The Pale Companion by Philip Gooden Read Free Book Online

ostentation. Maybe I was infected by Laurence Savage’s impatient, even contemptuous attitude towards Instede and its owner, for these were among the first thoughts that went through my mind as we covered the final distance towards the house.
    The great oblong face seemed more glass than wall, although the cold sheen of the windows was offset by the warm stone of the frontage. At the corners were little towers: slim, elegant features that my lady might have sketched out for the builders after they came into her mind while she was lounging in bed one morning. Before we could get too near to the main entrance, a liveried figure approached our little convoy and spoke to Master Pope, who was sitting up on the wagon beside William Fall. No doubt the servant was enquiring after our business. Anyway, we changed direction and moved parallel to the house and then turned again to go down one flank of Instede. It was like circumnavigating some island in the main, I imagine, searching for a favourable landing-point. I have been in some of London’s great houses – have even been a guest in one or two – but they seemed pinched and constrained in contrast to this magnificent edifice. Eventually, after rounding yet another corner, we fetched up at an entrance which was suitable for players and other riff-raff. That is, it was slightly less grand than the rest.
    We found ourselves in an inner courtyard. Our seniors, Messrs Sincklo and Pope, now engaged in earnest conversation with a stick-like individual whom I took to be a steward. I stood back with Laurence Savage and Jack Wilson and the others, happy enough to wait for instructions. Oh, we knew our places.
    Eventually, the property wagon drawn by Flem was led off by one of the servants while the steward beckoned us with a haughty long-armed wave to attend him. Sincklo and Pope went first and we followed. We entered by a low doorway, which restricted us to single file, and then almost immediately started to mount some stairs. I’ve never climbed so many stairs in my life. One flight was succeeded by another until it seemed as though we must be due to scrape heaven. At last we fetched up in a long dusty dormitory which, by its slanting ceiling, roughcast walls and squinty windows, occupied the very topmost storey of Instede. Lines of trestle beds stretched down both sides of the room. This, we gathered from our superior conductor, was our place. His name was Oswald Eden and it was apparent from his words and manner that he had a low view of players.
    “Well, gentlemen, dispose yourselves as you please. You are generously housed here, above your deserts though it may be.”
    He had a dry voice, like dead leaves scraping across a yard. His arms, I noted, were almost abnormally long. They fitted his stick shape.
    “Account yourselves fortunate,” added this magnanimous man.
    I was surprised that our seniors didn’t bridle under this treatment. If Master Shakespeare or Dick Burbage had been with us, surely they would have put the fellow in his place. Why, they’d only have to tell him that we had played – and played regularly – before the Queen and her Court to assure him of our quality. And after all, we weren’t interlopers; we had been
invited
down to this remote (albeit grand) pile. But Sincklo and Pope seemed to accept the steward’s highhandedness. Perhaps it amused them. But me it angered, and I said as much to Laurence Savage.
    “The man is often mightier than the master,” he replied. “Though in Elcombe’s case the master is mighty enough.”
    Anyway, the steward soon left us alone to settle into our new quarters. At the top of this great house the air hung hot and heavy, where it had been stewing all day underneath the leads. Motes of dust swayed idly in the sun’s beams. It was the kind of afternoon that seems a rehearsal for eternity. Two or three of our number lay down on the narrow beds to resume their interrupted woodland sleep. But Richard Sincklo would