‘Goad me and I’ll improve your ugly visage, Barnaby.’
‘Nothing could improve my face.’
‘Except a mask.’
‘Keep those two apart,’ said Firethorn from the other end of the table. ‘They are fellows in the same company, not fighting cocks with spurs on.’
‘Let’s watch the feathers fly,’ urged Elias. ‘My money rests on Giddy.’
‘And mine on Barnaby,’ said James Ingram.
Mussett shrugged. ‘It’s not a fair contest. I’ll not fight with a man whose leg is broken and whose reputation is in tatters.’
‘My reputation is impregnable,’ said Gill, tossing his head.
‘You did not see A Trick To Catch A Chaste Lady.’
‘Giddy speaks true,’ said Elias. ‘His Bedlam was a magical creation.’
‘The mayor told me that I was a finer clown than you.’
Gill curled a lip. ‘What do country bumpkins know of such things?’
‘Master Broome has seen you at the Queen’s Head whenever he was in London. His judgement is above reproach. That’s why he chose me.’
‘You were never a true clown, Giddy. You are a vagabond.’
‘I wear that title with pride.’
‘All you could offer was the false lure of novelty.’
‘That was preferred to the decaying skills of an old man.’
‘I am not old!’
‘Your body may still have vigour, but your mind has aged beyond recall.’
‘At least, I have a mind,’ responded Gill. ‘You lack anything that might be taken as a brain. Dumb animals show more sense than you, for which of them would drink themselves into a stupor so that three men could beat them for sport?’
‘I left my mark on them as well,’ boasted Mussett.
‘You’ve left one on this company and it’s a hideous stain.’
‘Do they still snarl at each other?’ said Firethorn with annoyance. ‘Knock their heads together, Owen, and let’s have some harmony.’
Mussett raised both palms. ‘No need of that,’ he said, producing a broad smile that brought a stab of pain to his swollen lip. ‘The fault is mine. Barnaby deserves my respect. And I think he needs it badly, for he’ll get little of it elsewhere.’
Gill choked back a reply, angry that the others were now siding with Mussett. Earlier in the day, none of them would speak a civil word to him yet now he was winning their regard. It was aggravating and Gill could no longer bear it. He looked around the taproom for his beast of burden.
‘George!’
‘Yes, Master Gill,’ replied Dart from a bench in the corner.
‘Take me to my room.’
‘The wounded dragon retires to its lair,’ mocked Mussett.
‘No more of that, Giddy,’ scolded Hoode. ‘You gave a promise to behave.’
‘And so I have, Edmund.’
‘Until the next contemptuous act,’ said Gill, using the crutch to get upright. ‘What will provoke it this time, Giddy? Female flesh, strong drink or your bellicose nature?’
‘None of them, Barnaby. I am reformed.’
‘Ha! You’ll tell me next that the Thames has run dry and that the Archbishop of Canterbury has turned highway robber. Reformed, are you?’ he asked, hopping out with Dart’s assistance. ‘You look the same pox-ridden botch of nature you’ve always been!’
Everyone expected Mussett to respond to the gibe but he put back his head and laughed aloud. Tension eased considerably with Gill’s departure and Hoode was relieved. An altercation between the two clowns was something that had to be prevented. Apart from anything else, it encouraged the company to take sides and that would breed more antagonism. Hoode really wanted to believe that Mussett had now reformed. Watching the man carefully, he saw how abstemious he was. The others were drinking heavily but Mussett refused to touch any ale, contented simply to be back into the fold again and determined to honour his promises. When the book holder returned, Hoode would have good news to give to Nicholas Bracewell. He had done his duty. Going to the other end of the table, the playwright had a first glass of Canary wine with Firethorn. It had a delicious taste.
When he reached his room, Barnaby Gill flicked Dart away without a word of thanks. Once again the clown was housed on the ground floor. Seeing his predicament, the landlord of the Blue Anchor had cleared out a room at the rear of the property for him and put in a truckle bed, a chair, a small table and a chamber pot. The wheelbarrow was also part of the furniture, standing incongruously below the single window. The room had once been a scullery and it preserved many aromatic memories of its former use. As he sank into the wheelbarrow, Gill was no longer aware of its compound of smells. He was preoccupied with a question that blocked out all else. How could he get rid of Giddy Mussett? How could he expose the man as the impostor he felt him to be? Gill had hoped that Mussett might save him the trouble by making himself such a liability to the company that they would oust him of their own accord. Evidently, that would not happen. Had any other hired man been guilty of Mussett’s reprehensible behaviour in Maidstone, he would have been dismissed instantly yet the obnoxious newcomer had been retained.
The person to blame, he concluded, was Nicholas Bracewell. Blind to the fact that he was reclining in a moveable couch that the book holder had worked hard to create for him, Gill persuaded himself that Nicholas was in league with Mussett against him. Who had brought the vagabond into the company even though it meant paying his debts in order to get him out of prison? Who had proclaimed Mussett’s innocence when someone trapped Gill in the privy of a wayside inn? Who had absolved the clown for the second time when he was accused of tossing a cat through Gill’s window? Nicholas Bracewell. Both outrages bore the hallmark of Giddy Mussett yet he was called to account for neither. That would only encourage him to inflict further humiliations on Gill. It was time to get his revenge. If nobody else would hound Mussett from the company, then Gill would have to do it himself. He began to speculate on the best means of doing it.
Deep in thought and simmering with anger, he was deaf to all sound. When the door inched open behind him, he was still devising harsh punishments for his rival. The attack was swift. A sack was dropped over Gill’s head then a rope encircled his chest. Before he had stopped spluttering with shock, he found himself tied securely to the support at the back of the wheelbarrow. When he tried to yell for help, a handful of sack was pushed into his mouth and bound into position by a piece of cloth. Worse was to follow. Unable to move or protest, Gill found himself being wheeled out of the room and down a couple of stone steps. He was being abducted from the inn.
Nicholas Bracewell was away for much longer than he had anticipated. Having met an old friend and his daughter, he was pressed by Sebastian Frant to meet the scrivener’s brother. Curiosity took him to the cottage but fascination kept him there. Though David Frant was a sick man, his memory was still tenacious. He talked about the changes he had seen over the years in Faversham and remembered how appalled the whole town had been at the murder of Thomas Arden. Forty years on, the crime still had a resonance.
What intrigued Nicholas most was the description of the port’s naval history. David Frant was well-informed. When he heard that Nicholas had once sailed with Drake on the circumnavigation of the globe, he was only too eager to furnish him with details of the town’s past. Though not one of the designated Cinq Ports, Faversham was a corporate member, being a limb of Dover and therefore charged with responsibilities of naval defence. Nicholas learnt that, two years before the Spanish Armada sailed, the town had fitted out a ship of fifty tons at a cost of four hundred pounds, supplementing it in Armada year itself with the Hazard, a vessel of forty tons.
Sebastian Frant was sorry when Nicholas finally bade them farewell. His brother invited him to come back at any time he chose. Impressed by Nicholas’s record as a sailor, Thomasina joined her father at the door to wave their friend off. With his mind still bubbling with naval history, Nicholas walked back towards the Blue Anchor. His route took him along the bank of the creek. He was strolling happily along when he saw an alarming sight. Drifting towards him on the evening tide, and spinning helplessly to and fro, was a rowing boat with a most unusual passenger. He was sitting upright in a wheelbarrow, trussed up with a sack over his head. The man’s body was writhing madly as he fought to escape his bounds and attract help. Nicholas felt the searing pain of recognition. It was Barnaby Gill.