I put the play and the book on the table. One of the twins, either Fish-Breath or Sweaty-Face, snatched up the play and peered at the top page. ‘You can read?’ I asked him.
His chair scraped as the twin stood, eager to punish my insolence, but Sir Godfrey held out a warning hand. ‘I’ll have no affray,’ he said, ‘it seems that young Richard has done his godly duty like a good Christian.’ He drew the book towards him, then reached up to fully open a shutter to let in more of the morning’s light. The twin, it was Fish-Breath I saw, because the other twin, like Simon, had a bandage around his scorched hand, sat unhappily as Sir Godfrey read the book’s title aloud. ‘“A Conference About the Next Succession to the Crowne of Ingland.” Is this your brother’s book?’ he asked me.
‘Yes, Sir Godfrey.’
He smiled wolfishly. ‘It seems we have trapped Mister William Shakespeare in sedition!’ He chuckled and held the book towards Fish-Breath. ‘As we agreed, this is yours, and that,’ he took the play script, ‘is mine.’
‘We can arrest the brother?’ Fish-Breath asked, taking the book.
‘Indeed you must arrest him,’ Sir Godfrey said, and I knew my brother would be listening by now, hearing what he had expected to hear, that Sir Godfrey had made a devil’s bargain with the Pursuivants. They would prove sedition, and Sir Godfrey would have a play to sell to a wealthy earl.
Sir Godfrey smiled as he looked at the top page. ‘“Romeo and Juliet,”’ he read aloud, ‘“a tragedy.”’ He bared his yellow teeth in another smile. ‘Thank you, dear Richard.’ He put the top page aside and picked up the next, and I watched as his smile slowly faded. He frowned, then read aloud again. ‘“Scene one, the English court. Enter William the Conqueror, Marquis Lubeck with a picture,”’ he paused and looked up at me, then turned towards Simon Willoughby. ‘The English court, William the Conqueror. Was this play stolen from you, Simon?’
‘No, sir. That’s Fair Em.’
Sir Godfrey shook his head sadly and looked back to the page. ‘“What means fair Britain’s mighty conqueror so suddenly to cast away his staff?”’ he read, then looked up at me. ‘What means young Richard so suddenly to cast away his wits?’ he snarled. ‘You will hang for this!’
Fish-Breath stood and reached for me, then suddenly went very still because a sword blade was at his throat.
He went still because my brother and the other Sharers were pushing through the door, filling the small room, and my brother was holding the sword at Fish-Breath’s gullet.
Sir Godfrey was the first to recover from the surprise. ‘Buttercup!’ he shouted. ‘Buttercup!’
There was no answer.
‘You sent him to buy salt, sir,’ Simon Willoughby whispered.
‘You wanted to hang my brother Richard?’ my brother asked Fish-Breath, but the twin had no answer. His head was tilted, forced back by the blade. ‘Are these the twins that branded you?’ my brother asked.
‘Yes.’
‘The twins that wish to arrest me for sedition?’
‘Yes, brother,’ I said.
‘No murder, my masters,’ my brother said, ‘no murder. Now set to.’
We set to.
TWELVE
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon …
WE WERE APPREHENSIVE. We had never rehearsed a play for so long, never seen so much money spent on any play, and had never been so nervous before a performance. Expectations, at least the expectations of the Lord Chamberlain’s wife, were high, and we were playing to an audience whose attention was reluctant. Many had seen Fair Em and had to be wondering why Lord Hunsdon was inflicting yet more pain on his guests. They had endured the wedding service, endured the bishop’s homily, and now had to endure us, and if the Queen had not been present, and everyone in the hall knew she liked watching plays, the noise of conversation would have swamped George Bryan’s opening lines. A few guests still whispered as Duke Theseus spoke those first words, but a savage look from Her Majesty swiftly silenced them. Even the servants distributing kickshaws, sweetmeats, and wine dared not move.
We had started almost two hours late. Some said it was because the Queen’s barge had to wait for slack water before rowing under the bridge, others blamed the bishop’s sermon, while Will Kemp, on no authority but his own, claimed the bride had fainted at the prospect of losing her virginity. My brother tried to calm the company’s nerves by saying that all weddings started late. ‘Which is why we marry in haste,’ he added. No one smiled.
I remembered his wedding. I was eight years old and in awe of him. My father, mother, and I had walked to the church at Temple Grafton on a cold November day. We all wore our best clothes, while my brother had a new dark doublet. His hair was longer then, and my mother said what a handsome boy he was, and he was almost a boy, only eighteen years old, while Anne, his bride, was eight years older. She was dressed in pale grey linen, and had sprigs of holly berries in her unbound hair. A small pot belly pushed at her skirts, and that small pot belly, though I did not realise it for a long time, became my niece Susanna. There were just eight of us in the church, nine if you count Susanna, the ceremony was over almost before it began, and then we had walked back to Stratford with Anne grumbling because showers were sweeping across the fallow fields, though we reached Henley Street before the rain turned heavy. ‘Well,’ my mother said, taking her usual seat at the kitchen table, ‘that’s done.’
George Bryan vomited during the long wait. ‘Dear sweet God,’ he kept muttering, one leg twitching. Silvia, who was helping Jean, looked at him aghast as he puked into a wooden pail held between his legs.
‘Is he sick?’ Silvia asked.
‘He’s always like that,’ I said.
‘Dear sweet God,’ George said again. He was dressed in one of Lord Hunsdon’s robes, a gorgeous cloak of dark blue velvet trimmed at the collar and cuffs with heavy drapes of lynx fur. His cap was dark blue velvet, also trimmed with fur and sporting the two black feathers from the hat I had stolen from deValle. He wore a golden chain hung with a badge. He was Duke Theseus, and he was shivering, pale, and vomiting.
John Heminges paced the tiring chamber, sometimes pausing to peer through the curtains that covered the entrances to the stage, but seeing nothing in the hall except servants laying down plates and goblets. I heard him muttering his opening line. ‘“Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!”’ He was Oberon, King of the Fairies, and was dressed in black hose and shirt, covered with a cloak made from real cloth of gold. The cloak was stiff because the gold wire woven into the silk threads made it unwieldy. The cloth had come from Lady Anne Hunsdon’s bed hangings, and Silvia had made it into a cloak, adding edges of black satin on which she had sewn white stars.
‘You can’t sit in it,’ she had warned John, ‘because it will bend and stay bent.’
‘Bend?’ he had asked, distracted.
‘No sitting, no kneeling, sir!’
‘“That very time I saw,”’ John Heminges said, one hand gripping the hare’s paw that hung about his neck on a silver chain, ‘“but thou couldst not,
‘Flying between the cold moon and the earth
Cupid all arm’d! A certain aim he took
At a fair vestal thronéd by the west,
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow.’
‘I have a love-shaft!’ Will Kemp boomed, then seized Jean and kissed her on the lips as he did before every performance. ‘But you have a helper now,’ he said, and took Silvia’s arm, turned her, then recoiled as he tried to kiss her, ‘what in God’s—’
‘Pins, sir,’ she said, taking two from her lips, ‘sorry, sir. I hold them in my mouth.’ She had put the pins between her lips when she saw Kemp kiss Jean. She smiled sweetly at him, then stooped to fasten the buckles on his shoes.
Kemp was in buff leather, woollen trews, a simple cap, and a good mood. ‘Keep it moving, my masters!’ he called. ‘Keep it moving!’ No one listen
ed. Kemp did not really expect anyone to listen.
My brother turned his back on the company and made the sign of the cross.
‘I need to piss,’ Thomas Pope said. Richard Burbage drew his sword and kissed the blade.
And I left by the scullery passage door and climbed the stairs. I was wearing a coat of goose-turd green, rough hose, and a woollen cap. My long hair was gone. Jean and Silvia, both of them laughing, had cut it off, then trimmed what was left. ‘There’s a wigmaker in Old Change who’ll pay well for this,’ Jean had said as she carefully laid the long tresses onto a piece of linen.
‘How much will I get?’ I had asked.
‘You? You won’t get a penny! Silvia will get a few shillings. You won’t!’
‘Lord above,’ Silvia had said, standing back to look at me. ‘He looks ten years older!’
The short hair felt strange at first. Father Laurence, seeing it, had smiled. ‘A man at last, Richard?’ he had said.
Now, a man at last, who waited for the wedding to end and for the guests to come from the chapel, I climbed to the minstrels’ gallery. Phil was there with his five musicians. Robert, Phil’s friend, raised his crumhorn in greeting when he saw me. ‘Short hair!’ he said, surprised.
‘I’ve grown up,’ I answered.
‘Is that Richard?’ Phil pretended not to recognise me. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you without a skirt!’ His voice was unusually sibilant.
‘What’s the matter with your voice?’ I asked.
‘I had two teeth pulled yesterday.’
‘What did that cost?’
‘Four pence each.’
‘God’s belly,’ I said, ‘I’d have done them all for nothing!’
He laughed and struck his fingers across the strings of his lute. ‘Why are we late?’
‘Because our masters haven’t finished the wedding, I suppose.’
I leaned on the balustrade. The candles had been lit on the tables, silverware gleamed, and the fire burned like a furnace. The Queen’s dais with its high-backed throne and solitary table was covered by a rich red canopy of state. It was mid-afternoon, yet already the sky beyond the oriel window looked dark. ‘You’ve got a black eye,’ Phil said.
‘I do.’
‘I’d have done it for nothing,’ he said, and I laughed.
Sir Godfrey had done it instead.
‘Now set to,’ my brother had said, though for a moment no one did. Sir Godfrey had begun a halting protest which my brother had ignored, sheathing his sword. No one else had moved, no one perhaps believing that there would be violence. ‘There must be a mistake …’ Sir Godfrey had said nervously.
Fish-Breath had snarled at Sir Godfrey to be silent. ‘We serve the Queen!’ he had said defiantly.
‘You don’t,’ my brother had said calmly.
‘And you’ll be locked in the Marshalsea by noon,’ Sweaty-Face had finished for his twin.
‘At this moment,’ my brother had said, still very calmly, ‘the Lord Chamberlain is with Her Majesty. You will find that your employment has ended by noon.’ And with that he had punched Fish-Breath in the stomach.
It was a hard, thumping blow. My brother was not a big man like Will Kemp, nor was he agile like Richard Burbage, but he was strong and relentless. I remembered watching him fight Dick Quiney when both boys were about sixteen, and Quiney, who was a head taller than my brother, ended up beaten and bloody. Fish-Breath had tried to hit back, but my brother had parried the fist, then head-butted Fish-Breath, who had whimpered, then put a hand to his dagger. My brother had seized the hand and bent a finger back. Fish-Breath had squealed again, there had been a cracking noise, a louder squeal of pain, then Sweaty-Face had hurled himself across the room to help his twin brother, and that was when the rest of us had set to.
Sir Godfrey had stood and tried to push past me, and I had pushed him back, and he had swung a fist to blacken my left eye. It had hurt and it had angered me. And seven years’ of anger had suddenly erupted as I kicked him hard between the thighs, then I had brought my knee up to meet his face as he bent over. I had felt his nose break. I had seized his lank black hair, dislodging his cap, and I had forced his head back against the wall and had punched his face till it was a bloody mess and my knuckles were hurting.
It was all over very fast. Sweaty-Face had put up a fight, but Will Kemp was quicker, taller and stronger, and within a moment Sweaty-Face had become Bloody-Face. ‘It wasn’t us!’ Sir Godfrey had pleaded through bleeding lips. He was on his knees with blood pouring from his nose. ‘It was Francis Langley. Talk to him!’
‘I will,’ my brother had said, and thumped Sir Godfrey around the ear. ‘And as for you,’ he had stepped over Fish-Breath and advanced on Simon Willoughby, who had whimpered.
‘He’s mine, Will,’ John Heminges had said.
‘Leave him to me,’ Will Kemp had demanded.
‘No, he’s mine!’ Heminges had insisted.
Bloody-Face had tried to haul John Heminges away from Simon, but Alan Rust and Richard Burbage had taken hold of him and hurled him against the wall. ‘The Lord Chamberlain,’ Rust had said, ‘is unhappy with you. He sends you greetings,’ and he had driven a fist into his ribs, ‘and asks that you do not steal from our company.’ He had driven the fist again, then a third blow into the already broken nose. Richard Burbage and Henry Condell, feeling left out, were dissuading Fish-Breath from trying to help his twin by pummelling him mercilessly, while my brother was staring down at Sir Godfrey, who was on the floor covering his head with his hands. ‘We are the Lord Chamberlain’s Men,’ my brother had snarled at the cowering priest, ‘and you do not piss on our stage!’
‘No!’ Simon Willoughby had wailed, and we had looked over to see the boy on the floor and Heminges, his apprentice master, standing over him with a knife.
‘No murder,’ my brother had said.
‘No!’ Simon had wailed again, because Heminges had plucked the boy’s cap off to release his long golden hair. Heminges then gathered the hair in one hand and pulled it straight up.
‘Wigmakers pay handsomely for golden hair,’ he had said.
‘No!’
‘Stop whining,’ Heminges had said, and struck the boy with the knife’s heavy pommel. Then he had begun sawing at the hair, slicing it all off, wielding the knife roughly to leave Simon’s scalp bloodied. ‘You are released from your apprenticeship,’ he had said as he worked, then laughed at the mess he had made of Simon’s head. ‘Are we done?’
My brother had looked around the crowded room where the four men were bloodied and beaten. ‘We’re done,’ he had said, picking up the book and the play, ‘and a very good morning’s work, my masters.’
We were laughing as we went back up Addle Hill. Will Kemp had his arm around my brother’s shoulder. ‘You’re a good man, Will!’ he had boomed. ‘A good man!’
‘Despite Peter?’ my brother had asked.
‘It might be a small part,’ Kemp had said, ‘but I can make something of it.’
‘Then let’s make something of today’s play,’ my brother had said.
And we had. The last rehearsal seemed to be infused with the energy of the fight, with enthusiasm, with the laughter that had echoed on Addle Hill. We were the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and no one pissed on our stage.
The first guests arrived in the great hall. They came in small groups, all dressed gaudily in silk, satin, and fur, all laughing or chattering, evidently relieved to have been released from the chapel which must have been cold because they mostly gathered about the wide hearth. I gazed down from the minstrels’ gallery, seeing feathered hats and bejewelled headpieces. Walter Harrison, resplendent in his steward’s black with a gold chain of office, clapped his hands to summon servants. ‘Wine,’ he said, ‘for the guests. Now!’
‘Oh good,’ Phil said, ‘a drunken audience. We might as well give them Fair Em again.’
Walter Harrison turned and looked up to the gallery. ‘Music,’ he called, ‘let us have music.’
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‘Let us have musicians then,’ I said, and skipped sharply away from Phil’s retaliatory slap.
I went back down the stairs. ‘Not long now,’ my brother said as I re-entered the tiring room.
‘Dear God,’ George Bryan prayed.
‘“Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!”’ John Heminges muttered over and over, pausing only to kiss the hare’s foot that hung about his neck on its silver chain.
‘Doesn’t that thing stink?’ Will Kemp demanded.
‘No worse than you.’
‘Gentlemen!’ Alan Rust intervened. The noise of the guests in the great hall was getting louder. The boys who played women and girls were sitting on a bench where Jean and Silvia coated their faces, bosoms, hands, and legs with the ceruse that made their skin white. The ceruse was infused with pearls so that their skin would shimmer in the candlelight. One by one they had their lips reddened, then their eyes anointed with belladonna and darkened with soot mixed with pork fat.
‘I need a piss,’ Thomas Pope groaned.
‘You pissed five minutes ago!’ Henry Condell said.
‘I need another.’
‘Piss in George’s bucket,’ Alan Rust suggested. George, abandoning the bucket, was reaching up to touch the ceiling. Another superstition.
‘Time to light the candles?’ Richard Burbage, who was stretching his arms, asked.
‘Not yet,’ my brother said.
‘Dear God above,’ George Bryan moaned. He could not quite reach the ceiling.
‘Jump!’ Will Kemp said, and George dutifully jumped and his finger brushed the beam.
‘It must be soon!’ John Heminges gripped his hare’s foot.
‘The Queen isn’t in the hall yet,’ Alan Rust said. He was peering through the central entrance.
Laughter sounded loud from the hall. I joined Rust to spy through the curtain. The guests were taking their seats, and servants were pouring wine. The stage was dark. Folk kept looking towards it, but all they saw were two heavy curtains that hung from the minstrels’ gallery, one obscuring the right-hand third of the stage, and the other the left. Each drape had been painted with a pair of white columns that stood at either side of a painted niche in which was a painted statue. The drapes were there to suggest the audience hall of an Athenian palace, and hid the gauze-hung hornbeam saplings.