Taking Wing

A Voice in the Dark

Isabel screams for help until her voice turns hoarse. No one answers, only the echo of her own cries bouncing back through the trees. She has never been alone in a forest before. Every rustling leaf and snapping twig makes her freeze in terror, certain the brigands have circled back to finish what they started. As daylight fades, she realizes with a sinking heart that she will never find her way out of the forest before nightfall. She must somehow keep herself safe from wild beasts until morning comes.

Isabel wonders what Nicolette, the bold slave girl from Master Hart’s favorite tale, would do in her place. Isabel decides that Nicolette would sensibly climb a tree while there is still enough light to see by. So Isabel resolves to do the same. She chooses a stout oak with good footholds and sturdy low branches. She hoists herself higher and higher, too frightened to stop. At last she finds a crotch where the trunk forks and wedges herself in, reasonably secure, to wait out the night.

After a while, Isabel’s mind begins to play tricks on her. She catches a whiff of woodsmoke and glimpses firelight flickering through the dusk, and dismisses it at once. She thinks tremulously that it’s small wonder she’s imagining things, after watching a man die that very day. Then a tuneful male voice starts singing “Bonny Sweet Robin Is All My Joy,” Meg’s favorite song. Every tiny hair on Isabel’s neck rises. Is some malicious spirit toying with her? But then the singer curses, grumbling that there’s no salt to be had and that Ned Scrivener never listens when told so. Isabel realizes that is no ghost. She scrambles down so eagerly that she skins her hands on the bark, groping her way toward the firelight and tripping over stumps and half-hidden bundles.

Isabel stumbles at last into a small camp built around a battered, gaily painted tilt-cart crammed with baskets and bundles. Delicious smells of onions and gravy leak out from under the lid of a stewpot bubbling over the fire, making her belly growl with hunger. A boy crouches beside the pot, muttering that there’s no salt in the whole camp and that a dash of strong ale will have to fool Master Pink’s temper instead.

When he glances up and catches sight of her face in the firelight, Isabel cries out his name before she can stop herself. It is Kit, Meg’s own brother! But startled half out of his wits, his hand flies to the knife at his belt, and he demands to know who goes there, before he recognizes her and gapes, asking if it’s really her.

Kit hauls Isabel closer to the fire and presses a wooden platter of stew into her hands before he’ll let her explain a single thing. Isabel eats greedily, wiping the platter clean with a crust of bread, since she’s had almost nothing all day. Between mouthfuls, haltingly, she tells him everything: the brigands who set upon them in the forest, John struck down and left for dead, and her horse and belongings stolen. She also explains how she has been sent away from London in the first place, banished to live with an aunt she barely remembers because Father was so displeased with her.

Tears well up as Isabel admits it. If she never arrives at Aunt de Vere’s now, her family will think she is dead, too. It also feels wrong, somehow, to still be turning over her own selfish dreams of adventure under such terrible circumstances. Kit falls silent for a long moment, staring into the fire as though struggling to find the right words. At last he admits that Meg thinks the world of Isabel. He wouldn’t feel easy in his mind handing her over to strangers to finish the journey. He’d gladly escort her to her aunt’s himself. But he doubts Master Pink can spare him, since their company is already small.

There is, however, one piece of good news. In three weeks they are due to perform in the town of Northampton on their way to Stourbridge Fair. Northampton lies only a few miles from where her aunt lives. If Isabel is willing to travel with the players that far, Kit can deliver her safely to her aunt’s door himself. Isabel gasps that he cannot mean it, hardly daring to believe her luck, and declares it a wonderful idea.

“There is more,” Kit says. From his awkward tone, Isabel senses at once that she isn’t going to like it. Kit explains carefully that the players won’t take kindly to a girl traveling in their company. It isn’t out of any disrespect to her, but because they’d worry she would slow them down or draw the wrong sort of attention on the road. If she means to stay with them, she’ll have to disguise herself as a boy, day in and day out, for three whole weeks.

Far from being troubled by the idea, Isabel feels a thrill of excitement she has no business feeling given her circumstances. She tells Kit at once that she doesn’t mind disguising herself in the least. She only asks to borrow his knife so she can cut off her hair before he can change his mind. Kit warns her frankly that their life isn’t an easy one. Some days the company earns so little that they can hardly feed themselves. Only yesterday, some scurvy fellow made off with part of their takings while they slept. If Isabel means to travel with them, she’ll have to work like everyone else and not simply ride along as a passenger.

Isabel promises she’ll do her share. Since Father always says she reads wondrously well and can sing and play the lute besides, she offers to make herself useful prompting the players and helping however she can.

The two agree Isabel will pose as Kit’s younger brother, Robert, supposedly robbed of his horse, money, and clothes by the very same brigands who set upon them both. Kit rummages through the cart and finds her a worn doublet, shirt, hose, and a velvet cap. Then he tactfully turns his back while she changes.

Isabel marvels at how quickly and comfortably boys dress compared to the endless laces and pins of a kirtle. When Kit turns around again, she sweeps off her cap and makes him a deep bow, exactly as she has seen her male relatives do. Kit tells her, grinning, that she looks very fine, Master Robert. He warns, though, that her hacked-off hair wants neatening and that her walk needs a good deal more swagger, since real boys do not skip and prance the way she does.

When the rest of the troupe finally trudges back into camp, they are nothing like the dashing company Isabel had pictured. They are only half a dozen weary, hungry-looking men leading a thin donkey named Delilah, their threadbare clothes brightened here and there with a jaunty feather in a cap, a ribbon on a sleeve, or tarnished gilt rosettes upon muddy shoes. Their leader, the tall and striking Master Jasper Pink, wears a vivid pink silk rose pinned to his doublet, his black hair dramatically streaked with white. He looks to Isabel exactly like a gypsy king.

Kit presents “Master Robert” to him in a rich, resonant, actor’s voice, spinning their story of brigands and a wealthy aunt waiting to pay a handsome reward for the boy’s safe return. He adds that Robert reads wondrously well and can prompt the players in their parts, and sing, and play the lute besides.

Master Pink looks Isabel over, remarking suspiciously that she has gotten to know Kit remarkably well in such a short time. Isabel, her heart pounding, blurts that it’s her own fault, since Father always says she babbles any foolishness that comes into her head. Master Pink asks flatly whether there truly will be a reward. Isabel assures him earnestly that her aunt will thank him most handsomely.

Master Pink only grunts noncommittally. Then he paces back and forth in glowering silence until the tension becomes almost unbearable to stand. At last his stern expression breaks into a dazzling showman’s smile. He throws open his arms, welcoming “his company of players” to their newest little brother.

A hideous trumpeting bursts out behind Master Pink, sending everyone into gales of laughter. He pats the donkey affectionately on the neck. “And so says Mistress Delilah,” he declares.