The Player's Boy by Bryher

Author:Bryher [Bryher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction

IV

“Bred to the King’s Service.”

October 1618.

he rain pitted the dirty thames. It was a perilous voyage to cross the street, between the deep holes and the almost liquid mud. My old riding boots needed mending; water had come through the soles, and I felt as if I were wading barefoot through the filthy slime. Somebody had stuffed a cloth into a broken pane in the house opposite the Plough, the old, solid buildings were in disrepair, trees had been cut down, and gardens neglected. The Southwark of my childhood had almost disappeared. Rubbish heaps soiled the meadows where we used to set our maypoles, and now that the ditches were no longer cleaned, some of the ground was turning back into marsh. Stern necessity kept me to the quarter, and yet, as I counted my few pennies over to make sure that I had enough to pay for a pot of ale, I wondered if I should want to move to London even if an alchemist should change the coins into gold? After the hatred and the turmoil of the early years, Southwark had become all that I had of home. I still slept in the old garret under Mother Crofton’s roof; people knew me, and though there were still days when I longed passionately never to see the broken walls and sprawling nettles of the lost gardens again, it was comforting to return after months in the provinces, and hear Mother Crofton call, “I’ve been airing your bed for you all day,” while I was still twenty yards from her door, or have Goodman Humphries, the innkeeper, invite me to drink a health with him in real Bordeaux. Times have changed, I thought, times have changed. We are all poorer, but this is my village, and if I belong anywhere it is here. Yes, Fortune, having robbed me of most of my desires, had tossed my cradle contemptuously back to me. I shook the raindrops from my cloak, scraped off the worst of the mud and hurried into the Plough.

“Give you good even, Master Sands,” the innkeeper turned from putting some wood on to the fire, “what is your news?”

“Bad,” I answered, as soon as I saw that we were alone in the room. “The execution is to be before Westminster Hall, at ten in the morning.”

“The poor, brave gentleman,” Humphries came forward and took my cloak himself, “it would have been better for Sir Walter if he had never returned from the Indies.”

“I would he had escaped into France.”

The water was dripping from my clothes on to the clean, sanded floor. My collar was wet and I could feel how sodden my boots were. “Here, Bess,” Humphries called, “take this cloak and dry it in the kitchen. I will heat some sack,” he added, “otherwise you may get an ague.”

I hardly liked to accept the wine, because the Plough these days stood little better with fortune than myself It had never been one of the great inns, but

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