Excerpt: Ruff by Rod Carley

Excerpted With Permission from Latitude 46 Publishing

ONE

Will shovelled the last of the horse dung.

The smell was stifling.

“Missed a spot,” yawned Kit, without looking up. He was lounging on a long wooden bench under the playhouse awning, leafing through the pages of a manuscript. Dressed extravagantly in blue velvet from head to toe and smoking a long clay pipe to ward off Will’s aroma, Kit was the new darling of London.

Will was not. He wasn’t a new anything, except for being an absent father of three. He scooped up the last rebellious turd, tossed it onto the pile, and waited.

He felt like a penny waiting for change.

“I have some suggestions,” said Kit finally, handing back the manuscript.

Will stammered nervously. “Th-thanks.” He envied Kit’s easy manner and long blonde hair. His fingers, stiff from shovelling, dropped the pages.

“Fut!”

He scrambled to gather up the sheets of parchment before the wind and soot got hold of them. The city’s chimney pots belched up so much coal smoke that soot settled everywhere – turning Will’s receding auburn hair an unseemly black. The awning protected Kit’s golden locks.

Chasing after his pages, Will looked and felt ridiculous. The wind picked up. He stomped on a page just before it blew into the gutter and mixed with the sewage – the raw sewage that emptied into the Thames. It had rained overnight.

The rain made things worse. In the country, rain meant fresh scents of growth and life. In the city, the rain was Will’s nemesis, a lukewarm, dirt-stained, ankle-deep wretched addition to the gutters, resulting in soaked boots, drowning rats, and waterlogged manuscripts.

Kit watched Will’s headless chicken dance with a bemused smirk. “Just because you’re writing about the Hundred Years’ War doesn’t mean it has to be as long,” he said, casually flipping his hair. “Don’t give the audience a history lesson. Every schoolboy knows the French beat la merde out of the English.

Get inside the characters’ feelings. It will help your poetry breathe. And pick up the pace, Willy.”

“Pick up the pace,” Will repeated, rescuing the last page and stuffing it in his satchel.

“Remember, a fast-flowing line keeps the tomatoes at bay.”

“Keep the tomatoes away,” Will mumbled wearily. A London commercial poet? Who was he kidding. He’d dreamt of becoming a poet since the age of thirteen when he saw a London touring troupe perform at the Stratford townhall. Working as a part-time parking attendant was not part of that dream.

“We must create a new art,” Kit continued.

“In other words,” Will sighed, “I must become you.”

“There is only one Kit Marlowe.”

“Your Tamburlaine the Great is…great.” Whenever he wanted to impress Kit, Will’s vocabulary failed him.

“That’s because I am great,” laughed Kit. He arched his back and sucked suggestively on his pipe. “You’re from the sticks, Willy. You ever jack off a horse?”

“Kit, please,” Will squirmed. “Must your thoughts always land in the gutter?”

“Care to join me?” Kit enjoyed making Will more uncomfortable than his usual uncomfortable state.

“I’m married,” said Will.

“Ah, so that’s why you ran away to London.” Kit didn’t believe any man could be straight by choice.

“I didn’t run away,” said Will. In fact, it was exactly what he’d done—but not for the reason Kit was inferring.

“No?”

“I took a carriage.”

“Willy made a funny.” Kit’s laughter was interrupted by a loud CAW! CAW! CAW! High above, perched on top of the flagpole mounted on the theatre’s tiring house, a crow cawed loudly.

Will looked up. Kit sat up.

“What a strange-looking crow,” Will observed, using his hand as a visor to block out the sooty sun. “Its wings are tipped with white.”

“His father wooed a dove,” Kit cooed. “Oh, such black-and-white feathered love.” He glanced at the festering piles of trash on the street. “A diet of garbage would turn anyone’s hair white.”

The leucistic crow impatiently screeched again.

CAW! CAW! CAW!

Then.

“Help me!” It was a child’s voice, its treble pipes barely registering above the din of the market-sellers hawking their wares.

Will and Kit turned in the direction of the cry. Two depraved figures, one carrying a large net, the other a menacing-looking hook, were chasing a small boy.

“Child-catchers!” exclaimed Kit, leaping up.

The boy tripped over a wheelbarrow laden with turnips and landed on a fresh mound of cattle dung. Up he got, pushing his little legs to run faster.

Kit and Will stormed past the herd of cattle coming towards them on their way to the slaughterhouse. The thick steam rising from their hides, mingling with the morning fog, made it difficult to see.

“Help!” screamed the boy again.

“Halt!” shouted Will, stepping out to block the path of the two child-catchers. He brandished his shovel like a medieval broadsword. The boy scurried around him and hid behind his legs. Brown, raisin-spotted goo dripped down his chin. The cretins had lured their young victim with a mincemeat pie.

“Out of our way,” said the first child-catcher with a pinched expression.

He was tall and skinny with a gaunt and wrinkled face. He wore ridiculously pointy shoes and a ragged muffin cap. With his large net, he looked like a Flemish fisherman who’d misplaced his boat.

“Give us the boy,” demanded the second with a wave of his hook. He had an abnormally large head with huge ears and bulging green eyes that jumped out of his disfigured face like an over-excited toad. Both reeked of piss, puss, and pints.

“You curs are fishing out of season,” said Kit, stepping forward. He rested his hands on his belt-buckle, a deceptively relaxed posture that kept his hand near his rapier. “Pack up your net and hook and be gone.”

“Oh, I’m scared,” sneered the man with the hook. He was missing most of his teeth. “Hand over the boy.”

“No can do,” said Will, tightening his grip on the shovel.

The man with the net held up a piece of paper. “I have a letter signed by the Queen ‘erself.”

Will peered down at the letter. He looked at Kit in astonishment. It was true.

“Perfectly legal,” snarled the man with the hook. “This ‘ere theatre owner has a license to recruit children.”

“That seal is a forgery,” said Kit, examining the letter. “Who are you working for?”

“That’s none of your concern,” snorted the Hook.

“What theatre, you cur, or I’ll stab your thieving eyes out.”

“The Theatre,” said the man with the net. A blinding wasn’t on his Saturday morning to-do list.

“You lying, flap-mouthed maggot-licker,” growled Kit, relishing each word.

“Jim Burbage would sell his mother to the Turks to pay for a new theatre, but he’d never snatch a child from the streets and force him to perform. Who is it, you curs, or I’ll cut off your ears.”

Will had witnessed Kit do that very thing earlier in the week to a pickpocket he caught trying to steal his purse.

“The Royal Chapel,” the man with the net blurted out.

“Shut your blow hole, Wankstain!” cursed the Hook, cuffing him with his free hand.

“The church?” said Will.

The licenses were created to find choristers for the Royal Chapel, but it was no secret they were really kidnapping boys for their new theatre company.

Will thought of his only son, Hamnet, who had just turned two.

“You are exploiting children.” There was ice in Kit’s voice as he tightened his grip on the handle of his rapier.

“We got th’authority to take any nobleman’s son in the land,” sneered Wankstain.

“Get out of my way, Fairy-Face!” The Hook pointed his implement at Kit.

“Fairy-Face!” Baiting Kit was a bad idea at the best of times.

At that moment, a prostitute working the street outside the Mermaid Tavern recognized the celebrity in her midst.

“It’s Kit Marlowe!” she shouted.

Rich and poor thrown together, swarmed the street to watch. It was free entertainment, cheaper than a bear baiting, and almost as much fun as a public hanging. Even the urchin, who loitered about the hitching post of the Mermaid and charged a penny to guide unsuspecting travellers into danger, joined the crowd to see what all the fuss was about.

Kit let loose a stream of invective. “You spongy, spleeny, fen-sucked hugger- muggers!” He drew his rapier and cut the air with a French figure eight. Will raised the shovel higher.

Wankstain pulled a nasty looking dagger from beneath his sodden waistcoat.

“Give us the merchandise.”

“No!” screamed the boy, peering around from behind the bottom of Will’s doublet.

CAW! CAW! CAW!

Will heard the screech, and then sensed something swooping down over his right shoulder. It was the crow dive-bombing the child-catchers.

YEOW!

The crow attacked the Hook’s face, clawing and pecking in a flurry of wingbeats. Its sharp, prodding beak an avian rapier—repeatedly cutting and slashing the child-catcher at lightning speed.

“Get if off me!” he screamed, dropping his hook while trying to protect his eyes.

Wankstain lashed out with his dagger. The crow instinctively did a barrel roll to get out of the way, its inky black shape banking into the rooftops, before diving and striking again.

“Help me!” screamed Wankstain, blood now streaming from his eyes.

The two child-catchers turned and ran with the crow in shrieking pursuit.

The crowd cheered.

“Someone’s eating crow tonight,” joked Kit, bowing to the crowd.

Will watched the crow turn a corner and disappear. 

“That’s some neighbourhood watch.” He lowered his shovel. “Puts the Queen’s Guard to shame.”

“What’s your name, boy?” said Kit, sheathing his rapier.

“Tommy,” replied the boy, emerging timidly from behind Will’s knees.

“Tommy Middleton.”

Will knelt down. It was as dangerous for a child to be alone on the streets of London as it was for a rabbit munching parsley in his wife’s garden or a lost lamb grazing in his brother-in-law’s meadow. Child-catchers, hawks, and coyotes lay in wait for any unguarded moment. Be it town or country, prey was prey.

“What were you doing out here all by yourself, Tommy?” he asked.

“Waiting for my father.”

“Where is he?” Will looked about. The crowd was dispersing.

“Up there.”

Tommy pointed to a short, middle-aged man atop a tall ladder contentedly repairing bricks on the exterior of the playhouse. Was he the only person in London who hadn’t heard the commotion?

The crow circled overhead.

“My Dad’s deaf,” said Tommy by way of an explanation. 

He jumped up and down and waved his arms to attract his father’s attention. The man looked down and saw his son consorting with two questionable playhouse-types.

“Tommy!” he yelled. “Get away from there!” He scurried down the ladder.

In his haste, he lost his footing.

CAW! CAW! CAW!

“Dad!”