The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary Blackwood

thirty seconds late, and the man descended on me.
    I gave the drapery a prodigious yank and was free. As I stumbled for the door, the cannoneer burst through the center of the curtain and blocked my path. I looked about frantically. The only other route of escape was the inside stairs. I scrambled for them and, clinging to the rickety railing, half-ran, half-fell down them, with the soldier hard upon my heels.
    I was not quite halfway to the bottom when the burly, greybearded man who had played the second gravedigger suddenly appeared at the foot of the stairs. I was trapped.
    My only chance for escape lay in jumping off the stairs to the floor below, a fall of some six or eight feet—risky, but better to sprain an ankle than to be whipped or put in the stocks. I ducked under the railing and was about to leap when a cry rang through the theatre that stopped every one of us dead in his tracks. “Fire! Fire!”
    The stocky greybeard at the foot of the stairs shook a finger at me, as if to say he’d deal with me later, then hastened away. The cannoneer came thundering down the steps, but I scrambled faster than he and ran for the rear door. When I burst through it, Falconer was gone. I ran on, around the side of the playhouse.
    People were streaming out of the main entrance in panic. The elegant ladies from the gallery scurried fearfully down the steps, hoisting their vast skirts above their ankles in an unseemly way. One was sobbing, and the tears made tracks through her heavy white makeup.
    I was mostly afraid of being pursued. I pushed into the center of the noisy, milling mob. Some were staring at the roof of the theatre. When I followed their gaze, I saw a thick cloud of grey smoke rising from the thatch, to become lost in the darker grey of the sky.
    The players had set a ladder on the uppermost landing of the outside stairs, and several of them were now on the roof, beating at the smouldering thatch with their capes. A line of men, comprised of players and audience alike, formed between the playhouse and the nearest drainage ditch. They dipped up buckets of water and passed them from hand to hand along the line, up the stairs and the ladder to the men on the roof, who tossed the water onto the spreading flames.
    In the middle of the line, passing buckets with the rest, stood the slim boy who had played Ophelia. He was wigless now but still in his stage makeup. Above the waist, he wore the bodice of his lady-like costume; below it, he wore men’s breeches and hose.
    â€œWhat set it off?” said a man next to me.
    â€œThe wad from the cannon, is my guess,” said another.
    My stomach twisted. If that was so, then I was partly to blame, for I had distracted the cannoneer and caused him to misdirect the shot. I had seen buildings burn before. In fact, it was not uncommon, even in a village as small as Berwick. But I had never before been the cause. Furthermore, I felt as though it were something more than a mere building at stake. It was an entire world, one into which I had been privileged to look briefly, and which was now in danger of crumbling.
    So distressed was I that I was on the verge of lending my efforts to the fire fighters, even at the risk of being recognized. Then someone jostled me from behind, bringing me to my senses. I whirled about, expecting to see Falconer at my elbow, demanding the completed script. But it was only a thin fellow with a red nose and a scraggly beard, smiling apologetically. “Begging your pardon, my young friend,” he said and moved off through the crowd.
    Now that my thoughts were on Falconer, I cast my eyes about for him, but my stature was so small and the throng so dense that I stood no hope of spotting him. I turned back to the drama being played out atop the theatre.
    The men on the roof were making little headway against the flames. They would, I believe, have lost their livelihood had not the gloomy sky chosen that moment to open up, dousing the