The True Prince (31 page)

Late the following week a clammy wind blew out of the northwest, dragging a series of heavy rains in its wake. On the next Monday, after a downpour had interrupted our performance, we set about some housekeeping chores. Master Stewart put us apprentices to work at a long table in the back of the tiring room, sorting costumes: some for the ragpicker, some to the keeping room for mending, and others to be brushed up in preparation for our appearance at court.

That very day an engraved document had arrived from Whitehall, embossed with the seal of the Lord Chamberlain, formally and officially inviting Lord Hunsdon's Men to perform for Her Majesty during the two weeks after Christmas. So either the Lord Chamberlain had decided to forgive us for Sir John Oldcastle and the Putrid Play, or Her Majesty had simply overruled him. Good news, either way, but Robin was in one of his fretting moods. “I fear we won't have a stage when we come back from Whitehall. Our agreement with the Curtain is only good to the end of the year.”

“Then it may be time for threats,” said Gregory. “Tell the Queen to build us a new theater, else Falstaff dies in the next play.”

Robin ignored this. “One of the hired men told me that Giles Allen means to tear down the Theater and sell the lumber, come spring. Can he do that?”

“If that were true,” said I, “Richard Burbage would be
breathing fire. But he seems almost cheerful these days. I'm sure he has somewhat in mind.”

“Aye,” Robin agreed. “Retirement.”

“Look, lads!” Gregory called. I looked, and a little cry escaped me. He had slipped on a pair of beaded yellow sleeves and struck a pose, singing, “In yellow sleeves to honor his maid, he rides far afield with the beauteous lady—”

“Where did you find those?” I asked, a shade too quickly.

“Why, here at the bottom of the court pile.”

From the other end of the table, Master Stewart frowned. “I've been searching for 'em of late. They don't belong there, nor on thy twiggy arms. Put 'em on the pile to be steamed and stuffed.”

Gregory obeyed, musing aloud. “Yellow sleeves, black and gold … By the bye, did that black satin doublet we lost last summer ever turn up?”

“Nay,” muttered Master Stewart. “With all this shuffling between stages, one of the dolts at the Swan may have packed it away in their own wardrobe.” Master Stewart was the most wonder-less man I have ever known. If a night-tripping fairy had visited him while he slept and left a perfect teardrop pearl hanging from his nose, he would have said, “Fancy that—my snot has calcified.”

But if he was blind to coincidence, Gregory was not. “Strange, how things disappear from our wardrobe and show up in the ballads.”

I made a vague reply, all the while calculating feverishly. If those were the very sleeves last worn by Robin Hood—and I had no doubt they were—then who had returned them? If it was Kit, then how had they come into his hands, unless by the last man to wear them, Peregrine Penny himself? I happened to glance out the window, and what I saw made my heart turn over.

Five men led by Richard Burbage were slogging through the rain toward the old Theater. Shakespeare made one, and Heminges another, but the other two were strangers. My first thought was that they were court officials, looking for Kit.

“Pray excuse me for a moment, Master Stewart?” He nodded without looking up from his work, and I dashed out, followed by Gregory's quizzical eyes.

Master Burbage had somehow obtained a key; when I arrived, the side door stood open and all five men were gathered upon the stage, below the overhanging “heavens” that gave them a little protection from the rain. I paused at the door to listen. Richard Burbage's voice carried famously well, and since he did most of the talking, I soon learned that the building, not Kit, was his subject. He was pointing out the structure of the roof timbers and the three galleries stacked one upon the other.

With their attention diverted, I ducked quickly under the stage. Their conversation covered my movement as I crept deeper into “hell.”

Of course I did not expect to find anyone there, but even the wooden pallet had disappeared. A scattering of bricks and some gouges in the ground marked the former habitation— that was all. Had I flushed Kit out of his den, only to chase him back to Penny and Tom? The reappearance of the yellow sleeves made me wonder.

A rat brushed my foot, and I stifled a yelp. The men had climbed to the musicians' gallery for a better view; I heard Richard Burbage say, “Mind your step—the railing is loose. As I told you, Master Street, time is of the essence. With all your crew, how long might it take you to finish?”

An unfamiliar voice replied, “For the first, a mere matter of days. For the second, I must make a closer examination of the building before I give an account….”

They retreated into the tiring room, leaving me an opportunity for escape. While scurrying under the boards, it occurred to me that Master Street might be a carpenter, and the Company wished him to build a new theater elsewhere. A simple and obvious solution to their problem, except that I knew from John Heminges it would take more money than they had. Far more pressing, to my mind, was where Kit might be. I paused at the door, staring at the rain with a gloomy apprehension that my effort to “help” him had only sunk him deeper in trouble.

Night came on early these days, and within an hour we were headed home, Robin and I following Masters Condell and
Heminges according to custom. Just inside Bishopsgate we paused for the men to bargain with a hot-pastry vendor. A few hardy musicians strolled about in the drizzle, and I listened as always for the Robin Hood tune. But over a month had passed since the ambush of “Sir Flatter”; it seemed the gentleman bandit had retired, or else he was nursing his wounds in some remote cave. Robin and I wandered over to watch the puppet motion on the south end of the gate.

The tone of the performance had changed. Instead of Punch and Judy tossing the baby, the puppets were acting a tale of thwarted love, wherein an elegant gentlewoman in purple silk rejected a young poet. A musician with a recorder piped the sad strains of an old ballad called “The Cold Lady,” while the puppet master managed to make the squeaky voices of his actors provoke sympathy. Perhaps it was just the thing for a gloomy November day, for it held the crowd spellbound, and a kitchen maid nearby wept into her apron. Too sad for me, however—I was pulling Robin away to rejoin our master when a small boy ran out of nowhere and knocked into me. Recalling Davy, I felt for my purse, just before he slipped a piece of paper into my hand. “By your leave, sir,” he gasped by way of apology, and ran on.

Turning aside, I unfolded the paper to a square smaller than my palm. The message inside was very brief, written in the overly careful hand of one who does not write much, or only recently learned how: “7 ante. BF”

In the south transept of St. Paul's at seven o'clock the next morning, on the same bench as before, Bartlemy said, “I finally got in to search the court records at Fleet Prison. The person who paid Glover's bail was not Philip Tewkesbury.”

“It wasn't? Who else could it be?”

“Lady Tewkesbury, Baroness of Wellstone. Lord Philip's mother. After very much searching, I found not only the record, but also the message she wrote to the magistrate. The hand is the same as that of the papers you gave me.”

In the long silence that followed, I marveled at how a single new fact can make all manner of odd pieces and recollections fall into place, and you wonder why the sense of it never occurred to you before.

I recalled the day a token was delivered, and the effect it had had, and the mockery in that more recent message that compared Kit to me, and his voice saying, “Women—all stations, all ages, with their flattering lips …” And what was the last thing he had said to me, when I claimed to know the author of the play? “Perhaps you're not so clever as you think.”

“I see.”

“Do you? Do you see clear enough to remember anything else? Such as when or how he may have met the lady?”

I shook my head. “It may have been during our last court season, almost a year ago. He changed after that, in some
ways. He used to roam abroad at night with Robin, but last spring he drew more into himself. If he went out, he went alone. Someone sent him a silver brooch last June—on the very day he was dismissed, in fact.”

“Describe it,” he demanded. After I did, he shook his head in exasperation. “This is the sort of thing you might have told me last summer.”

“But it was common for ladies to send him tokens—and we didn't even know it was a lady. What sort of person is she?”

“A widow, twice over. About thirty-five, I should say, but looks younger. Philip is her only child. She came to London about a year ago to advance his fortunes at court, then returned to her home in Herefordshire for the summer. Now she is back in London but not so evident as before. She has made a bit of a reputation for herself.”

“As a beauty? Or a poet?”

He shrugged. “She's fair enough, though too thin for my taste. Lord Philip resembles her.
He
is supposed to be the poet. She is known mainly as one who pushes too hard for what she wants.”

“And what is that?”

“Three things.” Bartlemy was picking at his chin, irritably. The joy I had given him with the handwritten ballad two weeks ago seemed to be all used up. “The most important would be the advancement of her son. The second thing might be revenge, for the family has fallen on hard times—six years
ago they lost a deal of property in a lawsuit brought against them by none other than William Brooke. So they are sour on both Brookes and everyone associated with them. Her third wish, I reckon, would be to see her plays performed by the finest theater company in London.

“So look how it might have happened. When the finest theater company in London performs at court, she draws out the chief boy player for … conversation.” Noticing the look on my face, he added, “I mean no more than that. She may have flattered and led him on, but she'd not compromise her position for him. I think she introduced him to her son, and they become friends, after a fashion. Perhaps Lord Philip met Penny and told his mother about him, and a bold plan began to take shape—the sort of stagey plan a playmaker would devise. By it the lady could get her revenge by humiliating her enemies and at the same time endear her son to one of the most powerful men at court, namely Essex.”

“And wreck Kit's life in the meantime,” I concluded. “Well? Is her work accomplished?”

“I fear not. Philip has slipped in the great man's esteem.”

“Why? Oh—because of the Putrid Play?”

“The what?” When I explained that title, he nodded. “Very like, from what I hear. But the young man must redeem himself quickly. Essex has just received permission from the Queen to put down the rebellion in Ireland. He's making a list of friends to go with him, and at last count, Tewkesbury's not included.”

“So—”

“There may be another robbery in hand—or a thing more sinister.”

“Then why are you waiting? You've found your plotters and have your proof—arrest them.”

“It's … not so simple as that.” Bartlemy was rolling and unrolling the edge of his cloak between his thumb and forefinger. His irritation had become something else: a distinct un- ease, of a sort that I had never seen in him. “The perpetrators— Penny and Watts and Glover—have made themselves scarce, and we can't just arrest the Baron and Baroness of Wellstone.”

“Oh. You'd throw Kit to the wolves, but we must forbear to touch the gentlefolk. He's no
perpetrator
—he's merely caught in the middle. Penny and Tom are wily enough to find cover and Lord Philip and his mother will go free. Kit bears the brunt, though he is the least guilty. What makes you better than those hypocrites you detest at court? You're just like them, advancing yourself by any means at hand—”

He grabbed a handful of my cloak and gave a hard shake to cut off my tirade. I was a little surprised at my own outburst, but this resentment of gentlemen, who could command bad plays and use our stage for personal duels, had been long building in me.

“Listen close to what I have to tell you,” Bartlemy said in a voice that was absolutely cold. “It's not to justify myself, but to soothe your delicate feelings. The truth is, my master finds
himself in a predicament. The Lord Chamberlain, who employed him, is gravely ill. Chances are, he will die. Did you know that?” I shook my head, too stunned to speak. “That means that someone else will be the next Lord Chamberlain, and chances are it will be someone of the Essex faction. My master wishes to see which way the wind will blow before causing an upset at court. This does not mean that anyone will escape. But if it can be done at all, he wants to catch the common criminals first, in the act of whatever scheme my lady cooks up, and use them to implicate their betters. Do you follow my meaning?”

I nodded, though sullenly. He went on, “This approach does not please me, but my master is my master. We will watch Lord Philip's movements, and wait a little, and make what use we can of Kit Glover.”

“Why can't you leave him alone? What do you hold against him?”