The Counterfeit Crank

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‘What ails you?’ asked Nicholas Bracewell, peering at his friend with concern.

‘Nothing,’ said Edmund Hoode. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘Your face is pale and drawn.’

‘I am well, I do assure you.’

‘Your eyes are bloodshot.’

‘Pay no heed to that, Nick.’

‘Are you in pain?’

Hoode shook his head. ‘No, no.’

‘Yet I saw you wince even now.’

‘Only because of the mistakes I made in that last scene.’

‘That, too, was unlike the Edmund Hoode I know. You so rarely make mistakes.’

‘Even the best horse stumbles.’

Hoode smiled bravely but Nicholas was not fooled. The company’s book holder had worked so closely with his friend over the years that he could always tell what the latter was thinking and feeling. Something was amiss. Hoode, the resident playwright with Westfield’s Men, was also a gifted actor and he was rehearsing a role for the first performance of Caesar’s Fall, a play by a new dramatist. Known for his reliability, he was uncharacteristically hesitant that morning, forgetting lines, inventing moves that had not been specified and, at one point, clumsily knocking over a piece of scenery in the Forum. They were in the yard of the Queen’s Head, the London inn where the company was based, and where they had to compete with the pandemonium of the market outside in Gracechurch Street. The sky was overcast. A cool breeze was blowing yet Nicholas thought he saw beads of sweat on Hoode’s brow.

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