The Playmaker (20 page)

No sound from within answered my knock—Anne Billings had escaped. Fury blazed up in me as I gripped the iron door handle and howled, a raw screech echoed by all the fiends at my back. Jack picked up a loose flagstone and hurled it through the center pane in the front window. It was the work of a moment to hoist me through and get the door open.

I had some idea of searching the house. There were signs that the evacuation was recent: a plate of crusts and a half-drunk cup of wine on the table, an unmade bed in the servant's room. But the more I looked, the more it appeared they had made a clean break, she of the raisin eyes and her curd-faced maid Lydia. Meanwhile Jack found a picture of the Virgin and a breviary, which to his mind more than justified the destruction that followed.

It is difficult to wreck a stone house, but they tried: ripping down the shutters, smashing all the window glass, piling everything that would burn in the center of the downstairs hall. By then I had turned over my aunt's spartan-like bedroom and her study and found nothing of value to me. The upstairs was empty save for a straw pallet on the floor of one room—some pious beggar's refuge, no doubt—which I kicked apart in rage. By then reason and I had parted company and I joined in the wanton destruction. With all my heart, God knows; all my heart.

Downstairs they had set a torch to the pile of household goods.
I threw an armful of straw upon it, then dodged the live goat that two of the boys heaved through the open window. After a wild chase, we caught the terrified creature and dragged it to Jack, who cut its bleating throat with his dagger. He meant to roast it over the bonfire, but had hardly begun butchering when one of his lads burst through the door in a panic. “Run! It's the watch!”

“Every man for himself!” bellowed Jack. He bolted past, headed for the back rooms. All the boys followed, including me, but I lost ground when I slipped on something—candle tallow or goat's blood—and fell, striking my head on the doorpost. Sheer terror forced me to my feet again, though my head was spinning, and by some instinct I groped my way through the kitchen and emerged into the yard to see the last boy scrambling over the stone wall. I leapt after him, using a thick vine as a rope, and rolled over the top just as the torches of the watchmen poured through the open front gate.

T
HE
P
OET'S
T
ALE

fter that night, Anne Billings' house was the last place I would have wished to visit. But on the following day, near twilight, I was picking through the ruins with Star. She knew nothing about my part in the destruction; all I told her was that I had run into former quayside enemies who dealt me a hard time I didn't wish to talk about. The bruises and scratches I took during my frantic exit made the story plausible. By now she knew when to press me and when not; the state I was in upon arriving home that night (as hollowed and harrowed as a burnt-out house) was not a time to press me. But on her Saturday visit to the market she had heard about vandals sacking a former foundling hospital and brought this news to me in great excitement. She proposed we make a search. I could think of no good reason to refuse.

Even in July the house retained its chill, the stone walls clammy and silent, with no bleat of grazing goats to soften them. The bonfire had eaten a great oblong hole in the upstairs floor before the watch could organize a fire brigade. Seeing it in daylight made me feel sick. My sleep had been riddled with dreams of being marched into Newgate prison while the felons jeered at me.

“Are you well?” Starling asked, sharply. She thought we were searching for information and knew not what to make of my listless manner.

I nudged the corner of a charred mattress poking from the pile. A picture of the Virgin slid out from under it. The tin frame was bent, and I suddenly remembered seizing the picture with both hands and dashing it against my knee. “I'm well enough,” I said, in a voice that seemed to lie flat on the stone floor.

We searched the downstairs, finding nothing, of course, then climbed to the second level and peered into rooms that still had a floor. “Someone has already set up housekeeping here,” Starling remarked, standing in the doorway of a tiny room off the upstairs hall. The floor was scoured of mud and filth; the straw bed I had kicked apart was painstakingly put back together and covered over with rough canvas. There was no furniture, only a few pitiful possessions: candle ends, kindling wood, a length of rope. “I wonder if Mistress Billings was taking in beggars instead of orphans.”

“It appears so.”

“This beggar seems as cleanly as a Dutch wife. Look how he's sanded the floor.” It was true; whoever made a home here had
taken pains to carry sand upstairs and scour the floor and sweep it out. To think of him patiently bearing his loads and putting right the damage wrought by vandals like me turned my face hot with shame. Mother used to say that what a man shows in his anger is what he truly is. I was looking at myself, amidst these burnt timbers and wrecked goods, and hardly liked the sight. I turned and led the way back downstairs.

“What conclusion?” Starling asked in a small voice as we passed the remains of the bonfire.

I paused, took a deep breath, pointed at the Virgin's picture with my toe. “It appears Anne Billings was a Catholic,” I said tightly, adding, “all the same, I hope she got away safe.” And so I did hope, for the sake of my own conscience.

We had closed the front door and started down the flagstone walk when a movement at the gate halted us. A man in rags stood there, his legs bound in rough sacking, his head covered by a patched hood pulled forward so we could see none of his face beyond a scabby chin. He held a bag in one hand, and in the other a clapper made of two wooden slats—the kind that lepers use to warn of their approach. After standing motionless for a moment, he slowly raised the clapper and struck the air with it, informing us with an air of weary resignation that we must not come near.

Seeing this, I came near to breaking down. “Quick!” I whispered to Starling. “Have you any money—a twopence, or penny, anything? I'll pay you back.” But she had none, and all I carried were two pennies. As I fumbled in my pouch for them, the beggar
caught my intent and opened his bag. As we edged around him, I tossed the coins in the bag's open mouth. It was conscience money; the man seemed a living reproach to me. His gratitude, shown by tugging at the front of his hood, only made me feel worse.

Starling said little on the way back, having caught my somber mood. As we approached the Bridge, we noticed a constable tacking a broadside to the wall that shielded the riverside privies. No literate Londoner can resist a new broadside; as soon as the man moved on, Starling went over for a look, and I heard her gasp.

I came closer and read this:

My mind was dry, barren. Before Starling could make any comment, I turned and made for the Bridge. She followed, by now so confounded I could feel it in her. We were all the way across the
Bridge before I could trust myself to speak. “I know what you're thinking. We should go to John Clement, whoever he is, and tell him what we know. But Beecham and Kenton know far more about me than I do of them. Besides …” I blinked fiercely, struggling for control. “I've had my fill of it. If I never hear those names again, I'll die content. Master Clement can manage without us, and all will pass. So let's leave it. Will you?”

“I will,” she said, so faintly I could barely hear. For the rest of the way home neither of us said a word.

Rumors of the Queen's illness were proved totally false when an official proclamation arrived from her, assuring the good people of London that she was in excellent health and requesting that they stop their riots on her behalf.