Shakespeare's Rebel (21 page)

‘The wanton country lass? I think he relishes it. Though being raised entirely in Southwark, he needed to be informed both of their accent and of their . . . somewhat different ways.’

‘And from your vast experience of these, you duly informed him? Good.’ Will nodded. ‘Well, I hope that
As You Like It
delights as Harry Five no longer does.’

‘Nothing for me in it, though?’

Will smiled. ‘Small steps, John. You have shown restraint of late and served us well. The fights continue to thrill, at least . . .’

‘Thank ye.’

‘. . . but certain of the sharers remain to be convinced of your conversion. Let
As You
pass.’ He gestured to the papers before him. ‘There may be something here for you, though. We will need strong men.’

‘Another tragedy?’

‘Tragedy and history both. I attempt a life . . . and attempt the life . . . of Caesar. Though truly it is more a portrait of his assassins.’

John had taken a step away. Now he stepped back. ‘Caesar? Conspiracy and murder? Coup and counter? Is that wise with what is happening out there?’

‘I write it
because
of what is happening out there.’ Shakespeare’s eyes gleamed. ‘You know what we do, John. Our company is different because we do not give the people only food for their stomachs. We feed their minds too. Since they cannot talk of news upon the streets for fear of spies and inquisitors, they can hear it talked of here, within this wooden O. They see Caesar’s fall, Rome’s state shaken, while outside they witness each day soldiers in arms upon the streets of London, the unceasing threats to our sovereign and
her
state. Their unrelieved thoughts swell into a boil’ – he jabbed with his quill – ‘and I lance it. I do not suggest a cure. But at least I attend to the symptoms.’

Above, Burbage was building to a shout. ‘So, Physician,’ John said, ‘who is the hero of the piece, as Henry is of this? Caesar or Brutus? Monarch or rebel?’

‘Neither.’ Shakespeare shrugged. ‘For the whispers on the street also tell me this: these days people are believing less and less . . . in heroes.’ He rose. ‘Come. I must into the garb of the King of France. What follows for you? ’Tis Rambures, yes?’ He clapped a hand on John’s shoulder. ‘Does the French lord also have a limp?’

‘I thought perhaps a st . . . st . . . stammer,’ John replied, his face sober.

‘God a mercy! You dragged one of those out for hours in Melton Mowbray! Consider, John. We have a new play to present on the morrow. We would not hear the chimes at midnight.’ His smile faded, his voice lowered again. ‘I heard another rumour. Or was it speculation? That all those soldiers on the street are not to repulse the Spanish. No one truly believes their Armada will come now. Few believe any more that it was ever intended.’

‘Then why has a nation been in arms these long hot months?’ John asked. ‘Why have yeomen been held from their fields and merchants from their trade?’

‘Can you not guess?’ Will pulled his friend closer, his voice descending again to a whisper. ‘Master Secretary Cecil keeps an army in the field in case his rival Essex should bring his back with him from Ireland. It is not Tyrone’s rebellion he truly fears . . . but Robert Devereux’s.’

Will released him, moved to the stair, but John remained for a moment, considering. London had indeed been abuzz with the Spanish threat and the forces raised to counter it, citizens mustered by ward or guild to defend the realm. Almost daily reports had the enemy landing, repulsed, marching on the capital, sailing up the Thames. Parchments found on dunghills had Papist assassins lurking in every long shadow, graffiti had Elizabeth dead or fled. But this was not 1588, with a nation rallied. Eleven years later, the Queen did not appear in armour at Tilbury. The populace had grown tired of false war, only to be roused again by another threat that also was not delivered. So while the players above him now told a tale of patriotism, the playwright added stronger spice for a hungry people to feed upon. If the French were thrashed again at Agin Court and a nation cheered, men and boys died horrible deaths while cowards plundered for themselves. Not all was glory, within the wooden O or beyond it.

Shaking his head, John followed Will up the stair and into the tiring house. While his friend donned the robes of the French monarch, he doffed St George’s cross and pulled on the fleur-de-lis. While he did, he heard Ned speak his lines – boldly, cheekily, in the accent of the streets he was raised in. He got his laughs. Will was right: the lad’s bent was to humour, and he looked forward to seeing him on the morrow once more in a dress, in the new comedy. He would watch from the galleries, pay the extra pennies for the place, two cushions and a bag of cob nuts – to share. For he would have a companion, one he had been as carefully, soberly, wooing over the summer as he had the players. Perhaps he would take her hand as they watched their son. He might even venture so much.

Tess! The thought of her, and how she had agreed to accompany him to the play, focused him. He spoke his remaining few lines stammer-less.

And then he had a sword in his hand.

The man he’d replaced, Sam Gisburne, was a good fighter, one of the more skilled in the company, having served some time in the army. So John had placed him in combat against Burbage, who, though nimble and swift, tended to remember his many lines better than he did his cuts, thrusts and parries.

Now it was John’s turn to manage him. And this day the player was also angry – at the poor house, at their inattention. The King came scything in, a great overhead swoosh fit to cleave a skull when he should have gently lunged. Taking the blow on his shield and high to lessen the force, John let the other’s blade slide across the wood, before slashing hard at Burbage’s face. The player was up the stage and John down, so most of the audience was behind John’s back and the blow looked a lot closer than it was. A section gasped . . . and it startled Burbage, no matter that it never truly threatened to mar his beauty. With half a dozen others clattering together and trying to represent the combined might of France and England, the noise was enough for John to hiss, ‘My eyes!’ and not be heard by any but the man he fought. Burbage did hear, looked, nodded. He was back, John’s partner again, each man in each other’s eyes as they alternated attack and defence.

He had quickly learned that since the audience was near all round them, below in the pit that lapped the platform and in the boxes above it, it was not possible to disguise all blows. Better to give lustily, to hold back little . . . and to kill with a hard slap of the side of the blunted broadsword straight into the gut. No matter that it was armoured there – a blow, a step in, a sawing blade and his own screaming as he folded over it created the illusion that a chink in the armour had been found. It was always the victim who made the strike look good. And John gave Burbage’s victorious final blow its due reverence. The audience gasped as he hit the platform hard, blood spilling from the sheep’s bladder he wore beneath. The French fled, dragging dead Rambures with them by his ankles, a red trail left behind. Trumpets announced the triumph of England.

Speeches followed the action. John waited in the tiring house while Henry wooed the French princess, a scene of charm that the audience enjoyed as much as he. So the applause at the end was warmer than had been expected from the play’s early reception.

He took his bows, his salute reaching from the topmost gallery to the toe of the lowest groundling, content. He was back among the players. Even if it was only as fight master and substitute, a chink had opened, one he could surely widen. Not only this one, for if this theatre day did not proceed quite as those of old – with pots of ale in carousing company – he had hopes it would end in an inn nonetheless. In the Spoon and Alderman, with his feet just a little further under Tess’s oaken table.

XV

As You Like It?

The press was thick when John and Ned exited the Globe, for their own lingering audience was immediately swelled by that of the nearby Rose. Excited chatter filled the air as the two crowds met and compared experiences. John, taller by a head than most there, was able to see to the doors of the other playhouse, noting that a larger audience than their own was spilling forth. ‘What played there, sir?’ he asked of a prosperous-looking gentleman in an emerald velvet doublet, an equally well-clad lady on his arm.

‘
The Shoemaker’s Holiday
,’ came the reply, accompanied by a loud guffaw. ‘Man, Alleyn had the crowd in a roar from his very first words. Have you come from the Globe?’ On John’s nod, the man continued, ‘What piece?’

‘
Henry the Fifth
.’

The man grimaced. ‘Ach, I’ve seen it. ’Tis tired, sir, tired. I’m for a comedy, and the Admiral’s Men play them superbly.’

‘We play a new comedy tomorrow, sir. The ink scarce dry from Master Shakespeare’s quill.’ Ned produced a playbill from the stack in his satchel. All the players had them, for distribution that night and on the morrow.

The man took it, his wife studying over his shoulder. ‘
As You Like It
,’ she read. ‘Is it amusing?’ she asked.

‘Oh aye, ma’am,’ replied Ned. ‘A hilarious tale of a country girl who spurns her clod suitor because she is in love with a courttrained clown.’

John smiled. Ned’s role in the piece was minor. But he remembered how he’d once described
Medea
from the point of view of his personation of the second sentry.

‘And you play, do you, boy?’ the lady asked.

‘Aye, mum,’ said Ned, dropping into a courtesy, speaking on in a rural voice, eyelids fluttering. ‘Oy be the maid, see.’

‘Oh, Geoffrey, let us to it. It sounds charming.’

Man and wife melded into the crowd. ‘I wonder if Master Shakespeare knows how his whole plot revolves around Audrey the milkmaid,’ John said.

Ned grinned. ‘Oh, I am sure he’ll realise when he sees me perform it.’

They moved on, seeking. Both were hungry, and they were assailed on all sides by higglers, some behind carts, others with trays. They could choose from a great variety of beasts – finned, furred, feathered – prepared in dozens of ways. It being September, there was an abundance from the fields and little of it would be salted – they would have enough of that in the winter to come. Ned was keen on poultry, but that was richer than John’s purse. So he sought out a familiar stall where the humble pie was made from only the freshest deer entrails, and the seasonings rich in nutmeg. One apiece, followed by a hunk of crumbly cheese and an Orange Pippin, sent down with a mug of cider, did the trick.

‘Well, Father,’ said Ned, licking his fingers clean, ‘shall we to the birds?’

John shook his head. He was as fond of cock fighting as his son. But his purse would certainly not stand any wagers, and besides, he had his responsibilities – and his instructions. ‘Nay, lad,’ he said, ‘for you know the conditions your mother imposed on your continuing at the theatre. They include your early return home and no dalliance.’ He laughed at his son’s frown, pulled him from the ground by his collar. ‘Besides, do you not still need to study your role for the morrow?’

‘I learned that in less than half an hour,’ Ned snorted. ‘I would they gave me something more to prove my mettle.’

‘From what Master Shakespeare has told me, he has such an advance in mind.’ John pushed his son back into the crowd. ‘They are pleased with you, lad.’

‘Aye. I only hope . . .’ He broke off, chewed his lip.

‘Hope?’

‘You talked of my mother’s conditions. She still sees my time with the players as short-lived. As soon as Sir Samuel returns from war . . .’

He again left his sentence unfinished. Both knew what that return could mean. ‘Would it be so bad then, to be a squire’s stepson?’

John asked the question softly. He had long ago learned with Ned that if he tried to persuade him to one course he would straightway choose the other. Obstinate as an ass, his son, and he had an idea where he got that from – his mother! So he had not spoken out against Despair once during the summer. He had simply let his son fall fully in love with playing.

As he had. ‘What? To get all my excitements from chasing dumb creatures across a field? To live in’ – he shuddered – ‘Finchley!’ Ned looked around at the thronging, raucous street. ‘Southwark is the only home I’ve ever known. And my future is with the Chamberlain’s Men.’ He turned and gripped John’s arm. ‘I cannot leave that, Father. You must see to it.’

He placed his hand over his son’s. ‘I shall try,’ he replied. ‘There is still time. Irish wars drag on. And war itself brings dangers – even to fat knights who hide their bulk behind others and try to avoid them.’

His grin was not matched by Ned’s. ‘I do not know, Father. The time may be closing. My mother had another letter.’

John slowed his stride. The Spoon and Alderman was in sight, the spire of St Mary Overies rising behind and as if from it. ‘What news?’

Ned halted, looked around. No one stood near. He had learned, as everyone on London’s streets had that summer, to keep his voice low. Men had disappeared who voiced rumour as news too loudly. Boys too. ‘Sir Samuel says little . . . save that he may soon be home. For it appears that the Vice-Regent has brought the rebel to a reckoning.’

John frowned. Whispers of a battle would have been on the streets, and all Cecil’s spies would not have been able to contain them. ‘What sort of reckoning?’ he asked, his voice as low as his son’s.

‘A meeting. Tyrone has submitted, kissed the royal ring. A truce has been negotiated.’

‘Truce?’ John frowned. A truce was not submission. A truce was a parley between equals who both had reasons not to fight for a while. It did not sort with the rumours that had come – of an English army chasing through bog and forest an enemy who would not stand and fight but just kept building its own strength while its opponent’s wasted. And it did not sort with Essex, who would hurl himself unarmoured into a hundred foes if he could win glory that way. He had been sent there not to negotiate with traitors but to bring back ‘rebellion broached on his sword’ – words Will had been wise to cut from the play they performed that day.