Free The Devil's Plague by Mark Beynon

have it shouted out in front of a group of strangers was nothing less than galling."
    "We're hardly strangers, Sir William. Talk to me." Charles said, settling himself beside the actor.
    Davenant struggled to understand why Charles was suddenly being so compassionate, but he didn't care. He was just happy for the company. "Where do I begin?" he said.
    "With wine," replied Charles, thrusting a goblet into Davenant's hand.
    Davenant drained half the cup and then sighed. "My parents were the proprietors of a humble inn by the name of the Crown Tavern in Oxford. My father was frequently away from home on business. As Oxford was en route to Shakespeare's home in Stratford, the playwright would often spend the night when away from London and the Globe. It was obviously on one of these nights that Shakespeare and my mother decided to embark on a physical relationship of which I was the product. There were all sorts of rumours flying around, but my father, being the proud, foolish man that he was, decided to bury his head in the sand. After all, William Shakespeare was quite the icon. Christ, they even named me after him and asked him to be my godfather! I myself didn't discover the truth until after my father had passed away. It was purely by chance, but when someone remarked to me that I had a 'wit with the very same spirit of Shakespeare', I decided to confront him about it. We even shared a striking resemblance. At the time I was serving as his apprentice. We were in the middle of rehearsing Romeo and Juliet when I walked up and asked him face to face whether there was any truth to the rumours. I was ready for him to say no, but when he confirmed my fears, I felt sick, sick that I had been deceived and sick for the lie my false father had been living. What made it worse was that the man I had known as my father for all these years knew all along and that it didn't trouble him in the slightest. So I left Shakespeare's apprenticeship under a cloud of mistrust and he set me up on my own. After all, it was the very least he could do. But to this day, I refuse to put on any of his plays."
    "Did you grieve for him, Will?"
    Davenant thought long and hard about his reply. "Yes," he said, eventually. "I didn't find out that he had died until a good three weeks after, and yes I still felt anger towards him. But I did grieve."
    "It is a terrible thing to lose a father, but to lose two must have been doubly hard to bear," replied Charles.
    "I can count myself fortunate at least that my 'father', John Davenant, died peacefully. What they did to your father, the King, was beyond the pale. I was heartbroken, really I was."
    "I know you were," said Charles softly. "And to have seen it with my own eyes as a young boy..."
    "You were at your father's execution?" Davenant exclaimed.
    Charles took a moment to collect his thoughts, no doubt the retelling of such a distressing anecdote was still hard to bear even years later. "I was hiding underneath the scaffold and watched... watched it through a crack in the wood. I saw the drunken executioner parading around the stage, lapping up every jeer and taunt, before cutting my father's head off with one blow of his axe. I can vividly remember it dropping into the basket not ten feet away from me."
    "With Cromwell looking on with jubilant glee, I daresay." There was vitriol in Davenant's voice now.
    "Still, we have found solace in our mutual ire, have we not?" replied Charles.
    Their heart-to-heart was cut short by a sudden, blood-curdling scream that tore through the night. The two men stumbled to their feet and darted across the slippery grass towards the tent from which the chilling scream had issued.
    "It's Faith and Anne," gasped Charles, as the two men ran through the cool darkness. Davenant pulled the flap of the tent to one side and poked his head reluctantly inside, terrified of what he'd find. To his relief, he found both women alive and well, attempting to kill a spider that had crept its way