Master Skylark: A Story of Shakspere's Time by John Bennett (top rated books of all time txt) 📕
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- Author: John Bennett
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“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.
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
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