the cart roads and lanes, roamed along the seashore, and explored many ruins
left unnoticed before his time. My father had traveled with him a time or two
for a few days. His name, I recalled, was John Leland.
He died well before my time and before his history was written, but his notes
had been copied.
Now if I could come upon such a copy …
Frequently I’d seen a man about the public room at the inn who eyed me from time
to time with a quizzical cast to his eye. He had the look of a rogue, and I’d no
doubt he was one, but he struck me as an amusing and interesting fellow. So when
he next looked regretfully into the bottom of his glass, I suggested he have
another.
He accepted quickly enough, and I said, “You have the look of a man who knows
what’s about.”
“Here and there,” he admitted.
“There was a man named John Leland who wrote some notes for a book about
England. I’d like a copy of them.”
“A copy of a book?” he started at me, then shook his head. “I know nought of
such things.” He looked up from his glass. “It comes upon me that I know a man
who once said he’d copy anything for a price, and reasonable enough, too.”
“You have a glass of ale,” I said, “and you can have another, or a meal if you
like. Who is this man?”
He glanced right and left, yet I believe it was the looks of Jublain, not too
unlike his own kind, that won him in the end. “Do you know Saint Paul’s Walk?”
“I do,” said Jublain.
“There be scribes there, and there be one scribe who … well, what you need
done, he will do. He knows much of books and such. If it is a copy of something,
he’ll find it for you.”
“What is it to be? The meal or the ale?”
He grinned, his teeth yellow and broken. “I’d prefer the drink but I need the
meat.”
When I had ordered, I asked, “The name?”
“Ask for Peter Tallis. If it be an altered bill of lading, a warrant or a
license, he will have it for you.”
When we were outside Jublain looked at me, exasperated. “You are an odd one. Who
would pay for the copy of some idle notes?”
“Watch me,” I replied cheerfully. “I will pay.”
Saint Paul’s Walk was where London’s heart could be heard beating. Actually, it
was the nave of the great cathedral, but forgetting that Jesus had driven the
moneylenders from the temple, the Dean had welcomed them back, and with them had
come the scribes, the lawyers, sellers of badges and souvenirs, and, in fact,
every sort of business. The playing of ball was forbidden, as was the riding or
leading of horses.
It had become the greatest promenade in London, haunted by gallants courting
their ladies (or prospecting for new ladies to court), and by thieves,
pickpockets and traders. Tailors came there to study the latest in fashions, and
around the north door gathered balladmongers, sellers of broadsides and street
musicians.
We made our way through a confusion of people and their accompanying odors.
People crowded about the stalls, listening to the pitch of the venders, or to
the more intimate sounds of rustling petticoats.
Peter Tallis proved to be a man of middle age, with curled gray hair at his
temples and no wig. When I stated my purpose he leaned back in his chair with a
fat smile. “Hah! At last a new request! I have been asked for everything but
this! Yet … it amuses me. And I know of these notes.”
“You have seen them?”
“Ah, no! But … I knew the man. He came often to the Walk to question people.
As you know, this is the greatest clearing house for information in all of
London—perhaps the greatest in Europe. More business is done here in a day than
at the Royal Exchange in a week.
“You wish a copy of all his notes? I have the very man for it … a student.
Very bright, very sharp.” He glanced up at me again. “Who shall I say wants this
work?”
“You need not say. Had I the time I would find and copy the notes myself, but I
need them now. At once.”
“You can write?” Tallis was skeptical.
“As well as you, my friend, and perhaps better,” I replied brusquely. “When the
copy of the book is ready I shall pay you eight shillings for it.”
“It is very little.”
“It is very much. A farm laborer makes but three shillings a week.”
“This is a man who can write,” Tallis protested. “Ten shillings.”
“Nine, then,” I said, “but not a penny more, or I do it myself.”
“Nine then.” He paused. “Where shall it be delivered?”
“I will come back in one week,” I said.
“Nine shillings!” Jublain protested, as we walked away. “Are you made of money?
Nine shillings for something you have never seen! What are you thinking of?”
“It’s a gamble,” I replied frankly. “I need friends, and aside from you I have
none. I need money, and believe I see a way to get it.”
“It had better work,” Jublain replied grimly. “You are spending enough.”
Much of the money I had brought was gone. More would be gone by the week’s end,
but I still had four gold pieces, ancient coins brought to Britain by some
traveler or soldier.
By dint of much walking I priced coins in various shops, even bought two in a
junk shop where they lay amid a lot of mixed stuff. One was of bronze, the other
silver.
“Look you,” Jublain protested, when once more we sat in the inn with tankards of
ale before us, “Essex is in Ireland. He will need fighting men. We could—”
“I have naught against the Irish.”
“How many wars are there, that you pick and choose?”
“Go to Essex if you wish. I shall go to America, a quick voyage and home again
with riches.”
“You tell me to go? We are friends, Barnabas. Anyway, I must see what comes of
this madness.”
“Enough for now. There is a play at the Globe. In my life I have seen but one
play and that in an inn yard. This is about Julius Caesar.”
“If you must go, carry a sword. There are roving gangs, and even inside the
theater there is trouble. The last time I went, some idle son threw a beef bone
that near broke my skull.”
“If you have not heard,” it was the man for whom I’d bought the meal, “you had
best know. The theater sits now on the Bankside near Maiden Lane. They took it
up one night and carried it over the Thames.”
“Carried a theater? What nonsense is this?”
“The old man, Burbage, died and left the theater to his sons, Cuthbert and
Richard. Left the building, that is. It stood upon land belonging to Alleyn, who
would not lease it to them.”
“So?”
“One dark night a set of rough fellows, Richard Burbage among them, came across
the river armed with swords, daggers, bills and hooks. They tore down the
theater and took it over the river. The Thames was frozen, so they carried it
over on the ice.
“Alleyn was that beside himself, but he had not the men to stop them. Burbage
had a carpenter named Streat with him, and William Smyth and who knows who else?
Some say Will Kemp was along, and Shakespeare, too, that actor who writes.”
“You seem to know a bit of all that goes on,” I commented.
“Aye, if you’ve aught to sell, I will find a buyer. If there’s a place you’d go,
I can take you there. If there’s a man you must meet, I can arrange that, too.”
“And a woman?” Jublain suggested.
“That a man must do for himself, unless. …”
“Unless what?”
“If it were business, serious business …”
“And your name?”
“I am Corvino, once an acrobat and a clown.”
“No longer?”
“I took a fall. I am agile enough, but not for that. Not again. Not me.”
“Come with us to the theater, Corvino. I have a matter to discuss. There is a
Society of Antiquaries. Do you know of them?”
“A bit. ”
The plan that had come to me was not complicated. In our Elizabethan world, to
succeed a man needed at least strength, courage, and, if not those, the favor of
friends. I was ambitious, I suppose, but I had no connections at court, nor was
I wishful to enter that world. I wanted to do something, to accomplish, to
achieve, but even for that one needed opportunity. And opportunity could be had
only through the favor of some great man.
The discovery on the Devil’s Dyke was an omen. It was a beginning, a foothold.