The Secret of the Rose

by Sarah L. Thomson

  “Do not move; that hem is coming loose,” I said to someone standing before me in a pale green satin gown trimmed with narrow bands of black velvet. I did not even ascertain who wore it, but dropped to my knees to catch up the errant stitches before they unraveled further.

  “That will do,” I said as I bit off the thread and looked up to see to whom I had been ministering. My eyes traveled past the green skirts, the stomacher embroidered with yellow vines, the wide lace ruff, and up to the face, pale with white powder under a black wig.

  “Robin?” I said in surprise, and got to my feet. “I hardly knew thee.”

  My little brother looked half sick with nerves. He opened his mouth to speak, but just then Master Alleyn’s voice rose over all. “Oh, very well, very well, ’twill do. ’Tis time, masters, prepare yourselves!”

  One of the points that fastened Robin’s sleeve to his bodice had come loose. I quickly retied it. “Thou’lt do well,” I promised him. Master Cowley stood taller, straightened the crown on his head, and opened the door at the back of the stage to stride out into the view of the audience. The other players entered after him in a swirl of silks and velvets and rustling taffeta. Robin was swept up among them. Will flopped down on a table next to me with a sigh of relief.

  “I thought we’d never get them ready,” he whispered, only to receive a glare from Master Alleyn, who, as the Catholic villain Guise, was still waiting for his entrance. Will made an unrepentant face at the player’s back, but hushed until he stalked onto the stage. There was an angry howl from the crowd to greet him, and under cover of the noise Will whispered to me again.

  “Listen to them! I’ve never heard the groundlings shout so. Well, they may enjoy it, but ’tis not a play I care for.”

  I turned to him with sudden, unreasonable joy. “You do not?”

  He gave me a sidelong glance, as if puzzled by my eagerness. “What tireman would? Pig’s blood is a misery to get out of a costume.”

  I nodded, and tried to look sympathetic, and not as if, like a fool, I had expected him to say something completely different. Why should he dislike the play for any reason other than the extra work it made for him? Why should I expect him to hate it for the same reasons I did?

  Will and I sat together backstage for the rest of the play. We could not see much of what was happening onstage, only occasional glimpses as the players came on and off. But we could hear. As the wicked Catholics pursued the innocent Protestants across the stage, they shouted lines I knew all too well.

  “‘There are a hundred Protestants which we have chased into the river Seine that swim about and so preserve their lives,’” Nick warned. “‘How may we do? I fear me they will live.’”

  “‘Go place some men upon the bridge with bows and darts to shoot at them they see, and sink them in the river as they swim,’” answered Harry, bold with the glory of his first man’s part.

  “‘Stab him and send him to his friends in hell,’” Master Alleyn roared.

  And every time a player fell to the stage, miming death and smeared with blood, the crowd howled with rage. “Filthy papists!” “Rome is the devil!” I thought that Master Alleyn must fear for his life. When he was murdered in his turn, the watchers whooped and clapped so loudly that the play had to halt and the murderers hang uselessly about the stage with nothing to do until the noise died down enough to let them continue.

  At last it was over. The players thronged backstage, laughing and talking. I looked, but did not see Robin among them. Will and his father hurried off to examine the damage to the costumes. And I slipped out into the yard to look for my master.

  I found him sitting in the first gallery. Master Henslowe leaned on the railing, talking excitedly. “A triumph, Kit, ’twill keep the house full for a month, I warrant you,” he was saying as I came up. But Master Marlowe answered only with an abstracted smile.

  Master Henslowe hurried backstage to congratulate his players. The galleries emptied, and the last of the audience made its way out the doors. And still Master Marlowe sat, and I stood mutely by, waiting for him to tell me what he wished me to do.

  Some of the hirelings came out and began to scrub the stage, pouring buckets of water over the sticky blood that the players had tracked all over the worn boards.

  “’Tis only pig’s blood,” Master Marlowe said suddenly, and glanced aside at me. I do not know what he saw in my face, but he smiled, it seemed to me a little ruefully, and turned his eyes back to the stage. “Pig’s blood and false speeches, and the groundlings are happy and will pay a penny apiece to see it. Henslowe’s seats are filled, and the players are paid, and the playmaker has a brand-new reputation as a loyal Protestant. And who is harmed by it? ’Tis all dissembling, Richard.” Now he looked directly at me. “’Tis a skill thou wouldst do well to practice.” And before I could react he had risen, clasping his hands together overhead and stretching until his bones cracked. “Get thee home, then. I’ll be out for some time.”

  Some of the audience were still gathered outside the Rose’s door, talking over the play. I kept close to the wall of the playhouse, working my way past the crowd, and almost bumped into a figure my own height in pale green satin.

  “Pardon, mistress,” I murmured, without thinking, before my eyes took in the face, pale with powder, and the cropped hair. Robin’s wig was gone, and he looked clownish and tragic at once, with red paint still brightening his mouth and his eyes rimmed in black. “Robin? What dost here?”

  “I only wanted a breath of air,” Robin muttered, his voice husky and odd.

  “Master Henslowe will have thy head for stepping foot out of the playhouse in that gown,” I warned him. “If Master Green does not take it first.”

  He nodded, as if he hardly cared.

  “Robin? Art ill?”

  “Thou wast right.”

  “About what?”

  He shook his head in amazement. “About the playhouse. Didst hear them?” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Yelling for Catholic blood?”

  I should have been triumphant. But how could I, seeing the white misery on his face under the gaudy paint?

  “’Twas—’twas but one play, Robin,” I said awkwardly, keeping my voice low as well so that those around us would not hear.

  “’Twas my first time on the stage. They all expect me to be glad for it.”

  “Thou didst not write the speeches.”

  “I played my part.”

  “I wrote the play out myself,” I countered. “Every word. I am at least as much to blame as thee. Thou didst not even have a line to speak.”

  “I was onstage.” Robin looked ready to melt with guilt. “Thou wast right. I should never have stayed here.”

  I sighed and said to my little brother for the first time in our lives, “No, thou wast right.”

  He blinked.

  “Thou hadst no other choice, Robin. Nor I. Where else could we have gone?”

  The two of us could have begged for crusts of bread like the old veteran and his little son by St. Paul’s churchyard. Or I could have become like that woman under the sign of the cardinal’s hat, selling myself to keep off hunger. I knew London better than I had six months ago. There were worse things than being a player or a playmaker’s servant, and I had seen them.

  We were safe, Robin and I. We had bread and clothes and beds at night. We were only doing what we must to keep ourselves alive.

  God keep thee safe, Rosalind, my father had said. Perhaps, strange though it might be, the playhouse and the playmaker were God’s way of answering the prayer.

  “’Tis not truth, Robin,” I told him. “’Tis pig’s blood and false speeches. And who is…” I had meant to finish Master Marlowe’s sentence. And who is harmed by it? But as I thought of the groundlings shrieking their blood-thirst, I could not say it. Instead, I reached out to grasp Robin’s arm, feeling the solid flesh and bone beneath the slippery satin.

  “We must survive,” I whispered to him, my voice low and fierce. “W
e must go to their churches, take part in their plays, and keep the truth in our hearts.”

  Robin nodded and put his hand into mine, clasping it as if we had made a bargain.

  “Get thee within,” I said, with a faint attempt at a smile. “And let no one see thee, or thou’lt have a beating for risking that gown.”

  Once Robin had gone, I made my way toward the bridge, passing groups of people walking slowly and talking. None noticed me as I slipped by. Just another servant boy, all but invisible in the slowly gathering dusk.

  “Murdering papists.”

  “They’d kill us if they could.”

  “Spying for Spain, all of them, no doubt.”

  “And the Pope has ordered it. He said it would be no sin to kill our queen.”

  “Anyone might be a secret Catholic. Any neighbor, any servant, any friend…”

  “God defend us!”

  I felt cold reach all the way down my spine, a chill settle into my stomach. Hugging my arms across my chest, I hurried through the streets.

  ’Tis all dissembling…Pig’s blood and false speeches…And who is harmed by it?

  Meaning only to comfort Robin, I’d found Master Marlowe’s words in my own mouth. And they had seemed true enough. No player had been injured on that stage, not so much as bruised. They would perform again tomorrow, none the worse for having their throats slit today.

  Robin and I must survive. Surely it was no sin. Surely no one could blame us for only trying to live.

  But as the sun faded behind clouds, and the early dark of a winter evening gathered, I thought of the groundlings, shrieking for the deaths of Catholics, and remembered my old neighbors, tearing my home apart. And one of them, it must have been, had whispered a word in the sheriff’s ear. Who? Hugh Forrester, the father of Robin’s friend Hal? Our maidservant, Joan? Master Crabbe at the school? Someone had seen my father cross himself, had glimpsed a lighted candle through our windows, had caught a whisper of a Latin prayer, and that had been enough.

  They’d kill us if they could…. Anyone might be a secret Catholic. Any neighbor, any servant, any friend…

  There were no neighbors or friends with such suspicion abroad. We are all harmed by it, I answered Master Marlowe in my mind.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MAY 1593

  Spring came at last, and warmth with it. A haze of green softened the fields outside the city, and the hawthorn hedges bloomed white with their own snow of blossoms. It was on such a sweet, sunlit day that I went on my regular errand to pick up Master Marlowe’s linen from the laundry.

  Mistress Pieters’s small shop was full, and everyone seemed to be talking, not waiting to be served. I squeezed my way inside and listened to scraps of conversation until I could catch Mistress Pieters’s eye.

  “…Spanish hunting us at home and the English here…”

  “…warned them, but no one cared to listen…”

  “Stay home tonight, who knows what might befall?”

  “Richard?”

  Mistress Pieters looked astonished and not well pleased to see me.

  “I’ve come for Master Marlowe’s collar and cuffs, please, mistress,” I said, uneasy. I rather wished I could retreat out of the shop and come back another time, but it was impossible. The chatter had ceased and all eyes turned to me, and they were not friendly eyes, either.

  “Indeed?” Mistress Pieters said at last, and her fair cheeks flushed red. “Master Marlowe’s collar and cuffs?” She all but spat his name and, rummaging in a basket, snatched up the fine linen and threw it at me. “He has a nerve, to send you here today for these!”

  I stared at her, bewildered, and held out the coins in my hand. “Mistress? What is it? I do not—”

  “Thinkst thou we have not been by the church and seen what thy master has done there?” she snapped. “Take his property and begone! And I’ll have none of his money, either. Tell him not to send thee to this shop again!”

  Baffled, I left, feeling unfriendly gazes and angry thoughts prickling along the length of my spine. I had to fight the urge to break into a run as soon as I reached the street.

  What on earth had Master Marlowe done? Mistress Pieters had said something about a church. But Master Marlowe had not set foot in a church since I’d been in his service.

  That is, he had not set foot inside a Protestant church.

  They were all Protestants, these Dutch. My stomach began to tighten and I walked quicker.

  I had wondered if Master Marlowe might be a Catholic himself. Surely not. Not the man who’d forced me to swear on my saints to save my life. Not the man who had written that play, who had painted Catholics as bloody murderers for every Protestant in London to hate. Unless…’Tis all dissembling, Richard, he had said to me. How deep did his dissembling go? And what was the truth he was trying so hard to hide?

  Something struck me in the middle of my back, something soft and slimy. I spun around in surprise, and the next missile hit over my heart. I gagged at the smell of ripe horse dung.

  Who had thrown it? I looked around wildly. The woman walking by in her neat white coif, who snatched at her two children’s hands to hurry them along? The wealthy man in the loose green gown and the tall black hat?

  I was ready to run, when something stung the backs of my legs. Now I seemed under attack from two directions at once. Which way did safety lie, and which way danger?

  “Playmaker’s boy!”

  It was a mocking hiss, with malice behind it. I whirled around again, and a pebble hit my cheek. I jumped back, covering my eye, and was about to flee—any direction must be better than standing still, a cowering target—when I heard a loud, angry voice.

  “Wilt cause trouble in the streets, today of all days?” The speaker was a tall Dutchman. He had hauled a boy of Robin’s age out of a dark alley, and now he wrenched a stone out of his upraised hand. The boy protested in quick Dutch, pointing at me, but the man snapped back at him in English. “Get thee home!” he ordered. His eyes met mine over the boy’s head, and I knew the order was in truth meant for me.

  The last time I had seen this man, it had been in the streets near the Rose, with mud and blood dripping from his fair hair.

  I took his advice and ran.

  In Broad Street, by the Dutch church, I was forced by a crowd to slow my steps. People clustered about the doorway of the church, but they seemed to be neither going in nor coming out. In my present mood, a crowd in front of a Protestant church was nothing I cared to encounter. But still I hesitated.

  Thinkst thou we have not been by the church and seen what thy master has done there? Mistress Pieters’s words seemed to imply that Master Marlowe had made some mark or left some sign that could still be seen. And now that I looked more closely, I realized that the crowd was thickest around a paper pasted up by the church door. A libel. Someone had written a message and posted it on the wall of the Dutch church for all of London to read. Presumably, from what Mistress Pieters had said, that someone had been Master Marlowe.

  It was dangerous to stay. I might be recognized as Master Marlowe’s servant at any moment. And had I not been warned, more than once, to pay no heed to my master’s affairs?

  But what if this libel revealed something of the elusive truth under Master Marlowe’s dissembling?

  “Richard! Thank God. Come back out of this mob.”

  I nearly shrieked aloud as a hand fell on my arm, and wrenched free to turn around and look up at Master Marlowe’s face.

  “Peace!” he snapped, pulling me a few steps away into an alley. “Dost want all London to hear thee?” His face twisted with disgust as he took in the state of my doublet. “Didst fall in the street? No matter. Go thou and read what it says, then come back and tell me.” He was frowning anxiously, his lips thin, his face drawn.

  “Read it?” I choked out, bewildered. Had not Master Marlowe written the libel himself? Why did he need me to tell him what it said?

  “Of course, read it!” He gave me a shove back
toward the church. “I dare not go myself, too many know my face. But none will notice thee. Hurry!”

  Now I understood nothing at all. Had he written the libel or not? I slipped out of the alley and made my way toward the church. Everyone was trying to do the same—get close enough to read the paper or listen to someone else read it aloud. Soon I was packed in, bodies on all sides of me, and I could see nothing over the broad shoulders of the man in front of me.

  “What does it say?” I asked a man beside me.

  “How can I see?” he answered impatiently. “Here, move on, if you’ve read it once!”

  “Something about those immigrants,” said a woman’s spiteful voice from behind me, and a sharp elbow nudged me in the ribs.

  “Who asked them to come here?”

  “Not enough jobs for true Englishmen, and bread costs so much….”

  Well, I might not be able to see over men’s shoulders, but there were some benefits after all to being short and thin. Using my shoulder as a wedge, I wormed my way in between the two men in front of me. There were grumbles and cries of “Wait thy turn,” but I ignored them, pushing farther into the crowd. I even thought of dropping to my hands and knees and crawling between legs, but didn’t try it for fear of being trampled. At last I wound up with my nose nearly pressed against the libel pasted to the church wall.

  I had to push myself back a little to gain space in which to read. When I did, I saw that there was nothing unfamiliar about what the libel said. It was not, thank every saint, about Catholics. It only declared what those behind me in the crowd were saying, what I had heard a mob of apprentices shout at a Dutch stranger in the streets—that foreigners were vultures, devouring honest English workers like a glutton eats his dinner. Only the libel said it in rhyme. And the last few lines made me realize why Mistress Pieters had thrown me out of her shop, why she had refused to touch Master Marlowe’s money.