IT WAS STRANGE passing the night in a tent with Dyrick. He snored mightily, disturbing my sleep. Next morning we all rode out, saddle-sore, and I, painfully conscious of my aching back. It was our final day’s journey. Sulyard’s face was heavy as a bladder from his drinking the evening before. As he took his place in the ranks some of the soldiers gave him unpleasant looks – I guessed because he had shown his fear. Snodin, though, looked no worse than usual – the sign of a true drunkard.
We set off again. The tramp of marching feet, the rumble of the carts behind us, the dust rising up and covering us, had become a familiar daily routine. But this was the last day; the soldiers would go all the way to Portsmouth, but according to Dyrick we had only a few miles to travel before passing a village called Horndean and turning off to Hoyland.
It was another hot, sultry day. The soldiers sang through most of the morning, more bawdy versions of courtly love songs, so inventive in their obscenity they made me smile. We passed into forested country again, interspersed with stretches of downland and meadow and the occasional village, where people were going to church for Sunday service. The soldiers ceased their bawdy songs out of respect.
Then, two miles on, where the road narrowed and ran between high forested banks, we found an enormous cart that had lost a wheel and turned over, blocking the road from side to side. It had been carrying a huge iron cannon, fifteen feet long, which had slipped the thick ropes securing it and lay on the ground. The four great horses that had been pulling it stood grazing by the bank. The carter persuaded the soldiers to stop and help repair his vehicle; the cannon had come from Sussex and, he said, should have been taken to Portsmouth by sea.
While some of the men lifted the empty cart and others put the spare wheel on the axle and tried to tighten it, the rest of the company fell out, finding places to sit on the banks of the narrow lane. Dyrick strolled up and down with Feaveryear, looking at the wood, then came over to where Barak and I sat.
‘May we join you?’ They sat down. Dyrick waved a gloved hand at the trees. ‘This land, like Master Hobbey’s, is part of the ancient Forest of Bere. Do you know its history?’
‘Only that it is an ancient royal forest from Norman times.’
‘Well done, Brother. But little used: successive kings have preferred the New Forest. Bere Forest has been shrinking little by little for centuries, cottagers establishing the squatters’ rights you are so keen on, hamlets growing into villages, land sold off by successive kings or granted to the Church like the Hoyland Priory estate. It comprises miles and miles of trees like this.’
I looked up into the forest. The growth here seemed very old, huge oaks and elms, the green undergrowth below heavy and tangled. Despite the days of hot weather a damp earthy smell came from it.
There was a crash from the cart: the new wheel had been fixed, but as soon as the men released their hold it fell off again, the cart lurching once more onto its side. Dyrick groaned. ‘We shall be here all day.’ He stood up. ‘Come, Feaveryear, help me adjust my horse’s harness.’ He walked away, Feaveryear rising hastily to follow him.
‘He doesn’t want his little clerk telling us his secrets,’ Barak said scoffingly. ‘He need not fear. Feaveryear is loyal as a dog.’
‘Have you got to know him any better?’
‘All he seems willing to talk about is his salvation, the wickedness of the world, and how this journey is a waste of his honoured master’s time.’
We looked up as Carswell approached us, a serious expression on his face. He bowed. ‘Sir, I am sorry for the trouble last night. I wanted you to know, few think like Sulyard.’
‘Thank you.’
He hesitated. ‘May I ask you something?’
‘If you wish.’ I waved a hand to the bank beside me. I smiled encouragingly, expecting some legal query.
‘I hear the London lawyers have their own band of players,’ he said unexpectedly.
‘Plays are often performed at the Inns of Court, but no, the actors’ companies are independent bodies of men.’
‘What sort of people are they?’
‘A roistering lot, I believe, but they must work hard or they could not perform as they do.’
‘Are they well paid?’
‘No, badly. And life is hard in London these days. Have you a wish to be an actor, Carswell?’
His face reddened. ‘I want to write plays, sir. I used to go and see the religious plays when they were allowed and as a boy I wrote little playlets of my own. I learned to write at the church school. They would have had me for a scholar, but my family is poor.’
‘Most plays today are full of religious controversy, like John Bale’s. It can be a dangerous occupation.’
‘I want to write comedies, stories to make people laugh.’
‘Did you write any of the naughty songs you sing?’ Barak asked.
‘Many are mine,’ he said proudly.
‘Most comedies in London are foreign,’ I said. ‘Italian mainly.’
‘But why should there not be English ones too? Like old Chaucer?’
‘By God, Carswell, you are a well-read fellow.’