KING DICK TAPPED his feet impatiently. He had, in rehearsal, urged Habs to slow down, to take more care with his lines, but now that very precision was driving him to distraction. On stage, Romeo was taking his leave of Juliet, banished after his killing of Tybalt.
‘Farewell! I will omit no opportunity that may convey my greetings, love, to thee.’
‘Yes, yes,’ muttered the King. ‘Now hurry up and get banished.’ He caught Habs’s eye and gestured that he should move things on.
‘Dry sorrow drinks our blood,’ said Romeo, conspicuously faster. ‘Adieu, adieu!’ he cried, and ran from the stage. ‘What is it, King Dick? What’s happened?’
‘Nothin’, probably,’ said the King, ‘but John Haywood ain’t here yet. He said he’d miss the beginnin’, not the whole show. You’re not on again in Act Three or the whole of Act Four, and he trusts you, Mr Snow. He likes you.’
Habs didn’t like where this was heading. With a head full of lines and stage directions, the only place he needed to be was precisely where he was. But the King hadn’t finished.
‘Mr Haywood talks to everyone, but he listens to you. I want you to run down to the kitchens and instruct him.’ Habs’s eyes betrayed him. He would never question a direct instruction, but the King saw his annoyance anyway. His large black eyes narrowed. ‘It is two minutes’ work, Mr Snow, and you are not on for twenty. Swiftly, please.’
Habs snatched a glance at Joe and Goffe on stage, nodded at the King, then ran.
Habs moved without thought, ran without sight. His body might have been descending the stairs, but his head was already back on the stage. Act Five began with him and him alone. The words had already begun to run in his head when he heard a bottle smash. He stopped abruptly, pulled from his daydream. To begin with, he wasn’t sure why he had pulled up. It wasn’t the glass breaking – God knows, there had been plenty of that in the cockloft. It was another sound, one that had followed the dropped bottle – a sound that had alerted him to danger. After the smash there’d been an extra beat, Habs was sure of it now, and it had been enough to stop him in his tracks. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to recall the last few seconds. Gooseflesh crawled over his neck and arms. What sound, buried deep in a sailor’s soul, could trigger this? The slow unsheathing of a blade, the cocking of a rifle. At sea, the sudden, whipped tightening of the bolt rope usually meant trouble, but it couldn’t be that. Eager to be on his way but unwilling to ignore what his body was telling him, Habs hesitated. And then he had it.
Skull on brick. It was a sound he’d been familiar with all his life.