The Fool's Girl

by Celia Rees

  ‘They are set to take a circuitous route north, visiting various houses.’ Will told him what he had gleaned from Stephano.

  ‘Dispensing Mass and sedition.’ Cecil frowned. ‘Visiting houses sympathetic to their cause.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Will agreed. ‘No doubt.’

  ‘How did you find this out? By means of the shewstone?’

  So he did know. The news jarred him, but Will fought hard not to show it.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Cecil nodded rapidly, as if he’d guessed Will’s surprise. ‘I know about that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You do not deny such a thing exists?’

  Will shook his head. What was the point of it? His face darkened. It must be Forman. He was a fool to ever have trusted him.

  ‘Not your friend Forman,’ Cecil said, guessing that thought too. Will wondered why he wanted the stone. ‘I have it from another source. The Ambassador may or may not know of its existence, but someone at his court certainly does. Some woman who serves his daughter went to see a City soothsayer. During the consultation, she boasted of a stone of rare power that would soon be in her hands.’

  ‘No.’ Will thought to take the conversation back to Cecil’s earlier question. ‘That is not how I know about their plans. I have a spy in their camp.’

  ‘Do you now?’ Cecil’s face showed something like admiration. ‘Very enterprising. More than I’ve managed to establish. His Excellency is a source of information, when it suits him, but he is hardly likely to supply day-to-day intelligence.’ He gave Will a thin smile. ‘Well done!’

  ‘He tells me that they should arrive at Sir Andrew’s estate something short of midsummer. They will wait there for others to join them from other parts of England. Once they are in residence, my spy is set to do me another service.’

  ‘Who is your spy?’ Cecil asked. ‘The boy Stephano?’

  Will nodded. ‘I think he will prove useful and I believe that he can be trusted.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. We have the girl. Now, what of this stone?’ Cecil asked, suddenly eager. ‘Have you seen it yourself?’

  ‘I have,’ Will answered warily.

  He reminded himself to go carefully. To Cecil, people were pieces on a gaming board, to be moved here, moved there, knocked over, discarded. He had reminded Stephano to be just as careful. His Excellency the Venetian Ambassador was likely to play the same way.

  ‘I would dearly love to see it.’ Cecil’s eyes grew dark and took on a sudden gleam, like lead new cut.

  ‘Things like that are seldom to be trusted,’ Will said. ‘It could be nothing more than a conjuring trick.’

  Secretary Cecil did not like to be contradicted. His look sharpened to steel.

  Will was aware of the danger, but he would protect Violetta. He would not deliver her and the stone into Cecil’s hands. Who knew what he would or would not do to get the secret from her? To be able to see from a distance, without the need for any physical presence – it was a sorcery sought by all in Cecil’s world.

  ‘What I mean is . . .’

  Will paused while he drew the right words together. He had to find ways of placating this man of power, while diminishing any offence offered to him and drawing his attention away from Violetta.

  ‘What do you mean, Master Shakespeare?’ The Secretary’s tone was ominous, his brows knitted further together. His grey eyes were dull now, as heavy with threat as the sky before a storm breaks. Then the clouds dispersed. ‘But there will be time for that afterwards. Let us deal with this other matter first. When that is successfully concluded, you can bring her and this shewstone to me. If she has it, I want to see it. It is your duty as Her Majesty’s loyal subject. I want to see this girl before His Excellency takes her into his protection.’

  Shakespeare nodded, though he had no intention of ever keeping his promise. To do so could condemn Violetta to the Tower, kept captive for ever, never to return to her native Illyria, like some princess in a fireside tale.

  ‘I am Her Majesty’s loyal subject,’ Will said firmly. ‘I will do all I can to prevent this plot from succeeding. I do not want to see her kingdom torn apart and bonfires set up in every marketplace.’

  ‘I know, I know. You are right to admonish me. The stone is a distraction from our main purpose. Succeed in this, and I will see to it that Her Majesty learns of your loyalty. She is a great admirer of your work. She greatly enjoyed the play at New Year. I’m sure she will want your company to appear before her when that time comes round again.’

  ‘We are honoured by her interest.’ Will bowed low. ‘I will make sure that I have a new entertainment to offer.’

  ‘We will always be in need of entertainment.’

  Neither would dare to utter it, but they both knew that, given her age and frailty, the Queen might not be there next year. Will’s company could be playing to a different court. Cecil looked about; his nimble, restless mind was already moving on to other things. ‘This affair must be kept most secret. Tell me, Master Shakespeare, do you like gardens?’

  ‘I do, sir,’ Will replied, wondering at this new turn in their conversation. ‘So does my wife. We plan to plant one at my new house.’

  ‘So do I.’ Cecil gave a rare smile of real pleasure. ‘We will be planting here.’ He waved towards an unpromising area of trodden grey mud and churned yellow clay that ran down to the Thames. ‘John Gerard will supervise the work. You know him?’

  ‘I know his History of Plants.’

  ‘Quite so. An excellent work. He has devised wonderful gardens at Theobalds, my country place, and Burghley House. I wish him to do the same here. He has collected many rare and interesting specimens. From time to time I will have seeds and slips sent to you from our nurseries with advice as to how they should be treated.’

  ‘That is most kind, sir.’ Will bowed.

  ‘Not at all. We can learn from plants: which is wholesome, which is poison and which pernicious weed. Which should be kept and nurtured, which plucked out. I will let you know how things are growing here. You, in turn, can tell me how things are in your garden.’

  .

  18

  ‘There lies your way’

  The yard of the Bell Inn was full of snorting horses and patient ponies tethered together. Men patrolled up and down the line checking packs, testing straps, tightening girths. One of them was George Price. He looked up from the hoof he was examining and gave Violetta a fleeting smile. He was no longer dressed as a gentleman, but wore homespun and a hooded coat like the rest of the carriers. The actors’ cart stood at the centre of the yard, its high side panels brightly painted, piled high with trunks, cloak bags and hampers, folded scene cloths and assorted props. Tod was having trouble backing the horses between the shafts, so Feste ran over to help him. Master Shakespeare was talking to a square-set man with a thatch of dark hair and beetling brows. He was wearing a hooded sheepskin, but from the way he stood and the orders he was giving, he was in charge. He was Will Greenaway, the Stratford carrier, impatient to be on the road.

  Violetta was keen to be moving too. She looked from one part of the yard to another, eager to be gone. When Will had explained his idea to her and Stephano, she had felt her spirit rising. Hope and excitement had flared inside her at the boldness of the plan. It was also risky, dangerous, full of pitfalls, it might not even work at all, but it was better than doing nothing. After the wake was over, she’d gone to Maria to tell her that they would be leaving.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ Maria declared. ‘There’s nothing for me here.’

  They had left Simon Forman’s house early that morning just as the sun was rising and the Thames beginning to colour with the pink light of dawn.

  Will had made no objection to Maria coming with them. In fact, he had welcomed her. She was a good needlewoman and could help with the costumes and in the tiring room. Everyone had to make themselves useful when they took to the road. She rode with Violetta, up on the wagon, with Tod driving. Feste was already asleep on t
op of the trunks, curled up on a bed that he had made for himself on the painted cloths used for scenery. Greenaway leased horses to Will and any of the company who wished to ride. The rest of them took turns on the wagon or walking behind.

  They left the City at Newgate and went up Houlburne in the direction of the village of St Giles-in-the-Fields. From here they would take the Uxbridge Road past the hanging tree at Tyburn and on to St Mary at the Bourne. Here they would cross the stream at Westbourne and follow the road westward. They went at a plodding pace. The packhorses were heavily laden for their homeward journey.

  ‘Greenaway brings cheeses, lambskins, woollen garments and knitted hose down from Stratford. And he takes back goods impossible to come by in Stratford, like sugar loaves and spices, cloth for the mercers, notions for the haberdashers, amber for the apothecaries, tobacco, paper, books from the printers by St Paul’s . . .’

  Tod was a fund of information, but Violetta did not mind his chatter. It passed the time and he was a pleasant companion.

  ‘What do you carry in your own pack, master?’ Tod called down when Will rode close up to them.

  He smiled up at them. ‘Oh, this and that,’ he said.

  His pack was full of gifts that he had been collecting for Anne and his daughters. He liked to bring them things that caught his eye or were hard to come by outside London: nutmegs for the kitchen, sugar, raisins, pepper, candied ginger, sticks of cinnamon, fragrant blades of mace. He had bought Spanish steel knitting needles, a rainbow mix of silk yarns and ribbons, a card of silver buttons, the French lawn handkerchiefs that Anne liked to embroider and pretty glass beads from an Italian pedlar. A necklace for Anne, bracelets for the girls. And seeds. He’d got them from a man who travelled to Amsterdam.

  The sun was warm. They were soon leaving behind the brown pall that hung over the city. Violetta had got used to the reek of it: a mix of smoking fires, clotted kennels and rotting middens. Now the stink was thinning to nothing, replaced by the scent of May blossom and flowers.

  Will rode forward to catch up with Will Greenaway. He needed to talk to him about where they would be staying each night.

  ‘If we make good time,’ Tod said, ‘we could get to High Wycombe. It’s a good-sized town. We can set up in the yard of the White Lion. First night we’ll play As You Like It, because it’s fresh in our minds. We haven’t talked about any other plays yet. I’m hoping he’ll decide to do Romeo and Juliet.’

  ‘Romeo y Julieta?’ Violetta said. ‘I know it. There is a story by Matteo Bandello.’

  ‘It was my first play with the company. I played Juliet.’

  Violetta laughed. She could not get used to the idea of a young man like Tod playing a girl. He was so strong sitting next to her, legs planted apart, his hands big and square holding the reins, the muscles moving in his tanned forearms.

  ‘Oh Romeo, Romeo!’

  He spoke the words with love and longing, completing the speech in a voice that made her laugh harder, it was so exactly like her own.

  ‘Why does a man play the woman’s part?’

  Feste had woken up and her question had him snorting. They both ignored him.

  ‘That is how it has always been.’ Tod shrugged. ‘It is against the law for women to act on stage, so men or boys have to take their parts.’

  ‘I find it strange,’ she said. ‘Unnatural. It is not the same in other countries.’

  ‘Did you really travel with a band of players?’

  Violetta nodded.

  ‘And acted with them?’ Tod shook his head as if such a thing was beyond his imagining.

  ‘Oh, yes. Many times.’

  ‘She’s good too,’ Feste interrupted from behind them. ‘Better than you, I’ll warrant.’

  Tod smiled. ‘I don’t doubt it! I do my best, but I yearn to play the man.’

  ‘Glad to hear it, master!’ Feste laughed so loud Violetta bid him be quiet. He was in a mood to make mischief. Sometimes she preferred it when he was quiet and melancholy. When he was in this kind of temper, he would use his wit to mock and twist anything that was said.

  They were nearing High Wycombe. Greenaway, the carrier, sent back a message to say that they would be stopping for the night. When they reached the outskirts, Will asked Feste to lead the way. The clown hopped down from the cart, put on his jester’s hat, slung his drum at his hip, took out his pipe and began to play. He walked in front of the players’ wagon; its painted sides and cover announced that they were a travelling company. Such visits were rare, so their arrival attracted an excited crowd.

  They were to set up at the White Lion, the inn used by the carriers. The landlord assured Will that they still had the boards to make the stage, kept from the days of the travelling players. Will walked into the yard. It was good and wide, with galleries on three sides. It would do perfectly.

  Violetta watched as the place was transformed. The boards were found, dusted down and placed on hogshead barrels. The stage was positioned at the end gallery. The chamber behind would be used as a tiring room, a painted curtain hung across to conceal the actors and serve as a backdrop. There were different cloths, depicting day, night, forest, town or wherever most of the action took place. The actors entered and left the tiring room by way of a window with a bench laid as a step up to the stage. The audience would be ranged around the galleries or standing in the yard, depending on how much they had paid.

  Will brought his principal actors together to discuss that night’s performance, while others in the company cried their arrival round the town. Feste went with them, playing on his pipe and tabor, while his companions capered and danced to the market square, where those with the skill put on displays of tricks and tumbling that would be expected by this country crowd. Violetta went along to give out handbills and cry up the time and place of performance. She watched the tricks with an appraising eye, tutting over any clumsiness, privately thinking she could do better. The crowd were easily satisfied. She listened to their groans, their quick intakes of breath, and regretted the old life she appeared to have forfeited. When it was over, she envied the performers’ smothered looks of delight at the loud whistles and shouts, the applause they attracted.

  Once she had given out her bills, she went back to the inn with Feste. Will was with Tod and the other actors, rehearsing. He beckoned to Feste, who vaulted up on to the rough stage. Violetta watched them pace about, getting used to the space, making sure no one was likely to take a step backwards and tumble off the boards. Will held a book in which he was ever scribbling, scoring things through, crossing things out. They were soon too busy to notice her. She wandered away from the stage, wondering what to do.

  Maria was in the tiring room. She had unpacked the trunks and was shaking creases from the costumes, brushing down the garments, looking them over for stains that would need sponging, holes and tears that would need repairing. She hummed as she worked, an old air from Illyria. Violetta’s eyes stung to hear it – it had been one of her mother’s favourites – but she did not go in and join her. Maria had been made wardrobe mistress, but Violetta did not want to become her assistant. It seemed her obvious place, but she could not see herself patching and stitching, lengthening and shortening, letting in and letting out. Instead she sat on one of the stairs that led up to the gallery, watching the actors on the stage, learning the words as they spoke them, watching their gestures and movements. That is where she wanted to be. Women banished from the stage? What foolishness. They were short of players. Many parts had to be doubled. They were going to a deal of trouble coping with the lack, working out who should be onstage and who off it in order not to meet themselves coming back. She might have her chance yet.

  The audience began to fill the yard and range themselves round the upper floors. Violetta stood at the entrance collecting the money: a penny for the yard, tuppence for the gallery. Soon the money bag was bulging and the place was full. Every space was taken. Boys climbed up on the roofs and perched there like rows of starlings. Violet
ta fought her way up the stairs to where George Price had saved a place for her. She smiled and thanked him.

  ‘I saw you this morning,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of men among Greenaway’s carriers,’ he said. ‘Two more with the actors. We’re here to keep an eye on you. Keep you safe.’

  Violetta stared at him. The danger she was in had slowly been sliding out of view. She gripped the rail in front of her, searching the faces in the surrounding galleries, looking down at the crowd crammed into the inn yard.

  ‘Do you think there could be men here? Now?’

  ‘It’s possible. It’s best to assume so. I look for anything out of the ordinary way of things, like someone watching you instead of the play. Once it begins –’ he nodded towards the stage – ‘then we will know. ’

  Around her, the excited chatter began to lessen; the actors had yet to appear, but the audience seemed to know that the play was about to start. Violetta found herself watching the crowd, like George Price, but when the actors stepped out she forgot about that. She was down there with them. These were not boards set out on hogsheads, and this was not an inn yard in High Wycombe, and these were not Will, Tod, Ned, Tom, Henry and the rest, but this was Arden and these were dukes, their daughters, followers and courtiers, shepherds, shepherdesses and lost princes. Even Feste was transformed, splendid in a jester’s cap and motley of green and yellow, rather than his battered hat and frayed and faded black.

  ‘All the world’s a stage,’ the character Will played said, but to Violetta it seemed the other way round. The stage had become the world. Everything outside it ceased to exist. That was where the magic lay. That was why the people had parted with their hard-earned pennies today and would happily do so tomorrow, if the players could be persuaded to stay.

  George Price sat by her side, immune to magic. He kept a sharp eye on what was happening in the audience, with the staff of the inn coming and going with food and ale. The players were known and trusted. He was not concerned about them. The play reached its conclusion and his practised eye noticed nothing out of the ordinary. The performance was over. He could reassure her. She was safe for the moment.