‘They’re not as handsome as this one,’ Becky said.
‘Put some wood on the fire, girl,’ deValle said, ‘then keep your whore-mouth shut.’ He was gazing at me still, an expression of dislike on his face. ‘I’m told,’ he said, ‘that players need to be swordsmen, is that true?’
‘If the play demands it, sir, yes.’
‘And most plays do?’
‘The crowds like to watch swordplay,’ I said.
‘Then let us see if they would like to watch you,’ deValle said, and went to a chest that stood among the shadows on the far wall. He lifted the lid, rummaged among its contents for a moment, and plucked out a sword, which he shook from its scabbard. He tossed me the sword, and I let it drop to the floor rather than try to catch it by the blade. I picked it up to find it was an old backsword, its foreblade blunt and the leather of its hilt ragged. The weapon was ill-balanced and clumsy. DeValle smiled at my expression and drew his rapier with its elaborate silver guard, the long blade sliding from its scabbard with a barely audible hiss. ‘We’ll try a pass,’ deValle said, ‘and see if you’re good enough to entertain our crowds.’
‘Mister deValle,’ Francis Langley said nervously.
‘Quiet, Langley,’ deValle said, keeping his eyes on me. Becky looked excited. ‘First blood?’ deValle suggested, meaning that the fight would end when one of us was wounded.
‘Maybe I should just yield now then,’ I said. I was holding the sword clumsily, the point down.
‘Not if you wish employment here,’ deValle answered savagely, and raised the rapier.
He was proposing a match between an old, ill-balanced sword, and a rapier. Onstage the fights were usually with swords, made for cutting as well as lunging, because such fights took less room than the long-bladed rapiers needed, and because the crowds liked to see sweeping cuts as well as elegant lunges. A rapier could not cut; it was designed solely to pierce. It required as much skill as a sword, but the skill was different. Henry Condell and Richard Burbage, who performed most of our fights at the Theatre, could fight with either weapon, but Signor Mancini, in whose hall I trained at least once a week, had only taught me the backsword. ‘You learn this sword first,’ he liked to tell me in his liquid accent, ‘because the rapier is easy afterwards.’
I pretended to know nothing as I faced deValle. I suspected he was a good swordsman, proud of his skill and eager to inflict a wound, but I was not as clumsy as I pretended to be. I was a player, so I played being an awkward, unskilled, frightened man. I stood flat-footed, square on to deValle who was poised elegantly, his right foot forward and his blade angled upwards. ‘Ready?’ he asked.
‘Sir?’ I said uncertainly.
‘First blood, boy,’ he said, and stamped forward, his long blade coming for my face, and I flicked it aside, using the weak outer end of my blade, the foible. I staggered backwards and looked alarmed.
‘Not his face, Mister deValle,’ Francis Langley said, ‘please, sir, not his face! He’s a player!’
DeValle ignored the plea. He had retreated, smiling. He thought that my parry was a lucky chance, because no swordsman would parry with the foible if he could help it. He stamped forward, long blade lunging, and immediately stepped back. It was a feint, but I twitched my blade and stumbled two steps backwards as if in panic, and he laughed. ‘Maybe you should only play women, Mister Shakespeare,’ he said.
‘Cut him, Kit,’ Becky said savagely.
‘Not his face!’ Langley pleaded again.
‘Not his face,’ deValle said, ‘then I’ll mark his thigh.’
I knew he would come for my face. He was a bully, sure of his skill, and he wanted to humiliate me. He was a bad player, though, because he had told the lie about marking my thigh without any conviction. He simply wanted to mislead me, then draw blood from my cheek and, just as I expected, he looked at my legs, lowered his blade slightly, then smiled and stamped forward. Sure enough the long blade flicked up, aiming for my face, and I stepped to my left, cut hard and fast to the right to beat the rapier down, and slashed the blade inwards to slice it onto his exposed forearm. The blade struck, and he looked alarmed. I was no longer hesitant, no longer clumsy. I was moving lightly, I had turned him, his rapier was off to my right and the length of the blade meant he had to step backwards to use it, but I gave him no chance, stamping forward, lunging, and stopping the blade an inch from his beard. ‘First blood, sir,’ I said, nodding at his forearm, where a seep of red was staining the lace cuff of his sleeve.
For a heartbeat he looked furious, then he forced a smile. ‘Clever,’ he said.
‘Beginner’s fortune, sir,’ I said, lowering the blade, and then, to show I meant the fight to be over, handed the sword to Francis Langley.
‘Beginner’s fortune, eh?’ deValle asked. He sheathed his blade. ‘I think not. I think you are cunning, Mister Shakespeare. I think you’re a weasel. I think you’re sly. But you drew first blood.’ He pulled up his sleeve. My blunt blade had broken the skin, little more, but there was blood there, and he would have a bruise to remember me by. He spat on the blood, rubbed it, and let the sleeve fall again. ‘Who trains you?’
‘Signor Mancini.’
‘In Silver Street,’ deValle said. ‘He’s good,’ he added grudgingly.
I could not afford fencing lessons, but I had no chance of being a player of men’s parts unless I had the skills of the sword. Signor Mancini liked me, which meant he let me owe him money, but how long would he be patient? I thought how desperately I needed coins. I had to pay rent, I had to buy food, I had to live. And the Theatre was scarcely open now, as the winter deepened and the weather worsened. I faced penury, and how long before the Widow Morrison threw me onto the street?
‘Sit down.’ DeValle indicated one of the chairs at the table. I sat, and deValle took the chair opposite me. My back was to the open gallery, so the winter light was on his face. He stared at me, still with dislike. ‘So you can fight,’ he said.
‘Stage-fighting,’ I said disparagingly, ‘where we try neither to wound nor hurt.’
‘The Earl of Lechlade, my master,’ he said, ignoring my words, ‘desires to have a company of players. I do not understand his desire, but he will not be denied. Players, as you have just shown me, are full of deception.’ He paused to pour himself a cup of red wine. ‘My task is to find his lordship players who will practise their deceptions in Mister Langley’s playhouse.’
‘The Swan,’ Francis Langley put in.
‘So named,’ deValle said, ‘because his lordship’s emblem is a swan.’ He touched the badge on his shoulder. ‘But we’re not telling anyone that name yet. We’ll announce it when we announce the first play.’ He gave Francis Langley a look of pure malevolence, then glanced back at me. ‘Would you like to play at the Swan, Master Shakespeare?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said, though I was by no means certain of that answer.
‘What do you earn now?’ he asked.
‘It depends, sir,’ I said, ‘on whether I’m needed in a play, and whether the Theatre is open. In bad weather we don’t perform. And it’s winter now, sir, so some weeks we don’t perform at all.’
‘I did not ask for a lecture,’ he said. ‘What do you earn now?’
‘In a bad week, sir? Nothing. In a good week? Three shillings, four shillings. Most weeks just a shilling or two.’
‘A pittance. We will pay more to the players who wear his lordship’s swan, is that not so, Mister Langley?’
‘If you say so, sir,’ Langley said. He looked alarmed, and I had the sense that the cost of building the Swan playhouse was running out of control, driven by the Earl of Lechlade’s promises and demands. The nobility was famous for not paying its debts, or for delaying their payments for months or even years, and doubtless his lordship was expecting ever more fake marble, ever more painted naked ladies, and ever more lavish amounts of gold leaf, and Francis Langley was providing it at his own expense and praying that he would be repaid.
‘We
will pay well,’ deValle told me. His blue eyes, scornful and unfriendly, were fixed on me. ‘But I should tell you that players are not hard to find. Turn over any stone in London and a player crawls out.’ He paused as if expecting me to protest, but I held his gaze and said nothing. ‘You are, Becky says, handsome,’ he went on grudgingly, ‘and God knows she’s seen enough men to make a judgement.’
‘He’s a good-looking boy,’ Francis Langley said.
DeValle ignored him. ‘You can dance?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
He hesitated, perhaps irritated that I had not called him ‘sir’. ‘So we should consider him, should we not, Mister Langley?’
‘Consider him? Yes, sir. He’s good! People like watching him.’
‘But what use are players?’ deValle asked. ‘What use is a playhouse?’ He asked the questions and left them hanging. No one answered. The fire crackled in the hearth, then spewed sparks as a log dropped.
‘A playhouse is no use,’ deValle continued scornfully, ‘and players are a waste of money, unless there is a play. We have a playhouse, and Christ knows we can find players, but where is the man who writes the plays?’
Francis Langley shuffled his feet. ‘I’ve been talking to the Reverend …’
‘Don’t talk to me of Venables! Who performs his plays?’
‘The Lord Chamberlain’s Men did,’ Langley said, ‘well, they performed one.’
‘Hester and Ahasuerus,’ I said.
‘And?’ deValle asked.
‘A piece of shit,’ I said.
He gave a genuine smile at that. ‘We don’t want shit! We want plays!’
‘Tom Nashe has agreed to write something,’ Francis Langley said weakly.
‘Have you seen it?’
‘Well, I don’t think he’s started yet. He said he’d start soon. And Ben Jonson, you haven’t met him, sir, but Ben said he’d be willing to think of something …’ his voice trailed away.
‘Ben writes for the Rose,’ I pointed out.
‘And demanded twenty-five pounds for a play,’ deValle snarled.
‘Yes, sir,’ Langley said.
‘His lordship is not a cow to be milked,’ deValle said angrily. It was plain that the Swan had its stage and it would doubtless have players, but it had no plays. DeValle stood and walked to the balustrade from where he gazed at the stage below. ‘When will the playhouse be finished, Langley?’
‘End of January, sir. If there’s money.’ He added the last three words in a tone of despair.
DeValle ignored the despairing tone. ‘So we can put on a play at January’s end?’
‘If the weather’s good, sir, yes.’
‘But we have no play!’ DeValle turned on Langley savagely. ‘We have no play!’
‘We will, sir.’ Langley did not sound convincing. ‘And we can always do The Seven Deadly Sins, folk like that one.’
‘For Christ’s sake that is old! That is tired! His lordship does not expend funds so you can fart some ancient piece of nonsense that half London has seen before. Would you open a new whorehouse with nothing but old poxed ingles pissing on moth-eaten mattresses?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Your customers want new whores. Fresh meat. Not half-eaten tarts like Becky.’
‘Thank you,’ Becky said.
DeValle ignored her, turning back to look out into the playhouse. ‘When is the wedding?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Sir?’ Langley asked, puzzled.
‘I wasn’t asking you.’ DeValle still had his back to us.
‘Wedding?’ I asked uncertainly.
‘The Lord Chamberlain’s granddaughter is marrying Thomas Berkeley,’ deValle said menacingly, ‘when?’
‘February, sir,’ I said.
‘February,’ deValle said, ‘and in the court there is much talk of that wedding. The Lord Chamberlain and his wife have even boasted of the play that will be performed there. A comedy, his lordship said. A fine piece of writing, she said. Have you seen it?’
I hesitated. ‘Parts of it,’ I finally admitted. I did not say that I had listened to most of the play that morning.
‘What is it called?’
‘My brother is still searching for a title, sir,’ I lied.
‘Is he now?’ DeValle turned and stalked back to the table’s far side. He sat, felt in a purse hanging from his belt, and brought out a handful of gold coins. He spun one of the coins on the table’s top. I stared at the glitter, Becky gazed, and Langley looked hungry. ‘Bring me that play,’ deValle said softly.
I looked up to meet his gaze. ‘Sir?’
‘Bring … me … that … play,’ he repeated, leaving a pause between each word.
I said nothing. I felt alarm, fear, danger. ‘Is the play good, Richard?’ Francis Langley asked nervously.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Lady Anne Hunsdon says it’s good,’ deValle said slyly. ‘She praised it to the Queen. She said she’d never read a finer comedy.’
‘I know she’s read it,’ I said, ‘but her husband is paying for it, and if another playhouse were to perform it first …’
‘We have friends at court too,’ deValle interrupted me harshly. ‘The Lord Chamberlain’s displeasure is our affair, not yours.’
‘How many players, Richard?’ Langley asked.
‘A lot, sir!’ I said, hoping that would deter him. ‘At least a dozen.’
‘Expensive then,’ Langley said.
DeValle ignored that. ‘Are you frightened, boy?’
‘I don’t know that I can steal a copy, sir. The pages are guarded.’
‘Your brother wrote it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then who better to steal it than you?’ He rolled one of the coins across the table, and I was forced to trap it before it fell to the floor. ‘Keep that one, boy,’ deValle said, ‘and I’ll give you six more when you bring me the pages.’ I stared at the precious coin that lay enormous, heavy and gleaming in my hand. An unflattering portrait of the Queen graced one side; her crown was perched precariously on long flowing hair, and she stared off to one side over a beaked nose that somehow made her look petulant. I turned it over to see the royal coat of arms flanked by the letters E and R. ‘That is a sovereign, boy,’ deValle said, ‘a gold sovereign. Have you held a sovereign before?’
I shook my head. I had never even seen a sovereign before. It was said to be made of almost pure gold, and, though its value was set at twenty shillings, it was rumoured to be worth far more. I put the coin on the table, took a deep breath, and pushed it back towards deValle. ‘The pages are guarded, sir.’
‘So you don’t want employment here?’
If the moment in the ditch on the road from Stratford to Ettington had changed my life, that moment when I had asked Ned Sales where he was going and impulsively asked him to carry me to London on his wagon, this moment was another. I had a choice. I could accept deValle’s gold and betray my brother. I could steal A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and even, perhaps, the new play he was writing that was set in Verona. I would be rich! I would have employment. It would be a sweet revenge for the part of Francis Flute, for the years of misery with Sir Godfrey, but Father Laurence’s words haunted me too. ‘Don’t look to your brother for help, be a help to him.’ I stared at deValle, who glared back at me. ‘Well, boy?’
‘You want me to steal my brother’s play, sir?’
‘Sweet suffering Christ, how daft are you? Isn’t that what I just said?’
I took a very deep breath. ‘If that’s the price, sir, no.’
‘Then get out,’ he snarled. ‘Get out, now!’
No one spoke as I stood. My chair scraped loud on the chamber’s floor. DeValle glared at me, Francis Langley frowned at the table, Becky smiled, and still no one spoke as I crossed to the door.
I fled down the stairs, through the tiring room, and out onto the stage.
Where a tall man dressed in black, as lanky and thin as a human daddy-long-legs, his greasy black ha
ir showing beneath a wide-brimmed black hat, a black spade beard long on his chest and his deep-lined face grinning and malevolent. He put an arm out to stop me. ‘Look who we have here,’ he said with a sneer worthy of deValle. ‘It’s little Richard, only you’re not so little any more, are you?’
I slapped his arm away, took one horrified look into his gaunt and grinning face, jumped from the stage, and walked away. I wanted to run, but I walked because I would not pay this man the compliment of running away from him.
It was Sir Godfrey. And his mocking laughter followed me out of the playhouse.
Sir Godfrey Cullen was no knight. The ‘sir’ was a courtesy given to ministers of the Church of England, and Sir Godfrey was the parish priest of Saint Benet’s in Blackfriars. He was also the proprietor of Scavenger’s Yard which lay just north of the city in Clerkenwell, and which provided bears, dogs, and other beasts for London’s entertainment, but chiefly he had been the owner and chief predator of Saint Benet’s Choir School for Boys.
It was to Saint Benet’s and to Sir Godfrey’s care that my brother had consigned me on my arrival in London. I joined twenty-three other boys, most of them much younger than me, who lived in a malodorous shed in the burial ground behind Saint Benet’s church, and next door to an old monastic hall that had been turned into a playhouse that could seat two hundred and seventy people. The Puritan fathers of London might detest the playhouses and had banned them from within the city’s walls, but they had no power to ban a choir school, and if the choir school chose to present plays as part of the boys’ education, then the city council had to swallow their rage and endure the indignity. There were three such boys’ playhouses within the city walls, of which Saint Benet’s was the smallest, and all were hugely popular, attended by eager crowds of playgoers willing to pay three or four pence to watch small boys prance, pose, and perform.
‘He’s a pretty boy,’ Sir Godfrey had said, inspecting me on my first visit. We were in Saint Benet’s vestry, where Sir Godfrey sprawled long-legged behind a table on which was a Bible, two tall candles, and a flagon of wine. I stood opposite him, wondering what lay in store.