Peg Leg, wary at first, was happy enough to see him since he was sober, and happier to take a few coins in exchange for services – a bath that had not been too much occupied; a sponging-off of the worst road excesses from his clothes, with the loan of an old cloak and wide-brimmed hat to conceal them; a jug of small beer, a plate of pottage . . . and the dispatch of a pot boy to the Spoon and Alderman to enquire after its proprietress, with the instruction to note if anyone was watching the doors.
John was just trimming his beard when the boy returned. ‘Barman says she’s gone to the Globe,’ the lad reported, adding helpfully, ‘Gone to see the play.’
John reached for his still damp, somewhat cleaner clothes. ‘Any watchers?’
‘None that I could see,’ the boy replied.
As John dressed, he considered. The boy might have missed Cecil’s men, or they may have followed Tess to the playhouse. Or – he paused in his dressing to consider – or was it possible that they were not there at all? A sleep had cleared his muddled head somewhat. Surely the Secretary of State would have many things on his mind, not least organising the complete fall of his rival. He might have missed the disappearance of her majesty’s messenger. Indeed, he may not even have been informed of John’s return from Ireland, with so many earls and knights and what not. The interim was his – and the playhouse the very place he most wanted to be. He would find his woman there, his son. Shakespeare.
Will! The cleverest man John knew. If he could not cudgel his own brains and solve the dilemma of what the devil to do, his friend the playwright could. And lend him some more money too, for the Queen’s purse was now much diminished.
It was amazing what some sleep, some ale, a bite of food, cleaner clothes and not stinking like a five-day corpse could do for a fellow! He was home; he had survived the latest madness that Essex had thrust upon him. He was, after all, a tiny cog in that mighty engine. Scarce worth anyone’s notice.
John was whistling when he set out into warm autumnal sunshine. He was going to the theatre, where, at the worst, he had three thousand people to hide amongst. And, of course, there was a play to see. He wondered if it would be a good one. What was playing this day? He just hoped it wasn’t The Spanish Tragedy. There was a part of him that had never shaken the nightmare he’d woken from, and he had no desire to return to it.
XXVI
Play Within A Play Within A Play
John discovered what not five paces on to Rose Street, when he stopped at a milk stall.
‘Why, ’tis the tragical tale of the emperor Julian Chaser,’ the apple-cheeked proprietress answered his enquiry as she handed over a leathern mug, brimming white. ‘Played it for four days now and the town’s agog. They’ll play it again all this week if the crowds come like this.’ She beamed at the hordes around. ‘I’d like to get to it myself if’n I can sell me wares.’ She smiled prettily, if gap-toothedly, as John handed back his mug. ‘All the quicker if you drain another, handsome sir.’
John laughed, but shook his head. The penny he’d handed over for the drink now had few companions. He’d need one of those to gain admittance to the theatre, another to mount to the gallery where Tess was sure to be.
He swam into the swelling crowd and a gusty wind. On it scraps of paper were borne. He snatched one from the sky. Read. ‘Julian Chaser, indeed,’ he murmured.
The playbill proclaimed the newest offering from the Chamberlain’s Men. ‘The sad and profound history of that greatest of men, Julius Caesar; his tragic fall to murderous conspiracy; and the bloody civil strife that followed.’
So he had finished it.
John shook his head. Like any who had attended grammar school, he knew his Tacitus, the Roman’s sonorous declensions rapped into knuckles by a teacher’s corrective ruler. It was a bloody tale indeed, of assassination, political turmoil, troubled succession, the dire consequence of noble men taking what they considered honourable necessity. What was Will doing writing it now, when a monarch tottered, two men had a royal arm each and tugged, while armed men mobbed the streets and no one knew what would come?
John shrugged . . . exactly what Will always did. Slaking the thirst of people not allowed to drink freely. To a populace who received the government dole of vinegar, a play like this was sweet sack indeed. No wonder they were playing it an almost unprecedented five times straight. No wonder the crowd that bore him along hummed. He was excited himself – and he had other purposes in the theatre than to see a play. He would pursue them – but he could cock an ear while he did.
The crowd surged against the playhouse’s main doors. John stopped short of the entrance, exchanged a ha’penny for a handful of Kentish cob nuts, shucked, munched and observed. Gatherers took the audience’s pennies, dropping them into the slots of clay boxes which would all be taken to their office for breaking and counting. John noted one fellow who either had a bad case of nits or was stealing a quarter of the take. His hand reaching up to scratch his bare head every fourth coin probably meant he was dropping the penny down his ample collar. Noting his pockmarked face to report it to Will later, John shifted his gaze to those not clamouring to enter. Several stood by, singly and in pairs, watching the crowd; most, no doubt, were seeking to rendezvous with companions. Others could be watching for him. Two had an especially steady gaze and a soldierly lean.
There were many reasons why some men sought others. The theatre drew rogues, and so was a place for the watch to apprehend notorious cutpurses. However, he was not going to risk being taken himself, not this close to his goal. Not when there was another way in, and one, besides, that he was more used to using.
The players’ entrance was not mobbed; but there was still enough of a crowd for John to remain concealed. Boys had gathered to watch for the main performers, and two hung from scaffolding that rose from the back of the playhouse to its roof, repairs being effected on the thatch, though the boys were being ungently prodded off by a doorman with a long pole. Some well-dressed merchants’ wives lurked too, hoping perhaps to draw Burbage’s eye – he was notorious for his dalliances. Servants attended them, for no gentlewoman went to the theatre alone, whatever her intentions. Again, two men stood out for John for their watchfulness, their bearing.
He might be mistaken. However, trying to enter as one of the company was a risk, especially when he paused to explain himself to the doorkeeper. What to do?
Howling turned him. Along Maiden Lane, past the edge of the Rose Theatre, which stood directly behind the Globe and before whose main entrance a far smaller crowd moved – its manager, Henslowe, would be gnashing his few remaining teeth, he thought – John could see to the baiting ring beyond. Mastiffs were being taken from their kennels, dragging their grooms as they tried to maul their rivals, the men jerking hard on chains and plying their whips. Near them, coming down the westerly road, was a coach.
It was a rare enough sight on London’s roads to make John stare longer. It was plush, with highly polished wood, its driver in maroon livery. He kept an easy control with a touch of his lash when mastiffs lunged near his horses, coming on to rein in right by the players’ entrance. A boy, also in maroon, hopped from where he’d been clinging, lowered steps, opened the door . . . and a man descended, reaching his hand back to a lady.
The man was Lord Grey, who’d preceded Essex to Nonsuch and who bore the earl such enmity. The lady he handed down was Sarah.
John moved under the scaffolding to observe. Noblemen as high-ranking as Grey expected the best treatment at the playhouse, and paid accordingly. Part of that money bought this quieter entrance backstage, seats in the minstrels’ gallery – and, this time, a reception from none other than the playwright himself. Will came out of the doorway and bowed. All in the crowd stared.
It was not distraction enough to go to the door and have that conversation with the doorman. But it gave him his opportunity – for like any stage conjuror, John knew that there was a single moment when an audience looked elsewhere. With the leap and twist of the tum
bler he’d once been, he grabbed the cross scaffolding above. It groaned under his sudden weight, but held as he swung himself up to the lowest platform, pressed himself flat upon it, peered over its edge. Shakespeare was reciting some rehearsed speech of welcome, and even the watchers had stepped closer to listen. Close enough for their eyes to be hidden by their hat brims. Silent and swift as a monkey, he climbed the remaining two levels. Only as he swung himself over the last one did his scabbard clatter against wood and he felt, rather than saw, someone’s attention turn upwards. By then, he was lying flat again.
Applause came. It seemed a good time to make his last move, and he slid over to the hole in the thatch that was under repair, wide enough just to admit his body. He peered into the gap – the thatch gave directly on to the theatre’s upper gallery. He could see heads, the men in caps, women with their hair dressed high. He was poised above the space at the very back, a narrow gap between the last bench and the lath wall. The thatch gave as he placed hands either side of the hole, reaching his foot to the beam directly below him. He was tall, but there was still a small drop. For a moment he balanced upon it, until, with a grunt, he swung over, dropped and entered a playhouse in a way he never had done before – through its roof.
There was a couple just settling to his right. They turned, the woman yelping at his sudden closeness, the man grabbing for his dagger hilt. John raised empty hands. ‘My apologies,’ he said, shifting away, ‘for I see this place is taken.’ He turned, moved against the flow of the crowd entering, to the usual complaints. The stairs were blocked by incomers, but when he saw a slight gap, he pushed into it and descended to the middle gallery.
Pressing himself to a pillar, he scanned the crowd. What now? Or rather, who first? There were several that he sought here this day. Ned and Will would be almost below him, in the tiring house beneath the minstrels’ gallery. Tess would be . . . out there! The theatre was already near full, and with the hour approaching, yet more were cramming in. The yard was a blur of movement as the groundlings settled, the galleries only less so as the spectators who had paid a penny more fought for diminishing space just as their inferiors did in the pit. Until movement ceased, John would have little hope of spotting Tess in the three thousand – and not much even then.
That decided him. Ned would be better able to spot her from the stage with that uncanny player’s ability to know where someone special was in a packed house. Besides, John also needed to see Will as soon as possible. For his counsel – and for the loan to fund whatever course the playwright suggested.
To further curses, John moved towards the minstrels’ gallery. The railing in front of the last bench was just below and to the side of it, so close he could hear a viola being tuned. To a woman’s loudly voiced annoyance, he forced himself on to the bench between her and the wall, then watched the pit below, awaiting the distraction that would inevitably come.
It came fast – a woman’s loud scream, and the hue and cry beginning immediately with roars of ‘Thief! Stop, thief!’ and a rustle through the whole crowd as everyone felt for their purses. More than one cutpurse had been struck guilty by the yells, for three youths were surging for the doors. Everyone on the galleries leaned over to better view the chase, including the disgruntled lady to his left. As she did so, John stepped up on to the balustrade, swayed, balanced, then pushed through the gap between curtain and pillar.
‘What mean you, sir?’ came the immediate yell as he narrowly missed puncturing the skin of a tabor, and a fife was snatched from his way. He got his balance. ‘Afternoon, Giles,’ he said.
‘Lawley,’ replied Giles Tremlett, master of the consort, slowly lowering a viola. ‘What make you here, man?’
‘Your pardon. I will not disturb you longer.’ As he spoke, the trumpeter above their heads sounded the beginning of the play. ‘If I may . . .’ He began to pass in the direction to which he’d motioned, the stairs to the tiring house below. But his progress was immediately blocked by the people he barged into coming up.
‘Zounds, sir, what do you think you are about?’
John recognised the nasal voice. He had heard it whine and complain on a few quarterdecks off Cadiz. ‘Your pardon, zur,’ he replied in what he hoped would pass him off as one of the peasants he’d met only that morning. Might have done too, if he hadn’t stepped sideways with his head down and so failed to see his passage was blocked by another.
A softer landfall. Better scented, too. ‘Well,’ said Sarah, ‘if it isn’t the fellow we were just speaking of, Lord Thomas.’
‘What’s that?’ Grey stooped to peer under John’s brim, then gave a grunt of astonishment. ‘S’death! Whip me if it’s not.’ He turned and peered behind him. ‘Master Shakespeare, this is the very rogue you were just enquiring after. And here he appears like one of your damnable deus ex machina, what?’
One deferential step below his lordship, Will gazed up. ‘I see him, my lord,’ he replied drily. ‘He was always wont to make . . . unusual entrances.’
‘And exits.’ Lord Grey smiled humourlessly. ‘For he was the only one of Essex’s party of ruffians not accounted for at Nonsuch.’
‘Was he, my lord?’ Shakespeare turned from noble to sometime player. ‘His lordship has been most graciously informing me of the recent extraordinary events. Seemed to think I might fashion a drama out of them.’
‘Well, master scrivener, knowing your taste in both high and low, I think you would find both in Robert Devereux’s recent exploits,’ Lord Grey drawled. ‘Though whether the climax is to be comic or tragic, end in a jig or an execution, we have yet to discover.’
Since this last was directed menacingly at John, he had to respond. ‘My lord of Essex was well received when last I heard.’
‘Then you stayed but for the fourth act, not the last.’ Lord Grey was like a dog with a lump of gristle, for being in a playhouse, his allusions were all theatrical. ‘The finale contained as much drama as before, but less romance. I was just about to tell Master Shakespeare of it – the last cold interview with her majesty . . . though more warmly dressed, what?’ He gave a little guffaw, continued, ‘Then her dismissal of the earl to be judged by the council of his peers. They were fleet in their condemnation and she as swift to act upon it.’
He paused. Beside them, Giles Tremlett hissed, ‘Will!’ and gestured with his bow to the stage. The trumpet had sounded, the crowd was hushed, all anticipating the music that would announce the players’ entrance. Will held his hand high, commanding a moment, then asked the question that caused John’s heart to beat all the faster. ‘And the denouement, milord? Is my lord of Essex condemned for treason?’
Lord Grey waited, his large nostrils distended, as if he was aware that he held not only his small group of listeners but the whole Globe in pause. Then a smile came to his thin lips and he said, ‘Not . . . yet. As a peer of the realm he is entitled to a hearing before his peers at Westminster Hall. Whether his acts are treasonous will be decided then, along with the punishment. For now he is confined to the Lord Keeper at York House. Egerton will have the watching of him, and just two servants there.’ The smile, lips and nostrils, stretched. ‘Won’t that teach him to see the Queen naked?’
And what will it teach me, who saw the same? wondered John. Still, it was not treason, not yet. It might still give him a chance to distance himself from Essex’s further fall. But the fact that Lord Grey knew that he had been at Nonsuch, and not taken, confirmed what he suspected. Cecil would be looking for him, and the men outside were almost certainly his seekers.
He saw Tremlett raise his viola again, appeal clear on his face. Will saw too. ‘I thank your lordship for his courtesy in telling me this,’ the playwright said. ‘And now if he will sit and observe the play . . .’ He gestured with one hand to the two chairs set there and with the other to his musician, who, relieved, counted four. The consort struck up.
Lord Grey, with another sneer, passed John by. Sarah followed with nothing for him but the slightest of winks. Th
en she was sitting, as his lordship acknowledged the cheer his appearance produced, while behind him, his friend was pulling John none too gently down the stairs.
They descended all the way to Hell, no words spoken, except upon the stage, where shouts followed hard upon the music. As they passed by the tiring room directly behind the platform, John sought his son among the players readying themselves there, nearly missed him when his eyes passed over a comely Roman noblewoman with long brown curls under a headdress. ‘Ned,’ he muttered, taking a step. But a firm hand restrained him, tugging him on and down.
The grip was not released until John had been shoved into the alcove. The cramped space looked the same as before, scattered papers of whatever play Will was working on, ink pots and quills, the one chair behind the table. A window had been added, cut into the lath and filled with leaded glass, admitting light. It gleamed on Will’s high forehead as he turned from drawing the drape, closing them in. ‘By Christ’s foot, man!’ he hissed. ‘What mischief are you about now?’
‘I . . .’ John opened his mouth, could not speak. How did he begin to explain?
Fortunately the playwright prompted him. ‘The last I saw of you, you’d achieved your heart’s desire, had your foot back upon the platform . . .’ He gestured beyond the drapes, where players’ voices rang. ‘That foot even had a limp, so I knew you were back. And then’ – he clicked his fingers – ‘gone again. There are rumours of a debauch that shocked even Southwark, you vanish, then reappear three weeks later like a street mountebank in my minstrels’ gallery while I am being told that you are part of a damned conspiracy – and that you have burst into her bedroom and seen the Queen naked!’ He gaped. ‘What are you thinking of, you damned fool?’
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