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

To be sure, he knew that the Lord Chamberlain’s men were still playing at the theater in Shoreditch; for Master Carew had taken Cicely there to see the “Two Gentlemen of Verona.” But just where Shoreditch was, Nick had only the faintest idea—somewhere away off by Finsbury Fields, beyond the city walls to the north of London town—and all the wide world seemed north of London town; and the way thither lay through a bewildering tangle of streets in which the din and the rush of the crowd were never still.

From a hopeless chase like that Nick shrank back like a snail into its shell. He was not too young to know that there were worse things than to be locked in Gaston Carew’s house. It were better to be a safe-kept prisoner there than to be lost in the sinks of London. And so, knowing this, he made the best of it.

But Master Shakspere was come back to town, and that was something. It seemed somehow less lonely just to think of it.

Yet in truth he had but little time to think of it; for the master-player kept him closely at his strange, new work, and taught him daily with the most amazing patience.

He had Nick learn no end of stage parts off by heart, with their cues and “business,” entrances and exits; and worked fully as hard as his pupil, reading over every sentence twenty times until Nick had the accent perfectly. He would have him stamp, too, and turn about, and gesture in accordance with the speech, until the boy’s arms ached, going with him through the motions one by one, over and over again, unsatisfied, but patient to the last, until Nick wondered. “Nick, my lad,” he would often say, with a tired but determined smile, “one little thing done wrong may spoil the finest play, as one bad apple rots the barrelful. We’ll have it right, or not at all, if it takes a month of Sundays.”

So, often, he kept Nick before a mirror for an hour at a time, making faces while he spoke his lines, smiling, frowning, or grimacing as best seemed to fit the part, until the boy grew fairly weary of his own looks. Then sometimes, more often as the time slipped by, Carew would clap his hands with a boyish laugh, and have a pie brought and a cup of Spanish cordial for them both, declaring that he loved the lad with all his heart, upon the remnant of his honour: from which Nick knew that he was coming on.

Cicely Carew’s governess was a Mistress Agnes Anstey. By birth she had been a Harcourt of Ankerwyke, and she was therefore everywhere esteemed fit by birth and breeding to teach the young mind when to bow and when to beckon. She came each morning to the house, and Carew paid her double shillings to see to it that Nick learned such little tricks of cap and cloak as a lady’s page need have, the carriage best fitted for his place, and how to come into a room where great folks were. Moreover, how to back out again, bowing, and not fall over the stools—which was no little art, until Nick caught the knack of peeping slyly between his legs when he bowed.

His hair, too, was allowed to grow long, and was combed carefully every day by the tiring-woman; and soon, as it was naturally curly, it fell in rolling waves about his neck.

On the heels of the governess came M’sieu de Fleury, who, it was said, had been dancing-master to Hatton, the late Lord Chancellor of England, and had taught him those tricks with his nimble heels which had capered him into the Queen’s good graces, and so got him the chancellorship. M’sieu spoke dreadful English, but danced like the essence of agility, and taught both Nick and Cicely the latest Italian coranto, playing the tune upon his queer little pochette.

Cicely already danced like a pixy, and laughed merrily at her comrade’s first awkward antics, until he flushed with embarrassment. At that she instantly became grave, and, when M’sieu had gone, came across the room, and putting her arm about Nick, said repentantly, “Don’t thou mind me, Nick. Father saith the French all laugh too soon at nothing; and I have caught it from my mother’s blood. A boy is not good friends with his feet as a girl is; but thou wilt do beautifully, I know; and M’sieu shall teach us the galliard together.”

And often, after the lesson was over and M’sieu departed, she would have Nick try his steps over and over again in the great room, while she stood upon the stool to make her tall, and cried, “Sa—sa!” as the master did, scolding and praising him by turns, or jumping down in pretty impatience to tuck up her little silken skirts and show him the step herself; while the cook’s knave and the scullery-maids peeped at the door and cried: “La, now, look ’e, Moll!” at every coupee.

It made a picture quaint and pretty to see them dancing there. The smoky light, stealing in through the narrow casements over the woodwork dark with age, dropped in little yellow chequers upon old chests of oak, of walnut, and of strange, purple-black wood from foreign lands, giving a weird life to the griffins and twisted traceries carved upon their sides. High-backed, narrow chairs stood along the wall, with cushioned stools inlaid with shell. Twinklings of light glinted from the brass candlesticks. On the wall above the wainscot the faded hangings wavered in the draught, crusted thickly with strange embroidered flowers. And dancing there together in the semi-gloom, the children seemed quaint little figures stepped down from the tapestry at the touch of a magic wand.

And so the time went slipping by, very pleasantly upon the whole, and Nick’s young heart grew stout again within his breast; for he was strong and well, and in those days the very air was full of hope, and no man knew what might betide with the rising of to-morrow’s sun.

Every day, from two till three o’clock, he was at Master Gyles’s private singing-room at the old cathedral school, learning to read music at first sight, and to sing offhand the second, third, and fourth parts of queer intermingled fugues or wonderfully constructed canons.

At first his head felt stuffed like a feasted glutton with all the learning that the old precentor poured into it; but by and by he found it plain enough, and no very difficult thing to follow up the prickings in the paper with his voice, and to sing parts written at fifths and fourths and thirds with other voices as easily as to carry a song alone. But still he sang best his own unpointed songs, the call and challenge of the throstle and the merle, the morning glory of the lark, songs that were impossible to write. And those were the songs that the precentor was at the greatest pains to have him sing in perfect tones, making him open his mouth like a little round and let the music float out of itself.

Like the master-player, nothing short of perfection pleased old Nathaniel Gyles, and Nick’s voice often wavered with sheer weariness as he ran his endless scales and sang absurd fa-la-la-las while his teacher beat the time in the air with his lean forefinger like a grim automaton.

The old man, too, was chary of his praise, though Nick tried hard to please him, and it was only by little things he told his satisfaction. He touzed the ears of the other boys, and sometimes smartly thumped their crowns; but with Nick he only nipped his ruddy cheek between his thumb and finger, or laid his hand upon his shoulder when the hard day’s work was done, saying, “Satis cantorum—it is enough. Now be off to thy nest, sir; and do not forget to wash thy throat with good cold water every day.”

All this time the busy sand kept running in the glass. July was gone, and August at its heels. The hot breath of the summer had cooled, and the sun no longer burned the face when it came in through the windows. Nick often shut his eyes and let the warm light fall upon his closed lids. It made a ruddy glow like the wild red poppies that grow in the pale green rye. In fancy he could almost smell the queer, rancid odor of the crimson bloom crushed beneath the feet of the farmers’ boys who cut the butter-yellow mustard from among the bearded grain.

“Heigh-ho and alackaday!” thought Nick. “It is better in the country than in town!” For there was no smell in all the town like the clean, sweet smell of the open fields just after a summer rain, no colors like the bright heart’s-ease and none-so-pretty, or the honeysuckle over the cottage door, and no song ever to be heard among the sooty chimney-pots like the song of the throstle piping to the daisies on the hill.

But he had little time to dream such dreams, for every day from four to six o’clock the children’s company played and sang in public, at their own school-hall, or in the courtyard of the Mitre Inn on Bread street near St. Paul’s.

They were the pets of London town, and their playing-place was thronged day after day. For the bright young faces and sweet, unbroken voices of the richly costumed lads made a spot in sordid London life like a pot of posies in a window on a dark street; so that both the high and the low, the rich and the poor, came in to see them play and dance, to hear them sing, and to laugh again at the witty things which were written for them to say.

The songs that were set for Nick to sing were always short, sweet, simple things that even the dull-eyed, toil-worn folk upon the rough plank benches in the pit could understand. Many a silver shilling came clinking down at the heels of the other boys from the galleries of the inn, where the people of the better classes, wealthy merchants, ladies and their dashing gallants, watched the children’s company; but when Nick’s songs were done the common people down below seemed all gone daft. They tossed red apples after him, ripe yellow pears, fat purple plums by handfuls, called him by name and brought him back, and cried for more and more and more, until the old precentor shook his head behind the prompters-screen, and waved Nick off with a forbidding frown. Yet all the while he chuckled to himself until it seemed as if his dry old ribs would rattle in his sides; and every day, before Nick sang, he had him up to his little room for a broken egg and a cup of rosy cordial.

“To clear thy voice and to cheer the cockles of thine heart,” said he; “and to tune that pretty throat of thine ad gustum Reginae—which is to say, ‘to the Queen’s own taste,’—God bless Her Majesty!”

The other boys were cast for women’s parts, for women never acted then; and a queer sight it was to Nick to see his fellows in great farthingales of taffeta and starchy cambric that rustled as they walked, with popinjay blue ribbon in their hair, and flowered stomachers sparkling with paste jewels.

And, truth, it was no easy thing to tell them from the real affair, or to guess the made from the maiden, so slender and so graceful were they all, with their ruffs and their muffs and their feathered fans, and all the airs and mincing graces of the daintiest young miss.

But old Nat Gyles would never have Nick Attwood play the girl. “The lad is good enough for me just as he is,” said he; and that was all there was of it.