The True Prince (2 page)

Still, my place in the Company suited me well enough. Though there were times, such as now, when my mind strayed to visions of a warm room in some warehouse where I could add up accounts all day long and see them come out as expected.

Instead, before dawn I had dragged myself out of the bed I shared with Robin, swallowed a cup of cider and a slab of cold porridge, trudged a mile up the Shoreditch Road to the Theater, spent an hour practicing dance and swordplay, stubbed my toe in the Morris dance, taken a snub and a defeat from Kit—and it was not yet eight o'clock. In a few moments the Company would assemble to rehearse a play I had never
heard of before yesterday, and that would be the last chance I would get to practice my part, which I must then perform to a boisterous, disrespectful audience at two hours past noon. It was not a large part—one long speech and two short ones, plus single lines in three scenes—but I was expected to get it down pat, plus all my entrances and cues. None of the other actors could be counted on to prompt me, for they had their own parts to occupy them. After the performance we would immediately begin putting together another play for the morrow and would not depart for home until after dark. At times a clerk's position looked very good, or at least very peaceful.

“A match!” sang out Master Cowley. Kit had worked his blade under Robin's hilt and disarmed him. The foil clattered on the stage, and Robin wrung his offended hand, whistling in pain. “'Ware to your right,” our instructor told him. “That's where he slips past your defense every time.”

“Only because I let him,” panted Robin. “I could see he was winded, so I ended the misery for both of us.” Kit, passing behind, gave him a jab in the ribs that made him yelp. “I shall take that as your humble thanks.”

“—As the dung beetle said to the mare.” Kit thrust his foil, then Robin's, into the portable rack, only moments before a stage boy came to wheel it away. His voice made crude remarks sound like high oratory, and all his movements were graceful and well timed and slightly exaggerated—he lived his life in gestures broad enough to be seen from the third gallery.

“Apprentices, attend!” Henry Condell, a senior member of the Company, marched to the foot of the stage and called our names in order of rank: “Kit! Robin, Richard, Gregory!”—a small consolation, that I was not quite at the bottom of the list. We gathered around as Master Condell consulted the scroll in his hand. “You will all be needed for the battle scene outside the city gates. Kit—you must change out of the countess's robes presently after the castle scene, to be ready in time. Use a helmet that covers your face, so you can leave the paint on for your next entrance as the countess.” Kit nodded impatiently; he did not need to be told. “We haven't enough helmets to spare one for you, Robin, but if you die as soon as the fighting begins, you can hide your lady's face, eh? Richard—you must fight the whole battle. Take on Kit and don't let him beat you back so soon this time. And Gregory—are you lame today?”

“I twisted my ankle this morning, sir—”

“So eagerly did he leap out of his warm bed,” Robin offered.

“You may fall early, then. And get the tiring master to wrap your ankle.” Master Condell loosely rolled up the paper that contained our cues and entrances. Soon it would be hanging from a center post behind the stage, where the players would be all but knocking each other down to get a look at it. “By the bye, we have taken on another boy. He should be here by noon, and I bid you make him welcome. He is an orphan, not yet eleven.”

We glanced at each other. Every season saw apprentices come and go. This new boy was evidently a replacement for Dick Worthing, who had left us barely a month before, when his voice cracked and plunged into the “abyss from which no boy returns” (as Master Condell put it). Dick had joined a touring company bound for France, and I missed his easy good humor. The arrival of this new boy would force us to regroup ourselves as we made a place for him—all except Kit, who would remain on top and pretend to notice nothing that went on below. What made our eyebrows go up as we looked at each other was not the boy's arrival, but his age. I was considered old when I began at fourteen, but ten seemed right young, unless the boy was gifted beyond common. Robin spoke up. “Does he come from St. Paul's Chapel, sir?”

“No. He comes from Wales.” Master Condell was already halfway across the stage. “But he has a certain quality….”

“Quality,” Robin repeated, once our master was out of sight. “What can he mean by that?”

“Probably long golden locks,” said Gregory as he rolled the paper that contained his lines. “And fluttering eyelashes—”

“—and he doesn't scratch himself on the stage,” finished Kit. “What is it? Do you fear he may take your place as Juliet?”

“Impossible,” Robin informed him loftily. Snatching Gregory's scroll, he addressed it with the dying words of a lady no one had played but himself. “Oh, happy dagger; here is thy sheath—”

Gregory snatched it back. “… there rust, and let me die!” As the two of them tried to outdo each other in agonized faces, Kit turned away and sauntered up the stage to where the men of the Company were gathering for rehearsal. Now nearly seventeen, he had long since outgrown such boys' play.

To Robin I said, “Gregory has almost become your equal at dying. He may have an eye on Juliet for himself.”

Robin assumed a straight face. “Not until I grow a beard. Then I shall conquer Romeo's part—though not before
he
does, of course.” This he said with a worshipful glance at Kit's back.

“What is it makes you think
he
will be trusted with Romeo anytime soon?” Gregory muttered. “The Company may keep him in skirts forever, since no one queens it like himself.”

Robin opened his mouth with a quick defense of his hero, but was interrupted by Master Cuthbert Burbage, who burst through the side door yelling, “Richard!” My head jerked around, but he was not calling for me. He stopped a passing stage boy and demanded, “Where's my brother?”

“Gone to hell, sir,” the boy answered respectfully. This was an old joke: the area below the stage was known as “hell,” partly to distinguish it from the star-painted “heaven” above the stage, and partly because that was where ghosts and devils made their exits.

“Fetch him, then. And be quick!”

The boy darted behind the curtains that shielded the stage supports from view, and Master Cuthbert climbed to the
boards. The look on his doughy face indicated dire news. His dramatic entrance had alerted the company members, who gathered around as Richard Burbage released the trap door in the stage and reared his imposing head and chest through it. “What's ado, Cuthbert?” he asked his brother. “Have you just sighted the Spanish fleet off Dover?”

“No jesting. This is serious.” Master Cuthbert, usually so calm and milk-mannered, was pacing the floor in great agitation. “Giles Allen has refused to renew our lease!”

His words left an echo. In the sudden, tomblike quiet, Richard Burbage repeated, “Refused.”

“Aye. Refused.”

“And could you not put him off—”

“No more putting off. No more talk. We have talked for months, and Allen has been a riddle through it all. First he shows a kindly face, then a flinty one, and then he gives us reason to hope that a raise in rent will incline him to see it our way. But this is the first time he's refused us flat. He says he wants to sell the land—even hints that he may have a buyer already.”

A tempest from the Bermudas could not have flattened the Company as soundly as those words did. “Then …,” a voice quavered from the back of the stage, “what's to be done?”

I knew what was at stake as well as any of them. Richard and Cuthbert Burbage owned the building. When their father, James, had built it, it was the only permanent stage in all of
England, and he was justified in naming it, simply, the Theater. But the land it sat on was the property of one Giles Allen. When the lease expired some time back, Master Allen began to quibble about whether it would be renewed, but never came out with an absolute refusal. Until now. So here we stood: one of the most highly regarded stage companies in London, soon to be without a stage.

“What's to be done?” Richard Burbage climbed out of hell and onto the stage. “What we must do
now
is rehearse for a play to go on at two o'clock. Master Allen will not keep us from that.”

Good counsel, but the impending loss of our Theater hit me hard—almost as if it were my own home. Suddenly I was not the same boy who, scarcely an hour earlier, had dreamed of more comfortable work in a counting house.

Even Robin, a veteran of the stage and usually a merry soul, seemed to be undone. His part in this day's play was a tragic heroine—the daughter of an earl who is falsely accused of treason (the earl, not the daughter) and dragged off the stage to be sold into slavery (the daughter, not the earl). At that point in the play, Robin seized the cloak of Thomas Pope and cried, “Alas! What part have I in my father's treachery, that I should be taken in vile servitude and surrender my sweet person to thy lustful minions!”

“None, maid,” replied Thomas Pope, “but you are pinching my neck and mashing my toes—kindly loose your grip.” Robin
blushed and stepped back as Master Pope gingerly tested his foot. The Company laughed, too heartily perhaps, but it relieved some of their strain.

The fourth act was the last for Robin and Gregory and me. Our time might have been better spent studying cues and lines, but we lacked the will. We sat in the first gallery, in the seats reserved for wealthy patrons—a place so near the stage that they could become a part of the play. And they often did, advising the players and making witty remarks as they puffed on their pipes. Robin liked to imitate them when he sat in their place during rehearsals, but today his wit was beaten down. Instead of jesting he fretted, like an orphan soon to be turned out on the street. In truth he was no orphan, but might as well have been: his mother and stepfather lived in Kent, but seldom made the journey to visit him. The Theater was the only home he knew. “Suppose the Company has to disband?” he asked as Richard Burbage made a noble dying speech on the stage. “Would the Admiral's Men take me, do you think?”

“The Admiral's Men are glutted just now with red-headed boys,” said Gregory, who then softened his words with a smile. His tongue was as sharp as a dagger, which he sometimes sheathed before it could wound, and sometimes not.

“My hair is not red. It's auburn.”

“So it is.” Gregory leaned closer, peering at Robin's face. “In fact, those little hairs growing from your chin are the most lovely—”

“What!” Robin clapped a hand to his jaw and felt around it anxiously.

“Put it up, Gregory,” I said.

He blinked at me, startled. “'Twas only a jest.”

“It's no subject for jesting.”

“Our Robin could find a place in any company he chose— you know that. We're the ones in peril, you and I.”

I shrugged, but admitted to myself that Robin's harping on the bad news had begun to wear on me. He harped on: “But if the Company disbands—”

“They won't disband,” I said. “The Queen herself favors us.”

“She doesn't favor our new patron.”

With a loud moan, Gregory flopped his head down on the railing that separated our gallery from the stage. For myself, I could have stuffed Robin's mouth with cotton for bringing up another sore point. Lord Hunsdon, the Queen's Lord Chamberlain and the patron of our Company, had recently passed away at a ripe old age. His son George took over the Company, and everyone expected him to take his father's office as Lord Chamberlain as well. But the Queen had settled that position on William Brooke, the seventh Lord Cobham. According to rumor, the appointment caused an uproar at court, where certain gentlemen were still going about with their noses out of joint. But our Company suffered more than bent noses, since we could no longer wear the proud title of
Lord Chamberlain's Men. We were now Lord Hunsdon's Men, which hardly rang with the same dignity and importance. And Lord Hunsdon's Men might soon become Men of the Street. The year was not beginning well.

“All will come right in the end,” I said, feigning confidence.

“How?” Robin demanded.

“I am not in God's counsel, so I can't tell you that. But you may be assured that the Company will not take this lying down.” I might have put this better, for at that moment a goodly portion of the Company was lying down on the stage, having expired from dagger wounds. Today's play was a tale of bloody revenge and did not improve our mood. “They'll think of something,” I added lamely.

“What if they decide to disband?” he persisted. “Other companies have broken apart for less—”

“Hold a moment.” Gregory had lifted his head. “Look yonder,” he said, nodding toward the front of the theater. “They just came in.”

The hired help had arrived: penny gatherers who collected admission to the galleries and serving maids who swept the floors and sold sweets during the performance. But we knew at once which “they” Gregory meant: a man and boy standing just before the first gallery. The man was of middling height with a black beard streaked with gray, but that was all we noticed of him.

The boy was beautiful—his face a little too wide in the
mouth and brow, but cherubic and rosy. A cap of dark, curly hair set off eyes of so intense a blue that the color, even at a distance, made me think of calm summer skies.

Looks matter on the stage—none of the apprentices were ugly and each had some particular appeal that suited him for certain roles. Robin was winsome and lively; Gregory's intelligent face bespoke keenness and subtlety; Kit's noble features and striking coloring set forth dignity and command. And I, with my wide dark eyes and small chin that could so easily be made to tremble, was the picture of pitiable suffering. Or that was my guess; if there was a lady in the play who went mad or killed herself, that part was likely to go to me. But the “quality” shining from this curly-headed boy was pure innocence, as if an angel in child's form stood in our midst.