Mask of Night by Philip Gooden Read Free Book Online Page B

inn approached via a large courtyard with a gallery running round it. This would certainly do as a makeshift theatre. Temporary seats for the gentry were easily installed in the gallery and the penny-payers could stand on the cobblestones in the yard. We would play on an elaborate dais at the inner end, while a handful of small storage rooms could be used for dressing areas and places to stow the effects, & cetera.
    There were other benefits in our change of place. The Oxford authorities may have regarded players as vagabonds but they were reputedly less concerned about the lenten laws than their London counterparts, perhaps because the Puritans were not so powerful in the university city. In addition there would be no Privy Council breathing down our necks, on the lookout for seditious material.
    However, apart from performing in front of the good citizens of Oxford, we had another commission to carry out, as I discovered after our arrival there. The only other time I’d been on tour was in the midsummer of 1601, almost two years before. Then a group from the Chamberlain’s had journeyed to Instede House in Wiltshire to stage
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
in celebration of a noble wedding. The play had come off well enough but the wedding had not come off at all. Murder and other tragedies intervened and everyone was caught up in the affair, like it or not. *
    Now, our current business in Oxfordshire also had to do with a prospective marriage but the circumstances of this one were very different from those surrounding the Instede match (or non-match).
    A mile or so beyond the northern boundary of the city lies the village of Whittingham, and between the village and the old city walls live two families, almost side by side. They are neighbours without being particularly neighbourly. The Constants and the Sadlers are not grand people – or not very grand anyway – but they are proud and prickly. They are proud of their name and their possessions. They are prickly over any attempt to diminish either. As with many neighbours there has been a falling-out over land. Or, more precisely, over a useless strip of marsh which is too sodden to graze on, too brackish to drink from and not deep enough to keep fish in. This patch of land doesn’t even lie between their two houses but at some distance, to the south-east of the city in Cowley Marsh. The dispute over the title to this bit of bog goes back generations.
    This quarrel has never flared into real violence although each side has taken the other to law again and again. To no one’s benefit except the lawyers’ since the families have spent a hundred times more in court than the patch of land is worth. Generally an uneasy peace exists between the Constants and the Sadlers but they have never quite been on comfortable terms. In the bad old days there was nearly a duel between the heads of the two families, the winner to take possession of the bog (with the loser probably left to rot in it – those were the bad old days, after all). But good sense prevailed or cowardice or fear of the law, and the dispute has grumbled on ever since although with periods of truce.
    The oldest son in the Sadler household is a student called William. Among the Constants there is a daughter called Sarah. They hadn’t seen each other for many years, William Sadler and Sarah Constant, not since they played together as children during one of the truces between the two families. Well, when the oldest son and the oldest daughter met for the first time since childhood on neutral ground, the almost inevitable happened. Whatever the coolness between their elders, William and Sarah had been drawn to one another; had apparently continued to meet as often as they could although in secret, knowing that their parents might be displeased; had liked, loved, & cetera; had determined to marry; had even thought of elopement; but had finally confessed their mutual feelings to their mothers and fathers.
    Now, this story