Mask of Night (3 page)

“Thank you, Master . . . Neville?”

“Revill, Nick Revill.”

“Tell me truly how we are doing.”

“We?”

“Oh, the Chamberlain’s.”

The mocking, almost sneering tone had gone. No more references to Bumbag or Shakeshaft. Just “we”. In his heart, Kemp remained one of the Chamberlain’s. He’d spent the best years of his life with the troupe. I felt what I had not experienced since entering this dingy room: a dash of pity.

Still squatting on Kemp’s filthy floor, I shrugged. I could not give the impression that we were pining for Kemp’s return – we weren’t, and anyway Robert Armin was a clown who was better suited to our later, more subtle times – but I did not want to hurt the old man’s feelings by saying that we had never looked back since his departure.

“You above all are familiar with the playhouse, Master Kemp. Even at the best of times our fortunes hang by a pin,” I said, voicing some of the thoughts that had occurred to me on the way over to Dow-gate. “And Lent is coming.”

Perhaps I sounded more mournful than I intended because Kemp said, “You have a powerful patron in Lord Hunsdon . . . ”

“The Lord Chamberlain is sick,” I said.

“ . . . and an ally in the Queen?”

“She is worse than sick as you must know. All London knows it.”

“All London may be sick soon enough,” said Kemp. “I have heard the stories. This is just the beginning.”

I guessed that he was talking about the plague. Or perhaps it was merely an old man’s belief that, since he was sinking, everything else must surely be sinking with him.

“But we shall survive,” I said.

“No doubt you will,” said Kemp, lying back once more on his thin bed. The momentary life he’d shown when cutting a caper or trying to sell us his little pamphlet had disappeared again.

The audience was obviously at an end. I clambered to my feet. Abel Glaze, who’d stayed quiet during these last exchanges, got up too. Then he did a strange thing – a thing which I should not have thought of doing or been capable of doing. He leaned forward and kissed Will Kemp as he was stretched out on his boarded bed, kissed his wrinkled brown brow. Kemp said nothing more but when we quit the room I looked back and saw the clown’s eyes brimming, like an overfilled cup. The water in them reflected the small quantity of light coming through the bandaged window.

When we were safely outside in the street I was about to speak but, glancing at Abel’s preoccupied expression, thought better of it. We said nothing for a long time but walked back towards Southwark, crossing the bridge rather than taking a ferry and then walking straight on down Long Lane. The afternoon remained clear. The sun shone from a blue sky. Even the dust in the road had a fresh spring sheen to it. Eventually, as we turned the corner by St George’s church, I remarked to Abel, “Well, they always say that tears lie under the clown’s paint.”

“That’s what they say, is it?” said Abel. “Next you’ll be telling me that comedy and tragedy are the opposite sides of the same coin.”

This sharpness was unusual, for Abel. Plainly something in Kemp’s predicament had struck a chord with him. I would catch him in a more cheerful mood and ask him about it later. Normally I would have turned off at this point towards my own lodgings but instead I accompanied Abel in the direction of his. Fellowship perhaps. Also it was a pleasant afternoon, and I wanted to walk off the effects of Kemp’s dim room. But then both our attentions were diverted. Or rather everything to do with Kemp – everything to do with everything (except for one subject) – was swept away.

Abel lived near the edge of Southwark, where town meets open country in a raggedy fringe. I don’t think it was because he could not afford better lodgings closer to the Globe playhouse (“better” is a relative term south of the river, you understand). In fact I’m pretty certain he could have afforded them. He’d hinted at a store of cash salted away somewhere, the fruits of his coney-catching days around the country. He might have abandoned his old dishonest ways but he still retained some of the tools of his trade – salves and other preparations – in a large wallet which he carried everywhere with him, as if at any moment he might set out on the open road once more. For there was still something of the open road about Abel. That may be the reason why he liked to be within sight and smell of the trees and fields, liked to keep a gap between himself and the worst stinks and vapours of the town. Anyway he was accommodated in Kentish Street, so called because once it had untangled itself from the city’s vicious grip it ran off in the direction of that county as fast as its muddy heels could carry it.

Although there was plenty of space in this part of town, the houses tended to huddle together as if for protection from some malign force. These houses were crammed with mean, dirty rooms which made my own lodgings in Dead Man’s Place appear generous. The individuals inside these rooms were frequently mean and dirty too. If you’re looking for real spaciousness – for grand chambers and fine gardens – then it is the mansions and palaces in the heart of our city that you must visit.

When the plague attacks it often strikes at London’s dirty skirts first, although, if unchecked, it may eventually creep its way into those same grand chambers and fine gardens. But the fringes and skirts of London are the earliest to fall. There’d already been rumours of cases, as Will Kemp had suggested, but nothing very definite. Now, however, the clown’s predictions and forebodings took shape before our very eyes.

We hadn’t yet reached Abel’s lodging-house when we came across a row of squat single-storey dwellings. A group of official-looking people was gathered before a single doorway in the middle of the row. Beyond them, and at a distance of a few yards on the opposite side of the street, stood a small, gawping crowd. Men, women and children, a couple of dozen in all. Some babies cradled at the breast. Naturally we joined the crowd. It would have been difficult to squeeze past them. No one was saying anything. Their eyes were aimed at the group in front of the door. I identified a constable and a beadle by their dress and badges. There was also a short man who appeared to be in charge of the scene, as well as a pair of shrouded, hag-like females. I knew what was up. So did the rest of the crowd. I felt goose-flesh break out over my body, and yet I would not, could not, have moved away. I suppose that everybody in the crowd – men and women and those children who were old enough to understand what was happening – must have been in the same frozen state.

A dispute was in progress by the door. Every word was audible. The short man was saying to the beadle, “And I tell you, Master Arnet, that this will
not
do. This – this is too quickly defaced or removed altogether. Like this.”

So saying, he ripped down a paper bill from where it had been pinned to the door. LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US was printed on it in big black type (and the largest word by far was LORD), together with some other prayers and injunctions in smaller lettering. The short man held out the bill, crumpled and torn, in front of the beadle’s evasive gaze.

I had the impression that the speaker intended his words to be heard not just by the beadle and the constable but by the rest of us. The beadle shifted uncomfortably and muttered something about “orders”.

“I am giving you fresh orders, Arnet,” said the small man, whom I took to be a councillor or alderman. Judging from his high-handed manner, which was in inverse proportion to his inches, he probably came from across the river. A fine white horse was tethered to a tree at the London-ward end of the row of hovels. Presumably it belonged to this important gent. He continued to address the beadle: “You are to return here with red paint and a brush and you are to set the mark upon this door. It is to be the prescribed fourteen inches in length. You will do it in oil so that it may not be easily rubbed off. These are the new orders from the Council.”

“Well, Master Farnaby . . . ” said the beadle but his voice tailed off as the other man stared at him. Arnet gazed across the road at the little crowd, as if he expected some help from that quarter. I guessed that the beadle was local, drawn from the parish like the constable.

“While you are obtaining the red paint,” continued the alderman called Farnaby, “and the brush and a measure – remember that the mark is to be fourteen inches in length, that is prescribed – while you are obtaining the necessary items, this gentleman remains here to secure the premises. You understand?”

He was referring to the constable. The constable nodded energetically. The alderman turned back to the beadle.

“Well, what are you waiting for, man? Go get your brush, your paint, your measure.”

The beadle scuttered off up the street. As Farnaby was issuing these instructions in a not-to-be-controverted tone, a flickering movement caught my eye. To one side of the doorway there was a low ragged window, more of a hole than a proper opening, covered with cloth sacking. Someone was looking out at the street through a gap between the sacking and the wall. All I could see was the white of a single eye. I find it hard to describe the thrill – of horror, of terror, somehow mixed up with fellow feeling – which shot through me at the sight of that single eye. It must have belonged to a child or to an adult who was crouching down low so as to see out into the street. The house was occupied!

I don’t know why I should have been shocked at this. The dwelling, more of a hovel than a house, was much likelier to be full than empty. And this could explain why the beadle had put up a bill which was no more than a flimsy sheet of paper. It might have been that Arnet had been bribed by the occupants of the house to keep quiet about the infection, or that he was hoping to be bribed. Sticking up a bit of paper to warn of the plague was the equivalent of doing nothing since, as the alderman had demonstrated, it was easily torn down. Or it might have been that the beadle was moved to pity for the inhabitants of the hovel. With the painting of an indelible red cross on their door, and other restrictions, they were being condemned to a prison of sickness from which none could expect to emerge alive.

As if to confirm that the place was occupied, Alderman Farnaby turned to the constable and, motioning with his head in the direction of the door, said, “Their name?”

“Turnbull, sir.”

“Number?” Then, realizing that he hadn’t been understood, “How many Turnbulls altogether?”

The constable counted off on his fingers.

“Five, six . . . no . . . seven. And then there is a person called Watkins.”

“There are eight Turnbulls,” said a woman standing on the far side of Abel Glaze. She was clutching a small boy by the hand.

Farnaby looked across the street to the speaker.

“She had another at Candlemas.”

“It perished,” said someone else, a man this time.

“That was two doors away,” said the woman.

“No matter where it was or what the baby did,” said Farnaby. “In the matter of this dwelling now, constable: secure the door in the prescribed form with padlocks. After forty days you may remove the locks. All this to be at the charge of the parish.”

I looked at the slit between sacking and wall. No sign of an eye. But there were surely ears pricked up inside that dark room, listening to their fate. Now Alderman Farnaby directed his fire at the pair of hag-like women who were standing to one side, cowled and expectant.

“I don’t have to tell you your duties, do I?”

“We know them,” a voice came quavering from one of the scarfed heads.

“Are you honest and discreet?”

“We are, sir,” said the second scarfed head.

“Vigilant and skilful?”

“Now, sir,” said the first, “I should say we are that too, though we should be the last to claim it – but if you were to ask these good neighbours standing here – ”

Alderman Farnaby wasn’t interested in the old woman’s meanderings and cut her off with a wave of his hand. He took one last look at the constable and the old women before sweeping his eyes across the group on the other side of the street. He paused as he glimpsed Abel and me. Perhaps we appeared out of place among the usual inhabitants of Kentish Street. His look seemed to say to all of us, “You’ve had your entertainment.”

What he actually said was, “The keeper has just called you ‘good neighbours’ . . . well, you will show yourselves good neighbours to these unfortunate Turnbulls and, er, the person called Watkins in the following manner. This house remains undisturbed for the prescribed forty days. These two honest and discreet women will act as nurse-keepers. There is to be no intercourse with the occupants except through them. A warder will be appointed at the charge of the parish to ensure that no one leaves this place. The mark on the door will not be touched. Anyone who tries to wipe the mark off the door, or who enters the house, or who aids the unfortunate occupants to depart before the end of forty days will find himself – or herself – clapped into the stocks or the House of Correction.”

Then, without waiting to see the effect of his words, he strode off, unhitched the white palfrey and mounted it. He turned the horse’s head towards London and rode off at an even pace.

“A fig for you too, Farnaby,” said the woman who’d given the number of occupants in the Turnbull household as eight. The words were almost shouted, and accompanied with the appropriate thumb-through-fingers gesture, although not until the alderman was at a safe distance. The small crowd nodded or murmured approval. One or two laughed. Seeing this, the little boy whose hand she was holding glanced up at her and laughed too.

“Now, now,” said the constable, no doubt feeling the pull of his office, “the gentleman is doing no more than what is prescribed.”

“The bugger should be prescribed himself,” said the woman. “Him and his prescribes. Laying down the law.”

“He’s not the only one who likes doing that,” said one of the two crones who’d been appointed nurse-keepers. She crossed the street to stand in front of the woman with the boy. The crone was less ancient that I’d taken her for at first. The quaver had gone from her voice. I wondered whether she’d assumed an older, more feeble manner for the benefit of the alderman.