London (97 page)

“It will go ahead then?”

“We shall be open before this year is out.”

“So,” Bull gave a sigh of relief. “I’ll get my money back.”

Edmund smiled superbly. “Of course.”

No one in the Chamberlain’s company, by that summer, was happier than young Jane Fleming. For it had seemed to her, in recent weeks, that Meredith loved her.

His play was done. She thought by now she must know every line. As Edmund approached the end, his excitement had mounted. How proudly he had read her his favourite lines, or asked her: “Is it all right?” And she had always said: “It’s wonderful.” Certainly, his wit was sparkling.

Once, as she had tried to think of the play as a whole, she had timidly asked: “What exactly is it all about?” But he had started to grow angry, and she had never asked again.

Why should she do anything to spoil the sense of triumph which kept him so attentive to her? Even when he was with his fashionable friends, he hardly ever ignored her.

There was another reason why she felt happy. High summer was approaching. Already, Jane and her parents had been carefully preparing the costumes to be loaded into the wagon. Though she knew it meant she would not see Edmund for a while, she was still excited.

It was on a pleasant July afternoon, as she and Edmund strolled down the lane from Shoreditch that they encountered Alderman Jacob Ducket.

Even on this summer day, he was dressed in black, his white ruff, his silver and diamond-pommelled sword and the silver flash in his hair providing the restrained decoration appropriate to his wealth and stern authority. He was standing in front of Bishopsgate and, perhaps she should have noticed, he was smiling. As they came near, Edmund airily doffed his hat and made an elaborate bow, so nicely calculated between respect and mockery that it made her giggle. But if normally Ducket would have had no time for young Meredith, today he looked at him almost affably and, beckoning him to come closer, gently asked: “You have not heard the news?”

The alderman did not often smile. Indeed, the only visible trace of the cheerful genes of his ancestor who had dived into the river was the silver flash in his hair. Like many of his fellow aldermen, he was a Puritan – in his case of a sternly Calvinistic kind.

It had been a very good day for Alderman Ducket. He had already been to the Bankside theatres. He had enjoyed that. Now he was going to Shoreditch. Seeing young Meredith, known to be a play-lover, gave him another chance to savour the reaction to his statement. Calmly, then, he informed him: “The theatres are all to be closed.”

It was as he expected. The girl looked stunned and Meredith went pale; but Meredith recovered first. “Who says so?”

“The city council.”

“Impossible. All the theatres are outside your jurisdiction.”

Shoreditch, of course, lay past the city limits. But it was a curious feature of city government that, even after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, their old feudal liberties had never been repealed but passed into the hands of the monarch. The Bankside theatres, therefore, lay in the old Liberty of the Clink. Even Blackfriars was still a liberty. It had long infuriated the city fathers that the theatres continued under their noses yet outside their jurisdiction.

“We have asked the Privy Council to close them all.”

“They won’t. The queen herself loves the players.”

But now Ducket smiled. “Not since
The Isle of Dogs
,” he said.

This play, performed by Lord Pembroke’s men, had featured pointed, but amusing criticisms not only of the city aldermen, but even of the government. It had been an amazing stroke of luck. For months Ducket and his fellow aldermen had laboured, ensuring the Chamberlain’s men’s lease on the Theatre in Shoreditch would end. They had even approached Giles Allen, who owned the site and ordered him: “Don’t lease it to actors again or we’ll ruin you.” Since then, Ducket had been stirring up trouble in Blackfriars, but he had achieved nothing definite. And then those fools the Lord Pembroke’s men had given him his chance, and he had taken it with both hands. A deputation to the Privy Council had produced a careful report showing how the government had been insulted.

“You are wrong,” he said sweetly. “The council is with us.”

“But,” Edmund protested, “that would mean . . .”

“That the theatre is over,” Ducket nodded. “Indeed,” he went on, “some of your actor friends had better be careful. They may be considered vagrants.”

The threat was not entirely empty. Anyone wandering about the country, with no fixed employment, as actors did, was liable to be whipped and returned to his place of origin; and while Ducket could not touch respectable men like the Shakespeares, some of the poorer actors with only casual employment might run this risk if they attempted to tour. The real point of his remark, however, was the implied insult: the theatre was outside society, its actors mere vagabonds.

“I still don’t believe you,” Meredith said, and walked on.

But it was true; and by that evening all London knew it. The theatres were ordered to close. Worse yet, poor Ben Jonson, one of the writers of
The Isle of Dogs
, had been put in gaol for contempt, while his fellow author Nashe had fled. In the theatre community people were deeply despondent. “I shall have to go back to haberdashery,” Jane’s father miserably remarked. The actors were distraught. Even the Burbages, who had repeatedly tried to see the Privy Council, could say nothing encouraging.

Only after a week was there any piece of news.

“We are permitted to leave the city to go on our tour,” the company was told. But when someone asked “After that, will we be allowed back?” he was given a shrug and a curt: “Who knows?”

Amid all this gloom, the person who kept their spirits up was not a member of the company at all.

Edmund Meredith was a tower of strength. “This is only done to frighten us,” he told them. “The Privy Council has been mocked and it is teaching us a lesson.” And when Fleming remarked dolefully that some of the council were as puritan as Ducket, he only laughed. “The court must still be amused,” he cried. “Do you suppose the queen means to spoil her Christmas entertainment for the Puritans?” And because he was a gentleman, whose father had been at court, they mostly supposed he must know something that they did not.

Jane loved him all the more when she watched him gaily put heart into the little group of spare actors and small fry who gathered at the Fleming house. She thought what it meant to him, when his hopes were pinned entirely on his own play. There was a nobility in his bravado. Some days later, when the troupe set off in their wagons, and he kissed her goodbye with the promise “We shall come through this together”, she had never felt so close to him.

The summer months were very difficult for Edmund Meredith. He had been proud of his performance in front of the Flemings. He knew he had cut a good figure. But did he really feel confident about the future? Three days after the announcement, things were even more difficult when his anxious cousin Bull came to his lodgings at the Staple Inn to ask about his fifty pounds.

“Keep calm,” he had counselled. “This will pass.” But after Bull had departed, shaking his head, Edmund experienced a profound gloom. What was to become of his play? And what indeed am I, he thought, without it? What was to be his fortune in men’s eyes?

At the end of summer, while the players were still on tour, he encountered Lady Redlynch.

He was introduced to her by his friends Rose and Sterne. Her husband, Sir John, had died the previous year and at the age of thirty, alone and without children, she had nothing much to do. Despite his own depressed state, he felt a little sorry for her.

He need not have worried. Lady Redlynch, having been born a West Country merchant’s daughter, knew perfectly well how to take care of herself. Thanks to Sir John, she already had a handsome house in Blackfriars, and she promised to take a personal interest in the business of the new theatre. She had fair hair, wide blue eyes, inviting breasts and, rather charmingly, a voice like a little girl, which vanished entirely when she was in a hurry. Meredith amused her. She liked witty men. She decided to take him as a temporary lover at once.

By late October the situation was still unchanged. The theatres stood empty and silent; the costumes lay unused in the wardrobe. The Burbages had been to the Privy Council again. It was said that Will Shakespeare had been hatching something with his patrons at court, but nothing definite was heard. Each day, actors came to Fleming’s house for news and asked: “Is it all over then? Shall we go?” Not yet, they were told. Not yet.

Edmund came by each day. He was admirable. Always light-hearted, yet always calm. He had frequently gone to inspect the Blackfriars theatre, he told her. Everything was ready for performances to begin.

“Just be patient,” he urged. “The audience is waiting for the theatre to be restored. They will not be denied for ever.”

There was no doubt, Jane thought, that he cut a fine figure. How proud of him she was. There was something else about him too: a new confidence, a sense of potency. She found it strangely fascinating and it sometimes exercised her imagination during those dull days.

It was one of the actors who finally told her that Edmund was sleeping with Lady Redlynch.

In early November Edmund Meredith sent the letter. It was a daring move, but he could not stand the tension any longer.

The affair with Lady Redlynch had been a success. Though they were discreet, the fact that a few men gossiped was enough to make him look a fine fellow in the eyes of the fashionable world. But at times, recently, he had wondered if the affair had run its course. Perhaps he had had enough of her somewhat padded charms. He was also a little afraid. Once or twice he had sensed that she might be considering marriage. He dreaded a pregnancy too. Precautions were few and crude in Tudor England. As a barrier to conception, a lady and her lover might use a handkerchief; but it did not always work.

He thought of Jane Fleming, though this worried him less. She would probably never know; and anyway, if she did, a man with a reputation was all the more attractive to a young girl.

But what about his play? To be a gallant lover was a fine thing, but it still begged the essential question: “What can I say that I am?”

Though he had kept up his cheerful face, over three months after the ban was announced Ducket and the aldermen were still looking complacent and the Privy Council maintained its ominous silence. His friends at court had heard nothing; nor had Lady Redlynch. The usual theatre scene would normally have begun, but the days passed uselessly. And then one day: “I must know,” he told Lady Redlynch. He decided to send the message. When Lady Redlynch asked him what sort of missive it was, he answered simply:

“A love letter.”

It was written to the queen.

Of all England’s rulers, none has ever understood as well as Queen Elizabeth I that the key to monarchy is theatre. Indeed, the Elizabethan court, with its constant public displays, its tours of the counties and its calculated, stage-managed receptions for foreigners, was one of the cleverest theatres ever devised. And at the centre of the stage, gorgeously dressed in brocade encrusted with pearls, a huge lace ruff encircling her neck and head, her gold-red hair piled up or freely flowing, stood Elizabeth – daughter of royal Harry yet born of her people too, the Renaissance princess, and virgin queen whose glittering radiance was a star to every Englishman.

For many years this part, of the virgin queen, had been a necessary role. Threatened by Europe’s dangerous powers, she had protected her little kingdom by hinting at marriage with one or another of them. But she had long ago grown used to it. Her courtier favourites, men like Leicester and Essex, had always pretended they were in love with her, and she had pretended to believe them. No doubt, sometimes it was true; for Elizabeth was a woman too. But who can ever say, in statecraft, what is theatre and what is real? One mirrors the other. And so if now, threatened by parliaments who wanted to know her successor, old Elizabeth, face painted, hair dyed, still played the virgin queen, who could blame her? She did it to perfection, rising each season like a phoenix from her ashes, surrounded by gallants who made her withered autumn like a spring.

Edmund’s letter was perfect. It was, in fact, the best thing he had ever written. The terms in which he addressed the queen were those of an unknown admirer. Inspired by her he had written a play that might amuse her. Yet now, utterly downcast, he learned that all further plays should lie in darkness, never to be lit by the radiance of her eyes. The conclusion of this protestation was just what she liked.

But if your Majesty thinks that heaven, of having pleased you, too good for me, then I had rather I, and my poor verses, should remain in perpetual darkness than offend your sight.

He ended it with the suggestion, almost as though she were a girl again and they were secret lovers, that if there were any hope for him, she should at a certain time and place, where he could clearly see her, let fall her handkerchief.

It was the sort of thing she loved.

Dusk had already fallen but Jane was careful as she made her way past Charing Cross. There were plenty of people about and the couple ahead were entirely unaware of her presence.

The great palace of Whitehall was a series of handsome courtyards surrounded by brick and stone buildings. There were walled gardens, a tiltyard for jousting, a chapel, a hall and a council chamber; also, some lodgings reserved for visitors from the Scottish court, known as Scotland Yard. The palace was, to a large extent, open to the public, and since its gates straddled the road from Charing Cross to Westminster, people came through all the time. The queen allowed her subjects to cross the yard to the river stairs if they wanted a barge. They could even come to see the tapestries on the great stairs or watch the state banquets from a gallery. They could also stand about at times like this in the hope of seeing her.