I wondered why Master Robert Mink had suggested a meeting here, away from the Southwark haunts. Within, The Ram was not crammed. Smoke and whispering and little barks of laughter emerged from a group knotted in one corner. Despite the paucity of lamps overhead, I easily spotted my co-player at a table on the opposite side of the room.
‘Sit down, Nick.’
He shouted to a young, feeble-looking drawer for another pint-pot for himself and an additional one for me, and, when the lad was slow to move, shouted again, ‘Quickly, before my friend dies of thirst. I have already passed on, and believe I must be in Purgatory now.’
There was a single, sickly candle on the elmwood table at which we sat. By its smoky flicker, I watched the quiver of Master Mink’s chins.
‘You’re doubtless asking yourself why I come to this hole when there are so many other holes south of the river, and close to our great Globe too, where I could be equally badly served.’
I said that something of the kind had occurred to me while I slithered over the cobbles outside.
‘I like sometimes to put a distance between the place where I earn my bread and the place where I eat it — or drink it. I also have an affection for this part of town. I once had a connection with the Red Bull. Boy, where is that drink!’
Out of the shadows, as if on cue, hobbled the puny drawer, no more than a boy, I saw now. One foot dragged slightly behind him, as if struggling to keep up. His mouth wrestled with some simple phrase — probably that cry of drawers everywhere, ‘Anon, anon sir’ — but it was plain that he had even less command over his words than he did over his movements. His outstretched hands shook so that the two tankards which he was carrying slopped over onto the filthy flooring. He tried to place them in front of us but kept missing the expanse of the table-top. At each attempt, another ale-spurt leaped up and over the rims. Master Mink seemed split between deep irritation and high amusement at the boy’s efforts, but finally he half rose, seized the tankards and put them on the table himself.
The boy stared.
‘Avaunt thee, Gilbert,’ said Master Mink. ‘Avaunt, I say. In plain English, go. Shog off.’
When the boy had turned and shambled away, a process that took some time, Master Mink said, ‘There goes a by-blow of the landlady’s. Mistress Goodride is her name and that is her nature too. Well, the fruit of her loins shows all too clearly the mark of her sin. She bore him, and now Gilbert Goodride bears his mother’s sin, I say.’
‘You sound like my father,’ I said.
‘Was he a player?’
‘A parson.’
Though many men might not have been, Robert Mink seemed pleased by this comparison to a pulpit-pounder.
‘Is her name really Mistress Goodride, Master Mink?’ I said, thinking that, like The Beast with Two Backs, this tavern-keeper’s name might be another witty invention by my colleague.
‘Robert you may call me. After all, we share a profession and a workplace, and have a licence to be familiar. As for the name of Goodride, it will do as well as any other.’
I wondered how much to believe. I decided to revert to what we had been talking of before the arrival of the unfortunate Gilbert.
‘You played the Red Bull?’
‘A long time ago.’
‘That is the only playhouse I have not visited.’
‘I have played every one of them.’
‘But the Globe is the finest?’
‘Yes, how can it be otherwise, with the Brothers Cabbage and Master Shakeshift and all, telling us that it is so.’
I was a little shocked at the irreverence, and my face must have given me away.
‘You have not been long at this game, have you, Nicholas?’
‘Two years almost,’ I said.
‘And you are from the west?’
I remembered how tartly I had answered Master Burbage over the matter of my origins, so this time I rested content with a nod.
‘And now you are here, drawn by this siren?’
For an instant I thought that he was referring to Nell or some other trull or doxy.
‘I mean London,’ said Master Mink. ‘I mean, to speak more precisely, the itch of playing. That is your siren.’
‘And so, if playing is my siren, I will not be pleased until I have dashed myself on the rocks?’ I said, wanting (as I had with Master WS), to impress this strange man with my learning.
‘None of us is pleased until he has dashed himself on the rocks,’ said Master Mink gloomily. ‘Do you think Odysseus could ever sleep happy again once he had heard the song of the sirens?’
‘Do you remember Robert Greene?’ I said, partly because I wanted to shift his mood and partly because I was genuinely interested in those giants, the playwrights and versifiers of the eighties and early nineties. ‘Though I know that your opinion of authors is not great.’
‘Oh yes, Greene I remember. . and George Peele. . Kit Marlowe. . and Tom Nashe, Tom Lodge. Thomas Watson, too. Thomas is a good name for an author, is it not? That’s what they were all called. Thomas. Thomas Kyd, him as well.’
‘Kyd of the Spanish Tragedy?’
‘The very same.’
Now this was like hearing that my interlocutor had walked with Elijah or spoken with John the Baptist. Men such as Kyd, with their blood-and-thunder tales of revenge, were the harbingers to our latter-day, refined masters like Master WS.
‘Oh, Thomas is a good journeyman name, a good no-nonsense name,’ Robert Mink continued. ‘Boy, boy Gilbert, another drink for my friend and me!’
Mink’s reminiscent, almost womanish, mood was replaced with a stentorian bellow as he called for more refreshment. So loud and abrupt was his shout that it not only caused me to jump, spilling some of what remained in my pot (Master Robert was drinking more rapidly than I could manage), but it provoked a stir in the quietly buzzing, gently smoking huddle in the opposite corner. One or two pale faces were even turned in our direction through the gloom.
‘Where are they now?’
I said nothing; I can recognise a rhetorical question when I hear one.
‘Dead and gone, in disgrace or in obscurity,’ said Master Mink. ‘Kit Marlowe stabbed in Deptford, Greene dying with nothing, so that his wife could not even afford a winding-sheet. Kyd tortured in the Tower and now gone too. You hear what I say about dashing oneself on the rocks? Do you think it was the sirens’ song that Odysseus really wanted — or the rocks? Then there was that Thomas Nashe looking for sanctuary in, let me see, in. . where was it?’
Out of the smoky darkness I could see Gilbert Goodride, the hapless drawer, commencing his progress towards us, clutching two more tankards which, brimming in the beginning, would lose much of their freight before the end of their journey.
‘I have it!’ said Master Mink.
‘What?’ I said, my mind and eyes on the hobbling little figure.
‘Yarmouth! Nashe sought sanctuary in Yarmouth after he ran into trouble with the Council over The Isle of Dogs.’
‘What trouble?’ I said, trying to distract Master Mink from Gilbert’s advance. I had a nasty feeling that this was not going to turn out well.
‘Lewd matters. Veiled attacks on someone in authority. Something that got up the Council’s nose. Or most probably Mr Secretary Burghley’s. WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, YOU HALTING HALF-WIT!’
A combination of shaking hands and uneven gait notwithstanding, the boy had reached us with the slopping tankards. At the last moment, though, a spasm jerked the remaining contents of one of the pots over Master Mink. Now, my companion was, I had already observed, particular in the manner of his dress (unlike some players, who, appearing as kings, queens and princes during their afternoons in the playhouse, are content to pass for mechanics and handicrafts-men in their private hours). Even by the fitful, smoky light of the tavern corner, anyone might see that Robert Mink was well turned out; his doublet alone, Dutch-fashion and long-pointed, would have cost me two weeks’ wages. Now his ample frontage was soaked in ale. Some of the liquid spattered his smooth cheeks and folded chins.