There was an unwonted buzzing in the east end of Stratford on that next to the last day of April, 1596. It was as if some one had thrust a stick into a hive of bees and they had come whirling out to see.

The low stone guard-wall of old Clopton bridge, built a hundred years before by rich Sir Hugh, sometime Mayor of London, was lined with straddling boys, like strawberries upon a spear of grass, and along the low causeway from the west across the lowland to the town, brown-faced, barefoot youngsters sat beside the roadway with their chubby legs a-dangle down the mossy stones, staring away into the south across the grassy levels of the valley of the Stour.

Punts were poling slowly up the Avon to the bridge; and at the outlets of the town, where the streets came down to the waterside among the weeds, little knots of men and serving-maids stood looking into the south and listening. Some had waited for an hour, some for two; yet still there was no sound but the piping of the birds in white-thorn hedges, the hollow lowing of kine knee-deep in grassy meadows, and the long rush of the river through the sedge beside the pebbly shore; and naught to see but quiet valleys, primrose lanes, and Warwick orchards white with bloom, stretching away to the misty hills.

But still they stood and looked and listened.

The wind came stealing up out of the south, soft and warm and sweet and still, moving the ripples upon the river with gray gusts; and, scudding free before the wind, a dog came trotting up the road with wet pink tongue and sidelong gait. At the throat of Clopton bridge he stopped and scanned the way with dubious eye, then clapped his tail between his legs and bolted for the town. The laughing shout that followed him into the Warwick road seemed not to die away, but to linger in the air like the drowsy hum of bees—a hum that came and went at intervals upon the shifting wind, and grew by littles, taking body till it came unbroken as a long, low, distance-muffled murmur from the south, so faint as scarcely to be heard.

Nick Attwood pricked his keen young ears. “They’re coming, Robin—hark ’e to the trampling!”

Robin Getley held his breath and turned his ear toward the south. The far-off murmur was a mutter now, defined and positive, and, as the two friends listened, grew into a drumming roll, and all at once above it came a shrill, high sound like the buzzing of a gnat close by the ear.

Little Tom Davenant dropped from the finger-post, and came running up from the fork of the Banbury road, his feet making little white puffs in the dust as he flew. “They are coming! they are coming!” he shrieked as he ran.

Then up to his feet sprang Robin Getley, upon the saddle-backed coping-stones, his hand upon Nick Attwood’s head to steady himself, and looked away where the rippling Stour ran like a thread of silver beside the dust-buff London road, and the little church of Atherstone stood blue against the rolling Cotswold Hills.

“They are coming! they are coming!” shrilled little Tom, and scrambled up the coping like a squirrel up a rail.

A stir ran out along the guard-wall, some crying out, some starting up. “Sit down! sit down!” cried others, peering askance at the water gurgling green down below. “Sit down, or we shall all be off!”

Robin held his hand above his eyes. A cloud of dust was rising from the London road and drifting off across the fields like smoke when the old ricks burn in damp weather—a long, broad-sheeted mist; and in it were bits of moving gold, shreds of bright colors vaguely seen, and silvery gleams like the glitter of polished metal in the sun. And as he looked the shifty wind came down out of the west again and whirled the cloud of dust away, and there he saw a long line of men upon horses coming at an easy canter up the highway. Just as he had made this out the line came rattling to a stop, the distant drumming of hoofs was still, and as the long file knotted itself into a rosette of ruddy color amid the April green, a clear, shrill trumpet blew and blew again.

“They are coming!” shouted Robin, “they are coming!” and, turning, waved his cap.

A shout went up along the bridge. Those down below came clambering up, the punts came poling with a rush of foam, and a ripple ran along the edge of Stratford town like the wind through a field of wheat. Windows creaked and doors swung wide, and the workmen stopped in the garden-plots to lean upon their mattocks and to look.

“They are coming!” bellowed Rafe Hickathrift, the butcher’s boy, standing far out in the street, with his red hands to his mouth for a trumpet, “they are coming!” and at that the doors of Bridge street grew alive with eager eyes.

At early dawn the Oxford carrier had brought the news that the players of the Lord High Admiral were coming up to Stratford out of London from the south, to play on May-day there; and this was what had set the town to buzzing like a swarm. For there were in England then but three great companies, the High Chamberlain’s, the Earl of Pembroke’s men, and the stage-players of my Lord Charles Howard, High Admiral of the Realm; and the day on which they came into a Midland market-town to play was one to mark with red and gold upon the calendar of the uneventful year.

Away by the old mill-bridge there were fishermen angling for dace and perch; but when the shout came down from the London road they dropped their poles and ran, through the willows and over the gravel, splashing and thrashing among the rushes and sandy shallows, not to be last when the players came. And old John Carter coming down the Warwick road with a load of hay, laid on the lash until piebald Dobbin snorted in dismay and broke into a lumbering run to reach the old stone bridge in time.

The distant horsemen now were coming on again, riding in double file. They had flung their banners to the breeze, and on the changing wind, with the thumping of horses’ hoofs, came by snatches the sound of a kettledrummer drawing his drumhead tight, and beating as he drew, and the muffled blasts of a trumpeter proving his lips.

Fynes Morrison and Walter Stirley, who had gone to Cowslip lane to meet the march, were running on ahead, and shouting as they ran: “There’s forty men, and sumpter-mules! and, oh, the bravest banners and attire—and the trumpets are a cloth-yard long! Make room for us, make room for us, and let us up!”

A bowshot off, the trumpets blew a blast so high, so clear, so keen, that it seemed a flame of fire in the air, and as the brassy fanfare died away across the roofs of the quiet town, the kettledrums clanged, the cymbals clashed, and all the company began to sing the famous old song of the hunt:

“The hunt is up, the hunt is up,
Sing merrily we, the hunt is up!
The wild birds sing,
The dun deer fling,
The forest aisles with music ring!
Tantara, tantara, tantara!
“Then ride along, ride along,
Stout and strong!
Farewell to grief and care;
With a rollicking cheer
For the high dun deer
And a life in the open air!
Tantara, the hunt is up, lads;
Tantara, the bugles bray!
Tantara, tantara, tantara,
Hio, hark away!”

The first of the riders had reached old Clopton bridge, and the banners strained upon their staves in the freshening river-wind. The trumpeters and the drummers led, their horses prancing, white plumes waving in the breeze, and the April sunlight dancing on the brazen horns and the silver bellies of the kettledrums.

Then came the banners of the company, curling down with a silky swish, and unfurling again with a snap, like a broad-lashed whip. The greatest one was rosy red, and on it was a gallant ship upon a flowing sea, bearing upon its mainsail the arms of my Lord Charles Howard, High Admiral of England. Upon its mate was a giant-bearded man with a fish’s tail, holding a trident in his hand and blowing upon a shell, the Triton of the seas which England ruled; this flag was bright sea-blue. The third was white, and on it was a red wild rose with a golden heart, the common standard of the company.

After the flags came twoscore men, the players of the Admiral, the tiring-men, grooms, horse-boys, and serving-knaves, well mounted on good horses, and all of them clad in scarlet tabards blazoned with the coat-armor of their master. Upon their caps they wore the famous badge of the Howards, a rampant silver demi-lion; and beneath their tabards at the side could be seen their jerkins of many-colored silk, their silver-buckled belts, and long, thin Spanish rapiers, slapping their horses on the flanks at every stride. Their legs were cased in high-topped riding-boots of tawny cordovan, with gilt spurs, and the housings of their saddles were of blue with the gilt anchors of the admiralty upon them. On their bridles were jingling bits of steel, which made a constant tinkling, like a thousand little bells very far away.

Some had faces smooth as boys and were quite young; and others wore sharp-pointed beards with stiff-waxed mustaches, and were older men, with a tinge of iron in their hair and lines of iron in their faces, hardened by the life they led; and some, again, were smooth-shaven, so often and so closely that their faces were blue with the beard beneath the skin. But, oh, to Nicholas Attwood and the rest of Stratford boys, they were a dashing, rakish, admirable lot, with the air of something even greater than lords, and a keen knowingness in their sparkling, worldly eyes that made a common wise man seem almost a fool beside them!

And so they came riding up out of the south:

“Then ride along, ride along,
Stout and strong!
Farewell to grief and care;
With a rollicking cheer
For the high dun deer
And a life in the open air!”

“Hurrah! hurrah! God save the Queen!”

A dropping shout went up the street like an arrow-flight scattering over the throng; and the players, waving their scarlet caps until the long line tossed like a poppy-garden in a summer rain, gave a cheer that fairly set the crockery to dancing upon the shelves of the stalls in Middle Bow.

“Hurrah!” shouted Nicholas Attwood, his blue eyes shining with delight. “Hurrah, hurrah, for the Admiral’s men!” And high in the air he threw his cap, as a wild cheer broke from the eddying crowd, and the arches of the long gray bridge rang hollow with the tread of hoofs. Whiff, came the wind; down dropped the hat upon the very saddle-peak of one tall fellow riding along among the rest. Catching it quickly as it fell, he laughed and tossed it back; and when Nick caught it whirling in the air, a shilling jingled from it to the ground.

Then up Fore Bridge street they all trooped after into Stratford town.

“Oh,” cried Robin, “it is brave, brave!”

“Brave?” cried Nick. “It makes my very heart jump. And see, Robin, ’tis a shilling, a real silver shilling—oh, what fellows they all be! Hurrah for the Lord High Admiral’s men!”

CHAPTER II
NICHOLAS ATTWOOD’S HOME

Nick Attwood’s father came home that night bitterly wroth.

The burgesses of the town council had ordered him to build a chimney upon his house, or pay ten shillings fine; and shillings were none too plenty with Simon Attwood, the tanner of Old Town.

“Soul and body o’ man!” said he, “they talk as if they owned the world, and a man could na live upon it save by their leave. I must build my fire in a pipe, or pay ten shillings fine? Things ha’ come to a pretty pass—a pretty pass, indeed!” He kicked the rushes that were strewn upon the floor, and ground the clay with his heel. “This litter will ha’ to be all took out. Atkins will be here at six i’ the morning to do the job, and a lovely mess he will make o’ the house!”

“Do na fret thee, Simon,” said Mistress Attwood, gently. “The rushes need a changing, and I ha’ pined this long while to lay the floor wi’ new clay from Shottery common. ’Tis the sweetest earth! Nick shall take the hangings down, and right things up when the chimley ’s done.”

So at cockcrow next morning Nick slipped out of his straw bed, into his clothes, and down the winding stair, while his parents were still asleep in the loft, and, sousing his head in the bucket at the well, began his work before the old town clock in the chapel tower had yet struck four.

The rushes had not been changed since Easter, and were full of dust and grease from the cooking and the table. Even the fresher sprigs of mint among them smelled stale and old. When they were all in the barrow, Nick sighed with relief and wiped his hands upon the dripping grass.

It had rained in the night,—a soft, warm rain,—and the air was full of the smell of the apple-bloom and pear from the little orchard behind the house. The bees were already humming about the straw-bound hives along the garden wall, and a misguided green woodpecker clung upside down to the eaves, and thumped at the beams of the house.

It was very still there in the gray of the dawn. He could hear the rush of the water through the sedge in the mill-race, and then, all at once, the roll of the wheel, the low rumble of the mill-gear, and the cool whisper of the wind in the willows.

When he went back into the house again the painted cloths upon the wall seemed dingier than ever compared with the clean, bright world outside. The sky-blue coat of the Prodigal Son was brown with the winter’s smoke; the Red Sea towered above Pharaoh’s ill-starred host like an inky mountain; and the homely maxims on the next breadth—“Do no Wrong,” “Beware of Sloth,” “Overcome Pride,” and “Keep an Eye on the Pence”—could scarcely be read.

Nick jumped up on the three-legged stool and began to take them down. The nails were crooked and jammed in the wall, and the last came out with an unexpected jerk. Losing his balance, Nick caught at the table-board which leaned against the wall; but the stool capsized, and he came down on the floor with such a flap of tapestry that the ashes flew out all over the room.

He sat up dazed, and rubbed his elbows, then looked around and began to laugh.

He could hear heavy footsteps overhead. A door opened, and his father’s voice called sternly from the head of the stair: “What madcap folly art thou up to now?”

“I be up to no folly at all,” said Nick, “but down, sir. I fell from the stool. There is no harm done.”

“Then be about thy business,” said Attwood, coming slowly down the stairs.

He was a gaunt man, smelling of leather and untanned hides. His short iron-gray hair grew low down upon his forehead, and his hooked nose, grim wide mouth, and heavy under jaw gave him a look at once forbidding and severe. His doublet of serge and his fustian hose were stained with liquor from the vats, and his eyes were heavy with sleep.

The smile faded from Nick’s face. “Shall I throw the rushes into the street, sir?” “Nay; take them to the muck-hill. The burgesses ha’ made a great to-do about folk throwing trash into the highways. Soul and body o’ man!” he growled, “a man must ask if he may breathe. And good hides going a-begging, too!”

Nick hurried away, for he dreaded his father’s sullen moods.

The swine were squealing in their styes, the cattle bawled about the straw-thatched barns in Chapel lane, and long files of gabbling ducks waddled hurriedly down to the river through the primroses under the hedge. He could hear the milkmaids calling in the meadows; and when he trundled slowly home the smoke was creeping up in pale-blue threads from the draught-holes in the wall.

The tanner’s house stood a little back from the thoroughfare, in that part of Stratford-on-Avon where the south end of Church street turns from Bull lane toward the river. It was roughly built of timber and plaster, the black beams showing through the yellow lime in curious squares and triangles. The roof was of red tiles, and where the spreading elms leaned over it the peaked gable was green with moss.

At the side of the house was a garden of lettuce; beyond the garden a rough wall on which the grass was growing. Sometimes wild primroses grew on top of this wall, and once a yellow daffodil. Beyond the wall were other gardens owned by thrifty neighbors, and open lands in common to them all, where foot-paths wandered here and there in a free, haphazard way.

Behind the house was a well and a wood-pile, and along the lane ran a whitewashed paling fence with a little gate, from which the path went up to the door through rows of bright, old-fashioned flowers.

Nick’s mother was getting the breakfast. She was a gentle woman with a sweet, kind face, and a little air of quiet dignity that made her doubly dear to Nick by contrast with his father’s unkempt ways. He used to think that, in her worsted gown, with its falling collar of Antwerp linen, and a soft, silken coif upon her fading hair, she was the most beautiful woman in all the world.

She put one arm about his shoulders, brushed back his curly hair, and kissed him on the forehead.

“Thou art mine own good little son,” said she, tenderly, “and I will bake thee a cake in the new chimley on the morrow for thy May-day-feast.”

Then she helped him fetch the trestles from the buttery, set the board, spread the cloth, and lay the wooden platters, pewter cups, and old horn spoons in place. Breakfast being ready, she then called his father from the yard. Nick waited deftly upon them both, so that they were soon done with the simple meal of rye-bread, lettuce, cheese, and milk.

As he carried away the empty platters and brought water and a towel for them to wash their hands, he said quietly, although his eyes were bright and eager, “The Lord High Admiral’s company is to act a stage-play at the guildhall to-morrow before Master Davenant the Mayor and the town burgesses.”

Simon Attwood said nothing, but his brows drew down.

“They came yestreen from London town by Oxford way to play in Stratford and at Coventry, and are at the Swan Inn with Master Geoffrey Inchbold—oh, ever so many of them, in scarlet jerkins, and cloth of gold, and doublets of silk laced up like any lord! It is a very good company, they say.”

Mistress Attwood looked quickly at her husband. “What will they play?” she asked.

“I can na say surely, mother—‘Tamburlane,’ perhaps, or ‘The Troublesome Reign of Old King John.’ The play will be free, father—may I go, sir?”

“And lose thy time from school?”

“There is no school to-morrow, sir.”

“Then have ye naught to do, that ye waste the day in idle folly?” asked the tanner, sternly.

“I will do my work beforehand, sir,” replied Nick, quietly, though his hand trembled a little as he brushed up the crumbs.

“It is May-day, Simon,” interceded Mistress Attwood, “and a bit of pleasure will na harm the lad.”

“Pleasure?” said the tanner, sharply. “If he does na find pleasure enough in his work, his book, and his home, he shall na seek it of low rogues and strolling scape-graces.”

“But, Simon,” said Mistress Attwood, “’tis the Lord Admiral’s own company—surely they are not all graceless! And,” she continued with very quiet dignity, “since mine own cousin Anne Hathaway married Will Shakspere the play-actor, ’tis scarcely kind to call all players rogues and low.”

“No more o’ this, Margaret,” cried Attwood, flushing angrily. “Thou art ever too ready with the boy’s part against me. He shall na go—I’ll find a thing or two for him to do among the vats that will take this taste for idleness out of his mouth. He shall na go: so that be all there is on it.” Rising abruptly, he left the room.

Nick clenched his hands.

“Nicholas,” said his mother, softly.

“Yes, mother,” said he; “I know. But he should na flout thee so! And, mother, the Queen goes to the play—father himself saw her at Coventry ten years ago. Is what the Queen does idle folly?”

His mother took him by the hand and drew him to her side, with a smile that was half a sigh. “Art thou the Queen?”

“Nay,” said he; “and it’s all the better for England, like enough. But surely, mother, it can na be wrong—”

“To honour thy father?” said she, quickly, laying her finger across his lips. “Nay, lad; it is thy bounden duty.”

Nick turned and looked up at her wonderingly. “Mother,” said he, “art thou an angel come down out of heaven?”

“Nay,” she answered, patting his flushed cheek; “I be only the every-day mother of a fierce little son who hath many a hard, hard lesson to learn. Now eat thy breakfast—thou hast been up a long while.”

Nick kissed her impetuously and sat down, but his heart still rankled within him.

All Stratford would go to the play. He could hear the murmur of voices and music, the bursts of laughter and applause, the tramp of happy feet going up the guildhall stairs to the Mayor’s show. Everybody went in free at the Mayor’s show. The other boys could stand on stools and see it all. They could hold horses at the gate of the inn at the September fair, and so see all the farces. They could see the famous Norwich puppet-play. But he—what pleasure did he ever have? A tawdry pageant by a lot of clumsy country bumpkins at Whitsuntide or Pentecost, or a silly school-boy masque at Christmas, with the master scolding like a heathen Turk. It was not fair.

And now he’d have to work all May-day. May-day out of all the year! Why, there was to be a May-pole and a morris-dance, and a roasted calf, too, in Master Wainwright’s field, since Margery was chosen Queen of the May. And Peter Finch was to be Robin Hood, and Nan Rogers Maid Marian, and wear a kirtle of Kendal green—and, oh, but the May-pole would be brave; high as the ridge of the guildschool roof, and hung with ribbons like a rainbow! Geoffrey Hall was to lead the dance, too, and the other boys and girls would all be there. And where would he be? Sousing hides in the tannery vats. Truly his father was a hard man!

He pushed the cheese away.

CHAPTER III
THE LAST STRAW

Little John Summer had a new horn-book that cost a silver penny. The handle was carven and the horn was clear as honey. The other little boys stood round about in speechless envy, or murmured their A B C’s and “ba be bi’s” along the chapel steps. The lower-form boys were playing leap-frog past the almshouse, and Geoffrey Gosse and the vicar’s son were in the public gravel-pit, throwing stones at the robins in the Great House elms across the lane.

Some few dull fellows sat upon the steps behind the school-house, anxiously poring over their books. But the larger boys of the Fable Class stood in an excited group beneath the shadow of the overhanging second story of the grammar-school, talking all at once, each louder than the other, until the noise was deafening.

“Oh, Nick, such goings on!” called Robin Getley, whose father was a burgess, as Nick Attwood came slowly up the street, saying his sentences for the day over and over to himself in hopeless desperation, having had no time to learn them at home. “Stratford Council has had a quarrel, and there’s to be no stage-play after all.”

“What?” cried Nick, in amazement. “No stage-play? And why not?”

“Why,” said Robin, “it was just this way—my father told me of it. Sir Thomas Lucy, High Sheriff of Worcester, y’ know, rode in from Charlcote yesternoon, and with him Sir Edward Greville of Milcote. So the burgesses made a feast for them at the Swan Inn. Sir Thomas fetched a fine, fat buck, and the town stood good for ninepence wine and twopence bread, and broached a keg of sturgeon. And when they were all met together there, eating, and drinking, and making merry—what? Why, in came my Lord Admiral’s players from London town, ruffling it like high dukes, and not caring two pops for Sir Thomas, or Sir Edward, or for Stratford burgesses all in a heap; but sat them down at the table straightway, and called for ale, as if they owned the place; and not being served as soon as they desired, they laid hands upon Sir Thomas’s server as he came in from the buttery with his tray full, and took both meat and drink.”

“What?” cried Nick.

“As sure as shooting, they did!” said Robin; “and when Sir Thomas’s gentry yeomen would have seen to it—what? Why, my Lord Admiral’s master-player clapped his hand to his poniard-hilt, and dared them come and take it if they could.”

“To Sir Thomas Lucy’s men?” exclaimed Nick, aghast.

“Ay, to their teeth! Sir Edward sprang up then, and said it was a shame for players to behave so outrageously in Will Shakspere’s own home town. And at that Sir Thomas, who, y’ know, has always misliked Will, flared up like a bull at a red rag, and swore that all stage-players be runagate rogues, anyway, and Will Shakspere neither more nor less than a deer-stealing scape-gallows.”

“Surely he did na say that in Stratford Council?” protested Nick.

“Ay, but he did—that very thing,” said Robin; “and when that was out, the master-player sprang upon the table, overturning half the ale, and cried out that Will Shakspere was his very own true friend, and the sweetest fellow in all England, and that whosoever gainsaid it was a hemp-cracking rascal, and that he would prove it upon his back with a quarter-staff whenever and wherever he chose, be he Sir Thomas Lucy, St. George and the Dragon, Guy of Warwick, and the great dun cow, all rolled up in one!”

“Robin Getley, is this the very truth, or art thou cozening me?”

“Upon my word, it is the truth,” said Robin. “And that’s not all. Sir Edward cried out ‘Fie!’ upon the player for a saucy varlet; but the fellow only laughed, and bowed quite low, and said that he took no offense from Sir Edward for saying that, since it could not honestly be denied, but that Sir Thomas did not know the truth from a truckle-bed in broad daylight, and was but the remnant of a gentleman to boot.”

“The bold-faced rogue!”

“Ay, that he is,” nodded Robin; “and for his boldness Sir Thomas straightway demanded that the High Bailiff refuse the company license to play in Stratford.”

“Refuse the Lord High Admiral’s players?”

“Marry, no one else. And then Master John Shakspere, wroth at what Sir Thomas had said of his son Will, vowed that he would send a letter down to London town, and lay the whole coil before the Lord High Admiral himself. For ever since that he was High Bailiff, the best companies of England had always been bidden to play in Stratford, and it would be an ill thing now to refuse the Lord Admiral’s company after granting licenses to both my Lord Pembroke’s and the High Chamberlain’s.”

“And so it would,” spoke up Walter Roche; “for there are our own townsmen, Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, who are cousins of mine, and John Hemynge and Thomas Greene, besides Will Shakspere and his brother Edmund, all playing in the Lord Chamberlain’s company in London before the Queen. It would be a black score against them all with the Lord Admiral—I doubt not he would pay them out.”

“That he would,” said Robin, “and so said my father and Alderman Henry Walker, who, y’ know, is Will Shakspere’s own friend. And some of the burgesses who cared not a rap for that were afeard of offending the Lord Admiral. But Sir Thomas vowed that my Lord Howard was at Cadiz with Walter Raleigh and the young Earl of Sussex, and would by no means hear of it. So Master Bailiff Stubbes, who, ’tis said, doth owe Sir Thomas forty pound, and is therefore under his thumb, forthwith refused the company license to play in Stratford guildhall, inn-yard, or common. And at that the master-player threw his glove into Master Stubbes’s face, and called Sir Thomas a stupid old bell-wether, and Stratford burgesses silly sheep for following wherever he chose to jump.”

“And so they be,” sneered Hal Saddler.

“How?” cried Robin, hotly. “My father is a burgess. Dost thou call him a sheep, Hal Saddler?”

“Nay, nay,” stammered Hal, hastily; “’twas not thy father I meant.”

“Then hold thy tongue with both hands,” said Robin, sharply, “or it will crack thy pate for thee some of these fine days.”

“But come, Robin,” asked Nick, eagerly, “what became of the quarrel?”

“Well, when the master-player threw his glove into Master Stubbes’s face, the Chief Constable seized him for contempt of Stratford Council, and held him for trial. At that some cried ‘Shame!’ and some ‘Hurrah!’ but the rest of the players fled out of town in the night, lest their baggage be taken by the law and they be fined.”

“Whither did they go?” asked Nick, both sorry and glad to hear that they were gone.

“To Coventry, and left the master-player behind in gaol.”

“Why, they dare na use him so—the Lord Admiral’s own man!”

“Ay, that they don’t! Why, hark ’e, Nick! This morning, since Sir Thomas has gone home, and the burgesses’ heads have all cooled down from the sack and the clary they were in last night, la! but they are in a pretty stew, my father says, for fear that they have given offense to the Lord Admiral. So they have spoken the master-player softly, and given him his freedom out of hand, and a long gold chain to twine about his cap, to mend the matter with, beside.”

“Whee-ew!” whistled Nick. “I wish I were a master-player!”

“Oh, but he will not be pleased, and says he will have his revenge on Stratford town if he must needs wait until the end of the world or go to the Indies after it. And he has had his breakfast served in Master Geoffrey Inchbold’s own room at the Swan, and swears that he will walk the whole way to Coventry sooner than straddle the horse that the burgesses have sent him to ride.”

“What! Is he at the inn? Why, let’s go down and see him.”

“Master Brunswood says that he will birch whoever cometh late,” objected Hal Saddler.

“Birch?” groaned Nick. “Why, he does nothing but birch! A fellow can na say his ‘sum, es, est’ without catching it. And as for getting through the ‘genitivo’ and ‘vocativo’ without a downright threshing—” He shrugged his shoulders ruefully as he remembered his unlearned lesson. Everything had gone wrong with him that morning, and the thought of the birching that he was sure to get was more than he could bear. “I will na stand it any longer—I’ll run away!”

Kit Sedgewick laughed ironically. “And when the skies fall we’ll catch sparrows, Nick Attwood,” said he. “Whither wilt thou run?”

Stung by his tone of ridicule, Nick out with the first thing that came into his head. “To Coventry, after the stage-players,” said he, defiantly.

The whole crowd gave an incredulous hoot.

Nick’s face flushed. To be crossed at home, to be birched at school, to work all May-day in the tannery vats, and to be laughed at—it was too much.

“Ye think that I will na? Well, I’ll show ye! ’Tis only eight miles to Warwick, and hardly more than that beyond—no walk at all; and Diccon Haggard, my mother’s cousin, lives in Coventry. So out upon your musty Latin—English is good enough for me this day! There’s bluebells blowing in the dingles, and cuckoo-buds no end. And while ye are all grinding at your old Aesop I shall be roaming over the hills wherever I please.”

As he spoke he thought of the dark, wainscoted walls of the school-room with their narrow little windows overhead, of the foul-smelling floors of the tannery in Southam’s lane, and his heart gave a great, rebellious leap. “Ay,” said he, exultantly, “I shall be out where the birds can sing and the grass is green, and I shall see the stage-play, while ye will be mewed up all day long in school, and have nothing but a beggarly morris and a farthing May-pole on the morrow.”

“Oh, no doubt, no doubt,” said Hal Saddler, mockingly “We shall have but bread and milk, and thou shalt have—a most glorious threshing from thy father when thou comest home again!”

That was the last straw to Nick’s unhappy heart.

“’Tis a threshing either way,” said he, squaring his shoulders doggedly. “Father will thresh me if I run away, and Master Brunswood will thresh me if I don’t. I’ll not be birched four times a week for merely tripping on a word, and have nothing to show for it but stripes. If I must take a threshing, I’ll have my good day’s game out first.”

“But wilt thou truly go to Coventry, Nick?” asked Robin Getley, earnestly, for he liked Nick more than all the rest.

“Ay, truly, Robin—that I will”; and, turning, Nick walked swiftly away toward the market-place, never looking back.

CHAPTER IV
OFF FOR COVENTRY

At the Bridge street crossing Nick paused irresolute. Around the public pump a chattering throng of housewives were washing out their towels and hanging them upon the market-cross to dry. Along the stalls in Middle Row the grumbling shopmen were casting up their sales from tallies chalked upon their window-ledges, or cuffing their tardy apprentices with no light hand.

John Gibson’s cart was hauling gravel from the pits in Henley street to mend the causeway at the bridge, which had been badly washed by the late spring floods, and the fine sand dribbled from the cart-tail like the sand in an hour-glass.

Here and there loutish farm-hands waited for work; and at the corner two or three stout cudgel-men leaned upon their long staves, although the market was two days closed, and there was not a Coventry merchant in sight to be driven away from Stratford trade.

Goody Baker with her shovel and broom of twigs was sweeping up the market litter in the square. Nick wondered if his own mother’s back would be so bent when she grew old.

“Whur be-est going, Nick?”

Roger Dawson sat astride a stick of timber in front of Master Geoffrey Thompson’s new house, watching Tom Carpenter the carver cut fleur-de-lis and curling traceries upon the front wall beams. He was a tenant-farmer’s son, this Roger, and a likely good-for-naught.

“To Coventry,” said Nick, curtly.

“Wilt take a fellow wi’ thee?”

Poor company might be better than none.

“Come on.”

Roger lumbered to his feet and trotted after.

“No school to-day?” he asked.

“Not for me,” answered Nick, shortly, for he did not care to talk about it.

“Faither wull na have I go to school, since us ha’ comed to town, an’ plough-land sold for grazings,” drawled Roger; “Muster Pine o’ Welford saith that I ha’ learned as much as faither ever knowed, an’ ’tis enow for I. Faither saith it maketh saucy rogues o’ sons to know more than they’s own dads.”

Nick wondered if it did. His own father could neither read nor write, while he could do both and had some Latin, too. At the thought of the Latin he made a wry face.

“Joe Carter be-eth in the stocks,” said Roger, peering through the jeering crowd about the pillory and post; “a broke Tom Samson’s pate wi’ ’s ale-can yestreen.”

But Nick pushed on. A few ruddy-faced farmers and drovers from the Bed Horse Vale still lingered at the Boar Inn door and by the tap-room of the Crown; and in the middle of the street a crowd of salters, butchers, and dealers in hides, with tallow-smeared doublets and doubtful hose, were squabbling loudly about the prices set upon their wares.

In the midst of them Nick saw his father, and scurried away into Back Bridge street as fast as he could, feeling very near a sneak, but far from altering his purpose.

“Job Hortop,” said Simon Attwood to his apprentice at his side, looking out suddenly over the crowd, “was that my Nick yonder?”

“Nay, master, could na been,” said Job, stolidly; “Nick be-eth in school by now—the clock ha’ struck. ’Twas Dawson’s Hodge and some like ne’er-do-well.”

CHAPTER V
IN THE WARWICK ROAD

The land was full of morning sounds as the lads trudged along the Warwick road together. An ax rang somewhere deep in the woods of Arden; cart-wheels ruttled on the stony road; a blackbird whistled shrilly in the hedge, and they heard the deep-tongued belling of hounds far off in Fulbroke park.

Now and then a heron, rising from the river, trailed its long legs across the sky, or a kingfisher sparkled in his own splash. Once a lonely fisherman down by the Avon started a wild duck from the sedge, and away it went pattering up-stream with frightened wings and red feet running along the water. And then a river-rat plumped into the stream beneath the willows, and left a long string of bubbles behind him.

Nick’s ill humor soon wore off as he breathed the fresh air, moist from lush meadows, and sweet from hedges pink and white with hawthorn bloom. The thought of being pent up on such a day grew more and more unbearable, and a blithe sense of freedom from all restraint blunted the prick of conscience.

“Why art going to Coventry, Nick?” inquired Roger suddenly, startled by a thought coming into his wits like a child by a bat in the room.

“To see the stage-play that the burgesses would na allow in Stratford.”

“Wull I see, too?”

“If thou hast eyes—the Mayor’s show is free.”

“Oh, feckins, wun’t it be fine?” gaped Hodge. “Be it a tailors’ show, Nick, wi’ Herod the King, and a rope for to hang Judas? An’ wull they set the world afire wi’ a torch, an’ make the earth quake fearful wi’ a barrel full o’ stones? Or wull it be Sin in a motley gown a-thumping the Black Man over the pate wi’ a bladder full o’ peasen—an’ angels wi’ silver wingses, an’ saints wi’ goolden hair? Or wull it be a giant nine yards high, clad in the beards o’ murdered kings, like granny saith she used to see?”

“Pshaw! no,” said Nick; “none of those old-fashioned things. These be players from London town, and I hope they’ll play a right good English history-play, like ‘The Famous Victories of Henry Fift,’ to turn a fellow’s legs all goose-flesh!”

Hodge stopped short in the road. “La!” said he, “I’ll go no furder if they turn me to a goose. I wunnot be turned goose, Nick Attwood—an’ a plague on all witches, says I!”

“Oh, pshaw!” laughed Nick; “come on. No witch in the world could turn thee bigger goose than thou art now. Come along wi’ thee; there be no witches there at all.”

“Art sure thou ’rt not bedaffing me?” hesitated Hodge. “Good, then; I be na feared. Art sure there be no witches?”

“Why,” said Nick, “would Master Burgess John Shakspere leave his son Will to do with witches?”

“I dunno,” faltered Hodge; “a told Muster Robin Bowles it was na right to drownd ’em in the river.”

Nick hesitated. “Maybe it kills the fish,” said he; “and Master Will Shakspere always liked to fish. But they burn witches in London, Hodge, and he has na put a stop to it—and he’s a great man in London town.”

Hodge came on a little way, shaking his head like an old sheep in a corner. “Wully Shaxper a great man?” said he. “Why, a’s name be cut on the old beech-tree up Snitterfield lane, where’s uncle Henry Shaxper lives, an’ ’tis but poorly done. I could do better wi’ my own whittle.”

“Ay, Hodge,” cried Nick; “and that’s about all thou canst do. Dost think that a man’s greatness hangs on so little a thing as his sleight of hand at cutting his name on a tree?”

“Wull, maybe; maybe not; but if a be a great man, Nick Attwood, a might do a little thing passing well—so there, now!”

Nick pondered for a moment. “I do na know,” said he, slowly; “heaps of men can do the little things, but parlous few the big. So some one must be bigging it, or folks would all sing very small. And he doeth the big most beautiful, they say. They call him the Swan of Avon.”

“Avon swans be mostly geese,” said Hodge, vacantly.

“Now, look ’e here, Hodge Dawson, don’t thou be calling Master Will Shakspere goose. He married my own mother’s cousin, and I will na have it.”

“La, now,” drawled Hodge, staring, “’tis nowt to me. Thy Muster Wully Shaxper may be all the long-necked fowls in Warrickshire for all I care. And, anyway, I’d like to know, Nick Attwood, since when hath a been ‘Muster Shaxper’—that ne’er-do-well, play-actoring fellow?”

“Ne’er-do-well? It is na so. When he was here last summer he was bravely dressed, and had a heap of good gold nobles in his purse. And he gave Rick Hawkins, that’s blind of an eye, a shilling for only holding his horse.”

“Oh, ay,” drawled Hodge; “a fool and a’s money be soon parted.”

“Will Shakspere is no fool,” declared Nick, hotly. “He’s made a peck o’ money there in London town, and ’s going to buy the Great House in Chapel lane, and come back here to live.”

“Then a ’s a witless azzy!” blurted Hodge. “If a ’s so great a man amongst the lords and earlses, a ’d na come back to Stratford. An’ I say a ’s a witless loon—so there!”

Nick whirled around in the road. “And I say, Hodge Dawson,” he exclaimed with flashing eyes, “that ’tis a shame for a lout like thee to so miscall thy thousand-time betters. And what’s more, thou shalt unsay that, or I will make thee swallow thy words right here and now!”

“I’d loike to see thee try,” Hodge began; but the words were scarcely out of his mouth when he found himself stretched on the grass, Nick Attwood bending over him.

“There! thou hast seen it tried. Now come, take that back, or I will surely box thine ears for thee.”

Hodge blinked and gaped, collecting his wits, which had scattered to the four winds. “Whoy,” said he, vaguely, “if ’tis all o’ that to thee, I take it back.”

Nick rose, and Hodge scrambled clumsily to his feet. “I’ll na go wi’ thee,” said he, sulkily; “I will na go whur I be whupped.”

Nick turned on his heel without a word, and started on.

“An’ what’s more,” bawled Hodge after him, “thy Muster Wully Shaxper be-eth an old gray goose, an’ boo to he, says I!”

As he spoke he turned, dived through the thin hedge, and galloped across the field as if an army were at his heels.

Nick started back, but quickly paused. “Thou needst na run,” he called; “I’ve not the time to catch thee now. But mind ye this, Hodge Dawson: when I do come back, I’ll teach thee who thy betters be—Will Shakspere first of all!”

“Well crowed, well crowed, my jolly cockerel!” on a sudden called a keen, high voice beyond the hedge behind him.

Nick, startled, whirled about just in time to see a stranger leap the hedge and come striding up the road.

CHAPTER VI
THE MASTER-PLAYER

He had trim, straight legs, this stranger, and a slender, lithe body in a tawny silken jerkin. Square-shouldered, too, was he, and over one shoulder hung a plum-colored cloak bordered with gold braid. His long hose were the color of his cloak, and his shoes were russet leather, with rosettes of plum, and such high heels as Nick had never seen before. His bonnet was of tawny velvet, with a chain twisted round it, fastened by a jeweled brooch through which was thrust a curly cock-feather. A fine white Holland-linen shirt peeped through his jerkin at the throat, with a broad lace collar; and his short hair curled crisply all over his head. He had a little pointed beard, and the ends of his mustache were twisted so that they stood up fiercely on either side of his sharp nose. At his side was a long Italian poniard in a sheath of russet leather and silver filigree, and he had a reckless, high and mighty fling about his stride that strangely took the eye.

Nick stood, all taken by surprise, and stared.

The stranger seemed to like it, but scowled nevertheless. “What! How now?” he cried sharply. “Dost like or like me not?”

“Why, sir,” stammered Nick, utterly lost for anything to say—“why, sir,—” and knowing nothing else to do, he took off his cap and bowed.

“Come, come,” snapped the stranger, stamping his foot, “I am a swashing, ruffling, desperate Dick, and not to be made a common jest for Stratford dolts to giggle at. What! These legs, that have put on the very gentleman in proud Verona’s streets, laid in Stratford’s common stocks, like a silly apprentice’s slouching heels? Nay, nay; some one should taste old Bless-his-heart here first!” and with that he clapped his hand upon the hilt of his poniard, with a wonderful swaggering tilt of his shoulders. “Dost take me, boy?”

“Why, sir,” hesitated Nick, no little awed by the stranger’s wild words and imperious way, “ye surely are the master-player.”

“There!” cried the stranger, whirling about, as if defying some one in the hedge. “Who said I could not act? Why, see, he took me at a touch! Say, boy,” he laughed, and turned to Nick, “thou art no fool. Why, boy, I say I love thee now for this, since what hath passed in Stratford. A murrain on the town! Dost hear me, boy?—a black murrain on the town!” And all at once he made such a fierce stride toward Nick, gritting his white teeth, and clapping his hand upon his poniard, that Nick drew back afraid of him.

“But nay,” hissed the stranger, and spat with scorn, “a town like that is its own murrain—let it sicken on itself!”

He struck an attitude, and waved his hand as if he were talking quite as much to the trees and sky as he was to Nick Attwood, and looked about him as if waiting for applause. Then all at once he laughed,—a rollicking, merry laugh,—and threw off his furious manner as one does an old coat. “Well, boy,” said he, with a quiet smile, looking kindly at Nick, “thou art a right stanch little friend to all of us stage-players. And I thank thee for it in Will Shakspere’s name; for he is the sweetest fellow of us all.”

His voice was simple, frank, and free—so different from the mad tone in which he had just been ranting that Nick caught his breath with surprise.

“Nay, lad, look not so dashed,” said the master-player, merrily; “that was only old Jem Burbage’s mighty tragic style; and I—I am only Gaston Carew, hail-fellow-well-met with all true hearts. Be known to me, lad; what is thy name? I like thy open, pretty face.”

Nick flushed. “Nicholas Attwood is my name, sir.”

“Nicholas Attwood? Why, it is a good name. Nick Attwood,—young Nick,—I hope Old Nick will never catch thee—upon my word I do, and on the remnant of mine honour! Thou hast taken a player’s part like a man, and thou art a good fellow, Nicholas Attwood, and I love thee. So thou art going to Coventry to see the players act? Surely thine is a nimble wit to follow fancy nineteen miles. Come; I am going to Coventry to join my fellows. Wilt thou go with me, Nick, and dine with us this night at the best inn in all Coventry—the Blue Boar? Thou hast quite plucked up my downcast heart for me, lad, indeed thou hast; for I was sore of Stratford town—and I shall not soon forget thy plucky fending for our own sweet Will. Come, say thou wilt go with me.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Nick, bowing again, his head all in a whirl of excitement at this wonderful adventure, “indeed I will, and that right gladly, sir.” And with heart beating like a trip-hammer he walked along, cap in hand, not knowing that his head was bare.

The master-player laughed a simple, hearty laugh. “Why, Nick,” said he, laying his hand caressingly upon the boy’s shoulder, “I am no such great to-do as all that—upon my word, I’m not! A man of some few parts, perhaps, not common in the world; but quite a plain fellow, after all. Come, put off this high humility and be just friendly withal. Put on thy cap; we are but two good faring-fellows here.”

So Nick put on his cap, and they went on together, Nick in the seventh heaven of delight.

About a mile beyond Stratford, Welcombe wood creeps down along the left. Just beyond, the Dingles wind irregularly up from the foot-path below to the crest of Welcombe hill, through straggling clumps and briery hollows, sweet with nodding bluebells, ash, and hawthorn.

Nick and the master-player paused a moment at the top to catch their breath and to look back.

Stratford and the valley of the Avon lay spread before them like a picture of peace, studded with blossoming orchards and girdled with spring. Northward the forest of Arden clad the rolling hills. Southward the fields of Feldon stretched away to the blue knolls beyond which lay Oxford and Northamptonshire. The ragged stretches of Snitterfield downs scrambled away to the left; and on the right, beyond Bearley, were the wooded uplands where Guy of Warwick and Heraud of Arden slew the wild ox and the boar. And down through the midst ran the Avon southward, like a silver ribbon slipped through Kendal green, to where the Stour comes down, past Luddington, to Bidford, and away to the misty hills.

“Why,” exclaimed the master-player—“why, upon my word, it is a fair town—as fair a town as the heart of man could wish. Wish? I wish ’t were sunken in the sea, with all its pack of fools! Why,” said he, turning wrathfully upon Nick, “that old Sir Thingumbob of thine, down there, called me a caterpillar on the kingdom of England, a vagabond, and a common player of interludes! Called me vagabond! Me! Why, I have more good licenses than he has wits. And as to Master Bailiff Stubbes, I have permits to play from more justices of the peace than he can shake a stick at in a month of Sundays!” He shook his fist wrathfully at the distant town, and gnawed his mustache until one side pointed up and the other down. “But, hark ’e, boy, I’ll have my vengeance on them all—ay, that will I, upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour—or else my name’s not Gaston Carew!”

“Is it true, sir,” asked Nick, hesitatingly, “that they despitefully handled you?”

“With their tongues, ay,” said Carew, bitterly; “but not otherwise.” He clapped his hand upon his poniard, and threw back his head defiantly. “They dared not come to blows—they knew my kind! Yet John Shakspere is no bad sort—he knoweth what is what. But Master Bailiff Stubbes, I ween, is a long-eared thing that brays for thistles. I’ll thistle him! He called Will Shakspere rogue. Hast ever looked through a red glass?”

“Nay,” said Nick.

“Well, it turns the whole world red. And so it is with Master Stubbes. He looks through a pair of rogue’s eyes and sees the whole world rogue. Why, boy,” cried the master-player, vehemently, “he thought to buy my tongue! Marry, if tongues were troubles he has bought himself a peck! What! Buy my silence? Nay, he’ll see a deadly flash of silence when I come to my Lord the Admiral again!”

CHAPTER VII
“WELL SUNG, MASTER SKYLARK!”

It was past high noon, and they had long since left Warwick castle far behind. “Nicholas,” said the master-player, in the middle of a stream of amazing stories of life in London town, “there is Blacklow knoll.” He pointed to a little hill off to the left.

Nick stared; he knew the tale: how grim old Guy de Beauchamp had Piers Gaveston’s head upon that hill for calling him the Black Hound of Arden.

“Ah!” said Carew, “times have changed since then, boy, when thou couldst have a man’s head off for calling thee a name—or I would have yon Master Bailiff Stubbes’s head off short behind the ears—and Sir Thomas Lucy’s too!” he added, with a sudden flash of anger, gritting his teeth and clenching his hand upon his poniard. “But, Nicholas, hast anything to eat?”

“Nothing at all, sir.”

Master Carew pulled from his pouch some barley-cakes and half a small Banbury cheese, yellow as gold and with a keen, sharp savour. “’Tis enough for both of us,” said he, as they came to a shady little wood with a clear, mossy-bottomed spring running down into a green meadow with a mild noise, murmuring among the stones. “Come along, Nicholas; we’ll eat it under the trees.”

He had a small flask of wine, but Nick drank no wine, and went down to the spring instead. There was a wild bird singing in a bush there, and as he trotted down the slope it hushed its wandering tune. Nick took the sound up softly, and stood by the wet stones a little while, imitating the bird’s trilling note, and laughing to hear it answer timidly, as if it took him for some great new bird without wings. Cocking its shy head and watching him shrewdly with its beady eye, it sat, almost persuaded that it was only size which made them different, until Nick clapped his cap upon his head and strolled back, singing as he went.

It was only the thread of an old-fashioned madrigal which he had often heard his mother sing, with quaint words long since gone out of style and hardly to be understood, and between the staves a warbling, wordless refrain which he had learned out on the hills and in the fields, picked up from a bird’s glad-throated morning-song.

He had always sung the plain-tunes in church without taking any particular thought about it; and he sang easily, with a clear young voice which had a full, flute-like note in it like the high, sweet song of a thrush singing in deep woods.

Gaston Carew, the master-player, was sitting with his back against an oak, placidly munching the last of the cheese, when Nick began to sing. He started, straightening up as if some one had called him suddenly out of a sound sleep, and, turning his head, listened eagerly.

Nick mocked the wild bird, called again with a mellow, warbling trill, and then struck up the quaint old madrigal with the bird’s song running through it. Carew leaped to his feet, with a flash in his dark eyes. “My soul! my soul!” he exclaimed in an excited undertone. “It is not—nay, it cannot be—why, ’tis—it is the boy! Upon my heart, he hath a skylark prisoned in his throat! Well sung, well sung, Master Skylark!” he cried, clapping his hands in real delight, as Nick came singing up the bank. “Why, lad, I vow I thought thou wert up in the sky somewhere, with wings to thy back! Where didst thou learn that wonder-song?”

Nick colored up, quite taken aback. “I do na know, sir,” said he; “mother learned me part, and the rest just came, I think, sir.”

The master-player, his whole face alive and eager, now stared at Nicholas Attwood as fixedly as Nick had stared at him.

It was a hearty little English lad he saw, about eleven years of age, tall, slender, trimly built, and fair. A gray cloth cap clung to the side of his curly yellow head, and he wore a sleeveless jerkin of dark-blue serge, gray home-spun hose, and heelless shoes of russet leather. The white sleeves of his linen shirt were open to the elbow, and his arms were lithe and brown. His eyes were frankly clear and blue, and his red mouth had a trick of smiling that went straight to a body’s heart.

“Why, lad, lad,” cried Carew, breathlessly, “thou hast a very fortune in thy throat!”

Nick looked up in great surprise; and at that the master-player broke off suddenly and said no more, though such a strange light came creeping into his eyes that Nick, after meeting his fixed stare for a moment, asked uneasily if they would not better be going on.

Without a word the master-player started. Something had come into his head which seemed to more than fill his mind; for as he strode along he whistled under his breath and laughed softly to himself. Then again he snapped his fingers and took a dancing step or two across the road, and at last fell to talking aloud to himself, though Nick could not make out a single word he said, for it was in some foreign language.

“Nicholas,” he said suddenly, as they passed the winding lane that leads away to Kenilworth—“Nicholas, dost know any other songs like that?”

“Not just like that, sir,” answered Nick, not knowing what to make of his companion’s strange new mood; “but I know Master Will Shakspere’s ‘Then nightly sings the staring owl, tu-who, tu-whit, tu-who!’ and ‘The ousel-cock so black of hue, with orange-tawny bill,’ and then, too, I know the throstle’s song that goes with it.”

“Why, to be sure—to be sure thou knowest old Nick Bottom’s song, for isn’t thy name Nick? Well met, both song and singer—well met, I say! Nay,” he said hastily, seeing Nick about to speak; “I do not care to hear thee talk. Sing me all thy songs. I am hungry as a wolf for songs. Why, Nicholas, I must have songs! Come, lift up that honeyed throat of thine and sing another song. Be not so backward; surely I love thee, Nick, and thou wilt sing all of thy songs for me.”

He laid his hand on Nick’s shoulder in his kindly way, and kept step with him like a bosom friend, so that Nick’s heart beat high with pride, and he sang all the songs he knew as they walked along.

Carew listened intently, and sometimes with a fierce eagerness that almost frightened the boy; and sometimes he frowned, and said under his breath, “Tut, tut, that will not do!” but oftener he laughed without a sound, nodding his head in time to the lilting tune, and seeming vastly pleased with Nick, the singing, and last, but not least, with himself.

And when Nick had ended the master-player had not a word to say, but for half a mile gnawed his mustache in nervous silence, and looked Nick all over with a long and earnest look.

Then suddenly he slapped his thigh, and tossed his head back boldly. “I’ll do it,” he said; “I’ll do it if I dance on air for it! I’ll have it out of Master Stubbes and canting Stratford town, or may I never thrive! My soul! it is the very thing. His eyes are like twin holidays, and he breathes the breath of spring. Nicholas, Nicholas Skylark,—Master Skylark,—why, it is a good name, in sooth, a very good name! I’ll do it—I will, upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour!”

“Did ye speak to me, sir?” asked Nick, timidly.

“Nay, Nicholas; I was talking to the moon.”

“Why, sir, the moon has not come yet,” said Nick, staring into the western sky.

“To be sure,” replied Master Carew, with a queer laugh. “Well, the silvery jade has missed the first act.”

“Oh,” cried Nick, reminded of the purpose of his long walk, “what will ye play for the Mayor’s play, sir?”

“I don’t know,” replied Carew, carelessly; “it will all be done before I come. They will have had the free play this afternoon, so as to catch the pence of all the May-day crowd to-morrow.”

Nick stopped in the road, and his eyes filled up with tears, so quick and bitter was the disappointment. “Why,” he cried, with a tremble in his tired voice, “I thought the free play would be on the morrow—and now I have not a farthing to go in!”

“Tut, tut, thou silly lad!” laughed Carew, frankly; “am I thy friend for naught? What! let thee walk all the way to Coventry, and never see the play? Nay, on my soul! Why, Nick, I love thee, lad; and I’ll do for thee in the twinkling of an eye. Canst thou speak lines by heart? Well, then, say these few after me, and bear them in thy mind.”

And thereupon he hastily repeated some half a dozen disconnected lines in a high, reciting tone.

“Why, sir,” cried Nick, bewildered, “it is a part!”

“To be sure,” said Carew, laughing, “it is a part—and a part of a very good whole, too—a comedy by young Tom Heywood, that would make a graven image split its sides with laughing; and do thou just learn that part, good Master Skylark, and thou shalt say it in to-morrow’s play.”

“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.

People were coming and going through the gates like bees about a hive, and in the distance Nick could hear the sound of many voices, the rush of feet, wheels, and hoofs, and the shrill pipe of music. Here and there were little knots of country folk making holiday: a father and mother with a group of rosy children; a lad and his lass, spruce in new finery, and gay with bits of ribbon—merry groups that were ever changing. Gay banners flapped on tall ash staves. The suburb fields were filled with booths and tents and stalls and butts for archery. The very air seemed eager with the eve of holiday.

But what to Nick was breathless wonder was to Carew only a twice-told tale; so he pushed through the crowded thoroughfares, amid a throng that made Nick’s head spin round, and came quickly to the Blue Boar Inn.

The court was crowded to the gates with horses, travelers, and serving-men; and here and there and everywhere rushed the busy innkeeper, with a linen napkin fluttering on his arm, his cap half off, and in his hot hand a pewter flagon, from which the brown ale dripped in spatters on his fat legs as he flew.

“They’re here,” said Carew, looking shrewdly about; “for there is Gregory Goole, my groom, and Stephen Magelt, the tire-man. In with thee, Nicholas.”

He put Nick before him with a little air of patronage, and pushed him into the room.

It was a large, low chamber with heavy beams overhead, hung with leather jacks and pewter tankards. Around the walls stood rough tables, at which a medley of guests sat eating, drinking, dicing, playing at cards, and talking loudly all at once, while the tapster and the cook’s knave sped wildly about.

At a great table in the midst of the riot sat the Lord High Admiral’s players—a score or more loud-swashing gallants, richly clad in ruffs and bands, embroidered shirts, Italian doublets slashed and laced, Venetian hose, gay velvet caps with jeweled bands, and every man a poniard or a rapier at his hip. Nick felt very much like a little brown sparrow in a flock of gaudy Indian birds.

The board was loaded down with meat and drink, and some of the players were eating with forks, a new trick from the London court, which Nick had never seen before. But all the diners looked up when Carew’s face was recognized, and welcomed him with a deafening shout.

He waved his hand for silence.

“Thanks for these kind plaudits, gentle friends,” said he, with a mocking air; “I have returned.”

“Yes; we see that ye have, Gaston,” they all shouted, and laughed again.

“Ay,” said he, thrusting his hand into his pouch, “ye fled, and left me to be spoiled by the spoiler, but ye see I have left the spoiler spoiled.”

Lifting his hand triumphantly, he shook in their faces the golden chain that the burgesses of Stratford had given him, and then, laying his hand upon Nick’s shoulder, bowed to them all, and to him with courtly grace, and said: “Be known, be known, all! Gentlemen, my Lord Admiral’s Players, Master Nicholas Skylark, the sweetest singer in all the kingdom of England!”

Nick’s cheeks flushed hotly, and his eyes fell; for they all stared curiously, first at him, and then at Carew standing up behind him, and several grinned mockingly and winked in a knowing way. He stole a look at Carew; but the master-player’s face was frank and quite unmoved, so that Nick felt reassured.

“Why, sirs,” said Carew, as some began to laugh and to speak to one another covertly, “it is no jest. He hath a sweeter voice than Cyril Davy’s, the best woman’s-voice in all London town. Upon my word, it is the sweetest voice a body ever heard—outside of heaven and the holy angels!” He lowered his tone and bowed his head a little. “I’ll stake mine honour on it!”

“Hast any, Gaston?” called a jeering voice, whereat the whole room roared.

But Carew cried again in a high voice that would be heard above the noise: “Now, hark ’e; what I say is so. It is, upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour! And to-morrow ye shall see, for Master Skylark is to sing and play with us.”

When he had said that, nothing would do but Nick must sit down and eat with them; so they made a place for him and for Master Carew.

Nick bent his head and said a grace, at which some of them laughed, until Carew shook his head with a stern frown; and before he ate he bowed politely to them all, as his mother had taught him to do. They all bowed mockingly, and hilariously offered him wine, which, when he refused, they pressed upon him, until Carew stopped them, saying that he would have no more of that. As he spoke he clapped his hand upon his poniard and scowled blackly. They all laughed, but offered Nick no more wine; instead, they picked him choice morsels, and made a great deal of him, until his silly young head was quite turned, and he sat up and gave himself a few airs—not many, for Stratford was no great place in which to pick up airs.

When they had eaten they wanted Nick to sing; but again Carew interposed. “Nay,” said he; “he hath just eaten his fill, so he cannot sing. Moreover, he is no jackdaw to screech in such a cage as this. He shall not sing until to-morrow in the play.”

At this some of the leading players who held shares in the venture demurred, doubting if Nick could sing at all; but—“Hark ’e,” said Master Carew, shortly, clapping his hand upon his poniard, “I say that he can. Do ye take me?”

So they said no more; and shortly after he took Nick away, and left them over their tankards, singing uproariously.

The Blue Boar Inn had not a bed to spare, nor had the players kept a place for Carew; at which he smiled grimly, said he’d not forget it, and took lodgings for himself and Nick at the Three Tuns in the next street.

Nick spoke indeed of his mother’s cousin, with whom he had meant to stay, but the master-player protested warmly; so, little loath, and much flattered by the attentions of so great a man, Nick gave over the idea and said no more about it.

When the chamberlain had shown them to their room and they were both undressed, Nick knelt beside the bed and said a prayer, as he always did at home. Carew watched him curiously. It was quiet there, and the light dim; Nick was young, and his yellow hair was very curly. Carew could hear the faint breath murmuring through the boy’s lips as he prayed, and while he stared at the little white figure his mouth twitched in a queer way. But he tossed his head, and muttered to himself, “What, Gaston Carew, turning soft? Nay, nay. I’ll do it—on my soul, I will!” rolled into bed, and was soon fast asleep.

As for Nick, what with the excitement of the day, the dazzling fancies in his brain, his tired legs, the weird night noises in the town, and strange, tremendous dreams, he scarce could get to sleep at all; but toward morning he fell into a refreshing doze, and did not wake until the town was loud with May.

CHAPTER IX
THE MAY-DAY PLAY

It was soon afternoon. All Coventry was thronged with people keeping holiday, and at the Blue Boar a scene of wild confusion reigned.

Tap-room and hall were crowded with guests, and in the cobbled court horses innumerable stamped and whinnied. The players, with knitted brows, stalked about the quieter nooks, going over their several parts, and looking to their costumes, which were for the most part upon their backs; while the thumping and pounding of the carpenters at work upon the stage in the inn-yard were enough to drive a quiet-loving person wild.

Nick scarcely knew whether he were on his head or on his heels. The master-player would not let him eat at all after once breaking his fast, for fear it might affect his voice, and had him say his lines a hundred times until he had them pat. Then he was off, directing here, there, and everywhere, until the court was cleared of all that had no business there, and the last surreptitious small boy had been duly projected from the gates by Peter Hostler’s hobnailed boot.

“Now, Nick,” said Carew, coming up all in a gale, and throwing a sky-blue silken cloak about Nick’s shoulders, “thou’lt enter here”; and he led him to a hallway door just opposite the gates. “When Master Whitelaw, as the Duke, calls out, ‘How now, who comes?—I’ll match him for the ale!’ be quickly in and answer to thy part; and, marry, boy, don’t miss thy cues, or—tsst, thy head’s not worth a peascod!” With that he clapped his hand upon his poniard and glared into Nick’s eyes, as if to look clear through to the back of the boy’s wits. Nick heard his white teeth grind, and was all at once very much afraid of him, for he did indeed look dreadful.

So Nicholas Attwood stood by the entry door, with his heart in his throat, waiting his turn.

He could hear the pages in the courtyard outside shouting for stools for their masters, and squabbling over the best places upon the stage. Then the gates creaked, and there came a wild rush of feet and a great crying out as the ’prentices and burghers trooped into the inn-yard, pushing and crowding for places near the stage. Those who had the money bawled aloud for farthing stools. The rest stood jostling in a wrangling crowd upon the ground, while up and down a girl’s shrill voice went all the time, crying high, “Cherry ripe, cherry ripe! Who’ll buy my sweet May cherries?”

Then there was another shout, and a rattling tread of feet along the wooden balconies that ran around the walls of the inn-yard, and cries from the apprentices below: “Good-day, fair Master Harrington! Good-day, Sir Thomas Parkes! Good-day, sweet Mistress Nettleby and Master Nettleby! Good-day, good-day, good-day!” for the richer folk were coming in at twopence each, and all the galleries were full. And then he heard the baker’s boy with sugared cakes and ginger-nuts go stamping up the stairs.

The musicians in the balcony overhead were tuning up. There was a flute, a viol, a gittern, a fiddle, and a drum; and behind the curtain, just outside the door, Nick could hear the master-player’s low voice giving hasty orders to the others.

So he said his lines all over to himself, and cleared his throat. Then on a sudden a shutter opened high above the orchestra, a trumpet blared, the kettledrum crashed, and he heard a loud voice shout:

“Good citizens of Coventry, and high-born gentles all: know ye now that we, the players of the company of His Grace, Charles, Lord Howard, High Admiral of England, Ireland, Wales, Calais, and Boulogne, the marches of Normandy, Gascony, and Aquitaine, Captain-General of the Navy and the Seas of Her Gracious Majesty the Queen—”

At that the crowd in the courtyard cheered and cheered again.

“—will, with your kind permission, play forthwith the laughable comedy of ‘The Three Grey Gowns,’ by Master Thomas Heywood, in which will be spoken many good things, old and new, and a brand-new song will be sung. Now, hearken all—the play begins!”

The trumpet blared, the kettledrum crashed again, and as a sudden hush fell over the throng without Nick heard the voices of the players going on.

It was a broad farce, full of loud jests and nonsense, a great thwacking of sticks and tumbling about; and Nick, with his eye to the crack of the door, listened with all his ears for his cue, far too excited even to think of laughing at the rough jokes, though the crowd in the inn-yard roared till they held their sides.

Carew came hurrying up, with an anxious look in his restless eyes.

“Ready, Nicholas!” said he, sharply, taking Nick by the arm and lifting the latch. “Go straight down front now as I told thee—mind thy cues—speak boldly—sing as thou didst sing for me—and if thou wouldst not break mine heart, do not fail me now! I have staked it all upon thee here—and we must win!”

“How now, who comes?” Nick heard a loud voice call outside—the door-latch clicked behind him—he was out in the open air and down the stage before he quite knew where he was.

The stage was built against the wall just opposite the gates. It was but a temporary platform of planks laid upon trestles. One side of it was against the wall, and around the three other sides the crowd was packed close to the platform rail.

At the ends, upon the boards, several wealthy gallants sat on high, three-legged stools, within arm’s reach of the players acting there. The courtyard was a sea of heads, and the balconies were filled with gentlefolk in holiday attire, eating cakes and chaffing gaily at the play. All was one bewildered cloud of staring eyes to Nick, and the only thing which he was sure he saw was the painted sign that hung upon the curtain at the rear, which in the lack of other scenery announced in large red print: “This is a Room in Master Jonah Jackdawe’s House.”

And then he heard the last quick words, “I’ll match him for the ale!” and started on his lines.

It was not that he said so ill what little he had to say, but that his voice was homelike and familiar in its sound, one of their own, with no amazing London accent to the words—just the speech of every-day, the sort that they all knew.

First, some one in the yard laughed out—a shock-headed ironmonger’s apprentice, “Whoy, bullies, there be hayseed in his hair. ’Tis took off pasture over-soon. I fecks! they’ve plucked him green!”

There was a hoarse, exasperating laugh. Nick hesitated in his lines. The player at his back tried to prompt him, but only made the matter worse, and behind the green curtain at the door a hand went “clap” upon a dagger-hilt. The play lagged, and the crowd began to jeer. Nick’s heart was full of fear and of angry shame that he had dared to try. Then all at once there came a brief pause, in which he vaguely realized that no one spoke. The man behind him thrust him forward, and whispering wrathfully, “Quick, quick—sing up, thou little fool!” stepped back and left him there alone.

A viol overhead took up the time, the gittern struck a few sharp notes. This unexpected music stopped the noise, and all was still. Nick thought of his mother’s voice singing on a summer’s evening among the hollyhocks, and as the viol’s droning died away he drew a deep breath and began to sing the words of “Heywood’s newest song”:

“Pack, clouds, away, and welcome, day;
With night we banish sorrow;
Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft,
To give my love good-morrow!”

It was only a part of a madrigal, the air to which they had fitted the words,—the same air that Nick had sung in the woods,—a thing scarce meant ever to be sung alone, a simple strain, a few plain notes, and at the close one brief, queer, warbling trill like a bird’s wild song, that rose and fell and rose again like a silver ripple.

The instruments were still; the fresh young voice came out alone, and it was done so soon that Nick hardly knew that he had sung at all. For a moment no one seemed to breathe. Then there was a very great noise, and all the court seemed hurling at him. A man upon the stage sprang to his feet. What they were going to do to him Nick did not know. He gave a frightened cry, and ran past the green curtain, through the open door, and into the master-player’s excited arms.

“Quick, quick!” cried Carew. “Go back, go back! There, hark!—dost not hear them call? Quick, out again—they call thee back!” With that he thrust Nick through the door. The man upon the stage came up, slipped something into his hand—Nick, all bewildered, knew not what; and there he stood, quite stupefied, not knowing what to do. Then Carew came out hastily and led him down the stage, bowing, and pressing his hand to his heart, and smiling like a summer sunrise; so that Nick, seeing this, did the same, and bowed as neatly as he could; though, to be sure, his was only a simple, country-bred bow, and no such ceremonious to-do as Master Carew’s courtly London obeisance.

Every one was standing up and shouting so that not a soul could hear his ears, until the ironmonger’s apprentice bellowed above the rest; “Whoy, bullies!” he shouted, amid a chorus of cheers and laughter, “didn’t I say ’twas catched out in the fields—it be a skylark, sure enough! Come, Muster Skylark, sing that song again, an’ thou shalt ha’ my brand-new cap!”

Then many voices cried out together, “Sing it again! The Skylark—the Skylark!”

Nick looked up, startled. “Why, Master Carew,” said he, with a tremble in his voice, “do they mean me ?”

Carew put one hand beneath Nick’s chin and turned his face up, smiling. The master-player’s cheeks were flushed with triumph, and his dark eyes danced with pride. “Ay, Nicholas Skylark; ’tis thou they mean.”

The viol and the music came again from overhead, and when they ceased Nick sang the little song once more. And when the master-player had taken him outside, and the play was over, some fine ladies came and kissed him, to his great confusion; for no one but his mother or his kin had ever done so before, and these had much perfume about them, musk and rose-attar, so that they smelled like rose-mallows in July. The players of the Lord Admiral’s company were going about shaking hands with Carew and with each other as if they had not met for years, and slapping one another upon the back; and one came over, a tall, solemn, black-haired man, he who had written the song, and stood with his feet apart and stared at Nick, but spoke never a word, which Nick thought was very singular. But as he turned away he said, with a world of pity in his voice, “And I have writ two hundred plays, yet never saw thy like. Lad, lad, thou art a jewel in a wild swine’s snout!” which Nick did not understand at all; nor why Master Carew said so sharply, “Come, Heywood, hold thy blabbing tongue; we are all in the same sty.”

“Speak for thyself, Gat Carew!” answered Master Heywood, firmly. “I’ll have no hand in this affair, I tell thee once for all!”

Master Carew flushed queerly and bit his lip, and, turning hastily away, took Nick to walk about the town. Nick then, for the first time, looked into his hand to see what the man upon the stage had given him. It was a gold rose-noble.

CHAPTER X
AFTER THE PLAY

Through the high streets of the third city of the realm Master Gaston Carew strode as if he were a very king, and Coventry his kingdom.

There was music everywhere,—of pipers and fiddlers, drums, tabrets, flutes, and horns,—and there were dancing bears upon the corners, with minstrels, jugglers, chapmen crying their singsong wares, and such a mighty hurly-burly as Nick had never seen before. And wherever there was a wonder to be seen, Carew had Nick see it, though it cost a penny a peep, and lifted him to watch the fencing and quarter-staff play in the market-place. And at one of the gay booths he bought gilt ginger-nuts and caraway cakes with currants on the top, and gave them all to Nick, who thanked him kindly, but said, if Master Carew pleased, he’d rather have his supper, for he was very hungry.

“Why, to be sure,” said Carew, and tossed a silver penny for a scramble to the crowd; “thou shalt have the finest supper in the town.”

Whereupon, bowing to all the great folk they met, and being bowed to most politely in return, they came to the Three Tuns.

Stared at by a hundred curious eyes, made way for everywhere, and followed by wondering exclamations of envy, it was little wonder that Nick, a simple country lad, at last began to think that there was not in all the world another gentleman so grand as Master Gaston Carew, and also to have a pleasant notion that Nicholas Attwood was no bad fellow himself.

The lordly innkeeper came smirking and bobbing obsequiously about, with his freshest towel on his arm, and took the master-player’s order as a dog would take a bone.

“Here, sirrah,” said Carew, haughtily; “fetch us some repast, I care not what, so it be wholesome food—a green Banbury cheese, some simnel bread and oat-cakes; a pudding, hark ’e, sweet and full of plums, with honey and a pasty—a meat pasty, marry, a pasty made of fat and toothsome eels; and moreover, fellow, ale to wash it down—none of thy penny ale, mind ye, too weak to run out of the spigot, but snapping good brew—dost take me?—with beef and mustard, tripe, herring, and a good fat capon broiled to a turn!”

The innkeeper gaped like a fish.

“How now, sirrah? Dost think I cannot pay thy score?” quoth Carew, sharply.

“Nay, nay,” stammered the host; “but, sir, where—where will ye put it all without bursting into bits?”

“Be off with thee!” cried Carew, sharply. “That is my affair. Nay, Nick,” said he, laughing at the boy’s, astonished look; “we shall not burst. What we do not have to-night we’ll have in the morning. ’Tis the way with these inns,—to feed the early birds with scraps,—so the more we leave from supper the more we’ll have for breakfast. And thou wilt need a good breakfast to ride on all day long.”

“Ride?” exclaimed Nick. “Why, sir, I was minded to walk back to Stratford, and keep my gold rose-noble whole.”

“Walk?” cried the master-player, scornfully. “Thou, with thy golden throat? Nay, Nicholas, thou shalt ride to-morrow like a very king, if I have to pay for the horse myself, twelvepence the day!” and with that he began chuckling as if it were a joke.

But Nick stood up, and, bowing, thanked him gratefully; at which the master-player went from chuckling to laughing, and leered at Nick so oddly that the boy would have thought him tipsy, save that there had been nothing yet to drink. And a queer sense of uneasiness came creeping over him as he watched the master-player’s eyes opening and shutting, opening and shutting, so that one moment he seemed to be staring and the next almost asleep; though all the while his keen, dark eyes peered out from between the lids like old dog-foxes from their holes, looking Nick over from head to foot, and from foot to head again, as if measuring him with an ellwand.

When the supper came, filling the whole table and the sideboard too, Nick arose to serve the meat as he was used at home; but, “Nay, Nicholas Skylark, my honey-throat,” cried Carew, “sit thee down! Thou wait on me—thou songster of the silver tongue? Nay, nay, sweetheart; the knave shall wait on thee, or I’ll wait on thee myself—I will, upon my word! Why, Nick, I tell thee I love thee, and dost think I’d let thee wait or walk? nay, nay, thou’lt ride to-morrow like a king, and have all Stratford wait for thee!” At this he chuckled so that he almost choked upon a mouthful of bread and meat.

“Canst ride, Nicholas?”

“Fairly, sir.”

“Fairly? Fie, modesty! I warrant thou canst ride like a very centaur. What sayest—I’ll ride a ten-mile race with thee to-morrow as we go?”

“Why,” cried Nick, “are ye going back to Stratford to play, after all?”

“To Stratford? Nay; not for a bushel of good gold Harry shovel-boards! Bah! That town is ratsbane and nightshade in my mouth! Nay, we’ll not go back to Stratford town; but we shall ride a piece with thee, Nicholas,—we shall ride a piece with thee.”

Chuckling again to himself, he fell to upon the pasty and said no more.

Nick held his peace, as he was taught to do unless first spoken to; but he could not help thinking that stage-players, and master-players in particular, were very queer folk.

CHAPTER XI
DISOWNED

Night came down on Stratford town that last sweet April day, and the pastured kine came lowing home. Supper-time passed, and the cool stars came twinkling out; but still Nick Attwood did not come.

“He hath stayed to sleep with Robin, Master Burgess Getley’s son,” said Mistress Attwood, standing in the door, and staring out into the dusk; “he is often lonely here.”

“He should ha’ telled thee on it, then,” said Simon Attwood. “This be no way to do. I’ve a mind to put him to a trade.”

“Nay, Simon,” protested his wife; “he may be careless,—he is young yet,—but Nicholas is a good lad. Let him have his schooling out—he’ll be the better for it.”

“Then let him show it as he goes along,” said Attwood, grimly, as he blew the candle out.

But May-day dawned; mid-morning came, mid-afternoon, then supper-time again; and supper-time crept into dusk—and still no Nicholas Attwood.

His mother grew uneasy; but his father only growled: “We’ll reckon up when he cometh home. Master Brunswood tells me he was na at the school the whole day yesterday—and he be feared to show his face. I’ll fear him with a bit of birch!”

“Do na be too hard with the lad, Simon,” pleaded Mistress Attwood. “Who knows what hath happened to him? He must be hurt, or he’d ’a’ come home to his mother”—and she began to wring her hands. “He may ha’ fallen from a tree, and lieth all alone out on the hill—or, Simon, the Avon! Thou dost na think our lad be drowned?”

“Fudge!” said Simon Attwood. “Born to hang’ll never drown!”

When, however, the next day crept around and still his son did not come home, a doubt stole into the tanner’s own heart. Yet when his wife was for starting out to seek some tidings of the boy, he stopped her wrathfully.

“Nay, Margaret,” said he; “thou shalt na go traipsing around the town like a hen wi’ but one chick. I wull na ha’ thee made a laughing-stock by all the fools in Stratford.”

But as the third day rolled around, about the middle of the afternoon the tanner himself sneaked out at the back door of his tannery in Southam’s lane, and went up into the town.

“Robin Getley,” he asked at the guildschool door, “was my son wi’ thee overnight?”

“Nay, Master Attwood. Has he not come back?”

“Come back? From where?”

Robin hung his head.

“From, where?” demanded the tanner. “Come, boy!”

“From Coventry,” said Robin, knowing that the truth would out at last, anyway.

“He went to see the players, sir,” spoke up Hal Saddler, briskly, not heeding Robin’s stealthy kick. “He said he’d bide wi’ Diccon Haggard overnight; an’ he said he wished he were a master-player himself, sir, too.”

Simon Attwood, frowning blackly, hurried on. It was Nick, then, whom he had seen crossing the market-square.

Wat Raven, who swept Clopton bridge, had seen two boys go up the Warwick road. “One were thy Nick, Muster Attwood,” said he, thumping the dirt from his broom across the coping-stone, “and the other were Dawson’s Hodge.”

The angry tanner turned again into the market-place. His brows were knit, and his eyes were hot, yet his step was heavy and slow. Above all things, he hated disobedience, yet in his surly way he loved his only son; and far worse than disobedience, he hated that his son should disobey.

Astride a beam in front of Master Thompson’s house sat Roger Dawson. Simon Attwood took him by the collar none too gently.

“Here, leave be!” choked Roger, wriggling hard; but the tanner’s grip was like iron. “Wert thou in Coventry May-day?” he asked sternly.

“Nay, that I was na,” sputtered Hodge. “A plague on Coventry!”

“Do na lie to me—thou wert there wi’ my son Nicholas.”

“I was na,” snarled Hodge. “Nick Attwood threshed me in the Warrick road; an’ I be no dawg to follow at the heels o’ folks as threshes me.”

“Where be he, then?” demanded Attwood, with a sudden sinking at heart in spite of his wrath.

“How should I know? A went away wi’ a play-actoring fellow in a plum-colored cloak; and play-actoring fellow said a loved him like a’s own, and patted a’s back, and flung me hard names, like stones at a lost dawg. Now le’ me go, Muster Attwood—cross my heart, ’tis all I know!”

“Is’t Nicholas ye seek, Master Attwood?” asked Tom Carpenter, turning from his fleurs-de-lis. “Why, sir, he’s gone got famous, sir. I was in Coventry mysel’ May-day; and—why, sir, Nick was all the talk! He sang there at the Blue Boar inn-yard with the Lord High Admiral’s players, and took a part in the play; and, sir, ye’d scarce believe me, but the people went just daft to hear him sing, sir.”

Simon Attwood heard no more. He walked down High street in a daze. With hard men bitter blows strike doubly deep. He stopped before the guildhall school. The clock struck five; each iron clang seemed beating upon his heart. He raised his hand as if to shut the clangor out, and then his face grew stern and hard. “He hath gone his own wilful way,” said he, bitterly. “Let him follow it to the end.”

Mistress Attwood came to meet him, running in the garden-path. “Nicholas?” was all that she could say.

“Never speak to me of him, again,” he said, and passed her by into the house. “He hath gone away with a pack of stage-playing rascals and vagabonds, whither no man knoweth.”

Taking the heavy Bible down from the shelf, he lit a rushlight at the fire, although it was still broad daylight, and sat there with the great book open in his lap until the sun went down and the chill night wind crept in along the floor; yet he could not read a single word and never turned a page.

CHAPTER XII
A STRANGE RIDE

Rat-a-tat-tat at the first dim hint of dawn went the chamberlain’s knuckles upon the door. To Nick it seemed scarce midnight yet, so sound had been his sleep.

Master Carew having gotten into his high-topped riding-boots with a great puffing and tugging, they washed their faces at the inn-yard pump by the smoky light of the hostler’s lantern, and then in a subdued, half-wakened way made a hearty breakfast off the fragments of the last night’s feast. Part of the remaining cold meat, cheese, and cakes Carew stowed in his leather pouch. The rest he left in the lap of a beggar sleeping beside the door.

The street was dim with a chilly fog, through which a few pale stars still struggled overhead. The houses were all shut and barred; nobody was abroad, and the night-watch slept in comfortable doorways here and there, with lolling heads and lanterns long gone out. As they came along the crooked street, a stray cat scurried away with scared green eyes, and a kenneled hound set up a lonesome howl.

But the Blue Boar Inn was stirring like an ant-hill, with firefly lanterns flitting up and down, and a cheery glow about the open door. The horses of the company, scrubbed unreasonably clean, snorted and stamped in little bridled clumps about the courtyard, and the stable-boys, not scrubbed at all, clanked at the pump or shook out wrinkled saddle-cloths with most prodigious yawns. The grooms were buckling up the packs; the chamberlain and sleepy-lidded maids stood at the door, waiting their fare-well farthings.

Some of the company yawned in the tap-room; some yawned out of doors with steaming stirrup-cup in hand; and some came yawning down the stairways pulling on their riding-cloaks, booted, spurred, and ready for a long day’s ride.

“Good-morrow, sirs,” said Carew, heartily. “Good-morrow, sir, to you,” said they, and all came over to speak to Nicholas in a very kindly way; and one or two patted him on the cheek and walked away speaking in under-tones among themselves, keeping one eye on Carew all the while. And Master Tom Heywood, the play-writer, came out with a great slice of fresh wheat-bread, thick with butter and dripping with yellow honey, and gave it to Nick; and stood there silently with a very queer expression watching him eat it, until Carew’s groom led up a stout hackney and a small roan palfrey to the block, and the master-player, crying impatiently, “Up with thee, Nick; we must be ambling!” sprang into the saddle of the gray.

The sleepy inn-folk roused a bit to send a cheery volley of, “Fare ye well, sirs; come again,” after the departing players, and the long cavalcade cantered briskly out of the inn-yard, in double rank, with a great clinking of bridle-chains and a drifting odor of wet leather and heavy perfume.

Nick sat very erect and rode his best, feeling like some errant knight of the great Round Table, ready to right the whole world’s wrongs. “But what about the horse?” said he. “We can na keep him in Stratford, sir.”

“Oh, that’s all seen to,” said the master-player. “’Tis to be sent back by the weekly carrier.”

“And where do I turn into the Stratford road, sir?” asked Nick, as the players clattered down the cobbled street in a cloud of mist that steamed up so thickly from the stones that the horses seemed to have no legs, but to float like boats.

“Some distance further on,” replied Carew, carelessly. “’Tis not the way we came that thou shalt ride to-day; that is t’ other end of town, and the gate not open yet. But the longest way round is the shortest way home, so let’s be spurring on.”

At the corner of the street a cross and sleepy cobbler was strapping a dirty urchin, who bellowed lustily. Nick winced.

“Hollo!” cried Carew. “What’s to do?”

“Why, sir,” said Nick, ruefully, “father will thresh me well this night.”

“Nay,” said Carew, in a quite decided tone; “that he’ll not, I promise thee!”—and as he spoke he chuckled softly to himself.

The man before them turned suddenly around and grinned queerly; but, catching the master-player’s eye, whipped his head about like a weather-vane in a gale, and cantered on.

As they came down the narrow street the watchmen were just swinging wide the city gates, and gave a cheer to speed the parting guests, who gave a rouse in turn, and were soon lost to sight in the mist which hid the valley in a great gray sea.

“How shall I know where to turn off, sir?” asked Nick, a little anxiously. “’Tis all alike.”

“I’ll tell thee,” said the master-player; “rest thee easy on that score. I know the road thou art to ride much better than thou dost thyself.”

He smiled quite frankly as he spoke, and Nick could not help wondering why the man before them again turned around and eyed him with that sneaking grin.

He did not like the fellow’s looks. He had scowling black brows, hair cut as close as if the rats had gnawed it off, a pair of ill-shaped bandy-legs, a wide, unwholesome slit of a mouth, and a nose like a raspberry tart. His whole appearance was servile and mean, and there was a sly malice in his furtive eyes. Besides that, and a thing which strangely fascinated Nick’s gaze, there was a hole through the gristle of his right ear, scarred about as if it had been burned, and through this hole the fellow had tied a bow of crimson ribbon, like a butterfly alighted upon his ear.

“A pretty fellow!” said Carew, with a shrug. “He’ll be hard put to dodge the hangman yet; but he’s a right good fellow in his way, and he has served me—he has served me.”

The first loud burst of talk had ceased, and all rode silently along. The air was chill, and Nick was grateful for the cloak that Carew threw around him. There was no sound but the beat of many hoofs in the dust-padded road, and now and then the crowing of a cock somewhere within the cloaking fog. The stars were gone, and the sky was lighting up; and all at once, as they rode, the clouds ahead, low down and to the right, broke raggedly away and let a red sun-gleam shoot through across the mist, bathing the riders in dazzling rosy light.

“Why, Master Carew,” cried Nick, no little startled, “there comes the sun, almost ahead! We’re riding east-ward, sir. We’ve missed the road!”

“Oh, no, we’ve not,” said Carew; “nothing of the sort.” His tone was so peremptory and sharp that Nick said nothing more, but rode along, vaguely wishing that he was already clattering down Stratford High street.

The clouds scattered as the sun came up, and the morning haze drifted away into cool dales, and floated off upon the breeze. And as the world woke up the players wakened too, and rode gaily along, laughing, singing, and chattering together, until Nick thought he had never in all his life before seen such a jolly fellowship. His heart was blithe as he reined his curveting palfrey by the master-player’s side, and watched the sunlight dance and sparkle along the dashing line from dagger-hilts and jeweled clasps, and the mist-lank plumes curl crisp again in the warmth of the rising sun.

The master-player, too, had a graceful, taking way of being half familiar with the lad; he was besides a marvelous teller of wonderful tales, and whiled away the time with jests and quips, mile after mile, till Nick forgot both road and time, and laughed until his sides were sore.

Yet slowly, as they rode along, it came home to him with the passing of the land that this was country new and strange. So he began to take notice of this and that beside the way; and as he noticed he began to grow uneasy. Thrice had he come to Coventry, but surely never by a road like this.

Yet still the master-player joked and laughed and pleased the boy with little things—until Nick laughed too, and let the matter go. At last, however, when they had ridden fully an hour, they passed a moss-grown abbey on the left-hand side of the road, a strange old place that Nick could not recall.

“Are ye sure, Master Carew,” he ventured timidly—

At that the master-player took on so offended an air that Nick was sorry he had spoken.

“Why, now,” said Carew, haughtily, “if thou dost know the roads of England better than I, who have trudged and ridden them all these years, I’ll sit me down and learn of thee how to follow mine own nose. I tell thee I know the road thou art to ride this day better than thou dost thyself; and I’ll see to it that thou dost come without fail to the very place that thou art going. I will, upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour!”

But in spite of this assurance, and in spite of the master-player’s ceaseless stream of gaiety and marvels, Nick became more and more uneasy. The road was certainly growing stranger and stranger as they passed. The company, too, instead of ambling leisurely along, as they had done at first, were now spurring ahead at a good round gallop, in answer to a shrill whistle from the master-player; and the horses were wet with sweat.

They passed a country village, too, that was quite unknown to Nick, and a great highway running to the north that he had never seen before; and when they had ridden for about two hours, the road swerved southward to a shining ford, and on a little tableland beyond he saw the gables of a town he did not know.

“Why, Master Carew!” he cried out, half indignant, half perplexed, and thoroughly frightened, “this is na the Stratford road at all. I’m going back. I will na ride another mile!”

As he spoke he wheeled the roan sharply out of the clattering file with a slash of the rein across the withers, and started back along the hill past the rest of the company, who came thumping down behind.

“Stop him! Stop him there!” he heard the master-player shout, and there was something in the fierce, high voice that turned his whole heart sick. What right had they to stop him? This was not the Stratford road; he was certain of that now. But “Stop him—stop him there!” he heard the master-player call, and a wild, unreasoning fright came over him. He dug his heels into the palfrey’s heaving sides and urged him up the hill through the cloud of dust that came rolling down behind the horsemen. The hindmost riders had plunged into those before, and the whole array was struggling, shouting, and wrangling in wild disorder; but out of the flurry Carew and the bandy-legged man with the ribbon in his ear spurred furiously and came galloping after him at the top of their speed.

Nick cried out, and beat the palfrey with the rein; but the chase was short. They overtook him as he topped the hill, one on each side, and, leaning over, Carew snatched the bridle from his hand. “Thou little imp!” he panted, as he turned the roan around and started down the hill. “Don’t try this on again!”

“Oh, Master Carew,” gasped Nick, “what are ye going to do wi’ me?”

“Do with thee?” cried the master-player, savagely clapping his hand upon his poniard,—“why, I am going to do with thee just whatever I please. Dost hear? And, hark ’e, this sort of caper doth not please me at all; and by the whistle of the Lord High Admiral, if thou triest it on again, thy life is not worth a rotten peascod!”

Unbuckling the rein, he tossed one end to the bandy-legged man, and holding the other in his own hand, with Nick riding helplessly between them, they trotted down the hill again, took their old places in the ranks, and spattered through the shallow ford.

The bandy-legged man had pulled a dagger from beneath his coat, and held it under his bridle-rein, shining through the horse’s mane as they dashed through the still half-sleeping town. Nick was speechless with terror.

Beyond the town’s end they turned sharply to the northeast, galloping steadily onward for what was perhaps half an hour, though to Nick it seemed a forever, until they came out into a great highway running southward. “Watling street!” he heard the man behind him say, and knew that they were in the old Roman road that stretched from London to the north. Still they were galloping, though long strings dribbled from the horses’ mouths, and the saddle-leathers dripped with foam. One or two looked back at him and bit their lips; but Carew’s eyes were hot and fierce, and his hand was on his poniard. The rest, after a curious glance or two, shrugged their shoulders carelessly and galloped on: this affair was Master Gaston Carew’s business, not theirs.

Until high noon they hurried on with neither stop nor stay. Then they came to a place where a little brook sang through the grass by the roadside in a shady nook beneath some mighty oaks, and there the master-player whistled for a halt, to give the horses breath and rest, and to water them at the brook-pools. Some of the players sauntered up and down to stretch their tired legs, munching meat and bread; and some lay down upon the grass and slept a little. Two of them came, offering Nick some cakes and cheese; but he was crying hard and would neither eat nor drink, though Carew urged him earnestly. Then Master Tom Heywood, with an ugly look at Carew, and without so much as an if-ye-please or a by-your-leave, led Nick up the brook to a spot where it had not been muddied by the horses, and made him wash his dusty face and hands in the cool water and dampen his hair, though he complied as if in a daze. And indeed Nick rode on through the long afternoon, clinging helplessly to the pommel of his saddle, sobbing bitterly until for very weariness he could no longer sob.

It was after nine o’clock that night when they rode into Towcester, and all that was to be seen was a butcher’s boy carting garbage out of the town and whistling to keep his courage up. The watch had long since gone to sleep about the silent streets, but a dim light burned in the tap-room of the Old Brown Cow; and there the players rested for the night.

CHAPTER XIII
A DASH FOR FREEDOM

Nick awoke from a heavy, burning sleep, aching from head to foot. The master-player, up and dressed, stood by the window, scowling grimly out into the ashy dawn. Nick made haste to rise, but could not stifle a sharp cry of pain as he staggered to his feet, he was so racked and sore with riding.

At the boy’s smothered cry Carew turned, and his dark face softened with a sudden look of pity and concern. “Why, Nick, my lad,” he cried, and hurried to his side, “this is too bad, indeed!” and without more words took him gently in his arms and carried him down to the courtyard well, where he bathed him softly from neck to heel in the cold, refreshing water, and wiped him with a soft, clean towel as tenderly as if he had been the lad’s own mother. And having dried him thoroughly, he rubbed him with a waxy ointment that smelled of henbane and poppies, until the aching was almost gone. So soft and so kind was he withal that Nick took heart after a little and asked timidly, “And ye will let me go home to-day, sir, will ye not?”

The master-player frowned.

“Please, Master Carew, let me go.”

“Come, come,” said Carew, impatiently, “enough of this!” and stamped his foot.

“But, oh, Master Carew,” pleaded Nick, with a sob in his throat, “my mother’s heart will surely break if I do na come home!”

Carew started, and his mouth twitched queerly. “Enough, I say—enough!” he cried. “I will not hear; I’ll have no more. I tell thee hold thy tongue—be dumb! I’ll not have ears—thou shalt not speak! Dost hear?” He dashed the towel to the ground. “I bid thee hold thy tongue.”

Nick hid his face between his hands, and leaned against the rough stone wall, a naked, shivering, wretched little chap indeed. “Oh, mother, mother, mother!” he sobbed pitifully.

A singular expression came over the master-player’s face. “I will not hear—I tell thee I will not hear!” he choked, and, turning suddenly away, he fell upon the sleepy hostler, who was drawing water at the well, and rated him outrageously, to that astounded worthy’s great amazement.

Nick crept into his clothes, and stole away to the kitchen door. There was a red-faced woman there who bade him not to cry—’t would soon be breakfast-time. Nick thought he could not eat at all; but when the savory smell crept out and filled the chilly air, his poor little empty stomach would not be denied, and he ate heartily. Master Heywood sat beside him and gave him the choicest bits from his own trencher; and Carew himself, seeing that he ate, looked strangely pleased, and ordered him a tiny mutton-pie, well spiced. Nick pushed it back indignantly; but Heywood took the pie and cut it open, saying quietly: “Come, lad, the good God made the sheep that is in this pie, not Gaston Carew. Eat it—come, ’twill do thee good!” and saw him finish the last crumb.

From Towcester south through Northamptonshire is a pretty country of rolling hills and undulating hollows, ribboned with pebbly rivers, and dotted with fair parks and tofts of ash and elm and oak. Straggling villages now and then were threaded on the road like beads upon a string, and here and there the air was damp and misty from the grassy fens along some winding stream.

It was against nature that a healthy, growing lad should be so much cast down as not to see and be interested in the strange, new, passing world of things about him; and little by little Nick roused from his wretchedness and began to look about him. And a wonder grew within his brain: why had they stolen him?—where were they taking him?—what would they do with him there?—or would they soon let him go again?

Every yellow cloud of dust arising far ahead along the road wrought up his hopes to a Bluebeard pitch, as regularly to fall. First came a cast-off soldier from the war in the Netherlands, rakishly forlorn, his breastplate full of rusty dents, his wild hair worn by his steel cap, swaggering along on a sorry hack with an old belt full of pistolets, and his long sword thumping Rosinante’s ribs. Then a peddling chapman, with a dust-white pack and a cunning Hebrew look, limped by, sulkily doffing his greasy hat. Two sturdy Midland journeymen, in search of southern handicraft, trudged down with tool-bags over their shoulders and stout oak staves in hand. Of wretched beggars and tattered rogues there was an endless string. But of any help no sign.

Here and there, like a moving dot, a ploughman turned a belated furrow; or a sweating ditcher leaned upon his reluctant spade and longed for night; or a shepherd, quite as silly as his sheep, gawked up the morning hills. But not a sign of help for Nick.

Once, passing through a little town, he raised a sudden cry of “Help! Help—they be stealing me away!” But at that the master-player and the bandy-legged man waved their hands and set up such a shout that his shrill outcry was not even heard. And the simple country bumpkins, standing in a grinning row like so many Old Aunt Sallys at a fair, pulled off their caps and bowed, thinking it some company of great lords, and fetched a clownish cheer as the players galloped by.

Then the hot dust got into Nick’s throat, and he began to cough. Carew started with a look of alarm. “Come, come, Nicholas, this will never do—never do in the world; thou’lt spoil thy voice.”

“I do na care,” said Nick.

“But I do,” said Carew, sharply. “So we’ll have no more of it!” and he clapped his hand upon his poniard. “But, nay—nay, lad, I did not mean to threaten thee—’tis but a jest. Come, smooth thy throat, and do not shriek no more. We play in old St. Albans town to-night, and thou art to sing thy song for us again.”

Nick pressed his lips tight shut and shook his head. He would not sing for them again.

“Come, Nick, I’ve promised Tom Heywood that thou shouldst sing his song; and, lad, there’s no one left in all the land to sing it if thou’lt not. Tom doth dearly love thee, lad—why, sure, thou hast seen that! And, Nick, I’ve promised all the company that thou wouldst sing Tom’s song with us to-night. ’Twill break their hearts if thou wilt not. Come, Nick, thou’lt sing it for us all, and set old Albans town afire!” said Carew, pleadingly.

Nick shook his head.

“Come, Nick,” said Carew, coaxingly, “we must hear that sweet voice of thine in Albans town to-night. Come, there’s a dear, good lad, and give us just one little song! Come, act the man and sing, as thou alone in all the world canst sing, in Albans town this night; and on my word, and on the remnant of mine honour, I’ll leave thee go back to Stratford town to-morrow morning!”

“To Stratford—to-morrow?” stammered Nick, with a glad, incredulous cry, while his heart leaped up within him.

“Ay, verily; upon my faith as the fine fag-end of a very proper gentleman—thou shalt go back to Stratford town to-morrow if thou wilt but do thy turn with us to-night.”

Nick caught the master-player’s arm as they rode along, almost crying for very joy: “Oh, that I will, sir—and do my very best. And, oh, Master Carew, I ha’ thought so ill o’ thee! Forgive me, sir; I did na know thee well.”

Carew winced. Hastily throwing the rein to Nick, he left him to master his own array.

As for Nick, as happy as a lark he learned his new lines as he rode along, Master Carew saying them over to him from the manuscript and over again until he made not a single mistake; and was at great pains to teach him the latest fashionable London way of pronouncing all the words, and of emphasizing his set phrases. “Nay, nay,” he would cry laughingly, “not that way, lad; but this: ‘Good my lord, I bring a letter from the duke’—as if thou hadst indeed a letter, see, and not an empty fist. And when thou dost hand it to him, do it thus—and not as if thou wert about to stab him in the paunch with a cheese-knife!” And at the end he clapped him upon the back and said again and again that he loved him, that he was a dear, sweet figure of a lad, and that his voice among the rest of England’s singers, was like clear honey dropping into a pot of grease.

But it is a long ride from Towcester to St. Albans town in Herts, though the road runs through a pleasant, billowy land of oak-walled lanes, wide pastures, and quiet parks; and the steady jog, jog of the little roan began to rack Nick’s tired bones before the day was done.

Yet when they marched into the quaint old town to the blare of trumpets and the crash of the kettledrums, all the long line gaudy with the coat-armour of the Lord High Admiral beneath their flaunting banners, and the horses pricked up their ears and arched their necks and pranced along the crowded streets, Nick, stared at by all the good townsfolk, could not help feeling a thrill of pride that he was one of the great company of players, and sat up very straight and held his head up haughtily as Master Carew did, and bore himself with as lordly an air as he knew how.

But when morning came, and he danced blithely back from washing himself at the horse-trough, all ready to start for home, he found the little roan cross-bridled as before between the master-player’s gray and the bandy-legged fellow’s sorrel mare.

“What, there! cast him loose,” said he to the horse-boy who held the three. “I am not going on with the players—I’m to go back to Stratford.”

“Then ye go afoot,” coolly rejoined the other, grinning, “for the hoss goeth on wi’ the rest.”

“What is this, Master Carew?” cried Nick, indignantly, bursting into the tap-room, where the players were at ale. “They will na let me have the horse, sir. Am I to walk the whole way back to Stratford town?”

“To Stratford?” asked Master Carew, staring with an expression of most innocent surprise, as he set his ale-can down and turned around. “Why, thou art not going to Stratford.”

“Not going to Stratford!” gasped Nick, catching at the table with a sinking heart. “Why, sir, ye promised that I should to-day.”

“Nay, now, that I did not, Nicholas. I promised thee that thou shouldst go back to-morrow—were not those my very words!”

“Ay, that they were,” cried Nick; “and why will ye na leave me go?”

“Why, this is not to-morrow, Nick. Why, see, I cannot leave thee go to-day. Thou knowest that I said to-morrow; and this is not to-morrow—on thine honour, is it now?”

“How can I tell?” cried Nick, despairingly. “Yesterday ye said it would be, and now ye say that it is na. Ye’ve twisted it all up so that a body can na tell at all. But there is a falsehood—a wicked, black falsehood—somewhere betwixt you and me, sir; and ye know that I have na lied to you, Master Carew!”

Through the tap-room door he saw the open street and the hills beyond the town. Catching his breath, he sprang across the sill, and ran for the free fields at the top of his speed.

CHAPTER XIV
AT BAY

“After him!—stop him!—catch the rogue!” cried Carew, running out on the cobbles with his ale-can in his hand. “A shilling to the man that brings him back unharmed! No blows, nor clubs, nor stabbing, hark ’e, but catch me the knave straightway; he hath snatched a fortune from my hands!”

At that the hostler, whip in hand, and the tapster with his bit, were off as fast as their legs could carry them, bawling “Stop, thief, stop!” at the top of their lungs; and at their backs every idle varlet about the inn—grooms, stable-boys, and hangers-on—ran whooping, howling, and hallooing like wild huntsmen.

Nick’s frightened heart was in his mouth, and his breath came quick and sharp. Tap-a-tap, tap-a-tap went his feet on the cobblestones as down the long street he flew, running as he had never run before.

It seemed as if the whole town bellowed at his back; for windows creaked above his head, and doors banged wildly after him; curs from every alley-way came yelping at his heels; apprentices let go the shutter-bars, and joined in the chase; and near and nearer came the cry of “Stop, thief, stop!” and the kloppety-klop of hob-nailed shoes in wild pursuit.

The rabble filled the dark old street from wall to wall, as if a cloud of good-for-naughts had burst above the town; and far in front sped one small, curly-headed lad, running like a frightened fawn. He had lost his cap, and his breath came short, half sobbing in his throat as the sound of footfalls gained upon his ear; but even yet he might have beaten them all and reached the open fields but for the dirt and garbage in the street. Three times he slipped upon a rancid bacon-rind and almost fell; and the third time, as he plunged across the oozing drain, a dog dashed right between his feet.

He staggered, nearly fell, threw out his hand against the house and saved himself; but as he started on again he saw the town-watch, wakened by the uproar, standing with their long staves at the end of the street, barring the way.

The door of a smithy stood open just ahead, with forge-fires glowing and the hammer ringing on the anvil. Nick darted in, past the horses, hostlers, and blacksmith’s boys, and caught at the leather apron of the sturdy smith himself.

“Hoo, man, what a dickens!” snorted he, dropping the red-hot shoe on which he was at work, and staring like a startled ox at the panting little fugitive.

“Do na leave them take me!” panted Nick. “They ha’ stolen me away from Stratford town and will na leave me go!”

At that Will Hostler bolted in, red-faced and scant of wind, “Thou young rascal,” quoth he, “I have thee now! Come out o’ that!” and he tried to take Nick by the collar.

“So-oftly, so-oftly!” rumbled the smith, tweaking up the glowing shoe in his great pincers, and sweeping a sputtering half-circle in front of the cowering lad. “Droive slow through the cro-owd! What hath youngster here did no-ow?”

“He hath stolen a fortune from his master at the Three Lions—and the shilling for him’s mine!”

“Hath stealed a fortune? Whoy, huttlety-tut!” roared the burly smith, turning ponderously upon Nick, who was dodging around him like a boy at tag around a tree. “Whoy, lad,” said he, scratching his puzzled head with his great, grimy fingers, “where hast putten it?”

All the rout and the riot now came plunging into the smithy, breathless with the chase. Master Carew himself, his ale-can still clutched in his hand, and bearing himself with a high air of dignity, followed after them, frowning.

“What?” said he, angrily, “have ye earthed the cub and cannot dig him out? Hast caught him there, fellow?”

“Ay, master, that I have!” shouted Will Hostler. “Shilling’s mine, sir.”

“Then fetch him out of this hole!” cried Carew, sniffing disdainfully at the low, smoky door.

“But he will na be fetched,” stammered the doughty Will, keeping a most respectful distance from the long black pincers and the sputtering shoe with which the farrier stolidly mowed the air round about Nick Attwood and himself.

At that the crowd set up a shout.

Carew thrust fiercely into the press, the louts and loafers giving way. “What, here! Nicholas Attwood,” said he, harshly, “come hither.”

“Do na leave him take me,” begged Nick. “He is not my master; I am not bound out apprentice—they are stealing me away from my own home, and it will break my mother’s heart.”

“Nobody breaks nobody’s hearts in old Jo-ohn Smithses sho-op,” drawled the smith, in his deep voice; “nor steals nobody, nother. We be honest-dealing folk in Albans town, an’ makes as good horse-shoes as be forged in all England”—and he went placidly on mowing the air with the glimmering shoe.

“Here, fellow, stand aside,” commanded Master Carew, haughtily. “Stand aside and let me pass!” As he spoke he clapped his hand upon his poniard with a fierce snarl, showing his white teeth like a wolf-hound.

The men about him fell back with unanimous alacrity, making out each to put himself behind the other. But the huge smith only puffed out his sooty cheeks as if to blow a fly off the next bite of cheese. “So-oftly, so-oftly, muster,” drawled he; “do na go to ruffling it here. This shop be mine, and I be free-born Englishman. I’ll stand aside for no swash-buckling rogue on my own ground. Come, now, what wilt thou o’ the lad?—and speak thee fair, good muster, or thou’lt get a dab o’ the red-hot shoe.” As he spoke he gave the black tongs an extra whirl.

CHAPTER XV
LONDON TOWN

“Come,” growled the blacksmith, gripping his tongs, “what wilt thou have o’ the lad?”

“What will I have o’ the lad?” said Master Carew, mimicking the blacksmith in a most comical way, with a wink at the crowd, as if he had never been angry at all, so quickly could he change his face—“What will I have o’ the lad?” and all the crowd laughed. “Why, bless thy gentle heart, good man, I want to turn his farthings into round gold crowns—if thou and thine infernal hot shoe do not make zanies of us all! Why, Master Smith, ’tis to London town I’d take him, and fill his hands with more silver shillings than there be cast-off shoes in thy whole shop.”

“La, now, hearken till him!” gaped the smith, staring in amazement.

“And here thou needs must up and spoil it all, because, forsooth, the silly child goes a trifle sick for home and whimpers for his minnie!”

“But the lad saith thou hast stealed him awa-ay from ’s ho-ome,” rumbled the smith, like a doubtful earthquake; “and we’ll ha’ no stealing o’ lads awa-ay from ho-ome in County Herts!”

“Nay, that we won’t!” cried one. “Hurrah, John Smith—fair play, fair play!” and there came an ugly, threatening murmur from the crowd.

“What! Fair play?” cried Master Carew, turning so sharply about, with his hand upon his poniard, that each made as if it were not he but his neighbor had growled. “Why, sirs, what if I took any one of ye out of your poverty and common clothes down into London town, horseback like a king, and had ye sing before the Queen, and play for earls, and talk with the highest dames in all the land; and fed ye well, and spoke ye fair, and lodged ye soft, and clad ye fine, and wrought the whole town on to cheer ye, and to fill your purses full of gold? What, sir,” said he, turning to the gaping farrier—“what if I promised thee to turn thine every word to a silver sixpence, and thy smutty grins to golden angels—what wouldst thou? Knock me in the head with thy dirty sledge, and bawl foul play?”

“Nay, that I’d not,” roared the burly smith, with a stupid, ox-like grin, scratching his tousled head; “I’d say, ‘Go it, bully, and a plague on him that said thee nay!’”

“And yet when I would fill this silly fellow’s jerkin full of good gold Harry shovel-boards for the simple drawing of his breath, ye bawl ‘Foul play!’”

“What, here! come out, lad,” roared the smith, with a great horse-laugh, swinging Nick forward and thwacking him jovially between the shoulders with his brawny hand; “come out, and go along o’ the master here,—’tis for thy good,—and ho-ome wull keep, I trow, till thou dost come again.”

But Nick hung back, and clung to the blacksmith’s grimy arm, crying in despair: “I will na—oh, I will na!”

“Tut, tut!” cried Master Carew. “Come, Nicholas; I mean thee well, I’ll speak thee fair, and I’ll treat thee true”—and he smiled so frankly that even Nick’s doubts almost wavered. “Come, I’ll swear it on my hilt,” said he.

The smith’s brow clouded. “Nay,” said he; “we’ll no swearing by hilts or by holies here; the bailiff will na have it, sir.”

“Good! then upon mine honour as an Englishman!” cried Carew. “What, how, bullies? Upon mine honour as an Englishman!—how is it? Here we be, all Englishmen together!” and he clapped his hand to Will Hostler’s shoulder, whereat Will stood up very straight and looked around, as if all at once he were somebody instead of somewhat less than nobody at all of any consequence. “What!—ye are all for fair play?—and I am for fair play, and good Master Smith, with his beautiful shoe, here, is for fair play! Why, sirs, my bullies, we are all for fair play; and what more can a man ask than good, downright English fair play? Nothing, say I. Fair play first, last, and all the time!” and he waved his hand. “Hurrah for downright English fair play!”

“Hurrah, hurrah!” bellowed the crowd, swept along like bubbles in a flood. “Fair play, says we—English fair play—hurrah!” And those inside waved their hands, and those that were outside tossed up their caps, in sheer delight of good fair play.

“Hurrah, my bullies! That’s the cry!” said Carew, in his hail-fellow-well-met, royal way. “Why, we’re the very best of fellows, and the very fastest friends! Come, all to the old Three Lions inn, and douse a can of brown March brew at my expense. To the Queen, to good fair play, and to all the fine fellows in Albans town!”

And what did the crowd do but raise a shout, like a parcel of school-boys loosed for a holiday, and troop off to the Three Lions inn at Master Carew’s heels, Will Hostler and the brawny smith bringing up the rear with Nick between them, hand to collar, half forgotten by the rest, and his heart too low for further grief.

And while the crowd were still roaring over their tankards and cheering good fair play, Master Gaston Carew up with his prisoner into the saddle, and, mounting himself, with the bandy-legged man grinning opposite, shook the dust of old St. Albans from his horse’s heels.

“Now, Nicholas Attwood,” said he, grimly, as they galloped away, “hark ’e well to what I have to say, and do not let it slip thy mind. I am willed to take thee to London town—dost mark me?—and to London town thou shalt go, warm or cold. By the whistle of the Lord High Admiral, I mean just what I say! So thou mayst take thy choice.”

He gripped Nick’s shoulder as they rode, and glared into his eyes as if to sear them with his own. Nick heard his poniard grating in its sheath, and shut his eyes so that he might not see the master-player’s horrid stare; for the opening and shutting, opening and shutting, of the blue lids made him shudder.

“And what’s more,” said Carew, sternly, “I shall call thee Master Skylark from this time forth—dost hear? And when I bid thee go, thou’lt go; and when I bid thee come, thou’lt come; and when I say, ‘Here, follow me!’ thou’lt follow like a dog to heel!” He drew up his lip until his white teeth showed, and Nick, hearing them gritting together, shrank back dismayed.

“There!” laughed Carew, scornfully. “He that knows better how to tame a vixen or to cozen a pack of gulls, now let him speak!” and said no more until they passed by Chipping Barnet. Then, “Nick,” said he, in a quiet, kindly tone, as if they had been friends for years, “this is the place where Warwick fell”; and pointed down the field. “There in the corner of that croft they piled the noble dead like corn upon a threshing-floor. Since then,” said he, with quiet irony, “men have stopped making English kings as the Dutch make dolls, of a stick and a poll thereon.”

Pleased with hearing his own voice, he would have gone on with many another thing; but seeing that Nick listened not at all to what he said, he ceased, and rode on silently or chatting with the others.

The country through Middlesex was in most part flat, and heavy forests overhung the road from time to time. There the players slipped their poniards, and rode with rapier in hand; for many a dark deed and cruel robbery had been done along this stretch of Watling street. And as they passed, more than one dark-visaged rogue with branded hand and a price upon his head peered at them from the copses by the way.

In places where the woods crept very near they pressed closer together and rode rapidly; and the horse-boy and the grooms lit up the matches of their pistolets, and laid their harquebuses ready in rest, and blew the creeping sparkle snapping red at every turn; not so much really fearing an attack upon so stout a party of reckless, dashing blades, as being overawed by the great, mysterious silence of the forest, the semi-twilight all about, and the cold, strange-smelling wind that fanned their faces.

The wild spattering of hoofs in water-pools that lay unsucked by the sun in shadowy stretches, the grim silence of the riders, and the wary eying of each covert as they passed, sent a thrill of excitement into Nick’s heart too keen for any boy to resist.

Then, too, it was no everyday tale to be stolen away from home. It was a wild, strange thing with a strange, wild sound to it, not altogether terrible or unpleasant to a brave boy’s ears in that wonder-filled age, when all the world was turned adventurer, and England led the fore; when Francis Drake and the “Golden Hind,” John Hawkins and the “Victory,” Frobisher and his cockleshells, were gossip for every English fireside; when the whole world rang with English steel, and the wide sea foamed with English keels, and the air was full of the blaze of the living and the ghosts of the mighty dead. And down in Nick’s plucky young English heart there came a spark like that which burns in the soul of a mariner when for the first time an unknown ocean rolls before his eyes.

So he rode on bravely, filled with a sense of daring and the thrill of perils more remote than Master Carew’s altogether too adjacent poniard, as well as with a sturdy determination to escape at the first opportunity, in spite of all the master-player’s threats.

Up Highgate Hill they rattled in a bracing northeast wind, the rugged country bowling back against the tumbled sky. Far to south a rusty haze had gloomed against the sun like a midday fog, mile after mile; and suddenly, as they topped the range and cleared the last low hill, they saw a city in the south spreading away until it seemed to Nick to girdle half the world and to veil the sky in a reek of murky sea-coal smoke.

“There!” said Carew, reining in the gray, as Nick looked up and felt his heart almost stand still; “since Parma burned old Antwerp, and the Low Countries are dead, there lies the market-heart of all the big round world!”

“London!” cried Nick, and, catching his breath with a quick gasp, sat speechless, staring.

Carew smiled. “Ay, Nick,” said he, cheerily; “’tis London town. Pluck up thine heart, lad, and be no more cast down; there lies a New World ready to thine hand. Thou canst win it if thou wilt. Come, let it be thine Indies, thou Francis Drake, and I thy galleon to carry home the spoils! And cheer up. It grieves my heart to see thee sad. Be merry for my sake.”

“For thy sake?” gasped Nick, staring blankly in his face. “Why, what hast thou done for me?” A sudden sob surprised him, and he clenched his fists—it was too cruel irony. “Why, sir, if thou wouldst only leave me go!”

“Tut, tut!” cried Carew, angrily. “Still harping on that same old string? Why, from thy waking face I thought thou hadst dropped it long ago. Let thee go? Not for all the wealth in Lombard street! Dost think me a goose-witted gull?—and dost ask what I have done for thee? Thou simpleton! I have made thee rise above the limits of thy wildest dream—have shod thy feet with gold—have filled thy lap with glory—have crowned thine head with fame! And yet, ‘What have I done for thee?’ Fie! Thou art a stubborn-hearted little fool. But, marry come up! I’ll mend thy mind. I’ll bend thy will to suit my way, or break it in the bending!”

Clapping his hand upon his poniard, he turned his back, and did not speak to Nick again.

And so they came down the Kentish Town road through a meadow-land threaded with flowing streams, the wild hill thickets of Hampstead Heath to right, the huddling villages of Islington, Hoxton, and Clerkenwell to left. And as they passed through Kentish Town, past Primrose Hill into Hampstead way, solitary farm-houses and lowly cottages gave way to burgher dwellings in orderly array, with manor-houses here and there, and in the distance palaces and towers reared their heads above the crowding chimney-pots.

Then the players dressed themselves in fair array, and flung their banners out, and came through Smithfield to Aldersgate, mocking the grim old gibbet there with railing gaiety; and through the gate rode into London town, with a long, loud cheer that brought the people crowding to their doors, and set the shutters creaking everywhere.

Nick was bewildered by the countless shifting gables and the throngs of people flowing onward like a stream, and stunned by the roar that seemed to boil out of the very ground. The horses’ hoofs clashed on the unevenly paved street with a noise like a thousand smithies. The houses hung above him till they almost hid the sky, and seemed to be reeling and ready to fall upon his head when he looked up; so that he urged the little roan with his uneasy heels, and wished himself out of this monstrous ruck where the walls were so close together that there was not elbow-room to live, and the air seemed only heat, thick and stifling, full of dust and smells.

Shop after shop, and booth on booth, until Nick wondered where the gardens were; and such a maze of lanes, byways, courts, blind alleys, and passages that his simple country footpath head went all into a tangle, and he could scarcely have told Tottenham Court road from the river Thames.

All that he remembered afterward was that, turning from High Holborn into the Farringdon road, he saw a great church, under Ludgate Hill, with spire burned and fallen, and its massive tower, black with age and smoke, staring on the town. But he was too confused to know whither they went or what he saw in passing; for of such a forest of houses he had never even dreamed, with people swarming everywhere like ants upon a hill, and among them all not one kind face he knew. Through the spirit of adventure that had roused him for a time welled up a great heart-sickness for his mother and his home.

Out of a bewildered daze he came at last to realize this much: that the master-player’s house was very tall and very dark, standing in a dismal, dirty street, and that it had a gloomy hallway full of shadows that crept and wavered along the wall in the dim light of the late afternoon.

Then the master-player pushed him up a narrow staircase and along a black corridor to a door at the end of the passage, through which he thrust him into a darkness like night, and slammed the door behind him.

Nick heard the bolts shoot heavily, and Master Carew call through the heavy panels: “Now, Jackanapes, sit down and chew the cud of solitude awhile. It may cool thy silly pate for thee, since nothing else will serve. When thou hast found thy common sense, perchance thou’lt find thy freedom, not before.” Then his step went down the corridor, down the stair, through the long hall—a door banged with a hollow sound that echoed through the house, and all was still.

At first, in the utter darkness, Nick could not see at all, and did not move for fear of falling down some awful hole; but as his eyes grew used to the gloom he saw that he was in a little room. The only window was boarded up, but a dim light crept in through narrow cracks and made faint bars across the air. Little motes floated up and down these thin blue bars, wavering in the uncertain light and then lost in the darkness. Upon the floor was a pallet of straw, covered with a coarse sheet, and having a rough coverlet of sheepskin. A round log was the only pillow.

Something moved. Nick, startled, peered into the shadows: it was a strip of ragged tapestry which fluttered on the wall. As he watched it flapping fitfully there came a hollow rattle in the wainscot, and an uncanny sound like the moaning of wind in the chimney.

“Let me out!” he cried, beating upon the door. “Let me out, I say!” A stealthy footstep seemed to go away outside. “Mother, mother!” he cried shrilly, now quite unstrung by fright, and beat frantically upon the door until his hands ached; but no one answered. The window was beyond his reach. Throwing himself upon the hard pallet, he hid his eyes in the coverlet, and cried as if his heart would break.

CHAPTER XVI
MA’M’SELLE CICELY CAREW

How long he lay there in a stupor of despair Nick Attwood never knew. It might have been days or weeks, for all that he took heed; for he was thinking of his mother, and there was no room for more.

The night passed by. Then the day came, by the lines of light that crept across the floor. The door was opened at his back, and a trencher of bread and meat thrust in. He did not touch it, and the rats came out of the wall and pulled the meat about, and gnawed holes in the bread, and squeaked, and ran along the wainscot; but he did not care.

The afternoon dragged slowly by, and the creeping light went up the wall until the roofs across the street shut out the sunset. Sometimes Nick waked and sometimes he slept, he scarce knew which nor cared; nor did he hear the bolts grate cautiously, or see the yellow candle-light steal in across the gloom.

“Boy!” said a soft little voice.

He started up and looked around.

For an instant he thought that he was dreaming, and was glad to think that he would waken by and by from what had been so sad a dream, and find himself safe in his own little bed in Stratford town. For the little maid who stood in the doorway was such a one as his eyes had never looked upon before.

She was slight and graceful as a lily of the field, and her skin was white as the purest wax, save where a damask rose-leaf red glowed through her cheeks. Her black hair curled about her slender neck. Her gown was crimson, slashed with gold, cut square across the breast and simply made, with sleeves just elbow-long, wide-mouthed, and lined with creamy silk. Her slippers, too, were of crimson silk, high-heeled, jaunty bits of things; her silken stockings black. In one hand she held a tall brass candlestick, and through the fingers of the other the candle-flame made a ruddy glow like the sun in the heart of a hollyhock. And in the shadow of her hand her eyes looked out, as Nick said long afterward, like stars in a summer night.

Thinking it was all a dream, he sat and stared at her.

“Boy!” she said again, quite gently, but with a quaint little air of reproof, “where are thy manners?”

Nick got up quickly and bowed as best he knew how. If not a dream, this was certainly a princess—and perchance—his heart leaped up—perchance she came to set him free! He wondered who had told her of him? Diccon Field, perhaps, whose father had been Simon Attwood’s partner till he died, last Michaelmas. Diccon was in London now, printing books, he had heard. Or maybe it was John, Hal Saddler’s older brother. No, it could not be John, for John was with a carrier; and Nick had doubts if carriers were much acquainted at court.

Wondering, he stared, and bowed again.

“Why, boy,” said she, with a quaint air of surprise, “thou art a very pretty fellow! Why, indeed, thou lookest like a good boy! Why wilt thou be so bad and break my father’s heart?”

“Break thy father’s heart?” stammered Nick. “Pr’ythee, who is thy father, Mistress Princess?”

“Nay,” said the little maid, simply; “I am no princess. I am Cicely Carew.”

“Cicely Carew?” cried Nick, clenching his fists. “Art thou the daughter of that wicked man, Gaston Carew?”

“My father is not wicked!” said she, passionately, drawing back from the threshold with her hand trembling upon the latch. “Thou shalt not say that—I will not speak with thee at all!”

“I do na care! If Master Gaston Carew is thy father, he is the wickedest man in the world!”

“Why, fie, for shame!” she cried, and stamped her little foot. “How darest thou say such a thing?”

“He hath stolen me from home,” exclaimed Nick, indignantly; “and I shall never see my mother any more!” With that he choked, and hid his face in his arm against the wall.

The little maid looked at him with an air of troubled surprise, and, coming into the room, touched him on the arm. “There,” she said soothingly, “don’t cry!” and stroked him gently as one would a little dog that was hurt. “My father will send thee home to thy mother, I know; for he is very kind and good. Some one hath lied to thee about him.”

Nick wiped his swollen eyes dubiously upon his sleeve; yet the little maid seemed positive. Perhaps, after all, there was a mistake somewhere.

“Art hungry, boy?” she asked suddenly, spying the empty trencher on the floor. “There is a pasty and a cake in the buttery, and thou shalt have some of it if thou wilt not cry any more. Come, I cannot bear to see thee cry—it makes me weep myself; and that will blear mine eyes, and father will feel bad.”

“If he but felt as bad as he hath made me feel—” began Nick, wrathfully; but she laid her little hand across his mouth. It was a very white, soft, sweet little hand.

“Come,” said she; “thou art hungry, and it hath made thee cross!” and, with no more ado, took him by the hand and led him down the corridor into a large room where the last daylight shone with a smoky glow.

The walls were wainscoted with many panels, dark, old, and mysterious; and in a burnished copper brazier at the end of the room cinnamon, rosemary, and bay were burning with a pleasant smell. Along the walls were joined-work chests for linen and napery, of brass-bound oak—one a black, old, tragic sea-chest, carved with grim faces and weird griffins, that had been cast up by the North Sea from the wreck of a Spanish galleon of war. The floor was waxed in the French fashion, and was so smooth that Nick could scarcely keep his feet. The windows were high up in the wall, with their heads among the black roof-beams, which with their grotesquely carven brackets were half lost in the dusk. Through the windows Nick could see nothing but a world of chimney-pots.

“Is London town all smoke-pipes?” he asked confusedly.

“Nay,” replied the little maid; “there are people.”

Pushing a chair up to the table, she bade him sit down. Then pulling a tall, curiously-made stool to the other side of the board, she perched herself upon it like a fairy upon a blade of grass. “Greg!” she called imperiously, “Greg! What, how! Gregory Goole, I say!”

“Yes, ma’m’selle,” replied a hoarse voice without; and through a door at the further end of the room came the bandy-legged man with the bow of crimson ribbon in his ear.

Nick turned a little pale; and when the fellow saw him sitting there, he came up hastily, with a look like a crock of sour milk. “Tut, tut! ma’m’selle,” said he; “Master Carew will not like this.”

She turned upon him with an air of dainty scorn. “Since when hath father left his wits to thee, Gregory Goole? I know his likes as well as thou—and it likes him not to let this poor boy starve, I’ll warrant. Go, fetch the pasty and the cake that are in the buttery, with a glass of cordial,—the Certosa cordial,—and that in the shaking of a black sheep’s tail, or I will tell my father what thou wottest of.” And she looked the very picture of diminutive severity.

“Very good, ma’m’selle; just as ye say,” said Gregory, fawning, with very poor grace, however. “But, knave,” he snarled, as he turned away, with a black scowl at Nick, “if thou dost venture on any of thy scurvy pranks while I be gone, I’ll break thy pate.”

Cicely Carew knitted her brows. “That is a saucy rogue,” said she; “but he hath served my father well. And, what is much in London town, he is an honest man withal, though I have caught him at the Spanish wine behind my father’s back; so he doth butter his tongue with smooth words when he hath speech with me, for I am the lady of the house.” She held up her head with a very pretty pride. “My mother—”

Nick caught his breath, and his eyes filled.

“Nay, boy,” said she, gently; “’tis I should weep, not thou; for my mother is dead. I do not think I ever saw her that I know,” she went on musingly; “but she was a Frenchwoman who served a murdered queen, and she was the loveliest woman that ever lived.” Cicely clasped her hands and moved her lips. Nick saw that she was praying, and bent his head.

“Thou art a good boy,” she said softly; “my father will like that”; and then went quietly on: “That is why Gregory Goole doth call me ‘ma’m’selle’—because my mother was a Frenchwoman. But I am a right English girl for all that; and when they shout, ‘God save the Queen!’ at the play, why, I do too! And, oh, boy,” she cried, “it is a brave thing to hear!” and she clapped her hands with sparkling eyes. “It drove the Spaniards off the sea, my father ofttimes saith.”

“Poh!” said Nick, stoutly, for he saw the pasty coming in, “they can na beat us Englishmen!” and with that fell upon the pasty as if it were the Spanish Armada in one lump and he Sir Francis Drake set on to do the job alone.

As he ate his spirits rose again, and he almost forgot that he was stolen from his home, and grew eager to be seeing the wonders of the great town whose ceaseless roar came over the housetops like a distant storm. He was still somewhat in awe of this beautiful, flower-like little maid, and listened in shy silence to the wonderful tales she told: how that she had seen the Queen, who had red hair, and pearls like gooseberries on her cloak; and how the court went down to Greenwich. But the bandy-legged man kept popping his head in at the door, and, after all, Nick was but in a prison-house; so he grew quite dismal after a while.

“Dost truly think thy father will leave me go?” he asked.

“Of course he will,” said she. “I cannot see why thou dost hate him so?”

“Why, truly,” hesitated Nick, “perhaps it is not thy father that I hate, but only that he will na leave me go. And if he would but leave me go, perhaps I’d love him very much indeed.”

“Good, Nick! thou art a trump!” cried Master Carew’s voice suddenly from the further end of the hall, where in spite of all the candles it was dark; and, coming forward, the master-player held out his hands in a most genial way. “Come, lad, thy hand—’tis spoken like a gentleman. Nay, I will kiss thee—for I love thee, Nick, upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour!” Taking the boy’s half-unwilling hands in his own, he stooped and kissed him upon the forehead.

“Father,” said Cicely, gravely, “hast thou forgotten me?”

“Nay, sweetheart, nay,” cried Carew, with a wonderful laugh that somehow warmed the cockles of Nick’s forlorn heart; and turning quickly, the master-player caught up the little maid and kissed her again and again, so tenderly that Nick was amazed to see how one so cruel could be so kind, and how so good a little maid could love so bad a man; for she twined her arms about his neck, and then lay back with her head upon his shoulder, purring like a kitten in his arms.

“Father,” said she, patting his cheek, “some one hath told him naughty things of thee. Come, daddy, say they are not so!”

The master-player’s face turned red as flame. He coughed and looked up among the roof-beams. “Why, of course they’re not,” said he, uneasily.

“There, boy!” cried she; “I told thee so. Why, daddy, think!—they said that thou hadst stolen him away from his own mother, and wouldst not leave him go!”

“Hollo!” ejaculated the master-player, abruptly, with a quiver in his voice; “what a hole thou hast made in the pasty, Nick!”

“Ah, daddy,” persisted Cicely, “and what a hole it would make in his mother’s heart if he had been stolen away!”

“Wouldst like another draught of cordial, Nick?” cried Carew, hurriedly, reaching out for the tall flagon with a trembling hand. “’Tis good to cheer the troubled heart, lad. Not that thou hast any reason in the world to let thy heart be troubled,” he added hastily. “No, indeed, upon my word; for thou art on the doorstep of a golden-lined success. See, Nick, how the light shines through!” and he tilted up the flagon. “It is one of old Jake Vessaline’s Murano-Venetian glasses; a beautiful thing, now, is it not? ’Tis good as any made abroad!” but his hand was shaking so that half the cordial missed the cup and ran into a little shimmering pool upon the table-top.

“And thou’lt send him home again, daddy, wilt thou not?”

“Yes, yes, of course—why, to be sure—we’ll send him anywhere that thou dost say, Golden-heart: to Persia or Cathay—ay, to the far side of the green-cheese moon, or to the court of Tamburlaine the Great,” and he laughed a quick, dry, nervous laugh that had no laughter in it. “I had one of De Lannoy’s red Bohemian bottles, Nick,” he rattled on feverishly; “but that butter-fingered rogue”—he nodded his head at the outer stair—“dropped it, smash! and made a thousand most counterfeit fourpences out of what cost me two pound sterling.”

“But will ye truly leave me go, sir?” faltered Nick.

“Why, of course—to be sure—yes, certainly—yes, yes. But, Nick, it is too late this night. Why, come, thou couldst not go to-night. See, ’tis dark, and thou a stranger in the town. ’Tis far to Stratford town—thou couldst not walk it, lad; there will be carriers anon. Come, stay awhile with Cicely and me—we will make thee a right welcome guest!”

“That we will,” cried Cicely, clapping her hands. “Oh, do stay; I am so lonely here! The maid is silly, Margot old, and the rats run in the wall.”

“And thou must to the theater, my lad, and sing for London town—ay, Nicholas,” and Carew’s voice rang proudly. “The highest heads in London town must hear that voice of thine, or I shall die unshrift. What! lad?—come all the way from Coventry, and never show that face of thine, nor let them hear thy skylark’s song? Why, ’twere a shame! And, Nick, my lord the Admiral shall hear thee sing when he comes home again; perchance the Queen herself. Why, Nick, of course thou’lt sing. Thou hast not heart to say thou wilt not sing—even for me whom thou hatest.”

Nick smiled in spite of himself, for Cicely was leaning on the arm of his chair, devouring him with her great dark eyes: “Dost truly, truly sing?” she asked.

Nick laughed and blushed, and Carew laughed. “What, doth he sing? Why, Nick, come, tune that skylark note of thine for little Golden-heart and me. ’Twill make her think she hears the birds in verity—and, Nick, the lass hath never seen a bird that sang, except within a cage. Nay, lad, this is no cage!” he cried, as Nick looked about and sighed. “We will make it very home for thee—will Cicely and I.”

“That we will!” cried Cicely. “Come, boy, sing for me—my mother used to sing.”

At that Gaston Carew went white as a sheet, and put his hand quickly up to his face. Cicely darted to his side with a frightened cry, and caught his hand away. He tried to smile, but it was a ghastly attempt. “Tush, tush! little one; ’twas something stung me!” said he, huskily, “Sing, Nicholas, I beg of thee!”

There was such a sudden world of weariness and sorrow in his voice that Nick felt a pity for he knew not what, and lifting up his clear young voice, he sang the quaint old madrigal.

Carew sat with his face in his hand, and after it was done arose unsteadily and said, “Come, Golden-heart; ’tis music such as charmeth care and lureth sleep out of her dark valley—we must be trotting off to bed.”

That night Nick slept upon a better bed, with a sheet and a blue serge coverlet, and a pillow stuffed with chaff.

But as he drifted off into a troubled dreamland, he heard the door-bolt throb into its socket, and knew that he was fastened in.

CHAPTER XVII
CAREW’S OFFER

Next morning Carew donned his plum-colored cloak, and with Nick’s hand held tightly in his own went out of the door and down the steps into a drifting fog which filled the street, the bandy-legged man with the ribbon in his ear following close upon their heels.

People passed them like shadows in the mist, and all the houses were a blur until they came into a wide, open place where the wind blew free above a wall with many great gates.

In the middle of this open place a huge gray building stood, staring out over the housetops—a great cathedral, wonderful and old. Its walls were dark with time and smoke and damp, and the lofty tower that rose above it was in part but a hollow shell split by lightning and blackened by fire. But crowded between its massive buttresses were booths and chapmen’s stalls; against its hoary side a small church leaned like a child against a mother’s breast; and in and round about it eddied a throng of men like ants upon a busy hill.

All around the outer square were shops with gilded fronts and most amazing signs: golden angels with outstretched wings, tiger heads, bears, brazen serpents, and silver cranes; and in and out of the shop-doors darted apprentices with new-bound books and fresh-printed slips; for this was old St. Paul’s, the meeting-place of London town, and in Paul’s Yard the printers and the bookmen dealt.

With a deal of elbowing the master-player came up the broad steps into the cathedral, and down the aisle to the pillars where the merchant-tailors stood with table-books in hand, and there ordered a brand-new suit of clothes for Nick of old Roger Shearman, the best cloth-cutter in Threadneedle street.

While they were deep in silk and silver thread, Haerlem linen, and Leyden camelot, Nick stared about him half aghast; for it was to him little less than monstrous to see a church so thronged with merchants plying their trades as if the place were no more sacred than a booth in the public square.

The long nave of the cathedral was crowded with mercers from Cheapside, drapers from Throgmorton street, stationers from Ludgate Hill, and goldsmiths from Foster lane, hats on, loud-voiced, and using the very font itself for a counter. By the columns beyond, sly, foxy-faced lawyers hobnobbed; and on long benches by the wall, cast-off serving-men, varlets, grooms, pastry-bakers, and pages sat, waiting to be hired by some new master. Besides these who came on business there was a host of gallants in gold-laced silk and velvet promenading up and down the aisle, with no business there at all but to show their faces and their clothes. And all about were solemn shrines and monuments and tombs, and overhead a splendid window burned like a wheel of fire in the eastern wall.

While Nick stared, speechless, a party of the Admiral’s placers came strolling by, their heads half hidden in their huge starched ruffs, and with prodigious swords that would have dragged along the ground had they not been cocked up behind so fiercely in the air. Seeing Master Carew and the boy, they stopped in passing to greet them gaily.

Master Heywood was there, and bowed to Nick with a kindly smile. His companion was a handsome, proud-mouthed man with a blue, smooth-shaven face and a jet-black periwig. Him Carew drew aside and spoke with in an earnest undertone. As he talked, the other began to stare at Nick as if he were some curious thing in a cage.

“Upon my soul,” said Carew, “ye never heard the like of it. He hath a voice as sweet and clear as if Puck had burst a honey-bag in his throat.”

“No doubt,” replied the other, carelessly; “and all the birds will hide their heads when he begins to sing. But we don’t want him, Carew—not if he had a voice like Miriam the Jew. Henslowe has just bought little Jem Bristow of Will Augusten for eight pound sterling, and business is too bad to warrant any more.”

“Who spoke of selling?” said Carew, sharply. “Don’t flatter your chances so, Master Alleyn. I wouldn’t sell the boy for a world full of Jem Bristows. Why, his mouth is a mint where common words are coined into gold! Sell him? I think I see myself in Bedlam for a fool! Nay, Master Alleyn, what I am coming at is this: I’ll place him at the Rose, to do his turn in the play with the rest of us, or out of it alone, as ye choose, for one fourth of the whole receipts over and above my old share in the venture. Do ye take me?”

“Take you? One fourth the whole receipts! Zounds! man, do ye think we have a spigot in El Dorado?”

“Tush! Master Alleyn, don’t make a poor mouth; you’re none so needy. You and Henslowe have made a heap of money out of us all.”

“And what of that? Yesterday’s butter won’t smooth to-day’s bread. ’Tis absurd of you, Carew, to ask one fourth and leave all the risk on us, with the outlook as it is! Here’s that fellow Langley has built a new play-house in Paris Garden, nearer to the landing than we are, and is stealing our business most scurvily!”

Carew shrugged his shoulders.

“And what’s more, the very comedy for which Ben Jonson left us, because we would not put it on, has been taken up by the Burbages on Will Shakspere’s say-so, and is running famously at the Curtain.”

“I told you so, Master Alleyn, when the fellow was fresh from the Netherlands,” said Carew; “but your ears were plugged with your own conceit. Young Jonson is no flatfish, if he did lay brick; he’s a plum worth anybody’s picking.”

“But, plague take it, Carew, those Burbages have all the plums! Since they weaned Will Shakspere from us everything has gone wrong. Kemp has left us; old John Lowin, too; and now the Lord Mayor and Privy Council have soured on the play again and forbidden all playing on the Bankside, outside the City or no.”

Carew whistled softly to himself.

“And since my Lord Chamberlain has been patron of the Burbages he will not so much as turn a hand to revive the old game of bull- and bear-baiting, and Phil and I have kept the Queen’s bulldogs going on a twelvemonth now at our own expense—a pretty canker on our profits! Why, Carew, as Will Shakspere used to say, ‘One woe doth tread the other’s heels, so fast they follow!’ And what’s to do?”

“What’s to do?” said Carew. “Why, I’ve told ye what’s to do. Ye’ve heard Will say, ‘There is a tide leads on to fortune if ye take it at the flood’? Well, Master Alleyn, here’s the tide, and at the flood. I have offered you an argosy. Will ye sail or stick in the mud? Ye’ll never have such a chance again. Come, one fourth over my old share, and I will fill your purse so full of gold that it will gape like a stuffed toad. His is the sweetest skylark voice that ever sugared ears!”

“But, man, man, one fourth!”

“Better one fourth than lose it all,” said Carew. “But, pshaw! Master Ned Alleyn, I’ll not beg a man to swim that’s bent on drowning! We will be at the play-house this afternoon; mayhap thou’lt have thought better of it by then.” With a curt bow he was off through the crowd, Nick’s hand in his own clenched very tight.

They had hard work getting down the steps, for two hot-headed gallants were quarreling there as to who should come up first, and there was a great press. But Carew scowled and showed his teeth, and clenched his poniard-hilt so fiercely that the commoners fell away and let them down.

Nick’s eyes were hungry for the printers’ stalls where ballad-sheets were sold for a penny, and where the books were piled along the shelves until he wondered if all London were turned printer. He looked about to see if he might chance upon Diccon Field; but Carew came so quickly through the crowd that Nick had not time to recognize Diccon if he had been there. Diccon had often made Nick whistles from the pollard willows along the Avon below the tannery when Nick was a toddler in smocks, and the lad thought he would like to see him before going back to Stratford. Then, too, his mother had always liked Diccon Field, and would be glad to hear from him. At thought of his mother he gave a happy little skip; and as they turned into Paternoster Bow, “Master Carew,” said he, “how soon shall I go home?”

Carew walked a little faster.

There had arisen a sound of shouting and a trampling of feet. The constables had taken a purse-cutting thief, and were coming up to the Newgate prison with a great rabble behind them. The fellow’s head was broken, and his haggard face was all screwed up with pain; but that did not stop the boys from hooting at him, and asking in mockery how he thought he would like to be hanged and to dance on nothing at Tyburn Hill.

“Did ye hear me, Master Carew?” asked Nick.

The master-player stepped aside a moment into a doorway to let the mob go by, and then strode on.

Nick tried again: “I pray thee, sir—”

“Do not pray me,” said Carew, sharply; “I am no Indian idol.”

“But, good Master Carew—”

“Nor call me good—I am not good.”

“But, Master Carew,” faltered Nick, with a sinking sensation around his heart, “when will ye leave me go home?”

The master-player did not reply, but strode on rapidly, gnawing his mustache.

CHAPTER XVIII
MASTER HEYWOOD PROTESTS

It was a cold, raw day. All morning long the sun had shone through the choking fog as the candle-flame through the dingy yellow horn of an old stable-lantern. But at noon a wind sprang up that drove the mist through London streets in streaks and strings mixed with smoke and the reek of steaming roofs. Now and then the blue gleamed through in ragged patches overhead; so that all the town turned out on pleasure bent, not minding if it rained stewed turnips, so they saw the sky.

But the fog still sifted through the streets, and all was damp and sticky to the touch, so Cicely was left behind to loneliness and disappointment.

Nick and the master-player came down Ludgate Hill to Blackfriars landing in a stream of merrymakers, high and low, rich and poor, faring forth to London’s greatest thoroughfare, the Thames; and as the river and the noble mansions along the Strand came into view, Nick’s heart beat fast. It was a sight to stir the pulse.

Far down the stream, the grim old Tower loomed above the drifting mist; and, higher up, old London Bridge, lined with tall houses, stretched from shore to shore. There were towers on it with domes and gilded vanes, and the river foamed and roared under it, strangled by the piers. From the dock at St. Mary Averies by the Bridge to Barge-house stairs, the landing-stages all along the river-bank were thronged with boats; and to and fro across the stream, wherries, punts, barges, and water-craft of every kind were plying busily. In middle stream sail-boats tugged along with creaking sweeps, or brown-sailed trading-vessels slipped away to sea, with costly freight for Muscovy, Turkey, and the Levant. And amid the countless water-craft a multitude of stately swans swept here and there like snow-flakes on the dusky river.

Nick sniffed at the air, for it was full of strange odors—the smell of breweries, of pitchy oakum, Norway tar, spices from hot countries, resinous woods, and chilly whiffs from the water; and as they came out along the wharf, there were brown-faced, hard-eyed sailors there, who had been to the New World—wild fellows with silver rings in their ears and a swaggering stagger in their petticoated legs. Some of them held short, crooked brown tubes between their lips, and puffed great clouds of pale brown smoke from their noses in a most amazing way.

Broad-beamed Dutchmen, too, were there, and swarthy Spanish renegades, with sturdy craftsmen of the City guilds and stalwart yeomen of the guard in the Queen’s rich livery.

But ere Nick had fairly begun to stare, confused by such a rout, Carew had hailed a wherry, and they were half-way over to the Southwark side.

Landing amid a deafening din of watermen bawling hoarsely for a place along the Paris Garden stairs, the master-player hurried up the lane through the noisy crowd. Some were faring afoot into Surrey, and some to green St. George’s Fields to buy fresh fruit and milk from the farm-houses and to picnic on the grass. Some turned aside to the Falcon Inn for a bit of cheese and ale, and others to the play-houses beyond the trees and fishing-ponds. And coming down from the inn they met a crowd of players, with Master Tom Heywood at their head, frolicking and cantering along like so many overgrown school-boys.

“So we are to have thee with us awhile?” said Heywood, and put his arm around Nick’s shoulders as they trooped along.

“Awhile, sir, yes,” replied Nick, nodding; “but I am going home soon, Master Carew says.”

“Carew,” said Heywood, suddenly turning, “how can ye have the heart?”

“Come, Heywood,” quoth the master-player, curtly, though his whole face colored up, “I have heard enough of this. Will ye please to mind your own affairs?”

The writer of comedies lifted his brows, “Very well,” he answered quietly; “but, lad, this much for thee,” said he, turning to Nick, “if ever thou dost need a friend, Tom Heywood’s one will never speak thee false.”

“Sir!” cried Carew, clapping his hand upon his poniard Heywood looked up steadily. “How? Wilt thou quarrel with me, Carew? What ugly poison hath been filtered through thy wits? Why, thou art even falser than I thought! Quarrel with me, who took thy new-born child from her dying mother’s arms when thou wert fast in Newgate gaol?”

Carew’s angry face turned sickly gray. He made as if to speak, but no sound came. He shut his eyes and pushed out his hand in the air as if to stop the voice of the writer of comedies.

“Come,” said Heywood, with deep feeling; “thou canst not quarrel with me yet—nay, though thou dost try thy very worst. It would be a sorry story for my soul or thine to tell to hers.”

Carew groaned. The rest of the players had passed on, and the three stood there alone. “Don’t, Tom, don’t!” he cried.

“Then how can ye have the heart?” the other asked again.

The master-player lifted up his head, and his lips were trembling. “’Tis not the heart, Tom,” he cried bitterly, “upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour! ’Tis the head which doeth this. For, Tom, I cannot leave him go. Why, Tom, hast thou not heard him sing? A voice which would call back the very dead that we have loved if they might only hear. Why, Tom, ’tis worth a thousand pound! How can I leave him go?”

“Oh, fie for shame upon the man I took thee for!” cried Heywood.

“But, Tom,” cried Carew, brokenly, “look it straightly in the face; I am no such player as I was,—this reckless life hath done the trick for me, Tom,—and here is ruin staring Henslowe and Alleyn in the eye. They cannot keep me master if their luck doth not change soon; and Burbage would not have me as a gift. So, Tom, what is there left to do? How can I shift without the boy? Nay, Tom, it will not serve. There’s Cicely—not one penny laid by for her against a rainy day; and I’ll be gone, Tom, I’ll be gone—it is not morning all day long—we cannot last forever. Nay, I cannot leave him go!”

“But, sir,” broke in Nick, wretchedly, holding fast to Hey wood’s arm, “ye said that I should go!”

“Said!” cried the master-player, with a bitter smile; “why, Nick, I’d say ten times more in one little minute just to hear thee sing than I would stand to in a month of Easters afterward. Come, Nick, be fair. I’ll feed thee full and dress thee well and treat thee true—all for that song of thine.”

“But, sir, my mother—”

“Why, Carew, hath the boy a mother, too?” cried the writer of comedies.

“Now, Heywood, on thy soul, no more of this!” cried the master-player, with quivering lips. “Ye will make me out no man, or else a fiend. I cannot let the fellow go—I will not let him go.” His hands were twitching, and his face was pale, but his lips were set determinedly. “And, Tom, there’s that within me will not abide even thy pestering. So come, no more of it! Upon my soul, I sour over soon!”

So they came on gloomily past the bear-houses and the Queen’s kennels. The river-wind was full of the wild smell of the bears; but what were bears to poor Nick, whose last faint hope that the master-player meant to keep his word and send him home again was gone?

They passed the Paris Garden and the tall round play-house that Francis Langley had just built. A blood-red banner flaunted overhead, with a large white swan painted thereon; but Nick saw neither the play-house nor the swan; he saw only, deep in his heart, a little gable-roof among old elms, with blue smoke curling softly up among the rippling leaves; an open door with tall pink hollyhocks beside it; and in the door, watching for him till he came again, his own mother’s face. He began to cry silently.

“Nay, Nick, my lad, don’t cry,” said Heywood, gently; “’twill only make bad matters worse. Never is a weary while; but the longest lane will turn at last: some day thou’lt find thine home again all in the twinkling of an eye. Why, Nick, ’tis England still, and thou an Englishman. Come, give the world as good as it can send.”

Nick raised his head again, and, throwing the hair back from his eyes, walked stoutly along, though the tears still trickled down his cheeks.

“Sing thou my songs,” said Heywood, heartily, “and I will be thy friend—let this be thine earnest.” As he spoke he slipped upon the boy’s finger a gold ring with a green stone in it cut with a tall tree: this was his seal.

They had now come through the garden to the Rose Theatre, where the Lord Admiral’s company played; and Carew was himself again. “Come, Nicholas,” said he, half jestingly, “be done with thy doleful dumps—care killed a cat, they say, lad. Why, if thy hateful looks could stab, I’d be a dead man forty times. Come, cheer up, lad, that I may know thou lovest me.”

“But I do na love thee!” cried Nick, indignantly.

“Tut! Do not be so dour. Thou’lt soon be envied by ten thousand men. Come, don’t make a face at thy good fortune as though it were a tripe fried in tar. Come, lad, be pleased; thou’lt be the pet of every high-born dame in London town.”

“I’d rather be my mother’s boy,” Nick answered simply.

CHAPTER XIX
THE ROSE PLAY-HOUSE

The play-house was an eight-sided, three-storied, tower-like building of oak and plastered lath, upon a low foundation of yellow brick. Two outside stairways ran around the wall, and the roof was of bright-red English tiles with a blue lead gutter at the eaves. There was a little turret, from the top of which a tall ash stave went up; and on the stave, whenever there was to be a play, there floated a great white flag on which was a crimson rose with a golden heart, just like the one that Nick with such delight had seen come up the Oxford road a few short days before.

Under the stairway was a narrow door marked “For the Playeres Onelie”; and in the doorway stood a shrewd-faced, common-looking man, writing upon a tablet which he held in his hand. There was a case of quills at his side, with one of which he was scratching busily, now and then prodding the ink-horn at his girdle. He held his tongue in his cheek, and moved his head about as the pen formed the letters: he was no expert penman, this Phil Henslowe, the stager of plays.

He looked up as they came to the step.

“A poor trip, Carew,” said he, running his finger down the column of figures he was adding. “The play was hardly worth the candle—cleared but five pound; and then, after I had paid the carman three shilling fip to bring the stuff down from the City, ’twas lost in the river from the barge at Paul’s wharf! A good two pound.”

“Hard luck!” said Carew.

“Hard? Adamantine, I say! Why, ’tis very stones for luck, and the whole road rocky! Here’s Burbage, Condell, and Will Shakspere ha’ rebuilt Blackfriars play-house in famous shape; and, marry, where are we?”

Nick started. An idea came creeping into his head. Will Shakspere had married his mother’s own cousin, Anne Hathaway of Shottery; and he had often heard his mother say that Master Shakspere had ever been her own good friend when they were young.

“He and Jonson be thick as thieves,” said Henslowe; “and Chettle says that Will hath near done the book of a new play for the autumn—a master fine thing!—‘Romulus and Juliana,’ or something of that Italian sort, to follow Ben Jonson’s comedy. Ned Alleyn played a sweet fool about Ben’s comedy. Called it monstrous bad; and now it has taken the money out of our mouths to the tune of nine pound six the day—and here, while ye were gone, I ha’ played my Lord of Pembroke’s men in your ‘Robin Hood,’ Heywood, to scant twelve shilling in the house!”

Heywood flushed.

“Nay, Tom, don’t be nettled; ’tis not the fault of thy play. There’s naught will serve. We’ve tried old Marlowe and Robin Greene, Peele, Nash, and all the rest; but, what! they will not do—’tis Shakspere, Shakspere; our City flat-caps will ha’ nothing but Shakspere!”

Nick listened eagerly. Master Will Shakspere must indeed be somebody in London town! He stared across into the drifting cloud of mist and smoke which hid the city like a pall, and wondered how and where, in that terrible hive of more than a hundred thousand men, he could find one man.

“I tell thee, Tom Heywood, there’s some magic in the fellow, or my name’s not Henslowe!” cried the manager. “His very words bewitch one’s wits as nothing else can do. Why, I’ve tried them with ‘Pierce Penniless,’ ‘Groat’s Worth of Wit,’ ‘Friar Bacon,’ ‘Orlando,’ and the ‘Battle of Alcazar.’ Why, tush! they will not even listen! And here I’ve put Martin Gosset into purple and gold, and Jemmy Donstall into a peach-colored gown laid down with silver-gilt, for ‘Volteger’; and what? Why, we play to empty stools; and the rascals owe me for those costumes yet—sixty shillings full! A murrain on Burbage and Will Shakspere too!—but I wish we had him back again. We’d make their old Blackfriars sick!” He shook his fist at a great gray pile of buildings that rose above the rest out of the fog by the landing-place beyond the river.

Nick stared. That the play-house of Master Shakspere and the Burbages? Will Shakspere playing there, just across the river? Oh, if Nick could only find him, he would not let the son of his wife’s own cousin be stolen away!

Nick looked around quickly.

The play-house stood a bowshot from the river, in the open fields. There was a moated manor-house near by, and beyond it a little stream with some men fishing. Between the play-house and the Thames were gardens and trees, and a thin fringe of buildings along the bank by the landings. It was not far, and there were places where one could get a boat every fifty yards or so at the Bankside.

But—“Come in, come in,” said Henslowe. “Growling never fed a dog; and we must be doing.”

“Go ahead, Nick,” said Carew, pushing him by the shoulder, and they all went in. The door opened on a flight of stairs leading to the lowest gallery at the right of the stage, where the orchestra sat. A man was tuning up a viol as they came in.

“I want you to hear this boy sing,” said Carew to Henslowe. “’Tis the best thing ye ever lent ear to.”

“Oh, this is the boy?” said the manager, staring at Nick. “Why, Alleyn told me he was a country gawk!”

“He lied, then,” said Carew, very shortly. “’Twas cheaper than the truth at my price. There, Nick, go look about the place—we have business.”

Nick went slowly along the gallery. His hands were beginning to tremble as he put them out touching the stools. Along the rail were ornamental columns which supported the upper galleries and looked like beautiful blue-veined white marble; but when he took hold of them to steady himself he found they were only painted wood.

There were two galleries above. They ran all around the inside of the building, like the porches of the inn at Coventry, and he could see them across the house. There were no windows in the gallery where he was, but there were some in the second one. They looked high. He went on around the gallery until he came to some steps going down into the open space in the center of the building. The stage was already set up on the trestles, and the carpenters were putting a shelter-roof over it on copper-gilt pillars; for it was beginning to drizzle, and the middle of the play-house was open to the sky.

The spectators were already coming into the pit at a penny apiece, although the play would not begin until early evening. Those for the galleries paid another penny to a man in a red cloak at the foot of the stairs where Nick was standing. There was a great uproar at the entrance. Some apprentices had caught a cutpurse in the crowd, and were beating him unmercifully. Every one pushed and shoved about, cursing the thief, and those near enough kicked and struck him.

Nick looked back. Carew and the manager had gone into the tiring-room behind the stage. He took hold of the side-rail and started down the steps. The man in the red cloak looked up. “Go back there,” said he, sharply; “there’s enough down here now.” Nick went on around the gallery.

At the back of the stage were two doors for the players, and between them hung a painted cloth or arras behind which the prompter stood. Over these doors were two plastered rooms, twopenny private boxes for gentlefolk. In one of them were three young men and a beautiful girl, wonderfully dressed. The men were speaking to her, but she looked down at Nick instead. “What a pretty boy!” she said, and tossed him a flower that one of the men had just given her. It fell at Nick’s feet. He started back, looking up. The girl smiled, so he took off his cap and bowed; but the men looked sour.

At the side of the stage was a screen with long leather fire-buckets and a pole-ax hanging upon it, and behind it was a door through which Nick saw the river and the gray walls of the old Dominican friary. As he came down to it, some one thrust out a staff and barred the way. It was the bandy-legged man with the ribbon in his ear, Nick looked out longingly; it seemed so near!

“Master Carew saith thou art not to stir outside—dost hear?” said the bandy-legged man.

“Ay,” said Nick, and turned back.

There was a narrow stairway leading to the second gallery. He went up softly. There was no one in the gallery, and there was a window on the side next to the river; he had seen it from below. He went toward it slowly that he might not arouse suspicion. It was above his head.

There were stools for hire standing near. He brought one and set it under the window. It stood unevenly upon the floor, and made a wabbling noise. He was afraid some one would hear him; but the apprentices in the pit were rattling dice, and two or three gentlemen’s pages were wrangling for the best places on the platform; while, to add to the general riot, two young gallants had brought gamecocks and were fighting them in one corner, amid such a whooping and swashing that one could hardly have heard the skies fall.

A printer’s man was bawling, “Will ye buy a new book?” and the fruit-sellers, too, were raising such a cry of “Apples, cherries, cakes, and ale!” that the little noise Nick might make would be lost in the wild confusion.

Master Carew and the manager had not come out of the tiring-room. Nick got up on the stool and looked out. It was not very far to the ground—not so far as from the top of the big haycock in Master John Combe’s field from which he had often jumped.

The sill was just breast-high when he stood upon the stool. Putting his hands upon it, he gave a little spring, and balanced on his arms a moment. Then he put one leg over the window-sill and looked back. No one was paying the slightest attention to him. Over all the noise he could hear the man tuning the viol. Swinging himself out slowly and silently, with his toes against the wall to steady him, he hung down as far as he could, gave a little push away from the house with his feet, caught a quick breath, and dropped.

CHAPTER XX
DISAPPOINTMENT

Nick landed upon a pile of soft earth. It broke away under his feet and threw him forward upon his hands and knees. He got up, a little shaken but unhurt, and stood close to the wall, looking all about quickly. A party of gaily dressed gallants were haggling with the horse-boys at the sheds; but they did not even look at him. A passing carter stared up at the window, measuring the distance with his eye, whistled incredulously, and trudged on.

Nick listened a moment, but heard only the clamor of voices inside, and the zoon, zoon, zoon of the viol. He was trembling all over, and his heart was beating like a trip-hammer. He wanted to run, but was fearful of exciting suspicion. Heading straight for the river, he walked as fast as he could through the gardens and the trees, brushing the dirt from his hose as he went.

There was a wherry just pushing out from Old Marigold stairs with a single passenger, a gardener with a basket of truck.

“Holloa!” cried Nick, hurrying down; “will ye take me across?”

“For thrippence,” said the boatman, hauling the wherry alongside again with his hook.

Thrippence? Nick stopped, dismayed. Master Carew had his gold rose-noble, and he had not thought of the fare. They would soon find that he was gone.

“Oh, I must be across, sir!” he cried. “Can ye na take me free? I be little and not heavy; and I will help the gentleman with his basket.”

The boatman’s only reply was to drop his hook and push off with the oar.

But the gardener, touched by the boy’s pitiful expression, to say nothing of being tickled by Nick’s calling him gentleman, spoke up: “Here, jack-sculler,” said he; “I’ll toss up wi’ thee for it.” He pulled a groat from his pocket and began spinning it in the air. “Come, thou lookest a gamesome fellow—cross he goes, pile he stays; best two in three flips—what sayst?”

“Done!” said the waterman. “Pop her up!”

Up went the groat.

Nick held his breath.

“Pile it is,” said the gardener. “One for thee—and up she goes again!” The groat twirled in the air and came down clink upon the thwart.

“Aha!” cried the boatman, “’tis mine, or I’m a horse!”

“Nay, jack-sculler,” laughed the gardener; “cross it is! Ka me, ka thee, my pretty groat—I never lose with this groat.”

“Oh, sir, do be brisk!” begged Nick, fearing every instant to see the master-player and the bandy-legged man come running down the bank.

“More haste, worse speed,” said the gardener; “only evil weeds grow fast!” and he rubbed the groat on his jerkin. “Now, jack-sculler, hold thy breath; for up she goes again!”

A man came running over the rise. Nick gave a little frightened cry. It was only a huckster’s knave with a roll of fresh butter. The groat came down with a splash in the bottom of the wherry. The boatman picked it up out of the water and wiped it with his sleeve. “Here, boy, get aboard,” said he, shoving off; “and be lively about it!”

The huckster’s knave came running down the landing. He pushed Nick aside, and scrambled into the wherry, puffing for breath. The boat fell off into the current. Nick, making a plunge for it into the water, just managed to catch the gunwale and get aboard, wet to the knees. But he did not care for that; for although there were people going up Paris Garden lane, and a crowd about the entrance of the Rose, he could not see Master Carew or the bandy-legged man anywhere. So he breathed a little freer, yet kept his eyes fast upon the play-house until the wherry bumped against Blackfriars stairs.

Picking up the basket of truck, he sprang ashore, and, dropping it upon the landing, took to his heels up the bank, without stopping to thank either gardener or boatman.

The gray walls of the old friary were just ahead, scarcely a stone’s throw from the river. With heart beating high, he ran along the close, looking eagerly for the entrance. He came to a wicket-gate that was standing half ajar, and went through it into the old cloisters.

Everything there was still. He was glad of that, for the noise and the rush of the crowd outside confused him.

The place had once been a well-kept garden-plot, but now was become a mere stack of odds and ends of boards and beams, shavings, mortar, and broken brick. A long-legged fellow with a green patch over one eye was building a pair of stairs to a door beside which a sign read: “Playeres Here: None Elles.”

Nick doffed his cap. “Good-day,” said he; “is Master Will Shakspere in?”

The man put down his saw and sat back upon one of the trestles, staring stupidly. “Didst za-ay zummat?”

“I asked if Master Will Shakspere was in?”

The fellow scratched his head with a bit of shaving. “Noa; Muster Wull Zhacksper beant in.”

Nick’s heart stopped with a thump. “Where is he—do ye know?”

“A’s gone awa-ay,” drawled the workman, vaguely.

“Away? Whither!”

“A’s gone to Ztratvoard to-own, whur’s woife do li-ive—went a-yesterday.”

Nick sat blindly down upon the other trestle. He did not put his cap on again: he had quite forgotten it.

Master Will Shakspere gone to Stratford—and only the day before!

Too late—just one little day too late! It seemed like cruel mockery. Why, he might be almost home! The thought was more than he could bear: who could be brave in the face of such a blow? The bitter tears ran down his face again.

“Here, here, odzookens, lad!” grinned the workman, stolidly, “thou’lt vetch t’ river up if weeps zo ha-ard. Ztop un, ztop un; do now.”

Nick sat staring at the ground. A beetle was trying to crawl over a shaving. It was a curly shaving, and as fast as the beetle crept up to the top the shaving rolled over, and dropped the beetle upon its back in the dust; but it only got up and tried again. Nick looked up.

“Is—is Master Richard Burbage here, then?”

Perhaps Burbage, who had been a Stratford man, would help him.

“Noa,” drawled the carpenter; “Muster Bubbage beant here; doan’t want un, nuther—nuvver do moind a’s owen business—always jawin’ volks. A beant here, an’ doan’t want un, nuther.”

Nick’s heart went down. “And where is he?”

“Who? Muster Bubbage? Whoy, a be-eth out to Zhoreditch, a-playin’ at t’ theater.”

“And where may Shoreditch be?”

“Whur be Zhoreditch?” gaped the workman, vacantly. “Whoy—whoy, zummers over there a bit yon, zure”; and he waved his hand about in a way that pointed to nowhere at all.

“When will he be back?” asked Nick, desperately.

“Be ba-ack?” drawled the workman, slowly taking up his saw again; “back whur?—here? Whoy, a wun’t pla-ay here no mo-ore avore next Martlemas.”

Martinmas? That was almost mid-November. It was now but middle May.

Nick got up and went out at the wicket-gate. He was beginning to feel sick and a little faint. The rush in the street made him dizzy, and the sullen roar that came down on the wind from the town, mingled with the tramping of feet, the splash of oars, the bumping of boats along the wharves, and the shouts and cries of a thousand voices, stupefied him.

He was standing there motionless in the narrow way, as if dazed by a heavy fall, when Gaston Carew came running up from the river-front, with the bandy-legged man at his heels.

CHAPTER XXI
“THE CHILDREN OF PAUL’S”

An old gray rat came out of its hole, ran swiftly across the floor, and, sitting up, crouched there, peering at Nick. He thought its bare, scaly tail was not a pleasant thing to see; yet he looked at it, with his elbows on his knees, and his chin in his hands.

He had been locked in for two days now. They had put in plenty of food, and he had eaten it all; for if he starved to death he would certainly never get home.

It was quite warm, and the boards had been taken from the window, so that there was plenty of light. The window faced the north, and in the night, wakened by some outcry in the street below, Nick had leaned his log-pillow against the wainscot, and, climbing up, looked out into the sky. It was clear, for a wonder, and the stars were very bright. The moon, like a smoky golden platter, rose behind the eastern towers of the town, and in the north hung the Great Wain pointing at the polar star.

Somewhere underneath those stars was Stratford. The throstles would be singing in the orchard there now, when the sun was low and the cool wind came up from the river with a little whispering in the lane. The purple-gray doves, too, would be cooing softly in the elms over the cottage gable. In fancy he heard the whistle of their wings as they flew. But all the sound that came in over the roofs of London town was a hollow murmur as from a kennel of surly hounds.

“Nick!—oh, Nick!”

Cicely Carew was calling at the door. The rat scurried off to its hole in the wall.

“What there, Nick! Art thou within?” Cicely called again; but Nick made no reply.

“Nick, dear Nick, art crying?”

“No,” said he; “I’m not.”

There was a short silence.

“Nick, I say, wilt thou be good if I open the door?”

“No.”

“Then I will open it anyway; thou durstn’t be bad to me!”

The bolts thumped, and then the heavy door swung slowly back.

“Why, where art thou?”

He was sitting in the corner behind the door.

“Here,” said he.

She came in, but he did not look up.

“Nick,” she asked earnestly, “why wilt thou be so bad, and try to run away from my father?”

“I hate thy father!” said he, and brought his fist down upon his knee.

“Hate him? Oh, Nick! Why?”

“If thou be asking whys,” said Nick, bitterly, “why did he steal me away from my mother?”

“Oh, surely, Nick, that cannot be true—no, no, it cannot be true. Thou hast forgotten, or thou hast slept too hard and had bad dreams. My father would not steal a pin. It was a nightmare. Doth thine head hurt thee?” She came over and stroked his forehead with her cool hand. She was a graceful child, and gentle in all her ways. “I am sorry thou dost not feel well, Nick. But my father will come presently, and he will heal thee soon. Don’t cry any more.”

“I’m not crying,” said Nick, stoutly, though as he spoke a tear ran down his cheek, and fell upon his hand.

“Then it is the roof leaks,” she said, looking up as if she had not seen his tear-blinded eyes. “But cheer up, Nick, and be a good boy—wilt thou not? ’Tis dinner-time, and thy new clothes have come; and thou art to come down now and try them on.”

When Nick came out of the tiring-room and found the master-player come, he knew not what to say or do. “Oh, brave, brave, brave!” cried Cicely, and danced around him, clapping her hands. “Why, it is a very prince—a king! Oh, Nick, thou art most beautiful to see!”

And Master Carew’s own eyes sparkled; for truly it was a pleasant sight to see a fair young lad like Nick in such attire.

There was a fine white shirt of Holland linen, and long hose of grayish blue, with puffed and slashed trunks of velvet so blue as to be almost black. The sleeveless jerkin was of the same dark color, trellised with roses embroidered in silk, and loose from breast to broad lace collar so that the waistcoat of dull gold silk beneath it might show. A cloak of damask with a silver clasp, a buff-leather belt with a chubby purse hung to it by a chain, tan-colored slippers, and a jaunty velvet cap with a short white plume, completed the array. Everything, too, had been laid down with perfume, so that from head to foot he smelt as sweet and clean as a drift of rose-mallows.

“My soul!” cried Carew, stepping back and snapping his fingers with delight. “Thou art the bravest skylark that ever broke a shell! Fine feathers—fine bird—my soul, how ye do set each other off!” He took Nick by the shoulders, twirled him around, and, standing off again, stared at him like a man who has found two pound sterling in a cast-off coat.

“I can na pay for them, sir,” said Nick, slowly.

“There’s nought to pay—it is a gift.”

Nick hung his head, much troubled. What could he say; what could he think? This man had stolen him from home,—ay, made him tremble for his very life a dozen times,—and with his whole heart he knew he hated him—yet here, a gift!

“Yes, Nick, it is a gift—and all because I love thee, lad.”

“Love me?”

“Why, surely! Who could see thee without liking, or hear thy voice and not love thee? Love thee, Nick? Why, on my word and honour, lad, I love thee with all my heart.”

“Thou hast chosen strange ways to show it, Master Carew,” said Nick, and looked straight up into the master player’s eyes.

Carew turned upon his heel and ordered the dinner.

It was a good dinner: fat roast capon stuffed with spiced carrots; asparagus, biscuit, barley-cakes, and honey; and to end with, a flaky pie, and Spanish cordial sprinkled with burnt sugar. With such fare and a keen appetite, a marvelous brand-new suit of clothes, and Cicely chattering gaily by his side, Nick could not be sulky or doleful long. He was soon laughing; and Carew’s spirits seemed to rise with the boy’s.

“Here, here!” he cried, as Nick was served the third time to the pie; “art hollow to thy very toes? Why, thou’lt eat us out of house and home—hey, Cicely? Marry come up, I think I’d best take Ned Alleyn’s five shillings for thine hire, after all! What! Five shillings? Set me in earth and bowl me to death with boiled turnips!—do they think to play bob-fool with me? Five shillings! A fico for their five shillings—and this for them!” and he squeezed the end of his thumb between his fingers. “Cicely, what dost think?—Phil Henslowe had the face to match Jem Bristow with our Nick!”

“Why, daddy, Jem hath a face like a halibut!”

“And a voice like a husky crow. Why, Nick’s mere shadow on the stage is worth a ton of Jemmy Bristows. ’Twas casting pearls before swine, Nick, to offer thee to Henslowe and Alleyn; but we’ve found a better trough than theirs—hey, Cicely Goldenheart, haven’t we? Thou art to be one of Paul’s boys.”

“Paul who?”

Carew lay back in his chair and laughed. “Paul who? Why, Saint Paul, Nick,—’tis Paul’s Cathedral boys I mean. Marry, what dost say to that?”

“I’d like another barley-cake.”

“You’d what?” cried the master-player, letting the front legs of his chair come down on the floor with a thump.

“I’d like another barley-cake,” said Nick, quietly, helping himself to the honey.

“Upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour!” ejaculated Carew. “Tell a man his fortune’s made, and he calls for barley-cakes! Why, thou’dst say ‘Pooh!’ to a cannon-ball! My faith, boy, dost understand what this doth mean?”

“Ay,” said Nick; “that I be hungry.”

“But, Nick, upon my soul, thou art to sing with the Children of Paul’s; to play with the cathedral company; to be a bright particular star in the sweetest galaxy that ever shone in English sky! Dost take me yet?”

“Ay,” said Nick, and sopped the honey with his cake.

Carew played with his glass uneasily, and tapped his heel upon the floor. “And is that all thou hast to say—hast turned oyster? There’s no R in May—nobody will eat thee! Come, don’t make a mouth as though the honey of the world were all turned gall upon thy tongue. ’Tis the flood-tide of thy fortune, boy! Thou art to sing before the school to-morrow, so that Master Nathaniel Gyles may take thy range and worth. Now, truly, thou wilt do thy very best?”

The bandy-legged man had brought water in a ewer, and poured some in a basin for Nick to wash his hands. There was a green ribbon in his ear, and the towel hung across his arm. Nick wiped his hands in silence.

“Come,” said Master Carew, with an ugly sharpness in his voice, “thou’lt sing thy very best?”

“There’s nothing else to do,” replied Nick, doggedly.

CHAPTER XXII
THE SKYLARK’S SONG

Master Nathaniel Gyles, Precentor of St. Paul’s, had pipe-stem legs, and a face like an old parchment put in a box to keep. His sandy hair was thin and straggling, and his fine cloth hose wrinkled around his shrunken shanks; but his eye was sharp, and he wore about his neck a broad gold chain that marked him as no common man.

For Master Nathaniel Gyles was head of the Cathedral schools of acting and of music, and he stood upon his dignity.

“My duty is laid down,” said he, “in most specific terms, sir,—lex cathedralis,—that is to say, by the laws of the cathedral; and has been, sir, since the reign of Richard the Third. Primus Magister Scholarum, Custos Morum, Quartus Custos Rotulorum,—so the title stands, sir; and I know my place.”

He pushed Nick into the anteroom, and turned to Carew with an irritated air.

“I likewise know, sir, what is what. In plain words, Master Gaston Carew, ye have grossly misrepresented this boy to me, to the waste of much good time. Why, sir, he does not dance a step, and cannot act at all.”

“Soft, Master Gyles—be not so fast!” said Carew, haughtily, drawing himself up, with his hand on his poniard; “dost mean to tell me that I have lied to thee? Marry, sir, thy tongue will run thee into a blind alley! I told thee that the boy could sing, but not that he could act or dance.”

“Pouf, sir,—words! I know my place: one peg below the dean, sir, nothing less: ‘Magister, et cetera’—’tis so set down. And I tell thee, sir, he has no training, not a bit; can’t tell a pricksong from a bottle of hay; doesn’t know a canon from a crocodile, or a fugue from a hole in the ground!”

“Oh, fol-de-riddle de fol-de-rol! What has that to do with it? I tell thee, sir, the boy can sing.”

“And, sir, I say I know my place. Music does not grow like weeds.”

“And fa-la-las don’t make a voice.”

“What! How? Wilt thou teach me?” The master’s voice rose angrily. “Teach me, who learned descant and counterpoint in the Gallo-Belgic schools, sir; the best in all the world! Thou, who knowest not a staccato from a stick of liquorice!”

Carew shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “Come, Master Gyles, this is fool play. I told thee that the boy could sing, and thou hast not yet heard him try. Thou knowest right well I am no such simple gull as to mistake a jay for a nightingale; and I tell thee, sir, upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour, he has the voice that thou dost need if thou wouldst win the favor of the Queen. He has the voice, and thou the thingumbobs to make the most of it. Don’t be a fool, now; hear him sing. That’s all I ask. Just hear him once. Thou’lt pawn thine ears to hear him twice.”

The music-school stood within the old cathedral grounds. Through the windows came up distantly the murmur of the throng in Paul’s Yard. It was mid-afternoon, quite warm; blundering flies buzzed up and down the lozenged panes, and through the dark hall crept the humming sound of childish voices reciting eagerly, with now and then a sharp, small cry as some one faltered in his lines and had his fingers rapped. Somewhere else there were boyish voices running scales, now up, now down, without a stop, and other voices singing harmonies, two parts and three together, here and there a little flat from weariness.

The stairs were very dark, Nick thought, as they went up to another floor; but the long hall they came into there was quite bright with the sun.

At one end was a little stage, like the one at the Rose play-house, with a small gallery for musicians above it; but everything here was painted white and gold, and was most scrupulously clean. The rush-strewn floor was filled with oaken benches, and there were paintings hanging upon the wall, portraits of old head-masters and precentors. Some of them were so dark with time that Nick wondered if they had been blackamoors.

Master Gyles closed the great door and pulled a cord that hung by the stage. A bell jangled faintly somewhere in the wall. Nick heard the muffled voices hush, and then a shuffling tramp of slippered feet came up the outer stair.

“Pouf!” said the precentor, crustily. “Tempus fugit—that is to say, we have no time to waste. So, marry, boy, venite, exultemus—in other words, if thou canst sing, be up and at it. Come, cantate—sing, I bid thee, and that instanter—if thou canst sing at all.”

The under-masters and monitors were pushing the boys into their seats. Carew pointed to the stage. “Thou’lt do thy level best!” he said in a low, hard tone, and something clashed beneath his cloak like steel on steel.

Nick went up the steps behind the screen. It seemed cold in the room; he had not noticed it before. Yet there were sweat-drops upon his forehead. He felt as if he were a jackanapes he had seen once at the Stratford fair, which wore a crimson jerkin and a cap. The man who had the jackanapes played upon a pipe and a tabor; and when he said, “Dance!” the jackanapes danced, for it was sorely afraid of the man. Yet when Nick looked around and did not see the master-player anywhere in the hall, he felt exceedingly lonely all at once without him, though he both feared and hated him.

There still was a shuffling of feet and a low talking; but soon it became very quiet, and they all seemed to be waiting for him to begin. He did not care, but supposed he might as well: what else could he do?

There was a clock somewhere ticking quickly with its sharp, metallic ring. As he listened, lonely, his heart cried out for home. In his fancy the wind seemed rippling over the Avon, and the elm-leaves rustled like rain upon the roof above his bed. There were red and white wild-roses in the hedge, and in the air a smell of clover and of new-mown hay. The mowers would be working in the clover in the moonlight. He could almost see the sweep of the shining scythes, and hear the chink-a-chank, chink-a-chank of the whetstone on the long, curving blades. Chink-a-chank, chink-a-chank—’twas but the clock, and he in London town.

Carew, sitting there behind the carven prompter’s-screen, put down his head between his hands and listened. There were murmurings a little while, then silence. Would the boy never begin? He pressed his knuckles into his temples and waited. Bow Bells rang out the hour; but the room was as still as a deep sleep. Would the boy never begin?

The precentor sniffed. It was a contemptuous, incredulous sniff. Carew looked up—his lips white, a fierce red spot in each cheek. He was talking to himself. “By the whistle of the Lord High Admiral!” he said—but there he stopped and held his breath. Nick was singing.

Only the old madrigal, with its half-forgotten words that other generations sang before they fell asleep. How queer it sounded there! It was a very simple tune, too; yet, as he sang, the old precentor started from his chair and pressed his wrinkled hands together against his breast. He quite forgot the sneer upon his face, and it went fading out like breath from a frosty pane.

He had twelve boys who could sing a hundred songs at sight from unfamiliar notes; who kept the beat and marked the time as if their throats were pendulums; could syncopate and floriate as readily as breathe. And this was only a common country song.

But—“That voice, that voice!” he panted to himself: for old Nat Gyles was music-mad; melody to him was like the very breath of life. And the boy’s high, young voice, soft as a flute and silver clear, throbbed in the air as if his very heart were singing out of his body in the sound. And then, like the skylark rising, up, up it went, and up, up, up, till the older choristers held their breath and feared that the vibrant tone would break, so slender, film-like was the trembling thread of the boy’s wild skylark song. But no; it trembled there, high, sweet, and clear, a moment in the air; and then came running, rippling, floating down, as though some one had set a song on fire in the sky, and dropped it quivering and bright into a shadow world. Then suddenly it was gone, and the long hall was still.

The old precentor stepped beyond the screen.

Gaston Carew’s face was in his hands, and his shoulders shook convulsively. “I’ll leave thee go, lad,—ma foi, I’ll leave thee go. But, nay, I dare not leave thee go!”

Some one came and tapped him on the shoulder. It was the sub-precentor. “Master Gyles would speak with thee, sir,” said he, in a low tone, as if half afraid of the sound of his own voice in the quiet that was in the hall.

Carew drew his hand hastily over his face, as if to take the old one off and put a new one on, then arose and followed the man.

The old precentor stood with his hands still clasped against his breast. “Mirabile!” he was saying with bated breath. “It is impossible, and I have dreamed! Yet credo—I believe—quia impossibile est—because it is impossible. Tell me, Carew, do I wake or dream—or, stay, was it a soul I heard? Ay, Carew, ’twas a soul: the lad’s own white, young soul. My faith, I said he was of no account! Satis verborum—say no more. Humanum est errare—I am a poor old fool; and there’s a sour bug flown in mine eye that makes it water so!” He wiped his eyes, for the tears were running down his cheeks.

“Thou’lt take him, then?” asked Carew.

“Take him?” cried the old precentor, catching the master-player by the hand. “Marry, that will I; a voice like that grows not on every bush. Take him? Pouf! I know my place—he shall be entered on the rolls at once.”

“Good!” said Carew. “I shall have him learn to dance, and teach him how to act myself. He stays with me, ye understand; thy school fare is miserly. I’ll dress him, too; for these students’ robes are shabby stuff. But for the rest—”

“Trust me,” said Master Gyles; “he shall be the first singer of them all. He shall be taught—but who can teach the lark its song, and not do horrid murder on it? Faith, Carew, I’ll teach the lad myself; ay, all I know. I studied in the best schools in the world.”

“And, hark ’e, Master Gyles,” said Carew, sternly all at once; “thou’lt come no royal placard and seizure on me—ye have sworn. The boy is mine to have and to hold with all that he earns, in spite of thy prerogatives.”

For the kings of old had given the masters of this school the right to take for St. Paul’s choir whatever voices pleased them, wherever they might be found, by force if not by favor, barring only the royal singers at Windsor; and when men have such privileges it is best to be wary how one puts temptation in their way.

“Thou hadst mine oath before I even saw the boy,” said the precentor, haughtily. “Dost think me perjured—Primus Magister Scholarum, Custos Morum, Quartus Custos Rotulorum? Pouf! I know my place. My oath’s my oath. But, soft; enough—here comes the boy. Who could have told a skylark in such popinjay attire?”

CHAPTER XXIII
A NEW LIFE

And now a strange, new life began for Nicholas Attwood, in some things so grand and kind that he almost hated to dislike it.

It was different in every way from the simple, pinching round in Stratford, and full of all the comforts of richness and plenty that make life happy—excepting home and mother.

Master Gaston Carew would have nothing but the best, and what he wanted, whether he needed it or not; so with him money came like a summer rain, and went like water out of a sieve: for he was a wild blade.

They ate their breakfast when they pleased; dined at eleven, like the nobility; supped at five, as was the fashion of the court. They had wheat-bread the whole week round, as only rich folk could afford, with fruit and berries in their season, and honey from the Surrey bee-farms that made one’s mouth water with the sight of it dripping from the flaky comb; and on Fridays spitchcocked eels, pickled herrings, and plums, with simnel-cakes, poached eggs and milk, cream cheese and cordial, like very kings; so that Nick could not help thriving.

The master-player very seldom left him by himself to mope or to be melancholy; but, while ever vaguely promising to let him go, did everything in his power to make him rather wish to stay; so that Nick was constantly surprised by the free-handed kindness of this man whom he had every other reason in the world, he thought, for deeming his worst enemy.

When there were any new curiosities in Fleet street,—wild men with rings in their noses, wondrous fishes, puppet-shows, or red-capped baboons whirling on a pole,—Carew would have Nick see them as well as Cicely; and often took them both to Bartholomew’s Fair, where there was a giant eating raw beef and a man dancing upon a rope high over the heads of the people. He would have had Nick every Thursday to the bear-baiting in the Paris Garden circus beside; but one sight of that brutal sport made the boy so sick that they never went again, but to the stage-plays at the Rose instead, which Nick enjoyed immensely, for Carew himself acted most excellently, and Master Tom Heywood always came and spoke kindly to the lonely boy.

For, in spite of all, Nick’s heart ached so at times that he thought it would surely break with longing for his mother. And at night, when all the house was still and dark, and he alone in bed, all the little, unconsidered things of home—the beehives and the fragrant mint beside the kitchen door, the smell of the baking bread or frying carrots, the sound of the red-cheeked harvest apples dropping in the orchard, and the plump of the old bucket in the well—came back to him so vividly that many a time he cried himself to sleep, and could not have forgotten if he would.

On Midsummer Day there was a Triumph on the river at Westminster, with a sham-fight and a great shooting of guns and hurling of balls of wild-fire. The Queen was there, and the ambassadors of France and Venice, with the Duke of Lennox and the Earls of Arundel and Southampton. Master Carew took a wherry to Whitehall, and from the green there they watched the show.

The Thames was fairly hidden by the boats, and there was a grand state bark all trimmed with silk and velvet for the Queen to be in to see the pastime. But as for that, all Nick could make out was the high carved stern of the bark, painted with England’s golden lions, and the bark was so far away that he could not even tell which was the Queen.

Coming home by Somerset House, a large barge passed them with many watermen rowing, and fine carpets about the seats; and in it the old Lord Chamberlain and his son my Lord Hunsdon, who, it was said, was to be the Lord Chamberlain when his father died; for the old lord was failing, and the Queen liked handsome young men about her.

In the barge, beside their followers, were a company of richly dressed gentlemen, who were having a very gay time together, and seemed to please the old Lord Chamberlain exceedingly with the things they said. They were somebodies, as Nick could very well see from their carriage and address; and, so far as the barge allowed, they were all clustered about one fellow in the seat by my Lord Hunsdon. He seemed to be the chiefest spokesman of them all, and every one appeared very glad indeed to be friendly with him. My Lord Hunsdon himself made free with his own nobility, and sat beside him arm in arm.

What he was saying they were too far away to hear in the shouting and splash; but those with him in the barge were listening as eagerly as children to a merry tale. Sometimes they laughed until they held their sides; and then again as suddenly they were very quiet, and played softly with their tankards and did not look at one another as he went gravely on telling his story. Then all at once he would wave his hand gaily, and his smile would sparkle out; and the whole company, from the old Lord Chamberlain down, would brighten up again, as if a new dawn had come over the hills into their hearts from the light of his hazel eyes.

Nick made no doubt that this was some young earl rolling in wealth; for who else could have such listeners? Yet there was, nevertheless, something so familiar in his look that he could not help staring at him as the barge came thumping through the jam.

They passed along an oar’s-length or two away; and as they came abeam, Carew, rising, doffed his hat, and bowed politely to them all.

In spite of his wild life, he was a striking, handsome man.

The old Lord Chamberlain said something to his son, and pointed with his hand. All the company in the barge turned round to look; and he who had been talking stood up quickly with his hand upon the young lord’s arm, and, smiling, waved his cap.

Nick gave a sharp cry.

Then the barge pushed through, and shot away down stream like a wild swan.

“Why, Nick,” exclaimed Cicely, “how dreadful thou dost look!” and, frightened, she caught him by the hand. “Why, oh!—what is it, Nick—thou art not ill?”

“It was Will Shakspere!” cried Nick, and sank into the bottom of the wherry with his head upon the master-player’s knee. “Oh, Master Carew,” he cried, “will ye never leave me go?”

Carew laid his hand upon the boy’s head, and patted it gently.

“Why, Nick,” said he, and cleared his throat, “is not this better than Stratford?”

“Oh, Master Carew—mother’s there!” was the reply.

There was no sound but the thud of oars in the rowlocks and the hollow bubble of the water at the stern, for they had fallen out of the hurry and were coming down alone.

“Is thy mother a good woman, Nick?” asked Cicely.

Carew was staring out into the fading sky. “Ay, sweetheart,” he answered in a queer, husky voice, suddenly putting one arm about her and the other around Nick’s shoulders. “None but a good mother could have so good a son.”

“Then thou wilt send him home, daddy?” asked Cicely.

Carew took her hand in his, but answered nothing.

They had come to the landing.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE MAKING OF A PLAYER

Master Will Shakspere was in town! The thought ran through Nick Attwood’s head like a half-remembered tune. Once or twice he had all but sung it instead of the words of his part. Master Will Shakspere was in town!

Could he but just find Master Shakspere, all his trouble would be over; for the husband of his mother’s own cousin would see justice done him in spite of the master-player and the bandy-legged man with the ribbon in his ear—of that he was sure.

But there seemed small chance of its coming about; for the doors of Gaston Carew’s house were locked and barred by day and by night, as much to keep Nick in as to keep thieves out; and all day long, when Carew was away, the servants went about the lower halls, and Gregory Goole’s uncanny face peered after him from every shadowy corner; and when he went with Carew anywhere, the master-player watched him like a hawk, while always at his heels he could hear the clump, clump, clump of the bandy-legged man following after him.

Even were he free to go as he pleased, he knew not where to turn; for the Lord Chamberlain’s company would not be at the Blackfriars play-house until Martinmas; and before that time to look for even Master Will Shakspere at random in London town would be worse than hunting for a needle in a haystack.

To be sure, he knew that the Lord Chamberlain’s men were still playing at the theater in Shoreditch; for Master Carew had taken Cicely there to see the “Two Gentlemen of Verona.” But just where Shoreditch was, Nick had only the faintest idea—somewhere away off by Finsbury Fields, beyond the city walls to the north of London town—and all the wide world seemed north of London town; and the way thither lay through a bewildering tangle of streets in which the din and the rush of the crowd were never still.

From a hopeless chase like that Nick shrank back like a snail into its shell. He was not too young to know that there were worse things than to be locked in Gaston Carew’s house. It were better to be a safe-kept prisoner there than to be lost in the sinks of London. And so, knowing this, he made the best of it.

But Master Shakspere was come back to town, and that was something. It seemed somehow less lonely just to think of it.

Yet in truth he had but little time to think of it; for the master-player kept him closely at his strange, new work, and taught him daily with the most amazing patience.

He had Nick learn no end of stage parts off by heart, with their cues and “business,” entrances and exits; and worked fully as hard as his pupil, reading over every sentence twenty times until Nick had the accent perfectly. He would have him stamp, too, and turn about, and gesture in accordance with the speech, until the boy’s arms ached, going with him through the motions one by one, over and over again, unsatisfied, but patient to the last, until Nick wondered. “Nick, my lad,” he would often say, with a tired but determined smile, “one little thing done wrong may spoil the finest play, as one bad apple rots the barrelful. We’ll have it right, or not at all, if it takes a month of Sundays.”

So, often, he kept Nick before a mirror for an hour at a time, making faces while he spoke his lines, smiling, frowning, or grimacing as best seemed to fit the part, until the boy grew fairly weary of his own looks. Then sometimes, more often as the time slipped by, Carew would clap his hands with a boyish laugh, and have a pie brought and a cup of Spanish cordial for them both, declaring that he loved the lad with all his heart, upon the remnant of his honour: from which Nick knew that he was coming on.

Cicely Carew’s governess was a Mistress Agnes Anstey. By birth she had been a Harcourt of Ankerwyke, and she was therefore everywhere esteemed fit by birth and breeding to teach the young mind when to bow and when to beckon. She came each morning to the house, and Carew paid her double shillings to see to it that Nick learned such little tricks of cap and cloak as a lady’s page need have, the carriage best fitted for his place, and how to come into a room where great folks were. Moreover, how to back out again, bowing, and not fall over the stools—which was no little art, until Nick caught the knack of peeping slyly between his legs when he bowed.

His hair, too, was allowed to grow long, and was combed carefully every day by the tiring-woman; and soon, as it was naturally curly, it fell in rolling waves about his neck.

On the heels of the governess came M’sieu de Fleury, who, it was said, had been dancing-master to Hatton, the late Lord Chancellor of England, and had taught him those tricks with his nimble heels which had capered him into the Queen’s good graces, and so got him the chancellorship. M’sieu spoke dreadful English, but danced like the essence of agility, and taught both Nick and Cicely the latest Italian coranto, playing the tune upon his queer little pochette.

Cicely already danced like a pixy, and laughed merrily at her comrade’s first awkward antics, until he flushed with embarrassment. At that she instantly became grave, and, when M’sieu had gone, came across the room, and putting her arm about Nick, said repentantly, “Don’t thou mind me, Nick. Father saith the French all laugh too soon at nothing; and I have caught it from my mother’s blood. A boy is not good friends with his feet as a girl is; but thou wilt do beautifully, I know; and M’sieu shall teach us the galliard together.”

And often, after the lesson was over and M’sieu departed, she would have Nick try his steps over and over again in the great room, while she stood upon the stool to make her tall, and cried, “Sa—sa!” as the master did, scolding and praising him by turns, or jumping down in pretty impatience to tuck up her little silken skirts and show him the step herself; while the cook’s knave and the scullery-maids peeped at the door and cried: “La, now, look ’e, Moll!” at every coupee.

It made a picture quaint and pretty to see them dancing there. The smoky light, stealing in through the narrow casements over the woodwork dark with age, dropped in little yellow chequers upon old chests of oak, of walnut, and of strange, purple-black wood from foreign lands, giving a weird life to the griffins and twisted traceries carved upon their sides. High-backed, narrow chairs stood along the wall, with cushioned stools inlaid with shell. Twinklings of light glinted from the brass candlesticks. On the wall above the wainscot the faded hangings wavered in the draught, crusted thickly with strange embroidered flowers. And dancing there together in the semi-gloom, the children seemed quaint little figures stepped down from the tapestry at the touch of a magic wand.

And so the time went slipping by, very pleasantly upon the whole, and Nick’s young heart grew stout again within his breast; for he was strong and well, and in those days the very air was full of hope, and no man knew what might betide with the rising of to-morrow’s sun.

Every day, from two till three o’clock, he was at Master Gyles’s private singing-room at the old cathedral school, learning to read music at first sight, and to sing offhand the second, third, and fourth parts of queer intermingled fugues or wonderfully constructed canons.

At first his head felt stuffed like a feasted glutton with all the learning that the old precentor poured into it; but by and by he found it plain enough, and no very difficult thing to follow up the prickings in the paper with his voice, and to sing parts written at fifths and fourths and thirds with other voices as easily as to carry a song alone. But still he sang best his own unpointed songs, the call and challenge of the throstle and the merle, the morning glory of the lark, songs that were impossible to write. And those were the songs that the precentor was at the greatest pains to have him sing in perfect tones, making him open his mouth like a little round and let the music float out of itself.

Like the master-player, nothing short of perfection pleased old Nathaniel Gyles, and Nick’s voice often wavered with sheer weariness as he ran his endless scales and sang absurd fa-la-la-las while his teacher beat the time in the air with his lean forefinger like a grim automaton.

The old man, too, was chary of his praise, though Nick tried hard to please him, and it was only by little things he told his satisfaction. He touzed the ears of the other boys, and sometimes smartly thumped their crowns; but with Nick he only nipped his ruddy cheek between his thumb and finger, or laid his hand upon his shoulder when the hard day’s work was done, saying, “Satis cantorum—it is enough. Now be off to thy nest, sir; and do not forget to wash thy throat with good cold water every day.”

All this time the busy sand kept running in the glass. July was gone, and August at its heels. The hot breath of the summer had cooled, and the sun no longer burned the face when it came in through the windows. Nick often shut his eyes and let the warm light fall upon his closed lids. It made a ruddy glow like the wild red poppies that grow in the pale green rye. In fancy he could almost smell the queer, rancid odor of the crimson bloom crushed beneath the feet of the farmers’ boys who cut the butter-yellow mustard from among the bearded grain.

“Heigh-ho and alackaday!” thought Nick. “It is better in the country than in town!” For there was no smell in all the town like the clean, sweet smell of the open fields just after a summer rain, no colors like the bright heart’s-ease and none-so-pretty, or the honeysuckle over the cottage door, and no song ever to be heard among the sooty chimney-pots like the song of the throstle piping to the daisies on the hill.

But he had little time to dream such dreams, for every day from four to six o’clock the children’s company played and sang in public, at their own school-hall, or in the courtyard of the Mitre Inn on Bread street near St. Paul’s.

They were the pets of London town, and their playing-place was thronged day after day. For the bright young faces and sweet, unbroken voices of the richly costumed lads made a spot in sordid London life like a pot of posies in a window on a dark street; so that both the high and the low, the rich and the poor, came in to see them play and dance, to hear them sing, and to laugh again at the witty things which were written for them to say.

The songs that were set for Nick to sing were always short, sweet, simple things that even the dull-eyed, toil-worn folk upon the rough plank benches in the pit could understand. Many a silver shilling came clinking down at the heels of the other boys from the galleries of the inn, where the people of the better classes, wealthy merchants, ladies and their dashing gallants, watched the children’s company; but when Nick’s songs were done the common people down below seemed all gone daft. They tossed red apples after him, ripe yellow pears, fat purple plums by handfuls, called him by name and brought him back, and cried for more and more and more, until the old precentor shook his head behind the prompters-screen, and waved Nick off with a forbidding frown. Yet all the while he chuckled to himself until it seemed as if his dry old ribs would rattle in his sides; and every day, before Nick sang, he had him up to his little room for a broken egg and a cup of rosy cordial.

“To clear thy voice and to cheer the cockles of thine heart,” said he; “and to tune that pretty throat of thine ad gustum Reginae—which is to say, ‘to the Queen’s own taste,’—God bless Her Majesty!”

The other boys were cast for women’s parts, for women never acted then; and a queer sight it was to Nick to see his fellows in great farthingales of taffeta and starchy cambric that rustled as they walked, with popinjay blue ribbon in their hair, and flowered stomachers sparkling with paste jewels.

And, truth, it was no easy thing to tell them from the real affair, or to guess the made from the maiden, so slender and so graceful were they all, with their ruffs and their muffs and their feathered fans, and all the airs and mincing graces of the daintiest young miss.

But old Nat Gyles would never have Nick Attwood play the girl. “The lad is good enough for me just as he is,” said he; and that was all there was of it.

CHAPTER XXV
THE WANING OF THE YEAR

In September the Lord Admiral’s company made a tour of the Midlands during the great English fairing-time; but Carew did not go with them. For, though still by name master-player with Henslowe and Alleyn, his business with them had come to be but little more than pocketing his share of the profits; and for the rest, nothing but to take Nick daily to and from St. Paul’s, and to draw his wages week by week.

Of those wages Nick saw never a penny: Carew took good care of that. Yet he gave him everything that any boy could need, and bought him whatever he fancied the instant he so much as expressed a wish for it: which, in truth, was not much; for Nick had lived in only a country town, and knew not many things to want.

But with money a-plenty thus coming so easily into his hands,—money for dicing, for luxuries, for all his wild sports, money for Cicely, money for keeps, money to play chuckie-stones with if he chose,—there was no bridle to Gaston Carew’s wild career. His boon companions were spendthrifts and gamesters, dissolute fellows, of whom the least said soonest mended; and with them he was brawling early and late, very often all night long. And though money came in fast, he wasted it faster, so that matters went from bad to worse. Duns came spying about his door, and bailiffs hunted after him around the town with unpaid tradesmen’s bills. Yet still he laughed and clapped his hand upon his poniard in the old bold way.

September faded away in wistful haze along the Hampstead hills. The Admiral’s men came riding back with keen October ringing at their heels, and all the stalls were full of red-cheeked apples striped with emerald and gold. November followed, with its nipping frost, and all St. George’s merry green fields turned brown and purple-gray. The old year was waning fast.

The Queen’s Day was but a poor holiday, in spite of the shut-up shops; for it was grown so cold with sleet and rain that it was hard to get about, the gutters and streets being very foul, and the by-lanes impassable. And now the children of Paul’s gave no more plays in the yard of the Mitre Inn, but sang in their own warm hall; for winter was at hand.

There came black nights when an ugly wind moaned in the shivering chimneys and howled across the peaked roofs, nights when there was no playing at the Rose, but it was hearty to be by the fire. Then sometimes Carew sat at home all evening long, with Cicely upon his knee, and told strange tales of lands across the sea, where he had traveled when he was young, and where none spoke English but chance travelers, and even the loudest shouting could not serve to make the people understand.

While he spun these wondrous yarns Nick would curl up on the hearth and blow the crackling fire, sometimes staring at the master-player’s stories, sometimes laughing to himself at the funny faces carved upon the sides of the chubby Dutch bellows, and sometimes neither laughing nor listening, but thinking silently of home. Then Carew, looking at him there, would quickly turn his face away and tell another tale.

But oftener the master-player stayed all night at the Falcon Inn with Dick Jones, Tom Hearne, Humphrey Jeffs, and other reckless roysterers, dicing and flipping shillings at shovel-board until his finger-nails were sore. Then Nick would read aloud to Cicely out of the “Hundred Merry Tales,” or pop old riddles at her puzzled head until she, laughing, cried, “Enough!” But most of all he liked the story of brave Guy of Warwick, and would tell it again and again, with other legends of Arden Wood, till bedtime came.

In the gray of the morning Carew would come home, unshaven and leaden-eyed, with his bandy-legged varlet trotting like a watch-dog at his heels; and then, if the gaming had gone well, he was a lord, an earl, a duke, at least, so merry and so sprightly would he be withal; but if the dice had fallen wrong, he would by turns be raving mad or sodden as a sunken pie.

Yet, be his temper what it might, he was but one thing always to Cicely, and doffed ill humor like a shabby hat when she came running to meet him in the shadows of the hall; so that when he came into the lighted room, with her upon his shoulder, his face was smiles, his step a frolic, and his bearing that of a happy boy.

But day by day the weather grew worse, with snow and ice paving the streets with a glassy glare and choking the frozen drains; and there was trouble and want among the poor in the wretched alleys near Carew’s house: for fuel was high and food scarce, and there were many deaths, so that the knell was tolling constantly.

Cicely cried until her eyes were red for the very sadness of it all, since she might do nothing for them, and hated the sound of the sullen bell.

“Pshaw, Cicely!” said Nick; “why should ye cry? Ye do na know them; so ye need na care.”

“But, Nick,” said she, “nobody seems to care! And, sure, somebody ought to care; for it may be some one’s mother that is dead.”

At that Nick felt a very queer choking in his own throat, and did not rest quite easy in his mind until he had given the silver buckle from his cloak to a boy who stood crying with cold and hunger in the street, and begged a farthing of him for the love of the good God.

Then came a thaw, with mist and fog so thick that people were lost in their own streets, and knocked at their next-door neighbor’s gate to ask the way home. All day long, down by the Thames drums beat upon the wharves and bells ding-donged to guide the watermen ashore; but most of those who needs must fare abroad went over London Bridge, because there, although they might in no wise see, it felt, at least, as if the world were still beneath their feet.

At noon the air was muddy brown, with a bitter taste like watered smoke; at night it was a blinding pall; and though, after mid-December, by order of the Council, every alderman and burgess hung a light before his door, torches, links, and candles only sputtered feebly in the gloom, of no more use than jack-o’-lanterns gone astray, and none but blind men knew the roads.

The city watch was doubled everywhere; and all night long their shouts went up and down—“’Tis what o’clock, and a foggy night!”—and right and left their hurrying staves came thumping helplessly along the walls to answer cries of “Murder!” and of “Help! Watch! Help!” For under cover of the fog great gangs of thieves came down from Hampstead Heath, and robberies were done in the most frequented thoroughfares, between the very lights set up by the corporation; so that it was dangerous to go about save armed and wary as a cat in a crowd.

While such foul days endured there was no singing at St. Paul’s, nor stage-plays anywhere, save at Blackfriars play-house, which was roofed against the weather. And even there at last the fog crept in through cracks and crannies until the players seemed but moving shadows talking through a choking cloud; and Master Will Shakspere’s famous new piece of “Romeo and Juliet,” which had been playing to crowded houses, taking ten pound twelve the day, was fairly smothered off the boards.

Nick was eager to be out in all this blindman’s holiday; but, “Nay,” said Carew; “not so much as thy nose. A fog like this would steal the croak from a raven’s throat, let alone the sweetness from a honey-pot like thine—and bottom crust is the end of pie!” With which, bang went the door, creak went the key, and Carew was off to the Falcon Inn.

MASTER SKYLARKA Story ofShakspere’s Time

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MASTER SKYLARK

CHAPTER ITHE LORD ADMIRAL’S PLAYERS

CHAPTER IINICHOLAS ATTWOOD’S HOME

CHAPTER IIITHE LAST STRAW

CHAPTER IVOFF FOR COVENTRY

CHAPTER VIN THE WARWICK ROAD

CHAPTER VITHE MASTER-PLAYER

CHAPTER VII“WELL SUNG, MASTER SKYLARK!”

CHAPTER VIIITHE ADMIRAL’S COMPANY

CHAPTER IXTHE MAY-DAY PLAY

CHAPTER XAFTER THE PLAY

CHAPTER XIDISOWNED

CHAPTER XIIA STRANGE RIDE

CHAPTER XIIIA DASH FOR FREEDOM

CHAPTER XIVAT BAY

CHAPTER XVLONDON TOWN

CHAPTER XVIMA’M’SELLE CICELY CAREW

CHAPTER XVIICAREW’S OFFER

CHAPTER XVIIIMASTER HEYWOOD PROTESTS

CHAPTER XIXTHE ROSE PLAY-HOUSE

CHAPTER XXDISAPPOINTMENT

CHAPTER XXI“THE CHILDREN OF PAUL’S”

CHAPTER XXIITHE SKYLARK’S SONG

CHAPTER XXIIIA NEW LIFE

CHAPTER XXIVTHE MAKING OF A PLAYER

CHAPTER XXVTHE WANING OF THE YEAR

MASTER SKYLARK
A Story of
Shakspere’s Time

CHAPTER I
THE LORD ADMIRAL’S PLAYERS