A Mystery Of Errors

The highwayman touched the brim of his black hat in salute and then spurred off into the woods. The sound of his mount’s hoofbeats quickly receded in the distance. Smythe decided that he probably wouldn’t need to worry about hanging, riding through the thickets like that. He’d likely break his neck long before some magistrate could stretch it for him.

It was certainly an interesting conclusion to a rather dreary and otherwise uneventful day, although it was his fourth time being robbed in as many days since he had left the midlands. Well, attempt at being robbed, in any event, he thought. The first three had been unsuccessful and this last one hardly seemed to count, seeing as how the highwayman had left him better off than he had been before. That was certainly a switch. He had never heard the like of it.

The first attempted robbery had taken place shortly after sundown on his first day out, as he had made his way toward London. Two men brandishing clubs had leaped out at him from under the cover of the woods. They had been more desperate than dangerous and he had made short work of them with his staff and left them both insensible in the middle of the road, or what passed for a road, at any rate, in that part of the country. It was little more than a pair of muddy ruts running side by side through the forest, tracks made by peddlers’ carts as they made their way from one small village to another, passing news and trying to sell their wares.,

The second attempt took place the very next day, but in broad daylight. Well, not quite daylight, perhaps, for little daylight had actually penetrated the thick canopy of branches overhead. This time, three surly and bedraggled men had accosted him, looking a bit more competent, armed with staves and daggers and demanding that he surrender all his money. The trouble was, he didn’t have any. He had tried explaining that to them, in a reasonable fashion, but for some reason, highwaymen seemed a rather skeptical lot. They had insisted on searching him. Smythe had complied with their demand, seeing no harm in proving his point by demonstration and taking no unnecessary risks. On seeing that he was, in fact, as penniless as they, without even any decent clothes or weapons worth stealing, the disgusted robbers had let him go his way.

The third attempt had taken place early in the morning, proving to Smythe that there was actually no safe time to travel at all. He had been walking through the woods when an arrow from a longbow thudded into a tree trunk just to his left, passing so closely that he had felt its breeze. Immediately, he ducked behind that very tree trunk, so as not to give the unseen archer a target for a second shot, then wasted no time in slipping back further into the woods and putting some distance between himself and the bowman. He had left the unseen archer behind him, the sound of his cursing receding in the distance, and took his time before he ventured out upon the road again. He then continued on his way without further incident, until the mounted highwayman accosted him… only instead of robbing him or trying to kill him, the brigand had given him a silver crown. It was a singular occurrence, indeed. All in all, Smythe had to admit that he had met more interesting people in the past four days on the road than he had during all the years that he had spent in the village of his birth… save for the time the actors had come through.

The Queen’s Players, featuring the famous Dick Tarleton, had put on a performance in the courtyard of The Goose and Gander. With the open sky above them, they had erected a small stage in the courtyard of the inn, with several screens behind the stage to make a tiring-room where costumes could be changed, and the entire village had attended their performance. Smythe had never seen anything like it. Somehow, that little group of men had managed to turn a small wooden platform supported by several barrels into another world, another place and time. Tarleton and Will Kemp, the two comedians of the troupe, had everyone helpless with laughter at their jigs and capers and from that moment on, Smythe had wanted nothing more than to be among those men and on that stage himself.

His father disapproved, of course. A life as a player was totally unsuitable and utterly out of the question. While working at his uncle’s forge was no more a fit occupation for a gentleman, his father had believed that it could do a lad no harm to learn a bit of industry and develop an eye for iron, steel, and horseflesh. Those would certainly be useful things to know for a man of standing and position. But acting? The very mention of it had driven his father to apoplexy. Actors were nothing but immoral vagabonds whose careers were built on lies and fancy. He had stormed and thundered and threatened to disown him. The dream of acting, it had seemed, was destined to wither on the vine. Instead, it was his father’s dream which had died before ever bearing fruit.