The Pale Companion Read Free

. . ooh! ah!”
    That was when he kicked me in the ribs.
    And some of those roundabout joined in. Whether they’d heard what I said and were genuinely offended or whether they simply saw a man curled up on the ground and couldn’t resist laying into him, I don’t know. As kickings go, it might have been worse. They kept stepping in each other’s way so their feet got tangled up and then in the dark they missed me and struck one another. Two or three of them were women, no doubt as provoked as the men by my aspersions on their rusticity.
    There’s another thing. I’m a player (Nick Revill, at your service) and a player has to know how to take punishment both simulated and real. Why, once when I was doing a brief stint with the Admiral’s Men and watching a rehearsal – ever eager in those days to pick up any tips I could – I tumbled out of the gallery of the Rose playhouse and into the groundlings’ area. I sustained nothing worse than a few bruises and a burst of applause. And when a player thwacks a player on stage with sword or club, although the blows may not be meant they are not altogether innocent either. So I knew that the secret in a situation like this, where one could do nothing to help oneself straightaway, was to remain supple and passive.
    “What – do – you – say – now?” came a voice that I recognized through the roaring in my ears as that of my initial assailant, raw breath.
    I said nothing. I tasted blood in my mouth. I wondered what had become of my friend Jack Wilson.
    My muteness must have satisfied the little knot of men and women because I sensed them draw back from me. The circle became ragged as one or two quit the scene, perhaps ashamed at what they’d participated in and wanting to avoid trouble. This was my chance. I staggered to my feet and limpingly made off.
    No-one tried to stop me. The square was still crowded and thumping noises and swearing continued from the stage. Evidently the battle between players and people wasn’t over. I slipped down one of the lanes that led from this public space.
    I didn’t know Salisbury. The inn where we of the Chamberlain’s Company were putting up for the night was somewhere on the edge of the city but exactly where I couldn’t have said. Jack Wilson and I had arrived in the market-place during the last hours of daylight and our attention had been caught by the preparations for staging an open-air drama in a corner. We’d stayed to watch, even though the action unfolding on the bare scaffold was the fustiest, mustiest morality stuff, all to do with Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel. To give us all a taste of what we might expect, the play was preceded by some kind of sermon from the bearded, furrow-browed figure who was later to take the part of God (and whose name I subsequently discovered was Peter Paradise, leader of this fraternal threesome). He hectored and ranted and called us “brothers and sisters” like a puritan. He told us we were accountable to none but God and to have no truck with earthly power and wealth. That’s all very well for you, I thought, carting your few paltry possessions from place to place and no doubt living on crusts doled out at back doors, but some us have got livings to make and patrons to please.
    Several times Jack and I sneered at the backward taste of the inhabitants of this town. If it hadn’t been for the surprisingly high quality of the playing we’d have gone off to join our fellows at the Angel Inn. But a professional always takes pleasure (sometimes of an envious kind) in watching another professional, even when he’s working with inferior material. So it was in this case.
    Because we were only a little short of midsummer the west yet glimmered with some streaks of day. But then I remembered that we’d entered the town from the east, which was the side the Angel lay on, so I changed course and turned down another street and then once more until I found myself back in the market-place.