Sleep of Death by Philip Gooden Read Free Book Online Page A

opposite wall of the narrow little passage and then cannoned into me. Being barged into was becoming a regular occurrence, and I had my dignity as a player to consider. I stuck my foot out and he fell sprawling. Behind him was another man in a short black cloak, and wearing a tall black hat.
    ‘Get him! Hold him!’ he hissed.
    Obligingly I knelt in the small of the big fellow’s back. He groaned but made no effort to get away. Black Cloak knelt down beside me and ran his hands over the fallen man’s jerkin.
    ‘Ah, I thought so.’
    He held up a necklace that, to my inexperienced eye, looked valuable.
    ‘Ungrateful bastard, Jacob,’ he said slowly and deliberately to the man who was face down on the floor. ‘And after the kindness of Sir Thomas and his lady towards you.’
    The other made a gurgling sound but still said nothing. Black Cloak looked at me and my evident costume. He had a long nose which was as sharp as a razor.
    ‘You’re a player?’
    ‘I have a message to deliver.’ I was still holding Master Mink’s billet doux.
    ‘Never mind that. Sir Thomas will want to thank you in person for stopping this fellow from getting away.’
    He urged the man to his feet, tugging at his arm. I took the other and, like a couple of constables, we escorted him back along the passage. He was a lumbering individual, with a scrawny beard, almost a head taller than I. As we neared the door of the box from which these two had so abruptly exited, Black Cloak reached up and cuffed him about the head. This seemed unnecessary since he was as docile and cowed as a whipped bear. We crowded through the entrance to the box. Two men were sitting watching the stage. Beside them sat an attractive woman with an oval face and golden hair that reminded me a little of my whore Nell’s. The dress of these individuals showed their wealth: the woman, for example, was wearing a jewel-encrusted farthingale and a low decolletage that uncovered a fine cleavage, a mode that was usually the sign of an unmarried woman. Seeing them watching the play down below, I was reminded that I was part of
A City Pleasure,
and no part at all of whatever was occurring among these spectators. I must return to the tiring-room within a few minutes. I cursed Master Mink for sending me to deliver the note now stuffed into a pocket. The older of the two men in the box glanced in our direction but he appeared little concerned with whatever had taken place in the box or outside in the corridor.
    ‘Now, Sir Thomas, he is here,’ said Black Cloak to the older of the seated men, pushing forward the bear-like fellow into the centre of the little room. At the same time he flourished the necklace in a way that I can only describe as theatrical. The woman’s hand went slowly, almost in a caress, up to her throat.
    ‘I saw Jacob slip this from my lady’s white neck’ – he waved the pearl necklace so that it looked like a stream of milk – ‘oh so closely while all of you were attending to the play. He’s a cunning one. He possesses subtle pickers and stealers for all his size. I saw it all from where I was standing behind you. How did he think that he would get away with it?’
    In demonstration, Black Cloak seized the right hand of the larger man in his left and held it up to display to the others. I had the impression that, if he could, he would have detached each of the large man’s blunt fingers and passed them around in proof of what he was saying. Yet I could see nothing delicate in these fingers that were supposed to have stolen. I stood, uneasily, at the rear of the box, puzzled because the large man made no attempt to wrest his hand away from the other’s grasp. Nor did he speak. He merely hung, crestfallen, in the centre of this little group.
    ‘He saw that I had witnessed all of it,’ continued the man in the black cloak. ‘My eyes are everywhere, you know, in your service, Sir Thomas. He tried to get away. I followed him out and, by good fortune,