Free The Secret of the Rose by Sarah L. Thomson Page A

forgotten that I was in the room.
    After a while I took up Mistress Stavesly’s broom again.
    I swept the bedroom and straightened the bed and emptied the bowl of water out the window. Then, reluctantly, I picked up the chamber pot. A few weeks ago, I would never have touched such an object. But now…
    Now, I told myself firmly, I had no choice. But still, I could not keep my nose from wrinkling as the stinking contents of the pot followed the wash water out into thestreet. I wiped my hands on my doublet and turned thankfully to more pleasant tasks, picking up Master Marlowe’s clothes from the floor. The buttons on his velvet doublet clinked softly together as I brushed and folded it and laid it, along with his breeches and hose and linen shirt and collar, away in the chest. I wondered if I could find a rag to dust with.
    “Richard!”
    I jumped. “Yes, master?” I came into the doorway between the two rooms to find Master Marlowe scowling at me.
    “Thou’lt fidget me beyond endurance. Go away.”
    “Yes, master.” I hesitated. “When should I return?”
    “An hour. Two. What thou wilt.” He turned his attention back to the paper on the table, but I was bold enough to speak again.
    “May I have your leave to visit my father, sir?”
    “Thou hast my leave to visit the devil, so thou dost it elsewhere than here,” he said impatiently. “Stay!” I had started for the door, but he got up suddenly and stalked into the bedchamber. When he came back, he tossed something to me, something small and round that flashed in the light as it flew through the air. I caught it between my hands. It was a shilling.
    “An advance on thy wages,” Master Marlowe said,sitting back down. “Thou’lt need it to give to the jailer. Take it and begone.”
    I snatched up Mistress Stavesly’s broom and all but ran out the door before his abrupt generosity could reverse itself.
    Mistress Stavesly lifted her eyebrows when I returned the broom and asked her the way to Newgate Prison. But she told me how to find it, and kept a customer waiting to be sure that I understood her directions. Eagerly I set off into the London streets.
    Already everything seemed less strange, the crowds less threatening. My new clothing, which had made me feel so bare and vulnerable yesterday, in truth rendered me nearly invisible. I was just another shabby servant boy in a city full of them. No one paid me the slightest heed.
    I made my way down Bishopsgate Street, as Mistress Stavesly had told me. But where Threadneedle Street branched off to the southwest, I hesitated.
    By all rights I should continue south, cross the bridge, and go to the playhouse to find Robin. I was still angry with him, and yet—it was his father, too.
    But Master Henslowe had said there would be rehearsal in the morning, and I had only an hour or two to spare. If I made my way across the river now, and thenRobin could not go to Newgate with me, I would have spent nearly half the time I had, and to no purpose.
    And besides, I needed to speak to my father about Robin, about how to coax or reason or order him out of the playhouse. I could hardly do that with my brother present.
    I set off, determined, down Threadneedle Street. After all, if Robin was busy learning his new trade, that was his own choice and no fault of mine. I broke into a run, as if I could outpace the shreds of guilt that still clung to my heels.
    By the time I reached the broad avenue of Cheapside, I was out of breath and had to slow to a walk again. I passed shops selling hats, stockings, lace, birdcages, buttons, needles, earrings. None of it held any interest for me. I could see the back of St. Paul’s Cathedral to my left, rising over walls and rooftops, but I hardly spared it a glance.
    What will our father say when he sees thee? What could I tell him, how could I explain my breeches and doublet? I could not reveal what had nearly happened to me two days ago. It would break his heart to know of the danger I had