Nicholas Bracewell experienced trepidation. Oxford took him nearer to a life he had relinquished and farther away from a woman he loved. It also held the possibility of a second attack from the man who had tried to kill him. There was safety in numbers, but he could not expect the company to form a cordon around him throughout their entire stay in the town. When Nicholas was alone, unguarded or asleep, he would be an inviting target for a man who could wait in the dark with catlike patience before leaping on his prey. Having failed with his knotted cord, he would next time choose a swifter means of dispatching his victim. Nicholas had to be ready for the flash of cold steel. He had a problem. In the hurly-burly of setting up the stage, marshalling the company and controlling the performance, he would be constantly distracted. Other eyes were needed to watch his back. He acquainted Edmund Hoode and Owen Elias with his plight and swore both to secrecy. When the former was not trailing his doublet against collegiate stone and the latter was not bouncing his Welsh cadences off the quadrangle at Jesus, they would be welcome sentries for a beleaguered friend.
Barnaby Gill was the real surprise. Renowned for his impish humour onstage, he was equally renowned for his morose behaviour off it, yet he was so excited when they came within sight of the town that he rode up and down the column to cheer on his colleagues and assure them that Oxford would redeem the miseries they had so far encountered. He was offering the leadership that Firethorn normally provided. His ebullience was due in part to the choice of a cherished play for the Oxford audience and in part to the fact that he knew of a tavern where he could get the sort of congenial company for the night that was difficult to find outside his London haunts. In addition to all this, Oxford gave him the opportunity to display his theatrical lore.
He drew his horse in beside Lawrence Firethorn again.
‘When the Queen came here last year-’
‘Spare me, Barnaby!’
‘She saw two comedies presented by university actors in Latin. They were meanly performed yet Her Majesty listened graciously throughout. She enjoyed them enough to invite the actors to stage their work at Court, but as their repertoire was imprisoned in the cage of a dead language, they did not oblige. The Court is too stupid to understand Latin.’
‘Is this another cautionary tale?’ said Firethorn.
‘I simply enlighten you about academic drama.’
‘It is a contradiction in terms. Too much learning silts up the drama, and too much drama destroys the supremacy of the mind.’ Jealousy rippled. ‘Besides, what can prattling, pox-faced, pigeon-chested students know about the art of acting? We have no competition here.’
‘That is my point, Lawrence.’
‘They will have seen no talent of my magnitude.’
‘Except when I last played here.’
‘Stand aside and let true greatness take the stage.’
‘I couple my first warning with another. Look for envy and suspicion from the scholars. We will meet opposition here. They hate strolling players and treat them as no more than vagabonds.’
‘Lawrence Firethorn will mend their ways.’
‘Ignore the gown and entertain the town.’
‘I want every man, woman and puking student there!’
‘The undergraduates will be on holiday.’
‘Fetch them back! Or they will miss an event as rare and memorable as an eclipse of the sun.’
‘Memorable, I grant you,’ said Gill, ‘but hardly rare. I eclipse your sun every time I pass in front of you onstage.’
They fell into a companionable argument until the town in the distance took on size and definition. An anticipatory buzz ran through the troupe. Relief was finally at hand. Wood and water gave Oxford a superb setting. Meadow, corn and hill added to its picturesque charm. Some towns were an imposition on the landscape, an ugly mass of houses, inns and civic buildings hurled by an undiscriminating hand onto the countryside to subdue the souls of those who lived there and offend the gaze of those who passed by. Oxford, by contrast, seemed to grow out of the earth like a stately mushroom, enhancing the quality of its environment while drawing immense value from it in return. Town and country sang in harmony and this impressed visitors from a capital city whose thrusting boundaries more often than not produced loud discord at its outer limits.
It was late afternoon and the sun had dipped low enough to brush the towers and steeples with a glancing brilliance. As they approached Pettypont, the fortified stone bridge over the River Cherwell, they marvelled at the Norman ingenuity that had constructed the crossing point. Christ Church Meadows stretched out expansively on their left but it was the looming tower of Magdalen College on their right that commanded attention. Directly ahead was the town wall with a cluster of buildings peering over at them with friendly condescension. Eastgate was a yawning portal that beckoned them on and gave Lawrence Firethorn a cue for a speech.
‘Enter, my friends!’ he exclaimed. ‘Where sieges have failed, we will conquer. Where university actors have bored in Latin, we will delight with the Queen’s English. Where religion has burnt men at the stake, we will be kinder parsons to our flock. Where learning flourishes, we will teach unparalleled lessons. Where drama is respected, we will give it new and awesome significance.’ His rhetoric took him through the gate and into High Street. ‘On, on, my lads! Buttress your backs and hold up your chins. Let the people of Oxford know we are here among them. Westfield’s Men arrive in triumph. We are no skulking players or roaming vagabonds. The finest actors in the world have come to this town and we must make it feel truly grateful. Smile, smile! Wave, wave! Make friends with all and sundry. Brighten their squalid existences. We wage a war of happiness!’
The brave words resuscitated the travellers and carried them up High Street in a mood of elation. The low buildings of St Edmund’s Hall were on their right, followed by the ancient Gothic front of Queen’s College. Almost directly opposite was the University College, reputedly the oldest foundation, and the heads which measured its imposing façade now switched back to the other side of the street to view the quieter majesty of All Souls. That pleasure was soon superseded by another as the imperious Parish Church of St Mary rose up to dwarf all the surrounding buildings and to spear the sky with perpendicular accuracy. Brasenose came next with Oriel College off to the left, fronted by a green that was speckled with trees. Beyond this open space and the scattered buildings around Peckwater’s Inn was the largest college of them all, Christ Church, first called Cardinal College when it was begun in 1525 by Cardinal Wolsey and now reaching out with easy magnificence even beyond the scope of its founder’s grandiose plans. Though still unfinished, it had an air of completeness and permanence, an architectural landmark against which all future collegiate building would take direction.
Barnaby Gill relished his role as the official guide.
‘Merton College is to the left, next to Corpus Christi, which stands by that woodyard. Back on this side, you can see Lincoln, then Exeter with Jesus College facing them across Turl Street.’ He flapped a wrist. ‘I can never tell whether Oxford is a town in which a university has taken root, or a university around which a town has somehow grown up, for the two are so closely entwined that it is impossible to see where the one begins and the other ends.’
It was a problem that did not afflict those who dwelt in Oxford, where the distinction between town and gown was so marked that the two halves were set irreconcilably against each other. The simmering hostility occasionally spilt over into violence and even into full-scale riot, but there was no sign of either now. A depressing uniformity had settled on the town and made the shuffling scholars merge peacefully with their counterparts among the townspeople. Nicholas Bracewell noted the same look on every face they passed. Players had often visited Oxford but the appearance of a celebrated London troupe should have elicited more than the dull curiosity it was now provoking. Lawrence Firethorn rode at the head of the company as if leading an invading army, but even his martial presence did not arouse interest. Nicholas leant across to Edmund Hoode.