The Pale Companion Read Online Free PDF Page A

which pulled our wagon than for ourselves – we continued our journey for the better part of the afternoon, aiming to reach that night’s destination in time for an early supper. Eating done, our time was our own. If we found ourselves in a town or even a large village we might walk around, looking to be diverted. This is what Jack and I had been doing when we’d stumbled across the Paradise Brothers’ presentation of the Cain and Abel story in Salisbury market-place.
    All the time I’d been watching that simple morality piece I’d thanked my lucky stars that I was with a great company like the Chamberlain’s. We didn’t have to wander about, enduring make-shift scaffolds and a paucity of props, together with country audiences who could afford no better. No, when the Chamberlain’s Company went touring we didn’t set up in any old hole or corner, but played the greatest towns, the grandest houses, the finest audiences. Nor did we have to endure the law’s delay or the insolence of office in the shape of self-important justices and aldermen imposing terms and conditions on what might or not be enacted in front of
their
citizens. No doubt they weren’t all like that – indeed, my new acquaintance Adam Fielding didn’t fit the description in any way. But in the country one has the expectation that everything is going to be a little slower and more awkward. Why even the rain in the shires hasn’t quite got the greasy polish of the London variety!
    You may see from the above that I am truly country-born and bred.
    Every company of players must tour, however. Why should a good thing be confined to the capital? There are more practical considerations too: you can be driven from London for a time, by an outbreak of plague or by the Council’s equally plaguey edict. You might want to withdraw yourself briefly from the easily-sated gaze of the Londoner, knowing that he will welcome you the more avidly (though without showing it, of course) on your triumphant return. And sometimes a company of players has a very particular commission to carry out. So it was with us as we proceeded north-west of Salisbury.
    I liked to imagine that our players’ tour had something in common with a royal progress. No huge entourage or strings of sumpter mules of course. But still a ceremonial advance across the land, the breathless expectation of town and village, the gratification of the inhabitants, their sense that something special had descended to touch their mundane lives. Or so I liked to imagine . . .
    However, if you’d actually seen us as we trudged along the the trackway which crossed the wide plain to the north of Salisbury, you might have thought we were no more than a band of tinkers. In the middle of our group lumbered the wagon containing the properties, the stage-cloth and other necessaries. These items, as I’d said to Adam Fielding, were considerably more valuable than mere players, and were carefully stowed and protected from the weather by tar-coated canvas sheets. Up on the wagon sat William Fall, the ‘carter’ and also one of our Company, who claimed this high position by virtue of the fact that his late father drove for a livelihood. He frequently stated that he would have earned more money by carting than playing the boards. To the carter fell the additional responsibility of caring for the horse, except when we put up at an inn where it became the ostler’s charge. Our nag was familiarly called Flem – on account, I suppose, of its being a Flanders draught horse. But the name was fitting because it wheezed and coughed a great deal, and altogether behaved as though this journey might be its last.
    Beside William Fall sat one of the two seniors on the tour, each man taking it in half-day turns to relieve his trudging feet. This morning, as we headed out of Salisbury, the reserved Richard Sincklo was sitting next to Fall. It was the responsibility of this high-up traveller to ensure we were going in the right