Philip Gooden - Sleep of Death

‘Yarmouth! Nashe sought sanctuary in Yarmouth after he ran into trouble with the Council over The Isle of Dogs .’

‘What trouble?’ I said, trying to distract Master Mink from Gilbert’s advance. I had a nasty feeling that this was not going to turn out well.

‘Lewd matters. Veiled attacks on someone in authority. Something that got up the Council’s nose. Or most probably Mr Secretary Burghley’s. WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, YOU HALTING HALF-WIT!’

A combination of shaking hands and uneven gait notwithstanding, the boy had reached us with the slopping tankards. At the last moment, though, a spasm jerked the remaining contents of one of the pots over Master Mink. Now, my companion was, I had already observed, particular in the manner of his dress (unlike some players, who, appearing as kings, queens and princes during their afternoons in the playhouse, are content to pass for mechanics and handicrafts-men in their private hours). Even by the fitful, smoky light of the tavern corner, anyone might see that Robert Mink was well turned out; his doublet alone, Dutch-fashion and long-pointed, would have cost me two weeks’ wages. Now his ample frontage was soaked in ale. Some of the liquid spattered his smooth cheeks and folded chins.

Gilbert Goodride, poor potboy, stood before us, shaking slightly, though whether from his natural condition or from fear of what he expected might happen, I do not know. This time, it was I who leant forward and relieved Gilbert of the tankards, placing them softly on the table.

‘Now, now,’ said Master Mink, standing up and wiping his face with a fine cambric handkerchief. This ‘Now, now’ may be delivered in several ways between the peremptory and the consoling. I was glad to hear from the other’s tone that he seemed to condole with the unfortunate Gilbert. ‘No harm done, after all,’ he continued. ‘No offence.’

So saying, he held out his hand, fleshy palm ajar, to the boy, as one offers one’s fingers to be sniffed at by a harmless dog. The ‘now, now’ had changed to a whispered ‘there, there’. Master Mink might have been a good mother dealing with a child troubled with dreams. Gilbert was trying to mouth apologies but nothing coherent emerged. He seemed slightly reassured by Mink’s soothing manner. So was I. But I was deceived. The plump, open gesture and the mild phrases lulled Gilbert Goodride as well. Suddenly, Mink’s splayed fingers closed around the awkward right hand of the potboy. Why do we suppose that fat men are necessarily slow and clumsy? I should have remembered how nimbly my co-player could caper on the stage. Using only his fingers, he squeezed the boy’s hand, tightening his grip like a vice, until the faces of both man and boy were contorted, Mink with the effort, Gilbert with the pain. Then, still holding on with the one hand, he forced open the boy’s fingers with the other. He spread them, palm-side-down, over the guttering candle which sat, fatly, in the middle of the table. The boy gave a small scream, more from surprise than hurt, I think, although he must have felt that too.

Mink held the boy’s hand above the dying candle for a instant before bringing it down hard onto the mess of wick and flame and smut and grease. When he released his grip, Gilbert sprang back from the table, shaking his hand in the air and making noises which were further from sense than ever. Then, still waving the offended limb, he shambled off towards the outer darkness, whining softly. From the table on the other side of the room came a bark of laughter. Somebody at least had appreciated the scene. More pitiful than the treatment of the boy was the way he seemed to accept it as his due, as if life could be no better and no different. I was reminded of a beaten cur slinking, without remonstrance, tail between legs, into a corner.

‘Good,’ said Mink. ‘Sit yourself down once more, Nicholas. When I have recovered my breath’ — though, by the by, he seemed not the least winded by his actions, while I (as I realised after a moment) had been holding my breath throughout — ‘I will try again for refreshment. This time maybe, we will be favoured with the mistress’s attention rather than her idiot’s.’

‘Perhaps she will be less than happy with you for treating her son like that,’ I said.

‘That is as nothing to what she does to him herself. I have seen her beat him senseless when he was younger.’

‘But he cannot help himself,’ I said.

‘That is why she used to beat him,’ said Master Mink. ‘That, and because he reminded her every day, in his misshapen way, of the heat of her reins. The quondam heat. She is no longer what she was, is our Mistress Goodride.’

The terrible thought crossed my mind, not only that Robert Mink might have known Mistress Goodride carnally (this was more than likely, judging by his off-hand and faintly contemptuous manner of referring to her appetite), but that this poor drawer Gilbert might have sprung from his own seed.

‘I must leave,’ I said. ‘I have business to attend to.’

Then Master Mink became all sweetness to me. Putting a confiding hand on my arm, he spoke low, ‘Please stay a little longer, Nicholas. Be comfortable. I will not keep you long from your business. We have not yet come to the reason why I wished to meet this evening. I would value your opinion on a matter.’

I had all this while been standing, but now I sat once more. His words were flattering. I was a still unfledged member of the Chamberlain’s Men and — although I tried my best to forget the fact — only a temporary one. Naturally, I harboured the hope that, by my skill and willingness, I might so impress those he had called Master Cabbage and Master Shakeshift and the others that they would create for me a permanent space on their boards. Master Robert Mink was one of the most senior players of the Company; it was in my interest to pay him the tribute of listening, and of providing him with an opinion if he so desired.

Such arguments with oneself are always the easiest to win.

Mink fumbled in his fine-quality, ale-soaked doublet and retrieved a sheaf of papers. ‘One reason I grew angry with that foolish boy was that I feared for these.’

He extracted a sheet, seemingly at random, and brought it up close to his eyes in the attempt to read. Now that the candle had been so summarily snuffed out by his own action, there was only a dim, swaying lamp suspended from the low ceiling. It was as ineffectual as a glow-worm.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I know them by heart.’

‘What do you know?’

‘The Lover’s Lament, I will begin with.’

He cleared his throat. His slumped shape seemed to straighten on the bench.

Et cetera.

I cannot go on. I had to sit through this stuff but that is no reason why you should have to. I will be merciful and draw the veil over Master Mink’s effusions.

Robert Mink did go on, however. Declaiming, sighing, whispering, urging, as if on stage, he begged his mistress to have pity on him. He threw himself into Tartary. He exalted her unto the skies. He waded through a Dead Sea awash with naiads, and a forest-full of dryads. He called in aid the whole classical pantheon. But, like all true lovers in verse, he ended no better than he had begun, still lost and lorn, alas!

‘Well?’ he said when he had not so much finished as, for a time, dried up, like the kennel down a street in hot weather.

Naturally, I knew full well whose verses they were, while, inwardly, I marvelled that a player with all his experience of others’ words should be so blinded to his own.