Much Ado About Murder

by Simon Hawke

  “ ‘Tis like he had never even left us,” Fleming said proudly, watching from the wings with Smythe as Ben worked through a scene with Kemp and Bryan. Tuck had learned that it had been John Fleming who had housed young Dickens when he had apprenticed with the company as a juvenile and so, strictly speaking, Ben had been Fleming’s apprentice, even though all the players generally regarded the juveniles as their apprentices in common. Fleming was married, but he and his wife were childless and no longer young. They had both taken to Dickens as if he were their own. Now, he looked for all the world like a proud and beaming father as he watched his grown “son” rehearsing on the stage.

  “He is very good and a quick study,” Smythe observed. “Was he this good as a juvenile?”

  “Aye, he always had the gift, I thought,” Fleming replied, nodding his silver-maned head emphatically. “Methinks that he could be another Ned Alleyn if he set his mind to it.”

  “Indeed?” said Smythe, with admiration. “That is high praise, coming from another player.”

  Fleming nodded. “I saw it in him even when he was just a boy. He has the ability to become the role he plays, to believe it so that it no longer seems like acting, but more like being. In that respect, however, he is not at all the same as Alleyn. Ned was always Ned, at heart. He never lost sight of being Ned, because he was very fond of Ned, you see. Whenever Ned Alleyn stepped out upon the stage, ‘twas Ned Alleyn that the audience was seeing, Ned Alleyn playing a part, and often playing it brilliantly, mind you, but nevertheless, one could never quite lose sight of that.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Smythe, not quite following him.

  “I mean that when you see Ned Alleyn playing a part, you always remain aware that you are watching Ned Alleyn playing a part. You never quite forget that ‘tis Ned Alleyn, the great actor, you are seeing.” He purposely broke up the word ‘actor’ into two syllables, accentuating each one pointedly. “The very nature of his performance demands that you remember it.” To illustrate, Fleming took a dramatic pose, standing bolt upright with his right hand upon his chest, his chin up aristocratically, his left arm held out before him as if he were Caesar speaking to his troops. And when he spoke, his voice performed a very credible imitation of Ned Alleyn’s ringing and bombastic stage cry. “ ‘Lo!” he intoned, “ ‘tis I, the great Ned Alleyn, playing this part! Behold how brilliantly I act! Revel in the very wonder of me!”

  Smythe laughed. “He would kill you if he saw that, you know.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt,” Fleming replied offhandedly, in his normal voice. “He would squash me like a beetle, the great oaf. But still, it changes nothing.” He shrugged. “That is how he acts.”

  “Perhaps, but if we are truly going to be honest with ourselves, John, is that not how all players act?” asked Smythe.

  “Aye, most of us do, I suppose,” Fleming agreed, nonchalantly. “If, as you say, Tuck, we are truly to be honest with ourselves, then perforce we must admit that once all the trappings of our craft are stripped away, we are all nothing more than great infants in want of much attention. We live or die at the whim of the groundlings; we fatten our pride on their applause. But not Ben. Ben is something else entirely.”

  “What makes him different?” Smythe asked curiously, as he watched him rehearse out on the stage.

  “For Ben, ‘tis not the applause that truly matters. For him, the play’s the thing. And not really the play so much as the playing. In that, I perceive he has not changed.”

  Smythe frowned. “ ‘Twould seem to me that playing matters neither more nor less to him than to any of the others. Or do my eyes see things less keenly than do yours?”

  Fleming smiled. “The flaw lies not so much in your observation as in your knowledge, Tuck. I have known Ben since he was but a boy, whilst you have only met him recently. And the truth is that there is rather more to Ben than the eye can plainly see. Ben did not much like his life, and so he went off to make himself another. And now he has come back, because the life he went in search of doubtless proved a disappointment, and so once again he seeks to make himself another.”

  Fondness seemed to mingle with a sort of wistful regret in John Fleming’s exression as he watched Ben Dickens on the stage. He sighed and continued while Smythe listened with great interest.

  “There is a sort of magic to our Ben,” Fleming said. “For all that he is a grown man now, there is still the child within him, a fey child, a changling who possesses the ability to believe in things the way only a child can believe. I first saw it within him when he came to us as an apprentice player and I see it still. When you and I go out upon that stage, Tuck, we take the parts we are to play and play them as best as we are able, do we not?”

  “Well, I fear my best is not to be compared with yours on equal footing,” Smythe said, somewhat sheepishly.

  “Nevertheless,” the older man replied, gently patting him on the shoulder, “you put forth your best effort each and every time, for which you are to be commended, and you strive always to improve. But that is not the point. Tis this: when the rest of us step out upon the stage, we are but playing parts, pretending to be something we are not. Yet when Ben steps out upon the stage, what he does is rather different. He becomes something he is not. That is his gift, you see, his special magic, and perhaps, his curse, as well. He has the ability to so completely throw himself into a role that he becomes that role during the time he plays it… for howsoever long that time may be. I first saw him start to do it on the stage and I did marvel at it. I thought that he had the potential to be better than merely good; I thought he could be great. And I still think so. But when I later saw him do the same thing in his life, offstage, then I became truly concerned for him. It frightened me.”

  “In what way were you frightened?” Smythe asked.

  “Do you recall those two thoroughly unpleasant ruffians who came into the Toad and Badger that day when Ben returned?”

  “Aye,” Smythe said, with a grimace. “Jack Darnley and Bruce McEnery were their names.”

  “They are the very ones,” said Fleming, nodding emphatically. “After Ben had been with us for a few years, he met those two somehow. I do not know where precisely, perhaps here at the theatre, perhaps in town somewhere… in truth, it matters not. What matters is that he fell in with them and began to spend his free time roaming the streets with that unruly lot of theirs -”

  “The Steady Boys,” said Smythe.

  “Aye, steady on the road to ruin, if you ask me. I watched him begin to change before my own two eyes, become another Ben… a Ben that I no longer knew, in many ways. And yet, in other respects, he still seemed much the same. When he was with us, he was the Ben that we had always known and loved. But then there were times when it seemed as if he were a changling, as if the faeries came whilst he had slept and stolen him away, leaving in his place some evil creature that merely had his aspect. It puzzled me at first, until at last I understood what was afoot. It always used to happen when he was returning from keeping company with those troublesome apprentices. There was something about those roaring boys that very much appealed to Ben, you see.”

  “I cannot imagine what it may have been,” said Smythe.

  “Nor could I,” said Fleming, with a grimace of distaste. “But methinks perhaps that what he saw in them in the beginning was something of what he wished to be himself, a sort of adventurer, a man of action and determination, a young gallant… not that they were any of those things, in truth, but I suppose that they believed they were, and spoke as if they were, and so Ben believed it, also. I attempted to dissuade him from their company, to convince him that they were a bad influence upon him and would bring him naught but trouble, yet ‘twas all to no avail, of course. When did youth ever credit the wisdom of their elders?”

  “I do not recall that I ever did, myself,” said Smythe. “Well, save for my Uncle Thomas, to whom I always listened with respect. But for the most part, when I was younger, I did not find that my elders seem
ed to possess very much wisdom.”

  “Amusing, is it not, how the older one becomes, the wiser one’s elders seem to grow?” said Fleming, with a smile. “Well, as you might imagine, the more I prevailed upon him to abandon this bad company, the more he sought it out. In the end, he drifted away from us. He found a position as apprentice to an armorer, which was just the sort of manly thing for a young gallant to be, I suppose, but then, he soon drifted away from that, as well. The rest you know. He saw how his friends paled in comparison to the genuine adventurers he met at his new master’s shop and ‘twas not long before he left them behind, as well, to make himself yet another life.”

  “I do not believe they liked that very much,” said Smythe.

  “Aye, that sort never would,” agreed Fleming. “When one leaves that sort of company, ‘tis often perceived as weakening the others, for they find their strength in numbers. But much more than their strength, methinks, they find their very identity in numbers. And so when someone leaves them, they feel threatened and betrayed.”

  “I realize that they do, but I am not sure that I understand why they should,” said Smythe.

  “Consider who they are and how they live,” said Fleming. “They are young and working class, though not yet old enough or, in most cases, skilled enough to work in their own right as journeymen or master craftsmen. Yet at the same time, they are old enough to consider themselves full grown, though again, in most cases, they have not yet acquired the wisdom of adulthood. And so they find themselves in service as apprentices, at the bidding of their masters and unable to achieve their independence until such time as their masters deem them worthy. They have no ability to determine the course of their own lives, no true feeling of worth, and no power of their own. In their masters’ shops, they labor hard and long and must do as they are told. But when they go out on their own and band together with others like themselves, why then they find within that company a strength of purpose and a sense of belonging to something that gives them worth and a feeling of respect. One becomes more than merely a lowly young apprentice; one becomes a Steady Boy, or a Bishopsgate Brawler, or a Fleet Street Clubman, or whatever other colorful appellation these gangs of apprentices choose for themselves. And this company thus becomes a band of brothers, in one sense a family, in another sense an army… not unlike your highland clans. And if you are a member of this clan, then you are someone worthy of respect, someone to be feared… for when one is young, fear and respect seem much like the same thing. If you should become the leader of such a band, why then you have importance, power, and position, all of which is yours by virtue of the men you lead. The more men, the more power; the more power, the more prestige.”

  “So that if one of the men you lead chooses to leave your command, then ‘tis very like a mutiny,” said Smythe.

  “Exactly so,” replied Fleming, nodding. “I could not have said it better.”

  “Now I understand what transpired earlier today,” said Smythe.

  Fleming looked at him. “What happened?” he asked, and briefly Smythe described their encounter with the Steady Boys while he and Dickens were on their way to the theatre.

  “I just knew those two would be trouble,” Fleming said, when he had finished. “And now, regretably, you have become mixed up in it. You would do well to avoid them, if you can.”

  “Did you expect me to run off and leave Ben to face them by himself?” asked Smythe.

  “Of course not,” Fleming replied hastily. “I know you better than that, Tuck. But just the same, I wish you had not become involved. Ben knows what they are like, and he knows what to expect of them. And not meaning to slight your abilities in any way, Ben is also a trained soldier who has been to war. He knows well how to take care of himself.”

  “Well, ‘tis not an army we are talking about, after all, John,” said Smythe, “just a few young malcontents and troublemakers.”

  “Just the same, they can be dangerous,” insisted Fleming. “If you do not wish to give me credence, then go ask your blacksmith friend, Liam Bailey, whose former apprentice was killed in one of their street brawls. Do not underestimate them merely because they are young, Tuck. Aside from which, those two, Darnley and McEnery, are of an age with you, or very nearly so. Some of the others might be younger, but put enough of them together and they can be trouble enough, believe me. They might forgive Ben, in consideration of the past, but they have no reason to grant you any such consideration.”

  Smythe nodded. “I shall keep that in mind, John. But ‘tis not in my nature to run away from trouble.”

  “Just see that you do not run toward it,” Fleming said, “ ‘Allo, what have we here?” he added, looking out past the stage into the yard. “ ‘Twould seem that Master James has brought us visitors.”

  The rehearsal stopped as the players came down off the stage into the yard to greet James Burbage, Richard’s father and the owner of the Burbage Theatre, who had arrived with a party among whom were Henry Darcie, one of the investors, his daughter, Elizabeth, Ben’s friend, Corwin, and another gende-man, dark and foreign looking, richly dressed in silks, who came in company with a beautiful young woman whose pale skin was a striking contrast to her jet black hair. Even before they were introduced, Smythe had already guessed that this was Master Leonardo, the wealthy Genoan merchant trader, and his lovely daughter, Hera, who had so captivated Corwin.

  There was yet another gentleman who came along with them, a man Smythe did not know. He was large, heavy, and robust-looking, with a florid face and a thick, bushy gray beard. Shoulder-length gray hair came down from beneath a soft, dove-gray velvet cap, which matched the three-quarter length cloak and short, soft gray leather boots that set off his burgundy hose and quilted black doublet shot through with silver thread. They must have come in carriages, thought Smythe, for otherwise those new, expensive clothes would have been filthy from the mud outside.

  The red-faced gentleman turned out to be Master William Peters, the goldsmith to whom Corwin had been apprenticed and in whose shop he now worked as a journeyman, well on his way to establishing a successful reputation as a craftsman in his own right. James Burbage made the introductions, pointing out the individual players to his guests. Henry Darcie and Elizabeth, of course, already knew them all, but this was apparently the first time that Master Leonardo and his daughter had ever seen the Burbage Theatre. Master Peters had attended several of their productions in the past, but he was apparently not a regular. He came, primarily, to act as an intermediary for Master Leonardo with James Burbage and Henry Darcie. And doubtless he also came for Corwin’s sake, for it was clear from the way his eyes never left Hera for an instant that the young journeyman was very much in love.

  “Well met, good players, well met all!” said Master Peters in a jovial tone, after Burbage had completed the introductions. “I beg you, do not allow our merry company to interfere with your busy preparations. We have merely come to visit and observe. My friend, Master Leonardo, late of Genoa and newly arrived upon these shores, is in the mind of considering new ventures here in London and, in that regard, was curious to learn something about the business of a company of players. Thus, upon learning of his interest, I could think of nothing better than to introduce him to my old friend, Henry Darcie, whom I knew to be an investor in your theatre. Therefore, ‘tis my great pleasure to introduce Master Leonardo, and his fair young daughter, Hera, and the rest here, I believe you all already know.”

  “Indeed, we do, good Master Peters,” the younger Burbage said, speaking for them all, “and you are all most welcome to the Theatre. Sad to say, we cannot regale you with a play, for as you doubtless know, by order of the council, the playhouses of the city are all closed ‘til further notice and we are thus enjoined from performing for you.”

  “Indeed,” said Master Leonardo, speaking excellent English, albeit with a pronounced Italian accent, “I was aware of the decree, though ‘tis a pity, for I had hoped to learn something of your work and, at the same time,
perhaps provide some amusement for my daughter, who has never seen an English company perform.”

  “Well, good Master Leonardo,” Shakespeare said, “we cannot disobey the council’s edicts, as you know. But while the council did close down the playhouses to prohibit our performing, fearing that the plague could breed among the crowds, they did not prohibit our explaining to a prospective investor in our theatre how a play is staged. And so, as we were in rehearsal for one of our productions when you arrived, you might find it both diverting and enlightening if we were to explain to you how such a production is prepared for a performance.”

  “Methinks a Papist could not have split a hair more finely,” Kemp said wryly, and then grunted as Speed gave him an elbow in the ribs.

  “The man’s a Roman, you bloody great buffoon,” he said, under his breath.

  “Please, come this way,” said Smythe, beckoning to them. “We shall set up some benches on the stage for you so that you may see how our company prepares for the performance of a play.”

  The guests climbed up upon the stage and took their seats at the side while the company resumed rehearsing. James Burbage explained the process to them as the Queen’s Men went through the play, stopping at intervals to correct or change a line, or else to adjust their movements on the stage and fine tune their entrances and exits.

  While Master Peters played the part of genial host, asking questions or else calling out encouragement to the players, Master Leonardo watched with interest, and with a critical, discerning eye it seemed, as James Burbage explained what they were doing and Henry Darcie offered the occasional supplementary remark. Watching from the wings, Smythe could see that Hera was thoroughly enjoying it all, watching with bright eyes and laughing at their antics, for despite the fact that it was only a rehearsal, the players, being players, could not resist joking around and clowning for their audience. Elizabeth, who might have greeted Smythe more warmly were it not for the presence of her father, sat next to Hera and they spoke often to each other and laughed together like good friends. The two of them made a very comely sight. Smythe noticed that just as Hera scarcely took her eyes off what was happening before her on the stage, so Corwin scarcely took his eyes off her. But then he also noticed that just as Corwin scarcely took his eyes off Hera, so Elizabeth scarcely took her eyes off Ben.