The True Prince (5 page)

John Heminges was a firm, broad-shouldered man with yellow hair turning sandy and a disposition to match his sunny coloring. He had a good head for business and could always be counted on to sound the voice of reason in any dispute. But at the moment he looked the opposite of reasonable, as he paced the width of the great room with one fist striking his palm over and over.

By the time we arrived, he had worn a track in the floor rushes. “… no reward for all these years of training and oversight. You know I've tried to be fair—more than fair—as loving as to my own child. For the last year his behavior has grown more and more brazen, until this—” He could not, apparently, find words for
this
, so he threw up his hands. “It is not to be borne.”

“Of course not,” Henry Condell said, in the soothing tone used to pacify lunatics. “We will set a fitting penalty in time.”

“Penalty?” John Heminges stopped short. “What penalty but expulsion from the Company?”

“John.” Master Condell reminded him, with a jerk of his head in our direction, that open ears were drinking in every word said. “That can be settled later. For now we have more pressing business.”

“Then let us be off.” Master Heminges picked up his hat from the table and started toward the door with no pause, as though he had merely changed the angle of his pacing.

Henry Condell turned to us. “You boys must walk to the Theater alone. Tell Master Burbage we'll be along in time for rehearsal—”

“Nay.” John Heminges turned at the door, one hand on the latch. “Let them come. They should see this—Robin especially.” Then he was out the door, leaving us mystified. Our master looked from us to the empty doorway and back again, frowned, shrugged, shook his head. “Come along, then. We'll
add something to your education beyond stage deportment, eh?”

So we followed them down Aldermanbury Street and on toward Cheapside, in an opposite direction from the one we usually took. Cheapside, the street that forms the spine of London, was filling already with water peddlers and tinsmiths, carters and housemaids on their way to market. And beggars of every description—sightless, legless, armless, hopeless—all wrapped up as well as they could afford against the morning chill. The gray dawn was made gloomier by the cries of the unfortunate: “A penny, sir. A penny for a poor soldier whose strength was spent in the Netherlands….” “A farthing, young master, to feed my gaunt-ribbed child!” “Pity a blind man, good people; pity the blind!” Add to these the singsong chants of peddlers hawking their wares and the church bells beginning to toll out seven o'clock, and it made a rackety way to greet the morning. Londoners are so accustomed to noise that they don't hear half of it, but I grew up in a country village, where dawn is gently roused by crowing cocks, rather than violently shaken with a thousand voices.

The huge gray block of St. Paul's Cathedral loomed to our left as we veered off Cheapside toward Ludgate. All this time the hats and cloaks of our masters kept well ahead of us— sometimes we had to trot to keep them in view—and Robin the chatterer had kept strangely silent. We both knew that our expedition had somewhat to do with Kit, but beyond that,
Robin was probably as ignorant as I. He and Kit had been close—as close as a lord with a faithful servant, or boy with his adoring hound. On warm nights they used to slip out after curfew to roam the streets of London, skirting danger while keeping out of real trouble. But those excursions had not resumed with the coming of spring this year, and though Robin never talked about it, I knew he was hurt. Kit often showed up at the Theater with the haggard face and dark-circled eyes that indicated he wasn't getting much sleep. Somehow we knew that he had not turned to a life of contemplation and study. “Some lady is keeping him up,” Gregory once suggested, with a dig to my ribs. But Kit seemed too much in love with himself to have any left over for a lady. Perhaps his playwriting acquaintance had been claiming his nights—though I could not imagine for what.

Robin seemed lost in his own thoughts and never glanced at me, even when we passed through Ludgate and continued on toward the court district. Here, just beyond the narrow river tributary known as the Fleet, the men turned abruptly toward a gray stone building, climbed the front steps, and disappeared under an arched doorway. “I knew it,” Robin murmured, increasing his pace until we took the steps at a run. The building was Fleet Prison.

In a small antechamber just inside the main door we nearly ran headlong into our masters, who were conferring with Will Shakespeare. Master Will's face made a striking contrast with
the others: while their expressions were solemn, his appeared bright with interest, as though engrossed in a play. “No, they've set no bail,” he was saying. “The magistrate has heard the complaint, but not the defense. That should be next.”

“If the Company refuses to pay bail, it shall come out of my own purse.” Master Heminges spoke in a tight, strained voice. “The youth is my charge….”

Just beyond them, the broad doorway opened to a courtroom of sorts—a magistrate's chamber for the preliminary hearing of petty cases. I could see the Queen's coat of arms mounted over the bench, where a gray-bearded official in a black cap impatiently shuffled a stack of papers. Two clerks flanked him in lower seats and a bailiff with pike and helmet stood to one side. The witness stand and the offenders' bench were out of my view, but I knew that Kit must be occupying one of them.

“He is
our
charge,” Master Will replied. “Calm yourself, John. It may be the very lesson he needs, and so work for the best.”

“Soft,” Master Condell warned. “It begins.”

The voice that was coming through the doorway could not belong to anyone but a player. It seemed to lean forward and take hold of its hearers, placing every syllable like part of an irrefutable argument for the existence of angels or mermaids. Kit had launched his defense like a spring coiled on his tongue.

He could attribute his misdeed to three factors, he said: youth, high spirits, and Spanish sack. Of those three, the wine was the greatest cause. He never had much of a head for it, Your Honor; it takes experience and practice to learn how much a man could hold without losing control of himself, and as far as that particular knowledge went, he was still at school. He threw himself upon the court, confident that a man so wise as our honorable judge would take his youth and inexperience into account and temper justice with mercy.

Master Heminges tightened his lips. “Come,” he said abruptly, and led the way into the courtroom, right down the center aisle. Heads turned as we entered: anxious wives and mothers, restless children, bored law students, attentive clergymen. A wooden railing separated the petty offenders from the rest of the courtroom. Masters Heminges and Shakespeare took a bench directly behind the rail, while the remaining three of us filed into the next row.

The minute he saw us, Kit's expression changed. The earnest, eager tone I had heard in his voice flattened—only a little, but enough to notice. By the time we settled ourselves, his expression had become guarded and tight on a face already the worse for wear. A prominent welt marked his cheekbone, and his eyes were puffy from a night in jail. His clothes had not stood the ordeal any better: one sleeve ripped, hose sagging as though someone had tried to tear it off.

“You may save your defense until the charge is read,” the
judge told him wearily. “You stand accused of breaking the peace, offering insult to honest citizens, and damaging property. All this court needs to know is, how plead you?”

“Guilty, Your Honor.” Beside me I heard Robin draw a sharp breath.

“Very well. Have you anything to add to your defense?”

Kit opened his mouth, then apparently thought better of it. “No, sir.”

“You may step down, then.” One of the yawning clerks wrote the plea into the court record as Kit stepped down and returned to his place, taking care to look at no one.

Henry Condell leaned forward as the bailiff called another name. “Will, what is this about? What did he do?”

I was eager to learn this myself and inched closer as Master Will turned his head. “I know scarcely more than you, but—”

He was interrupted by an emphatic “
Not
guilty, Your Honor!” from the dock. Immediately after came a screech like a hog being killed.

The noise came from somewhere behind us, and heads jerked up all over the courtroom. A stout woman in working- class garb rose from her bench, pointing a finger that quivered with rage, directly at the man in the dock. “He
lies
, Your Honor! There never was such a bold-faced blistering liar as—”

“Sit you down, madam!” the judge rapped out.

Instead the woman strode forward, her outstretched arm
like the prow of a ship, in perfect disregard of the judge's calls to order: “He promised to marry me, Your Honor!” (“We have heard your testimony, madam—”) “So when he shows up at my tavern with two knaves who claim to be churchmen, what was I to think but he was making good on his pledge?” (“Sit
down
!”) “And so he says, only we must have a proper wedding dinner before we proceed to the church, where this knave” (she knocked Kit on the back of the head) “—will serve as witness, while the other knave” (waving her arm in a vague circle) “will marry us.”

“Bailiff! Remove this woman!”

“And then, after they've eaten and drunk enough to stuff a regiment of Dutchmen, all at my expense, he denies he promised anything.” The bailiff did his best, but even after he wrapped his arm around her ample waist and began dragging her toward the door, she would not be silenced. “So what could I do but set my two grown sons on them? The brawl was not my fault, Your Honor—he's the one who brought it on. He's guilty as Lucifer! Guilty, guilty—” The door slammed on a last, high-pitched
“Guilty!”

In the abrupt silence, I heard a snicker from Robin and saw Master Will's face twitching. Most everyone else looked as sober as our judge, but the courtroom gravity had been stretched very thin. I stared at the defendant, who had brought about this change by denying his guilt.

He almost filled the dock: as tall as Richard Burbage and
at least as thick, with the bearing and presence of a military man and the complexion of a drunkard. His face might have been handsome in a rough-hewn way, but for the swollen nose, fiery as a live coal.

The judge sighed, rubbing his eyes. “As you see, Captain, we have witnesses to the matter and your companion has admitted his guilt. What hinders you?”

“Simple justice, my lord,” the defendant replied forth- rightly. “'Twas evil companionship that started me on last night's ill-favored venture. I meant to visit the sick, or attend to my prayers, but in spite of good intentions I was prevailed on to leave my humble lodging and take to the streets instead. Company, villainous company, hath been my downfall, honored sir—”

“Go to!” snapped the judge impatiently. “You are the worst corrupter of youth in all of London.”

“My lord!” cried the man, holding up a hand that showed a gap where the two middle fingers should be. “I am as virtuous as any man needs to be and as valorous. Was I not maimed in the Spanish Wars?”

“Put down your hand. I have seen it before, and for all I know, you lost those fingers when they got stuck in the bung- hole of an ale barrel.”

Titters broke out all over the courtroom, as the so-called captain cast down his eyes. “If you please, Your Honor. You wound my good name.”

“As if I could do more hurt to that name than yourself. To the point: Did you promise to marry Mistress Oxenbridge, as she claims?”

“If I did, 'twas only in words. Spoken words, things of shaped and polished air that flash but once, then flicker away—”

“Do you intend to marry her, now or ever?”

The defendant looked up, eyes wide. “
Marry
that harpy? By the Mass, no! Would you?”

The courtroom came undone then, as its occupants could hold back their laughter no more. One of the clerks went so far as to crack a smile, as the other bent his head, writing very diligently, shielding his eyes with one hand while his shoulders quivered. Master Will had taken out his table book and was making notes, his eyebrows raised with the eagerness of a huntsman on the track of quarry. Only two people seemed unmoved: John Heminges and the judge.

The latter waved the defendant back to his place. “The destruction of property and breaking of the peace are no matters for mirth. You both stand guilty as charged. Captain Peregrine Penny, stand forth.” The large man with the mottled cheeks did so. “You will repay one half the damage assessed and serve thirty days in Fleet Prison.”

Captain Penny raised his mutilated hand again. “Your Honor, I protest. 'Tis a poor return for faithful service to my country—”

“Enough! Bailiff, bear him away.” I saw Penny's good hand fall on Kit's shoulder and give an affectionate squeeze before he was led away.

“Christopher Glover, stand forth.” Kit rose from the bench, as the judge fixed him with a baleful eye. “Your conduct makes all too plain the weaknesses and pitfalls of your profession. Playacting has worked many ills upon this city, but one of the greatest is shiftless fellows who have not enough honest work to fill their days….”

He went on a little longer about the scourge of plays and players, as I felt Master Condell grow rigid beside me. The senior members of the Company were sensitive to the common charges hurled against their profession and made every effort to conduct themselves as law-abiding, church-supporting, respectable family men. Even Master Will's pleasant face had turned to stone by the time the judge was done. For that matter, I might have lodged a protest against the notion that players had too little to do.

“… As it is your first offense, I shall release you on bail.” Raising his voice, the judge addressed the courtroom. “Is there any present to stand bail for Christopher Glover?”

John Heminges stood, clearing his throat. But before he could speak, a voice sounded from the back of the room. “So please you, Your Honor. His bail is secured.”

Heads turned again as an elderly fellow came forward. His blue coat marked him as a servant, but without any
distinguishing signs to indicate his house. He stopped at the railing and handed the bailiff a sealed letter, which the bailiff in turn passed to the judge. That gentleman broke the seal and read slowly, while John Heminges sank back on the bench, as mystified as the rest of us. Kit glanced back at us, his expression undeniably smug.