half getting up from the ground. Abel and I moved to assist her. She groaned but it was for show only. There was no satisfaction in her eyes at the effect she’d produced on the carter but rather a kind of contempt directed at him. I had begun by feeling concern for the woman but now I felt sorrier for John Hoby. It was as if he had been run down by her.

  Mistress Root was a short, quite elderly woman with a lot of flesh attaching to her. Her arms, each of which was secured by Abel and me as if we were taking her into custody, were like bolsters.

  “These two young gentlemen will see to me now,” she said, and I would not have dared to controvert this.

  “My bonnet,” she said, and Abel let go of her arm to retrieve her headgear from where it lay.

  “There is a doctor near here,” I said, grasping at a way to get rid of our burden.

  “Oh, I know Hugh Fern,” she said. She was the sort of woman who would know everyone. “Take me to him.”

  We hobbled towards the Doctor’s gate, leaving the hapless carter to set himself in order and ponder how much he would have to pay in blood-money. The onlookers moved off as well, the show being over. Mistress Root enjoyed the experience of being held up by two able-bodied men, judging by the way she frequently paused to catch her breath and slump against us.

  I’d been wondering how to explain our reappearance at Doctor Fern’s but Mistress Root took matters in hand as we entered the front door. Standing in the great hall was the not unattractive young woman I’d glimpsed earlier, still in the company of the pocky man. They had been talking together.

  “Mistress Root,” said the young woman, looking up, surprised.

  “Susan, I am sent
by your mother.”

  “What happened to you?”

  The young woman came towards us.

  “An oaf of a carter ran me down and would have trampled all over me if it hadn’t been for these young gentlemen here.”

  The woman called Susan looked grateful. Abel and I smiled our oh-it-was-nothing smiles. Meantime I was trying to work out who Susan was and her relation to Mistress Root. Now the young woman turned to the individual with the pitted skin.

  “Pearman, go and fetch the Doctor,”she said. “Mistress Root, you shall come into this chamber.”

  Abel Glaze and I would have released our hold on Mistress Root at this point – since she could certainly have walked unaided – but she seemed reluctant to be let go of, and we escorted her to a room on one side of the hall.

  It was evidently the place where Doctor Fern carried on his business. Every surface was covered with little bottles and vials, with bowls and flasks, with mortars and pestles of all sizes, with steel and wooden implements, surgical probes and gauges, and with boxes containing little male and female figurines. On the walls were shelves of books together with planetary charts and drawings of human figures in outline pierced by arrows to indicate which areas were influenced by which signs of the zodiac.

  I was reminded of an apothecary’s shop I had once visited off Paul’s Yard in London, not so much by the objects – everything here was much neater, newer and shinier than it had been in old Nick’s emporium, and there were no crocodiles or unicorn horns hanging overhead – but by the smell of the place. A queer, sweetish smell, as of substances ground, mixed and distilled together, in which one could catch fugitive threads: of lavender, cinnamon and beer, for example, and underneath all, a kind of dungy scent. Not unpleasant.

  We helped Mistress Root to a padded settle on one side of the room. She sat down heavily. We might have retreated at this point but she clutched at our sleeves.

  “Who are you, chivalrous gentlemen of the road?”

  There are some compliments you’d be just as glad not to receive, or people you’d rather not receive them from. This one was accompanied by a flirtatious wink of one of the currant-like eyes. Nevertheless we introduced ourselves.

  “We’re players,” said Abel. “Of the Chamberlain’s Company newly arrived in town. I am Abel Glaze.”

  “And I am Nicholas Revill, at your service, madam.”

  “Pardon?” she said, pulling me down. “I am deaf on this left side.”

  I repeated myself more loudly and nearer to the ear in question, although I think that rather than the information she wanted to have my breath on her muddy cheek. I would have wiped the mud away with my handkerchief but was afraid that such a gesture to such a ripe matron would be misconstrued. Horribly misconstrued.

  “My second husband struck me on that side,” she said, “so I went deaf afterwards.”

  “I am sorry to hear it,” said Abel.

  “Not as sorry as he was to have done it,” said this dragon. “He did not rise for six hours from the floor when I was finished with him.”

  “You have a neat fist, mistress,” I said. Her knuckles were dimples in the flesh, so ham-like were her hands. But I didn’t doubt she could use them like mallets if necessary.

  “He is dead now, Hopkins is dead,” she said. “And so is the third one. Master Root is dead. I have seen them all into the ground. Root was the best – but none of them were any good in truth. ‘Husband’ and ‘good’ do not go together. Are you married?”

  “Alas no,” said Abel, who liked to play at being love-lorn.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “Good,” said Mistress Root, “I would have no more marriage.”

  Before we could hear any more about marriage or about her husbands, bad and worse, Doctor Fern came into his chamber with the woman called Susan, the other man following at their heels. To my embarrassment, Master Shakespeare suddenly appeared in the doorway. Swiftly I explained the state of things to him while the trio fussed around Mrs Root. He pulled me into the hall.

  “We were caught up in this willy-nilly. Who are all these people? Do you know?” I said, reckoning that if anyone would be familiar with the dramatis personae of this business it would be William Shakespeare, the playwright. He didn’t disappoint.

  “The formidable woman called Root is the Constant nurse, the old nurse, I am told,” he said. “Root is a fitting name for a nurse, considering how often she has to deal with herbs and plants.”

  “And the young one?” I said casually.

  “The young one is Susan Constant.”

  “She’s the one who wishes to marry?”

  “No, that is Sarah Constant. This is a cousin, I believe.”

  “Oh . . . ”

  Then why had that woman, the formidable nurse, mentioned having been sent here by Susan’s mother?

  “While the other person is a servant or apprentice to Hugh Fern who goes by the name of Andrew Pearman,” said WS. “Satisfied, Nick?”

  “I like to know where I am or who it is I’m with.”

  “So it wasn’t just a roundabout way of getting the identity of the young woman?”

  I had wanted that, true enough, and what I wanted now was to shift ground.

  “I saw the landlord’s wife this morning, William. She was striding out of the mist.”

  “Who? Oh, Jane Davenant?”

  “A nonpareil, like you said.”

  An odd, opaque look glazed WS’s features.

  “Nurse Root wants to talk to you, look, she’s beckoning.”

  I turned round. The old woman was sitting on the settle with her back to one end and her legs stretched out in front of her. Her skirts were up, not much beyond the bounds of modesty, and the legs were being examined by Hugh Fern. She was gazing at me, however, and waving a mighty arm in the air. Pearman, the Doctor’s apprentice, hovered to one side. My friend Abel Glaze was chatting to the woman WS had identified as Susan Constant. I went over.

  Hugh Fern was saying genially, “There doesn’t seem to be any great harm done, Mistress Root.”

  “No harm. No harm. Master Revill, you will testify to the harm that devil carter did to me.”

  It was a statement not a question. I looked at the legs. They looked back at me, plump and sound.

  “Well . . . ” I said.

  “A poor old body like me,” she said.

  I’d scarcely seen anyone more robust in my life, of any age. I glanced over at where WS had been standing but he was already gone.

  “I will give you a draught of something to swallow, Mistress Root,” said Doctor Fern, “and a preparation of neat’s-foot and other salves to rub on the afflicted area.”

  The old nurse seemed pleased enough and I realized that the wise doctor – to say nothing of the prosperous one – treads a line between his patients’ claims and his own observations.

  “You will cast again for me, Doctor Fern? As you did before?” said Mistress Root. “To see if I should proceed in a suit against that bad carter, John Hoby.”

  “That I will next week,” said Fern, “when the moon is right.”

  A touch of reluctance in his tone suggested to me that he would advise her not to proceed, and my opinion of him rose.

  “You would cast for me too, sir?” said Abel Glaze, who had been listening to the tail of this conversation. I was rather surprised that my friend wanted to have his future told, perhaps because it was something I wouldn’t have chosen to have done myself (I was uneasy enough with Lucy Milford’s prophesyings, and they came free after all). Possibly the surprise showed on my face, and was read as doubt or disbelief by the others.

  “Doctor Fern cast for me when I lost a cup,” said Susan Constant. She had a crisp, decided voice – almost mannish – which complemented her clear, sculpted features. “It was found where he said it would be.”

  The Doctor smiled at this testimony to his skill.

  “For myself I haven’t lost anything of value, perhaps because I have nothin
g of value to lose,” said Abel disingenuously, “but I should like to know what I might gain in the future.”

  “The answer is nothing,” I said. “We are poor players. Our future is simply enough told. It is pillar to post.”

  I don’t know why I was so averse to what Abel was asking for. It was normal enough. People in every walk of life, from housewives to admirals, visit their doctors not merely for remedies but also for castings, and most doctors are happy to oblige.

  Hugh Fern obviously regarded me as a sceptic about horoscopes – which I wasn’t altogether, only wary – because he stroked his round cheeks and looked at his assistant.

  “What would you say, Pearman? What is this gentleman’s sign?”

  I hadn’t paid much attention to this individual up to now but, as he began casting his eyes up and down my form and moving his raw head from side to side as if to catch me at all angles, I began to examine him too. He was of middle height, with a small ball-like head, a raw and pocked one. He looked to have been rubbed around the noddle with a nutmeg grater. He got more out of me than I got out of him, however.

  “Hmm . . . tall enough . . . lean . . . may I see your teeth, sir?”

  “Like a horse,” I said and treated him to a bare grin, without much good humour in it. Still, I suppose I should have been grateful. He might have asked to examine my urine like a piss-prophet.

  “A player . . . and a traveller therefore,” said Pearman, although he knew this already before checking my teeth. “I should say that the gentleman was born under the sign of the Archer.”

  This last part was delivered with a flourish. Despite myself I was impressed, or at least surprised, at what was little more than an ale-house trick. I wondered what comment William Shakespeare would have made about the whole business.

  “Sagittarius? I should say so too,” said Fern, clapping his assistant on the shoulder with pleasure and looking to me for confirmation.