“And I am Tatton Chantry.”
He seated himself across the table and I ordered a glass for him. My guess was that he was two to three years older than the age I was using, and a shabby, attractive young man who seemed cheerful, perhaps because of the ale.
“You are a student?”
“Aren’t we all?” he asked, smiling widely. “But yes … I was at Cambridge, and suddenly there was no more money and I had to make my own way.
“My father,” he added, “was a yeoman who aspired to better things. He wanted education and preferment for me, and sent me on to Cambridge. He died suddenly and it was discovered that he had o’erreached himself. After he was buried I had nothing.”
“Your mother?”
He shrugged. “I never met her. She ran off, I hear, with some company of actors or something of the sort. My father never spoke of her except to say she was a good woman, that he was too dull for her.”
He took a swallow of the ale. “That surprised me, for I never found him dull. Plodding, yes. He knew how to get forward and he worked at it, bettering himself and his business. Had he aspired for less for me he might have made it.”
“And now?”
He shrugged again. “I am nothing. Occasionally an actor of small parts, a writer of ballads and broadsides, a cadger of meals or drinks, a seller of tips upon races, but never yet a thief … although I have known a few.” He had about him an extravagant manner with wide gestures and a conversation filled with exclamations. He seemed a decent fellow, although beneath his seeming confidence I detected an uncertainty, perhaps a doubt of himself or of his ability to cope with the times. “To be an actor,” he continued, “is to be a vagabond, admired on the stage, despised off it, always at the risk of the mob’s displeasure, forever vulnerable. Fortunately, I have a landlady who lost a son, and is tolerant, a mistress who is without loyalty, and companions whose pockets are empty as my own.”
We finished our glasses, and I saw in him a desire to linger. He struck me as lonely, as one without roots and destination. And I? My roots have been rudely torn up, and I had fled, so though without roots, I did have destination. Where I was going now I did not know, but eventually I would go home again.
“Do not be misled,” I commented. “This is a new England today. It is not only those who were born to the nobility or the gentry who will rule in England tomorrow, it is also those of the yeomen who have ambition.
“Look you,” I said, “they farm much land, they are the new merchants, and from them will come our new leaders. There is a place for us if we have ambition and will try for it.”
“But how?” he said. “Words are easily spoken, deeds are another thing. I have no money, I have no position, I have not even the style of dress to attract a wealthy girl … I have nothing.”
“You write ballads? Is there nothing in that?”
He laughed grimly. “Less than nothing. All copyrights are held by the Stationers’ Company, and they pay a pittance. They control all and there is nowhere else to go. A man ekes out an existence only if he can do other things as well. A dramatist does scarcely better, for he must sell his copyright to the theatrical companies, and if he gets as much as six pounds he is fortunate. No, my friend, it is no way to earn a living.”
He glanced at me again. “You have education, yet I cannot place you. Your voice has a curious inflection.”
“I am only a fortnight from the Hebrides,” I said.
“A Scot? Ah, that accounts for it.”
“My father was a scholar of sorts,” I said. “Not a teacher, except of me, but a scholar in the old way. He knew the old languages, and the old scripts, and could use a dozen alphabets, all from the Gaels or the Irish.”
“I have heard of Ogam.”
“Aye, and it was but one. Most of the old Irish books were lost, he told me, and there was much in them of which we now know nothing.”
It struck me that perhaps he was not eating as often as he would prefer, so I ordered a meat pie for each of us, and another glass.
True it was that due to Fergus MacAskill and my careful hoarding of the few coins that came my way I was for the moment secure, but already I had learned how slender is the threat that holds one from poverty and despair. Today a man may walk among his fellows esteemed by all, and having about him more than he needs of food and drink, but tomorrow all may be lost. To understand that lesson, I had only to remember my own father, and my own home. If for the moment I had something, I had always to remember how little it was, and must forever be looking about me to find some means of augmenting my fortunes.
We ate well. My guess that my new friend might be hungered proved true. During the silences I thought much on what he had said of playwrighting and ballads. My father had written a bit here and there, and sometimes as a child I had with him made up verses as we wandered over the hills, amusing ourselves with careless, casual rhymes.
Why not attempt this myself? At least, it would provide some small returns to hold off for a little longer the moment when I should again be without anything.
“How then do they live, these poets and playwrights? If their works offer so little, how can they exist?”
He broke a bit of bread from the loaf. “A patron. The secret is to find a wealthy patron who will, if you dedicate your works to him, provide you with a sum of money, or put you on a retainer. But a thankless thing it is to weave pretty rhymes for some empty-headed dolt who scarce realizes what it is you do.
“Yet I have tried. God knows, I have tried! None of them deigns to prefer my verses. They either did not reply to my offerings or they reply only with empty thanks and no money. And a poet cannot live on good wishes.”
That night when I returned to the inn, Jacob Binns was there. With rest and proper food he had recovered his spirits as well as his appearance. He had gained weight and seemed stronger. Yet he was, as I could see, a very old man.
He listened as I explained my thoughts. “It be a good thing if it can be done,” he said, “and I know of a printer, a young man from Stratford-on-Avon by the name of Richard Field. He was once apprenticed to a very old friend and I can bring you together.”
“It would help,” I agreed.
He studied me thoughtfully. “Is this what you wish to do? It is only a bit better than a beggar’s life, and in the end you will have nothing. For you depend upon the whims of others, and whims change like a weathercock.”
“Jacob? Have you heard aught of Fergus or the others? Did they make the shore?”
He shook his head. “Lad, you know there is little news of what takes place in the Hebrides, or even the Highlands, for the matter of that. I have talked with peddlers and traders and such like but have heard nothing. Yet he was a strong swimmer, lad, and if any could have made the shore it was he.”
“He was like an older brother to me, or a father. He taught me much, and I wish—”
As we sat talking thus in the common room of the inn, of a sudden the door opened and a man entered. A man? A lad, rather, but a tall, well-made lad, only a bit older than myself.
He saw me and I saw him, and although each had changed we knew each other at once. When Rafe Leckenbie and his men had attacked us, one young man had spoken a word for me and to me. This was that man!
“You!” he said. “You are here, and he is here, and you are the one thing that has rankled him most, that you escaped him. He meant to kill you.”
“Rafe Leckenbie is here?”
“Yes. He’s here. He was in much trouble there, and he ran off, and some of us with him. I, too was in trouble—and because of him.”
“Leave him then. Be your own man.”
” ‘Tis easy said. He would kill me, as he will kill you. You have only one chance! Fly! Escape before he knows you are here!”