The Playmaker (3 page)

Before knocking at the inner door, I took a moment to finger-brush my hair, which is reddish and springy and refuses to lie flat. Then I straightened my doublet and squared the threadbare elbows out of sight and looked to see that all the buttons held fast. It was my best item of clothing and made me look sober and industrious
even though the seams were beginning to stretch. In the quiet, my ears picked up a rustling sound from the inner rooms. At my knock, the noise abruptly ceased. A pause stretched out before the rustling started again, louder this time. I heard the scrape of furniture being moved, then quick steps on a wooden floor, and felt an absurd impulse to run. The bolt shot back with a clang and the door creaked on its hinges. A sharp breath caught in my throat and lodged there.

But the face that gazed at me from the doorway was mild as milk: one of those faces that seems neither old nor young, with round blue eyes blinking behind round glass spectacles and a wide mouth opened in query; the furrowed brow of a sage and smooth cheeks of a baby. He looked every inch the lawyer, from the soles of his velvet slippers to the flat top of his cap with its silk tassel hanging down the right side of his face. One arm clutched a heavy book. Even at full height he stood only an inch or two taller than me. “Yes? What is it?”

I cleared my throat. “Are you—Am I addressing Martin Feather?”

“No, lad, you're not. You are addressing a lowly clerk in his employ.” He stepped over the threshold, turned, and locked the door behind him with an iron key. “Master Feather is abroad for the month on business. If you will return around the first of May, and are prepared to wait for the better part of the day, I'm sure he can accommodate you—eventually. But you must apply to his chambers at Middle Temple, not his residence.”

“Oh!”

The clerk, who had stopped to tie on a pair of wooden pattens to protect his slippers from road dust, must have heard the distress in my voice. He looked up. I saw enough interest in that look to blurt out, “But I'll starve before then! That is … I'm new in London, Your Honor. From the country. I was hoping for a position.”

He studied me a moment longer and I began to feel a peculiar leaning toward him. This happens with the rare stranger— something in the look, or the tilt of the head, or even the set of the shoulders, that lets you know here's someone a bit like you. Someone whose spirit, in an inward place not immediately apparent, bears an uncommon resemblance to yours. Perhaps he felt it, too. One eyebrow rose. “Come along, lad. I'm in haste but you can walk with me.”

By now dusk had fallen and the street population had thickened; we felt the force of it when we turned off Abbot Lane onto Cheapside. Since my clerk's business was taking him east, we found ourselves battling the tide that flowed from the Royal Exchange. Almost everyone traveled on foot, though here and there a great Lord or wealthy merchant glanced haughtily down from horseback. Sedan chairs carrying jeweled ladies appeared to float above the crowd, swaying gracefully—until I saw one tilt at a perilous angle when the foremost carrier stepped in a pothole, and its elegant cargo swore fit to blister my ears. My companion paid no heed to these amazing sights and sounds. “So,” he remarked, in a quiet but carrying voice, “you wish to enter the law, hey? Do you value your life so little?”

“How is that, sir?”

“Why, in any London uprising the battle cry is, ‘First, we kill the lawyers!'” At my puzzled look, he explained. “Just a line from a play, lad. My fellow clerks are not amused by it. I take it you read and write?”

“I do, sir. Our village rector credits me with a fairer hand than his.”

“How's your Latin?”

“Passable, sir. The rector says I learned all he could teach me, and that readily.”

“Where lives this admiring rector, then?” I heard the amusement in his voice and thought it best to trim my sails.

“Just a trifling place in Lincolnshire, sir. Village of Alford.”

“Ah.” He glanced my way. “Did you say your name, lad?” “No, sir. 'Tis Richard Malory, sir.”

My companion stumbled in his clumsy wooden pattens, striking the beefy arm of a leather-clad carter, which sent his book and papers flying. A bloody curse escaped him, and as we scrambled for the spilled papers his swearing continued, with some invention I thought: “By all the spiteful, sportive spirits—By the milk-white hands of the Virgin Mary—”

“Here, sir.” I gathered all the loose papers I could reach and handed them over. He stuffed them into what I had thought was a book, but was actually a worn leather portfolio stamped with a rose.

“By the tortured Greek syntax of St. Paul!” He straightened, his
tassel bouncing with the emphatic shake of his head, clutching another sheaf of papers. I spied one more, which a cart had just run over, and picked it up. While glancing over the damage, I chanced to read some of the words on it: “By order of Philip Shackleford, Lord H—”

His hand came down on my wrist, gripping so hard I cried out. “Did your rector not teach you manners, then?”

“Yes, sir. F-forgive me, sir.” He let go of my wrist to snatch the paper. Then he riffled through the contents of the portfolio with a distressed look and surveyed the area once more. Any loose papers would already have been trampled to shreds.

“No lasting harm done, then, just the usual dung and filth.” His words rolled blandly, but he was nearly panting, as though he'd just come off a run. As for me, I kept my eyes on the ground, chafing my wrist. He was stronger than he looked. “Well—Richard, did you say? We must part soon, but let me offer a word of advice.”

He continued his progress and I fell in beside him as before— unwilling to part company, but now rather wary of him, too.

“Is your heart set upon the law?” he asked.

“I … don't know, sir.” Strangely, this was a question I had never pondered. “My mother thought it would suit me.”

“Your mother. That's ofttimes the case. Well, would she be heartbroken if you chose another profession?”

I swallowed. “Not likely, sir. She's dead.”

“I see.” He stopped, and turned to me, and in one keen look seemed to grasp everything there was to know about that simple
statement. Once again I felt that pull toward him, an inclination that defied reason. After a moment he nodded briefly, then walked on. I blessed him for saying no more. In my present condition, weak and weary and dispirited, any expression of sympathy might have reduced me to a puddle on the street. “You will wonder at what I'm going to tell you now, Richard, but trust me on it, as far as you can trust a stranger. It is this: do not attempt to join yourself to Martin Feather.”

“Sir?”

We had reached the end of the lane, and my companion drew off a little from me, as if determined that here our ways should part. “I can tell you no more than this: he is a … precarious person to know. Even this much is in confidence—keep it close.”

“What am I to do, then?” I blurted. “I must have a position!”

“Of course. Of course.” He rubbed one side of his nose with an ink-stained finger, in the manner of certain scholarly men when they are thinking. I gazed upon that finger as though expecting my salvation to come from it. “Here is what you can do, and it may not suit you for the present, but times are hard. It will put bread in your mouth, and that's your chief concern, if I read you rightly. So tomorrow morning go down to Thames Street—hard by the river— and follow it east of the Bridge. Look amongst the wharves and warehouses there and you'll find the house of Motheby and Southern, Wine Merchants. I am aware that they could use a dock-hand. Yes, I can see you are too fine for that, but keep your wits about you and a better position will come your way.”

He had misread the dismayed look on my face. It was not that I considered myself too fine for dock work, or not much—only too soft. “But sir—”

“Not that it matters overmuch to me.” He hiked the furred collar of his black robe higher on one shoulder. “Do as you will, but if tomorrow finds you before Messieurs Motheby and Southern, tell them Peter Kenton sent you. I am not Peter Kenton, mind, only an acquaintance of his, but we'll consider you sent by proxy, hey?” He smiled then: a broad triangular smile marred only a little by his bad teeth. It went through me like a dart: a smile of naked collaboration, as though we two were snugged together in a plot. Yet my wrist was still throbbing. His humor was as unpredictable as Benjamin the bear's; as quickly as the smile appeared, it was gone. “Peace to you, Richard. Perhaps we will meet again.”

“Wait!” In something of a panic, I grasped for another moment with him. He paused, yards away, his head tilted in a way that had already become familiar to me. “Might I have your name, too, sir?”

He shook his head. “My name would mean nothing to them. Just remember Peter Kenton's. And hold a moment—” He fumbled about in his robe for a coin. “Here's a half-groat. 'Twill get you lodging for the night, and a meal. The East Cheap taverns are a fair lot taken by and large, but hold on to your purse.”

I caught the coin he tossed to me, and realized at once, by its feel and heft, that it was no groat. Indeed, it was an entire shilling, which would support me for a week if I took care of it. He must
have known; it was as likely to mistake one for the other as to take a stone for bread. “Sir! Wait—”

But he had already turned his back and disappeared, and the populace closed like a door upon the most generous man in London. Your name would have meant something to
me,
I thought forlornly. And at that moment, I felt far more desolate than if we had never met.

A T
OKEN

otheby and Southern looked me over carefully. One was round and pale, the other thin and red, but in expression they were brothers. Both regarded me with the pursed-up, squinty look a housewife might bestow on a fish that was almost spoiled. “I didn't know Kenton was in the city,” said Motheby to Southern.

“Nor I,” said Southern to Motheby. “I've seen him not since March. He owes us five shillings.”

“Five shillings? For what?”

“To be truthful,” I offered, “I've never met Master Kenton, exactly. 'Twas a friend of his who sent me here.”

“A friend?” said Motheby to Southern. “That waggish fop has friends?”

“He's right about the one thing,” said Southern to Motheby. “We are short of dockers, by at least two.”

“What mean you by two? I thought 'twas only one got his head knocked last week.”

“There was another, drowned in a rain barrel Saturday last. Overindulged, I take it.”

“Ah wine, wine.” Southern, the stout one, shook his head. “How deceitful its charm.”

“I can read and write,” I put in desperately, “and cipher as well, if you need a clerk.”

Motheby turned to Southern. “Do we need a clerk?”

“Our clerks keep their noggins in one piece and out of the water. We need hands, not heads.”

“Here are two, then.” I produced mine, hard enough after years of forking hay and shoveling dung, though I could see they were not overly taken with the rest of me.

“What do you think?” put Southern to Motheby.

“He's a fair-spoken lad.”

“Much use we have for that!” “Seems willing, though. Bright.”