The Silent Woman (21 page)

Westfield’s Men were delighted. There was no sign of plague in the city and no sense of being rushed on. In size and commercial importance, Bristol was second only to London among British seaports, and its bustling streets kindled fond reminiscences for the visitors of the clamour of the capital. Lawrence Firethorn liked the feel of the place and the magnitude of his potential audience. Bristol had a population of fifteen thousand people. While many were not playgoers, enough of them could be coaxed along to the Guildhall on successive days to guarantee Westfield’s Men a profitable stay. Three performances had been agreed, but Firethorn believed they could sustain enough interest to keep them there for a week.

The company lodged at the Jolly Sailor in St Nicholas Street on the west side of the city. Lawrence Firethorn seized playfully on the name.

‘St Nicholas Street for our own St Nicholas,’ he said.

‘I am no saint,’ said Nicholas Bracewell.

‘Mistress Anne Hendrik can vouch for that!’

Nicholas winced slightly. ‘This is a comfortable inn,’ he said. ‘That is the only reason I chose it.’

‘Beshrew this modesty, Nick. You guided us here as you have guided us all along. We are but children in your hands and you have been a true patron saint to us.’

They were in the courtyard at the Jolly Sailor and the hired men were singing happily as they unloaded the waggon. Lawrence Firethorn turned to practicalities.

‘When must you leave?’ he asked.

‘As soon as possible.’

‘We need you mightily for tomorrow’s performance.’

‘I will hold the book for
Death and Darkness
,’ said Nicholas, ‘and I will instruct my deputy in his duties while I am away. Then I must leave for Barnstaple.’

‘How long will we be without you?’

‘I will not know until I reach the town.’

‘Let us make sure that you
do
reach it,’ said Firethorn grimly. ‘Westfield’s Men cannot afford to lose its book holder to that murderous villain with the black beard. Take care, Nick. We are half the company without you.’

Nicholas was oddly unsettled by the compliment. Having worked so hard over the years to make himself indispensable to the company, he now felt the weight of responsibility a little oppressive. Though he was not looking forward to the journey to Barnstaple, it would buy him an appealing release from his onerous duties. Nicholas still had to negotiate the major obstacle that stood between himself and his former home. The man who had used his name at a Marlborough inn had been mocking the book holder. He had stayed his
hand at Chippenham but would almost certainly strike in Bristol. Nicholas had taken the precaution of showing Anne Hendrik’s portrait of the man to his friends. Lawrence Firethorn, Edmund Hoode and Owen Elias would also know whom to guard against now. Four pairs of eyes could scour the streets of Bristol for danger.

The waggon was emptied and its cargo stowed securely away until it was required next day at the Guildhall. Work was over. Westfield’s Men had a whole evening of pleasure in front of them. Firethorn watched them roll off into the inn.

‘Cakes and ale, Nick. Cakes and ale.’

‘They deserve some jollity.’

‘And so do we, dear heart. What more could I want now than a plate of eels and a pint of sack to wash them down?’ His voice darkened. ‘One thing more to please my appetite.’

‘What is that?’

‘The head of Israel Gunby on a silver platter.’

Barnaby Gill was a vital element in the success of any performance by Westfield’s Men, and he blended perfectly with the rest of the cast when he was onstage. As soon as he stepped off it, however, he felt completely detached from his colleagues and treated them with lordly disdain. Their world was not his. Bristol impressed this strongly upon him. With an evening of freedom at their disposal, the members of the company responded in ways that were all too predictable, and this gave Gill even further cause for remaining aloof.

Lawrence Firethorn drank heavily in the taproom and flirted with female guests and staff alike. A few of the sharers joined him but others had gone off to the stews in search of wilder women and noisier company. The hired
men found the prices in the taproom a little too high for their leaner purses and they were dicing and drinking in a nearby alehouse. The apprentices watched their elders with patent envy and longed for the time when broken voices and manly bodies would help them to break out of the dresses they wore onstage and entitle them to take their full due of sinful pleasure. Richard Honeydew was the exception, and Gill missed his contemplation of the boy’s naive beauty, but the youngest of the four apprentices had left with Edmund Hoode on a tour of the city. Nicholas Bracewell was their guide because he had known Bristol intimately since his youth and had promised to show them all the sights. There were some places in the city, however, that even the book holder could never find, and it was to one of these haunts that Barnaby Gill set off as the light began to fade over the port.

Bristol was a fine and ancient city with the mediaeval pattern of its streets largely unchanged. It boasted a formidable castle, an abundance of churches and some civic buildings that could startle both with their quantity and quality. The whole city was enclosed within a high stone wall, which was pierced by a number of gates, many of them crowned by churches. Its position made it the guardian of the West Country, and it had been built to defend. But the predominant feature of Bristol was its magnificent natural harbour. Ships that came up the Severn Estuary could sail up the supremely navigable River Avon into the very heart of the city, and its mercantile life had always been vigorous and profitable as a result. Wharves, warehouses and cellars were always piled high with goods from coastal or foreign trade. Bristol felt in recent years that it was suffering unfair
competition from London, but its harbour was still kept busy and the inns, taverns and ordinaries along the Shambles were always swarming with sailors.

It was in the direction of the harbour that Barnaby Gill now strode, and the seagulls were soon crying and dipping above him to teach him the way. Out of deference to the more subdued fashions of the provinces, he had eschewed his more elaborate apparel and chosen a doublet of scarlet and black satin with slashed sleeves and a pair of matching breeches. His red hat sported a white ostrich feather and his buckled shoes had a bright sheen as they clacked over the paving. An Orient pearl dangled from one earlobe.

There was prosperity and poverty in Bristol, and he saw examples of both as he picked his way through the streets. The city burgesses had plenty of money but little idea of how to spend it on their apparel or on that of their wives. Gill groaned with contempt at some of the fashions he saw and he averted his gaze in disgust at some of the vagabonds and crones who crossed his path. Bristol had the same heady mixture of fortune and filth as London itself. Barnaby Gill spent so much time reflecting on the close juxtaposition of the two that he did not realise that he was being followed.

The Black Boy was in a narrow, fetid lane than ran down to the harbour. From the outside, it looked like any of the scores of other inns and taverns in the area. But its door was locked and admission was carefully controlled. Gill knocked boldly and a small grille opened before him. Dark eyes studied him closely for a second then heavy bolts were drawn back on the other side of the door. It swung ajar for him to enter then slammed behind him. He was in a large and ill-lit room that was cluttered with tables and chairs.
Barnaby Gill looked around with the satisfaction of a weary traveller who has been a long time on a hostile road before reaching a favoured destination. The room was only half full but its atmosphere was captivating. Well-dressed men lolled in the chairs or on the settles. Attractive young girls served them with drinks or reclined in their arms or even shared their pipes of tobacco. The thick fug of smoke was an added attraction for Gill. A big, beaming woman wobbled over to him and conducted him to a seat, calling for wine with a click of her fingers and offering Gill her own pipe. When he had inhaled his first lungful of tobacco, he blew it out through pursed lips and the woman planted a soft kiss on them.

Two of the youngest and prettiest serving girls now came to sit beside their new guest, and all three sipped Canary wine. Barnaby Gill was soon deep in conversation with the two of them, transferring his affections from one to the other with capricious joy and ordering another flagon of wine when the first was empty. This was his private universe and he so relaxed into it that he did not observe the man with the raven-black beard who was allowed into the room by the doorkeeper. Barnaby Gill was in Elysium. Here was pleasure of an order undreamt of by any of his colleagues. They had only base appetites and conventional tastes. Gill lived on a higher plain. The woman who presided over the establishment shook with mirth, the girls replied with brittle laughter and the swirling smoke ignited desire. Barnaby Gill was a man at home among men. As the two boys giggled beside him in their taffeta dresses, he decided to choose the one who resembled Richard Honeydew.

‘A word in your ear, kind sir.’

‘With me?’ said Gill, looking up.

‘Are you not the man I take you to be?’

‘And who is that, sir?’

‘You may not wish me to name you before others.’

Lamparde had waited half an hour before he moved across to speak to Gill. He drank freely, spent money liberally and enjoyed the company of one of the serving girls but his gaze never strayed far from the actor. When he sensed that Gill was ready to leave, he stepped across to interrupt him.

‘Name me, by all means, if you may,’ said Gill proudly. ‘Fame is a cloak which I wear wherever I go. Who am I?’

‘One of the best actors in the world, sir.’

‘You know me well enough.’

‘I have seen you play in London many a time.’

‘My name?’

‘Master Barnaby Gill. You have no peer.’

Lamparde knew how to flatter. He let the purring accent of his native Devon give the words a more honeyed charm, but it was his eyes that did most of the talking. They gleamed with such a powerful amalgam of admiration and challenge that Gill was hypnotised. Here was a man indeed, sturdy and well-favoured, educated in his tastes and worthy of note. His apparel was made by a London tailor and the earring was the twin of that worn by Gill himself. It was the beard that really enthralled the actor. Sleek and well trimmed, it lent a satanic quality to its owner that was irresistible. No boy could compare with a man like this.

Lamparde gave him a respectful nod of the head.

‘I have hired a room here, sir. Will you wait upon me?’

‘Gladly.’

‘Let me conduct you to the place.’

‘I follow willingly.’

‘This privilege is overwhelming.’

‘Lead on.’

The two boys who had worked so hard to entertain their guest were somewhat peeved, but a signal from their employer sent them off to blandish a newcomer. If the men wanted a private room in which to improve their acquaintance, they would pay a high price. Whatever guests chose, the Black Boy would profit accordingly.

Barnaby Gill was taken along a dark passageway with the utmost courtesy by his newfound friend. Both of them were denizens of such establishments and spoke its language. Plague had deprived Gill of his visit to a similar haunt in Oxford and there had been no equivalent in the dull and unenlightened Marlborough. Male brothels were highly illegal places, and both prostitutes and clients would face bestial punishments if they were caught, but this danger only served to intensify the pleasure involved. Gill’s favourite haunt in London was a brothel in Hoxton, but its premises were relatively safe from official raids because it numbered among its clients such influential people as Sir Walter Raleigh and Francis Bacon. The fear that was missing there was ever-present here, and it sharpened the edge of his desire. Peril was his aphrodisiac.

They climbed a staircase and stopped outside a door. Lamparde unlocked it with the key that he had been given. He then stood back and gestured for his companion to enter.

‘This way, Master Gill,’ he invited.

‘After you, kind sir.’

‘You are my guest at this time.’

‘Then I’ll be ruled by me.’

‘You are the actor. I am but a humble spectator.’

‘That is as it should be.’

There was a touch of arrogance in Barnaby Gill’s walk. He went into the room as if making an entrance onstage. The door shut behind him. He was about to turn to face his new friend with a benign smile when the club struck him so hard across the back of the head that he was knocked forward onto the floor. Lamparde did not need to check the efficacy of the blow. He used cords to bind his victim hand and foot then gagged him with a piece of cloth.

Barnaby Gill had entered the Black Boy with a confident strut. He now left it over the shoulder of a murderer.

The Parish Church of St Peter was, appropriately, the tallest building in Barnstaple, and its massive tower, which was topped with a lead-covered broach-spire, reached much nearer to heaven than any other structure in the town. Set on open land between the High Street and Boutport Street, it had withstood centuries of attack by the elements and frequent squalls in the religious climate. Systematic rebuilding had been carried on throughout Elizabeth’s reign, and it was paid for by the raising of a church rate. New slates were fixed on the roof, the ceiling over the communion table was repaired, the floor was retiled, the lead guttering was renewed and the whole building washed with seven bushels of lime. The churchyard was newly paved and given a new gate.

Another change that had occurred was the developing interest in private pews. Wealthy families who worshipped regularly in the church wanted more comfort during the long sermons of Arthur Calmady. They paid to have pews erected for their own use, thereby exhibiting their status in public while ensuring a privileged degree of privacy. The pews were known as sieges, and it was in the Whetcombe siege that a small figure
in a black coat was now kneeling in prayer. When Matthew Whetcombe rented the pew, he did so to attest his position in the community and to hide away the deaf-mute child who was such a constant embarrassment to him. That same daughter was now praying, not for the soul of her dead father, but for the safe and speedy return of a household servant.