“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. Cocking 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 passed 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-cock 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 passed 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!
“But will they have me, sir?” he asked doubtfully.
“Have thee?” said Master Carew, haughtily. “If I say go, thou shalt go.
I am master here. And I tell thee, Nick, that thou shalt see the play,
and be the play, in part, and—well, we shall see what we shall see.”
With that he fell to humming and chuckling to himself, as if he had
swallowed a water-mill, while Nick turned ecstatic cart-wheels along the
grass beside the road, until presently Coventry came in sight.