At that they all began to laugh and to slap one another on the back, and to pound with their fists upon the board until the pewter tankards hopped; and when the tapster’s knave came back they were singing at the top of their lungs, for the spring had gotten into their wits, and they were beside themselves with merriment.
Master Tom Heywood had a little table to himself off in a corner, and was writing busily upon a new play. “A sheet a day,” said he, “doth do a wonder in a year”; so he was always at it.
Gaston Carew sat beyond, dicing with a silky rogue who had the coldest, hardest face that Nick had ever seen. His eyes were black and beady as a rat’s, and were circled about by a myriad of little crowfoot lines; and his hooked nose lay across his thin blue lips like a finger across a slit in a dried pie. His long, slim hands were white as any woman’s; and his fingers slipped among the laces at his cuffs like a weasel in a tangle-patch.
They had been playing for an hour, and the game had gone beyond all reason. The other players had put aside the dice to watch the two, and the nook in which their table stood was ringed with curious faces. A lantern had been hung above, but Carew had had it taken down, as its bottom made a shadow on the board. Carew’s face was red and white by turns; but the face of the other had no more color than candle-wax.
At the end of the arbor some one was strumming upon a gittern. It was strung in a different key from that in which the men were singing, and the jangle made Nick feel all puckered up inside. By and by the playing ceased, and the singers came to the end of their song. In the brief hush the sharp rattle of the dice sounded like the patter of cold hail against the shutter in the lull of a winter storm.
Then there came a great shouting outside, and, looking through the arbor, Nick saw two couriers on galloway nags come galloping over the bowling-green to the arbor-side, calling for ale. They drank it in their saddles, while their panting horses sniffed at the fresh young grass. Then they galloped on. Through the vines, as he looked after them, Nick could see the towers of London glittering strangely in the moonlight. It was nearly high tide, and up from the river came the sound of women’s voices and laughter, with the pulse-like throb of oars and the hoarse calling of the watermen.
In the great room of the inn behind him the gallants were taking their snuff in little silver ladles, and talking of princesses they had met, and of whose coach they had ridden home in last from tennis at my lord’s. Some were eating, some were drinking, and some were puffing at long clay pipes, while others, by twos, locked arm in arm, went swaggering up and down the room, with a huge talking of foreign lands which they had never so much as seen.
“A murrain on the luck!” cried Carew, suddenly. “Can I throw nothing but threes and fours?”
A muffled stir ran round. Nick turned from the glare of the open door, and looked out into the moonlight. It seemed quite dark at first. The master-player’s face was bitter white, and his fingers were tapping a queer staccato upon the table-top.
“A plague on the bedlam dice!” said he. “I think they are bewitched.”