'I like not dead weight between my legs, sir.'
'Then let me extract him from you.'
He took hold of Willoughby beneath the armpits and lifted him off the bed. Lowering him into a sitting position on the floor, Nicholas shook him vigorously but could not wake him up. The playwright was in a complete stupor.
Nell rearranged herself into a more alluring pose.
'Drag him outside, sir, and return for his reward.'
'Alas, mistress, I am not able to take his place.'
‘But you are the properer man of the two, I can tell.'
'I must needs take my friend home.'
'I did not know he had a home,' she observed. 'Unless it be up here. He spent last night in my arms and the one before. A stranger bedfellow I could not wish for, sir.'
'In what way?'
'Men love to talk of sin when they sup at my table. Yet when this one tasted my ware, he babbled of nothing but religion.
'Religion?'
'Haply, I excited his spirit,' said Nell. 'Rut I did not mind this speech. It is all one to me. His bishop in a purple cap went neatly into my confessional box and stayed till he was excommunicate'
Nicholas was amused by the metaphor and saw that she was no ordinary whore. Her ample frame and ready turn of phrase made her the particular choice of Ralph Willoughby. Whatever turmoil the playwright had been in, she had clearly helped him through it. Reaching into his purse, Nicholas handed her some money for her pains. Nell beamed her gratitude and leapt up off the bed to embrace him in a sensational bear-hug. He detached himself with difficulty and hauled Willoughby out into the passageway. Nell lolled in the doorway.
'Who is the poor creature?' she said.
'A good man fallen on bad times.’
'I know him only as Ralph who comes to take communion with me.'
'He is not fit for the service tonight, I fear.'
'That disappoints me, sir,' she sighed. 'When he was with me last, he made love as if the Devil was dancing on his buttocks.'
It was an apt image and more accurate than she realised.
Nicholas lifted him on to his feet then bent down to let the body fall across his shoulder. Waving a farewell to the irrepressible Nell he went carefully down the stairs so that he did not bang Willoughby's head against the wall.
Coming out into the street, he began the long, slow walk.
*
Edmund Hoode always worked best in the hours of darkness. When he was closeted in his lodging with no more than a candle and his writing materials, he could devote his full attention to the project in hand. There were far too many distractions during the day and he was, in any case, usually required for rehearsal or performance by the company. When night drew its black cloak around him, however, he came fully alive and his mind buzzed with creativity. As he sat over his table now, verse of surpassing excellence streamed through his brain but it was not part of some new play that he was writing. The inspiration and the object of his poetic impulse was Grace Napier.
She was perfection. As he reflected upon her virtues, he saw that she was the woman for whom he had been waiting all his life. She gave him purpose. She redeemed him. Compared with her, all the other women who had aroused his interest were nonentities, momentary distractions while he waited for his true love to come along. With those others, the chase had often been an end in itself. Consummation was rare and the certain conclusion of a relationship. Cupid was never kind to him. He had known much sadness between the sheets.
Grace Napier was different. She belonged to another order of being. He did not view her in terms of pursuit and conquest because that would demean her and drag her down from the lofty pedestal on which he had set her. All his thoughts now turned on one objective. N4arriage to his beloved. In the headlong rush of his ardour, he did not stop to consider the practicalities of such a wild hope. The fact that he had no house to offer her, still less a high income to serve her demands, did not stay his fantasies. He would make any sacrifice for her even if it meant that he left the theatre. Edmund Hoode wanted nothing more than to devote his energies to the composition of odes to her beauty and sonnets in praise of her sweetness.
‘I'll wrap my arms around your slender waist,
My gracious love, I would not be dis -graced.’
The lines sprang new-minted from his pen. He studied them on the vellum then rejected them for their banality. Grace deserved better. He killed the couplet with a slash of ink and turned to his Muse once more. Richer lines began to flow. Deeper resonances were sounded. Whenever he glanced up from his work, he saw Grace Napier on her pedestal, giving him that special smile which was poetry in itself.
Horror suddenly intruded. As he looked up at her once more, there was someone else beside her, an arresting figure with the arrogant grin of a practised voluptuary. Hoode recognised him at once.
It was Lawrence Firethorn.
An anxiety which had been at the back of his mind for days now thrust itself forward. Firethorn was a real threat. Dozens of beautiful young ladies were hypnotised by the tawdry glamour of the playhouse and were ready to surrender themselves to its ambiguous charms. Those who worshipped at the shrine of West field's Men inevitably tended to see Firethorn as their god. His bravura performances could not be matched by lesser players in smaller roles. Firethorn had no compunction about exploiting the adulation to the full. Swooning females were simply the spoils of war that fell to the victorious general and not even the vigilant eye of his wife, Margery, could stop him from exercising the age-old rites of soldiery. A few discerning acolytes-as Hoode liked to style them-had chosen him in place of the actor-manager. But he was seldom allowed to take advantage of their interest. Lawrence Firethorn had a distressing habit of stepping in and whisking the admirers-quite literally-out from under him.
That was not going to happen with Grace Napier.
‘Stay close, my love, avoid the scorching fire,
Prick not yourself upon that thorn's desire.’
They were not lines to be sent to his loved one. Hoode would engrave them upon his own heart to act as a warning. Whatever else he did, he must not introduce Grace to the insatiable Lawrence Firethorn.
Further meditation was interrupted by a banging on the door. He went over to unbolt it then opened it wide. Nicholas Bracewell stood there with a familiar figure over his shoulder. Hoode was pleased.
'Ralph?'
'The whole weight of him.'
'Where did you find him?'
'I will tell you when I have lightened my load.'
Nicholas stepped into the room and lowered the body to the floor, sitting Willoughby up and resting his back against the wall. The slumbering playwright was still dead to the world.
'He was at the Bull and Butcher,' said Nicholas.
'Drink or fornication?'
One prevented the other, Edmund.'
'He has burned the candle at both ends.'
'There is neither wax nor flame left.'
'Wake up, sir!' said Hoode, shaking his co-author.
'That will not rouse him,' said Nicholas, reaching for the jug on the table. 'Stand aside, I pray.'
With a swing of his arm, he dashed a few pints of cold water into Willoughby's face. The latter twitched, groaned, then spluttered. As he came out of his sleep, he opened an eye to blink at the world.
'Nell?'
'You are here among friends,' said Hoode.
'Edmund?' A second eye opened. 'Nicholas?'
'I fetched you from your revelry,' explained the book holder.
'We have need of you,' said Hoode. 'Our play is staged again.'
