"Is it true, sir," asked Nick, hesitatingly, "that they despitefully handled you?"

"With their tongues, ay," said Carew, bitterly; "but not otherwise." He clapped his hand upon his poniard, and threw back his head defiantly.

"They dared not come to blows--they knew my kind! Yet John Shakspere is no bad sort--he knoweth what is what. But Master Bailiff Stubbes, I ween, is a long-eared thing that brays for thistles. I'll thistle him!

He called Will Shakspere rogue. Hast ever looked through a red gla.s.s?"

"Nay," said Nick.

"Well, it turns the whole world red. And so it is with Master Stubbes.

He looks through a pair of rogue's eyes and sees the whole world rogue.

Why, boy," cried the master-player, vehemently, "he thought to buy my tongue! Marry, if tongues were troubles he has bought himself a peck!

What! Buy my silence? Nay, he'll see a deadly flash of silence when I come to my Lord the Admiral again!"

CHAPTER VII

"WELL SUNG, MASTER SKYLARK!"

It was past high noon, and they had long since left Warwick castle far behind. "Nicholas," said the master-player, in the middle of a stream of amazing stories of life in London town, "there is Blacklow knoll." He pointed to a little hill off to the left.

Nick stared; he knew the tale: how grim old Guy de Beauchamp had Piers Gaveston's head upon that hill for calling him the Black Hound of Arden.

"Ah!" said Carew, "times have changed since then, boy, when thou couldst have a man's head off for calling thee a name--or I would have yon Master Bailiff Stubbes's head off short behind the ears--and Sir Thomas Lucy's too!" he added, with a sudden flash of anger, gritting his teeth and clenching his hand upon his poniard. "But, Nicholas, hast anything to eat?"

"Nothing at all, sir."

Master Carew pulled from his pouch some barley-cakes and half a small Banbury cheese, yellow as gold and with a keen, sharp savour. "'Tis enough for both of us," said he, as they came to a shady little wood with a clear, mossy-bottomed spring running down into a green meadow with a mild noise, murmuring among the stones. "Come along, Nicholas; we'll eat it under the trees."

He had a small flask of wine, but Nick drank no wine, and went down to the spring instead. There was a wild bird singing in a bush there, and as he trotted down the slope it hushed its wandering tune. Nick took the sound up softly, and stood by the wet stones a little while, imitating the bird's trilling note, and laughing to hear it answer timidly, as if it took him for some great new bird without wings. c.o.c.king its shy head and watching him shrewdly with its beady eye, it sat, almost persuaded that it was only size which made them different, until Nick clapped his cap upon his head and strolled back, singing as he went.

It was only the thread of an old-fashioned madrigal which he had often heard his mother sing, with quaint words long since gone out of style and hardly to be understood, and between the staves a warbling, wordless refrain which he had learned out on the hills and in the fields, picked up from a bird's glad-throated morning-song.

He had always sung the plain-tunes in church without taking any particular thought about it; and he sang easily, with a clear young voice which had a full, flute-like note in it like the high, sweet song of a thrush singing in deep woods.

Gaston Carew, the master-player, was sitting with his back against an oak, placidly munching the last of the cheese, when Nick began to sing.

He started, straightening up as if some one had called him suddenly out of a sound sleep, and, turning his head, listened eagerly.

Nick mocked the wild bird, called again with a mellow, warbling trill, and then struck up the quaint old madrigal with the bird's song running through it. Carew leaped to his feet, with a flash in his dark eyes. "My soul! my soul!" he exclaimed in an excited undertone. "It is not--nay, it cannot be--why, 'tis--it is the boy! Upon my heart, he hath a skylark prisoned in his throat! _Well sung, well sung, Master Skylark!"_ he cried, clapping his hands in real delight, as Nick came singing up the bank. "Why, lad, I vow I thought thou wert up in the sky somewhere, with wings to thy back! Where didst thou learn that wonder-song?"

Nick colored up, quite taken aback. "I do na know, sir," said he; "mother learned me part, and the rest just came, I think, sir."

The master-player, his whole face alive and eager, now stared at Nicholas Attwood as fixedly as Nick had stared at him.

It was a hearty little English lad he saw, about eleven years of age, tall, slender, trimly built, and fair. A gray cloth cap clung to the side of his curly yellow head, and he wore a sleeveless jerkin of dark-blue serge, gray home-spun hose, and heelless shoes of russet leather. The white sleeves of his linen shirt were open to the elbow, and his arms were lithe and brown. His eyes were frankly clear and blue, and his red mouth had a trick of smiling that went straight to a body's heart.

"Why, lad, lad," cried Carew, breathlessly, "thou hast a very fortune in thy throat!"

Nick looked up in great surprise; and at that the master-player broke off suddenly and said no more, though such a strange light came creeping into his eyes that Nick, after meeting his fixed stare for a moment, asked uneasily if they would not better be going on.

Without a word the master-player started. Something had come into his head which seemed to more than fill his mind; for as he strode along he whistled under his breath and laughed softly to himself. Then again he snapped his fingers and took a dancing step or two across the road, and at last fell to talking aloud to himself, though Nick could not make out a single word he said, for it was in some foreign language.

"Nicholas," he said suddenly, as they pa.s.sed the winding lane that leads away to Kenilworth--"Nicholas, dost know any other songs like that?"

"Not just like that, sir," answered Nick, not knowing what to make of his companion's strange new mood; "but I know Master Will Shakspere's 'Then nightly sings the staring owl, tu-who, tu-whit, tu-who!' and 'The ousel-c.o.c.k so black of hue, with orange-tawny bill,' and then, too, I know the throstle's song that goes with it."

"Why, to be sure--to be sure thou knowest old Nick Bottom's song, for isn't thy name Nick? Well met, both song and singer--well met, I say!

Nay," he said hastily, seeing Nick about to speak; "I do not care to hear thee talk. Sing me all thy songs. I am hungry as a wolf for songs.

Why, Nicholas, I must have songs! Come, lift up that honeyed throat of thine and sing another song. Be not so backward; surely I love thee, Nick, and thou wilt sing all of thy songs for me."

He laid his hand on Nick's shoulder in his kindly way, and kept step with him like a bosom friend, so that Nick's heart beat high with pride, and he sang all the songs he knew as they walked along.

Carew listened intently, and sometimes with a fierce eagerness that almost frightened the boy; and sometimes he frowned, and said under his breath, "Tut, tut, that will not do!" but oftener he laughed without a sound, nodding his head in time to the lilting tune, and seeming vastly pleased with Nick, the singing, and last, but not least, with himself.

And when Nick had ended the master-player had not a word to say, but for half a mile gnawed his mustache in nervous silence, and looked Nick all over with a long and earnest look.

Then suddenly he slapped his thigh, and tossed his head back boldly.

"I'll do it," he said; "I'll do it if I dance on air for it! I'll have it out of Master Stubbes and canting Stratford town, or may I never thrive! My soul! it is the very thing. His eyes are like twin holidays, and he breathes the breath of spring. Nicholas, Nicholas Skylark,--Master Skylark,--why, it is a good name, in sooth, a very good name! I'll do it--I will, upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour!"

"Did ye speak to me, sir?" asked Nick, timidly.

"Nay, Nicholas; I was talking to the moon."

"Why, sir, the moon has not come yet," said Nick, staring into the western sky.

"To be sure," replied Master Carew, with a queer laugh. "Well, the silvery jade has missed the first act."

"Oh," cried Nick, reminded of the purpose of his long walk, "what will ye play for the Mayor's play, sir?"

"I don't know," replied Carew, carelessly; "it will all be done before I come. They will have had the free play this afternoon, so as to catch the pence of all the May-day crowd to-morrow."

Nick stopped in the road, and his eyes filled up with tears, so quick and bitter was the disappointment. "Why," he cried, with a tremble in his tired voice, "I thought the free play would be on the morrow--and now I have not a farthing to go in!"

"Tut, tut, thou silly lad!" laughed Carew, frankly; "am I thy friend for naught? What! let thee walk all the way to Coventry, and never see the play? Nay, on my soul! Why, Nick, I love thee, lad; and I'll do for thee in the twinkling of an eye. Canst thou speak lines by heart? Well, then, say these few after me, and bear them in thy mind."

And thereupon he hastily repeated some half a dozen disconnected lines in a high, reciting tone.

"Why, sir," cried Nick, bewildered, "it is a part!"

"To be sure," said Carew, laughing, "it is a part--and a part of a very good whole, too--a comedy by young Tom Heywood, that would make a graven image split its sides with laughing; and do thou just learn that part, good Master Skylark, and thou shalt say it in to-morrow's play."

"What, Master Carew!" gasped Nick. "I--truly? With the Lord Admiral's players?"

"Why, to be sure!" cried the master-player, in great glee, clapping him upon the back. "Didst think I meant a parcel of dirty tinkers? Nay, lad; thou art just the very fellow for the part--my lady's page should be a pretty lad, and, soul o' me, thou art that same! And, Nick, thou shalt sing Tom Heywood's newest song. It is a pretty song; it is a lark-song like thine own."

Nick could hardly believe his ears. To act with the Lord Admiral's company! To sing with them before all Coventry! It pa.s.sed the wildest dream that he had ever dreamed. What would the boys in Stratford say?

Aha! they would laugh on the other side of their mouths now!