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

Night came down on Stratford town that last sweet April day, and the pastured kine came lowing home. Supper-time passed, and the cool stars came twinkling out; but still Nick Attwood did not come.

“He hath stayed to sleep with Robin, Master Burgess Getley’s son,” said Mistress Attwood, standing in the door, and staring out into the dusk; “he is often lonely here.”

“He should ha’ telled thee on it, then,” said Simon Attwood. “This be no way to do. I’ve a mind to put him to a trade.”

“Nay, Simon,” protested his wife; “he may be careless,—he is young yet,—but Nicholas is a good lad. Let him have his schooling out—he’ll be the better for it.”

“Then let him show it as he goes along,” said Attwood, grimly, as he blew the candle out.

But May-day dawned; mid-morning came, mid-afternoon, then supper-time again; and supper-time crept into dusk—and still no Nicholas Attwood.

His mother grew uneasy; but his father only growled: “We’ll reckon up when he cometh home. Master Brunswood tells me he was na at the school the whole day yesterday—and he be feared to show his face. I’ll fear him with a bit of birch!”

“Do na be too hard with the lad, Simon,” pleaded Mistress Attwood. “Who knows what hath happened to him? He must be hurt, or he’d ’a’ come home to his mother”—and she began to wring her hands. “He may ha’ fallen from a tree, and lieth all alone out on the hill—or, Simon, the Avon! Thou dost na think our lad be drowned?”

“Fudge!” said Simon Attwood. “Born to hang’ll never drown!”

When, however, the next day crept around and still his son did not come home, a doubt stole into the tanner’s own heart. Yet when his wife was for starting out to seek some tidings of the boy, he stopped her wrathfully.

“Nay, Margaret,” said he; “thou shalt na go traipsing around the town like a hen wi’ but one chick. I wull na ha’ thee made a laughing-stock by all the fools in Stratford.”

But as the third day rolled around, about the middle of the afternoon the tanner himself sneaked out at the back door of his tannery in Southam’s lane, and went up into the town.

“Robin Getley,” he asked at the guildschool door, “was my son wi’ thee overnight?”

“Nay, Master Attwood. Has he not come back?”

“Come back? From where?”

Robin hung his head.

“From, where?” demanded the tanner. “Come, boy!”

“From Coventry,” said Robin, knowing that the truth would out at last, anyway.

“He went to see the players, sir,” spoke up Hal Saddler, briskly, not heeding Robin’s stealthy kick. “He said he’d bide wi’ Diccon Haggard overnight; an’ he said he wished he were a master-player himself, sir, too.”

Simon Attwood, frowning blackly, hurried on. It was Nick, then, whom he had seen crossing the market-square.

Wat Raven, who swept Clopton bridge, had seen two boys go up the Warwick road. “One were thy Nick, Muster Attwood,” said he, thumping the dirt from his broom across the coping-stone, “and the other were Dawson’s Hodge.”

The angry tanner turned again into the market-place. His brows were knit, and his eyes were hot, yet his step was heavy and slow. Above all things, he hated disobedience, yet in his surly way he loved his only son; and far worse than disobedience, he hated that his son should disobey.

Astride a beam in front of Master Thompson’s house sat Roger Dawson. Simon Attwood took him by the collar none too gently.

“Here, leave be!” choked Roger, wriggling hard; but the tanner’s grip was like iron. “Wert thou in Coventry May-day?” he asked sternly.

“Nay, that I was na,” sputtered Hodge. “A plague on Coventry!”

“Do na lie to me—thou wert there wi’ my son Nicholas.”

“I was na,” snarled Hodge. “Nick Attwood threshed me in the Warrick road; an’ I be no dawg to follow at the heels o’ folks as threshes me.”

“Where be he, then?” demanded Attwood, with a sudden sinking at heart in spite of his wrath.

“How should I know? A went away wi’ a play-actoring fellow in a plum-colored cloak; and play-actoring fellow said a loved him like a’s own, and patted a’s back, and flung me hard names, like stones at a lost dawg. Now le’ me go, Muster Attwood—cross my heart, ’tis all I know!”

“Is’t Nicholas ye seek, Master Attwood?” asked Tom Carpenter, turning from his fleurs-de-lis. “Why, sir, he’s gone got famous, sir. I was in Coventry mysel’ May-day; and—why, sir, Nick was all the talk! He sang there at the Blue Boar inn-yard with the Lord High Admiral’s players, and took a part in the play; and, sir, ye’d scarce believe me, but the people went just daft to hear him sing, sir.”

Simon Attwood heard no more. He walked down High street in a daze. With hard men bitter blows strike doubly deep. He stopped before the guildhall school. The clock struck five; each iron clang seemed beating upon his heart. He raised his hand as if to shut the clangor out, and then his face grew stern and hard. “He hath gone his own wilful way,” said he, bitterly. “Let him follow it to the end.”

Mistress Attwood came to meet him, running in the garden-path. “Nicholas?” was all that she could say.

“Never speak to me of him, again,” he said, and passed her by into the house. “He hath gone away with a pack of stage-playing rascals and vagabonds, whither no man knoweth.”

Taking the heavy Bible down from the shelf, he lit a rushlight at the fire, although it was still broad daylight, and sat there with the great book open in his lap until the sun went down and the chill night wind crept in along the floor; yet he could not read a single word and never turned a page.