CHAPTER VII
Ned stripped the barbs from a crow quill and cut the tip into a nib. Only one more copy and he was done. Legal papers were not the most interesting of jobs, but at least he could do the work at home and keep an eye on his mother. And with Mal's new connections to draw on, he might even aspire to a post in one of the new scriveneries attached to the Inns of Court.
He had just sanded the last page when footsteps sounded on the stairs and Mal appeared in the doorway.
"Can I borrow a pen and a bit of paper?" Mal asked.
"What do you want it for?"
"A letter."
"Who are you going to write to? You don't have any friends except me." It was cruel, but Mal was at his most handsome when he was vexed.
"I have friends. Blaise Grey, for one."
"Grey's not your friend," Ned replied. "If he was, he'd have helped you by now. Trust me, powerful men don't help underlings like us unless there's something in it for them."
Mal glowered, but said nothing.
"I don't think you're writing a letter at all," Ned went on. "I think you're writing a sonnet to that pretty apprentice-boy of Naismith's, the one you've been spending all summer with."
"I am not."
"After all I've done for you…" Ned sighed melodramatically. "Putting you up here, sharing my bed with you–"
"And I'm grateful, truly. But I have a letter to write and you should be at Henslowe's."
Ned shrugged. "It's only eleven."
"That was twelve the clocks struck. Or can't you count either?"
"Christ's hairy arse!" Ned snatched up his satchel and waved at the desk. "Help yourself. I'm off!"
He ran down the stairs without a backward glance, through the kitchen and out into the garden, where his mother was hoeing the cabbages.
"I'll be back for supper," he called over his shoulder as he vaulted the gate.
The mastiffs in the bear-baiting kennels nearby bayed in response to his shout but soon they were well behind him, their clamour lost amongst the cries from the Clink prison. Desperate inmates stretched their arms through barred windows as Ned passed.
"Spare a penny for an old soldier down on his luck, sir," one prisoner rasped through his few remaining teeth.
Ned threw him a pitying glance before turning towards the house opposite the prison. Henslowe was generous in lending money to his employees, but visitors to his house could not avoid the grim reminder of what would happen if they abused that generosity.
Ned knocked on the theatre manager's door and was admitted by a serving girl. He didn't know her name; maids came and went with the turn of the seasons, and they all looked much alike to him. She showed him into Henslowe's study, a gloomy wood-panelled chamber on the first floor overlooking the street.
Henslowe's book chest stood open and empty, its contents piled on the desk and floor. The theatre manager was sifting through a pile of manuscripts bound with string. His greying hair was unkempt and he wore a loose gown over his underlinens and slippers on his feet, as though he had not thought to dress since rising.
"I don't suppose you have Marlowe's final masterpiece hidden about your person, do you, Faulkner?" he asked, without looking up.
"Umm, no, sir."
Henslowe waved a hand at the piles of paper all around him.
"A fortune invested in the theatre business, and what do I have to show for it? A chest full of feeble scribblings, and not one of them fit to put on for the ambassador."
Ned doubted his words; most of the city's playwrights had sold their work to Henslowe in recent years. All except Will Shakespeare, who wrote exclusively for the Prince's Men.
"Does it have to be something new?" Ned asked, remembering what Mal had told him. "The ambassador's never been to London before, and surely he cannot have heard any of our plays put on in the New World unless they be transcribed into Vinlandic."
Henslowe put down the pile of manuscripts and stared at him.
"You know, you may be onto something."
"And he won't understand a word of it anyway," Ned said, warming to his subject, "so you could just put on something that looks good."
"Looks good… Yes, yes. Pageantry, spectacle, that colour of beast." Henslowe clapped him on the shoulder. "Good thinking, Faulkner. I knew there was a reason I liked you."
Mal finished his writing, sanded and folded it, and put it into his pocket. It was not a letter, nor indeed a sonnet, damned be Ned's lewd imaginings. Though even a sonnet would be easier to explain than the nonsense text he now carried: Baines' latest assignment, a letter transposed into cipher from memory. It was hard enough keeping his intelligence training hidden from Ned, without having cipher keys in his possession. He would present his work to the intelligencer later. Right now he had other things to do.
He was barely halfway along Bankside when he spotted Hendricks running towards him. The boy's straw-pale hair was dark with sweat, yet his doublet remained buttoned up. Mal had commented on it during their first wrestling lesson, but Hendricks had insisted he was more comfortable fully dressed. What kind of injuries must he be hiding, that he could not strip to shirt and hose? And yet the boy had not cried out when Mal threw him to the floor. Perhaps he was reading too much into the situation. Or perhaps the hurt was on the inside.
Hendricks' look of worried concentration was replaced by a broad grin when he caught sight of Mal. He shouted a greeting and stumbled to a halt, wiping the sweat from his sunburnt brow.
"I thought – I would not catch you," he panted as Mal approached.
"Is something amiss? Can I help?"
Hendricks shook his head, casting droplets of sweat about him. "Master Naismith is in the most dreadful temper, that is all."
"He has not changed his mind about allowing you to teach me?" Mal asked. "I would not have you disobey your master."
"Naught like that," Hendricks replied with a rueful smile. "It is the builders. They say it will take at least another two weeks to finish the carpentry, but we are due to perform at the end of the month and the stage is still not painted. Master Naismith blames Master Dunfell, Master Dunfell blames Master Naismith…"
Mal laughed. "Then we are well out of it. So, where shall we go?"
For a moment he thought of suggesting the Faulkners' house, but that would only add fuel to the fire if Ned found out.
"An it please you, sir, it is time you practised your Tradetalk with others."
"Others?"
"Skraylings."
Billingsgate was one part of London Coby knew well. The greater proportion of its Dutch inhabitants lived there, close to the wharfs where their ships put in. All foreign vessels coming into London were obliged to dock there for their cargoes to be measured and taxed, including those of the skraylings, and a market had sprung up nearby to offer the latest wares from both New World and Old.
To her surprise, Master Catlyn exchanged greetings with some of the Dutch stallholders in their own language. His accent was Flemish like her own, rather than the Zeelandic of the Amsterdam merchants, but he had no problem making himself understood.
"Not many Englishmen speak my tongue," she said, looking at him with renewed curiosity.
"I sailed to the Low Countries when I was nineteen," he said. "Living under siege, you learn what you need to survive."
"You were in a siege? What was it like?"
"Boring. Hungry. You don't want to know."
Well, that closed that line of questioning. She racked her brains for another topic of conversation.
"Did you never want to sail to the New World?"
"Not I." He laughed. "Crossing the Channel was bad enough. My home county is landlocked, and as far from the sea as any in England."
"Where is that?"