Case stood up with a satisfied look once he’d restored the female figure’s leg to its former position and back to respectability as well. ‘Made by Johannes Wilken of Dordrecht — in the Low Countries, you know. It has an additional feature which guarantees security. Look again.’
I noticed that the lock-plate held more puzzles. The woman’s arm was extended not so much in preparation for the dance but so as to point at a clock-like dial, above which some words had been inscribed, although the light was not good enough for me to make them out. Jack took his turn to look.
‘I have heard of this, I think,’ he said.
‘It is a detector lock, my friends,’ said Case quickly, unwilling to find himself trumped. ‘Every time the key is turned to lock up the cabinet, the dial moves around a notch so that the lady’s hand indicates a higher number. Note that it presently stands at thirty-nine. So if, when I next open the door, I find my lady fingering the number forty I will know that some villain has been playing fast and loose with my key. And the inscription now, you must want to know what that says…’
He peered at the cabinet lock as if to familiarize himself with the words again and then recited: ‘None but my master shall open me,
Respect my virtue if you be not he.’
Having delivered himself of all this news and the rhyme, Jonathan Case urged us to make ourselves comfortable on one of the benches at the table while he refilled our glasses.
The good doctor proceeded to talk to Jack and me about our work. He was full of praise for our abilities as players. He complimented us on our nimbleness, the injury to my side nothwithstanding. He said that we must have remarkable memories to hold our parts in our heads for one day, only to have to discard them on the next in preparation for a fresh drama. He remarked that the common belief about players — that we were little better than uneducated vagabonds — was obviously untrue, for here (looking at Jack) was a fellow who knew about gimbals and spoke French. I gazed in surprise at Jack and then remembered that he’d said something about the French legate being un favori du roi, a favourite of King James. For his part, Jack mumbled some words about having had an aunt who came from Paris. For some reason this struck us as enormously funny — an aunt from Paris! — and we hooted with laughter.
By this time, as you’ll probably have gathered, we were fairly pissed. Jonathan Case kept filling our glasses with the Osney and we kept on downing it. All thoughts of next day’s rehearsals were forgotten. After all, it was only a short walk back across the river, and the gatehouses at each end of the bridge closed later than the city ones so as to accommodate the pleasure-seeking folk who frequented Southwark in the evening. We had time for another drink. Always time for another one.
We were well settled in when a man descended the short flight of steps to the cabin. None of us heard him enter. Case started up in surprise. He did not look pleased to see the newcomer.
‘Mr Tallman,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I do not know that it is your business, Dr Case, but your brother wanted to consult me about the voyage.’
‘Well, it is I who have chartered the ship,’ said the physician. ‘He should have told me first.’
The other shrugged. He fitted his name, if I’d heard it right (by this point my senses were none too sharp). Tallman was a tall man, and a dry, austere-looking one. His black garb might have enabled him to pass for a puritan in a poor light, except that his fingers glittered with rings and the shoes on his feet were ornamented with fine silver buckles. He had not acknowledged Jack or me, by the by.
‘You can see that Colin is not here. You must go and find him elsewhere.’
The stranger turned about without a word and went up the steps as silently as he’d come. Jack said, ‘He is a navigator, a pilot?’
‘No, no, Henry Tallman is…’
But whatever Tallman was exactly we were not to find out. Instead, Case let the sentence drift away and launched into a disquisition on sailors and their strange beliefs.
At one point I got up to go outside. Unsteady on my feet, I had to cling on to the edge of the table. I stumbled up the steps, across the deck and, since the bulwarks which prevented the mariners falling off the boat were quite low, urinated with ease over the side of the boat, managing the considerable feat of not tumbling into the river. The night was still and cold. Down the front end of the craft the embers in the brazier had almost died out and there was no sound of voices. My unease at being on board a boat had gone. But then rather than going anywhere we were moored tight against the bank. I wondered what had happened to Case’s brother and his cousin, the silent Thomasina. Then I returned to the cabin and accepted Dr Case’s offer of another glass. And another. He was a generous host, dispensing several glasses for every one he consumed himself.
I’m not sure how the rest of the evening went. Knowing that the bridge gatehouses would by now be shut, Jack and I must have accepted Case’s offer of accommodation for the night, or perhaps we simply slipped into a deep, fume-filled sleep without any offer being made. Either way, we did not leave the Argo that night.
I’ve got only a couple of other memories. One was of being half hoisted, half propped up, before being escorted down into a place that was dark and dank. The other memory was earlier, even though I was still far gone, with eyelids drooping while the candles in the great cabin guttered. The physician’s cousin Thomasina finally returned — where had she been all this time? — and the middle-aged man and the young woman embraced in a close manner that, if I’d been in my right mind, I would have said was very un-cousin-like.
All of this, the extended story of the previous evening beginning in Middle Temple with Twelfth Night and ending in a stupefied state on board the Argo, unfolded behind my tightly closed eyes in much less time than it takes to tell it here. Nevertheless, even in my mind I stretched the story out longer for fear of opening those eyes a second time and discovering what I already knew.
I had to open them eventually. To glimpse a dark, cluttered space rather than the relatively comfortable cabin where Jack and I had drunk ourselves stupid. To realize that the fumy odours I was smelling emanated not just from my brain but from stacked and roped barrels. To understand that I was lying on a heap of sails or tarpaulins. To recall, when I made a slight movement, the injury I’d foolishly incurred on the Middle Temple stage. To realize that the snoring I’d heard was not my own but that of my friend and fellow, Jack Wilson.
It was some consolation not to be alone. And to hear his voice.
‘Nick? You are awake?’
‘Yes. In God’s name, what’s happening?’
‘What’s happened, more like. We drank deep last night on the Argo. So deep I fear we never left the vessel.’
‘But the vessel has left… with us on board.’
With one accord, both of us staggered off our makeshift beds. There was a conveniently placed ladder and a hatch, which yielded to our urgent shoving. In seconds Jack and I were out on deck, swaying on our feet, dazzled by the sunlight off the water, almost overwhelmed by the buffeting air.
I suppose I’d imagined that, although we’d slipped our mooring by London Bridge, we couldn’t have gone very far. That I’d look about and see the smoke of the city chimneys and the Tower of London standing proud above a huddle of dwellings. But none of this was visible. Instead, the river stretched out on either side, broader than I’ve ever seen it. Where there was land, it had the look of marsh, although in the hazy distance I discerned low hills.
Jack seized my arm. ‘Have we been captured by pirates?’
‘If we have, they’ll get no ransom for a couple of players. In fact, I can think of one or two people who might pay for us not to be returned.’
I tried to speak lightly but, in truth, I was hardly able to grasp the reality of where we were. It was the first time I’d seen the boat, the Argo, by daylight.