How to Stop Time(45)

Grace got to her feet, and the first man, the apple thief, then grabbed her and made a gargoyle of his face, shoving his tongue in her ear.

I had, by this point, stopped playing.

Hal, next to me, tapped my foot while still playing his flute, as the actors continued singing below. I heard Christopher sighing his disapproval behind me. So I began to start playing again, but then spied Rose, leaving her basket and rushing back through the pit, concerned for her sister. She reached Grace, who was still having trouble with the ear-licker, when the apple-thief’s companion made a grab at her, pulling up her skirt and reaching his hand beneath it.

She slapped him, he yanked at her hair, I felt her distress as if it was my own, just as Grace was elbowing her harasser hard in the face, bloodying his nose. I didn’t know what happened next because I was climbing over the oakwood rail of the balcony, holding my lute like a club, and – to the sound of a thousand gasps – jumping down onto the stage.

I landed on top of Will Kemp, then shouldered past a shocked Shakespeare himself, as I lunged forward and leapt off the stage to reach Rose and Grace.

I ran around the side of the pit and pushed my way through as nuts and ale and apples were thrown in my direction from the angry crowd. The play went on behind me, as the play always did, but I doubt if even those in the fivepenny seats could hear a word that was being said, such was the commotion now in the pit and around the benches. Even in the balconies people were roaring and jeering and raining their theatre food down on me.

Rose was fine now – she had broken free of her lecherous assailant – and was trying to help Grace, who was still in trouble, being held in a headlock with a thick arm squeezed hard around her neck.

Between Rose and myself we managed to get Grace free.

I grabbed the sisters’ hands and urged them, ‘We have to go.’

But there was potentially an even bigger problem now.

One of the men from the expensive seats was now standing in our path as we tried to get out of the theatre. I hadn’t spotted him, and I doubt he had spotted me, before I had leapt out of the gallery.

He stood tall and strong and solid, better dressed than I had seen him last, with his thinning hair flattened in stripes across his head, clasping those thick butcher’s hands in front of him.

‘So,’ said Manning, looking down at me with his one good eye. ‘I see it is true. You made it to London . . . How long is it since I saw you last? It seems only yesterday. You haven’t changed in the slightest. But then, you don’t, do you?’

I see it is true.

I would never know for sure if Christopher had spread his suspicions about me beyond the musicians’ gallery. Nor would I ever know if the men who manhandled Rose and Grace were in on the whole thing.

‘I see you have made some friends.’

‘No,’ I said, as if a word could cancel a reality. He surveyed a confused Grace and Rose.

‘No?’

‘They are not my friends,’ I said, determined he knew as little about the sisters as possible, or their connection to me. ‘I have never seen them before this day.’

I gestured with my eyes for Rose to leave, but she wouldn’t.

‘Ah, and still he lies. Well, be aware of this, girls, for he is not what he seems. He is an unnatural malevolence, incarnate. A witch’s boy.’

‘My mother died an innocent woman. She died because of you.’

‘Her last charm for all God knows. Perhaps she changed form. Perhaps she stands among us now.’

He stared at Rose, then Grace, as if trying to read an abstruse text. I couldn’t stay another moment. The nightmare was coming true. A mere knowledge of me was a danger to anyone. My very existence a curse. The crowd around us was becoming still, but watching Manning more than the stage. I recognised a face staring at me. I didn’t know his name but I knew he was a knife grinder. I had seen him on the bridge of a morning, plying his trade.

He was a pale weak-looking skinny man, no more than twenty, who always wore a belt of shining knives.

I contemplated grabbing one of them, but that would only have assured me a one-way ticket to Tyburn and a noose around my neck.

But I knew it was too late. The risk of Manning knowing I knew the girls was less than the risk of my leaving and them staying with him.

So I implored Rose, ‘We must leave.’

‘. . . I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways. Therefore tremble and depart . . .’

But then even the actors fell quiet as Manning grabbed a handful of Grace’s hair.

‘This one!’ Manning shouted. ‘How many years has she?’

Grace was kicking at him.

‘Has she twenty? Has she thirty? She might have sixty years to her. She looks like a child but we know of other deceptions, don’t we?’

Grace punched him hard in the groin.

‘Get off me, you eel, you piss-cunt!’

But it seemed no good. The crowd was with Manning and against us. We would be contained here. Manning would get some kind of hearing. Accusations of witchcraft and devilry would follow. I had endangered Rose and Grace. The only thing that could have saved us, right at that moment, was the one thing that did.

‘Pray, get thy hands off that young girl.’

It was Shakespeare himself, front of stage and out of character.

Manning held on. ‘I am William Manning, I am the—’