The Merry Devils nb-2

by Edward Marston

  'They tell me Jack Harsnett's gone, sir.'

  'I dismissed him for insolence.'

  'So his cottage is empty?'

  'Until I find a new forester.'

  'Let me live there, sir.'

  'You're not fit for the work.'

  'I've always liked that cottage, sir,' said the man, sawing the air with his hands and trying an ingratiating grin. 'I'd be warm in winter there. It's a quiet place and I'd be out of the way.'

  'No.'

  'I ask it as a favour, sir.'

  'No!'

  The reply was unequivocal but it did not dismay him. The smirk came back to haunt and nudge Jordan who fought against the distant pull of obligation. The man revolted him and reminded him.

  'You weren't always master here, sir.'

  'I am now,' said Jordan.

  'Thanks to a friend, sir.'

  'You were well-paid and told to leave the country.'

  'The money ran out, sir.'

  His single eye fixed itself on Jordan and there was nothing humble in the stare now. It contained a demand and hinted at a warning. Jordan was made to feel distinctly uncomfortable. He thrust his hand into his pocket and brought out a few silver coins, hurling them to the ground in front of the man. The latter fell on them with a cry of pleasure and secreted them at once.

  'Now get off my land for ever,' ordered Jordan.

  'But that cottage is--'

  'I don't want you within thirty miles of Parkbrook ever again. If you're caught trespassing here, I'll have you hanged! If I hear that you're spreading stories about me, I'll have your foul tongue cut out!'

  Francis Jordan raised his crop and lashed the man hard across the cheek to reinforce his message. He did not stop to see the blood begin to flow or to hear the curses that came.

  *

  The rehearsal was a shambles. Deprived of their book holder, Westfield's Men were in disarray before Vincentio's Revenge. Scene changes were bungled, entrances missed, two dead bodies left accidentally on stage and special effects completely mismanaged. Prompting was continuous. Lawrence Firethorn stamped a measure of respectability on the performance when he was on stage but chaos ruled when he was off it. The whole thing ended in farce when the standard that was borne on in the final scene slipped out of the hand of Caleb Smythe and fell across the corpse of Vincentio himself who was heard to growl in protest. As the body was carried out in dignified procession, it was the turn of the musicians to add their contribution by playing out of tune.

  Lawrence Firethorn blazed. He called the whole company together and flogged them unmercifully with his verbal cat o' nine tails. By the time they trooped disconsolately away, he had destroyed what little morale had been left.

  Edmund Hoode and Barnaby Gill adjourned to the tap room with him.

  'It was a disgraceful performance!' said Firethorn.

  'You have been better,' noted Gill, scoring the first point.

  'Everybody was atrocious!'

  'The play needs Nick Bracewell,' said Hoode.

  'We do not have Nick Bracewell, sir.'

  'I am bound to say that I did not miss him,' observed Gill.

  Firethorn bristled. 'What you missed was your entrance in Act Four, sir, because the book holder was not there to wake you up.'

  'I never sleep in the tiring-house, Lawrence!'

  'Only on stage.'

  'I regard that as gross slur!'

  'You take my meaning perfectly.'

  'This will not be forgotten, sir.'

  'Try to remember your lines as well, Barnaby.'

  Hoode let them fight away and consulted his own worries. Concern for his friend etched deep lines in his forehead. It hurt him to think that he might be indirectly responsible for any misadventure into which Nicholas stumbled after leaving the playwright's lodging. If anything serious had happened, Hoode would not be able to forgive himself. Meanwhile, there was another fear. Grace Napier would be in the audience that afternoon. He trembled at the thought of her seeing a calamitous performance by the company because it was bound to affect her view of him. It was some years since he had had anything more than abuse thrown at him from the pit. Vincentio's Revenge could change that. Hoode did not relish the idea of being pelted by rotten food while his beloved looked on from the balcony.

  'Here's George Dart!' said Firethorn.

  'Alone!' observed Hoode.

  "That does not trouble me,' added Gill.

  Dart came to a halt in front of them and gabbled his story. He had found nothing. When he approached the watch, he was told that the operation of the law was none of his business and sent away with a flea in his ear. The one piece of information he did glean was that a man was killed in a brawl on the north embankment around midnight.

  His three listeners immediately elected their book holder as the corpse. Dart was interrogated again then dismissed. Firethorn slumped back in his chair and brooded.

  'I see Willoughby's hand in this!'

  'You see Willoughby's hand in everything but in your wife's placket, sir,' said Gill waspishly.

  'We must look into this at once,' decided Hoode.

  'After the performance,' said Firethorn.

  'Instead of it, Lawrence.'

  'Ha! Sacrilege!'

  They returned to the tiring-house to find it a morgue. Everyone had now heard George Dart's tale about the murder on the embankment and they were convinced that Nicholas Bracewell was the victim. Nor was it an isolated incident. In their febrile minds, they saw it as the latest in a sequence that began with the appearance of a real devil in the middle of their performance. Devil, maypole, Roper Blundell--and now this. The cumulative effect of it all was overwhelming. They mourned in silence and wondered where the next blow would fall. Not even a stirring speech from Firethorn could reach them. Westfield's Men had one foot in the grave.

  The irony was that Vincentio's Revenge had attracted a sizeable audience. They came to see blood flow at the Queen's Head and that put them into good humour. Grace Napier and Isobel Drewry were there to decorate the gallery and act as cynosures for wandering eyes. They knew the play by repute and longed to while away a couple of hours in a more tragic vein. Grace was a little uneasy but Isobel was brimming with self-confidence, discarding her mask and coming to the theatre for the first time as an independent young woman with a mind of her own. As the glances shot across at her, she returned them with discrimination.

  Seats filled, noise grew, tension increased. The genial spectators had no notion of the accelerating misery backstage. They did not realise that they might be called upon to witness the low point of the company's achievement. Blood and thunder were their priorities. With a bare five minutes to go before the start, the latecomers wedged themselves into their seats and insinuated their bodies into the pit.

  Panic gave way to total immobility in the tiring-house. They were turned to stone. Firethorn chipped manfully away at it with the chisel of his tongue but he could not shape it into anything resembling a theatrical company. He tried abuse, inspiration, reason, humour, bare-faced lying and even supplication but all failed. They had given up and approached the coming performance with the hopeless resignation of condemned men about to lay their heads on the block of their own reputation.

  With execution two minutes away, they were saved.

  Nicholas Bracewell entered with Margery Firethorn.

  The whole place came back to life at once. Everyone crowded around the newcomers with excited relief. Firethorn pushed his way through to embrace the book holder.

  'A miracle!' he said.

  Do you have no welcome for me, Lawrence?' chided his wife. 'You have me to thank for his release.'

  'Then I take you to my bosom with joy,' said her husband, pulling her close for a kiss of gratitude. 'What is this talk of release?'

  'From prison.'

  'Mon Dieu!'

  'I was locked in the Counter,' said Nicholas, 'but there is no time for explanation now, sir. The spectators have paid their money and the
y want their play.'

  He took charge at once and the effect was incredible. With their book holder back at the helm, it might yet be possible to salvage the play. The only disturbing factor was the presence of Margery.

  'You cannot stay here, my love,' said Firethorn.

  'Why not, Lawrence?'

  'Because it is not seemly.'

  'Do you think I have not seen men undressed before? It will not fright me, I warrant you.' She pointed at the half-naked John Tallis who was being helped into a skirt. 'I will look on the pizzle of the Duchess of Venice and not be moved.'

  'I share your disappointment!' said Gill wickedly.

  'Stand by!' called Nicholas.

  They were actually straining to get on stage now.

  *

  The axe bit hungrily into the wood before it was thrown aside. Jack Harsnett took the piece of ash and used his knife to hack it into shape. He then reached for the other piece of wood and bound the two together with a stout twine that would withstand bad weather. Having tested the result by banging it on the ground, he got his knife out again and gouged a name on the timber. It took him a long time but he kept at it with surly patience, sustained by the memory of an occasion when he had carved the same name alongside his own.

  His work done, he walked over to the pile of stones that marked the grave and looked down with a wave of grief washing over him. Then he lifted the cross high and brought its sharpened end down hard into the hole that lie had dug for it, kicking the earth into place around it and stiffening its hold with some small boulders. His spade patted everything firmly down.

  Burial in an anonymous field was the best that he could manage for his wife and only his crude handiwork indicated the place. After one last glance at the grave, he walked quickly back to the cart. There was no point in driving any further now.

  Harsnett headed back towards Parkbrook.

  *

  Lawrence Firethorn displayed his flowering genius yet again. His portrayal of Vincentio sent shivers down the spines of all who saw it. He was exactly the kind of villain that they liked--dark, handsome, ruthless, confiding, duplicitous and steeped in a black humour that could raise a macabre laugh during a murder. He stalked the stage like a prowling tiger, he sank his speeches like a spear into the topmost gallery and he used a range of gestures so expressive and so finely judged that he would have been understood had he been dumb.

  Seeing him as an unscrupulous Italian nobleman, it was hard to believe that he was only the son of a village blacksmith. His voice, his face, his bearing and his movement were those of a true aristocrat but his origins were not entirely expunged. With exquisite refinement, he laid each part that he played on the anvil of his talent and struck a magnificent shower of sparks from it with the hammer of the actor. The theatre was his forge. His art was the wondrous clang of metal.

  Absorbed in his role on stage, he could shed it in an instant when he entered the tiring-house. When he got his first real break from the action, he sidled across to Nicholas for elucidation.

  'Well?'

  'I was falsely imprisoned for assault and battery.'

  'How?'

  'Two men attacked me. A third brought constables and swore that I was the malefactor. My word did not hold against theirs.'

  'Rakehells! Who were they?'

  'I mean to find out.'

  'But how did you obtain release?'

  'I bribed an officer to take a message to Mistress Firethorn.'

  'Why to my wife and not to me?' said the other peevishly.

  'You had enough to do here, sir,' said Nicholas tactfully. 'Besides, I knew that your good lady would move with purpose.'

  'Oh yes!' groaned Firethorn. 'Margery does that, sir!'

  'Did I hear my name, Lawrence?' she asked, coming over.

  'I was singing your praises, sweeting.'

  'And so you should, sir,' she said bluntly. 'The message reached me in Shoreditch well after noon. That left me little time and much to do within it. My first thought was to repair to the Counter in Wood Street and demand that Nicholas be handed over to me, but I reasoned that not even my writ would run there.'

  Firethorn made a mental note of a possible future refuge.

  'The message urged me to contact your patron,' she continued, 'so I flew hither and was told he was too busy to see me. That was no obstacle to me, sir. My business was imperative and so I forced my way into Lord Westfield's presence. When he recognised who I was, he praised my appearance and asked why I did not visit the theatre more often.'

  'Keep to the point, woman!' said her husband.

  Nicholas interrupted to wave four soldiers on to the stage and then to cue in a canon that had to be rolled out from the tiring-house.

  Margery returned to her tale with undiminished zest.

  'I had caught him just in time for Lord Westfield was about to depart for the country. Hearing of our problem and rightly judging its serious effect on the company, he wrote a letter in his own hand there and then. With a man of his for company, I was driven to the Counter in his coach and that could not but impress the prison sergeant. When he read the letter, he did not hesitate to obey its command. Nicholas was delivered within a matter of minutes. We hastened here and you know the rest.' She broke off to watch some actors stripping off their costumes. 'I had not thought that Master Smythe had such comical haunches.'

  She drifted off to view the spectacle from a better angle.

  'We have been fortunate, Nick,' said Firethorn.

  'I know it well.'

  'But why were you imprisoned in the first place?'

  'To keep me from holding the book here, master.'

  'A vile conspiracy!'

  'Which landed me in a vile lodging.'

  'It has the stink of Banbury's Men about it.'

  'No, master, I'm convinced of that.'

  'But someone wants to damage the company.'

  'Not the company,' said Nicholas. 'Lord Westfield himself.'

  Before Firethorn could react to the news, the book holder cued him and the actor tore on to the stage to challenge one of his intended victims to a duel. After he had dispatched the man with the poisoned tip of his sword, he shared his thoughts with the audience before he withdrew again. Nicholas sent on actors for the next scene and resumed his conversation.

  'I see it plain now, master.'

  'Our patron is the target?'

  'Without question.'

  'But it was we who suffered the attacks, Nick.'

  'Only when Lord Westfield was present,' said the other. 'He was here when we first performed The Merry Devils. He was at The Curtain for Cupid's Folly and he joined us at The Rose. On each occasion, someone tried to discredit us in order to hurt him.'

  'I begin to see your point, sir.'

  'There was no trouble during The Knights of Malta or Love and Fortune. Our patron was not here in person to be embarrassed. That is why his enemies stayed their hand.'

  'But he is not here today either.'

  'It does not matter,' argued Nicholas. 'The attack is not through the play itself. We'll have no devil or falling maypole or unexpected death. Lord Westfield's enemies had failed three times already and were angry at their failure. They sought a new approach.'

  'To disable the book holder.'

  'That would not stop the performance--which was the intention in the other three cases--but it might impair the quality and that would reflect badly on our patron.'

  Firethorn was impressed and punched him softly.

  'You did some thinking in that prison, sir.'

  'I'd choose more fragrant places for my contemplation.'

  'You'll be in one tonight unless I'm mistaken,' said the other with a roguish grin. 'Mistress Hendrik came looking for you. When she sees that bruise on your face, I'm sure she'll make you lie down so that she can tend it properly.' He cocked an ear to listen to the action on stage. 'Why did such a beautiful Englishwoman marry such a boring Dutchman?'

  'That has never come up in
conversation.'

  Firethorn stifled his mirth so that it would not distract.

  'The Counter was a grim experience,' said Nicholas, 'but it gave me one valuable piece of information.'

  Firethorn made another entry to stab a rival in the back and deliver a soliloquy of thirty lines while straddling the corpse. He sauntered off to applause then shook the Venetian court away to turn once more to his book holder.