Роберт Харрис – Will Shakespeare and the Pirate’s Fire (страница 1)
Will Shakespeare and the Pirate’s Fire
Robert J. Harris
Table of Contents
“I’d give a lot for a good horse right now,” panted Will Shakespeare, leaning heavily against the trunk of a looming oak tree. He wiped some sweat from his brow with the cuff of his jerkin and sucked in the sharp February air.
They had been running so hard his friend Hamnet could hardly summon the breath to speak. “I’d settle for a hole in the ground,” he gasped, “and some branches to cover ourselves with.”
“Look how they’re beating the bushes,” Will pointed out. “It’ll take more than a few twigs to save us.”
Hamnet poked his head out for a peek. Will caught the back of his jerkin and yanked him down. “Stay down, you clodpole! They’ll see you!”
“You wouldn’t think they’d be so stirred up over a few rabbits,” sighed Hamnet. “Maybe we should have just picked some berries and gone home.”
Hamnet Sadler was only a few months younger than Will and they had been friends for the entire fourteen years they had been growing up in Stratford. They had taken more than a few chances together, but if they were convicted of poaching a public whipping was the lightest sentence they could expect.
They both hugged the tree’s shadow as they spied on Sir Thomas Lucy’s men. There were a dozen of them, poking in the bushes with hunting spears, determined to flush out the young poachers. They were a tough, hard crew, the sort who could be depended on to carry out any order, no matter how cruel, as long as they were paid for the deed.
The squire himself perched uneasily astride his fat, grey gelding. He surveyed the ground and yapped out his orders. “There, Cobb, there!” he shrilled. “I swear by God I saw something move among those brambles.”
“Just a bird, sir!” Cobb called back.
Will sank back into the shadows. “That nag of his couldn’t outrun Widow Tanner’s donkey,” he said.
“It’s his men will outrun us if he spots us,” said Hamnet. “And they’re a mean lot.”
Will bit his lower lip and looked around. This was a wild, tangled country, too dense and thorny for deer – nothing for a proper nobleman to brag about – but Sir Thomas guarded it like it was the Garden of Eden. Charlecote Warren the locals called it, for it was rich in rabbits, hare and game birds.
Will fingered the bow that hung at his side, thinking of the pair of rabbits and the fat guinea fowl he had bagged. Hamnet had only got a stringy-looking hare, but he was well content with his prize. England’s longbowmen had once made her armies invincible, but in these days of gunpowder the bow had become a poacher’s weapon.
Hamnet shook his head like an old man. “I wish you’d stop getting us into fixes like this, Will. It was bad enough when we were just filching apples.”
“Life will be quiet enough when you’re in the grave,” said Will, giving his friend an encouraging thump on the arm. “Besides, somebody has to goad Old Lousy.”
“Come on, use your eyes!” Sir Thomas Lucy was telling his men. “They can’t have disappeared like vapour!”
“I think I recognised one of them, sir,” said one of the hunters. “John Shakespeare’s boy.”
“Shakespeare!” Lucy pronounced the name as a hateful hiss. “That insolent brogger! He’s been more trouble to me than floods and plague. But if I take his boy up on a poaching charge, that will knock the mischief out of him.”
“Will, they know who you are!” Hamnet exclaimed through gritted teeth.
“He’s just guessing,” said Will. “They weren’t close enough to see our faces. If we can get back to Stratford ahead of them, they won’t be able to prove a thing.”
“And how are we going to do that?” Hamnet asked. “Are you going to conjure up a griffin to carry us on its back?”