Hill of Bones

I

I’d been dead for about five minutes now and it was a comfortable experience. I had taken care to fall on my back and lay there quite at ease, arms outstretched, gazing up at the darkening sky. The moon, almost at the full, was poised on the gable of one of the buildings overlooking the yard. If I squinted slightly I could make out a white face peering from a window in the gable. Some child, probably, or a penny-pinching adult who was reluctant to pay up to see me dead.

From a few yards away came the sound of several voices raised in argument. I was aware that I was being referred to, and not in a complimentary way. No one seemed to regret my death. Indeed, there was talk of vengeance and justice. Then the argument turned to scuffling, accompanied by blows and gasps, and the thud of another body hitting the ground. The dead man had the good manners and the skill to fall a little distance away, leaving me to contemplate the moon and the face at the window. Now, after more scuffles and groans, the bodies began to fall as fast as rotten fruit from the tree. I counted three more thuds followed by silence apart from the odd satisfied groan or murmur of approval from the dark pit beyond where we lay scattered, all five of us.

Then it was time for the summing-up. One of the few survivors of this violent action – his name was Malcontento – spoke up to explain how these five sudden killings had been necessary on account of other and earlier murders. Naturally, being dead, I didn’t turn my head but kept my eyes fixed on the moon, which was inching its way above the rooftops. In my mind’s eye, though, I saw Malcontento pointing an accusatory finger at me and my fellow corpses. I heard him as he ran through a list of poisonings, stranglings and stabbings before wrapping things up with a couple of little rhymes.

‘An honest life, however low, outweighs

The deeds of these. Each one his debt now pays.

So Heaven’s law trumps false device and reason,

May their guilty blood wash off all sin and treason.’

There was a pause to allow this harmless moral to sink in, before we corpses rose from the dead and joined our fellows at the front of the makeshift stage to acknowledge the plaudits of the audience. To judge by their clapping and their calls, they seemed pleased with our depiction of the lechery and violence that everyone expects to find at the court of an Italian duke, especially one who’s planning to marry his half-sister after disposing of her husband. We – or rather our author – had even included a scene in a madhouse, something that audiences of every type and class always appreciate.

Finally we players did a little jig in gratitude and as a way of bringing our performance of A House Divided to a merry close. In truth, we were already well disposed towards the audience. They had been more respectful than a London crowd – but then any crowd is more respectful than a London one – and although we didn’t have an exact tally on the amount of money brought in by the ‘gathering’ taken before the performance the word was that the citizens of the city of Bath had been open-handed. And this sum would be supplemented by a grant from the town corporation, since they wanted to keep in good odour with our royal patron.

We finished our jig with a flourish and filed behind the curtained screens that provided the off-stage area. We were playing in the yard of the Bear Inn, which lies off Cock Lane in the central part of Bath. The Bear didn’t have the amenities of our own Globe Theatre or fashionable London venues such as Blackfriars. In fact, it didn’t have any amenities at all apart from the hastily erected stage, some moth-eaten drapes and, for furniture, a table, a few stools and an imposing chair (the duke’s throne) provided by the landlord, Harry Cuff. Everything else – props, costumes, masks, face-paints – had to be laboriously transported from town to town across the kingdom by wagon. But there’s a special quality to being out on the road when the weather is fair and the audience is made up not of jaded Londoners but honest provincials eager for entertainment provided by the cream of the capital’s players.

We of the King’s Men certainly regarded ourselves as that cream, pouring out our riches as we progressed across the West Country to our last destination of Bristol. This was home territory for me, Nicholas Revill, a member of the King’s Men for more than six years by now. In the latter days of Queen Elizabeth’s reign I had arrived in London from the village of Miching, which lies to the south-west of Bristol. If you climb the hills above this village there is a fine view of the channel that separates England from Wales. My father was the parson of the village and my mother the parson’s wife. They and many other folk in Miching died in an outbreak of the plague. I was in Bristol at the time, vainly seeking employment as a player, and although I returned home disappointed I soon realised there were greater blessings than finding a job: I was still alive.

With my good parents no longer in this world and no other family to keep me behind, I escaped to the metropolis where I once again had a piece of good fortune when I fell among the Chamberlain’s Men, as they were called at the time. Even then, as the Chamberlain’s, they had a high reputation, with the Burbage brothers as the principal shareholders and William Shakespeare as their principal author. Now King James was our patron, and the Burbages and Shakespeare enjoyed the royal link with a quiet pride. Perhaps it made them reluctant to leave London, for neither the brothers nor WS were with us on this trip to the west.

‘A good audience, this Bath one,’ I said to my friend Abel Glaze. It was he who had tumbled down dead on stage right after my demise, landing a careful distance away.

‘Yes,’ chipped in Michael Donegrace, one of our boy players. A dozen of us were taking turns to shuck off our costumes in the cramped and dimly illuminated area to one side of the stage, before folding our garments and storing them away in one of the tiring-chests. Being on tour meant we had no tire-master to nag us about the tears and lost buttons and stains on our outfits, but equally it meant that each individual was responsible for stowing his garb and keeping it fit for the next performance.

‘You come from this part of the world, don’t you, Nick?’ said Laurence Savage.

‘I believe I have heard Nicholas mention the fact from time to time,’ said Abel.

‘A world separates Bath from my old village of Miching,’ I said.

‘What surprised me,’ said Laurence, ‘was how quick the audience was here, how ready to lap up all the wickedness on stage. I’d heard they were a bit strait-laced in these parts. You know, afflicted with a touch of the…’ He pulled his mouth down and mimed the conical hat that was worn by the Puritans and, as he did so, unintentionally jabbed with his elbow a boy pushing his way through the drapes that fronted the tire-room.

Once he’d recovered from the blow in the stomach, the lad gazed around in wonderment and perhaps alarm. He saw a dozen grown men and a couple of boys of about his own age with their faces still painted and their costumes half off, in the light of a single lantern and a spill of moon from overhead. The boy’s eyes then darted about as if he were searching for someone.

‘Hello, Leonard,’ said Laurence Savage to him. And then to the rest of us: ‘This is Leonard Cuff, son to our host at the Bear. I was chatting to his father this afternoon and had the honour of being introduced to the members of that gentleman’s family.’

Laurence possessed the knack of remembering names and faces even after the most fleeting meeting. For his part, the boy was relieved to recognise a friendly face. He held up a letter.

‘This is for the duke,’ he said in an uncertain voice. ‘Is – is the duke here?’

There was a moment’s silence, then the sharper of my fellows looked at me, realising before I did what the lad was on about. The duke – Duke Peccato, to give him his name – was the Italian part that I had so recently enacted in A House Divided. It was I who had schemed to marry my half-sister, played by Michael Donegrace, and in the process found it expedient to kill off my brother-in-law. My machinations led inevitably to my own violent death and those of my associates, chiefly at the hands of Malcontento, played by Laurence. I was pleased to have been Duke Peccato. It was quite a big part and, more important, it was a very bad part. There’s nothing players like more than a true villain to sink their teeth into. The audience like it too.

‘I am the duke,’ I said. ‘Duke Peccato.’

‘You are?’ said Leonard.

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘That is my part, I mean. My name is Nicholas Revill.’

‘Well, sir, whoever you may be, this is for you.’

The boy handed me the letter rather gingerly as if he thought some of the duke’s evil might have rubbed off on the person playing him.

He added, ‘It’s from a lady.’

‘What lady?’

‘Don’t know. She was wearing a hat pulled low and I couldn’t see her face clear.’

There was an outburst of ooh-ing and ah-ing from my fellows at the mention of ‘a lady’. I knew what they were thinking. It was more or less what I was thinking too.

‘I’m not acquainted with any ladies in Bath,’ I said, half apologetic but a bit smug as well. I might have asked more questions of the landlord’s son – could he guess at the mystery woman’s age? what about the style of her voice? – but the lad had already slipped away through the drapes.

‘Your lucky night,’ said Laurence.

‘You dog,’ said Abel.

‘I am jealous, I confess it, Duke Peccato,’ said Michael Donegrace, who had so recently glided across the boards as my half-sister and would-be bride, and on whose behalf I had already killed extensively that night.

I ignored their ribaldry and held the folded paper close to the lantern so as to read the superscription. ‘To him who plays the Duke’, it said in a large but elegant hand. Well, of course, whoever wrote this could not have known my name, only the part I played in A House Divided. There was another line of writing under the address, slightly smaller but in the same hand. No more than three words: ‘A privy message’. I felt my cheeks grow warm and was glad I hadn’t completely wiped off my face-paint because I was being looked at very intently by Laurence Savage and the others. My fingers were itching to tear open this private message – which was sealed with a red blob of wax – but I was not going to give my fellows the satisfaction of reading my expression while I examined its contents.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ I said, folding up the last bit of my ducal costume with exaggerated care and putting it in one of the tire-chests.

‘Will we be seeing you later at Mother Treadwell’s?’ said Laurence.

Most of us King’s Men were lodging at a couple of rooms in a house near the North Gate of the town, where all of us were crammed into too few beds. The place was run by a good-natured, twinkle-eyed widow woman who welcomed travelling players, and more particularly their gossip.

‘Oh, no, we won’t be seeing him later,’ said Abel Glaze, answering for me. ‘Nicholas will be treading well elsewhere tonight, won’t he?’

‘More room in the bed for the rest of us then,’ said Michael Donegrace.

I left them to their envious jokes and made my way out of the changing room and slowly through the inn yard. Most of the audience had watched A House Divided on their feet, like the groundlings at the Globe, although there was a cluster of benches near the front for those who preferred to sit and were willing to pay a bit more. It was a close, warm evening with a little light remaining in the west as well as that provided by the rising moon. There were a few stragglers remaining after the performance, drinking and smoking in corners, the embers of their pipes glowing softly in the near dark. Murmurs of male conversation. No women that I could see, no enticing female strangers with hats pulled low over their brows.

It was not unknown for players to receive messages from, ah, the better class of women who had been present at our performances on stage. Messages that offered favours. Sadly, it had never happened to me or my immediate fellows, but there were tales about a few of the older men in the company, including an amusing one about William Shakespeare and Dick Burbage having planned an assignation at the same time with the same man’s wife. Mind you, they were much younger then, and playing has become more respectable in these latter days.

So it was with hope in my heart, and the enticing words ‘A privy message’ tapping in my brain like a drumbeat, that I exited the yard into Cock Lane and turned down towards a thoroughfare that I think is called Cheap Street. The bulk of the great city church of Bath loomed to my left.

From the first-floor window of a house at the corner of Cheap Street came a gleam of light where the curtain was not completely drawn. That, combined with the beams from the moon, should, I decided, enable me to read the letter. As I stopped under the window, all eager to tear the thing open, I spied a figure carrying a staff and lantern and emerging from the shadows of the great church. A little dog trotted at his heels. It was the bellman on the first leg of his nightly round of the city of Bath. He rang his bell and called out the time – ten o’clock – and gave me a wary look as he passed on down Cheap Street. The dog growled softly before slinking after its master. If the bellman was here, the watch would probably be close at his heels. I did not want to get taken up on suspicion of attempting a house robbery. Being a foreigner in town, and a player as well, would make that all too likely.

I turned back towards the Bear Inn and waited until a pair of watchmen had gone by in the same direction as the bellman. My fingers fumbled impatiently with the wax seal of the ‘privy message’. I returned to the corner house and the window with its crack of light, and raised the unfolded sheet closer to my eyes. Only to understand that I had been played for a fool for the sheet was completely blank. Even by the uncertain light I could see nothing, nothing at all. There was not a single word on the sheet, let alone a place of assignation, or any fond endearments and promises.

My first reaction was irritation, more with myself than the unknown ‘lady’ who had given the letter to the landlord’s boy. I wondered whether one of my friends was playing a joke on me but swiftly discounted the idea. Then I thought that I would have to spend an hour or two drinking ale in a town inn, before slinking back to Mother Treadwell’s and pretending to Laurence Savage and the rest that I had indeed enjoyed the favours of some high-born Bath lady. It would be too humiliating to do anything else. Then it further occurred to me – being primed for the event, as it were – that I should go in search of a house of ill repute and purchase what I was not going to be given tonight for free. Which direction to go, though? In London I’d have known, but in a strange town I was at a loss for a bordello.

There must surely be one or two such places in Bath, which, although not a very large or populous city, is much visited on account of its curative waters. But since our arrival the previous day, all our time had been spent preparing the stage in the yard of the Bear Inn and then rehearsing for this evening’s performance and the other plays that were to follow. Consequently, I had little notion of the city’s more disreputable quarters although I supposed they’d be away from the shadow of the great church and the centre of the town. Most probably close to one of the old gates. The North Gate wasn’t a good prospect. Nearby was both the city lock-up and a proper gaol, as the twinkle-eyed Mrs Treadwell had informed us, ‘very conveniently placed for naughty players’. And the East Gate in the wall, which we had glimpsed on our approach to the city, was not much more than a postern onto the river bank.

I was still standing underneath the lighted window on the corner of Cheap Street, clutching the blank sheet of paper. By now indecisive as well as irritated, I mused on whether I’d be more likely to find what I was looking for down by the South Gate or the West one. Then I wondered how sensible it was to go wandering around unfamiliar streets in a darkened city, no doubt encountering the bellman and the members of his watch. In the process I found my appetite, my itch, subsiding.

It was a surprise when I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder. I hadn’t heard anyone come up behind me. I spun round and there she was! A woman, quite tall and slender from her outline, and wearing a large hat.

‘You were the duke, sir? In the recent play?’ Her voice was low, well bred. Doubtless a lady.

‘You are responsible for this, madam?’ I said, flourishing the blank ‘privy message’ and not hiding my anger.

‘I must apologise, sir. I was in a great hurry and although a thousand phrases were whirling through my head, I could think of nothing to write that would guarantee your attention. But I believed you would be intrigued enough by what I wrote on the cover not to want to break the seal in front of your friends in the company. I thought you’d want to open it in private, by yourself. I have been watching you since you left the inn yard.’

All this was said in a rush with hardly a pause for breath. It was irritating that she had been able to predict my response to the letter so exactly. Hardly reassured, I said: ‘So you watched our play sitting in the yard of the Bear Inn? I didn’t notice you.’

‘I wasn’t in the yard but in a house, standing at a window high above the stage. I could see and hear quite well from up there.’

I remembered the face glimpsed while I was lying down dead, the white countenance peering from the gable window. For some reason, I shivered at the memory, and to cover the moment I laughed and said, ‘Well, madam, not only do you draw me away from my company and my bed-rest with a silly note – a blank sheet of paper – but now you inform me that you didn’t even pay good money to watch our play. I hope you enjoyed it.’

‘I did. I was much struck by your duke.’

‘That was a part that I played. I am not Duke Peccato,’ I said wearily.

‘I was frightened by the scene in the madhouse,’ she said.

‘We meant to frighten,’ I said, wondering where these compliments were leading. Still, it was good to know that the devilish masks and the white smocks worn by the players acting as lunatics were effective.

To put an end to our conversation, I said: ‘Sorry to disappoint you but I’m not a duke or lunatic after all, merely a member of the King’s Men, and one who is tired after an evening’s work and now intends to return-’

I stopped as she stretched out a hand and clasped my arm tight.

‘Help me.’

That was the point where I should have shaken off her hand, turned on my heel and gone back to Mother Treadwell’s to face the jokes and the prying questions of my fellows. But I didn’t. Foolishly, I stayed and said: ‘At least give me the courtesy of your name since you did not include it in this – this privy message.’

‘Katherine Hawkins. I live there, in a house overlooking the yard of the Bear.’

Still holding my arm, as if afraid I might break away, she gestured behind her with her other hand.

‘Well, I’m Nick Revill. I live in London.’

‘You can do me a great service, sir.’

‘How?’

‘By visiting a dying man.’

‘You need a priest, not a player,’ I said. Gently I prised her fingers from my arm.

‘The priest will come soon enough. I need you now.’

It’s hard to resist when a young woman appeals to you directly. At least, I found it so. It had occurred to me that this might be a trap but she was speaking very earnestly and I believed her honest – or wanted to believe it.

‘Who is dying? What can I do? I’m a player, I say again, not a priest or a doctor of physic.’

We were disturbed by the scrape of a window opening overhead, from where the gleam of light shone. A head thrust out. A male voice said: ‘Do your business elsewhere. Be off or I’ll call the watch.’

We both looked up. She quickly averted her head from the man above, perhaps fearful of being recognised, but I had a glimpse of her face, pale, drawn, beautiful. The window was shut, firmly. We were speaking quietly after my initial burst of anger but we’d been there for a few minutes. Anybody looking down on a man and woman in a public street late at night, talking low, negotiating, would have come to the obvious conclusion.

‘Please. Come with me, Mr Revill – Nicholas,’ said Katherine Hawkins. ‘I promise you… promise you on… on my mother’s grave… that there is nothing to be wary of. I will explain as we go.’

We walked round the corner and along Cheap Street, keeping clear of the kennel that ran down the middle of the street and which, in this dry midsummer, smelled of the muck and waste deposited there.

In the same soft tones, the woman said that she lived with her uncle, Christopher Hawkins, a respectable and well-to-do cloth merchant and a member of the town corporation. It was he who was dying. He had no more than a day or two of life left in him. The crisis might come at any moment, according to Dr Price. Although Christopher Hawkins was rambling in his wits he had clear moments. He was half deaf and almost blind too. His wife was dead and he had a single surviving son called William, a young man whom he had not seen for several years. William Hawkins was of about my age and build.

‘Where is your cousin, this William?’

‘I do not know. He is restless. The last I heard he was in London. He was searching for his course in life. He once said he wanted to be a player, like you,’ she said, folding her arm under mine and pressing close. ‘Then he said in a letter to me that he might try his fortunes in the New World, in the Americas.’

‘If he did, then he is thousands of miles away. He may as well be dead.’

‘I know. But my uncle has been calling out for his son, mumbling his name, asking for him. He has taken it into his head that William is quite close, that he may arrive at any minute.’

‘Perhaps he will.’

‘No, no, he will not. Or if he did it would be a miracle. I cannot depend on miracles. I do not need a miracle now that you are here, Mr Revill. Nicholas.’

She made to turn up a lane between houses but I stopped, forcing her to a standstill. The only light was that shed by the moon and, from down the lane, a couple of lanterns outside the houses.

‘I see what you’re proposing, madam. You want me to go and see your dying uncle and impersonate his son and clasp his hand and speak some words of greeting and comfort to him.’

‘Yes.’

‘I will not do it.’

‘But you are a player.’

‘This isn’t a play. It’s real.’

‘So much the more important, sir. My uncle is all in all to me. He and his wife took me in when my parents died in the plague in the old Queen’s time. I have no one else in the world except my absent cousin. I would be glad for Uncle to die happy.’

The mention of her parents’ death in the plague may have caused me to lean more attentively towards her. At any rate she sensed a slight softening in my attitude, for she went on: ‘You see, there was an estrangement between William and Uncle Christopher, a quarrel over nothing, but the last of many quarrels for he quit this house soon afterwards and went off to make his way in the world. I know that my uncle blames himself for what occurred. He would die happy knowing that you – he, I mean – had come back again. You have the manner of Cousin William, the height, something of the look, the voice even.’

‘As to the voice, I come from this part of the world,’ I said.

‘I knew it! I could almost believe this was fated.’

‘It is an imposture, madam, a lie.’

‘A white one. No guilt or blame attaches or, if it does, it is mine alone. It will only take an instant.’

‘What if he recognises me?’ I said. ‘I mean, what if he recognises that I am not his son, William. That would be worse than doing nothing.’

‘Uncle Christopher can hardly see, he can hardly hear,’ she said. ‘It is enough if he knows you are in the same room. I promise that if my uncle is not in a fit state to receive you, if he is wandering too much in his mind, I will not ask you again. It is now or never.’

‘Let it be now then,’ I said.

II

Had I stopped to think the matter through, I would have refused her request. A great deal of trouble would have been avoided. Some danger too. But I was persuaded to do this merciful deed by her manner, by her pleading – by her attractions too, of course. If I hoped anything at all it was that the old uncle might be so deep asleep or far gone that no pretence on my part would be necessary. As I followed Katherine Hawkins down the narrow road, which I later learned was called Vicarage Lane, I reflected that this errand was very different from what I’d been imagining when I was handed the ‘privy message’.

We halted outside a doorway over which hung a lantern. As far as I was able to see, the houses in the lane were newer than some others in the city, rising to three or four storeys rather than two, and constructed of stone instead of timber. I remembered that Katherine said her uncle was a cloth merchant, a well-to-do one. She produced a key and unlocked the door. Inside the lobby, which was illuminated by a couple of wax candles, a woman of uncertain age started up from a chair. She’d been dozing.

‘Why, Mistress Katherine, where have you been?’

‘It’s all right, Hannah. It’s a close night. I needed a little air.’

The woman, who was wearing a grey overdress, looked curiously at me. I would have done the same in her position. I waited for whatever explanation Katherine Hawkins would give. I wasn’t going to help her out. She hung the door key on a hook by the entrance and then removed her hat, doing each action slowly as if to give herself time to think. I saw that, although strained, she had an enticing face, a wide mobile mouth, a delicate chin, large eyes.

‘Oh, here is an extraordinary coincidence, Hannah. This is Mr Revill. He is a member of the King’s Men who have been playing in the yard of the Bear. He and the others have come all the way from London. Mr Revill knew William.’

‘William?’ said the woman, who I supposed was some long-time retainer. She struggled to catch up with Katherine Hawkins, who now said with deliberate slowness: ‘Yes, our cousin William. Mr Revill knew him in London.’

The older woman’s face lit up even as I felt myself growing more and more uncomfortable with the deception.

‘You are friends with William, sir! How is he? Where is he?’

I shrugged, to hide my unease, and said, ‘I’ve no idea where your William is. I met him only once – or perhaps it was twice – many years ago. I… I was told he had gone to the Americas.’

‘I thought it might be a comfort for Uncle Christopher to see Mr Revill,’ said Katherine smoothly. She was very adept at spinning a tale. I wondered what else she had said that was half true or outright false.

‘Of course, of course,’ said Hannah.

‘I will take him up to my uncle. Go to bed now, Hannah.’

Hastily, to avoid further comment or question, she snatched up one of the wax candles and we left the lobby. I followed her up the stairs.

Half-way up, when we were out of earshot of the woman, I stopped and whispered urgently to her, ‘Already you have involved me in a complete falsehood and I have not even seen your uncle. Whatever you may say to the woman in the lobby, I’ve never met your cousin.’

‘You could have encountered him in London,’ she whispered back. ‘I told you Cousin William wanted to be a player. And I had to explain your presence to Hannah somehow.’

She was very close to me and standing on the stair above so we were at the same height. She bent forward a degree and kissed me on the lips, holding the candle delicately poised to one side. I felt her breasts against me. She stayed for just long enough before pulling back and saying, ‘I beg you to do this one thing that we have already discussed, Mr Revill. I shall ask no more of you, while you… you may ask of me what you please.’

She turned down a passage at the top of the first flight of stairs, without looking back to see whether I was behind her. She came to a door, tapped on it once, softly, and almost straight away twisted the handle and entered the chamber. I halted in the entrance, peering through the gloom, wondering what I had been foolish enough to let myself in for and wishing with (almost) all my heart that I was back with my fellows at Mother Treadwell’s.

What followed was painful but not entirely painful. I’ll tell it in brief. The room belonging to the dying uncle Christopher – at least that part was true, he really was very near death – was stiflingly hot, not only on account of the general airlessness of the night but because a fire smouldered in the chimneypiece while a half-dozen candles consumed themselves in different corners. There were grand tapestries on the wall, depicting knights in the lists or knights out hunting or knights conversing with ladies in pointed hats.

Katherine went forward to a large four-poster bed, its curtains drawn back. A sharp-nosed man was lying there. His head was almost sunk into a pile of pillows, his body buried under thick blankets, his reed-thin arms stretched out flat on the covers. Resting under his right hand was a small black-bound book. Perhaps nothing confirmed how close he was to dying as the presence of the Bible.

When Katherine beckoned me forward to stand beside her, I could scarcely make out anything but the nose, the glimmer of white in the almost closed eyes, the threads of hair sticking out from under his nightcap.

She shook her uncle gently by the shoulder to ensure that he was awake or at least not completely asleep. She said several times, ‘William is here. Your Will is here, Uncle.’ And to vary it, ‘He has returned, your son has returned.’

Eventually his right hand fluttered and a kind of twitch affected the dying man’s lips. His head moved towards me a fraction and I sat on the edge of the bed, took his dry, cold hand in mine and said, ‘Yes, I am here.’ I could not bring myself to say the name of William. I said, ‘I am here,’ again, but more loudly, and his fingers tightened slightly on my wrist while his mouth seemed to widen into a smile or a grimace.

He struggled to say something even as his feeble grip slackened and his fingers scrabbled at the cover of the Bible. He was making a vain attempt to pick it up. I had to lean very close to hear him but, striving with every word, he was saying, ‘Take – it – take – it – William.’

At first I was not sure what he meant, then understood he must be referring to the black-bound testament. I looked towards Katherine, standing beside and above me. She gestured, yes, yes, take it, so I took up the Bible from the dying man’s hand and, without thinking, slipped it into a pocket in my doublet. While all this was going on, the old uncle appeared almost animated. Then the expression vanished altogether and his head subsided even further into the white pillows. I had the image of a man drowning in foam. And I do not know whether that man was Uncle Christopher or me, for I had never felt more uneasy or uncertain in my life.

The less painful part came afterwards. Indeed, there was some pleasure in it. After a few more minutes by the bedside of Uncle Christopher – who might now have been truly dead apart from the odd tremor in his chest and a sound from his gaping mouth like fallen leaves being blown along – Katherine took me by the hand and ushered me from the room. There was another staircase leading to the next floor where two or three rooms were clustered together under the roof. Guided by the single candle she held in her other hand, up we crept and she opened the door to a low-ceilinged chamber, equipped with a simple bedstead and a chest.

Without saying anything, Katherine gestured towards the window. I went to look. The window was still half open. I leaned out. Down below was the yard of the Bear Inn and the stage where the King’s Men had presented our production of A House Divided. To one side was a portion of the garden that must belong to the house, separated from the inn yard by a stone wall. In the moonlight I could see the whole scene quite clearly. There was no one left in the yard now, no murmuring idlers, no pipe embers.

Katherine came to stand beside me. She closed and latched the window.

‘I was in a hurry when I left,’ she said, turning aside and putting the candle on top of the chest. ‘I saw you on stage and straightaway I thought you looked and sounded very like Cousin William. My… scheme… was brewing in my head all the while I watched but I did not pluck up the courage to write you a note until the performance was over and you were all doing your little dance. There was so little time then, if I was to catch you before you left.’

‘So you wrote the note but had nothing to say,’ I said. My mood was an odd mixture of anger and sadness, and a return of the itch that had driven me through the yard of the Bear.

‘All I could think of was that way of addressing you on the cover of the letter, putting three words.’

‘“A privy message”,’ I said. ‘It certainly got my attention.’

‘I ran down and round, and handed it to some lad in the inn. I gave him a coin to pass it to “To him who plays the Duke”. Then I waited until you emerged, as I knew you would.’

‘Well, madam, I think my business here is done.’

But I did not move. I did not even wonder why she had led me upstairs rather than back to the ground floor. I knew why.

‘You have brought comfort to a dying man, Nicholas,’ she said. ‘Your deed will surely be noted in heaven.’

Maybe it was her words that made me think of the dying man’s Bible in my doublet pocket. I made to retrieve it but was distracted by Katherine’s next move. She licked her fingers and with a decisive motion snuffed the candle she’d placed on the chest. Then she started forward and kissed me full on the lips and pressed herself against me. We descended, almost tumbled, onto the narrow bedstead, and she fumbled with my hose even as I struggled to undo my doublet with one hand and raise her skirts with the other. The smell of the snuffed candle lingered in the room.

In the beginning of what followed, with one tiny corner of my mind, I wondered whether this deed that we were about to perform was also one to be noted in heaven. Yet she was eager and grateful, and now I was more than glad to be here, in the house of a dying man, with his niece. Then all my discomfort and scruples disappeared. Everything vanished in the moonlit delights of the summer night.

When I woke, the sky was turning pale. I didn’t know where I was. Soon the details of last night began to return, slow at first and then all at once. My part as the wicked Duke Peccato in A House Divided, the note with its teasing superscription, the nocturnal meeting with Katherine, the mission of mercy to the dying man, the pretence that I was his returned son, William. Then Katherine Hawkins and I afterwards, up here in this little chamber with the gable window, and the bed, which now seemed small and hard. Katherine had gone. I was a little disappointed but couldn’t blame her. Whether it was remorse or second thoughts or the straightforward desire for her own bed, she’d left me.

I must have fallen asleep once more for I came to with a start, woken by some noise outside. Almost dashing my head against a ceiling beam, I went to the window. Down below in the inn yard were a couple of travellers taking charge of their horses from the ostler. These early leavers mounted up and clattered out of the yard where we’d played the previous evening. It seemed like a signal that I should leave too. There was no noise from the rest of the house. I wanted to sneak out even if no one was up yet. Especially if no one was up yet. I recalled that the key to the door was hanging on a hook beside it. I wouldn’t have minded seeing Katherine again – indeed, had it been later in the day, and had my stomach been full and my senses sharper, I would definitely have wanted to see her again – but I was reluctant to encounter the old retainer Hannah or, God forbid, to come anywhere near the dying Uncle Christopher once more. I laced and fastened my garments and put on my doublet. An unfamiliar weight to one side made me remember old Christopher’s Bible, the volume which I’d stuffed in a pocket. ‘Take – it – William’, he’d gasped to me, and I had obeyed his words.

I took it out of my pocket and straight away saw what hadn’t been apparent to me in the heat and confusion of the previous evening: namely, that it wasn’t a Bible at all. Rather, it was a notebook or a commonplace book, handsomely bound in black leather, and full of scribblings and comments, together with some longer stretches of writing and even the odd sketch, each labelled with letters and arrows. I puzzled over the mechanisms depicted in the sketches before realising, from their general shape and the rollers and pedals, that they were weavers’ looms. Perhaps Christopher Hawkins was designing a more efficient machinery for his trade. Elsewhere in the book were remarks and quotations that he liked sufficiently to note down. ‘Age and wedlock tames man and beast’ and ‘Neither a borrower, nor a lender be’ – that sort of thing, cautious sayings as befitted a merchant.

There were several pages of verse, which I guessed had been written by Hawkins himself rather than copied from another’s work, since the lines were blotted with crossings-out and at first glance appeared somewhat feeble.

Their fame and renown these knights so far did spread

By deeds and valour that scarce may be uttered.

Their names will live for ever scribed in stone

Long after we mortals are nothing more than bone.

et cetera.

I was about to put the book down on the chest, where it might be found later by a servant, or perhaps by Katherine herself, when it came to me that this was a careless, disrespectful way to treat a dying man’s property. After all, he had urged me to take the thing even if he was under the misapprehension that I was his son. It must be important to him since he was clutching it with his cold, dry hand. I should not abandon it in this upstairs chamber. But nor did I want to look for a member of the household to whom I could hand back the book since I planned to slip away unseen.

So I tucked the commonplace book inside my doublet, took one last look around the little bedchamber, unlatched the door, listened for sounds from below, heard nothing, trod silently downstairs to the first floor where the dying man’s room was located, together with the other larger bedrooms, heard nothing here either, stole down to ground level and out into the lobby, listened to the clack of pans from the kitchen quarter of the house, plucked the key from the hook by the front door – turned key in lock – opened door – replaced key on hook – stepped out into Vicarage Lane – closed door behind me – all as quiet as could be.

I was still carrying Christopher Hawkins’ notebook. I had no intention of taking it away for good. Rather, I thought it would give me an excuse for returning to the house and seeing Katherine again. The King’s Men had two more days and nights in Bath before we travelled on to Bristol. I should be able to squeeze out a spare hour or two for Katherine.

It was a bright summer morning. I emerged into Cheap Street and was straight away reminded that this city, for all its health-giving waters and handsome new buildings, is a market town. A herd of brindled cows was trotting unwillingly along, urged by a drover to their rear, and churning up the muck in the street still further. I approached the town centre to see pigs at liberty and rootling around the stocks and pillory, which were set between the Guild Hall and the great church. It had never occurred to me before that the rubbish flung at the malefactors in the pillory – rotten apples, dead cats and the like – would make natural picking for pigs.

Hungry in my stomach and tired in my limbs, but with the bounce that comes from a good night well spent, I walked up the slight incline towards the North Gate and Mother Treadwell’s. In the lodging house I found my fellows still half asleep round the breakfast table but suddenly all alert and talkative when they realised I’d come back. I parried their questions and salacious remarks with casual understatement. Naturally, I said nothing at all of the way I’d impersonated a dying man’s son. Yes, I had passed a very pleasant night. No, she is a lady, well bred, not one of the women of the streets you usually consort with. Her name? Is she married? None of your business, Laurence Savage.

There was cold meat, bread and ale for breakfast. Mother Treadwell prided herself on her table. One of the others – I suspected it was Abel Glaze – must have informed on me to the landlady, for she paid me particular attention as she fussed over the breakfast items, winking and tapping the side of her nose and enquiring whether the beds of Bath were soft enough for me and telling me to eat plenty of cold meats so as to regain my vigour.

We had no rehearsal for later that day but were still required to report to the senior player in our company, John Sincklo, to ensure that there were no tasks to be done before the play itself. This was particularly necessary on tour where the stage and other gear were not kept in such an ordered state as at home in the Globe Theatre. Sincklo was staying in comfort at the Bear Inn as a favoured guest of the landlord, Harry Cuff, since we were bringing plenty of business to his establishment. Those of us at Mother Treadwell’s duly reported to John Sincklo only to be told, rather brusquely, that we weren’t needed. He was a somewhat reserved fellow, our senior, not much used to drink, and I suspect he’d enjoyed more than a few glasses with Landlord Cuff after last night’s successful production.

So we were free for the larger part of the day. I thought about returning to the Hawkins’ house in Vicarage Lane although it seemed a little too soon. In any case there was a diversion planned by my companions, which they had obviously been concocting the night before. They wouldn’t tell me what it was but dragged me with them down Cheap Street and then to the west of the great church, which I was surprised to see in the clear light of day was not yet finished. Perhaps the money had run out. The church was not our destination, however.

Beyond the church precincts was a cluster of stone buildings with steam rising from among them. Led by Laurence Savage, who promised us it would be worth it, half a dozen of us paid a penny each to a doorkeeper to be allowed into a viewing area. We climbed a flight of stone steps and found ourselves in a gallery overlooking a very large four-sided pool of water, which was open to the air and from which rose a slightly sulphurous smell as well as steam and a perceptible wave of heat. In the middle of the pool was a structure like a monstrous salt cellar, with pinnacles and jutting eaves.

Even though it was still quite early in the morning, the bath was full of folk. Some clung to the side as though afraid to venture far in, but the majority were standing in the water talking together or half swimming, half wading through it or else simply lying on their backs, buoyed up by the air trapped in their smocks and drawers. A few sat on stone recesses at the base of the great salt cellar.

Men and women mixed together without distinction. When one of the bathers made to get out, their garments clung close as an onion skin and showed most or all of what lay beneath. We gawped, of course, but it was, in truth, not much of a spectacle. Or at least it was not a stirring spectacle. The majority of the bathers were far from young and it was generally apparent why they had come to try the healing waters of Bath. Some were as rotund as the inflated bladders carried by jesters, others were so thin they looked as though they were being consumed from within. And I have never seen so many misshapen limbs, so large a quantity of bent backs, as I saw gathered together in this steamy pool. Why, if you half closed your eyes, and added a little bit of screaming and groaning to the picture, you might have imagined you were present at one of the infernal pits. The smell of the brimstone and the white, ghost-like garments of the bathers added to this impression.

Just occasionally, however, our watch was made worthwhile when a woman younger and more comely than the mass climbed from the water or sank herself slowly into it and so revealed much more under her clinging garments than would normally be considered decent. The odd thing was that these women seemed to know the effect they were having and to be prolonging their actions by a few instants. This, no doubt, was why we’d paid our pennies to the doorkeeper.

A wizened-looking individual emerged from a corner of the gallery and took it upon himself to act as our guide. He told us this was the King’s Bath, which we knew, and that the area round the pinnacled construction in the middle was called the Kitchen on account of its being situated directly over the source of the hot spring. Then he said that there were other interesting sights to be seen elsewhere at the Queen’s Bath and the Lepers’ Bath. Sights of a fleshly nature, he said, both more enticing and more grotesque than anything likely to be seen here at the King’s. If we good gentlemen would like to accompany him…

The others were ready enough but I was not in a the mood. Partly it was because I was thinking of Katherine Hawkins – one of the few younger women in the pool below had hair of a similar colour to hers, although this bather was handsome rather than pretty. I considered that now might be time to return the commonplace book belonging to her uncle. Then I might invite Katherine to attend a performance in the yard of the Bear that evening, and afterwards we could…

Lost in my warm imagination, I hardly realised that I’d been left alone in the gallery, so eager were my fellows to see the sights of the Lepers’ and the Queen’s Baths. I took one final look at the pool with its ghostly bathers and started towards the entrance.

At the top of the stairs my way was blocked by a burly individual.

‘Are you Nicholas?’ he said.

‘What business is it of yours?’

‘Nicholas of the…’ he fumbled in his mind to get the right words in the right order, ‘… of the King’s Men presently playing in this town?’

I nodded. He stuck out his doubleted chest and pushed forward into the gallery. Instinctively I stepped back towards the stone parapet, which prevented spectators from tumbling into the steam bath. I thought, I’m growing weary of being sought out by strangers with an interest in plays and players. This one did not have the advantage of being young, attractive and female.

‘You have got something that doesn’t belong to you,’ he said presently.

‘I have?’

‘A book,’ said this gentleman. He uttered the word ‘book’ as though it didn’t pass his lips very often.

I understood straight away that he must be referring to Uncle Christopher’s commonplace book. I only just prevented myself from feeling for the pocket where it was stowed.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Give it me now.’

He lumbered forward and I stepped back in equal measure with him until I felt the parapet against my buttocks. He was a big man with beetling brows and a seamed forehead. With one push he could have shoved me over into the steamy pool.

‘I haven’t got the book with me,’ I said.

‘So you do have it,’ he said. He wasn’t as slow and stupid as he looked.

He came to within a couple of inches, face to face, close enough that I smelled his meaty breath. He gripped me by the upper arms. I’m not sure what would have happened next, whether he would have manhandled me or shoved me out and over into the bath. Fortunately, we were interrupted by a shout from the entrance to the gallery. Over my new friend’s shoulder I saw an individual who was dressed in some sort of blue livery and carrying a mace.

‘We’ll have none of that filthy behaviour here,’ said this person. ‘Bringing disrepute on the royal baths. Be off with you.’

The bulky man had taken a pace back from me. I slipped out of his shadow and walked briskly to the stairs, nodding to the individual with the mace on the way. I did not stop to ask what he thought we were up to. I could guess. (Later I learned that he was the sergeant-at-arms for the King’s Bath, employed to ensure decorous conduct among the bathers and the watchers.) I clattered down the stone stairs and out into fresh air and the precincts of the great church.

I walked fast up Cheap Street towards Vicarage Lane, looking behind me occasionally to see if the lumbering man was on my tail. I was going to return the commonplace book to Katherine Hawkins and I was going to do it now. My thoughts of inviting her to a play performance, and then to something rather more personal after the play, had faded. Instead I felt aggrieved, angry. No one else in Bath knew that I was Nicholas of the King’s Men. No one else was aware I possessed the wretched notebook apart from Katherine, since she had seen me take it from her sick uncle. She had encouraged me to take it! Therefore it must have been she who had set that blockish individual on me. Why hadn’t she simply asked me to return the notebook? I was meaning to do that anyway. Why were threats necessary? Yes, I felt angry and aggrieved.

The one question I did not ask myself was why a book containing second-hand quotations and bits of bad verse should be so important.

I strode up Vicarage Lane, reached the merchant’s house and knocked loudly on the door. It was Katherine herself who opened it. Her eyes were red, her hair was disordered, her dress careless. I was glad to see she was in a state of distress. So distressed, it seemed, that she didn’t even recognise me at first. When she did realise who it was, she said only three words.

‘He is dead.’

No need to ask the identity of the dead man.

‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ I said, almost without thought.

‘You had better come in, Nicholas.’

‘No, you had better come outside first.’

I took her by the shoulders and gently but firmly drew her through the front door. Before she could object, I explained that I had just been accosted by a man in the baths who’d roughly demanded the return of the black-bound book that Uncle Christopher had given me the previous evening, and that it could only have been she – Katherine – who put him on my tail.

I had scarcely got to the end of my speech when I registered growing confusion on her face.

‘My uncle’s black notebook?’ she said. ‘Oh, what does that matter? I don’t know of any man in the baths, Nicholas.’

The figure of Hannah passed through the lobby. Katherine glanced over her shoulder through the still open door of the house while the old retainer peered curiously in our direction. I realised two things at once: that Katherine Hawkins had nothing to do with the stranger in the King’s Bath and that it must be Hannah who had described me to him. The servant was the only other person to know my name and the acting company I belonged to, as well as the fact that I’d visited this house last night. How she deduced that I had the book, I don’t know.

Now it was my turn to feel confused. And guilty for having spoken bluntly to Katherine while her grief for her uncle was so raw. I took her more tenderly by the shoulders and ushered her back into the lobby of her own home. Hannah had vanished. If she appeared again, and if I had the chance, I’d have a word with her.

‘I am very sorry to hear of your uncle’s death,’ I said, this time with feeling.

‘It was early this morning,’ she said. ‘So long expected yet so surprising when it happens. Thank God the parson got here in time.’

Uncle Christopher’s demise must have occurred after I crept out of the house, otherwise I would have been alerted by the fuss and alarm of a death, the summoning of the parson and so on. Selfishly, I was glad to have made my exit in time.

We’d been slowly pacing towards the back of the house and by now we were standing outside the door to what was the dining room. A window gave a view of some apple trees, sun-lit. Inside the panelled chamber it was stuffy and gloomy. A long table stood in the centre of the room, with chairs at each end and benches set on either side. Huddled towards one end were three men, two sitting next to each other, the other on the bench opposite. Wooden boxes and sheafs of paper and documents were arrayed on the table between them, together with a clutch of lighted candles. The men were so absorbed in leafing through the papers that our presence went unnoticed.

Eventually one of them looked up. He was a very plump individual with a large face. He seemed to start and coughed to draw the attention of the one beside him. This second man was wearing spectacles. He must have been long-sighted for he now removed them in order to scrutinise us – more precisely, to scrutinise me – as we stood in the doorway. This gentleman did not start in surprise but his brow furrowed as if was I presenting him with a puzzle, and not a very welcome one either. By now the third man, who’d been sitting with his back to us, was aware of us too. He twisted his head round. His eyes narrowed.

‘This is Nicholas Revill,’ said Katherine Hawkins, as the four of us gave the smallest dip of the head in acknowledgement. ‘He is a friend of my cousin William. They knew each other in London. He is here as a member of the King’s Men. They are playing in the yard of the Bear.’

I wasn’t very happy that the fiction about my knowing her cousin was being maintained but it was becoming such a frequent story that it might shortly turn out to be true. It transpired that the three men were notable Bath citizens. The one with the spectacles was Edward Downey, a lawyer. Uncle Christopher was both client and friend to him. The plump one was John Maltravers and, like the late Christopher Hawkins, he was a cloth merchant and a member of the city corporation. The third was Dr Price. I remembered that Katherine had mentioned him by name when we first met. On hearing of their friend’s death they had immediately come round to the Vicarage Lane house. I was surprised that the doctor of physic was not upstairs with the body. I thought that if this trio were here to offer comfort and condolence, they were going about it in an odd way, fencing themselves in behind a mass of documents on the dining table.

I sensed hostility emanating from them, slight but unmistakable. Particularly from Mr Maltravers. Perhaps it was because I was a player, for he had grunted and humphed when Katherine described what I did. I tried to be civil, remembering that Bath corporation was supplementing our takings in the city – even if these important people were doing so not out of love for the drama but because they didn’t want to offend our royal sponsor, King James.

‘I hope that you gentlemen will attend a performance,’ I said. ‘We have two nights remaining at the Bear.’

‘Two too many,’ said Maltravers.

‘Now, now, John,’ said Downey the lawyer. ‘It may not be to your taste but the players provide a diversion for our citizenry. And remember that they are not your run-of-the-mill fellows but the King’s Men.’

‘A little diversion does no great harm,’ said Dr Price with a judicious air as though he were measuring out a dose of medicine.

‘Plays are not a diversion but a corruption,’ said Maltravers. He rose from the table and waddled towards where we were standing in the doorway. He stuck out a stubby, accusatory forefinger. ‘The days of plays and players in this city would be numbered if I had my way. We should go back to the times when players were treated as vagrants, when they were stripped naked from the middle upward and whipped when found anywhere they were not wanted.’

He seemed to grow excited as he said this. This sort of hostile talk is familiar enough if you’re a player, at least from those who incline towards the puritan view. It was disturbing to be talked of as a vagrant but I tried to maintain the civil tone.

‘If you had heard and seen our audience last night, sir, you would have known that we were very much wanted.’

‘John, John,’ said Downey, making downward motions with his hand in a placating way, ‘this Mr… Mr… er…?’

‘Revill.’

‘This Mr Revill is right. I have heard that their efforts were well received last night. Remember they are the King’s Men.’

‘And guests in our city,’ added Dr Price.

Maltravers might have said more but he merely humphed again, waddled back to the dining table and returned his attention to the documents. The others soon followed. I wondered why Katherine had wanted to introduce me to them.

She motioned me back into the passageway and said, ‘Did you notice how they stared at you? For a moment they thought you were William Hawkins, returned at long last to the house of his father. I told you that you look like him – a little like, anyway.’

My affairs in this place were done. I did not want any further involvement with the Hawkinses. I certainly had no intention of urging Katherine to come to this evening’s performance, let alone to any renewal of last night’s post-play activities. She was thinking only of her uncle. I would intrude no longer on a house of grief.

There was one more thing to do: to return Uncle Christopher’s commonplace book. If I was accosted again by the burly man from the baths I could genuinely claim not to have it. Even better, to avoid such a disagreeable situation in the first place, I’d make sure I was not out of the protective company of my fellow players for as long as we remained in the city of Bath.

I was about to get the wretched black book out of my doublet when there came a great commotion from the lobby. The sound of women’s voices raised, crying out, interrupting each other. Underneath was a male voice, trying to make itself heard. Was this grief for the dead Christopher? It did not sound like grief.

Then Hannah came running down the passageway and almost collided with Katherine. The young woman put her hands on the shoulders of the older one. She gave the white-faced servant a few moments to recover her breath before asking, ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

‘Oh, it is only William come back,’ panted Hannah. ‘Only William, your cousin and Mr Christopher’s long-lost son!’

I didn’t wait to hear any more. It was as if I was the guilty party in all this. I almost ran through the lobby, past a gaggle of female servants, and a young man who was standing there, looking about him like a stranger. I thought, I played the part of you last night. In passing, I did not note any very strong resemblance between us.

III

The play we were performing that evening in the yard of the Bear Inn was called A City Pleasure. It was written by Edgar Boscombe, a playwright who may not be familiar to you. He was never very prolific and now he can write no more for he is dead. A City Pleasure is a satirical comedy about a young man from the provinces who comes to London with his sister, looking for pleasure and edification. There are other things in the story but this is the main one. The city of London takes its pleasure with this young couple, duping them and trying to assail their virtue, but throughout the action the two retain a curious integrity and when they return home – sadder, wiser and poorer – they discover that they never were brother and sister. Instead, they are cousins. And so they may marry. Which they do at the end of Act Five under the eye of a kindly, bumbling country parson. This is a play well suited to a provincial audience, for it shows how dreadful and corrupt London is, how honest and honourable are those who dwell outside the capital, and how virtue always triumphs in the end.

A City Pleasure was also a contrast to the blood-letting of the previous night, A House Divided. Contrast and variety make for happy audiences.

I didn’t have such a big part in this satire as in the revenge tragedy, and I confess I spent some of my time off-stage mulling over the strange events of that morning, and the way in which William Hawkins had turned up at the house in Vicarage Lane mere hours after his father’s death. Was this a piece of very unfortunate timing? Or very neat timing? Was it even William Hawkins? Maybe it was another imposter. I had not waited around to see Katherine greet her (presumed) cousin. I would have been uncomfortable in the presence of a man I’d impersonated, even if the act had been done with the best of intentions.

And still I had in my possession the commonplace book belonging to the late Uncle Christopher. At one point I’d flicked through its pages again to see why the burly fellow in the King’s Bath should – under orders, no doubt – have been wanting to take it from me by force. But I saw nothing different from my first examination of it: pages of homemade verses and a few drawings, interspersed with copied-out comments. The subject of Christopher’s poetry, if one could call it that, seemed to be some great battle involving knights of old, the kind of subject that was popular years ago and that has now fallen from favour.

We of the King’s Men finished our second play for the second evening in the Bear Inn yard. A City Pleasure was well received by the Bath audience. They enjoyed our depiction of innocent country cousins who are able to withstand the lures of the big city. As we disrobed in the makeshift tire-room after the performance, there was some suggestive speculation from my friends about my plans for the dregs of the evening. Where was the next letter from my sweetheart? Would I be joining the lady from the town that night? I retaliated by asking whether they’d enjoyed their tour of the Queen’s Bath and the Lepers’ Bath. I was pleased to hear that it had been disappointing.

I had not thought to see Katherine Hawkins again so as I left the Bear, in company with Laurence Savage and Abel Glaze, I was surprised to find her in the inn yard.

‘Nicholas,’ she called softly, nearly cooing my name. The evening was still light since our play tonight had not been as lengthy as the previous one. My heart beat slightly faster to see her standing there, tall and elegant, in the dusk of the inn yard.

‘Oh-ho,’ murmured the others, straining to catch a glimpse of her. ‘Oh-ho.’ I waved them on and went over to join her.

She was not alone. A young man was standing a little behind her. It was William Hawkins, I recognised him before she introduced us. She was not so foolish as to maintain that we’d met before. I might have almost run from their house that morning but now curiosity got the better of me. Why were they here in the inn yard? Shouldn’t they be closeted in mourning for a dead father and uncle? And another equally pressing question: did this young man really look like me?

From some remark he made it was apparent that she’d already described to her cousin how the two of us had become acquainted at the play the previous evening – which was true enough. I don’t suppose she said anything of the further services I did for her, either the one at his dying father’s bedside or the other up in the little gable room.

‘We must talk, Nicholas,’ Katherine said to me. ‘But not here or in the house in Vicarage Lane either. Too many eyes there.’

‘Cousin Kate tells me she trusts you,’ said William Hawkins.

They were a trusting pair of cousins, these Hawkinses. What secrets was I going to find out now?

The three of us went to a nearby tavern called the Raven. The interior was dim and smoky, ripe for a consultation. We found a quiet corner with a table, bench and stool. I sat opposite the cousins.

I took a better look at William Hawkins. He was about my height and build, although his voice did not – to my ears – sound very much like mine. I suppose he would be accounted handsome, which I took as a kind of compliment (to myself, of course). Mr Hawkins did not seem to have changed since his arrival home that morning, for his clothes were creased and travel-stained. I guessed he was normally clean-shaven like me, but now he was stubbly, as if he’d had no time to attend to himself. The only mark of mourning worn by either cousin was a black armband.

When we were seated and provisioned with drink – beer for William and me, canary wine for Katherine – I asked him where he had been all these years and how it happened that he returned to his father’s house just too late. He was not a boastful fellow and did not pretend to great adventures.

He said that, after many arguments with his father, he left Bath and went to seek his fortune in London. It even crossed his mind to become a player, like me. Failing in that, and making little progress in anything else, he wrote to Cousin Kate that he was planning to try his luck in the Americas. Somehow he ended up in Edinburgh instead and become secretary to a wealthy cloth maker. Memories of his father’s much smaller business, together with a clear head and a neat hand, enabled him to get the post and even to prosper in it, but it was hardly the daring voyage of discovery he’d proposed to himself on quitting home. A mixture of pride and shame had prevented him communicating again with his father or his cousin, but lately he’d been contemplating a return south. The decision was made for him when the old manufacturer died. That happened a month ago. It had taken William that time to travel back to Bath. His arrival on the day of his father’s death was good fortune – or bad fortune – depending on which way you looked at it.

‘I will not say I had any great love for my father, Nick,’ he said. ‘But I would have been glad to have seen him for one last time and to have him see me.’

Katherine and I exchanged looks. For certain, she had not told him of my pretence on the previous night. She squeezed her cousin’s hand – they were sitting side by side – and said, ‘I believe Uncle Christopher died content, William. Even if he could not see you, I know for a fact that you were in his mind’s eye.’

William looked fondly at her. Considering what had passed between us the previous night, I might have felt jealous but I did not. Instead I thought of the play we had just staged, A City Pleasure, about the kissing cousins from the country. Then I ordered another round of drinks from the potboy.

This – the life story of William Hawkins, the obvious affection between him and Katherine – was all beside the point. Why did the Hawkinses want to talk with me? Before we could get to that point I handed over the commonplace book to Katherine, happy to get rid of it. She was happy to receive it too, saying it was the very item that she wanted to speak to me about and that she had, in her confusion and grief that morning, brushed aside when I intended to return it.

‘I recognise this,’ said William. ‘It was father’s.’

‘I entrusted it to Nick,’ said Katherine. ‘And I am glad I did, for I fear that Uncle Christopher’s friends would have taken it otherwise.’

‘The gentlemen who were in the house?’ I said.

‘Yes. They came to condole with me but they seemed more interested in going through Uncle’s papers and documents.’

‘Looking for his will?’

‘Mr Downey the lawyer already has a copy of that. They were in search of something else.’

I waited for her to explain. They seemed reluctant to say more. Katherine looked at her cousin.

Eventually, as if confessing to something slightly shameful, William Hawkins said, ‘My father was much occupied with stories of olden times, the days of knights and damsels and chivalry. He read fables and poetry. He even wrote verses himself. For years he attempted a great romance about one of King Arthur’s battles.’

That explained the scrawled pages of poetry, the tapestries depicting knights jousting and hunting in Uncle Christopher’s bedchamber.

William said, ‘There is a tale that Arthur himself fought a final battle close to Bath, a battle in which he slew many of the Saxon foe single-handed.’

‘It was on a hill outside the town,’ said Katherine. ‘Solsbury Hill, it is called now, but then it was known as Badon.’

‘There are other stories about the place,’ pursued William. ‘I suppose there are bound to be stories in a very old region like this. They say that treasures are buried on Solsbury Hill. There is talk of a magical mirror, for instance. Even of items that date from Arthur’s time. My father went searching on the hill, although I do not know whether it was for inspiration or for relics.’

‘And found them?’ I said.

William shrugged.

Katherine said, ‘He carried this book with him wherever he went. He made notes, he took down sayings that he approved of. He had ideas about how the manufacture of cloth might be improved and tried to design better looms.’

She flicked through the book and held it open at one of the mechanical sketches. I nodded, then noticed something different on the opposite page. It wasn’t a weaver’s loom but a drawing of a hillside, dotted with trees. There was an arrow indicating north. There were a couple of crosses and other arrows and question marks. There was even an image of a bear a couple of inches tall, delicately drawn. I indicated the page.

Katherine examined it and said: ‘This is most likely Solsbury Hill. The bear was the emblem of King Arthur. My uncle believed he had found the place where Arthur slew more than nine hundred of the enemy.’

‘Nine hundred!’

‘It was an age of heroes,’ said William Hawkins with a straight face.

‘He did sometimes talk of treasure on Solsbury Hill and of spirits who still linger about the place but I think this is what he meant,’ continued Katherine, thumbing through more pages until she came to some of old Christopher’s verses. She recited:

‘Of gold and silver they interr’d many a pound

When these knightes’ corses were laid i’th’ground

And Britain’s foes no footing found perdee

After Arthur won full soverayntee.’

‘He used to read his verses to me when I was young,’ said Cousin William. ‘I am afraid that I did not always show a proper reverence for his words, and he struck me more than once when I yawned.’

We were interrupted by the potboy returning with our drinks. I took a draught of mine.

‘The gold and silver aren’t real,’ I said after a moment, feeling on familiar ground since we talked of gold and silver all the time on stage and it was nothing more than words. ‘This is the language of poetry. Your uncle merely means the fallen bodies of Arthur’s knights, and so on. Just as the bear stands for Arthur, the knights’ bodies represent the treasure that is buried there.’

‘I know that,’ said Katherine. ‘But I do not think that Mr Maltravers or Mr Downey or Dr Price know it. They believe my uncle left some… some guide… to finding hidden treasures on Solsbury Hill or elsewhere. Mr Maltravers asked me before he left the house today whether there were any other papers, anything hidden away.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said the only papers my uncle valued were his poetry. Said they were welcome to look at Uncle Christopher’s work if they wished. He would be pleased to have readers. What is in this book is only scribbled bits and pieces. Uncle paid to have his Arthur poem copied out properly in the new italic style.’

‘And what did they say to that?’

‘They aren’t interested in his poetry, Nicholas. Mr Maltravers laughed when I mentioned it. He did enquire about his black book, though, and I remembered you said that someone had asked you for it at the baths.’

‘“Asked” is one way of putting it.’

Now William Hawkins spoke up: ‘Then I stepped in to protect my dear cousin from these intrusive questions so soon after my father’s death. I said that they could direct their questions to me.’

‘They must have been surprised to see you again after so many years.’

‘They were, but their real concern was whether I’d get in the way of their search through my father’s effects.’

‘Are you sure there is nothing in that book?’ I said. ‘Other people certainly seem to think so.’

‘See for yourself,’ said Katherine, passing the volume back across the table. The very casualness of the gesture told me she thought the book held no secrets and I did not even bother to pick it up again. I was glad to see the back of it, to be honest. Let others attend to the tangled affairs of the Hawkins family.

From outside the Raven tavern I heard the bellman pass, ringing his bell, telling us all that it was ten o’clock. Time for honest citizens and players to be in bed. I drained the last of my drink.

‘I wish you well,’ I said. ‘I am returning to Mother Treadwell’s.’

We said goodbye rather formally. Perhaps Katherine would have embraced me had it not been for the presence of William as well as of a dozen other individuals in the tavern. Before leaving the Raven I stopped to relieve myself – being a modern place it had its own house of office in the back yard – and then I went out into the street via an alley. The moon was up and near the full, as last night, but it was veiled by thin clouds and cast only a faint light.

Perhaps a couple of minutes had elapsed since I’d parted from the Hawkinses. I could just about make out two individuals walking close together ahead of me. The cousins, presumably. Were they arm in arm? Hard to tell in the gloom. Anyway, what business was it of mine?

Even as I looked the two figures increased to three. For a moment I thought they had been joined by a friend, but no friend would be moving so fast or raising his arms in such a threatening way. The sounds that came from up the street, grunts and cries, then a woman’s scream, sent me running towards them. But the cobbles were slippery with muck and I slid in something and fell with a thump. By the time I’d got to my feet again, the noise had stopped and I could see no one at all up the street.

Although moving less rapidly now, I almost stumbled over the figure of William Hawkins. He was crouching above Katherine, who lay stretched on the ground. Hawkins stood up, panting hard, expecting a fresh attack and ready to lash out.

I said, ‘It’s all right, it’s me, Nick Revill. What happened?’

‘I don’t know. Some man… Kate… oh, Kate…’

He sank to his knees next to her. For an instant, I feared the worst, but she groaned and tried to sit up. William sighed in relief and supported her as she rose shakily to her feet. I stepped back. In the distance I saw a dancing speck of light, a firefly, then two of them. I thought the attacker was returning with reinforcements before realising that they would hardly be carrying lanterns. The fireflies converged, then drew nearer. There were footsteps on the cobbles, the bark of a dog, the ting of a bell.

Too late, of course. This was typical of the bellman and the watch in any town. Where were they when you really needed them?

William Hawkins and I were sitting in the dining room of the Vicarage Lane house. It was nearing midnight. The cousins had returned home after giving what little information they had to the watch – an unidentified man springing out of the dark from the porch where he’d been lying in wait, followed by a quick theft. The theft of the black book, which Katherine had been still holding as she walked along. Naturally, I recalled the rogue who’d accosted me in the King’s Bath. The same man? It seemed likely.

Since the real malefactor had escaped, the bellman and his watch did their duty and detained me instead, imagining that I had a hand in the attack. This, despite the assurances of the Hawkinses as they limped off to dress their wounds that the opposite was true: I had actually come to their rescue.

It took me a quarter of an hour before my protestations of innocence were accepted. In the end, I was allowed to go only after stressing my elevated position in the company of the King’s Men and insinuating that King James himself would be displeased if he heard that one of his principal players had been thrown into the local lock-up. Quite casually I said that I had an appointment in Whitehall to see him – King James, that is – when I returned to London, and that I would assure His Majesty of the loyal and intelligent servants he possessed among the Bath watch. If they detained me for a moment longer, however, I would have a very different tale to tell.

They believed me. I might have said they were men of limited understanding but I nearly believed myself by the time I was done speaking. In fact, we parted on such good terms that I urged them to attend our performance on the next evening. They could easily do this before they went on duty at ten o’clock.

I could have returned to Mother Treadwell’s but my blood was up after all this activity and I decided to call on the Hawkins household and see how things stood there. I would almost have welcomed an attacker in the few hundred yards it took to reach the house, so ready was I for a fight, but I arrived unassailed.

William Hawkins welcomed me in and now we sat in the dining room. The house was hushed. It was late. The body of his father was laid out upstairs. The funeral would take place in a couple of days. We were recovering with a dose of his father’s aqua vitae. I did not find the fiery liquid soothing.

Cousin Kate was in bed recovering from her ordeal in the street. She was not badly hurt but she was bruised and shaken. William was angry, not so much for himself but on her behalf. He was angry too with Hannah, the old servant, who had been – unwittingly, perhaps – the indirect cause of what had happened. I had described to William my morning encounter with the rogue in the King’s Bath, and how he tried to take the black notebook from me. I said the only person who could have deduced it was in my possession was Hannah. She must have spoken to one of the men in the house that morning. Hawkins strode from the room and went upstairs to where the old retainer was attending on Katherine. He was back within minutes, looking a whit less angry, and confirming what I’d thought. Hannah had referred to my presence in the house the previous night as well as to my position in the King’s Men. She said I’d been taken to see the dying man. She couldn’t remember whether she’d said all this to John Maltravers or to the lawyer Downey. Or was it Dr Price? She was very distressed at the state of her mistress. She hoped she had not done any wrong.

Anyway, one or more of the trio must have deduced I had the book and set the rogue on my trail – this was the conclusion William and I came to. The same rogue must have been watching us in the smoky, dim interior of the Raven tavern or else he had an accomplice there; had seen the book being passed back to Kate Hawkins; had lurked to waylay her and William on the way home.

‘He shall not get away with this,’ said William. ‘Whoever’s responsible will not get away with it either.’

‘Who is behind it?’

‘I do not know. One of the three men here this morning, surely. The doctor, the lawyer or the merchant. They are all respectable citizens but one of them is evidently prepared to resort to force… to attack my cousin…’

‘So there is something valuable in your father’s personal book after all?’

‘My father was an odd mixture of businessman and dreamer, Nick. What he wrote down in his little volume showed both sides. His plans for better machinery were the practical part, while the dreams were the verses about King Arthur.’

‘And drawings of Solsbury Hill with signs and markings…’

‘Yes, with markings that could cause someone to believe there was buried treasure there,’ conceded William.

‘But there is no treasure?’

‘I am not about to go off and dig up a hillside in pursuit of my father’s dreams.’

‘Others may be.’

‘Yes,’ said William.

‘If they’re going to search on this Solsbury Hill of yours they’re going to do it soon. To strike while the iron is hot.’

‘Yes, they are,’ said William.

‘I have an idea,’ I said.

IV

‘Are you sure this is such a good idea?’ said Laurence Savage.

‘Nick knows what he’s doing,’ said Abel Glaze, ‘even if the rest of us haven’t the faintest notion.’

I looked towards William Hawkins for support but he stayed silent. The scheme that the two of us contrived the previous night in the Vicarage Lane house, while fortified with generous doses of his father’s aqua vitae, did not seem so plausible in the cold light of day. The literal cold light, since we were sheltering behind some low bushes near the top of Solsbury Hill. Away from the fuggy air of the city, the breeze blew sharp and clear, and the morning sun was scarcely beginning to warm the slope we sat on. Bath is ringed with hills – they say there are seven of them, just as in Rome – and this Solsbury one is located to the north-east of the city. It is a hill much like any other, distinguished only by an unnatural flatness on top and the even slant of its sides. William Hawkins said that it might have been used in the old times as some kind of fort.

We had struck out from the town that morning, the four of us, Laurence having established that we weren’t required at the Bear Inn to prepare for our final night’s performance. I’d explained to my friends that we were set to catch some villains who had attacked my new friend, William, and his cousin, Kate. Laurence and Abel might have taken this as a tall story but they’d seen with their own eyes the young woman in the inn yard, together with a male companion. Furthermore they knew I’d been engaged on nocturnal adventures, since I returned to Mother Treadwell’s very late the previous night, or rather in the small hours of the morning. They thought I’d been up to you-know-what again and I didn’t bother to disabuse them of the notion.

I outlined the situation: the attack in the street, the reason for it; the fact that the villains had stolen a map – or plan, or guide – call it what you will – which they hoped would reveal the whereabouts of some hidden items; relics buried not far from the city of Bath. Hawkins said that he thought his father’s sketch, the one we’d looked at in the Raven tavern, showed the south-western flank of the hill, the one facing the city. Like his cousin, he was of the opinion that Christopher’s crosses and arrows most likely indicated the place where King Arthur had personally vanquished his Saxon enemies, all nine hundred of them. But to a more greedy eye the markings might appear to show the burial places of treasure. We were assuming that whoever was in quest of treasure would waste no time. After stealing Christopher’s book, they would want to make use of it straight away.

Abel and Laurence were happy enough to join in the adventure. To be honest, I think they were growing a little tired of our stay in Bath. I’ve noticed this before on our summer tours. You spend a couple of days in a place and then you get restless, looking towards the next destination, wondering what pastimes and delights will be offered by the town over the horizon. Abel and Laurence hadn’t experienced the excitements of the city of Bath as I had, and the prospect of smoking out a malefactor or two – with the very remote possibility that buried treasure and King Arthur could be involved – was sufficient to bring them along.

We left by the North Gate, and passed through an area of wooden houses and hovels that grew more ragged the further we shifted from the walls of the city. We went from lanes to paths to rough tracks, passing orchards and small farmsteads and neat fields, some with sheep grazing. We moved at a slight upward incline until we reached the flank of the hill after the better part of an hour.

There were few people about and no one at all that we could see on the hillside. By now, Laurence and Abel were openly sceptical about the entire enterprise. Faced with a steepish hillside they talked openly about turning round and going back to Bath. To get them to go on, I had to promise that all the drinks would be put on my slate when we reached Bristol.

‘Every day, mind, Nick,’ said Laurence. I nodded.

So we clambered up the slope and were rewarded at the top with a fine view of the country in every direction. Down below in a loop of the river was the city of Bath, neatly girdled by its walls and lapped by pastures and woods. From here you could hardly recall the odour of its close, stinky air, nor see the mean habitations clinging to its skirts. I breathed deep and looked about with pleasure. I wondered whether this was truly the place where a mighty battle had been fought by King Arthur, whether it was the field where the Saxon enemy had been vanquished. I thought of the little image of the bear in Christopher’s book. Had bears wandered across this place during those far-off days? Who knew?

Now it was as quiet and peaceful as the day of creation. The only living creatures were small and unassuming. Larks sang high in the air. Rabbits scuttered across the grass. I thought how these rolling hills meant more to me than the others, with the exception of William, since they were not so far from the Somerset village of my birth. William spent some time looking about, like me, pleased to be home again.

We’d brought some ale and bread and cheese with us. We established ourselves behind a line of bushes that gave some protection from the breeze and through which we could see the west-facing approaches to the hill. We chatted and drank and ate. William talked about Edinburgh, another city of hills, as he described it. He talked about his work as secretary to a cloth manufacturer. He had been present when King James set out from Edinburgh on his long, meandering progress to London to claim the throne. James had promised to return to the Scots capital every three years but he had not done so yet. I told the others the story I’d spun to the Bath watchmen about my familiarity with the King.

We talked about plays and players in the way – half proud, half mocking – that you talk with your fellows about your own work. Then we fell silent and thought about the wisdom of sitting hundreds of feet up a hillside waiting for the arrival of treasure-hunters, and wondered who was really engaged on a wild-goose chase here. The sun was high in the sky by now and the ale was making me sleepy. Pretty soon we’d have to give this up for the fruitless enterprise it was and return to the town to prepare for our final evening’s performance.

It was Abel who spotted them first. He jabbed me as I lay at a slant on the grass, squinting at the sun. I sat up and peered through the leaves. In the distance, beginning their ascent, were two figures. Out for a stroll? But who strolls anywhere except a gentleman in a city street or a lady in her garden? These two were about some business. One of them, wearing a labourer’s clothes, was carrying a mattock and spade over his shoulder. The other, better dressed, carried no implements and walked some way to the rear, either because he found the slope of the hill very effortful or to disassociate himself from his companion. In the further distance was a carriage, with a driver left behind to mind it and the two horses. He had been able to steer part of the way along one of the tracks leading towards Solsbury Hill but it was pleasing that the occupants of the carriage were compelled to get out to complete their journey and tire themselves out in the process.

I was glad that we were right, William and I. Glad as well to recognise two people I knew, enemies not friends. The fat man in the rear was John Maltravers, the merchant and corporation member, and hater of plays and players. The one who wanted us whipped as vagrants. The fellow in front, stocky rather than fat, was the wretch who accosted me in the King’s Bath and most likely attacked the Hawkins cousins in the street. William was peering through the shrubbery beside me. He knew Maltravers, of course. He was able to identify the other man, the one with the spade and mattock.

‘That is Rowley. George Rowley. I remember him. He has been Maltravers’ creature these many years. He collects the merchant’s debts, for example.’

‘I reckon it was he who attacked you last night.’

‘Very likely.’

Speaking hardly above a whisper I indicated to Laurence and Abel who these gents were. The whispering was instinctive – and not really necessary since the wind was blowing in our direction. We could hear them, though, the wheezing and groans of Maltravers as he strove to climb the slope and the more regular panting of Rowley.

Then they stopped at a point between a spur of rock and a clump of stunted oak trees. Maltravers waited for a long time for his breath to come back. From a pocket he drew what looked very like Uncle Christopher’s black book, together with a larger sheet of paper, which he proceeded to unfold. I guessed he’d made a more detailed plan of the area. He consulted book and plan, nodded at his man, strode backwards and forwards a few times before finally settling on a spot where there appeared to be a slight hollow in the grass. Pointing at the place with his stubby forefinger, he marked it with his heel, nodded again at Rowley, then settled himself down on the spur of rock and watched while the excavation began.

Rowley started to break up the soil with the mattock. We heard the sound of the implement striking the ground, we heard his involuntary grunts when he struck a stony patch. Eventually he’d loosened enough topsoil to start digging properly. The next question was when we should reveal ourselves. William and I had not planned in much detail for this moment.

In the end we gave them a half-hour or so. I suppose the thought was in all our minds that this was not a wild-goose chase, that George Rowley the digger might actually turn up something. At several points the servant paused and looked in the direction of his master who, with a shake of that peremptory forefinger and a barked command, indicated that he should continue digging. Eventually – quite soon, in fact – the interest of watching a man dig a hole starts to fade. I looked at William Hawkins, who nodded his agreement. Abel and Laurence were already gazing elsewhere, up at the sky, around at the countryside.

‘Let’s do it,’ I said.

From the pouch that I was carrying I extracted four items that Laurence had filched, temporarily, from the tire-chest at the Bear Inn. These were the masks or vizards that had been worn for the lunatic scene in the first play we’d done in Bath, A House Divided. The masks were half animal, half devil. A couple had birdlike beaks, one a snout, the other the suggestion of horns. When they were combined with white smocks and wild gestures and gibbering speech, they proved most effective on stage, as Kate Hawkins told me when we first met. Now we were about to find out whether they’d put the fear of God – or the devil – into a couple of treasure-hunters. It was Kate’s reference to ‘spirits’ lingering on the hill that had made me think of using the masks. We looked at each other through the eye-holes. William Hawkins laughed nervously. Laurence and Abel grinned. This was meat and drink to them.

We were about to rise up from our hiding place behind the shrubbery when we were halted by a call from below. Rowley must have found something, for he beckoned to Maltravers and then pointed to the bottom of the little pit he’d made. Maltravers levered himself up from his rock and crossed the few yards to the place. He leaned forward, supporting himself by resting his fat hands on his bent knees. One hand still clasped the black notebook and sheet of paper. With his spade, Rowley gestured at some object in the hole. The servant moved back slightly. Maltravers bent forward a bit more. Any further and he might topple over.

Maybe the same idea occurred to Rowley for he raised the spade in a hesitant manner as if he might give his master a thwack on his rump. Or perhaps he was considering a more final stroke, for he now lifted the spade a little higher. From this position he might strike the merchant round the head. How many years of bad-tempered words and shouted orders and resentment lurked behind that moment? I was almost disappointed when Rowley lowered the spade just before Maltravers looked back over his shoulder. Evidently the merchant was not very impressed with the discovery, whatever it was. Time to move.

‘Ready?’ I said to the others.

We adjusted our masks with their beaks, horns and snouts. We bared our wolfish teeth.

‘Now!’ I said.

The four of us jumped up from where we had been concealing ourselves. With windmilling arms and ear-piercing shrieks, we raced around the bushes and launched ourselves at a downhill pelt. It took Maltravers and Rowley several seconds even to locate the source of all this hullabaloo. It took them several more to respond. Rowley dropped the spade. Maltravers let go of the black book. The sheet of paper fluttered to the ground. They turned and took to their heels, running, if anything, even faster than we were. Maltravers stumbled and fell. He rolled several yards like a barrel before scrambling to his feet once more. Unfortunately for them, the path of their flight nearer the base of the hill led through a patch of boggy ground. Maltravers and Rowley squelched and floundered into this. Neither man showed any concern for the other. They reached the far side of the boggy stretch and staggered towards the waiting carriage. The coachman was staring apprehensively. At least I assume he was, since all I could see was the white dot of his face.

Meanwhile Laurence, Abel, William and I had halted our pursuit in the region of the little excavation made by Rowley. There was no point in going any further. We had accomplished our task of scaring off these ne’er-do-wells and, into the bargain, we had regained Uncle Christopher’s black book. We would not have wanted to go on with the chase anyway because we were curious to see whether there really was any buried treasure. Also because we were out of breath ourselves, what with the running and our shrieks and laughter.

I picked up the black notebook and waved it in the air in triumph. We tore off our masks and made gleeful whooping noises at the runaways, who stopped and gazed at the spectacle for a moment before clambering aboard the carriage. The driver turned it as fast as he could – I had hopes it might overturn but it did not – and within little more than a minute they were bumping and rocking down the track in the direction of Bath.

We turned our attention to the hole in the ground. Rowley’s digging had indeed turned up something. I bent down and picked up what appeared to be part of a helmet. Was I holding a relic of Arthur’s time? Perhaps. But it was made of leather and a strip of rusted metal, which was probably a nose-piece, not an artefact of gold or silver or precious stones. I threw it back into the hole. William Hawkins retrieved the sheet of paper that John Maltravers had dropped in his panic. It was a larger drawing of this aspect of the hillside, with the oaks and the stone outcrop crudely depicted and a cross roughly at the point where we stood.

‘Do you think there’s anything further down there?’ said Laurence.

‘We could dig,’ said Abel, eyeing the mattock and spade abandoned on the ground.

‘It is all a story, a fable,’ said William. ‘There’s nothing there.’

‘And we must return to town,’ I said. ‘We have a play to do.’

A slight sense of disappointment came over us. Into the distance jolted the coach belonging to Mr Maltravers, citizen of Bath. After a brief time we strolled down the lower slopes of Solsbury Hill, taking care to avoid the marshy patch near the bottom. We threaded our way back, past the fields and orchards, through the lanes of tumble-down houses outside the city wall and so on through the North Gate.

But that wasn’t the end of it, of course. Did you think it would be?

The play we were performing on our last night at the Bear Inn was A Fair Day. This is a comedy about a summer fair, as the title suggests. Set on the outskirts of London – although I don’t think the city is ever named – it shows a world populated by good-hearted or venal stall-holders, cutpurses, gamesters, fortune-tellers and the like. There are confidence tricksters too, of course, the ones who sell little bottles containing the elixir of life or the infallible prescription for turning base metal into gold, once you have parted with your money. And then there are the visitors to the fair. All these characters are thrown together and left to simmer like the ingredients of a stew until the flavour is rich and rare.

I was playing the part of a justice of the peace, Mr Justice Righthead, who stalks the fairground looking for breaches of the law in between announcing his determination to close the whole thing down. The idea had already occurred to me that I could slip one or two touches into my performance that hinted at a certain Bath gentleman. I padded myself out around the middle and practised wagging my forefinger and emphasising my Somerset burr. It was a joke that would only be appreciated by Abel and Laurence, and perhaps one or two of the audience who might be reminded of Mr John Maltravers. It was also a way of exacting a further little revenge on the merchant. There could be no adverse consequences, surely, since we were quitting the town the next day.

Shortly before we were due to go on, Abel said to me, ‘They’re here.’

‘Who’s here?’

‘The men on the hill today. Mr Maltravers and whatsisname, Rowley. They’re sitting in the audience.’

‘You’re certain?’

‘See for yourself.’

I peered through a gap in the tattered hangings that concealed the tiring-room to the side of the stage. On a bench only a few yards away squatted the portly merchant and his servant. They looked disgruntled and battered after the day’s experiences. Furthermore, sitting near to them were two other gents I knew: Edward Downey, the lawyer, and Dr Price. These two wore expressions that indicated they might actually be looking forward to the evening’s entertainment. Also on the benches were the cousins, Kate and William Hawkins. Then, casting my eyes further back towards the individuals standing behind the benches, I noticed the two members of the night watch. I remembered that I’d urged them to attend this evening. But it also came to me that they might be here in some official capacity, perhaps to do the bidding of John Maltravers. I had to remind myself that it was Maltravers and Rowley who had done wrong, who stole Christopher’s notebook and assaulted the Hawkinses.

‘Why is he here?’ said Abel.

By now Laurence Savage was also taking a peek through the hangings. He said to me, ‘I thought you said this Maltravers hates plays.’

‘So he does.’

‘Do you think they recognised us this morning? Do you think they knew us for players?’ said Abel.

I shrugged. ‘So what if they did? We are here under licence. They can do no harm.’

‘Who can do no harm?’

This was John Sincklo speaking, the senior member of the King’s Men on our tour. He had caught the last words of our anxious conversation. A serious individual, John Sincklo would not approve of anything that I and the others had been doing that day away from the stage. So we made light of our comments and readied ourselves for the final performance in Bath.

All was going well with A Fair Day, or so it seemed. The audience enjoyed our antics as stall-holders, con men, customers. There is not much of a plot to the play but there is a lot of coming and going and confusion of identities and a good measure of bawdiness mixed with finely crafted insults. Among all this, I strode as Mr Justice Righthead, denouncing the pleasures of ordinary folk and trying to put a stop to them. I quickly forgot about the presence of John Maltravers and George Rowley in the audience, carried away with my windy proclamations and buoyed up by the laughter in the inn yard.

Trouble did not start until quite near the end of the action. In my part as Justice Righthead, I had just received my comeuppance. Among the visitors to our fictional fair were an innocent young man and a comely young woman. I had taken both under my wing, especially the woman, upon whom I had designs. Now this pair were exposed as a notorious cutpurse and his wench. So Mr Justice Righthead was in his turn exposed as both a fool and a hypocrite, when the woman gleefully described his clumsy attempts to seduce her. Instead of hanging my head in shame, I launched on a fresh tirade. Attack is the best defence. I was in full flow when I became aware of a disturbance among the audience. The weighty figure of John Maltravers lumbered to his feet and, wagging his finger in the style that I’d been imitating on stage, started his own rant.

I won’t bore you with the details of what he said. Plays were a disgrace, players were a blot upon the commonwealth, authority was being undermined, we should be whipped for our pains, et cetera. This was so much an echo of the lines that I was delivering that at first people might have believed Maltravers’ words were all part of the action. But some among the audience recognised him and, pretty soon, everyone was able to distinguish between play-acting and the real thing. Curiously, he did not sound as convincing as an actor would have done. Edward Downey and Dr Price made ineffectual attempts to hold him back but he waddled to the edge of the raised stage and continued his harangue.

Now we of the King’s Men are used to dealing with interruptions. Usually they come from drunks, occasionally from mischief-makers. They tend to be short-lived. This Maltravers man went on and on. He was genuinely angry, working himself up further with every spluttered sentence. His round face turned a dark red and his finger waggled ever more furiously. The audience were reduced to mutters, interspersed with a bit of booing and some laughter. They might not have been entertained as we’d been entertaining them, but they could not take their eyes off the merchant. I’d stopped speaking some time ago since there was no point in continuing with my own rant. My fellows were all on stage, for it was the climax of the action. We formed a ragged semi-circle staring at our attacker, waiting for him to exhaust himself. John Sincklo looked outraged, since there is nothing to rouse the ire of a player like an attack on his profession.

Then I noticed that George Rowley was nowhere to be seen. The stocky servant was not sitting on the bench, nor could I spot him in the gathering gloom of the inn yard. Some instinct caused me to glance sideways at the little curtained-off tire-room where our costume baskets and other effects were stored. I broke away from the group and within a few strides had reached the side of the stage.

Inside the tire-room everything was in a state of disorder. Costumes, props were tumbled out of the baskets. Among the pile was a frantically rummaging Rowley. I could guess what he was looking for. Instantly I realised that John Maltravers’ intervention in our play was planned. Oh, he meant every one of the words he was still booming out in condemnation of the players. He’d love to see us whipped, run out of town and the rest of it. But he was acting too. It was a diversion to keep all eyes in the audience fixed on him and to give his man a chance to sneak into the tire-room and ransack our property. Undoubtedly, Maltravers had realised the identity of his ambushers on Solsbury Hill this morning, had seen us retrieve the black book, and, driven by fury, was determined to get it back. It was a desperate scheme, guaranteed to make an exhibition in front of his fellow citizens. But perhaps he did not care.

All this passed through my mind in a flash. About as long as it took Rowley to look up from his mad search and observe that there was someone else in the tire-room with him. This was when things turned serious. He grunted and produced from somewhere in his garments a wicked little knife. Humiliated this morning on Solsbury Hill, discovered now in the middle of his wrongdoing, he was driven by the same rage as his master. He slashed out at me and, more by luck than design, I staggered back out of range. But I tumbled over a heap of clothing and lay there sprawled on my back, helpless. Time seemed to slow down. From outside I could hear the continued ranting of Maltravers, from within this curtained-off space the heavy breathing of my assailant. Above me was the darkening summer sky and the same old moon and a corner of the gable and the little window from which Katherine Hawkins had spied on me at the beginning of this business.

Rowley paused for a second to position his dagger so that he might make a more effective strike. My hand closed round a dagger, one of our props, but it was a paltry wooden thing. Rowley stamped on my hand, then fell forward, intending to stab me in the guts. If he’d known he would be hanged for the deed, it would have made no difference. I cried out but the sound was feeble to my own ears. There was murder in his eyes, the real thing and not the simulated rage you see on stage. From playing dead two nights ago I was about to become genuinely so.

Yet I was saved by the part I played as Mr Justice Righthead. I’d wound padding about my stomach in imitation of Maltravers’ fatness, and Rowley’s knife became buried and deflected among all the stuffing, the fustian cloth and rags bulking out my midriff. Rowley looked confused and I twisted away from him. He extricated the knife and was lifting it to strike once more when the front curtains to the tire-house were not so much opened as torn away. Rowley paused, then faltered.

We must have presented a dramatic tableau, the player lying on the ground and the knifeman with his arm raised uncertainly. Crowded in the entrance to the tire-room were the Hawkinses and the two members of the night watch. I’ll think twice before saying again that they’re never there when you need them.

We finished the play, by the way. It would have been unprofessional not to.

We had to wait until the watch took charge of George Rowley, whose guilt couldn’t be doubted since he was caught knife-in-hand. Like his master, Maltravers, he had some hectic words to say before he was dragged off. It was an accusation against John Maltravers – that he had put him up to this, that he was the one responsible. I remembered that moment on the hillside when Rowley appeared willing to strike his master about the pate with his spade. Maltravers, crestfallen after all his shouting, looked increasingly uncomfortable. His face went from pure red to mottled red and white. Eventually he strode out of the yard, but I noticed Downey the lawyer and Price the physician gazing after him, and I would have bet they had a few questions of their own to put to him.

The assumption was that Rowley was rummaging through the tire-room gear in search of some valuables. It was merely bad luck that I had stumbled across him. And good luck that I was unharmed. No one mentioned the black-bound commonplace book belonging to Uncle Christopher. It was no longer in my possession anyway, since I had already returned it to William Hawkins while we were on Solsbury Hill.

After a half-hour or so we resumed A Fair Day. I took up my part as Mr Justice Righthead, although my costume was somewhat torn and shredded about the middle, with the stuffing coming out. It was only when we were all done that I started to shiver and shake at having so nearly escaped a severe wounding or even death. It took the company of my fellows and a few drinks in the Raven afterwards to steady my nerves.

For their part, the Bath citizens sitting or standing in the yard of the Bear appreciated our resilience and our dedication to the craft of the stage play. They cheered us loudly at the end, so much so that we were encouraged enough to take up an extra collection of money. John Sincklo looked doubtfully at me and Laurence and Abel after it was all over, as if we knew more about the incident than we were letting on, but he did not ask any questions. In fact, he was gratified at the way the crowd showed themselves to be on the side of the players, and pleased by the additional money that came in. We did better than that when we received an extra subvention from Bath corporation as if in tacit apology for the misbehaviour of one of their own at our final performance.

Later, when we reached Bristol, I gave Sincklo an outline of the story. I felt that I owed him that much.

We left Bath the next day. As we passed through on our way to the West Gate and the fresher air of the Bristol road, we paused to observe that some preliminary justice had been meted out to George Rowley. He was standing in the pillory by the Guild Hall, smeared with rotten fruit and draped with vegetable peelings. The pigs were still waddling about at liberty on the city cobbles, in expectation of what they might scavenge. I was glad to see Rowley in the pillory, although it does not usually give me much pleasure to watch the public punishment of malefactors.

Much later, when we had returned to London, Kate Hawkins wrote to me, a genuine ‘privy message’ this time. She thanked me for the service I had performed for her dying uncle (but made no mention of our later connection). She said that an indictment was being laid against John Maltravers largely on the testimony of George Rowley. But the evidence was thin and, Maltravers being a respectable citizen and his accuser a mere servant, he would probably wriggle his way out of punishment. His standing in the town had been irredeemably harmed, however, by his ranting in the yard of the Bear Inn. Edward Downey and Dr Price had turned against their old friend and even apologised to her for their unseemly behaviour on the morning of Christopher’s death. She and William were still grieving for Uncle Christopher but she wrote that, when a suitable period of mourning was passed, they intended to marry. I thought it was a happy ending and very similar to the plot of the second play we’d done in Bath, the one entitled A City Pleasure.

As for the black notebook, which might have revealed the whereabouts of precious items buried on Solsbury Hill, that had been locked away as a family keepsake. Neither she nor William had any interest in scrabbling about on a bare hill in search of Arthur’s gold or any other relics. They had enough treasures to look forward to in their domestic lives, which was a nice comment, although one that for a moment made me feel envious. If there were any relics to be found on Solsbury Hill, Kate added in a postscript, let’s leave them to the future. That’s what the future’s for, after all.