Raleigh's Page Read Online Free PDF Page A

boys went back down to their room. “Show him what’s in his sea chest,” Peter ordered as he flopped down on his bed to read.
    William showed Andrew the silver spoon and blade he was to use at table. Wrapped in silk was a small dragon made of silver, its tail a toothpick, its head an ear spade. There were also quills, paper, a lead inkwell, and an ivory-handled penknife.
    William chatted as he handed over those things. It was as if he were making gifts. For a moment Andrew forgot his strangeness. Then he remembered he was at Durham House, on trial. Perhaps what he was holding had been used by a boy who’d failed.
    He stiffened and muttered, “Never!”
    “What?” asked William.
    The younger boy shook himself. “Are these things new, or were they used by others before?” he asked.
    “A boy before,” said William. “There was a test. He lied. Mr. Raleigh sent him off.”

    Andrew had lied sometimes. He wanted to know what that boy’s test was, and his lie. Before he could ask, Peter came over with his lute. The new page’s coming had made an afternoon’s holiday for them.
    “Do you sing?” he asked Andrew.
    The boy nodded. He had a fair voice. He knew songs. “And I have a flute,” he said.
    “Get it and play for us.”
    Andrew played “Oh Noble England” better than he ever had before. William smiled and nodded approval as he kept time. He went and got his fiddle. Soon the three pages were playing and singing rounds together. Andrew’s voice was as high as Peter’s was low. William’s straggled in between. They did part-singing like Andrew had done in school. It felt good to sing. It sounded wonderful.

6
    M R . H ARRIOT
    The man who lived in the set of rooms beyond the dormitory came out with his fiddle when he heard their music. William introduced Andrew. The man’s hands were cold.
    Mr. Harriot was tall and sallow, with black hair thinning at the front and a stark black beard that against his skin appeared almost blue. His eyes were black, large as almonds. He was a little older than Andrew’s teacher back home.
    He had an easy laugh and sang tenor. Until the bell for supper the four of them made music together. Then Mr. Harriot led them down to the dining hall.
    “It will be a clear night,” he told Andrew as he headed to his place. “The light lasts long now, so after supper I’ll take you up to the roof and show you London at dusk through my glass. I call it a perspective cylinder. When it gets dark I’ll show you the stars!”
    Tremayne had told his boys about glasses for looking at a distance, but Andrew had never seen one. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I’d like that.”
    Mr. Raleigh usually dined at Court. That evening, though, he ate at Durham House, seated at his high table. The rest of his household, forty in all, sat ranked below him.
    Monsieur Pena and Mr. Harriot sat several places above the pages; Andrew sat below Peter and William. Mistress Witkens sat a few places below Andrew, her white bag cap perched and bobbing. James, the guard who’d admitted him that morning, sat next to her. He caught Andrew’s eye and winked again.
    They all watched Mr. Raleigh. No one was to begin eating until he did. He poured gravy on his gleaming silver plate, broke in bread to sop, then sprinkled on salt from an elaborate silver container shaped like a ship.
    Andrew waited for Mr. Raleigh to lift his spoon. He didn’t. Instead, he signaled the man standing behind him to carry his plate to the crone with wild hair, who sat at the last place.
    The room was silent. She muttered a prayer in Latin from the old religion. Mr. Raleigh then took his meal out of a wooden bowl like everyone else.
    “Who is she?” Andrew whispered to William.
    “A holy woman,” he replied. “Sometimes she stands out front in the Strand chanting the old prayers. She tended the chapel when the Catholic bishop and his priests lived here. When the Queen ordered them out, she wouldn’t leave. Mr. Raleigh said she