Fools and Mortals

  ‘Maybe He could turn the water into wine?’

  Lord Hunsdon laughed. ‘Gossip says your clown walked out.’

  ‘He did, my lord.’ My brother sounded grim.

  ‘A pity! Anne says he’s funny. Very funny!’

  ‘Her ladyship is right, he is funny, he also thinks he’s indispensable.’

  ‘No one is indispensable,’ Lord Hunsdon said, ‘except possibly Harrison. Will your fellow be back?’

  I saw my brother shrug. ‘Eventually, I suppose. He’s walked out before. I suspect he’ll soak his pride in ale tomorrow, then crawl back.’

  ‘But you need him tomorrow?’

  ‘We do, my lord.’

  ‘Want me to send Ryker to him?’

  My brother paused, surprised and pleased. Ryker was Lord Hunsdon’s chief yeoman, the commander of his household guards. ‘Would you, my lord?’

  Lord Hunsdon grinned. ‘It would be a pleasure, Mister Shakespeare. Let’s remind your fellow that he’s one of my retainers, eh? And Ryker can be frightening as hell. He scares me. Where does your fellow live?’

  ‘At the sign of the Phoenix in Lombard Street.’

  ‘A good tavern! Ryker will be there in the morning, and I dare say your fellow will be here soon after.’ His lordship pushed the jug across the table. ‘I must to supper. I look forward to your play, Mister Shakespeare.’

  My brother stood as Lord Hunsdon got to his feet. ‘Your lordship is most kind,’ he said formally.

  ‘I’m old, that’s why. Kindness comes easier when you’re old.’

  My brother did not stay long after his lordship left. I saw him make notes on the pages, then he put the script into the big chest, locked it, and put the key on the high mantel. He pulled on his cloak and hat, and I heard his footsteps clump across the stage above me. The door opened and closed, and all that was left was the slight crackle of the fire. Occasionally, from somewhere deep in the mansion, I could hear music, and once or twice there were footsteps in the scullery passage. A chill began to seep into the room as the fire burned down. Time crept, marked by the church bells striking the hours through the slow dark. In a moment of silence I pushed aside the fabric covering the stage’s front, tiptoed across the floor to the table. I took the jug of sack and carried it back to my lair, where I swathed myself in the spare green cloth. There had been a time when I would have kept the silver jug and sold it, but that time had passed. Silvia, I thought, Silvia.

  I fell asleep, only to be woken by footsteps. A dim light showed in the great hall, and I peered through the gap in the fabric to see Walter Harrison attended by a serving man who held a lantern aloft as the steward looked around. ‘All is well,’ Harrison announced, and the two left. I stayed still, scarce daring to breathe until their footsteps had faded. I pulled more of the cloth about me, cocooning myself, still shivering. It was no colder than my attic room at the Widow Morrison’s house, but it felt strange to be so alone in such a great house, startled by every creak, every small noise, every scrabble of a rat in the undercroft beneath the hall. There was still a glow from the fire, but the small warmth did not reach the stage. The church bells were silent, their ringers gone home, and London slept.

  I fell asleep a second time, to be woken as a heavy blanket was thrown over me. I cried out, startled, and a voice hushed me. ‘Richard! Richard!’ It was Silvia, whispering. ‘Gawd, it’s cold,’ she said, and I felt her slide under the blanket to join me. For a trembling moment we just lay there, maybe both surprised by what was happening, but then I reached for her and she made a small noise and came into my arms. ‘I couldn’t leave you here,’ she whispered. The blanket was a thick fur, lined with satin, and taken, she said, from her mistress’s closet. ‘She has four, she doesn’t need this one. And it’s warm, we need it.’

  It was warm, and we needed it. And later, I do not know how much later, we slept.

  There comes a moment in a lot of plays when everything seems on the edge of disaster, and, quite suddenly, a character appears onstage to set it all right. My character Emilia does that in the Comedy of Errors. Her long lost husband has been condemned to death, but Emilia enters just in time to save his life. ‘Most mighty duke,’ she exclaims, ‘behold a man much wronged!’

  I remember when I first played Emilia thinking that the groundlings would never believe her sudden intervention. She is an abbess, thinks herself a widow, and believes her husband and one of her two sons are drowned. She has mourned them for years, and then, quite unexpectedly, both husband and son are there in Ephesus. Egeon, the husband, is about to be executed, but the Abbess Emilia rushes onto the stage and utters her cry of recognition, ‘Behold a man much wronged!’ The family is suddenly reunited, the execution averted, a feast is served, and the audience is in tears, but they are tears of happiness, not of grief. I remember Richard Burbage, who played the lost son, scorning the scene when we had first rehearsed it. ‘Life isn’t like that!’ he told my brother. ‘It’s too pat, too convenient!’

  ‘This is the stage,’ my brother had said, ‘we traffic in dreams.’ And he was right. No audience had ever mocked the sudden intervention of the abbess, instead they gasped with relief, they smiled, they shed tears, they were happy!

  I needed an Emilia. I needed a character to exclaim, ‘Behold a man much wronged!’ I was safe for this one night, but we had only one more rehearsal in the great hall, after which I must leave the mansion and risk arrest. ‘I’ll think of something,’ Silvia had said, but all she could suggest was that I hid in her parents’ house.

  ‘Then they’ll be arrested too,’ I said.

  ‘Dear God, no,’ she had whispered.

  I needed an Emilia, and instead I was discovered by Fang and Nasty. Silvia had left me in the night’s darkness, whispering that she had to light fires. She had kissed me. ‘Stay there,’ she cautioned me, scrambled away, the mansion fell silent once more, and I fell asleep again. It was the sleep of exhaustion, a deep sleep, so I did not hear the first scrabble of paws, the voices, or the footsteps, but woke abruptly to a dog howling in my ear. A second dog barked. ‘They found something!’ a voice called.

  I was dizzy with sleep, my heart pounding. A faint light showed from the back of the stage. I tried to stand and hit my head painfully on the boards above. ‘Go get him, Nasty!’ a second voice shouted, and both dogs redoubled their barking. They were high, shrill barks, not the deeper and threatening sound of the fighting mastiffs, but the noise still scared me, and I seized the blanket and pushed out through the fabric covering the stage’s front, tearing the cloth from its nails. The morning’s first grey light was showing through the oriel window, and a servant was reviving the fire to flicker shadows across the hall. He seized a poker as if to defend himself, then just stared at me as two men crossed the stage, one carrying a lantern. ‘That’s not a rat!’ one said.

  ‘Naked as a rat, though,’ the second man said. The dogs, both terriers, proud of their work, howled at my heels. ‘Quiet!’ the man shouted. ‘Down, Nasty! Down, Fang!’

  I managed to pull on hose, shirt, and doublet before the steward arrived. More dogs had come to the hall, so there were now six of them running around, yapping in excitement and pissing on Lady Hunsdon’s new rugs. They were ratcatchers’ terriers, their dirty pelts matted and their muzzles bloodied. ‘Let me have silence!’ Walter Harrison demanded loudly. ‘The family is sleeping, this noise is unseemly!’

  Even the dogs quietened. The steward must have been newly woken, yet he still appeared immaculately dressed, his chain of office gleaming over his silver-buttoned doublet. He looked me up and down, from my long unkempt hair to my grubby hose through which one toe poked. ‘Mister Shakespeare,’ he said, disappointment in his voice, ‘explain yourself.’

  ‘He was thieving, Mister Harrison!’ a serving man had crawled through the torn fabric at the stage’s front and now reappeared with the empty silver jug. ‘I found this, sir!’ The terriers evidently thought this damning, because they started howling.


  ‘Quiet!’ Harrison bellowed. He frowned at me. ‘Stealing, Mister Shakespeare?’

  ‘I stole the sack, sir, not the jug.’

  He seemed to accept that explanation because he looked me up and down again, then said, ‘You are hardly dressed as a thief. Explain yourself, pray?’

  There were now six or seven serving men in the hall, together with the two ratcatchers, all surrounding me as I shivered. ‘I slept here, sir,’ I explained.

  ‘You slept here,’ Harrison said flatly. ‘Why, pray?’

  ‘I was too late to leave the city, sir.’

  ‘And you purloined one of her ladyship’s bedcovers?’ he enquired, looking at the expensive blanket of satin-lined fur.

  ‘I found it,’ I said weakly.

  ‘Yet I believe the coverlets are kept in her ladyship’s chamber?’ Harrison asked, provoking one of the serving men to snigger. Harrison turned on him. ‘Begone! You have work!’

  ‘I just found it, sir,’ I repeated, unable to think of any other lie.

  One of the terriers pissed against the logs stacked on the hearth. ‘Take your wretched dogs away!’ Harrison ordered the ratcatchers. ‘The rats are in the undercroft, not here. Go!’ He waited as they left. ‘It seems there is no harm done,’ he declared loftily, ‘and we shall say no more on the matter. Today is your final rehearsal in the hall, is it not?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Then finish dressing, Mister Shakespeare, have your rehearsal, and then make sure you leave.’

  ‘Leave, sir?’ I said stupidly.

  ‘Leave, Mister Shakespeare. Remove yourself from the mansion. Depart. Go home. Leave. You cannot sleep here! His lordship’s residence is not a common lodging house. You will leave.’

  ‘But he can’t!’ a voice protested from the door.

  ‘Can’t?’ Harrison turned towards the door, his voice rising in indignation. ‘Can’t?’

  ‘He’ll be hanged!’ Silvia cried.

  My Emilia had come onstage.

  Will Kemp arrived shortly after the church bells had tolled nine. He came into the hall as if there had been no argument the previous day. ‘Good morrow, all!’ he called cheerfully. ‘A little warmer today, I think.’ He was followed by his apprentice, Billy Rowley, and by a tall grim man in Lord Hunsdon’s livery who I supposed to be Ryker, the commander of the Lord Chamberlain’s guard. The tall man stopped in surprise when he saw that Lord Hunsdon was in the great hall. ‘Don’t go, Ryker,’ his lordship called, ‘I need you!’

  ‘My lord?’

  The Lord Chamberlain was furious. Silvia had told me he could be a fierce old bugger when he was crossed, and she was right; all trace of his usual geniality had vanished, and Will Kemp, surprised like Ryker that his lordship was present and fearing that the anger was aimed at him, backed away a few steps. ‘I will not be defied!’ Lord Hunsdon snarled.

  ‘I meant no harm, my lord,’ Kemp said in an unnaturally humble voice.

  Lord Hunsdon ignored him. No one else spoke. All the players were in the hall, all of us looking nervous. The musicians were peering from the gallery, while Walter Harrison, who alone seemed unmoved by his lordship’s anger, stood by the fire with a protective arm about Silvia’s shoulders. She looked anxious, glancing constantly towards me. The bandage had been taken from my left arm, and the burn, oozing pus, throbbed. ‘A horse, Ryker!’ Lord Hunsdon demanded.

  ‘At once, my lord.’

  ‘You’re coming with me.’

  ‘Of course, my lord. Where to, my lord?’

  ‘Whitehall, now!’ His lordship stalked from the room, and Ryker, still looking astonished, followed.

  ‘God’s belly,’ Kemp said, ‘what is happening?’

  ‘You are!’ my brother said. ‘All of us are. The Sharers! We’re starting the rehearsal at midday.’

  ‘At midday?’ Kemp said startled, ‘but we …’

  ‘We shall be finishing later than we promised, Mister Harrison,’ my brother said.

  ‘I am sure you can be accommodated,’ Harrison said calmly.

  ‘Don’t take your cloak off, Will,’ my brother said to Kemp, ‘you’re coming with us.’ He strode to the chest beside the fire and took out a book, a sheaf of papers, his quill box, and ink. He carried them to the big table where the play’s properties were piled. ‘Swords!’ he said. ‘If you’re a Sharer, get yourself a sword.’ He looked at me. ‘You won’t need a sword, brother.’

  He called me brother!

  He sat, found a clean sheet of paper, and began writing. ‘Ralph,’ he called as he wrote, ‘practise the dances. Phil? The singers could be rehearsed.’ He finished whatever he was writing, sanded the paper, and stood. The Sharers, looking mystified, were buckling sword belts. My brother did the same. ‘We’ll be back soon,’ he announced.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Ralph Perkins asked.

  He ignored the question. ‘We’ll be back soon,’ he repeated, ‘now come.’

  We went.

  The piece of paper on which my brother had written so hurriedly contained only eight words:

  Beneath it was a thick stack of more paper, the bookkeeper’s copy of a play. I carried the play and the book, which was the unbound copy of A Conference, down Addle Hill, while my brother followed with Will Kemp, Alan Rust, John Heminges, Richard Burbage, and Henry Condell. All six men wore a sword or a rapier, the weapons’ long scabbards hidden by their cloaks. ‘No murder,’ had been my brother’s last words as we left the mansion.

  A small rain was blowing from the south, making the cobbles of the hill slippery. The ice was largely gone from the river, and the wherries were busy again, carrying passengers up and down between the city’s landing stages. ‘You’ll have to talk to my pa,’ Silvia had said in the all too short night, ‘if we’re marrying.’

  ‘We’re marrying now,’ I had said, and she had giggled. She had wanted to come with us to Addle Hill, but Walter Harrison had scoffed at the thought, telling her sternly that she had some explaining to do.

  ‘So you were with the girl last night?’ my brother asked.

  ‘Silvia, yes.’

  He grunted. ‘His lordship might not be pleased to hear you seduced one of his family’s maids.’

  ‘We’re getting married,’ I said defiantly. It seemed strange to say that out loud, especially to my brother.

  ‘Dear sweet Saviour!’ he said, then chuckled. ‘Lord, what fools we mortals be.’

  His amusement irritated me because, as so often, he made me feel like a child again. ‘You were younger than me when you got married,’ I retorted.

  ‘Indeed I was.’

  ‘And Silvia says his lordship won’t mind.’

  ‘I doubt his lordship minds whether she marries or not,’ he said mildly, ‘except he might be sorry to lose a good maidservant. And from what I hear she is a good girl.’

  ‘Too good for me, you mean?’

  ‘She’ll surely be good for you,’ he said, and I wondered whether it had been my brother who had told Silvia I was a thief. I was about to ask him, but he had a question of his own. ‘You know she and Jean have been talking?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Jean wants her to help at the Theatre.’

  ‘She’s a wonderful seamstress,’ I said, to encourage him.

  ‘There are many skilled seamstresses,’ he said dismissively, then suddenly we were at the porch of Saint Benet’s Church. ‘We’ll follow you in,’ he said, ‘and remember, no murder.’

  ‘No murder,’ I repeated, then went down the familiar steps.

  The church, which Sir Godfrey liked to boast had been there from before the time of the Conqueror, lay almost three feet beneath the cobbles of Addle Hill, and parishioners had to go down four old worn stone steps to reach the door. The entrance to Sir Godfrey’s house lay a few yards further down the hill, and that door would be bolted, but the church door only closed at curfew. ‘The faithful,’ Sir Godfrey liked to say, ‘must have access to God’s saving grace,’ by which he really m
eant that the faithful must have access to the massive poor box, iron bound and flamboyantly padlocked, that greeted every visitor. Sir Godfrey preached charity, encouraged generosity, and pocketed the coins. I had to duck under the stone arch and so entered Saint Benet’s where I had so often chanted the psalms in the white-washed choir. The church had once been painted with scenes from the Bible, it had possessed a handsomely carved pulpit and had boasted silver vessels on the altar, but Sir Godfrey, feeling the chill of a Puritan wind, had made sure that anything beautiful was sold or destroyed. There was no pulpit now, the altar was a plain deal table, and the candlesticks were turned from beechwood. Only the poor box was colourful, its flanks white and its face painted red, with a text from the Book of Proverbs: ‘He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord.’

  I skirted the huge box, walked up the brief nave, and pushed open the door into the vestry. It was empty. I crossed the room and pushed down the latch of the further door. If Sir Godfrey was home then this door was left unbolted, and it was. I pushed the door open, and Sir Godfrey, sitting at his breakfast table, turned, startled. ‘Richard!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘It’s the pretty boy,’ a mocking voice snarled, and I saw that Piggy Price’s two bulbous nephews were also at the table. I had thought they might have left after waiting one night, but it seemed they were staying till all three days were passed. The fourth person at the table was Simon Willoughby, who shuddered when he saw me. The four were sharing a loaf of bread, some cheese, a flitch of bacon, and a jug of ale.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll join us, dear boy,’ Sir Godfrey said, smiling through his black spade beard.

  ‘I want to hurt him!’ Simon pleaded. His face was still bruised, his lip swollen and his eye closed. The great blood clot showed dark on his cheekbone, while his burned right hand was bandaged.

  ‘We must be friends,’ Sir Godfrey said silkily. ‘Did you bring what we wanted, Richard?’