The True Prince (18 page)

He sucked the remaining marrow from a leg bone and tossed the bone to a hound waiting nearby. Then he stretched his long arms above his head, belched, and reached for his cap. “Nothing simpler,” said he.

GENTLEMEN OF THE SHADE

fter we escorted Starling to the corner of Aldermanbury Street, where she could get home safely by herself, Bartlemy and I set off southward at a brisk pace. No words passed between us until we reached St. Paul's landing, where Aldersgate Street meets the Thames. Since the hour was past nine o'clock, half the watermen had tied up their boats and gone home to supper, but the other half had lit their lanterns and rowed on, trolling for fares. They swarmed like fireflies in the weedy-smelling mist now rising from the river. To Bartlemy's shout of “Westward, ho!” two of them changed course and darted our way. We stepped aboard the boat that reached us first.

“How far, sir?” inquired the waterman.

Bartlemy tossed him two pennies before replying, “Whitefriars.”

“Oho! As you please.” The man pushed beyond the
reeds and steered his wherry to a place where the current was not so swift. “But when we draw nigh, I'll haul up and you gentlemen may leap ashore before I beat out to the open current.” He chuckled at this, though I was not inclined to join him. Our destination was a haunt of cutthroats and thieves, its very name used to frighten children. “Be good,” an exasperated mother or nurse might cry, “lest the devil come and bear thee off to Whitefriars!”

“You'll draw up to the landing and let us off like honest men,” Bartlemy said, and the waterman laughed outright. Once past the rushes he stretched his oars and bent his back, bearing up against the current with long steady strokes as frogs along the bank raised a rackety chorus. We sat uneasily for a few moments, until Bartlemy asked me, “What's to become of Sir John Oldcastle, then?”

This was so unexpected I couldn't fathom his meaning at first. Once I did, the first thing that came to mind was, “Falstaff. We must call him Falstaff.”

“Oldcastle!” the waterman exclaimed from the stern. “What a case! Will he get away with all his rogueries, you think?”

“We must call him Falstaff,” Bartlemy informed him, in a solemn tone that seemed to mock me.

“Pffft! Falstaff, Oldcastle, makes no bones, he's a rare 'un. Claiming to be the slayer of Hotspur—did you ever hear the like?”

The waterman wheezed with laughter as he pulled on his oars.

“Most rare,” Bartlemy said, in a voice that betrayed no opinion.

“Will he get away with it, think ye?”

“I'm not the one to ask,” my companion said, gazing at me as though I could reveal the fat knight's fate. But so far as I knew, that was still locked inside Master Will's head.

“By the Lord,” our boatman went on, “I almost hope he will. The tales he comes up with! Who'd believe he could twist his fat belly out of so many tight places …” He went on to recall his favorite bits of the play, and Bartlemy countered with his. I was amazed at how firm a hold Jack Oldcastle—Falstaff, rather—had taken on the public imagination. Coward, conniver, and cheat though he was, the waterman seemed to regard him as a hero—or at least juicy meat for conversation until he pulled up to Whitefriars stairs and tossed out a mooring line. “Here ye be, gentlemen. Watch your purses, feet, and necks, and perhaps we shall meet again.”

Once we were on the ground our boatman lost no time in casting off and pulling away. “Have you a dagger?” Bartlemy asked me. “Good—endeavor not to use it. Pull your cap down, meet no one's eyes and keep close—you'll be safe. Most like.”

We were in the dreaded “suburbs,” though at first glance it resembled nothing more than a down-at-heels section of London, with sagging shutters and tumbledown walls and a heavy smell of sour ale. The only light came from open doors
and windows, and that little enough; they were like glowing patches on a sad, gray garment. Whitefriars once housed a monastery—hence the name—but all traces of religion had fled; the bursts of laughter and quarreling we heard sounded anything but pious. But except for the cat who flew out a window in front of us and hit the ground howling, I saw no violence. The place was quiet overall, but not with a comfortable quietness. The silence appeared to shift from one dark alley to the next, as though seeking its time to break out in lawlessness.

My companion had his route in mind: first along the wall marking Bridewell Prison, where he stopped to look into the windows of two alehouses. Then we cut across the old monastery grounds and paused at the window of another. When he shook his head and moved on, I protested, “I thought this was going to be simple.”

“Simple, yes. Easy, perhaps not. I know one more place to look.” He continued in a westerly direction, and to my relief the neighborhood improved a little. The Inns of Court lay not far away, which seemed convenient—with so many lawbreakers near to hand the law students had all the case studies they could ever want. After darting down too many narrow roads and alleys to count, we came to an alehouse with softly glowing windows and the merry notes of a fife and drum spilling into the street. By one torch mounted beside the door I barely made out the device carved on the sign: a crude bull with one bent horn.

After a glance in the window Bartlemy plucked my sleeve and whispered, “Here we are at last. Remember to keep your head down.” I followed him into an alley, then through an open door that led directly into the kitchen. A drip-nosed, slack-jawed boy was turning a joint of mutton on the fireplace spit while a stout woman peeled onions at the table. The woman straightened and put her hands on her hips, but Bartlemy silenced all protest with a coin tossed her way. He also helped himself to a turnip just before passing into the tap- room.

A pall of greasy smoke stung my eyes and a hail of voices hammered my ears as we made our way around the wall. Bartlemy found a stool at one end of a table, dropped onto it, and disappeared. He possessed an uncanny gift for making himself inconspicuous, like a turtle disappearing into its own shell. I tried to do the same by not looking at anyone, or at least not anyone close by. A serving maid brought ale, splashing liberally at every step, and my tankard became a refuge to hide behind.

Shapes and sounds began to emerge. All around the room I could make out whiskered faces bent closely together and heard somewhere behind me the murmurs of a private meeting. Near the fireplace a buxom, frowsy-headed woman had begun a song with the fife player. The attention in the room flowed toward its center, where an imposing figure in a leather jerkin, sleeves pushed up on his brawny arms, sat
at the head of the table shaking a dice cup. The dim and spotty light fell on his right hand, notable for the absence of two fingers. He made his toss and crowed in triumph. As he stood up to propose a health, the red face of Peregrine Penny leapt out of the shadows. “Behold the man fortune smiles upon!”

Fortune shone with differing brightness on the other players around the table—young men, all. One gloomily studied the dice, his face hidden under the brim of a flat cap. Another, dressed in the sober gown of a law student, made a throw and cursed when it went against him. The third bounced up to take his turn, saying, “Count not your grain until the last rat's killed, Captain.” He also wore the sad colors of a student— except for his hat, a stylish, tall-crowned piece of work with a red plume. His accent marked him as a country squire's son. Perhaps his parents had sent him to the Inns of Court for polishing; if so, he hankered after polish of another kind. “Main!” he shouted after a favorable cast. “And now for the Nick—”

“Hold a moment, Master Coble.” Captain Penny raised his hand. “The hour grows late. Would you care to hazard all on this next cast?”

The young man glanced around him. From the happy flush on his round, pockmarked face, I guessed he had come to the point where it seemed impossible to lose. “I might. I might— what of you, Knopwood?”

His fellow student waved a hand. “I've lost enough.”

“You, then?” Master Coble offered his cup to the youth in the cap, who merely shook his head without raising it.

“It's between us lions.” Captain Penny rose to his feet again. “To the victor belong the spoils.”

All attention was now on the game. I have never played Hazard myself, but witnessed many rounds in the keeping room behind the stage, where hired players passed the time between scenes. Winning depends on rolling the right combination of numbers in a single or double cast. Master Coble's face gleamed with sweat as he shook the cup and made his toss. “Main!” cried the onlookers.

The young man scooped up the dice and rolled again. They struck the table with the sound of ice cracking.

“Three!” A bad cast—I knew by the falling tone of the voices.

The captain leaned forward to take the cup and rolled a seven. “Another Main,” murmured a voice nearby. “Only a twelve will win it for him.” The rattling in the cup filled the room like water as tension rose. Then Penny made his cast, and the dice clattered merrily on the table. “Twelve!”

The entire room let out its breath. The frowsy-haired singer swept over to give the victor a noisy kiss. A serving maid filled his tankard, even as the captain raised it, shouting, “May all honest dicemen prosper thus!” He drained the tankard to hearty cheers.

“—and live to dance at their own wedding, rather than the
end of a rope.” Though I could not see who said this, I knew that voice—roughened by drink and smoke, but unmistakable. It almost knocked me off the stool.

“Pray contain yourself,” Bartlemy mumbled through a mouthful of turnip. “You are not on stage.”

Kit raised his head—and his cup—in tribute to the winner. He looked the same, yet not the same, and in an instant I recognized the difference: a light growth of black hair on his upper lip.

Penny was laughing at the hangman joke, his hands stretched out to rake in the winnings. But the next moment he was staring at the point of a dagger directly under his nose. Master Coble had lunged upon the table to point his weapon, though his voice was not quite steady. “You—Let me see those dice.”

“Sir! What's your drift?”

“You play with false dice, that's my drift!”

A murmur rose from the tavern crowd, but the captain tempered it with a laugh. “Clean as a relic. See for yourself.”

He handed the cup to his accuser, who sat up on the table to examine the contents with his companion the law student. While they were thus occupied, Penny scratched his upper arm serenely. “Watch his hand,” Bartlemy murmured, startling me. “His right hand.” I watched, as Kit stretched both arms above his head with a huge yawn, and his left hand came near Penny's right. Something may have passed between them,
though it happened too quickly for me to be certain.

Master Coble looked up from his examination. “You switched them.”

“I cry you mercy!” Penny held up his mutilated right hand. “Accuse me not of a dexterity that, alas, can hardly be mine. Search my battered body—you'll find no false dice on me.”

Some of the bystanders protested angrily at this offense to an old soldier. The fellow in the legal gown tried to pull his companion off the table, but the latter seemed to be spoiling for a fight. “I know your kind!” he shouted at the captain. “All you ‘old soldiers' should be locked up to keep you from preying on honest citizens.”