The Playmaker Read Free Page B

is what you can do, and it may not suit you for the present, but times are hard. It will put bread in your mouth, and that's your chief concern, if I read you rightly. So tomorrow morning go down to Thames Street—hard by the river— and follow it east of the Bridge. Look amongst the wharves and warehouses there and you'll find the house of Motheby and Southern, Wine Merchants. I am aware that they could use a dock-hand. Yes, I can see you are too fine for that, but keep your wits about you and a better position will come your way.”
    He had misread the dismayed look on my face. It was not that I considered myself too fine for dock work, or not much—only too soft. “But sir—”
    “Not that it matters overmuch to me.” He hiked the furred collar of his black robe higher on one shoulder. “Do as you will, but if tomorrow finds you before Messieurs Motheby and Southern, tell them Peter Kenton sent you. I am not Peter Kenton, mind, only an acquaintance of his, but we'll consider you sent by proxy, hey?” He smiled then: a broad triangular smile marred only a little by his bad teeth. It went through me like a dart: a smile of naked collaboration, as though we two were snugged together in a plot. Yet my wrist was still throbbing. His humor was as unpredictable as Benjamin the bear's; as quickly as the smile appeared, it was gone. “Peace to you, Richard. Perhaps we will meet again.”
    “Wait!” In something of a panic, I grasped for another moment with him. He paused, yards away, his head tilted in a way that had already become familiar to me. “Might I have your name, too, sir?”
    He shook his head. “My name would mean nothing to them. Just remember Peter Kenton's. And hold a moment—” He fumbled about in his robe for a coin. “Here's a half-groat. 'Twill get you lodging for the night, and a meal. The East Cheap taverns are a fair lot taken by and large, but hold on to your purse.”
    I caught the coin he tossed to me, and realized at once, by its feel and heft, that it was no groat. Indeed, it was an entire shilling, which would support me for a week if I took care of it. He musthave known; it was as likely to mistake one for the other as to take a stone for bread. “Sir! Wait—”
    But he had already turned his back and disappeared, and the populace closed like a door upon the most generous man in London. Your name would have meant something to
me,
I thought forlornly. And at that moment, I felt far more desolate than if we had never met.

A T OKEN
    otheby and Southern looked me over carefully. One was round and pale, the other thin and red, but in expression they were brothers. Both regarded me with the pursed-up, squinty look a housewife might bestow on a fish that was almost spoiled. “I didn't know Kenton was in the city,” said Motheby to Southern.
    “Nor I,” said Southern to Motheby. “I've seen him not since March. He owes us five shillings.”
    “Five shillings? For what?”
    “To be truthful,” I offered, “I've never met Master Kenton, exactly. 'Twas a friend of his who sent me here.”
    “A friend?” said Motheby to Southern. “That waggish fop has friends?”
    “He's right about the one thing,” said Southern to Motheby. “We are short of dockers, by at least two.”
    “What mean you by two? I thought 'twas only one got his head knocked last week.”
    “There was another, drowned in a rain barrel Saturday last. Overindulged, I take it.”
    “Ah wine, wine.” Southern, the stout one, shook his head. “How deceitful its charm.”
    “I can read and write,” I put in desperately, “and cipher as well, if you need a clerk.”
    Motheby turned to Southern. “Do we need a clerk?”
    “Our clerks keep their noggins in one piece and out of the water. We need hands, not heads.”
    “Here are two, then.” I produced mine, hard enough after years of forking hay and shoveling dung, though I could see they were not overly taken with the rest of me.
    “What do you think?” put