Sleep of Death

ACT IV

Now, this business was not to be as straightforward as the killing of Francis.

Francis was no more than a simple servant and easily ordered and led, even though at the last moment when he knew that he was going to die he showed unexpected spirit in trying to escape from me.

But Old Nick was a different kettle of fish, a much more slippery customer. I’d had dealings with him before of course. What man past a certain age in London has not needed the potions, lotions and ointments of such a master-mixer, either to stimulate the appetite before love or to cure its ravages afterwards? Also, he prepared much that was useful when slipped into a lady’s cup.

Therefore it was with regret that I decided that Old Nick too would have to go. His absence will be keenly felt among men and women of a particular age and class. Nevertheless, only a fool hesitates between a lesser evil and a greater one — I mean, the loss of another’s life or the loss of one’s own. Because I am afraid that Master Nicholas Revill, in his blundering pursuit of Francis’s shirt and the marks on its sleeve, may be coming a little too close to the truth. One thing may lead to another: a stained sleeve, the means of a secret murder, the identity of the murderer.

I have a less reasonable fear. I have seen for myself that strange facility which Old Nick the apothecary possesses — possessed, I should say. How, often, when he is grasping a fragment of clothing or a personal ornament (ring, brooch), he is able to track down something of the past fortunes or the future fate of its owner. He is like a dog put on the scent. Why, once when I wished to discover whether a certain lady was remaining faithful to me, I brought him an item of apparel which she had worn next to her body. He enjoyed pawing and sniffing at that, and then, tail up and nose to the ground, he was off. I was startled when he spoke in my lady’s voice, and more startled still when the old man began to cry out in the words and accents that she was accustomed to use with me in the privacy of the bed. Even though the words and cries issued from his withered mouth, I felt myself becoming aroused to hear her in him.

When he had recovered I asked if he had seen anything in his fit. He told me that he could never see clear and continuous, but that it was like a landscape glimpsed during thunder and lightning: sharp, quick pictures that were gone before you were able to seize hold of them. Nevertheless he had, he told me, the sensation of being roughly but pleasurably used, and he sniffed again at the piece of clothing as though he would drink up her folded scents through his nostrils. ‘Who was using her?’ I demanded. And Old Nick described the man, though imperfectly seen as through a veil of sweat and delight. All this was some time ago; I have forgotten exactly what the apothecary said. Perhaps I did not listen after I had heard enough to know that the man with my lady was not me. The answer I received was, as I had expected, that she had not remained faithful. Thus I had the licence to make my lady pay for her trangression and pay she did.

It was this facility in the apothecary to see and hear others over a distance of time and space, others whom he had never seen or heard in the flesh, that made me fearful in the matter of Francis’s shirt. For I could not be sure what might be revealed as he smelled after the hapless servant. Nor was it sufficient to recover the shirt by stealth and leave Old Nick to his own devices. There was no telling what or who the old man might tell in turn.

I visited the shop in Paul’s churchyard. I had recruited our false steward Adrian to stand guard over the door in case Old Nick and I should be disturbed. Ever since that business with Francis I have found Adrian to be more and more serviceable. He has evidently decided that his character is better suited to a life of out-and-out villainy than one of petty gains and thievery in an important household. In fact, he has acquired his own little band of disreputable followers. He grows into those traces of the demonic which he is fond of affecting: the black clothes, the black looks. Without boasting, I may say he aspires to the condition of ruthlessness and looks up to me as a model of what might be achieved.

Once inside the dark interior I call out for Old Nick and he appears, pat, from the back quarters.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he says in that tone which tells me that I am not altogether welcome. His voice has a youthful sweetness and doesn’t match its withered old source. Perhaps it is no more his, really his, than the voices which he produces during his fits.

‘It is I,’ I say, ‘come to visit my old friend, Old Nick.’

‘What do you want this time? More of the mixture which will get your lady into bed? Or one that will get her out of it for good?’

‘I require something for an enemy,’ I say.

‘A love potion?’

‘A poison.’

‘Who for this time?’

‘The world.’

‘But you have already procured poison from me, have you not?’

In saying this he has signed and signed again the death warrant which I have brought with me, and yet does not seem to know it.

When I needed the mixture to pour down Sir William Eliot’s ear, in imitation of the way in which the villain Claudius pours poison into the sleeping head of old King Hamlet, I naturally turned to Old Nick. Old Nick the master-mixer for love and death, he who will provide lotions and solutions for all events. But the apothecary knew me only as a pursuer of ladies, and I did not wish to reveal myself to him as a purchaser of poison. You see, I have some scruples. So I rented a dumb man in Shoreditch and instructed him to take a paper having my requirements written on it to Old Nick. And told him, be sure to bring back the same paper to me with the mixture. You see, I am careful.

So I thought I was free and clear. There was nothing to connect me to the purchase of the poison, the piece of paper being long since returned and destroyed, and the dumb man of Shoreditch being unable to reveal who sent him to fetch and carry.

But, in this case of murder, I have discovered that you are never free and clear. Once it is done there are a thousand subtle cords that bind you to the act, and each time you snap one you discover that you are still tethered to the deed by the rest. And new cords and cables seem to grow faster than you can break the old ones.

I wondered how the old apothecary knew, whether it was his power of seeing-through-touch. Maybe he had needed only to handle the note brought by the Shoreditch man to be aware of who had really sent it. But, however he knew of the poison which I had caused to be bought, here was another cable connecting me to the death of Sir William, and of Francis, too. A living cable.

He waits for me to say something.

I am surprised that this clever old man cannot foresee his own future — or rather its absence.

‘You have a shirt of mine,’ I say.

‘A shirt?’ He pretends ignorance.

‘Brought to you by a young player and his mistress.’

‘The whore Nell. I know her. But as to that shirt, it is not yours. It is a dead man’s.’

‘He wished me to have it. He told me so before he died.’

‘The young player thought it was his. In fact, he brought it to me so that I could make a repair to the sleeve.’

‘But you are not a tailor.’

‘He wished to discover who or what had caused the damage to the shirt.’

‘All this to-do over a cheap item of clothing. It is not worth repairing. It should have been buried with the dead man.’

‘I would say it is worth a man’s life,’ says the apothecary.

‘It cost him his,’ I say.

‘And others’ besides? There was poison on the sleeve.’

‘Then it was your own,’ I say. ‘Your mixture.’

‘I know,’ he says. ‘There is no craftsman in London who has the skill to produce such a potent poison. I thought so when the shirt was first brought to me and a trial or two proved it.’

‘What else did you discover?’

‘A frightened man in the dark called Francis. And another frightened one now.’

‘It is yourself you mean. You know why I have come.’

‘I can see what you are about to do.’

‘You are old and weak,’ I say.

‘But I am not fearful as you are,’ says the impudent apothecary.

‘Why don’t you struggle or protest?’ I say, curious and diverted for an instant, for he stands calm on the other side of the counter.

‘To struggle against fate is futile.’

‘So this is your fate?’ I ask.

‘And yours,’ he says, at which I grow angry.

‘I cannot see an end to this,’ I say, feeling the heat rising beneath my face. ‘I want that piece of clothing.’

‘It is here,’ says Old Nick, producing it from beneath his counter.

‘Thank you,’ I say, grabbing the shirt with one hand and Old Nick with the other. I pull him across the counter, scattering boxes and glass-ware. When I have him on his front over the counter, I carefully place the shirt to one side, telling myself that this time I must remember to take it away. Then I place both hands round the scrawny neck of Old Nick and squeeze and squeeze. He is a tough old bird and my grip is awkward. Although he doesn’t put up a great struggle it seems a long time before his thin legs stop flailing and his withered body stops bucking up and down on the counter-top.

Then I call Adrian from where he has been standing watch outside the apothecary’s door. The man must get used to murder if he is to keep company with me. He swallows the sight of the body with hardly a gulp and then helps me to lower the alligator from its swinging perch. The alligator is hard and shiny and weighs little because it is hollow. We quickly bind up the withered old man and hoist him aloft in the beast’s place. He must have been cut in the struggle by shattered glass because blood begins to drip onto the floor.

Adrian asks why we are doing this and I say it is my humour. I am reminded of Hamlet’s stowing the body of Polonius in the lobby so that he can joke about it.

I tell Adrian that the corpse is expecting a visit from a friend of his, meaning Adrian’s, and the thieving steward asks who and I say, ‘Master Nick Revill, the player’ and even in the half-darkness of the dead man’s shop I see the other’s mouth twist in anger.

‘Perhaps,’ I say, ‘you would wait here until he arrives.’

I leave Adrian after giving him further instructions. As I walk briskly across Paul’s I notice the innocent figure of Master Revill making his way in the opposite direction. I am careful not to be seen. Underneath my doublet is stuffed the shirt that belonged to Francis. I smile and smile like a man in love with this fallen world. I take pains to keep my hands clenched because there is blood on my palms.

Darkness.

A jolting darkness.

At first I thought that my eyes were tight closed and so made to unfasten them. Either they would not open or they were open already — I could not tell, it was so dark. I attempted to reach up with my hand from where it lay awkwardly under my body, but my hand would not move. My hands were joined together. Next I tried to shift my legs but they too were fastened to each other.

I considered whether I was dead. Close by me were squeaks and squeals and, more distant, thuds and murmurs. This must be the afterlife. Was I in hell or purgatory with gibbering spirits keeping me company, either in torment or in mockery? Well, father, I thought, you were right. Here it is, and here am I in it. I shall describe purgatory. Complete darkness. Your body unable to move but shaken and jolted painfully every moment. No other feeling but aches and pains in every limb. Something close and stifling lying across your face. And tiredness, so that you want to sleep forever but cannot for the aches and pains and the jolting.

Nevertheless I must have slept — or somehow retreated from any knowledge of myself because, moments or hours later, I don’t know which, I went through the whole process again of coming to, and being unsure of whether my eyes were open or shut, and attempting once more to move my hands and feet.

Around this time the thought came to me clearly that I was not dead but alive, in pain and bound up by the hands and feet. I couldn’t see anything because there wasn’t anything to see. The stifling cover over my face and body was a stinking hairy blanket. The jolting motion and the squealing noise were caused by whatever I was being carried in, a cart or wagon most probably, as it jerked across the ground. The regular thuds turned themselves into the sound of a horse’s hooves. The murmurs were the low, occasional voices of the men travelling with me, my captors perched on the driving seat of the cart. The aches and pains in my body were proof not of the torments of hell but that I still had life.

I tugged at my hands but they were securely tied, I could feel the cord biting into my wrists and the backs of my hands. In my mind’s eye I traced back the path which had led to where I found myself now. The visit to Old Nick’s shop. The wait when I was convinced of being watched. The sight of the apothecary’s body swaying from the ceiling. The voice in the darkness saying ‘And so an end’. The blacker shapes growing up around me, blows raining down on my head. The descent into night.

As the conveyance bumped and swayed on its way I tried to order my thoughts. Whoever the man — or men — who had done this to me, he or they had presumably murdered Old Nick as well. Although ignorant of the means by which the old apothecary had been forced through death’s door, I couldn’t doubt that he had been murdered and then grotesquely raised up into the place where his alligator normally hung. I was less certain about why he’d been killed, but the drowning of Francis, that poor servant’s river-stained shirt, the strange death of Sir William Eliot, together with the play of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, all these things bobbed in my mind like the confused flotsam of some sea-battle.

Why was I still alive? Where was I being taken, joltingly and painfully, in the back of a wagon under a stinking blanket? Since the individual who had disposed of Old Nick had taken me by surprise, why hadn’t he made an end of me there and then, and left me displayed at the apothecary’s? He might as well be hanged for two sheep as for one. Surely, since I was still living and breathing, it must be for a purpose. This gave me a little flare of hope. I was not required to die — or at least not yet. But then, I reflected, the hope that relies on the unknown purposes of a murderer must be slender indeed.

I twisted my head to one side, and winced as the after-pain of a blow forked down my side. I tried to peer under the blanket but there was not even the tiniest gap or cranny through which to see. Or if there was, it was night outside and nothing visible. I listened. No sound except the squeaking wagon and the plodding, panting horse, and the occasional murmured comment which I could not make out clearly. If I had been certain that there were people other than my captors at hand I would have called out. I would have cried, ‘Help! Ho! Murder!’ so loudly as to be heard from Spitalfield to Southwark. But I feared there was nobody to listen. There were no street sounds, no echoes of our passage coming back from walls or houses. We must be outside the city. If I could have thrown off the filthy blanket I would have been able to tell from the quality of the air whether we were within or outside the city walls. The smell of London was the first thing that struck me when I came up from the country.

There are four main routes out of London and we might be moving on any one of them. North, into the flat lands beyond Finsbury Fields. Westward, down the river in the direction of Greenwich. Or perhaps eastwards — although on that route the cart would have passed through Holborn and Westminster, and a prudent driver might prefer to steer away from crowded places. These directions all involved traversing relatively law-abiding areas of the city.

On the other hand, if we had crossed the river either by the bridge or ferry, we would have moved south through my own patch of Southwark. This was no particular source of comfort. Were I planning to take someone prisoner and carry him off to a secret destination, this is the direction I would take. Everyone knows that the law and authority of the city do not stretch far on our bank of the Thames. Men and women who have stumbled into trouble recognise that they have a bolt-hole here. Even those on the right side of the law but afraid of its frown — boatmen, for example, or the owners of bearpits — feel instinctively that they are at home south of the water. Respectable figures like the players of the Chamberlain’s Men are resident in Southwark. Master WS, he lived in the Liberty of the Clink, did he not? Though not Master Richard Burbage, no, he lived with seven little Burbages somewhere oh-so-proper north of the river. .

So my muddy thoughts pursued their meandering course. I probably fell into sleep or unconsciousness again, from time to time. Master WS’s bland, brown-eyed face came floating at me through the stifling darkness under the blanket. Something he had said when we were talking backstage at the Globe in what seemed to be another life. Something about an apothecary. . and tricks of the trade. Why had he mentioned the word ‘apothecary’? I would ask Master WS the next time I saw him. But if this slow-coach didn’t soon get to where it was going I would not be able to return to the Globe for the next performance of. .

I couldn’t remember what it was I was due to perform in. .

Suddenly I was jolted awake by a violent lurch. The cart tipped to one side and shuddered to a stop. There was swearing up in front and the thwack of a whip being applied. Then shifting sounds as the men jumped to the ground and, shoving and cursing, struggled to get the wagon upright and on the move once more. After a time they succeeded. The wagon groaned as they resumed their places and we continued on as lumberingly as before.

But I was too preoccupied to wonder any longer where we were going or why I had been permitted to remain alive. The jolt, as the wagon fell into the hole, had been enough to bring something banging against my back, something which was evidently sharing my stinking blanket and which had been stowed a few feet off. I hadn’t been aware of it until that instant. The stillness and stiffness of the object as it lay pressing into my back reassured me and I told myself that my bedfellow was a roll of rough cloth or a bundle of sticks and staves — or anything at all so long as it was not the truth. This truth I could now feel on my backbone. I was being jabbed at by stiff fingers. Fingers belonging to someone else. Every time the wagon lurched I was prodded, as if in admonition. And then, underneath the animal stench of the hairy blanket, another smell crept into my nostrils. It was the particular scent of Old Nick — a compound of herbs, some sweet, some rank, and his own bodily self — and overlaying all this the scent of death. And I understood that the body which I had glimpsed swaying from the ceiling of his shop had been cut down and placed beside me in the wagon. And I turned very afraid.

Then we stopped.

Again the wagon seemed to lift itself up as the men climbed down. The next moment the blanket that covered me — us — was pulled aside. I don’t know why but I had somehow thought that the hours had slipped away and that evening had shaded into night and night had grown into day again. We seemed to have travelled so long and so far. Even as I sensed one of the men groping for the blanket to throw it off, I prepared to emerge into the clear and cruel light of morning, blinking like a mole. But no such thing. It was night still.

However, my eyes were used to the dark by now. It was my element. And besides, there was a little light thrown at us by a sickly looking moon.

I saw two men at the foot of the wagon. They were gazing at its contents.

‘He’s out,’ said one.

‘I shall light a fire under his feet,’ said the other.

I took only a moment to recognise the first voice as that of Adrian, the false steward in the Eliot household, the thief I had exposed as he prepared to steal my lady’s necklace and blame it on dumb Jacob. Of course! What more natural in a man like him than that he should seek revenge on me, the player who had cost him his livelihood and the respect of his master and mistress. Seeing this, knowing who my enemy was, somehow brought a kind of relief even though I was trussed-up and helpless, lying next to the apothecary’s corpse.

I groaned involuntarily.

‘Still alive then,’ said the other man cheerfully.

‘Get him out,’ said Adrian.

Together they reached in and seized hold of my bound feet and dragged me over the tailboard of the wagon. I thumped painfully onto the ground.

‘And the other thing,’ said Adrian

Moments later the body of the apothecary was carelessly deposited next to me.

‘Go and call,’ said Adrian. I sensed rather than saw or heard the second man move off a distance while Adrian stayed close. As far as I could make out from where I lay awkwardly, face half crushed into the earth, we were in a clearing in a forest. Pale moonlight lay across the grass and fallen leaves. A ring of trees stood guard around us. The air was still and expectant. The horse snuffed and shuffled. It must be hobbled.

From the edge of the clearing came the hooting of an owl, or a townsman’s idea of what an owl’s hoot should be. Ter-wit, ter-woo, three times repeated. I almost laughed. Obviously this was some prearranged signal to be delivered by Adrian’s accomplice. I thought of Nat the animal man, the Southwark beggar who made the odd penny by imitating the cries of animals and birds. I remembered how, only a few days before, Nat had made the sound of a hyena for me in the Goat amp; Monkey, a screeching mirthless laugh; how, only yesterday, he had quipped with William Eliot about the mute unicorn. I wished I was there now, in the warmth and ease and companionship of the alehouse, or in the warmth and pleasure of Nell’s bed. I wished I had returned with her to her crib, that I had not left her with an ill impression of myself. I wished myself anywhere but here in the middle of a dark wood.

The other man finished making his bird calls and was answered by hooting from farther afield. This was more convincing than the first call but to anybody who possessed country ears it was still no owl. My spirits, already low, sunk down even deeper. So there were at least three of them, three men who counted themselves enemies to me. Why stop at three? Might not the whole forest be full of individuals who hated me or could be hired by one that did?

I tried to see where Adrian was but he was out of sight, probably somewhere on the far side of the horse and wagon waiting for his minions to return. After a time there were whispers from the edge of the clearing and the next moment three shapes were standing so close to me that no more than their legs were visible. I played, not dead, but quiet, glimpsing things through a half-closed eyelid and hoping that if I stayed still I might also stay safe. I noticed one of the six legs swing back and forward and, at first without connecting the two, experienced a sickening blow in the belly. Trussed as I was, I doubled up on the ground and retched helplessly.

Through red-dimmed senses and past my wheezing breath I heard a voice say, ‘No, Ralph. Wait. Your time will come.’

It was plain that Adrian was in command. So far I had heard not a sound from the third man, save for imitation of the owl. Adrian must have made some gesture because I felt hands fumbling at me.

I was hooked up under my bound arms and hauled into a standing position. I fought to get my breath back. I spat and spluttered. With my hands tied behind my back I felt naked, though I was clothed, and open to harm. The other two men, who I couldn’t see clearly, held me up. Directly opposite was Adrian the false servant, his countenance gleaming in the pale moonlight. His razor-like nose quivered. He sneered in a way that, had he been on stage, I would have condemned as unconvincing. The one-time steward was wearing the same gear as when I had last encountered him in the Eliots’ private box at the Globe Theatre. A tall black hat and a dark cloak that, together with the sneers, signalled clearly: I am villain. Quake, all you who look on me.

I half expected him to rub his hands together with glee and — as if he had read my mind — this was the next thing which he did.

‘Well, player.’

For an instant I contemplated not recognising him. That would be galling. A villain demands a response. But he could see that I knew him. Saying nothing, I let my head droop in acknowledgement. I felt weak and beaten. I was weak and beaten. But something told me to play at seeming even worse than I felt.

‘Oh, this is turning the cat in the pan,’ he said. ‘This is a change of fortune.’

I still kept silent, partly because I could think of nothing to say and partly to deny him the satisfaction of an answer. He remained gazing at me for a moment longer, then turned away, motioning for us to follow. With my legs bound I was dragged by the other two across the rough tussocky ground. I wanted to say, ‘What about Old Nick? What about the apothecary? You cannot leave him lying dead and cold in the forest, for birds to peck at.’ When we left his corpse behind, I felt almost as though I was abandoning an old friend.

We were rapidly out of the clearing and into the forest. A thin light strained through the leaves from above and then was suddenly extinguished as clouds moved over the moon. By now my eyes were as used to the dark as they would ever become. We were treading some kind of path, a thread of greyer ground that wound among the boles and trunks. Ahead of us the yet darker shape of Adrian glided through the trees like an outcrop of the night. He was evidently familiar with the route. Neither of my companions was particularly nice or careful about our passage and my feet and shins were buffeted against roots and torn at by prickly bushes. I am sure they went out of their way to ensure that my head and shoulders collided with low-lying branches.

I was half hopping, half being hauled along like a sack. My two escorts were panting and sweating with the effort of carrying me, particularly the man on my left who was plumper and heavier than his companion. The one on my right was more wiry. His face seemed to be in shadow. He smelt woody and smoky. Several times one or other of them lost his grip and we had to pause while he got a firmer handhold. I would have suggested, conversationally, that it would be easier for all of us if my feet were unbound and I was allowed to walk. But it was plain that they wouldn’t do anything without their leader Adrian authorising it and, no doubt, he thought that, with free feet, I would attempt to run away. As I would have done, given the smallest chance.

After we’d travelled a few hundred yards in this fashion Adrian made a decisive turn off the path. I saw a tiny light glimmering among the trees. Soon we arrived at what looked like a ramshackle hut, a darker shape in the enveloping darkness. A candle was burning in a gap between the intertwined branches of which the hut was made. I was pushed, almost thrown, through an open door. I landed face down on a scratchy mound of straw. I twisted round, spitting out fragments of it. The hut was small and barely enclosed my three captors as they stood upright while I sprawled on what I took to be a simple bed.

I suddenly understood in what sort of place I was and the probable identity of one of my escorts, the one who smelt and whose face was in shadow. As the greatest and most populous city in the world, London has more need of fuel than lesser towns and it is charcoal that is used in preference to any other. Our city is ringed about by charcoal-burners, men who live out in the woods where they ply their trade and who bring their supplies early in the morning to Croydon or Greenwich or Romford. There they sell their wares to the city colliers, who deliver sacks to the needy wives. The charcoal-burners are shy men, living more like beasts in the forest than like human beings in society, while their city cousins, the colliers, are crafty and think nothing of short-changing their customers by switching a larger sack for a smaller or filling the bottoms of them with dross.

I was convinced that this place where I lay bound and helpless was a charcoal-burner’s hut, and the blackened, shadowy figure who had escorted me here together with the plump man was a charcoal-burner. For sure, I had smelt the woody, sooty scent on him but had not realised it for what it was.

This shadowy figure now scuttled about the hut in a way that suggested it was his own. He lit another candle from the one that had guided us there and placed them both on the earthen floor. The candles flickered in the draughts piercing the ragged sides of the hut. The shadows of the three men confronting me jumped and swelled on the walls and roof, which were crudely made of wattle and daub. Adrian seemed to swirl in his black cloak and hat, a dancing devil. The shadowy shape of the charcoal-burner was so encrusted with soot and grime that his features were indecipherable. He had long arms and his posture reminded me of a melancholy ape which I had once seen in a cage. The third man, the plump one, wheezed as he gazed at me with an expression hovering between hatred and satisfaction.

‘Well,’ said Adrian, ‘we have met before.’

‘If you’re going to take so long on the prologue,’ I said, ‘you may never get to the main action.’

‘We shall shortly move to the epilogue with no interim,’ he said. ‘Your epilogue, your exit.’

Adrian accompanied these histrionic words with a leer. It is odd how even in a desperate situation — and this was the most desperate I had ever experienced — the mind can work clearly. What the false steward’s expressions reminded me of was a line from Master WS’s Hamlet about ‘damnable faces’. Since I had played Lucianus, the poisoner in the play-within-the-play, and these were in fact the words that described my appearance, or rather his appearance, I suppose you could say I am something of an expert on looking horrid. And, in my judgement, Adrian was overdoing it.

‘And so the whirligig of time brings in his revenges,’ I said.

‘Sweet meat will have sour sauce,’ he said, and I saw that we might beat each other to death with sayings.

‘Who are these gentlemen? Have they also got a grudge against me?’

There was a movement from the plump man. He had only recently recovered his breath after the exertion of dragging me through the forest.

‘You are Master Revill, the player. Master Nicholas Revill?’

He had a thick, greasy voice, like his person.

‘Surely you haven’t brought me all this way without knowing who I am?’

Underneath my easy air there was fear. If I stopped to think I would start to shake, and a tremor would enter my voice. Accordingly, I said the first things that occurred to me, hoping to keep the fear at bay.

‘Master Nicholas Revill, formerly of Ship Street?’

Ship Street. What was he talking about? That was where I’d lodged with the stuck-up Mistress Ransom and her overblown daughter, the one who tried to tumble me on her bed. Where I’d lodged, that is, until Nell had emptied a chamber-pot over the mother’s head.

‘Who are you? What do you want?’ I said.

‘Look on this as an action for breach of promise, Master Revill,’ said the plump man.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said, not having to play at being baffled.

‘I am Ralph Ransom, brother to Meg, the simple virgin whose flower you cropped.’

‘Oh Jesus,’ I said.

‘That is not the end of it,’ said the plump man. ‘In order to take from her that precious jewel which she could bestow once and only once, you also promised yourself to her in marriage.’

‘It’s not true.’

‘You deny that you lay together?’

‘I, yes, we never. . she. .’

‘You came to her room, you spent yourself in extravagant words, she — oh foolish virgin, Margaret — took your forged notes as true tender and succumbed to your blandishments. You speedily untrussed and took down your hose, and my sister Margaret lost her honour to a man who possesses not a shred of that quality. She gave way, because you gave your oath that she would be your bride.’

‘This is absurd,’ I said, recalling all too clearly the scene in the woman’s chamber, she all red smoke and fire and I wallowing under her like a bobbing bark in a tempest.

‘There is more,’ said plump Ralph, determined to have his day and his say.

I groaned. In truth, I was in pain. The beating I’d received at the apothecary’s, the jolting ride out of London in the back of the wagon, the prospect that I would end like Old Nick on the far side of death’s door, all of these things afflicted me. And yet I played at being in a worse state still.

I groaned again and fat Ralph Ransom took this for a sufficient answer.

‘You have abused my mother.’

‘I never touched her.’

‘Abused her most monstrously.’

‘Not a finger, I swear by my own mother.’

‘After deflowering my sister, you emptied the contents of your filthy chamber pot over my mother. Do you deny that?’

‘I, well, it’s. .’

‘She was covered in your piss.’

‘No, well. . not. .’

‘A mother drenched with your waste, a sister defiled with your lust. Are not these good reasons for my hatred, Master Revill?’

I sighed.

‘I know you for what you are,’ Ralph pursued, scarcely able to speak for the fury that had been building in him. ‘You are a filthy p-p-p-player, you are a dirty crawling c-c-c-caterpillar, a double-dealing ambidexter. You are a frequenter of b-b-b-brothels and houses of sale.’

‘That could be said of half the men in London,’ I said.

‘You have as your trug or doxy or housewife, what you will, a woman called Nell? She is a notorious whore. You are her pimp or pa-pa-pa-pander.’

Of what use was it to protest that Nell loved me and that I, in my way, loved her, and that whatever might be her relations with other men, with me they were unsoiled by the taint of money either offered or taken? So I might have said before yesterday, anyway. I gave up the attempt. These men had already convicted me. All that remained was the sentence.

‘You know so much that you must have been following me,’ I said, lamely. And, indeed, I thought of the plump man who had been on my tail a few days before when I had left my Nell. I became certain that it was this individual who was now standing in front of me in the candlelit cabin.

‘We have sniffed you out,’ said Adrian, who had been content to leave Ralph to batter away at me. ‘We have sniffed you out to your stinking lair. You have cheated and abused my friend Ralph through his mother and his sister as surely as you have cheated and abused me.’

‘Oh, you are a thief,’ I said, feigning a boldness I did not feel.

‘Let losers have their words,’ said Adrian.

‘You would have stole my lady’s necklace — and loaded the blame onto poor mute Jacob too.’

‘You trapped me with a trick,’ he said. ‘You slipped a hair around my finger and said that it was one of my lady’s when it was no such thing. Say that is not true, player, if you can.’

How could I, when it was true, perfectly true? Never mind that Adrian really was a thief. I had used a subterfuge to trap him, as William Eliot had discerned. I’d dishonestly caught a dishonest man. There was a germ of truth in all their accusations and it was enough to dishearten me.

‘What’s he got against me?’ I asked, gesturing with my head in the direction of the third member of this triumvirate, the long-armed and grimy charcoal-burner. Up to this point he had said nothing.

‘He is in my employ,’ said Adrian.

The grimy creature nodded his head and smiled — that is, he opened a hole of a mouth. He had two remaining teeth at the top that huddled together for comfort.

‘He is a man of few words,’ I said. ‘Is he dumb?’

‘Nub is serviceable,’ said Adrian. ‘He lives in this forest.’

At this announcement of his name and dwelling, Nub again performed a smile.

‘Like a faun or a satyr,’ I said.

‘Simple he may be,’ said Adrian, ‘but at least he is not a city fellow like you, player, full of deceits and trickery.’

‘I’m from the country myself.’ I tried to be jaunty but it is hard when your limbs are numb and your heart is dancing with fear. ‘From the West. I am a stranger to London.’

‘Why are we wasting time?’ said fat Ralph to Adrian. ‘He keeps us talking to delay us.’

‘Waiting adds relish to the meat,’ said Adrian.

Of the three, Ralph was the most eager to exact revenge. Adrian, I judged, was no less enthusiastic to hurt me, probably to kill me, but he enjoyed his taunting and his hand-rubbing and his gleeful leers too much to get straight down to business as his companion wished. The other man, the ape of a charcoal-burner, was a hanger-on, probably vicious on request.

While we’d been talking I had been casting surreptitious eyes round the simple room, like a trapped beast. I was reclining awkwardly and painfully on a mound of straw, Nub’s bedding, fit for a brute. My hands and feet I could scarcely feel, so long and securely had they been bound. I was sweating with fear although little gusts of night air entered through the many gaps and holes in the plaited willow of the hut walls. There wasn’t so much a doorway as a place where a section of the wall was more tattered and incomplete than elsewhere. Small bones from the charcoal-burner’s meals were scattered about. It was more like the den of an animal than the dwelling-place of a human being.

In the centre of the earth floor a pile of ash and burnt twigs lay heaped up together with the charred remains of some small forest creature; directly above this was an uncertain hole in the roof for the smoke to climb through. When I was forced, because of the discomfort of my position, to fall backwards on the prickly bedding from time to time, I glimpsed a single cold star shining far above the hole, hazed over by the smoke from the two candles. I doubted that Nub had ever been prosperous enough to possess a candle in his life. Adrian must have supplied them so that this absurd tribunal was not staged in utter darkness. Even as I looked up the cold star was snuffed out by a black curtain of cloud. That star was my hope, and now it was gone. The air grew even more still.

Fat Ralph was correct, of course. I was talking because I was frightened and because as long as I could get them to talk and keep them at it they were not doing anything worse, like beating me or killing me. Only two of them counted in this respect. The third, the charcoal-burner, showed no interest in my supposed crimes. However, as well as wanting to live a little longer, I was curious.

‘Tell me one thing,’ I said, ‘before. .’

‘Before. . before what, player?’ said Adrian, practically hoisting himself into the air in his villainous dance of glee.

‘Before the, ah, epilogue,’ I said.

‘Your epilogue and your exit,’ said Adrian.

‘Why did you kill Old Nick? Why did you bring him out here?’

‘The latter is easily answered,’ said the false steward. ‘Old Nick, as you call him, was brought out here to keep you company. As long as the pit be big enough, what matter how many bodies it contain.’

So they planned to do away with me. Well, that was hardly news. Yet there was something about hearing it cold that made me break out hot all over again. At the same time, like a bass accompaniment to the villain’s threats, a growling broke out in the distance. Thunder. Once again, my mind reverted to Master WS, and how, often at some moment of crisis in his drama, he would interpolate a human storm with a heavenly one. Well, here was my crisis, and here was the storm, come pat. So Nature copies Art.

‘And the first part?’ I persisted. ‘How had the apothecary deserved to die? Had he whored your sister too, Master Ralph? Or bepissed your mother perhaps?’

Ralph took a step towards me. His leg was already pulling back for a kick but Adrian put out a restraining arm.

‘Later,’ he said. ‘I wish the player to know exactly what is due to him. I don’t want him kicked insensible.’ Then, to me, ‘There is no harm in answering your question since your mouth and your eyes and ears will soon be stopped. Do you think you have seen all of us, player? Know that there is another in the shadows. It is with us even as it is with you theatre people. We are the ones on-stage — yet there is another off-stage who keeps his own counsel.’

This was somehow not surprising. The whole tangled business was beyond Adrian’s grasp alone.

‘I knew it,’ I said.

‘You know nothing,’ said Adrian. I sensed that the false steward already regretted saying what little he had said.

‘He killed the apothecary, this individual in the shadows?’

Adrian seemed to want to withdraw his wicked and winking hints. For a moment his black cloak subsided into stillness, his tall black hat ceased to wag. He was silent.

‘And Sir William Eliot, your old master. He was murdered, wasn’t he?’ I persisted, momentarily at an advantage. ‘But you didn’t kill him. It was the man in the shadows, surely?’

From outside came renewed rumbling, as if some beast was roaming on the outskirts of the forest.

‘I have said enough,’ said Adrian, now distinctly subdued.

‘I am right,’ I said.

‘Not a word more on that matter.’

‘You should beware, Master Adrian, that you never come into question for this. There will be no keeping silent then. The name of this other mysterious man will be forced out of you under torture.’

‘He’s right,’ said Ralph. ‘We must finish with this p-p-p-player now and send him off to join the apothecary while it is still d-d-d-dark.’

He drew his hand across his double chins and gurgled, in what I assumed was a mime of throat-slitting. Like Adrian, Ralph Ransom was a poor player and would not have earned his keep on the boards. But Nub, that smoky charcoal man, again showed us his dark, almost toothless hole. Throat-slitting was a language that he understood and appreciated.

Adrian seemed to recover something of his old demonic self. His shadow grew on the wall as his cloak inflated and his sharp little nose quivered. The light from the candles wavered as the gusts of air through the wall-spaces grew stronger. The air was warm, like little draughts from the mouth of hell.

‘To be brief, player,’ said Adrian, ‘we have sentenced you to death.’

‘A false steward, together with a fat woman’s fat sibling and a mute charcoal-burner — you are no true court,’ I cried.

‘We will do.’

‘B-b-but f-f-f-first, f-f-f-first-’ stuttered Ralph. He was so angry, or excited at whatever was in prospect, that he was scarcely capable of getting the words out.

‘Recover yourself, friend,’ said Adrian, patting him on the shoulder.

Ralph took several deep breaths. I almost felt for him as he struggled to calm himself.

‘Think on this, p-p-p-player. We are not going to put an end to you without first p-p-p-purging you of your naughty p-p-p-part.’

‘You make no sense.’

‘Your vicious t-t-t-tool.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

But I was afraid that I did.

‘You have shamed and beslubbered my sister with the seed of your instrument, with your silly weapon. Not c-c-c-content with that, you have monstrously abused my mother with the waste and outpouring from that same p-p-p-part.’

‘I never laid a finger on your mother, I say again. What happened was an accident. She chanced to be standing underneath the window when — when — it wasn’t even me. . And I never touched your sister with a will, either. Talk to her. She launched herself at me. She tricked me into entering her chamber-’

‘You tricked her and you entered more than her chamber, p-p-p-p-player. And for that you will pa-pa-pa-pay.’

‘Jesus.’

I was slick with sweat. The warm breath of the breeze penetrating the hut through its many crevices grew into a steady, somehow airless stream. Outside I heard the trees shaking their heads at the coming storm. Sweat ran from my forehead down my face, it gushed from under my arms. I began to shake. There was a flash outside the hut, followed seconds later by the thunder-crack. By the lightning, I glimpsed momentarily my three opponents, huddled about me. They looked human and not-human, like the wax effigies of the dead that you may see in Westminster Abbey.

‘As you untrussed and took down your hose for your pleasure with this good man’s good sister,’ said Adrian, ‘so we will now untruss you for ours.’ His voice was unsteady. He was excited, as Master Topclyffe in the Tower was said to grow excited when he had a priest on the rack.

‘Christ, no, wait.’

‘And after you have become our eunuch, after you have become a gelded player, the fingers will be removed from your right hand,’ said Adrian. ‘Then you will die.’

I groaned because I was incapable of speech. My head pounded. The murderous, mutilating trio before me appeared to grow smaller as if I was viewing them down a dark tunnel. For an instant I thought that I heard light, pattering footsteps outside the hut, and my mind leapt at the hope of rescue, but another instant was enough to identify the sound as the rain, falling slowly, falling in single fat blobs.

‘You trapped me with a trick,’ Adrian continued. ‘By sleight of hand you slipped a thread of somebody’s hair under my finger and claimed it was my Lady Alice’s. Because of you I was discharged from the Eliot household. Sir Thomas would never have discharged me but for you. Your hands are dangerous things and, like your cock, do harm to good and innocent people. Therefore, though the rest of your life be very short, your enjoyment of your organ of generation and of your fingers will be shorter still.’

The speech came off trippingly, as though he had learned it by heart, had stored it up in that dark chamber ready for the occasion of its delivery. But there was still that tremor in his voice. The thrill of seeing another hurt, tormented. Or was it? A further flash of lightning and thunder-clap, and I could have sworn that Adrian flinched. Like many, perhaps he was frightened of a storm. But I could not see how to turn it to my advantage.

He motioned to the sooty charcoal man, as if to say ‘Now your time is come.’

Through the haze that seemed to have filled the tiny cabin — a haze that may have proceeded from my own terror or from the smoky candles, or both — I saw Nub draw from somewhere among the dirty rags that hung off his person a long, rusty, curved knife. He loped towards me across the dirty floor and crouched at my feet. Obligingly, the lightning flashed once again and the thunder boomed out closer to. So, I thought, would this scene be staged: with noise and knife and quaking terror. Adrian and Ralph stood back. Evidently, like those citizens that crowd close to the scaffold to witness the agony of the dying, they were content to leave the dirty work to another but at the same time eager not to miss a moment’s pleasure. The charcoal-burner cut the cord that bound my feet together and with his blackened claws threw my legs apart as casually as if he was dealing with a beast in the shambles. My limbs were numb, I could not move them.

This dirty man looked at me, and the red-streaked whites of his eyes stood out clear in his face. He smiled his toothless smile. If he had earlier reminded me of an ape, he now appeared to me with his two protruding teeth in the likeness of a rat. And like a great rat he started to crawl up my body, gripping the knife with one hand and fumbling between my legs with the other, deliberately protracting his pleasure and my pain. He had no liking for the subtleties of untrussing and pulling down my hose, not Nub. He intended to slice through cloth and skin and sinew and all, without discrimination. I writhed, I twisted, I dwindled, as it were, into myself but to no avail. He was wiry and strong. I was lying on my back with my hands bound beneath me. His weight was on the lower part of my body from which feeling had, in any case, almost departed.

But extreme fear may give a sharpness to the mind, even to the senses. The haze over my vision cleared and I saw things clear, more clear than ever in my life. I saw the four of us as if from the outside, a frozen tableau, and here again a flash of lightning fixed us all in unmoving postures. In an instant I considered — and rejected — attempting to delay the charcoal-burner by pointing out that, if he did his worst there, where I lay on the pile of straw, the blood and mess would stain his sleeping-place. But that wouldn’t bother a torturer and executioner.

‘Wait,’ I said. My voice came out thick, as though my tongue had turned into a bolster.

‘No more words, player,’ said Adrian from where he stood on the far side of the hut. Was he putting a distance between himself and the blood that was about to be spilt? ‘We have heard enough of you.’

‘This concerns your friend — the one who is off-stage — the one in the shadows.’

I spoke as calmly and clearly as I could manage. Outside, the rain pattered steadily. My life depended on being understood. The charcoal man was still groping at my centre, questing after my fear-shrunken parts.

‘He does not exist,’ said Adrian, almost calling across the space of the tiny hut.

‘I have a message from him,’ I said.

I remembered the scrap of paper which I had retrieved from the apothecary’s shop just before the ambush in the dark. The paper with the writing which it had been too gloomy to decipher. It was still in my grasp, actually in my hand. Like a dying man clutching at a straw I had clenched my hand over it as I was assaulted in the shop, and it had remained in my closed fist ever since. At least I hoped it had. The careless cruelty with which my hands had been wound round with cord might actually have helped to keep a grip on the fragment of paper. There was no sensation in my limbs now, but I recalled how earlier, in the jolting back of the wagon, I had been half aware of holding something. In my clear-sighted desperation I suddenly realised what it might be.

‘A message?’ said Adrian.

‘He is t-t-t-time-wasting,’ stuttered Ralph. ‘Get on with it.’ This was directed at Nub, who seemed to be distracted by the conversation passing backwards and forwards over his black head. The curved, rusty knife stood erect in one hand while the other hand hovered above my groin. Possibly he waiting for the final word of command from Adrian. But Adrian was himself distracted by the noise from the black sky over the forest. He could not fully savour his revenge because he was somewhat fearful for himself. From the top of my great terror I looked down on his little fright. The other two had less imagination.

‘In my hand I have a message. See for yourself.’

I tried to speak with a confidence and sureness that I did not feel. But I am a player.

‘Behind my back. In my hand I feel it still. I have a message from your friend in the shadows. I found it in the shop of the dead apothecary. It is important. He will not thank you if you don’t recover it.’

There was a pause while my life — to say nothing of my fingers and my private parts — hung in the balance.

‘Turn him over.’

Through the ragged door I saw lightning stab at the trees. I was roughly manhandled onto my front. I lay, face down, on the stinking, prickly pile of straw. Adrian’s next words were covered by the thunder so that he had to repeat himself.

‘Look at his hands. See what he is holding.’

As if through a thick blanket, I felt a fumbling at my own bound and benumbed hands. There was a grunt from Nub which might have signified ‘here’ or ‘see’. I sensed rather than saw Adrian move closer to see what he had discovered.

‘Bring it here.’

Another grunt. The charcoal burner’s black claws tugged and twisted at something that was in my own grasp. Thank Christ the scrap of paper was still there.

‘Don’t tear it, you fool,’ said Adrian.

There was more fumbling at my back. I hoped that, in the struggle to retrieve the note, my hands might be completely unfastened. No such luck. But in order to extricate the scrap of paper from where it was wedged between my hands and the cords that secured them, Nub had to pull at the ropes and the constriction on my lower arms became a little less.

‘Give it to me.’

Over my shoulder, I again sensed rather than saw Adrian as he reached out for the paper. There was a shift in the shadows thrown by one of the candles as someone, presumably Ralph, picked it up and brought a light to bear on this puzzle. I had no idea what was on the paper which I had been clutching for hours. It might be some recipe of Old Nick’s, it might be a note of assignation dropped by a customer as he was paying for one of the apothecary’s love-philtres, it might (for all I knew) contain the identity of the secret, off-stage man who Adrian had hinted at.

None of these questions was preoccupying me at that instant. I had at most a few seconds while the attention of my captors was distracted. Not the sooty, rat-like Nub of course. Reading and writing did not concern him. Even though I was lying on my front he continued to squat on my lower legs, knife in hand, ready to continue the business of emasculation once Adrian had given the word.

I heard the low breathing of the two upright men, a whispering below the pattering rain and the thunder-grumble. From this I could deduce that there was indeed something which concerned them on the scrap of paper. There were more whispers. I went limp. I groaned and my head fell forward onto the bed of straw. I wanted Nub to think — if he was capable of thought — that I had fainted from pain or fear.

‘There are words here, player,’ said Adrian.

I stayed still and silent.

‘Valerian, ipomea, agrimony, gall-bladder, ratsfoot, antimony.’

I said nothing.

‘Why, this is nothing, Nicholas.’

‘Look carefully, it is a code,’ I said. Anything to delay them for an instant longer.

‘Well, code or no, we will decipher you first. Nub, unman Master Revill.’

Nobody moved. I thought that most probably the filthy charcoal burner had not understood the meaning of ‘unman’ — or ‘decipher’, come to that.

‘Turn him over and go on with your business.’ Adrian’s voice was unsteady.

Nub raised himself off from where he had been sitting on my calves and prepared to heave me over onto my back. Even while the business was proceeding with the scrap of paper, I had been all ears for the advance of the storm. Fortune was with me. The patron saint of players (Genesius), to whom I had prayed for aid, was above, beyond the thunder and lightning but surely directing it. There was a flash of lightning almost directly outside and a deafening burst of thunder, as if the very fabric of the world had been torn in two, and straightaway a smell of burning in my nostrils. All were distracted. Each man, torturer and victim alike, cowered within himself.

I had an instant of opportunity, and an instant only. I was half turned over on my side, still shamming faintness. My legs were free, though without much feeling in them. My hands were bound yet not so tightly as before. Drawing my breath deep inside me, I jerked up my head, which had been lolling inertly, and struck out in the general direction of the charcoal-burner’s face. I connected with his dirty nose or his hole of a mouth or some such — I cared not but was well pleased with the feel of the blow. He fell back and away from me and, by good fortune, on top of one of the candles. He may have been a little burnt and cried out in pain, but my ears still resonated to the thunder’s voice. I flailed around and struggled to get upright. My legs were weak and I staggered, stumbled and almost fell, but then was upright once more.

Adrian and Ralph stood opposite. They had not moved during this moment’s action, as if they themselves had just been transfixed by a lightning-bolt. Whether they were still deafened by the noise or dumbfounded by my sudden movement I do not know. Perhaps they were like spectators at an execution, ready for the pleasure of the event and never imagining that the condemned man might leap off the scaffold and join them in the crowd. I raised my head and screamed. A sudden shriek or scream can arrest and cow others, and on this night it seemed to me that I was the very epitome of the storm. Then I lowered my head and, with arms still tethered and on legs that were not yet altogether mine, I charged like a bull between my two tormentors. I was aiming for the ragged gap that served as a doorway to the hut. I butted into Ralph. He had a soft surface, and uttered a non-word that may have been ‘ouf’ and was anyway blotted out by the surrounding noise. He dropped the candle, which promptly extinguished itself on the ground. I tore on through the entrance, ripping my clothing on the sharp twigs and branches that surrounded it.

Then I was free and in the night air. There was a strong smell of scorching and burning together from somewhere close at hand but I did not, in my dash away from the charcoal-burner’s hut, see anything in flames. I was hardly conscious of the rain falling on my face, the continued darts of the lightning and the rip of the thunder.

I made my exit into the confusion of the night. I ran and ran and ran, as I ran once when I discovered the plague in my mother and father’s village.

I zig-zagged among trees, blundered through low-lying bushes, crashed into unseen branches, slithered down slopes, splashed through streamlets. The lightning must have illuminated my course but, for them to see me, they would have to be facing in the right direction as the flash came. My only thought — no, it was hardly a thought, more the instinct of an animal for survival — was to put as much distance between myself and those three men as possible. While I ran, I struggled to loose my hands from the bonds which tied them.

You, who sit in comfort reading this and assessing possibilities and likelihoods, may wonder how a single, frightened, bound man may make an escape from three enemies who have their hands, wits and weapons about them.

As I am running, breathless, almost sightless, hands still bound, consider (in comfort) these things.

I am a player. I have to fence, to dance, to tumble about on stage. I am required to move quickly, sometimes while speaking lines which I have committed to memory. I can run if I have to.

Against me was a fat, wheezing individual whose legs would not carry him far without rest. Against me was Adrian, who might be thin and angry and was doubtless ready for the chase but who, unless he doffed his black mantle and high hat, would not make very quick progress through the forest. Besides, I sensed that he was frightened of the storm. And against me was Nub the charcoal-burner; he might be the most dangerous. The forest was his. But he was too stupid to do anything without direction from the other two.

Consider also. I was angry. That these three men should set themselves up as a tribunal, and judge me on false evidence, and sentence me to death, as Adrian had expressed it — all this filled me with a fury that was paradoxically hot and cold. I was like the storm. When I lowered my head and charged at my captors, I saw red in front of my eyes.

Consider further.

I was afraid. Not only was I faced with death — which they were not; I was threatened also with emasculation — which they were not. The latter is perhaps, in some eyes, a worse fate than the former. There must be many men who would sooner contemplate losing their lives than being forced to part with the very instrument that makes them what they are. So I had this advantage over the rogues who had taken me prisoner. I was desperate and had everything, or nothing, to lose. A cornered man has a strength which he may not know that he possesses — until the time comes for him to use it.

So I ran. My breath came in thick gasps. Sweat and rainwater gushed into my eyes and I couldn’t brush it away. When I judged I’d put a distance between myself and the hut I stopped. I needed to catch my breath and to listen for the direction any pursuit was taking. I crouched down in the inky shadow of a great tree. It took me some moments to quieten my quivering, beating body sufficient to hear any other sounds. At first, nothing. Then, from a fair way to the left, in between the thunderstrokes and the lightning flashes, came a rustling and crashing through the underbrush. Perhaps a night creature but, more likely, one of the three men.

I tried to put myself in their position. I’d taken them by surprise and left them in darkness. Ralph would be winded after my collision with him, Adrian, already unnerved by the storm, would be thrown off balance because his carefully laid plans of torture and death had been disrupted. I had managed to strike Nub in the face but he was the kind to shrug off any hurt. Nevertheless I’d had a few moments’ advantage while they recovered and rallied their forces, enough time to cover the yards of forest immediately beyond the hut. Anyway, had I been the hunter, I would have delayed setting off in pursuit and listened instead for the blundering noise of the quarry and watched for glimpses provided by the flashes. Only when his direction was known for certain by sound would I have set off, telling those with me to fan out slightly as they beat their way through the woods. This was what I assumed Adrian would do.

The night air and the rain cooled my throbbing face. Despite my sweaty self, I shivered. I knelt in the dark, like a true penitent.

My priority was to free my hands. My shoulders ached from my arms being forced behind my back for hours. Besides the pain, it is awkward to run with your hands bound behind you, particularly if you are making your passage through a fraught wood. You are afraid for your eyes and your face, you cannot balance yourself properly, you are unable to guard against a tumble to the ground. I couldn’t cut my bonds. I had no knife — nor any means of holding one. Had I been able to find some saw-edged tree stump, I might have worked away at the cords until they frayed and parted. If all this were taking place in a play on stage, I would undoubtedly have found a cave to shelter from the storm in, a fire to warm myself by and a kindly old shepherd to provide simple country fare (and a beautiful daughter too). But it was still dark and I could not see any convenient tree stumps. And this was no play: there was a storm but no cave, lightning but no fire, and a trio of murderers rather than a kindly old shepherd (and daughter).

I had no choice but to writhe and twist and struggle with the ties that bound me. Like a man possessed, I rocked from side to side but was careful to stifle any grunts and groans, even though I considered that the swish of the rain would cover my noise. Nub had loosened the cords when he had snatched the scrap of paper from my grasp, otherwise I might not have succeeded in eventually freeing myself. My hands grew slick with moisture as I tugged and pulled. I felt the ropes slacken and give. A mixture of sweat and blood eased the passage of my wrists and hands. At last my hands fell free. They dangled at the ends of my arms like the belongings of another.

There was a pause in the thundering, which was in any case passing over. My ears still rang. Then my breath almost hopped out of me as an owl’s hoots sounded close by. Ter-wit ter-woo, three times repeated. It was no owl, of course, but fat Ralph, signalling to his companions. Sure enough, some way to the front, there was an answering hoot — the same, only slightly more convincing version of the night-bird’s cry which I had heard in the clearing by the wagon. So much for Nub. Finally there was a strangled croak from farther to the right, scarcely a bird at all or any creature known to God or man, and that I knew must be Adrian. I might have laughed out loud with relief and mockery but did not. Under the sound of the rain pattering on the leaves and dribbling from their branches, there was the noise of wheezing, again identifiable as Ralph. I breathed very shallow and huddled myself up on the ground into a kind of ball. I even shut my eyes because, like a child, I had a queer notion that if I could not see them they could not see me. Then there was a swishing and a crashing added to the wheezing as Ralph struggled, to the accompaniment of muttered curses, through the bushes and low branches to catch up with the charcoal-burner ahead. I guessed that the storm-tossed Adrian would also be striving to join his more nimble man.

Now I knew the whereabouts of all three. They were in front of me or making in that direction. Like a man at a crossroads I had a choice: to double back towards the hut, to follow in the track of my persecutors, or to turn to the right or the left. Or, simply, to keep where I was. Staying still would be the hardest. My heart was beating fast, every sinew in my body was tense with fear and expectation. I had to move.

But where? Although I thought that Adrian and the rest were in ‘front’ of me and that the hut was ‘behind’, I was by no means certain of the lie of the land. If you have ever been lost in a wood in daylight you will know how easy it is to draw circles with your feet while you think that you are ruling straight lines with your eyes. In the dark it is ten times worse. For all I knew, and especially in the rage and confusion of the storm, I might have gone round and about and ended up within yards of the hut. Nor could it be so far from day — so I reasoned to myself, the night had lasted a lifetime already, it could not be so far from day — and the dawn could expose me to my captors.

I had to hide somewhere. I did not relish spending several hours lying wet on the ground. I had the countryman’s aversion to night and the open air and the foul weather. Were it not for the real terrors that beset me, I would have been afraid of all sorts of doubtless imaginary hobgoblins and foul fiends. So does a greater fear drive out a lesser.

When I judged that Adrian and Ralph and Nub were well to the front, I headed off to the right and, at a kind of queer, crouching run, entered what seemed a less dense part of the forest. I held out my hands before my face to protect myself and tried to run silent. When I began to lose my breath once more I stopped in a place where the trees were growing apart rather than all close-clustered. After a few moments I found the tree I was searching for. I reckoned it was safer to get off the ground where I might be found at any moment. Perhaps there was some remnant of boyhood here, some memory of hiding away from playfellows among the friendly leaves, of seeing without being seen.

My tree was large and generous in the spread of its branches, the lowest of which was almost within my grasp. I scrabbled for it and slipped. The bark was slimy and water pelted my upturned face. I tried once more, caught hold and swung by weakened hands. All at once the terrors of the night, the weariness, the hunger that I felt, seemed to overwhelm me. I dangled there from the branch, my feet grazing the ground, scarcely caring whether the others caught up with me or how they would deal with me if they did. I may even have lost consciousness for a instant. Then, from somewhere or nowhere, came a burst of energy and resolution, and I found myself straddling the slippery branch.

Sopping leaves and twigs scraped at my exposed hands and face. This branch might have been good enough for a boy to sit astride but it was too slight a place to give me much ease or concealment. A little further up and over I made out a more substantial perch. I scrambled to one side, pressing the wet, knubbly bark with face and chest, gripping tight with one hand while the other searched for purchase. In the end I manoevered myself across a great, motherly branch that would have held me and many another. Once there, I slumped forward, head on my arms, my feet locked in a tight embrace about the branch. Beneath me the water dripped to the forest floor. Lightning flashed, but now at a distance; thunder, having played its part, rumbled rather than roared.

I must have slept, if you could call it sleep. Slept and woken. Slept and woken.

The short remainder of that night was split into hundreds of little portions of time and those portions split into yet more portions, and in each and every one I spent some moments anxious and alert, and passed other moments when I would not have been able to say who or where I was. Call it sleep.

At one point something dropped on my back and scuttled off down one leg. I gripped tighter on my branch.

At one point I thought how this was the third time within a few days that I had concealed myself in a tree. How I had spied on my knight and his lady in the garden. How, before that, I had climbed the pear tree and been on the verge of abandoning the chase when my eyes lighted on the carved initials WS. I wondered what Adrian had meant when he talked about another, a man off-stage who was directing their actions.

At another point I was woken by an animal cough. An eerie half light fell from above. The rain had stopped, but the air seemed to be saturated with moisture and strange, tiny, cloudy patches. I was cold and clammy. A finely-antlered deer was making his stately progress through the trees. Wisps of mist covered him up to his haunches so that he appeared as fabulous as a unicorn, a boat-like creature navigating the wood. A few yellow leaves spiralled down and vanished into the carpet of mist beside him.

Later I woke shaking. There was a stronger but still pale yellow light to one side of me, the right. Now, like a lode-stone, I could tell in which direction I pointed. I was facing to the north.

Later still I woke and saw what had been concealed by night and the thick air. I was on the edge of a clear area of the forest and ahead of me was a vista like a picture in a book. The slanting sun struck at the towers and domes of a city and glinted off a river. Above, the sky was the clearest azure, promising a fresh day and forgiveness to us all. A solitary star, still visible in the west, was soon to be outshone.

I almost wept with joy.

We had not travelled so far after all. The direction we’d taken in the wagon had been south, across the river and then through Southwark, as I had suspected. I was up a beech tree in a forest on the gentle, sloping heights south of our city. I squinted and tried to make out the shape of the Globe theatre but in the rising sun everything danced and dazzled so much that it was impossible to discern particular buildings, however large.

At that instant, for me, London might have been the new Jerusalem, a city of gold and crystal. I felt I might leap from my perch and race across the fields and plains until I reached it. I had survived a night of terror, with nothing worse than bruises and scratches. I had outwitted and escaped from three wicked men who unlawfully sought my life.

I was alive.

There was a cough underneath my branch.

The deer, of course. An innocent creature of the forest.

But this was no deer, no simple beast. It was a human cough, it was Adrian the false steward standing beneath the tree.

At first I hadn’t recognised him. From my position lying along the branch I looked straight down on the top and brim of his hat. This hat was so broad that it almost concealed the figure beneath. His breath plumed out into the cold morning air. Then he coughed again and shuffled a couple of paces forward.

My heart was thudding and my mouth was dry. I kept still. With luck he should move off. I assumed his two companions were within calling distance. When he went away I would jump down from the tree and run for my life, run for my city. It was just a matter of being patient — and still.

I continued to look at Adrian, at his back covered by the black mantle, at the hat which sat on him like a sooty chimney. But there is a strange sense in us, or in some of us, that says we are being watched even when we cannot see the watcher. Perhaps the poets are right when they poeticise about the threads of gold which connect them to their lover’s eyes or the daggers which kill when she looks on them unfavourably.

Or perhaps I simply made a noise or Adrian was brushed by a falling leaf. For whatever reason he turned to look and I knew even as his head began to move round that he was aware that something was behind and above him.

I didn’t take the time to think. If I had, various pictures would probably have flashed across my mind’s eye to do with Adrian calling out for help and the other two joining him, and then all three trapping me up the tree, like dogs with a cat. And, if I had spent time thinking it out, that is probably what would have happened.

Instead I acted by instinct.

Before Adrian’s head and upper body had completed a full turn I launched myself from the branch like a thunderbolt, like a dart of lightning. ‘Fell’ might be more precise than ‘launched’. I struck him somewhere about the middle before landing heavily and clumsily on top of him. He crumpled up and broke my fall. I did not pause to see what damage I had done to him. Frightened that he would call and bring on the others, I lashed out almost as soon as we had arrived on the ground in a tangle of limbs. I struck him about the face, I pummeled his back and shoulders. His hat had fallen off so I seized him by the hair and banged his head on the earth.

After a time I clambered upright. The red mist of anger that dropped before my eyes in the hut had returned and, through it, I cast around for a log or a stone, anything to strike at this man and crush him like a beetle. I found a fallen branch and swung it at his unmoving head like an axe. The branch must have been half-rotten — or my blows very forceful — because it snapped after ten or a dozen swings and I almost fell on top of him, carried by the force of my blows. That brought me to my senses and I staggered back against the trunk of the tree which had sheltered me and felt my gorge rise and I puked and was ashamed. Nub and Ralph were elsewhere in the forest. If anyone had been near they would have been alerted by the sounds of the fight and my gasping breath.

Nevertheless I had no time to lose. I knew what I had to do. Adrian was lying on his front, his legs in a strange, frog-like position. Blood covered the side of his face and was matted in his hair. The leaves and grass surrounding him were spattered with it. It was on my own clothing too as well as on my hands and, no doubt, face. I picked up his tall hat from where it had rolled into the undergrowth. Averting my gaze I plucked the black mantle from around his shoulders. He did not move. I was not sure that he would ever move again.

I had no time to be sorry. I scooped up Adrian’s cloak and hat in my arms and, taking a deep breath, I set my face in the direction of London. The early morning mist had nearly burnt up in the heat of the rising sun. Ahead lay the city, not quite so bright and gleaming as when I had first glimpsed it from up the beech tree. The pure azure sky was streaked with cloud.

I ran downhill, clutching Adrian’s garments. As I ran, tears and sweat streamed down my face. I had remembered the part that I was playing that afternoon at the Globe theatre. I knew what I had to do.

The play’s the thing. .