The boy nodded.
"Anxious to get over there and fight?" Mal asked.
Hendricks shook his head.
Mal gave up that line of conversation. If the boy was going to be so taciturn, learning a language from him promised to be hard going. He looked around.
"This is a poor spot to sit and talk. Look, there is shade, down there by the millstream."
He pointed to a knot of alders on the edge of the pleasure gardens.
Hendricks bit his lip. "I am not so sure."
"Come now, we cannot stand around in the sun like labourers. And it seems we cannot sit in the shade of yon theatre either, lest I am suspected of eavesdropping."
"Very well," the boy said. "It is just… Master Parrish said I should stay away from such lewd places. He–" Hendricks blushed like a girl. "He says I am too pretty for my own good."
"What, you think I would ravish you?" Mal laughed. "Jesu, you're a child, for Heaven's sake!"
"I'm not a child, I'm seventeen."
"Aye, well, tell me again when your voice breaks and I might believe you."
They crossed the little wooden bridge into Paris Gardens and sat down in the shade of the alders. Mal studied the boy's profile for a moment. Furrowed brow, a nose red and peeling from the sun, a bottom lip curled downwards in, what, frustration? Or misery? No sign of violence, but then not all bruises show. He wondered if that was why the boy hugged his ribs so protectively.
"I suppose tempers are running short," Mal said. "What with the contest and all."
"Something like that." The boy picked up an alder cone and threw it into the stream.
Mal made a sympathetic noise. It was none of his business, and he did not press the matter further.
"So, where shall we begin?" Hendricks said with forced cheerfulness.
"How should I know?" Mal said, sitting alert with forearms propped on his knees. "You're the teacher."
The boy glanced at him, ready with another retort, then seemed to change his mind. He smiled nervously.
"Well, the first thing you need to know," he said, staring off into the distance, "is that Tradetalk uses English words, more or less, but not in the way an Englishman would do. The skraylings refuse to make certain letters, to whit, m, b and p–"
"Why?"
"It is said they find them effeminate, like a lisp. The upshot is, they must find new words for many common English things, such as mother, brother and the like."
"And man and woman?"
The boy blushed again.
"Yes."
"So, how do you say 'man' or 'woman'?"
"Man is 'fellah'. Woman is 'she-fellah'."
"Like she-wolf?"
"Yes, I suppose so. But you address a man as 'sir', whatever his rank, and a woman as 'lady'. Not that you will need to address a woman in Tradetalk."
"Is it true there are no womenfolk here?" Mal asked.
Hendricks shrugged. "I have not seen any, nor no children neither. Perhaps they keep their women hidden, like the Turks are said to do."
Mal repeated the Tradetalk words a few times. It all seemed simple enough, if a little barbaric to the ear.
"Even the Turks are not so secretive," he said. "But then the skraylings seem fond of secrets."
"And stories," Hendricks said. "That's why they come to the theatres so much, even those who cannot understand the speeches."
"Your patron is a friend of the skraylings," Mal said. "And I hear yon theatre is being built with skrayling silver. That is a bold venture."
"You sound as if you do not approve, sir," the boy said, eyeing him suspiciously.
"On the contrary," Mal replied, cursing his clumsy approach to the issue. "I am all for seizing any advantage in a fight. Now, where were we?"
By the end of the afternoon, Mal had a grasp of simple greetings and a few phrases that might be useful in the marketplace. From time to time he was even able to forget why he was learning all this and simply enjoy a pleasant afternoon in the company of a new friend.
"I am indebted to you and your master," he said, getting to his feet and brushing dead leaves from his clothing. "If there is anything else I can do…"
Hendricks stared at the glittering millstream for a long moment.
"Teach me to fight."
So, it was the other boys giving him grief, not the master.
"I doubt I can help you," Mal said, not unkindly. "You will not come up against many apprentices armed with rapiers."
The boy looked up, his expression unreadable. "Anything you can teach me… about being a man."
Mal smiled. "Now that you really must learn for yourself. But– " Something about the boy's air of desperation reminded him of himself at the same age. "Part of my training was in unarmed combat and dagger-play. Perhaps that would be of some use?"
Hendricks' eyes lit up and he nodded.
"Though I warn you," Mal added, "if you ever come up against a man with a knife, your best stratagem is to run."
"Run, sir?"
"Like all the demons of Hell are after you."
Coby sat by the stream for a long time after Master Catlyn had gone. What was the point in going back to the theatre, if there was no work for her to do? And then there was this business of fighting lessons. She could not imagine what had possessed her to ask him. She didn't even like the man. No, that was not true. She had been determined not to like him after the way he had behaved at Goody Watson's, but he had changed his tune since then, indeed had been all politeness this afternoon. Not at first, perhaps, but then after they sat down together, he had suddenly changed. Was it something she said? Did he… oh Lord, did he suspect?
And what if he does? a voice in the back of her mind asked. She had assumed he shared Faulkner's tastes, but what if she were wrong? She felt herself grow hot all over, and not from the sun. What if he tries to seduce me? She leant over the stream, trying to make out her reflection in the rippling surface. Stupid. Why would he be interested in a plain, skinny creature like me, when London teems with women far better supplied with feminine charms?
She threw a twig in the stream and watched it float away. No, he did not know, she was certain of it. He would not have agreed to teach her to fight if he knew her to be a girl. The thought should have been comforting, but somehow it was not. She sighed. Anyone would think she wanted to be found out, like the guilty man in the proverb, running from shadows, afraid of everyone and everything.
Well, that was not her. She had nothing to feel bad about, the rest of the world was to blame for forcing her into these desperate straits. Getting to her feet she marched back to the theatre. She would find something useful to do if it killed her.
Walking back along Bankside towards Deadman's Place, Mal wondered when he had stopped trying to get out of Leland's commission and started looking forward to it and, more to the point, why. The lessons with Baines and Hendricks provided new challenges, it was true, but was that all? Perhaps a part of him was just sick of running away. Very well, so be it.
After crossing London Bridge he walked eastwards along Thames Street, emerging on the lower slopes of Tower Hill. In daylight the fortress looked far less ominous than it had by night. The crenellations of the walls and towers had begun to crumble with age, and moss and weeds had taken hold in every crack. The former Great Hall stood open to the sky, its roof timbers bare as the ribs of dead men. Only the Lieutenant's House, whitewashed and in good repair, gave any indication the Tower remained in active use. Mal hoped the ambassador's accommodation was in a better state than the rest of the fortress, otherwise the skraylings might be sorely offended.
No sooner had he thought of the skraylings than his eye was drawn towards the stockade on the far side of the river. Within it could be seen many domed tents of some heavy fabric woven in the same patterns of interlocking triangles as the skraylings' tunics. A column of bluish smoke rose from somewhere near the centre. He set off down the hill at a lope, determined to cross the river before he could change his mind.
"Westward ho! Eastward ho!"
The familiar cries of the wherrymen echoed across the water.
"What's the nearest stair to the skrayling camp?" Mal shouted to one of them.
"That'll be Horseydown. Tuppence, an it please you, sir."
Mal fished two pennies out of his pocket and stepped aboard the little boat. It felt good to have money to spare again.
A few minutes later he disembarked at Horseydown Stairs, a hundred yards downriver from the stockade. Unlike elsewhere on the Thames, there were no wherries waiting to take passengers, only a small boat with a prow carved in the likeness of a seabird's head, moored to the jetty and unoccupied. He assumed it belonged to one of the skrayling merchant vessels that stood at anchor along the Southwark docks. He gave the wherryman an extra halfpenny for his inconvenience, and set off towards the stockade.
The skrayling encampment stood on a narrow strip of ground, bordered on the north, south and west by the Thames and its tributary streams. Only a small wooden bridge connected it to Southwark at the western end. A pleasant enough situation, had it not been for the tanneries and forges upwind. If the intent was to isolate the skraylings whilst keeping them in plain sight, Mal could not think of a better location. It also made it impossible to approach the place unnoticed.
For a moment he considered skirting around the common land south of the encampment – but then why bother to come at all, if he did not improve upon the glimpse he had gained from Tower Hill? He took a couple of deep breaths, like a man steadying his nerves before charging into battle, then took the faint path that ran directly towards the skrayling stockade.
Not satisfied with the protection of river and streams, the builders had added a narrow moat connected to the Thames. On the south side, it was crossed by a wooden drawbridge where a double gate pierced the timber palisade. The gates were open, and skraylings armed with quarterstaves stood at either side of the entrance. The scent of tobacco drifted out across the common, along with unfamiliar cooking smells. He thought of all the strange peoples he had seen on his travels, but none were as strange as these creatures dwelling in his own country.
He paused at the landward end of the drawbridge. Should he announce himself? Seek an introduction to the chief skrayling? He still knew too little Tradetalk to be useful and besides, why would they believe him? He wore no livery, carried no badge to prove his position.
The distant murmur of skrayling voices stilled, and the notes of a woodwind instrument rose in its place. Soft, like a flute, but tuned to an alien key, even stranger than the music of the Turks. And yet the melody was hauntingly familiar, as if… That was it. A lullaby his mother used to sing, in the house by the sea. No. He had never heard it before, did not know it – how could he? Derbyshire was about as far from the sea as anywhere in England. Mal shook his head in confusion. Was he being bewitched? He made the sign of the cross, and the strange feeling faded.
He was uncomfortably aware of the two guards watching him out of the corner of his eye. He swallowed and walked away, heading westwards towards Southwark. His footsteps echoed on the timber planking of the bridge as he crossed the stream, and he had to force himself not to break into a run.