by M. J. Trow
‘How are you going to do this?’ Sledd asked Marlowe. ‘Surely, we’re not going to ask them all one by one? It will take days.’
‘No, no, Tom; you can’t have forgotten already. If you offer any role to one person, you will be beaten down by the rush of all the others who know they can do it better. Watch.’
He grabbed a passing walking gentleman by the sleeve and pulled him closer, whispering in his ear. Before he had finished, there were five more clustering round, so he spoke a little louder for the benefit of all. His voice would still not have carried more than two feet if it fell on normal ears, but these were not normal ears; these were the ears of men who would kill their grandmothers for a speaking part.
‘Gentlemen,’ he murmured, ‘I am here with an opportunity …’
The crowd grew to ten.
‘… for anyone interested in taking part in …’
Twenty.
‘… a Progress of the Queen. Not a masque, but to be part of her train.’
And there it was – Burbage and Alleyn were elbowing their way to the front and the task was complete.
Tom Sledd swept off his hat and made an elaborate bow to Marlowe, who accepted it with a raised eyebrow and an ironic smile.
‘If you would like to make an orderly line – yes, that’s right, out into the pit if you have to. Watch where you step.’ He raised his voice a notch. ‘This is for everyone. Pickers up as well; we need as many people as we can muster.’
When the line was complete, with Burbage and Alleyn still nudging each other to try and keep an inch ahead in the pecking order, Marlowe hopped up onto a table and clapped his hands. Now his voice was at full volume and he looked down to the human snake at his feet and smiled. ‘Thank you everyone. Let’s have some quiet now, please.’ He waited until the two gossiping seamstresses almost at the back realized they were the only two talking and shut up. ‘Thank you. Now, listen, because I won’t be repeating this bit, and if you get it wrong, you won’t be taking part and you won’t be getting your fee.’
A murmur broke out at the mention of money; almost all of them would have done it for nothing.
‘The job at hand is for people to take part in the Queen’s entry into Titchfield, for her to stay with the Earl of Southampton as part of her Progress. Costumes will be provided …’
The seamstresses at the back raised their eyebrows at each other and shrugged. He was hopeful, their gestures seemed to say.
‘… as will transport. When at Titchfield, you will have accommodation within the grounds with all found. And of course, a guinea for your trouble.’
Alleyn rolled his eyes and sneered. A guinea? He didn’t get out of bed for that kind of pittance. Although – the Queen did rather change the tilting ground; he might well make an exception in this case. He took a deep breath and glanced sideways at Burbage. Damn! It looked as if he would be happy to settle too.
‘What about Henslowe, though?’ someone called from the back. ‘He won’t let us all bugger off for days on end. We don’t want to be out of a place when we get back.’
‘Master Henslowe has agreed to it,’ Marlowe reassured the man, hoping that was true. ‘He, of course, as a loyal Englishman and true, will do anything to help the Queen and guarantee her safety.’
‘You want me to do what?’ Henslowe roared at Faunt. The man had gone too far.
‘I believe the phrase is “go dark”,’ Faunt said. His contempt for theatrical jargon knew no bounds.
‘For how long?’ Henslowe asked the question, as though the length of time had any bearing.
‘Oh, I don’t know precisely. Three days? Four? It all depends.’
‘Four days? Are you mad? What do you think happens to a theatre if it has no plays for four days?’
Faunt shrugged, and it was not a rhetorical shrug either. He quite honestly had no idea.
‘The audience forgets it, that’s what. The plague. The Puritan complaints. It doesn’t take much. They find somewhere else to go. They …’ he stopped in mid-sentence, horror etched on his face. ‘They might even go to the Curtain!’ He flung up his arms. ‘I don’t know why I’m wasting my breath. It isn’t going to be happening, Master Faunt. I am an Englishman, bred in the bone, but I will not allow you to ruin my business. I just won’t.’
Faunt sank his chin on his chest. Marlowe had said this might be how the interview would go. He played his trump card. ‘I am very disappointed, Master Henslowe,’ he said. ‘We had rather hoped you might take the part of … but, no, as you say, let’s not waste our breath.’
Henslowe was, as all people who work within the theatre secretly are, an actor manqué. No one had ever even mentioned him and a part in the same breath before and he couldn’t help himself. ‘Part of …?’ he let the sentence hang.
‘No, please, we were unreasonable to ask it of you,’ Faunt said, still hanging his head. ‘I’m sure Lord Strange will be able to help us out.’ He doffed his hat. ‘Good morning to you, Master Henslowe. I’ll see myself out.’
Henslowe scurried round from behind his desk. ‘Part of?’ he said, blocking the other man’s exit. ‘Part of … whom?’
Faunt raised his head and his smile was that of a stoat that knew he had mesmerized a nice fat rabbit. ‘Sir Christopher Hatton,’ he said, dismissively. ‘But I see now that …’
Henslowe preened. He grew several inches and pointed what he hoped might be taken for a lissom toe. ‘Sir Christopher Hatton? Me? But surely …’
‘You seemed the obvious choice,’ Faunt said. ‘A certain feline grace, gravitas, intelligence. The foremost jouster and dancer in England. And of course, we mustn’t forget, a favourite of the Queen. You would ride with her on her litter, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’
‘But won’t he mind?’ Henslowe said, common sense beginning to surface. ‘Sir Christopher, I mean.’
‘I hardly think so!’ Faunt was appalled. ‘This is for the safety of the Queen’s life, don’t forget.’ He closed to Henslowe and lowered his voice. ‘Someone in the Queen’s entourage wishes her ill. The only way we can ensure her safety is to replace every man jack of them.’
Henslowe nodded slowly and assumed a man-of-the-world expression. ‘I see,’ he said, though he wasn’t really sure that he did. ‘So … she doesn’t mind? The Queen, I mean.’
‘She will be given the details later,’ Faunt hedged, ‘but she would do anything to go ahead with this Progress and this is the only way. To see the people who love her and to assure them of her love for them.’
‘I see …’ Henslowe seemed to be stuck on the one safe phrase he could come up with. ‘But … the theatre. Mistress Henslowe is already far from happy about the falling revenues …’
Faunt caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder with a glove. ‘Mistress Henslowe can take part too, of course she can. We need as many beautiful women as we can muster. The Queen’s ladies; gorgeous dresses, that sort of thing. Send a messenger, get her down here.’ Faunt stepped back and smiled. He could read Henslowe’s mind; could he squeeze in his little piece from near the Bear Garden, or would that be taking a risk too far? ‘If you have any other … friends, they would be more than welcome.’ The stoat’s eyes narrowed and the rabbit walked right in.
‘I’ll send a clerk,’ Henslowe said, and the deed was done.
‘And everyone gets a guinea?’
‘Everyone. And if you have wives, daughters, sons at home that can join you, they all get a guinea as well.’
The line murmured. The walking gentleman with six daughters and four sons almost fainted with sheer delight. The seamstresses looked at each other, this time in frank alarm.
‘Master Marlowe,’ the bolder of them said. ‘Do they all get costumes? Only, there’s only the two of us and—’
‘We’ll get help,’ Marlowe said. ‘Don’t worry about that, Prudence; you and Alys won’t have to make them all. Perhaps just a few alterations.’
The seamstresses didn’t hear much more; Christopher Marlowe k
new their names. And they were getting a golden guinea each. Could any day ever be better?
‘Is that a guinea a day?’ one of the walking gentlemen wanted to know.
Marlowe narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t push your luck, Frizer,’ he said. ‘A guinea for the whole Progress.’
The man shrugged. There was no harm in asking, after all.
‘What I would like you to do,’ Marlowe continued, ‘is to make two lines here, one in front of me and one in front of Tom. You could stand behind Master Alleyn and Master Burbage, couldn’t you, to start things off?’
Alleyn and Burbage bridled but at least stopped nudging each other. And they were, after all, at the respective heads of the two columns.
‘You will be given an idea of what kind of person you will be playing, but all you strong young lads,’ he waved his arm generally over the crowd who were already beginning to muster into the two lines, ‘will be given pikes, halberds, armour to make you into the Queen’s bodyguard. You will also be given some training … is Will Shaxsper here?’ He scanned the crowd; that giant shiny forehead was usually easy to spot.
‘He’s not here today,’ someone volunteered. ‘He’s …’ the speaker descended into giggles.
‘Not another strumpet, surely?’ Alleyn said languidly. If a pot had ever called a kettle black, then this was that occasion.
‘He says he’s in love,’ a voice from the crowd shouted out, and the laughter nearly raised the roof. Marlowe hoped the man did turn up before everything was arranged; not only did he want him to drill the Guard, he must meet the Earl of Northumberland – two buttocks of one bum, if he was any judge.
‘If someone could find him, I would be grateful,’ Marlowe said. ‘He can drill the troop. But that’s enough from me,’ he said, jumping down off the table. ‘Don’t push and shove, we’ll get to you all eventually.’ He sat behind the table and Tom Sledd took up his position next to him. ‘Now, who’s first? Ned; what about you? Any idea who you would like to play?’
Alleyn looked down his nose at Marlowe, who smiled back calmly. He had mentally allotted more time with Alleyn and Burbage than with all the rest put together. ‘Well, Kit, I would have thought it was obvious.’ He raised his chin and struck a pose. ‘Hatton, obviously.’
‘Hmmm … isn’t he a bit … old, for you, Ned? I had in mind someone a bit nearer your own age. You do have to keep up the deception for four days, you know. It would not be easy.’
‘Easy?’ hissed Alleyn. ‘Easy? Do you imply that I need my roles to be easy? I can play any age you wish and you know it.’
‘Even so,’ Marlowe said, dipping his quill into the inkpot and taking the opportunity to move it further from Alleyn’s flailing arms, ‘I rather thought that Drake was the man for you to play. Handsome. Dashing. Hero of the Armada.’
Alleyn nodded. All that went without saying.
‘Flamboyant. Highly intelligent and, of course, very much in the Queen’s favour at the moment. You would almost certainly be riding on her litter.’
‘Really?’ Alleyn’s eyes opened wide. ‘Well.’ He thumbed his chin, riffling the hairs of his trim little beard. ‘Drake, you say … all right, Kit. Drake it is. But …’ he leaned closer, ‘what’s my motivation?’
Marlowe’s smile was bleak. ‘I’m sure you will find that as you get into the part, Ned. Sign here.’ He proffered the quill. ‘Thank you. Next!’
Meanwhile, things were not going so smoothly between Burbage and Tom Sledd. Burbage had had no real preference until he heard Alleyn being given Drake.
‘Any idea who you would like to play?’ the stage manager asked.
‘Sir Francis Drake,’ Burbage said promptly.
‘Ah. I rather think that Ned will …’
‘Alleyn? Why? Drake is handsome, flamboyant, dashing, a hero of the Armada; all the things I am and he is not. I was born to play Drake.’
‘Yes, but,’ Sledd gestured to his right, ‘I believe Ned has just signed on Drake. Can I offer you the Earl of Essex? Queen’s favourite, you know. You’d be bound to be riding on her litter.’
‘Essex. Hmm. I could do Essex. Tell me, is he wearing that stupid beard at the moment?’
‘I believe he is,’ Tom said, making it up as he went along. ‘I’ll check. But if he is, we can sort you out with a fake.’ It was a well-known jest at the Rose that Burbage couldn’t grow a beard if his life depended on it.
‘Well … I would have been better as Drake, but Essex it is, then.’ Burbage scribbled his signature and went off, stroking his chin and trying to look aristocratic.
The rest of the line took no time at all to sign up, the lusty lads being sent off to wait the arrival of Shaxsper, the less lusty ones being set aside for wigs and prosthetic breasts. Wives, daughters and the occasional little piece from near the Bear Garden notwithstanding, women were a little thin on the ground, and Gloriana went nowhere without her retinue of Lovellies, for preference not so Lovelly that they made her look like the tired old woman she was inevitably becoming.
Eventually, with quills worn to stubs and throats aching from so much talking, Marlowe and Sledd leaned back in their chairs and stretched. ‘How many do you make it?’ Marlowe asked, totting up his column. ‘I have seventy-four, counting wives and others who will be joining us. And I haven’t included the musicians.’ That would not have surprised them at all; since when had anybody listened to the band? ‘But we need them to play the Queen in to Titchfield but also to generally announce our Progress along the road, once we’re all in character.’
Tom Sledd held up a finger. He was counting. ‘One hundred and …’ he muttered under his breath, ‘seven. So, that’s one hundred and eighty-one. Is that enough?’
‘No. We’re not far short, though.’
‘How many more do we need?’ Sledd was sure he could muster a few more.
‘About two thousand. But, Tom, we are the theatre folk. We can use smoke. We can use mirrors. We can easily look like a retinue of two thousand, if we put our minds to it.’
Sledd was unconvinced. ‘I know we can do miracles on the stage, Kit, but this is real life. You can’t manipulate real life.’
Marlowe turned to his friend and clapped both hands on his shoulders. ‘Do you really think that, Tom?’ he asked. ‘Just watch me.’
‘There aren’t enough, Nicholas,’ Marlowe said. ‘And we can’t manage any more, even if they were available. As it is, we’re going to have to commandeer every cart for miles around, just to get them within walking distance of Titchfield. And the Queen’s litter has to be fairly sturdy – at the last count, at least four other people are expecting to be riding with her and they’re just the ones I know about.’
‘That’s an easy one to solve,’ Faunt said. ‘We just make her litter fit for one and the others can carry her. Just as much honour, fewer problems all round.’
‘Can Henslowe carry it the distance?’ Marlowe said. ‘He isn’t as young as he was.’
‘We’ll let him try,’ Faunt said. ‘If he can’t, we can pull in some lad from the crowd; they like that, don’t they?’
‘They?’
‘The people. The populace. The subjects. You know – them. The reason that the Queen insists on these blasted Progresses in the first place.’
‘True, that might be quite a winner. I’ll mention that to Henslowe – he might like having a few lines.’
‘Lines? We can’t have every word written out, Kit. This isn’t a play, you know. This is … well, in actual fact, I don’t know what this is, except a quick way for an appointment with Richard Topcliffe if we fail.’
‘I’m not writing lines as such, just giving everyone an idea of who they are, how to behave. You can’t expect a picker up of thrown vegetables to know how to even walk like a gentleman, let alone eat like one, speak like one – they need help.’
‘I see. Speaking of which, how is the Guard shaping up?’
‘Shaxsper is in charge of them. He turned up late, so he hasn’t got a main part, but
he is really good at directing actors – if he sticks to that instead of scribbling and womanizing, he might get somewhere. He has them going through their paces as we speak, in the pit at the Rose, where no one can see.’
Faunt leaned back and looked at Marlowe. This was a mad-brained trick, but it might, it just might just work.
It had taken some doing. It had taken a lot of grovelling. It had taken the calling in of many favours everyone thought had been long forgotten. But in almost less time than it took to tell, the people of the Rose were assembled ready to mount their various carriages, carts and nags to begin their epic journey. They were not yet in full costume, though the basics were there; the boys who were wearing dresses and kirtles resented it most, but it would have been impossible to travel wearing ordinary clothes and with the costumes carried as baggage – finding transport had been difficult enough as it was. They compromised by not wearing their breasts – they could always find something to stuff down their fronts nearer the time. They sat on the folded tents in lieu of seats, everyone was handed a packet of food for the journey; the rest was stashed under the baggage, to be cooked on campfires when they halted on the road. To prevent them looking too much like a ragtag army on the move, their departures were staggered. Each carter was given his itinerary, using as many different ways as possible, and every set of carts left in waves an hour apart. This meant that the first to arrive at their first stop would put up the tents, but the last would have the job of striking camp in the morning. All would be fair and equal in Gloriana’s train.
Marlowe balanced on the wall of the Bear Pit, leaning on Leonard Lyttleburye’s shoulder for support. Master Sackerson might be toothless, but no one had tested his claws for quite a while and Marlowe had no intention of doing it now. Lyttleburye had gone hotfoot to the Rose as soon as he had delivered his message at Cowdray. He was not playing anyone specific – who in the Queen’s retinue was as huge as he? – but he knew he would cut a dash carrying the royal standard at the front of the procession, so he was happy. He leaned his weight on the wall to give the playwright stability and closed his eyes; for possibly the first time in his life, Leonard Lyttleburye was content.
