Ink and Steel

Poley, who was drinking wine without water and eating beef like a man of prosperity. And who seemed to have set up shop in that particular corner of the Sergeant, given the number of men who came and went near him in ones and twos and sometimes threes. Some sat for a game of tables or draughts or diced a bit, while some merely quaffed a drink and spent a few moments in quiet conversation. Will wasn’t sure quite when, but after the third or fourth visit, he started jotting descriptions and the one or two names he knew Gardner, Justice of the Peace for Southwark. Oh, really? on the reverse of a sonnet that began ‘Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye’. He kept another sheet handy to drag across the paper. He and Kit had run in different circles, away from their connection to the theatre and the financial straits that had occasioned sharing lodgings and companies, the Admiral’s Men and lord Strange’s Men, for whom they both wrote plays.

Will didn’t know most of Poley’s associates. But Poley was one of the men who had been in that small room where Kit had died.

Poley never passed more than a glance in his direction in the brief gaps between guests. Will noticed that such patrons as did not seek Poley avoided him; he surmised that this was as much to do with Poley’s own reputation as the company he kept. The visitors seemed to come and go at regulated intervals. As the sun set and the moon rose, Will gathered up his courage and took a single deep breath. He spindled his poems lengthwise preparatory to tucking them back inside his doublet. That accomplished, he was making his way to the landlady to purchase ale for himself and wine for Poley when he saw a face he did recognize, and froze.

Richard Baines. A tall, fair man with a saddler’s forearms, a cleric’s smile, and a poison pen. Blessing his dull brown doublet and the darkness of his hair, Will stepped back into the shadows beside the bar, watching as Poley rose to meet his newest guest which Will had not seen him do before until the two heads leaned together, fair and fair. They embraced, and Will saw the glitter of a band on Baines thumb, a gold circle surrounding an inset of some darker metal, like the one Oxford wore. The flash of it drew Will’s eye to an odd-shaped scar on the base of the thumb, a string of pale knots like pearls.

Baines, Will knew through Kit and Thomas Kyd, and Baines would recognize him. But the men weren’t looking, so Will turned as if watching the landlady go shutter the windows, ducked to swing his hair across his profile, and started for the door.

Why is Robert Poley, who stood by when a knife went in Kit’s eye, talking to Richard Baines, who puts a knife to his reputation now that the man is dead?

For it was Baines who had written a note to the Privy Council that might have seen Kit hanged for heresy.

Salty sourness filled Will’s mouth, and he hesitated a moment and stole one final glance, thinking it safe enough with Baines back to the room.

But he found himself staring directly into Poley’s eyes, as if the man had been tracking his motion across the room. Will froze like a doe at the crack of a twig as Poley’s hand went out to rest on Baines thick forearm. Baines turned, and both men began to stand, and Will took one more hasty step toward the door before Baines mocking baritone arrested his motion like a bullwhip flicked at his nose.

“Well, well.” The big man swung a leg over his bench as he turned and stood. “William Shake-scene. Come sniffing after better company now that yourfancy-boy’s dead?”

Will stepped diagonally toward the door. “I was after supper,” he said, wishing himself better armed than with a handspan beltknife. “And I’ve had it. Good even to you, Master Baines, and I’ll thank you not to idly insult me.” Some impulse made him step forward and add, “Or slander my friends, sirrah.”

Benches scraped on planks as the Sergeant’s custom recognized a brewing fight.

“Friends,” Baines answered with a sneer. “That’s not what they call it that I ever heard. What will you do for a living now, you poor excuse of a playmaker? Without that drunken sodomite Marley to doctor your work and bugger…”

Will opened his mouth to interrupt, but a determined, feminine voice overrode the first rumble of his retort.

“Master Poley.” The landlady stepped between Will and Baines, ample hands on her ample hips, and tilted her head to glare around Baines broad shoulder at Poley. “You will control your friend. I’ll not have any man driving off custom.”

“Mistress Mathews,” Poley said, and he laid a hand on Baines arm. “As you wish it.” But his eyes met Will’s quite plainly, and the glare that followed Will to the door said, ‘And don’t come back.’

Well, Will thought later, barring the door of his own room behind him before tossing his much-battered sheaf of sonnets on the table, that could have ended much worse.

   Act I, scene vi

Bernardine:

Thou hast committed…

Barabas :