Shakespeare's Spy Read Online Free PDF Page A

use for a wig,” replied the other man, and cackling with laughter, draped Sal Pavy’s curls across his companion’s bald head.
    I tossed the stone aside. “Stupid sots. We shouldn’t let them get away wi’ this.”
    “There’s no point in getting ourselves killed over it,” Sam said. “There’s little point in calling a constable, either. Those two will get rid of the hair at the nearest wig shop, and even if we found it, we can’t very well put it back, can we?” He retrieved Sal Pavy’s cap and carefully covered the ragged remnants of the boy’s hair with it. “I don’t see any wounds. Did they hurt you?”
    Sal Pavy had ceased sobbing and was fiercely wiping away his tears with the hem of his cloak. “You might have done more to try and chase them off!”
    “What would you have us do? If we’d come any closer, they’d have cut your throat, not just your hair. Besides, we didn’t dare let them get a look at
our
luxurious locks.” Sampretended to stroke his nonexistent tresses. “They surely would have cast you aside and snatched us instead.”
    This attempt to coax Sal Pavy out of his foul mood failed miserably. “I might have expected you to make a jest of it! You’ve always made fun of my hair, both of you! I suppose you think it serves me right, getting it chopped off!”
    “Well, you know,” Sam replied, “if you’d had it cut sooner, you could have sold it for a good price yourself. As it is, you’ve neither the currency nor the curls.”
    I took Sam’s arm and drew him aside. “Can’t you see how upset ’a is? Don’t make it worse.”
    “Well, he behaves as though it’s
our
fault, for not saving his wretched hair!”
    “Perhaps it was. Perhaps we should have done more. In any case, it’s not
his
fault. Let’s get him home now.”
    “Home? It’s not even nones yet! We have half the afternoon ahead of us!”
    “Well, do as you like. I’m taking him home.”
    “When did you become so concerned about his welfare?”
    “When ’a became a part of our acting company,” I said.
    He scowled. “You’re beginning to sound the way Sander used to—like an older brother.”
    “I consider that a compliment. Now, are you coming wi’ us or not?”
    Sam sighed heavily. “All right, all right. It’s no fun going about by myself.”
    Sal Pavy walked well ahead of us, his cloak pulled tightly about him, his shoulders hunched to shelter his newly bare neck from the cold.
    I said softly to Sam, “Did you notice that things happened back there just as the cunning woman said they would?”
    “Of course I noticed.”
    “Can she truly see into the future, then, do you wis?”
    He sniffed skeptically. “More likely she was in league with those two louts, and she let them know somehow that there was a good head of hair to be had.”
    “I suppose you’re right.” I couldn’t help wondering, all the same. I was not so naive as to suppose that everything La Voisin said could be counted on to come true. Even so, was it not possible that occasionally she got a genuine glimpse of things to come?
    Sam tried his best to talk me into taking a shortcut home, across the Thames. Ordinarily, that would have been a sensible enough suggestion; we need only have paid a wherryman to row us across. But the winter had been so unusually cold that the river was frozen over from London Bridge to Whitehall, so solidly that folk had begun to venture out upon it to skate or to fish through the ice. Some parts were less solid than others, though, and the unfortunate souls who found them often ended up in the land of Rumbelow—that is to say, a watery grave.
    Though Sam seemed to think that it would be a great lark to cross on the ice, I insisted on using the bridge. “Ha’ you never heard the saying: Wise men go over London Bridge; fools go under?”
    “I had no intention of going under the bridge,” Sam grumbled, “only across the ice.”
    We came to the spot on Cheapside where the public pillory