The Beauty of the Wolf

by Wray Delaney

‘We must consider how we will overcome the obstacle,’ said Master Shakeshaft, tossing the half-eaten drumstick to the ground. ‘I have a notion I see a chink of light.’

  ‘Thank heaven and all its muses,’ said Master Cuthbert. ‘There was I imagining you had slammed the door on any sensible solution to our dilemma. Speak, Ben. I am trembling at the very thought that there might be a grub of an idea in that wine-soaked head of yours that once housed a brain.’

  Master Shakeshaft seemed in no way offended by the actor’s outburst.‘That is it, Crumb,’ he said to Master Cuthbert. ‘You have given me the idea and a pretty maggot of a thing it is. Why, it is simple. He –’ he pointed to Master Pennyworth, ‘– he will play the part as dead.’

  ‘Dead? Thunder my tongue! Oh, ye gods give me strength,’ said Master Cuthbert. ‘Dead – and I make love to bones? You mock our art, sir.’

  ‘Better the bones be dead than they speak with a voice from the grave,’ said Master Shakeshaft.

  As I watched the scene, the little fox leaped free of my doublet and trotted into the clearing to retrieve the drumstick.

  ‘A fox,’ shouted the woman.

  ‘Where, my sweet sorrow?’ said Master Shakeshaft, reaching for his sword.

  ‘It is but a cub,’ said Master Cuthbert.

  ‘It is vermin,’ said the woman.

  ‘Soon-to-be-dead vermin,’ said Master Shakeshaft, advancing on the creature.

  I would not let my fox be sacrificed to a drumstick and with the evening sun showing me in a golden light I made my entrance through the washing line.

  The actors stared at me as I picked up the fox and, having their attention and naught to lose but my pride which anyway was long gone, I seized my chance.

  Entirely forgetting that my face was covered in blood, I said, ‘Perhaps, sirs and mistress, I might play the female role?’

  L

  I stood before them, clinging to a fox cub, my face a bloody mess, and not a word was said.

  At last the silence was broken by Master Cuthbert.

  ‘Do you always bring the sun with you to illuminate your face?’ he said and added, without drawing a breath, ‘Clean him up and he will do.’

  ‘Rein in your desires, Master Cuthbert,’ said Master Shakeshaft. ‘Remember what we are trying to achieve: a play that will take London by the petticoat and jigger it until we hear the coins sing.’

  ‘How could I forget?’ said Master Cuthbert. ‘If last night’s disastrous performance is anything to judge our success by then I predict you will soon find yourself back in the Marshalsea.’

  ‘Last night was not so bad,’ said the theatre manager. He took a raw onion from his pocket and peeled it as he would an apple before taking a hearty bite. ‘It was . . .’

  ‘. . . a diabolical mess,’ interrupted Master Cuthbert. ‘A travesty. We could rightly be accused of being rogues rather an actors.’

  ‘That is where you are wrong. We are Sir Percival Hayes’s men.’

  ‘“Were” is the word, Ben. Sir Percival is in the past tense because, if you remember, you pissed away the profits, and when Sir Percival found out he told you to stuff your onions up your arse.’

  Master Shakeshaft shrugged and turned to me.

  ‘We need a boy actor who can sing like a nightingale.’

  It mattered not if I could or could not sing for having heard the name Sir Percival Hayes I had already decided to be gone from there and make my own way to the city.

  ‘I cannot sing,’ I said quickly. ‘And I cannot act. I would be no better than a . . . a . . . a bare-arsed knave.’

  Master Cuthbert laughed. ‘That, sir, would give me joy to see.’

  I bowed and walked away.

  ‘Wait, sir, wait,’ shouted Master Shakeshaft. ‘Not so much haste, sir. You have taken the sunlight with you.’

  Master Cuthbert stretched his long body. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Our bark is from Hell’s kitchen, our bite is velvet to the touch. Sit, eat. Have some chicken. What is your hurry?’

  Reluctantly, I sat at the table while Master Cuthbert introduced me to the other players whose names I instantly remembered and instantly forgot.

  ‘And Crumb is what these shadows call me,’ he added. ‘Now,’ he said, passing me a book. ‘Read.’

  ‘Do I stand or sit?’

  ‘You read if you can read and it matters not a jot if you stand, crouch, sit or jump.’

  It was by Ovid and I knew the work well. I read it using all the energy that my anger had released in me.

  When I had finished the passage Crumb threw his arms in the air.

  ‘There is a God,’ he shouted. ‘And your reason, Ben, for not taking a boy with a brain is?’

  ‘Is that he has not been on stage before and . . . and . . .’ He ran out of words. ‘And you have a point, Crumb.’

  Master Cuthbert laughed. ‘If we have a play properly rehearsed and all you lily-livered lice learn your lines then with Gally’s help, Sir Percival might reconsider his decision.’

  ‘That point had not slipped the entrails of my mind,’ said Master Shakeshaft.

  Finally the queen’s coin dropped. It was Gally who had spoken of the old rogue, the theatre manager. I inwardly smiled at the memory of her, of him.

  ‘Clean the lad up and let us see if there is a woman beneath his fluff,’ said Crumb.

  Sweet sorrow brought a pail of water and handed me a cloth.

  ‘Come,’ she said, ‘what is nature’s damage?’

  I turned my back to the table and washed my face but not well enough it seemed as with great impatience she took the cloth from me and cleaned me and shaved me.

  I wondered if it would be possible to take refuge here and while this thought played in my head I became fascinated by the hairs that protruded from the chin of Mistress Sweet Sorrow.

  ‘I was a bearded lady,’ she said, ‘one of the seven wonders of the world and never been further than Deptford.’ She took hold of my jaw which made speaking impossible. ‘God’s blood, who are you?’ she said, staring at me. ‘Tell me, for you have the beard of a boy and the complexion of a girl.’ I did not answer and she continued. ‘You could stand on stage, say not a word and the audience would be satisfied and not feel cheated of their coin.’

  She powdered my face and rouged my cheeks and my lips. My hair was long enough to be dressed. This all took place with nothing being lost in the quarrel between the actor and the playwright until I turned to face them.

  ‘Well, I never,’ said Master Shakeshaft. ‘What enchanted forest did you come from, mistress?’

  ‘I know not in which realm I belong,’ I said, keeping my voice soft and remembering how my sister held herself.

  Master Merrymay stood and raised his tankard to me. ‘Beautiful,’ he said breathlessly. ‘A faerie queen.’

  ‘What shall we call you?’ asked Crumb.

  ‘Beau . . .’ I paused for a moment then said, ‘. . . Sorrel.’

  ‘Master Beau Sorrel, we welcome you to the company,’ said Master Shakeshaft. ‘But not your fox.’

  The fox had all along sat under the table by my feet. I picked it up and again walked away.

  ‘Master Sorrel,’ called Master Shakeshaft, ‘you turn down my offer in favour of vermin?’

  ‘He stays with me.’

  Crumb laughed.

  ‘Take them both, Ben. You never know, the fox might turn out to be the greater actor.’

  LI

  Time makes ghosts of us – the self is perhaps the dust of what we remember.

  I remember that I had the remainder of that day, a night and one morning to learn my part. To my utter astonishment I found I had been given the lead role of Ann in A Warning for Faire Women.

  ‘This is a mistake,’ I said to Master Shakeshaft. ‘It is far too important a part for a novice such as I am.’

  ‘Come, young man, where is your mettle?’ he laughed. ‘You, at least, are something to look upon which is more than I can say for Master Pennyworth.’

&
nbsp; For some foolish reason I thought honesty might save me.

  ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I have never before seen a play performed.’

  ‘Never seen a play? In what hayloft have you been living?’ said the theatre manager. I moved my mouth to answer. ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘hold your tongue. The truth is always an actor’s worst friend.’ He took another onion from his pocket and peeled it. ‘Crumb is an excellent teacher.’ Taking a hearty bite, he continued, ‘I agree it is a part that demands . . .’

  ‘An actor?’ I said. ‘An understanding of the art?’

  ‘Worry not,’ said Master Shakeshaft. ‘I would rather we find you to be a useless player here in the country than we bring you on only to discover you to be a useless player in London. If you prove to be a useless player – as I fear you might – then think no more of it, other than you saved a travelling group of actors the embarrassment of lacking a leading lady. Once we return to London there will be no shortage of talent hungry for a meal and the stage.’

  Before I could think what to say he had shaken my hand and I had the impression that I had just been cheated but of what I could not say.

  The play had to do with the true murder of George Sanders, a prosperous London merchant. He was killed by the jealous George Brown who was in love with Sanders’s wife, Ann.

  I was vexed enough to be given a role that at least demanded someone with knowledge of theatre, but then my troubles doubled.

  ‘I cannot work out here in nature,’ announced Master Cuthbert. ‘We must take lodgings and the use of the upstairs room at the Wheatsheaf.’

  I knew this to be a inn near to the House of the Three Turrets – too near for my liking.

  ‘And how will we pay for it?’ asked Mistress Sweet Sorrow.

  Master Shakeshaft puffed himself up and taking hold of my doublet said, ‘These clothes are too grand for an apprentice.’

  And so it was that my clothes went to pay the bill at the inn where I arrived with the medley of players dressed in a lady’s gown. Lodgings were not what Master Cuthbert most desired but the hire of the room so that I might be well rehearsed.

  ‘It is your entrance that matters, Master Sorrel. Those few gestures tell the story to come, whether it be comedy or tragedy.’

  ‘Or a great mess of a turd,’ I said.

  The lines were simple. It was the rest that proved a dance hard to master and by the time the afternoon of the performance arrived, I felt as if I was to be taken to Tyburn Tree rather than appear in a play.

  I was wound so tight with fear – fear of forgetting my lines, fear of being discovered for the fraud I knew I was, fear that I would be recognised – that I could hardly see or hear the audience. Paints and wigs do not an actor make, though I made liberal use of both in order that my disguise be assured.

  The audience was full of sleepy drunks, and a hotchpotch of locals and landlords.

  ‘Now, young Master Sorrel,’ said Master Shakeshaft, ‘remember all you have been taught and if you fluff your lines make the words up, and no one will be a penny the wiser. Whatever you do, do not stand there with your mouth open making vinegar of wine – these words are meant to be heard.’

  The drums rolled, the play began and the actors ran onto the stage. What surprised me was that the audience carried on talking and chit-chattering. We were just a background diversion between the clinking of tankards.

  I must have made a good entrance for to my surprise everyone fell silent. I gawped at the faces gawping at me. One man in the audience shouted, ‘Do not be shy, lovely. Let us hear your voice.’

  The words flowed from me, filled as they were with the passion of a woman intent on murder. Who better than I, I thought, to play this role?

  What concerned me most that afternoon in the courtyard of the inn was that I would not be recognised and if that was the marker for success, then I achieved it. It did not occur to my father’s henchman who watched the play with all the rest that he was applauding his master’s son.

  The crowning moment was when Crumb said, ‘Well done, Master Sorrel, tomorrow we take the play – and you – to London.’

  LII

  It was the first time I had seen the great city and every sense in me was woken by the noise of bells. They rang for the day, the hour, they rang in a baby, they rang out a passing soul, they rang merrily in honour of a bride, they rang for work to begin and for work to end. All I could hear as we entered the city that fresh spring morning was the ringing of bells and the singing of larks. I was Caesar come to conquer, the rackety old cart a chariot. Sunlight danced on London Wall where flowers grew from the Romans’ bricks. Then we were on our way along Cheapside where so many streets and lanes spoke of their wares: of leather, milk, and silk.

  This was the time to put the past behind me. Never had I felt so alive as I did then and all that had gone before that moment seemed but dandelion seeds swept away by the breeze from the river. Here was my future. My purse at present was weak but I would in this city, out of its very clay, make my own fortune. This London was built for purpose, not for the idle and the shoe shufflers. Here, gold lay beneath the shit.

  I overlooked one thing: I had brought with me a fox cub. A creature of the forest, of its magic, lay sleeping in my doublet undisturbed by all he heard. Only his nose twitched at every new smell.

  As we crossed London Bridge I glimpsed a forest downriver; masts of galleons rising from the water while on the other side little boats and barges ferried people across with ant-like industry. All this I saw through the flap of the tent that covered the caravan.

  ‘This is Southwark,’ said Master Shakeshaft, ‘home of the rogue and the rascal.’

  We stopped at a house that looked over the river. It was neither tidy nor clean. And waiting for us in the doorway, hands on hips, was Gally.

  As pleased as I was to see Gally, I feared she might say my name without a care to the consequences and all would be lost. She gave me a long, hard stare as I followed Master Shakeshaft and his wife into the house.

  ‘What has the pied ninny cat dragged in today?’ she asked Master Shakeshaft.

  ‘Oh, that,’ said my new employer, waving a dismissive hand in my direction. ‘That is my apprentice, Beau Sorrel by name. A budding actor.’

  ‘More a . . .’ I began to say.

  Gally leaned towards me. ‘More an imposter,’ she hissed. In a louder voice she said, ‘A budding actor? If you say so, Master Shakeshaft.’

  ‘I do say so. He will play women’s parts and if he proves useless he can be the book holder or the prompter or do other such things that are necessary. But that face could sink a thousand ships. I wager that he, Beau Sorrel, is the money.’

  I did not think that best described me, feeling more a feeble shadow than anything well-versed with substance.

  He turned to his wife. ‘Is there any wine, my sweet sorrow? For I have a mighty thirst, and a hunger on me that a rhinoceros would be proud of.’

  ‘And with what do I buy this feast for such a vast and leathery animal?’ said Mistress Shakeshaft.

  Rummaging about in his pockets Master Shakeshaft took out a coin at which his long-suffering wife looked not at all impressed.

  ‘The floor!’ he said.

  This command had everyone but me – for I had no idea what it meant – scrabbling about in hope of finding a sixpence and being much rewarded in their search.

  I must have looked perplexed and, by way of explanation, Master Shakeshaft said, ‘When I have largesse upon me I then take the monetary precautions fitting to my status and scatter what coinage I have about my person onto the floor. No better bank there be.’

  ‘And you are no better than an ass to believe that,’ said his sweet sorrow.

  The theatre manager looked much wounded. ‘Mistress, you might show me some respite.’

  ‘Respect,’ I corrected him.

  ‘No, respite. The bitch always has a stick to beat me with.’

  ‘Have I not good reason?’ said his wife.
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  The chamber was low-ceilinged and the fire, when it was finally lit, gave off more smoke than warmth. The front door closed behind his wife and Master Shakeshaft stood on a chair and ran his hands along the top of the beams. He fetched down two bottles and winked at me.

  ‘My sweet sorrow will only bother with the food,’ he said, pulling a cork and pouring some wine into a dusty goblet.

  The chair by the fire groaned as he sat down on it, still holding the bottle. He looked around at us.

  ‘Do not feel you must keep company with me.’

  Master Cuthbert said he would take his meal at the Mermaid where he could pick up all the gossip and hear news of the latest plays.

  ‘Lead the way, Crumb,’ said Gally, ‘for I have no desire to stay and listen to the babbling of a bumpkin who believes he can act, or a theatre manager who thinks a bumpkin can make him his fortune.’

  ‘Hold that spiteful tongue of yours, Gally,’ said Master Shakeshaft.

  ‘Stuff an onion in it,’ said Gally, taking Crumb’s arm. She walked him purposefully to the door where she stopped and glanced back at me. ‘There is much I have to tell you, Crum, and you will be surprised when you hear the truth of it. A scandal, no less.’

  I felt that the game was up and tomorrow I would have to leave for I did not doubt that Gally meant to tell Crumb who I was. I jumped when Master Shakeshaft asked if I was staying.

  ‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘I have not a penny to go elsewhere with.’

  And in all honesty I was too tired to think what best to do. In the morning, I would have a plan.

  ‘What is that fox going to eat?’ asked Master Shakeshaft.

  ‘The same as me,’ I said.

  Master Shakeshaft laughed. ‘Apprentice, actor, fox, all is one and one is much of a muchness. It is hard to pull you apart.’

  ‘Master Shakeshaft,’ I said, ‘I am not even a proper actor.’

  ‘That is where our opinions differ,’ said Ben Shakeshaft. ‘I have all the conceit to believe you are; you have all the doubt to think you are not. I tell you this: a player is riddled with an equal amount of doubt and conceit yet once he struts upon the stage he becomes an empty vessel filled with the alchemy of the character he plays. No actor should truly know himself lest he becomes more important than the role.’