His Dark Lady (33 page)

‘MASTER SHAKESPEARE!’

Will woke with a grunting jerk, staring wildly about at the sound of his name being shouted about the theatre. He straightened his cap and wiped a trace of drool from his mouth. The hot July sunshine poured through a small window above him.

‘I’m busy! Can’t you see I’m working here?’ Will straightened out the crumpled sheet of paper he had been lying on and reached for his quill. ‘What is it?’

It was only Master Fildrew, one of the backstage managers at the Curtain. A small man with a limping gait, he threaded his way through the heaped bric-a-brac of the property room and thrust a note into Will’s hand.

‘Whore at the back door for you,’ Fildrew informed him sharply. ‘I told her we were preparing for the afternoon performance, but she won’t go away.’

Will read the note and jumped up, knocking his chair over. ‘At the back door, you say?’

‘Aye, Master,’ Fildrew agreed, staring as Will hurried from the room. He raised his voice after him. ‘And a fine black whore she is too. Do you know her fee? I would be happy to pay ten shillings for a shot at that.’

It was crowded backstage, as always just before a performance. Will found his way barred by minstrels tuning their instruments in the hallway and a boy actor in an unlaced scarlet and gold gown
with
his wig askew, weeping because he had grown too fat for the gown to be fastened. The dour-faced Scottish costume master fussed behind him, trying to drag the gaping sides of the gown together and swearing at Will in Gaelic as he pushed through to the back door.

A tall figure in the doorway straightened as he approached, and held out two gloved hands. ‘Will!’

It was Lucy Morgan.

He took her hands and pulled her close, kissing her on the mouth. She smelt sweet, of violets and roses, reminding him of a country garden. Her gown was demure, not like the extravagant dresses he had seen her wear at court, but she looked just as edible in it. ‘Lucy, how I have missed you! So you have come to see one of my plays at last. It’s a poor thing, an old story, but I’m rewriting after every performance, making it better each time it’s played.’ He nuzzled his lips against her throat, trying but failing to suppress the bitter accusation in his voice. ‘Could you not have come sooner? It’s been weeks.’

Her smile seemed strained. ‘I told you it would not be easy for me to escape. I have had my friend Cathy and her child to stay this summer, and I’m afraid she does not approve of our …’ She hesitated, not looking at him. ‘…Our meetings.’

‘Then you should have turned her out into the street,’ Will said venomously, surprised to discover a wave of anger inside him that would not be contained. ‘Her and her child too. You are your own mistress, Lucy. You do not need her approval.’

Lucy raised her eyebrows. ‘Perhaps not,’ she agreed, ‘but I do need her friendship. I love Cathy, she is my dearest friend, and I would never wish to hurt or offend her. Besides, I need her skill as a housewife. She has been helping me to tidy and clean out Master Goodluck’s old house. There were many tasks I would not have been able to undertake without her advice. And the house must be cleaned before the end of the summer. I may need to take a lodger in the autumn, for otherwise I cannot afford to live.’

He stared at her, remembering Cathy, the laughing, golden-haired girl he had met at Whitehall Palace. ‘Why does she disapprove of me?’

‘I wonder,’ Lucy murmured, looking at his wild hair and dishevelled clothes, the ink stains on his fingers.

Laughing, Will drew her inside the theatre. There, in the thick
shadows
behind the stage, he pushed her up against the wall and kissed her properly, letting his fingers explore her strong throat, then travel up over her jaw to the full-lipped, sultry mouth and high cheekbones above.

‘Promise me you will not listen to your friend,’ he whispered against her throat, breathing in the delicious fragrance of her dark hair. ‘You and I were meant to be together, Lucy Morgan. Our love was written in the stars. And no disapproving housewife is going to exert her baleful influence over us instead, however many thrifty ways to clean wood and pewter she may know.’

Lucy laughed with him, but he sensed her disquiet and was angry with himself for having made her mistrust him. From now on, he must control his temper. This rage would only grow if he continued to feed it with so much jealousy and frustration. It would get out of hand and threaten the love between them.

He heard a commotion from the front gates, and forced a smile. ‘Let us not quarrel, Lucy. You are here now, and I must be satisfied with that. Come and watch the play with me! We can sit on the stage, it’s the best view in the house. But we’ll have to hurry, they are already letting the playgoers in.’ When she did not move, he seized her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. ‘Come! What is the matter? The play will begin soon.’

‘You wish me to sit on the stage itself?’

‘Why not? You can sit on my lap, sweet Lucy, and feed me nuts and oranges when I grow hungry.’ He grinned. ‘It is allowed, so long as you do not disrupt the players.’

But Lucy was shaking her head. There was anger in her face. ‘Will, what are you thinking? Look at me, I am too easily recognized.’

‘So?’

‘I may not be one of the court ladies any more, but I do not wish to lose my reputation completely by sitting on the … on the very
stage
at the theatre.’ Her voice shook. ‘You must know only a whore would sit there.’

He stared at her, then realized that Lucy was right. What a fool he was! It had not even entered his mind that she could be disgraced by such a tiny thing. Yet he still wished her to sit on the stage with him and watch one of his own plays from close up, not from high in the gallery where the bolder noblewomen or wealthy merchants’ wives
sometimes
sat with their maids, covering their faces with their handkerchiefs so they would not be recognized.

‘Come,’ he said, and insisted on dragging her along the narrow corridor back towards the room where he had been writing. ‘What we need is a disguise.’

‘A what?’

As they reached the room, the first drum-roll came, then the minstrels struck up their welcoming music, and Will knew there would be little time before the prologue began. He threw open the lid of one of the theatrical chests, and rummaged about among the oddest collection of objects – a broken trumpet, a doll in swaddling cloth meant to look like a baby, a cracked chamber pot, and a dented crown – until he found something suitable.

Will suppressed his grin and handed a bushy grey beard up to Lucy. ‘Here, try this.’

She turned it over in her hand. ‘What is it?’

‘Well,’ he said lightly, ‘it looks like a baby badger flattened by a cartwheel. But I believe it’s meant to be an old man’s beard.’

Lucy looked at him. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘Humour me.’

Her eyes wide with disbelief, she held the bushy beard up to her chin, then waited for his verdict. ‘Well?’

‘Perhaps a mask would suit you better.’

She threw the beard at him. ‘Will you be serious for once? I need a man, not a jester.’

‘A jester is both.’

She closed her eyes. ‘Will, listen to me. There is still a small chance that I may be taken back at court one day, if Queen Elizabeth chooses to forgive me for whatever I did to offend her. Meanwhile, I must
not
lose my reputation by being seen at the theatre with you. It is too public a place.’

‘But you’ll sit on my lap in the tavern afterwards?’

‘Don’t mock me, Will Shakespeare,’ she told him, her face quivering with sudden fury, ‘or I shall leave and never come back!’

Silently, he turned his back on her, and drew a painted mask out of the chest with trailing laces on either side. He stood and fastened it about her head, his fingers curling round her neck afterwards, revelling in the soft smoothness of her skin.

He whispered, ‘I love you,’ in her ear, and heard Lucy sigh. He waited but she did not speak. ‘I know how difficult this is for you. I did not mean to make a mockery of your feelings. Will you forgive me?’

‘Oh, Will, why must you be such a child?’

Stung by that, Will resisted the urge to bend the masked Lucy over his writing table, pull up her skirts and show her how much he was a man. But that would only confirm his childishness in her eyes. Instead, he must mock himself, play the fool, so that Lucy would not see how much she had hurt him with that question.

He hooked the old man’s grey beard over his ears so that it dangled bushily on his chin, then stood up and took her hand. In the gallery above, the minstrels had finished playing. The whistles, applause and foot-stamping died away, and he heard the prologue begin his speech.

‘Now we are both in disguise,’ he said with a grin. ‘Shall we go and watch the play?’

Eight

PERCHED ON THE
edge of the stage at the curtain, Lucy tried to ignore the impudent stares of the groundlings below her. Will sat by her side, eating an apple as they watched the prologue finish his lengthy flourishes.

Will leaned towards her as the man left the stage. ‘It’s the chronicle of King Lear and his three daughters. Do you know the tale? Burbage has asked me to rework it for the company. Make something bigger of it, a spectacle. Was the prologue too long-winded? I thought it needed a prologue. But to see it played in such an overblown fashion makes me think otherwise.’

‘Hush there!’ someone called from the crowd.

Will did not even glance at the man. He threw his apple core aside and pulled Lucy on to his lap. She squirmed uncomfortably and did not know where to look, hearing the coarse laughter and comments from the men below. She was suddenly very glad of the mask which hid her face from the crowd, for there was no more prominent position than here on the edge of the stage, in full view of every playgoer.

‘Perhaps I shall lose the prologue,’ he murmured into her ear, ‘and begin with Lear’s division of his kingdom. For me, that is the heart of the play. What do you say, Lucy?’

‘I say it is you who are mad, not King Lear.’

‘You do not like the play?’

Her back was stiff. ‘I do not like sitting in your lap before all these people.’

‘I would not have all these people in my lap, I tell you, either before or after you have sat on me.’

One of the groundlings tugged violently at Lucy’s gown, and she looked down, coughing as a cloud of sweet-scented smoke enveloped her. At first she thought it was a swarthy-faced man, leaning against the stage and smoking a clay pipe. Then she realized it was a woman, with long grey locks and a filthy gown tucked up into her petticoat to reveal stained hose and a pair of boots tied about with twine. Her pipe was clamped between black gums where teeth had once been – as Lucy saw to her horror when the crone removed it to speak.

The woman pointed a crooked finger at Will. ‘Tell your keeper to shut up and watch the play, whore.’

‘I’m not a whore and he’s not my keeper.’ She glared at Will, who was laughing silently behind his bushy beard. ‘Shut up and watch the play, Master Shakespeare.’

He mimed sewing up his lips, then turned his attention back to the players. At once, his smile vanished and his face became oddly intent.

The afternoon sun came out from behind a cloud, and was soon burning Lucy’s back and shoulders through her gown. She had not stayed in London this late into the summer for many years, and the rising stench of the people around her was almost unbearable in the heat. She knew the theatres would soon be closing until the autumn, for the risk of plague was so high in the summer months that the city fathers had decreed that people should not be allowed to gather in large numbers at plays and bear pits.

It was not long before Lucy herself had forgotten her quarrel with Will, so absorbed did she become in the unfolding drama on the stage. She had seen the play herself, but was surprised to find that the crude retelling by street players that she remembered had been nothing like this one. The story though had changed little. King Lear chose to divide his kingdom between his daughters according to how much they loved him. His two eldest paid him the most elaborate compliments, and were rewarded with vast and profitable estates. His youngest, Cordelia, was given no portion of land to call her own, for she refused to flatter her father in hope of gain. Being cruel and spiteful by nature, the older daughters soon turned against
the
powerless old king and mistreated him, then waged war against their younger sister and her royal husband.

The boy playing the part of Cordelia was dark and slender-hipped, a perfect foil to the brash red-haired viciousness of the two older sisters, Goneril and Regan. His voice was a high-noted reed in the silence of the hushed theatre. When Cordelia was hanged at the end of the play, Lucy felt tears prick at her eyes, and wiped them away surreptitiously. It seemed foolish to cry at a story.

But then she heard sobs and sighing from all around, and looked down to see grown men wiping damp faces on their sleeves or weeping openly among the close-packed groundlings, while one woman called out hoarsely from the high gallery, ‘Lord have mercy on your poor sweet soul!’