“What, Master Carew!” gasped Nick. “I—truly? With the Lord Admiral’s players?”
“Why, to be sure!” cried the master-player, in great glee, clapping him upon the back. “Didst think I meant a parcel of dirty tinkers? Nay, lad; thou art just the very fellow for the part—my lady’s page should be a pretty lad, and, soul o’ me, thou art that same! And, Nick, thou shalt sing Tom Heywood’s newest song. It is a pretty song; it is a lark-song like thine own.”
Nick could hardly believe his ears. To act with the Lord Admiral’s company! To sing with them before all Coventry! It passed the wildest dream that he had ever dreamed. What would the boys in Stratford say? Aha! they would laugh on the other side of their mouths now!
“But will they have me, sir?” he asked doubtfully.
“Have thee?” said Master Carew, haughtily. “If I say go, thou shalt go. I am master here. And I tell thee, Nick, that thou shalt see the play, and be the play, in part, and—well, we shall see what we shall see.”
With that he fell to humming and chuckling to himself, as if he had swallowed a water-mill, while Nick turned ecstatic cart-wheels along the grass beside the road, until presently Coventry came in sight.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ADMIRAL’S COMPANY
The ancient city of Coventry stands upon a little hill, with old St. Michael’s steeple and the spire of Holy Trinity church rising above it against the sky; and as the master-player and the boy came climbing upward from the south, walls, towers, chimneys, and red-tiled roofs were turned to gold by the glow of the setting sun.
To Nick it seemed as if a halo overhung the town—a ruddy glory and a wonder bright; for here the Grey Friars of the great monastery had played their holy mysteries and miracle-plays for over a hundred years; here the trade-guilds had held their pageants when the friars’ day was done; here were all the wonders that old men told by winter fires.