The True Prince (7 page)

“The Company may go to hell, too!” Kit's famous reserve crumbled, as he turned on Robin like a boar at bay, almost snarling. “They care nothing for me—they pretend not to notice I'm no longer a
boy
. They'd stuff me in skirts until I was thirty, if they could get away with it.”

Mildly I remarked, “I thought that was a man's role you played yesterday.” I almost added, “Even though you ended up playing it like a girl,” but tact intervened.

So much for tact; his wrath only increased. “Aye, and you'd expect them to give me good support the first time. Burbage or Phillips should have played Sylvester, but who do they pick but Ned Shakespeare, who has a voice like a pipe and barely shaves and earned his place by virtue of being the playmaker's brother. As for Silvia, well … they might have given me someone I could play off of.”

The sheer unfairness of this remark pushed me beyond
prudence. “You play off me well enough when there's a quarrel toward. And Silvia was the only player to win applause, or do I remember wrongly?”

“Stop it!” Robin pleaded. Once again we were making life uncomfortable for him, torn as he was between liking for me and loyalty to Kit. “It was a bad play, I think we can agree on that. The Company should have tried you out on a better one.”

Kit uncrossed his ankles and swung his heels against the stone wall—rather like a thwarted child, instead of the near- grown man he claimed to be. Davy, on my other side, was doing the same thing, aimlessly rather than petulantly. “It's a good play,” Kit said. “Or would have been a good play, if they had given it the attention they should have.”

Robin and I gazed at him with identical stunned expressions. Surely Kit knew a good play from a bad one as well as we did; had he parted company with his senses? In the silence, which neither of us could think how to break, the Welsh Boy's sweet voice bubbled up, softly singing a popular street ballad: “Jolly William, tell me how thy lady doth—”

Swiftly, Kit swung both legs over the wall, dropped down behind me, and grabbed the back of the boy's doublet, jerking hard. Davy landed on his back, his stunned blue eyes filling with sky just before they filled with tears.

As Kit marched away, I shouted at his back, “What is
wrong
with you?” He continued across the field toward Aldgate, seething with the same caged-tiger helplessness I had
observed in Richard Burbage. Muttering, I scrambled down to make sure Davy had not broken anything.

Robin dropped down also, then stood indecisively before heaving a deep sigh. “I'm for the Mermaid.”

As for me, I had had enough of ranting players for one day. Or so I thought. But after I arrived home, with Davy still in tow, what did Starling and I decide to do with the afternoon but take in a play at the Rose. I helped with her house chores so we could leave early; our Theater's closing was apt to swell the crowds at the Rose and the Swan and the Curtain. At midday the three of us crossed London Bridge into Southwark, that rowdy district where theaters, brothels, gambling dens, and bear pits flourished.

The Rose is home to our chief rivals, the Admiral's Men. Robin liked to compare their players to farm animals, but in truth they were almost as good as our Company. This was only the third play I had ever had the leisure just to watch, a new work entitled
The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington, After Called Robin Hood.
Robin Hood plays always drew a crowd; no Englishman ever tired of the clever outlaw. The Admiral's Men were performing this version for the second time, and to judge by the roar of the audience, they might wring a dozen more showings out of it before the season ended. No tedious speeches or love scenes here: just as a talkative character threatened to outstay his welcome, a sword battle broke out, or the Sheriff of Nottingham showed his nasty
mug, or Friar Tuck waddled on with an ale keg. “My lady critic would despise this,” Starling giggled. “She was in the gallery of the Theater yesterday, praising the classical beauties of
The House of Maximus
—can you imagine?” We laughed one minute and cheered the next, young Davy jumping up and down with such abandon I had to wonder what he'd swallowed.

When the play ended and the groundlings began jostling their way toward the exits, the boy got away from us altogether. Starling, who had assumed responsibility for him, grew fretful as the minutes passed and we made very little progress through the crowd. “Suppose he's been kidnapped?”

“Who would want him?” I replied lightly, even while admitting to myself that lawless men lurked everywhere and were not above stealing pretty boys for nefarious purposes. Thus I was almost as relieved as she when Davy met us outside, still bubbling over with excitement. I wondered why he never showed such animation on our stage.

“Let's take a boat across the river,” he chirped.

“Can't,” I replied. “I spent my last penny on the play.”

“I'll put the fare.”

Starling looked sideways at him. “How could you do that? You had to borrow a penny from me to get into the Rose.”

“Aye.” The boy's face went as smooth as the summer sky. “And I'll pay it. But I keep a bit of coin put aside, for somewhat that may take my particular fancy.” Starling and I raised eyebrows at each other, silently vowing we'd not let him sponge
off us so easily next time. But we did not refuse the boat ride. It made a fitting end to an afternoon that turned out pleasant and carefree, and the last of that kind that I was to know for some time.

Master Allen sent word by his agents that he would allow access to the Company's tiring rooms for one day only, and Richard Burbage fired back a notice that he was bringing suit against the landlord for possession of his building. Setting the lawyers on it was all he could do; in the meantime we had a schedule to perform.

After some hasty negotiation, the chief players worked out an arrangement with the owner of the Curtain Theater nearby. The entertainment offered by the Curtain tended toward bear and bull fights, wrestling matches and bloody spectacle. For a price, the owner canceled most of these and gave our Company the run of his stage for three weeks out of every month (the fourth week being reserved for bear fights). It was the best that could be made of a bad situation. Master Cuthbert sent out a division of boys to tack up notices all over London, and performances at the Curtain began the following Monday.

The Curtain was built on a similar plan to the Theater, but different in dozens of ways one would not notice until forced to perform familiar actions in an unfamiliar space. The stage was deeper, but not as wide, so a player pacing off a speech might find himself teetering on the brink before a line was out.

The trap was in a different place, the tiring room walls were closer together, the musicians' gallery was backed by a wall instead of curtains, and on and on. For the first week we continually got in each other's way. Tempers grew short and minor eruptions broke out and every man and boy said things he afterward regretted. Except Kit, who said very little.

In spite of his defiant speech at the dike, he bottled himself up in a sullen attitude and continued playing imperious, passionate, or clever women as brilliantly as ever. As ordered, he had moved out of the Heminges household and now boarded with Richard Cowley in Southwark. This eased the strain between himself and John Heminges, although no one could mistake Kit's posture as one of resignation. He was a walking battle, and I could guess the conflict: one side of him defended his position as the finest boy player in London, while the other rebelled against that very position. No doubt he hated all of us, but for some reason he took it out only on the Welsh Boy.

This antipathy began to show itself in crafty ways. One afternoon I was standing behind the stage with Davy, awaiting our entrance together as a mother and son. Kit was on the stage, as a scheming queen plotting mayhem in snaky tones that writhed and fascinated. Only gradually did I become aware of the boy fidgeting beside me. My own neck itched from the starchy ruff that choked it, but that was an inconvenience that players were expected to endure. After all, the Queen's courtiers spent entire days encased in jeweled prisons, and
they managed to keep from scratching themselves in her presence. “Stop that,” I told him. “We must go on after Kit is done.”

“I can't help it,” he whispered. “The shirt is crawling.”

I pulled back the stiff high collar of his doublet and squinted down his neck, looking for lice. His skin was far from clean, but neither did it crawl. “I don't see anything.”

“You wouldn't. 'Tis cursed.”

I looked at him sharply, but before I could ask what he meant, we heard the words of our cue. During the scene I kept a hand on his shoulder and gave him a subtle scratch from time to time, which seemed to help. But he forgot all his cues unless I pinched him, and I noticed that every time Kit looked directly at him, the boy twitched worse than ever. Kit's usual manner with new apprentices was not to torment but to ignore them. But the looks he gave the Welsh Boy were pointed and cruel, as though by looks alone he might drive him out of the Company. After the scene I examined Davy's collar again and picked up a fine grayish powder on my fingers that made them itch unmercifully until I was able to wash it off. How strange—would Kit stoop to such meanness? And if so, why?

Whatever Kit's wishes, the Company had determined to keep Davy, at least until the end of the season. He showed well as a page or young maid, and his tumbling and singing skills pleased our audience. His speeches had to be pared to the barest meaning, because his lifeless delivery of them did not
improve, and whenever he had to speak at length, the audience became restless. This was too bad, because his memory was uncommon—just how uncommon no one knew until the day when he was asked to change his lines in rehearsal. “How, sir?” he asked, his wide blue eyes growing wider.

“You are saying the part about the lilies, but we struck that,” Master Heminges explained. “Skip down to ‘The fairest rose doth bear a thorn,' and speak only the next four lines.”

He might have said this in a foreign tongue for all the comprehension the boy showed. In an unlikely show of helpfulness, Kit crossed to him, took his scroll, and skimmed the lines. “Here,” he said, pointing. “This place here. Read that.”

The boy seemed frozen, his mouth barely moving as he replied.

“What's that?” Kit purred. “What did you say?”

“I cannot read,” said Davy.

This brought rehearsal to an abrupt halt, as Master Heminges exclaimed, “Can't
read
?” and other players clamored to know how any boy could get into a theater company without this vital mystery. Davy broke down and wept, pitifully enough to wring any heart, and revealed under questioning that Thomas Pope's housekeeper, who had taken a fancy to him, was drilling him on his lines in the evening until he could say them after her perfectly.

“Well,” growled Master Burbage, “ask the lady to start teaching you your letters. And if you've not mastered the art
by autumn, you will seek another place. Understood?”

“Aye, sir.” The boy nodded and wiped his eyes, and rehearsal continued. I saw Kit's face darken, making me wonder if he had known the Welsh Boy's secret somehow and seized the opportunity to expose it.

Other incidents occurred: if the two had a scene together, Kit was apt to do some small thing—like changing a cue—that would confuse the boy. He did not do it often enough to attract suspicion from the other players, only enough to reduce Davy to a bundle of nerves every time they went on together. One afternoon the boy cried out in pain during a scene when he was supposed to dance and laugh. After the scene I unlaced his gown and found a needle embedded in the corset, at an angle to pierce him when he bent left or right. I could guess who laced him up that day.

These little nips and nudges had begun to stoke a low fire in me. Whatever Kit might have against the boy, no one deserved this. I myself, after a year, was only now settling into some consistency as a player—if Kit had treated me the way he was treating Davy, I would have been shattered early on. With righteous outrage, I climbed to the upper tiring room after the play and held up the offending object. “What's this?”

Kit looked, making his eyes cross. “A needle.”

“Do you know where I found it?”

“No. A haystack?”

Robin and Gregory were watching us curiously, so I made
my reply obscure. “Let us say that it was in a place where needles ought not to be, and from now on I'll make it my business to keep watch.”

“Please yourself. Standing sentry for needles seems a … pointless occupation.”

“Be that as it may, I've made it my own.”

Words are curious things: “shaped and polished air,” according to Kit's reprobate friend Captain Penny. Yet they have an uncommon power. In the heat of the moment I had said more than I meant. Kit's unexplained cruelty angered me, but his arrogance on top of that pushed me to the brink. And with two witnesses I could not honorably take my words back. With no particular liking for him, I had made myself Davy's defender.

MASTER BURBAGE DRAWS A CIRCLE