Fools and Mortals

  My brother had bowed. ‘Your ladyship,’ he had responded in amazement.

  ‘Spend more!’ she said imperiously. The Theatre had a large stock of clothes, which I regarded as my wardrobe, but other than disguising the boys as women, dressing the noble characters in silks and satin, and the commoners in fustian, we took little trouble over costume. When Richard Burbage played Titus Andronicus, he wore hose, shirt, falling band, and boots, over which a white sheet had been artfully draped to suggest a toga. His troops, all played by hired men, wore battered helmets and dented breastplates that had seen service in Ireland or the Low Countries. The audience never seemed to mind, but Lady Anne wanted better, much better. ‘I wish the play to resemble a masque,’ she had said more than once.

  I had never seen a masque, but I knew they were lavish entertainments staged at country mansions and city palaces for the Queen and her aristocracy. My brother told me they were not so much plays as presentations, replete with gods and goddesses, choirs and musicians, and distinguished by the most elaborate effects and costumes that machinery, cunning, money, and needlewomen could devise. Gods flew, mermaids seemed to glide upon lakes, fountains spouted coloured water, grass was painted gold, cherubs chirped prettily, and, most astonishing of all, women played the parts of women. ‘And some do it amazingly well,’ my brother had said.

  ‘Then why don’t we …’

  ‘Because the Puritans hate us enough already! Put women on the stage and the Puritans will burn down the playhouses. If there’s one thing a Puritan fears, it’s a woman. Besides, they’re not real plays.’

  ‘They’re not?’ I had asked.

  ‘Masques are mere pious recitals,’ he said scathingly, ‘devised to make the audience feel inspired with unending speeches about chastity, nobility, bravery, and other such nonsense. They’re enchanting to look at, but dreary beyond belief to hear.’

  So A Midsummer Night’s Dream would be enchanting to look at. Jean and Silvia had brought yards of white silk gauze, cream-coloured satin, and delicate lace, which would be used to clothe the fairies. The company’s youngest apprentice boys had the fairies’ speaking parts, but they were accompanied by a half-dozen children from the Lord Chamberlain’s household for whom my brother had written three songs that Phil had set to music. The children were the sons of the household’s servants, and one, called Robin, turned out to be Silvia’s nephew. ‘Say hello to Francis Flute,’ she ordered him.

  ‘Hello,’ the child, six or seven years old, said.

  ‘Hello,’ I said awkwardly.

  ‘He’s a cheeky little bleeder,’ Silvia said, kneeling to drape Robin with gauze, ‘and stand still or I’ll smack you.’ Those last words were addressed to the child, who stared up at me with wide eyes. ‘He’s my brother’s eldest,’ Silvia explained. Her brother Ned worked in the stables. The whole family, it seemed, had connections to Lord Hunsdon’s household. Silvia’s father had been one of his lordship’s bargemen before he bought his own wherry, and her mother, like Silvia, had been a maidservant. ‘And I expect Robin here will grow up to serve the family,’ Silvia went on.

  ‘I want to be a soldier,’ Robin said.

  ‘You don’t want to be a soldier,’ she said, ‘because soldiers just get chopped to little pieces. You want to work in the stables like your dad. And stop picking your nose!’ She slapped Robin’s hand, then draped more gauze around his shoulders before tucking it, pinning it, and adding a silk ribbon. ‘There, you look like a lovely fairy!’

  ‘I don’t want to be a fairy.’

  ‘Well you are one. And you sing. You’re a singing fairy.’ She tied the ribbon, then looked up at me. ‘He’s got a lovely voice. Robin has. He sings like a little bird, don’t you? Just like a little robin redbreast.’

  Robin said nothing, just stared up at me as if appealing for help against this monstrous feminine abuse.

  ‘So you shot a horse?’ Silvia asked.

  ‘Barely.’

  ‘You didn’t kill it then?’

  ‘No, I just scared it.’

  She grinned at me and was about to say something more when Jean called out to my brother. ‘Are we putting rugs on the stage?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘So the fairies don’t need shoes?’

  ‘Fairies never need shoes.’

  ‘You hear that?’ Silvia said to Robin. ‘You don’t need shoes, so make sure you wash your feet.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I said so.’ She leaned back to look at her work. ‘You are a pretty little fairy! Isn’t he pretty, Richard?’

  ‘Very,’ I said.

  ‘And don’t bite your fingernails!’ Silvia slapped at Robin’s hand.

  Robin scowled. ‘Aunt Silvia is going to marry Tom,’ he said out of nowhere.

  My world stood still. I had no idea what to say, because there was nothing to say. Silvia blushed and did not look at me. She was slicing a pair of shears into the gauze costume, and the blades hesitated a moment, then cut again, savagely. ‘You’re getting married?’ Jean, on her knees in front of another child, asked blithely.

  There was silence for a moment. Silvia had put two pins between her lips, but took them out. ‘My dad wants me to,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Who’s Tom?’ Jean asked.

  ‘A waterman.’ Silvia still did not look at me. ‘He helps my dad.’

  ‘Nice boy, is he?’

  ‘Do we want to hem this edge with satin?’

  ‘We’ll use the blue on the children’s jerkins,’ Jean, still on her knees, shuffled across the floor to look at Robin. ‘Oh that does look nice! That high collar is ever so clever! And maybe the same for Titania? But in gold? Did we bring the gold?’

  Silvia had just put the two pins back between her lips, so shook her head.

  ‘I’ll fetch it,’ Jean said, starting to stand.

  Silvia spat the pins out. ‘No, I’ll go!’ She ran across the hall floor and vanished through the large doors. Robin, swathed in gauze and satin, began to pick his nose.

  ‘She’s a lovely girl,’ Jean said, when Silvia had left. ‘That Tom’s a lucky man.’

  ‘He is,’ I said dully.

  ‘And she can sew!’ Jean began hemming the edge of Robin’s jerkin. ‘She’s magic with a needle. I wish she could come work with me.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Jean rocked back on her heels and looked at me. ‘Lord above, Richard, I don’t understand you Shakespeares. Live with your heads in the bleeding clouds, both of you. Stand still, you little bugger.’ She slapped Robin’s hand. ‘Don’t pick your nose! You want your brains to leak out? Why do you think your Silvia’s not married?’

  ‘My Silvia?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s sixteen, for God’s sake! John Heminges’s wife was a widow at sixteen. Silvia should have been wed two years ago.’

  ‘She should?’

  ‘Don’t you go listening to none of this,’ Jean said to Robin, ‘and don’t bite your fingernails either, or you’ll end up with two stumps like Slippery Daniel. You’ll have to eat like a dog if you have stumps. She doesn’t want to marry this Tom, does she? And her dad is too soft to make her.’

  ‘Who’s Slippery Daniel?’ Robin asked.

  ‘No one you know, darling, but he makes a God-horrible mess when he eats. Can’t wipe his bum neither, so he smells something awful.’

  Robin laughed, and I watched the hall’s doors, but Silvia did not reappear. The snow was falling still harder, plastering the oriel window white, and the Sharers decided to call it a day and let everyone go home. ‘We meet tomorrow,’ my brother announced.

  I went home.

  The snow lifted. For most of the day it had seemed we would be buried by the big soft flakes, but by the time I reached home the snow had stopped. I paid the Widow Morrison three shillings in rent, and she stared at the coins as though she had never seen such things before. ‘A February miracle!’ she said, and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Have an oatcake, darling. Have two.’

  ‘
How’s Father Laurence?’ I asked her.

  ‘He’s busy, darling.’ She winked at me, which I suspected meant that the old priest was hearing confessions. ‘There was a man here asking for you.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘A nasty man, too,’ she said, and I must have looked alarmed. ‘It’s all right, darling,’ she went on, ‘I told him you hadn’t paid your rent and were out on the street. That was almost true too, wasn’t it?’

  I went upstairs to the attic that was dark and freezing. I struck steel on flint, lit a patch of charred linen in the tinder box and transferred the flame to a rushlight. I was miserable. Father Laurence was busy, and I was in no mood to huddle alone in my attic. Silvia! I wanted to believe what Jean had told me, but the mind forever slides downhill to believe the worst. And marrying Tom made sense. He was a waterman, he was young, he would have a trade, he would make money, and why would Silvia’s parents ever wish her to marry a penniless player? Perhaps Jean was right and perhaps Silvia did not want the marriage with Tom, but good sense dictated that she should marry him.

  I thought of some words that Bottom said to Titania after she had declared her passion for him, a burning passion despite the ass’s head perched on his shoulders. Under the influence of Oberon’s magic potion she swore undying love, to which Bottom answered, ‘To say the truth, reason and love keep little company these days,’ and I so hoped that was true! Yet I feared that reason and love would prove bedfellows. In a play anything can happen. Fairy queens can fall in love with monsters, but Silvia’s parents would want their daughter married safely, reasonably, to a man who could support her, and keep them in their old age.

  I did not want to be alone and cold, but nor did I want to stay dressed in the craftsman’s clothes I had worn all day, and so I changed into the finest garments I had stolen from the Theatre. I was angry. I told myself that Silvia had deceived me, and that once I had discovered the deception, she had fled from me. So tonight I would find another woman and squander what I had left of my brother’s gift. I chose a doublet cut from the softest Spanish black leather, slashed with strips of dark blue velvet. It had once cost a fortune, but some lordly soul, tiring of it, had donated it to the playhouse. The sleeves were tied at the shoulder with silver cords threaded through silver eyelets, and were padded with white silk, which bunched out of the slits on the forearms. The cuffs were of French lace, and the doublet, in short, was a thing of beauty. Wearing such a garment seemed like a gesture against malign fate, against the reason that had soured love. I hung a sheathed dagger from my belt, covered my finery with a thick, dark cloak, and then, with coins in my pouch, I went back into the cold night. ‘Going to the tavern?’ the widow asked as I left.

  ‘For a while.’

  ‘You should save your money, Richard.’

  That was doubtless good advice, but nevertheless I walked to the Dolphin, hoping that Alice would be alone, but when I pushed through the door into the crowded, smoky, candlelit main room, I saw my brother sitting at a table beyond the big hearth. He was with four other men, none of whom I knew. I stayed in the shadows, watching him. He looked animated, plainly telling some tale, and his companions were laughing. He looked happy too, and why did that surprise me? Perhaps because whenever he was with me he seemed to scowl? I doubted he would welcome my company, despite having restored his precious plays, nor did I want his company, so I shrank further back into the shadows and then saw Alice come down the stairs and cross the crowded room. She looked so slight and pale, her fair hair tousled, but when she saw my brother her face brightened, and my brother, seeing her, extended an arm in invitation. She went to his side, sat on the bench, and snuggled into his shoulder. It was well past curfew which meant the city gates were closed, so plainly my brother had no intention of going home. He would spend the night here. He whispered something in Alice’s ear, and she laughed. He bent down and kissed her forehead. She began to talk animatedly, and my brother and his companions listened. They were happy.

  I did not want to stay there, but nor did I want to slink home, so with misery as my companion I went to the Falcon, where, as usual, Marie sat by the fire, Dick scowled, and Margaret and her husband squabbled. ‘Don’t you look grand!’ Margaret welcomed me. ‘Doesn’t Richard look grand?’

  ‘Tie a ribbon round a dog’s neck,’ Greasy Harold, her husband, growled.

  ‘You miserable old bastard.’

  I bought a mulled ale, then sat by the tavern’s fire, where I brooded on Silvia, and then remembered the ‘nasty man’ who had enquired at the widow’s house. I suspected he had been sent by deValle. Somehow, in all the day’s excitement and disappointment I had not thought about deValle’s revenge, but he would want it. He was a proud man, and I had broken his leg and stolen his hat. I shuddered, suddenly realising my danger. ‘I might sleep here tonight,’ I told Margaret.

  ‘It’s stopped snowing, Richard, but of course you’re welcome.’

  ‘If you pay,’ Greasy Harold put in, ‘you can stay if you pay. We’re not a poorhouse.’

  ‘We’re not? Isn’t that a surprise,’ Margaret said. ‘Of course you can stay, Richard, don’t mind him.’

  ‘He might have to share a bed,’ John grumbled.

  ‘Share a bed! Who do you think will want a bed tonight?’

  ‘Someone might.’

  ‘Someone who missed the curfew,’ Marie put in helpfully.

  ‘No one’s travelling tonight!’ Margaret said scornfully.

  And that was when we heard the hoofbeats. ‘Oh no?’ Harold crowed. ‘So no one’s travelling?’

  You don’t hear horses that late at night, not in Shoreditch, and there was more than one horse, instead it was a whole clatter of hooves that was scarcely muffled by the snow. They came close, and we waited for them to pass, but instead they stopped and there was only silence. Horses mean money, and money means power, and power means trouble, and everyone in the Stinking Chicken knew it. We all looked at the street door.

  ‘Can’t be nothing to do with us,’ Margaret broke the nervous silence.

  The silence stretched.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ Harold said uncertainly.

  ‘I need a piss,’ I announced. I dropped a small coin on the table, snatched up my cloak, and went to the still room door.

  ‘Not in there, you dirty bugger!’ Harold protested. ‘Use the alley like a Christian!’

  I pushed through the door. A pair of rats vanished under barrels, and I pulled open the outer door into the stable yard and saw the man waiting there. Or rather I saw the long pale streak of a sword blade, which, the moment I appeared, was raised towards me. The swordsman said nothing. He was dressed in black, and I only saw him because there was a lantern in the back room of Nellie Cotton’s house, which overlooked the yard. Nellie never slept. She would be sewing in her back parlour, making endless clothes for her babies, all of whom were in Saint Leonard’s churchyard. She was mad.

  The man moved towards me, the light of Nellie’s lantern glimmering on his blade. I went left fast, through the gate into the piss-stinking alley, and there was another man waiting, and he too was dressed all in black, and he too carried a blade, this one a short, wide-bladed knife. ‘Mister Price wants to see you,’ he said, and the man who had been in the Falcon’s yard came through the gate, and his sword tip touched my spine between the shoulder blades.

  ‘Who is Mister Price?’ I asked. I was thinking I could jump and catch hold of the wall’s coping and be over it into Davy Locket’s backyard, but the sword in my spine prodded me. I would never be over the wall in time.

  ‘Mister Price,’ the second man said, ‘is the gentleman who wants to see you.’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong man,’ I said, and for a moment I even believed that. The only Mister Price I knew sold fish and couldn’t raise two pennies, let alone have black-dressed retainers with naked blades.

  ‘No, Dickie boy,’ the swordsman behind me said, ‘we don’t.’

  ‘Come gently, boy,’ the knife
man said, ‘and you might keep your balls.’

  ‘Or one of them,’ the swordsman said, then moved his blade so it pierced my cloak and slid between my thighs. He pressed the steel upwards. ‘And one’s better than none, right lad?’

  He was right. So I went gently.

  There were six of them, and seven horses. The seventh horse was for me. It was a broken-down jade with a saddle, but no stirrups, and even if I could have kicked it into a gallop I would never have escaped the six men on their sleek stallions. They were Percies. Pursuivants. They did not tell me that, but nor did they need to because they were commanded by the bulbous twins who had been humiliated by Alan Rust in the Theatre. One twin rode on my left and the other on my right, and both talked across me. ‘He’s a pretty boy, brother,’ one said.

  ‘He is, brother. For the moment.’

  ‘He’s got a nice hat.’

  ‘It is a nice hat!’

  ‘He’s not very chatty, though, is he?’ The twin on my right nudged me. ‘Lost your tongue?’

  ‘Very likely he will lose it,’ the second twin said, ‘if Mister Price decides to tear it out.’

  ‘By the root.’

  ‘Gobble gobble,’ the second twin said with a laugh. ‘That’s what you’ll sound like when he’s done with you.’

  ‘No,’ the first one said, ‘it’s more like gurgle gurgle, but only after they’ve stopped screaming.’

  ‘Gobble gurgle then.’

  The twins were young. Maybe in their middle twenties. Young and confident. The two men who rode ahead of us and the two behind were bigger, older, and silent. The pair in front listened to the twins’ chatter and did not even turn their heads, and I sensed that they despised the brothers.

  We went slowly. You cannot hurry a horse in the darkness, not unless you want to break the beast’s leg, and especially not when the animal is treading an uncertain road through newly fallen snow. We went north and west around the city, following Hog Lane between hedgerows thick with snow. The city wall was a dark streak to my south, the battlements faintly outlined by the lamps of London. The night’s small wind was blowing from the south, bringing the city’s reek of sewage and smoke. There was little moonlight; just enough to show the fields smooth and white.