by Celia Rees
‘You are very silent, sir,’ Violetta said at last.
‘I’m thinking.’ Will looked up at her.
‘And what are you thinking?’
He sighed. ‘That what you suggest is beyond my power.’
He had thought to be angry with them for presuming too far, for trying to trap him into helping them. Now that anger was fast turning to pity. Violetta saw it in his deep brown eyes that took in so much and gave so little away. She fought hard to hide her disappointment from him. She would not plead and she would not beg. Pride was all she had left. She would give it up for no man. Everything else had been taken from her. If he would not help them, so be it. They would find another way. But whatever happened, they would fulfil their part of the bargain. It was a matter of honour.
‘Very well.’ Violetta tried to smile and smooth her features. ‘I think Feste has the part now, Master Shakespeare. It is time we went to the playhouse.’
She led the way down the stairs. Will followed. He recognised all she had tried to hide. Her mask of affected indifference was as thin and brittle as glass. He might have been wishing that he had never set eyes on her, but at that moment she won his heart.
Richard Burbage, actor and theatre owner, was standing in shirtsleeves shouting directions up at the stage.
‘No, not there! To the right! That’s left!’
Someone dropped something, which fell from the height of the theatre and landed in the pit, puffing up dust and scattering nutshells. Three storeys up, the hammering and sawing stopped momentarily as the carpenters looked over to see if the fallen mallet had hit anybody or done any damage. Then it started up again. In the theatre, there was always something that needed doing: thatch replacing, holes patching, benches repairing, loose planks hammering back into place. Everyone shouted over the noise, adding to the din. The only time it was really quiet was in performance.
‘I’ve found a new clown.’
Will brought Feste forward for inspection. Richard Burbage owned a lion’s share of the theatre and felt losses keenly as pennies falling from his own pocket. If audiences were disappointed, they went elsewhere. Competition was sharp, with two theatres within throwing distance, not to mention the bear garden.
‘Good, that’s good, Will.’ He wrinkled his high forehead and pushed a hand through his thinning sandy hair. ‘Because until two minutes past, I thought you’d have to do it.’ He looked at his playmaker and laughed. ‘You may be many things, but a clown isn’t one of them.’ He turned his bright brown eyes to Feste. ‘Is he any good? Will I have seen him in anything? His face looks familiar, but I don’t recall from where. Who have you worked for, fellow? What company? Does he talk?’
‘He hasn’t worked here.’ Will spoke for Feste. ‘He’s a stranger. I found him performing in the street over by St Mary Overie.’
‘That’s where I’ve seen him. Juggling with chairs and such?’ Feste nodded. Burbage turned from him to Will. ‘Are you out of your wits? We’ll have the Revels Office down on us in a trice. Now, I’ve got a performance to stage.’ He was already walking away.
‘He’s good!’ Will followed after him. ‘He can do it. I swear it!’
‘How can he?’ Burbage turned back with an exaggerated sigh. ‘He can’t have had time to learn it properly. Anyway, he’s a foreigner! I’m not even sure it’s legal. And who’s this?’ His eyes fell on Violetta. ‘What’s she doing here? A playhouse before performance is no place for a woman. Get them out of here!’
‘Wait, Richard. He’s good, I promise! What’s the harm?’
Feste left the two men arguing and pulled himself up on the stage. He was small, thin as a starved hound, but very strong. He scampered about, reciting snatches of the play in different voices, peopling the stage with Rosalind and her cousin Celia; Touchstone himself, the banished Duke and his court, using Burbage’s jaded, world-weary tone for the melancholy Jaques. Actors emerged from the tiring house to watch, led by Tod with a long blonde wig in his hand, his face already whitened for Rosalind. They stood about the margins and watched the little man leaping from place to place on the stage. When he finished with a curtsy, they let up a roar, clapping and stamping and shouting for more. Burbage joined in, wiping tears from his eyes.
‘He’s hired!’ Burbage could already hear the money pouring in. ‘I’ve never laughed so much at one of your plays or seen one acted so lively. What’s his name?’
‘Feste.’
‘Well, Mister Feste,’ Burbage said as the clown jumped down from the stage, ‘let me shake you by the hand and welcome you into the company. Someone take Mister Feste and put him in Touchstone’s motley. No foreign tricks, mind,’ he said to Feste. ‘No tumbling or that kind of carry-on. Just stick to the play.’
Will took Violetta up to one of the small side galleries reserved for wealthy patrons.
‘I’ll make sure it’s roped off,’ he said. ‘You can watch the performance in peace from here. The crowd too. They are sometimes more interesting than what is happening onstage.’
He left her then, promising to be back when the performance began. The trumpets rang out above her and the place started to fill up with people. First a few, standing about in groups in the pit, dotted along the benches in the circling galleries, then more and more poured in until there were no spaces left. The ground was a solid mass of heads. All the galleries were filled.
Will returned just as the crowd was beginning to quieten. He did not speak, other than to utter a cursory greeting, but sat hunched forward, gnawing at his thumbnail, watching the audience. Violetta was waiting with as much anticipation as anyone. She welcomed any diversion from her own thoughts as they turned and twisted, meeting dead end after dead end. Something will turn up. That’s what Feste always said. Just put one foot after another. But what if it did not? She was glad to turn away from it all, if only for a little while, and lose herself in the world of the play.
The crowd was taking a time to settle. There was a disturbance in the upper galleries. People turned to stare as two young men, richly dressed in the Italian style, made their way late to their seats. They were sitting directly opposite Violetta.
Violetta sat forward, her attention momentarily drawn away from the jutting stage. There was something familiar about the men, but she was too far away to see their faces. They both wore beards and their hats shaded their eyes. Her gaze lingered on them for a moment. Could it be? Her heart beat harder and she half rose from her seat but then sank back, dismissing the possibility. This had happened before. On crowded streets, busy docks, in marketplaces, she’d thought to catch a glimpse of him, but had always been disappointed. Fancy supplies the face we want to see.
The actors took to the stage and Violetta watched the opening scene, but every now and then her eyes strayed to the strangers in the upper gallery. When Feste came on to the stage, the smaller of the two young men nudged the other. He pointed and they both stared down, caught by more than the clown’s words. The taller man looked up, his eyes searching the galleries, going through them row by row, studying each face carefully. His gaze stopped when he came to Violetta.
Will leaned forward, the girl’s presence forgotten for the moment, his lips moving silently as other men spoke his words to the world. He always felt the same mixture of dread and desire when the actors took to the stage. The play became a greater and a lesser thing. It no longer belonged to him, but to the actors and the audience. He had no power, no control over what would happen.
Equally, he knew almost straight away whether it was going to go well or ill. There was an air of expectancy. All talk ceased. Vendors were ignored. People were too busy with the play to concern themselves with nuts and fruit, bottles of beer. This was going to be a good performance. He knew as soon as Feste walked on to the stage. He seemed to know how Will wanted this played. His wit and energy spread to the others like quick running fire, spilling from the stage so the groundlings stopped thinking about the ache in their legs or the rain beginning to fall an
d the people up in the galleries stopped signalling to friends or flirting with the ladies present. They ceased to notice the need of a cushion, or the lack of a back to the benches, or the hardness of the seats, because they were no longer in the theatre at all; they were in the Forest of Arden.
The performance was fast, funny to the last. Even Will found himself laughing. Something that almost never happened. He left the box when Tod began his Epilogue, knowing that they would call for him. He was standing at the side of the stage when the final word was spoken. There was a moment of silence when the audience seemed to wake from a dream they had all been sharing. After that came the roar, a wave of applause that rose from all sides and crashed on to the stage. The actors looked at each other and smiled. They took hands and bowed. The crowd shouted for the clown and they shouted for Rosalind and Celia, they shouted for the Duke, they shouted for Will and then they shouted for the clown again. The actors took bow after bow, the greasepaint running down their grinning faces, while the crowd roared and cheered, whistled and stamped. Then the jigs began. Will joined in, grasping his actors’ sweating hands, as the crowd danced about the yard to the sound of fiddle, sackbut, flute and recorder. Feste pranced like an imp, playing on a short bone flute, keeping time on a tabor.
Violetta did not see them take their final bows. Just as the play was ending, one of the young men in the opposite gallery had signalled across to her. They met in the passage that ran along the back of the galleries. Violetta looked from one to the other, studying their faces, measuring the changes. Stephano smiled, his teeth showing white against the fine growth of his beard, and Guido laughed, shaking back his long curly hair. She embraced them both, holding them to her. They were taller than her now and she could feel hard muscle under the velvet of their doublets. Guido stepped back but Stephano could not let her go. He pushed away a wing of hair in order to see her face better, as if to be sure that it was really her. He tucked the stray lock behind her ear and his fingers travelled to her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw, dropping to the whiteness of her throat, as if he needed to touch her skin, find it warm, feel the beating of her blood. Then he tipped her face up to his and he kissed her. Violetta’s heart shifted inside her. The applause from the crowd rose up and roared around them, bouncing from side to side and all about, but in that moment they were utterly alone.
She linked arms with the two of them, just as she had done in Illyria, as they went down the stairs and out of the Globe.
Will returned to Violetta in a high good humour, but the gallery was empty. She was no longer there. He glanced into the pit, thinking she might have gone down there to wait for Feste. The clown was still on stage, jumping about, but there was no sign of the girl. Will shouldered his way down the stairs and out into the open, thinking to find her among those streaming out of the playhouse, but he was quickly recognised and captured by the crowd: shaking hands, being clapped on the back while he nodded his thanks at the praise showering down on him. He thought he caught a glimpse of her, arm in arm with two young men going towards the river, but the press was too great to chase after her and he had other claims on his time.
He went back into the playhouse wondering who the young men might be. He didn’t know she had any friends here, apart from Maria and Sir Toby. But what did he know about this girl? She kept much of herself hidden, like those ice islands said to float in northern seas. If the girl had chosen to make off with mysterious young men, then so be it. He went to collect the script. There were changes he wanted to make. What she wanted from him was impossible. His imagination was great, none greater. He could make cities, whole countries; people those with kings and princes, nobles and commoners. He could make the past live again, could create worlds that had never been, but he had been unable to think of one single way in which he could help this girl.
He began to wish again that he had never crossed paths with them. It was not fair to lay this thing upon him. People had an exaggerated idea of what he could do in the world. He was a player, no more than that. His influence was confined to the wooden walls of the Globe. Any power outside of that was as counterfeit as actors’ finery.
He could do nothing. That should be an end, and yet, even if he got his wish and never saw her again, he knew that he would not be able to stop thinking about her, gnawing at her problem as he gnawed his nails. She was young, younger than his own Susannah. Not that his daughter was likely to stir out of Stratford, but if she did . . . Life was precarious: death, disease, loss of fortune could tip the most ordered existence into chaos. Who knew what disaster could yet occur to force her to leave her home, to live among strangers? If that were to happen, he’d like to think that there were those who would offer what help they could give.
He went in search of the clown.
.
11
‘Is it a world to hide virtues in?’
Violetta looked from Stephano to Guido as they armed her down to the river. They had both changed, beyond the first growing of beards, wearing earrings and being much burnt by the sun. She was hard put to find in their faces the boys that she had known.
‘How did you know I was here?’ she asked.
‘We didn’t,’ Stephano said. ‘It was an accident. We came here to see the play. Then we saw Feste. At first we couldn’t believe it was him – how could it be? But Guido was sure. He’s never wrong about things like that. If Feste was here, you wouldn’t be far.’
‘How could you know that we would be together?’
‘Feste would never leave you,’ Guido said. ‘After Lady Olivia died, he gave you his service. When you were taken, he swore to us that he would find you. So you were either near, or . . .’
‘Or dead?’
Stephano shook his head. ‘I would not allow myself to think on that.’
‘He found me in Venice,’ Violetta said. ‘I’ve been with him ever since. But I did not expect to see you again. Not for . . . not for a very long time. I did not expect, or ever dare hope . . .’ She held on more tightly to Stephano’s arm, still hardly believing that he was here in flesh and blood, seeking to change the subject before her feelings overwhelmed her. ‘How do you come to be here? In London.’
‘We could ask the same thing of you!’ Stephano laughed at how impossible it was for them to be here, together, under grey London skies with the brown waters of the river flowing past. ‘We are here in the service of Signore Mazzolini, the Venetian Ambassador.’
‘Venice!’ Violetta stopped, disengaging herself from their linked arms. ‘So that’s why you are dressed like such fine Italian gentlemen.’
Stephano looked down at her shabby blue dress, the old velvet cloak rippled and patched where the nap had gone thin. His handsome features clouded. Shame and guilt began to corrode his joy at meeting her again, etching into it like acid.
Violetta stared at him. ‘Venice is our enemy. You saw what they did to our city.’
‘We are kept men.’ Stephano looked away from her. It got worse, not better. ‘Kept by Malvolio. He came upon us in Tunis and bought us from Sale Reis because it amused him to do so. He then gave us to the Venetian Ambassador, who was on his way to England. His Excellency has been kind to me. He did not like to see me treated that way. My father is Duke of Illyria now, and Illyria is allied with Venice, so he made me a kind of envoy. I sailed with him to England. Malvolio went to see his Jesuit brothers in Spain. He came on another ship. He is here now.’
‘You are an envoy for your father! He is a usurper! So you are reconciled with him?’ Violetta stood, arms folded. Had he come to find her just to let her know that she’d been betrayed again, and this time by one she’d thought had really loved her?
‘No, I am not reconciled. The opposite, if anything. But my father approved it. It amused him to see me as some kind of pet, like a dog or an ape, kept on a golden chain by Venice. To refuse would bring shame on Illyria, he said, I had to go with them. It was my duty. Malvolio took care to let me know that he held you captive in Venic
e and you would suffer if I ran away. All the time I was in an agony of fear for you, but what could I do?’
‘Malvolio is subtle and cruel.’ Violetta’s anger dissolved as she watched the distress move across Stephano’s face. He was as helpless as her. ‘He takes care to learn the secret levers of guilt and fear, the better to inflict pain and torture.’
Stephano shook his head. He refused to be comforted.
‘I should have acted then,’ he said at last. ‘I should have saved you when Malvolio and my father stood deciding your fate between them, gloating over it. I should have done something. To allow such a thing to happen and do nothing –’
‘What could you do?’ Violetta put her fingers gently on his lips to stop his words. ‘You were just a boy.’
Stephano shook his head. ‘I was old enough.’
‘We were little more than children. What can children do in the face of men’s might and malice? We could do nothing then.’
Stephano hailed a wherry to take her back to the Hollander. He helped her into the boat and the two boys sat opposite her, close and easy with each other. They had belonged to different houses in Illyria, brought up to be enemies, but they had become friends there and they were friends now. This was the way to defeat evil and tyranny. Violetta thought. Illyria’s future, if her poor country had a future, relied on amity, not enmity.