The Laughing Hangman

by Edward Marston

  ‘Listening to my tale was a kindness in itself.’

  Ambrose Robinson walked heavily to the door and let himself out. Nicholas relaxed slightly and looked up at Anne. She put a hand on his shoulder and smiled.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Much as ever, Nick. And you?’

  ‘I am kept as busy as usual here.’

  ‘You thrive on work.’ Her face puckered. ‘I am sorry to burden you with this errand but it means so much to Ambrose. He is quite distracted with worry. You were the only person we could turn to, Nick.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Ambrose has been kind to me. I owe him this favour. Do not blame me too much. Philip Robinson is suffering dreadfully, as you will see from his letters, and my heart goes out to him. But he is not the only reason I came here today.’

  ‘What else brought you here?’

  Anne bent over to kiss him softly on the lips.

  ‘You,’ she said.

  Then she let herself out of the room.

  Chapter Three

  Omens for The Misfortunes of Marriage were not propitious. The day began with torrential rain. It soaked the stage, blew into the galleries and turned the yard of the Queen’s Head into a quagmire. Emotional tempest soon followed. Barnaby Gill awoke with a blazing headache, announced that he was too ill to move, and refused to appear in the play which he saw as responsible for his condition. Lawrence Firethorn experienced his own marital misfortune. Incautious enough to retain a letter from a female admirer because it flattered his vanity, he opened his eyes that morning to find his wife reading the telltale missive before turning on him like a berserk she-tiger.

  Then there was Jonas Applegarth. Quiescent after the stern warning from Nicholas Bracewell, he worked through the night on emendations and additions which he wanted inserted into his play, and compiled a list of notes for individual actors whose performances, he felt on mature reflection, needed radical improvement if his work were to be given any hope of success. When his wife rose from her slumber and found him still poring over the foul papers of his play, Applegarth was like a powder keg in search of an excuse to explode. The sight of the downpour threatened to ignite rather than dampen.

  Nicholas Bracewell looked out from his lodging to see Thames Street being turned into a replica of the river whose name it bore. Horses churned up the mud, waggon wheels dispersed it with indiscriminate force, and sodden figures waded to and fro with all the speed that they could muster. Nicholas gave a sigh of resignation. Innyard theatre was at the mercy of the elements. In view of the religious satire which propelled The Misfortunes of Marriage, he was bound to wonder if the Almighty was inflicting the storm by way of a criticism of the play.

  Though the performance dominated his thoughts, there was another vexation at the back of his mind. Anne Hendrik’s request for help left him in a state of ambivalence. Willing to assist her in any way, he felt no such obligation towards Ambrose Robinson and still smarted at the memory of the man’s unconcealed affection towards the woman whom Nicholas still loved deeply. It worried him that Anne’s relationship with the Southwark butcher was so close that he felt able to entrust such a personal matter to her. Philip Robinson’s letters were indeed heart-breaking in their description of the boy’s ordeal, but Nicholas could not see why Anne Hendrik should be involved in his rescue, still less he himself.

  Concentrating on the afternoon’s performance, he braced himself for a tense morning at the Queen’s Head and left his lodging. He had splashed his way no more than twenty yards along Thames Street when a small, bustling figure cannoned into him and bounced off. With his head bent forward and his cloak all but hiding him, Caleb Hay had not even seen his approaching neighbour.

  ‘A thousand apologies, Master Bracewell!’

  ‘The fault was as much mine,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘A deluge such as this makes the most nimble of us blind and clumsy. By the end of the day, we may need to return to our houses by boat.’

  ‘The storm may yet blow over.’

  Caleb Hay grinned. ‘I admire your optimism but I do not share it. Nor can I offer you any sympathy with a clear conscience. If you serve such a filthy profession, you must expect the heavens to wash it for you out of sheer disgust.’

  ‘We must agree to differ,’ said Nicholas tolerantly.

  ‘You are too honest a man for the world you serve.’

  ‘It has brought me true friends and good fellowship.’

  ‘Then I will leave you to join them so that you may all get down on your knees together and pray for a miracle. Without a couple of hours of sunshine, you will have to watch your play float off down the river.’

  Adjusting his hat and pulling his cloak more tightly around him, Caleb Hay bade farewell and moved away. Nicholas detained him by touching his shoulder.

  ‘One thing puzzles me, Master Hay.’

  ‘What might that be?’

  ‘The way you behaved at our last encounter.’

  ‘Was I rude or uncivil?’ said Hay with genuine concern. ‘Was I full of self-affairs? Pray, do not take offence, Master Bracewell. An antiquarian lives in the past. We sometimes forget the good manners we should display in the present.’

  ‘You were not uncivil,’ said Nicholas. ‘We talked quite amicably. But you departed in a fit of anger.’

  Hay’s face clouded. ‘I remember now. Jonas Applegarth.’

  ‘You know the man?’

  ‘I know of him, sir.’

  ‘Enough to put you to flight in such a way?’

  ‘I saw a play of his once at The Curtain.’

  ‘So you do sink to our level from time to time,’ teased Nicholas gently. ‘What was the piece?’

  ‘A vile concoction set in Ancient Rome.’

  ‘You did not like Master Applegarth’s work?’

  ‘I detested it.’

  ‘Too bawdy for your taste?’

  ‘Too bawdy, too brutal and too full of bile. Only a person with a profound hatred of mankind could have penned such a malignant play. Clever, it certainly was. Laden with wit and scholarship of a high order. But, oh so cruel and so unkind. He even made jests in Latin and mocked a beautiful language until its face was covered in ugly sores. That is Jonas Applegarth for you, Master Bracewell. I hope this rain washes his new play into the ditch where it belongs!’

  ***

  The Queen’s Head was a house of mourning. Drenched actors kept vigil around the slimy innyard as if it were a mass grave containing the accumulated bodies of their departed relatives. Edmund Hoode watched a piece of straw being carried on a meandering journey by a tiny rivulet and saw his own life re-enacted in miniature. Peter Digby and his musicians played a dirge. Owen Elias sang in lugubrious Welsh. Lawrence Firethorn could still hear his wife, Margery, hammering nails into the coffin of their marriage as she tore the offending letter to shreds and pronounced a death sentence on their connubial delights. Jonas Applegarth was so grief-stricken that he simply stood in the rain and let it augment the tears that were coursing down his fat cheeks.

  Alexander Marwood responded with his usual gleeful misery. Moaning like a wind trapped in a hollow tree, he sought out Nicholas Bracewell and rolled his eyes in despair.

  ‘Your play is drowned,’ he said in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘Not yet,’ replied Nicholas. ‘It is but mid-morning and we have some hours to go.’

  ‘This rain will last a week.’

  ‘I doubt that, Master Marwood.’

  ‘You’ll be driven from the stage. No plays, no people to buy my ale. Disaster! How am I to sustain such a loss?’

  ‘The same way as we do, Master Marwood. With patience.’

  ‘But I rely on the income from Westfield’s Men.’

  ‘We pay our rent whether we play or no.’

&
nbsp; ‘It is your spectators who give me my profit.’

  ‘And so they will again as soon as the clouds move on. At the first sign of fine weather, they’ll flock back to the Queen’s Head to fill our seats and your coffers.’

  ‘Causing affrays and damaging my property.’

  Alexander Marwood was impossible to please. When a performance was abandoned because of inclement weather, he groaned at the resultant loss of income, yet he complained just as much when Westfield’s Men were actually bringing customers into his innyard. His relationship with the company was as joyless as that with his termagant wife. The landlord was the voice of doom in a beer-stained apron.

  As Marwood oozed away into the building, James Ingram joined the book holder beneath the thatched roof that overhung the stables. A dozen small waterfalls provided a splashing descant to their conversation.

  ‘What do you think, Nick?’ asked Ingram.

  ‘I have not given up hope yet.’

  ‘Our playwright has. He is weeping his own rainstorm.’

  ‘We all suffer in our different ways. But I am glad of a word alone with you, James,’ said Nicholas, turning his back on the depressing scene in the innyard. ‘I seek advice.’

  ‘On what subject?’

  ‘The Children of the Chapel Royal.’

  ‘I’ll tell you all you wish to know about them,’ said Ingram affably. ‘I joined them as a boy of eleven and spent four happy years there. They so imbued me with a love of theatre that I sought my livelihood in the profession.’

  ‘And you are set to rise swiftly in it, James.’

  ‘Your praise is kind. There is nobody whose judgement I would trust more readily.’

  Nicholas liked the young actor immensely and had been instrumental in getting Ingram taken on as a hired man. The latter’s talent marked him out at once as a player of high calibre and he was now given more or less regular employment by the company. It was generally accepted that he would, in time, be invited to become a sharer with Westfield’s Men and thus have a modicum of security in a wholly insecure trade.

  ‘You must have many fond memories,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘I do, Nick. It was hard work, but the joy of performance is like no other. Whether you are thirteen or thirty, it sets fire to your blood. I am forever indebted to the Chapel Children and will never speak harshly of their work.’ He flung a hostile glance at Jonas Applegarth. ‘Unlike some.’

  ‘Was Cyril Fulbeck the Master in your time?’

  ‘Not at first. He was Master of the Children of the Chapel at Windsor. It was only in my last year that he took charge of the main choir here in London.’

  ‘What manner of man is he?’

  ‘A good and honest fellow. He began as chaplain at Windsor and rose to be choirmaster. He was also a noted composer and later wrote songs for our plays. I cannot speak too warmly of him, Nick. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I have a friend whose son has been impressed by the Chapel Royal. Like you, he is being trained to act in the theatre. The boy does not follow in your footsteps, alas. Where you were happy, he is sorely oppressed and begs his father to release him in every letter he sends home.’

  Ingram sighed. ‘Things have changed at Blackfriars.’

  ‘Has Cyril Fulbeck grown stricter with his charges?’

  ‘No, Nick,’ said the other sadly. ‘He has grown older and is much hampered by sickness. It is an effort for him to fulfil his duties as choirmaster. The staging of plays has been handed over to another.’

  ‘Raphael Parsons.’

  ‘He is the manager of the Blackfriars company of boys.’

  ‘A sterner taskmaster, by all account.’

  ‘So I have heard.’

  ‘How long has he been in charge?’

  ‘Since the theatre was rebuilt and re-opened. Raphael Parsons took a lease on it and paid for the new construction. It is a fine indoor playhouse, Nick, much improved since my time there. Blackfriars may not hold as many people as we do here in the Queen’s Head but their plays are not plagued by this damnable bad weather of ours. In snow or rain, the Chapel Children can still perform.’

  ‘They hold the whip-hand over us there,’ agreed Nicholas with envy. ‘You have never met this Master Parsons, then?’

  ‘Only once, and that briefly. It was at their first performance at the new theatre. They played Mariana’s Revels and did so exceeding well. Raphael Parsons may be a tyrant but he is a true man of the theatre.’

  ‘A tyrant, you say?’

  ‘So it is voiced abroad. He is a martinet. Striving for perfection, he makes the boys work long hours and punishes them severely if they dare fall short.’

  ‘I have seen the letters I spoke of, James. They tell of harsh words and sound beatings.’

  ‘It was never so in Cyril Fulbeck’s day.’

  ‘Where might I find this Raphael Parsons?’

  ‘At the Blackfriars Theatre. He rehearses daily.’

  ‘And Master Fulbeck?’

  ‘There, too, as like as not. Master Parsons teaches the boys to be actors, but only Cyril Fulbeck can transform then into real choristers.’ Ingram’s curiosity was aroused. ‘If you need to go there, Nick, I would gladly bear you company.’

  ‘I accept that offer with thanks.’

  ‘Cyril Fulbeck is always delighted to see his old choristers. My presence may open doors that would otherwise be closed to you.’

  ‘It is settled, James. We’ll go together.’

  A rousing cheer interrupted their discussion. They turned to see that a small miracle had taken place behind them. The rain had stopped. The sun was wrestling with the clouds. Westfield’s Men shouted and clapped and stamped their feet with delight. Jonas Applegarth, soaked to the skin, was the happiest man in the yard. The Misfortunes of Marriage might after all be performed that afternoon.

  ***

  The audience that streamed into the innyard a few hours later had no notion of the frenetic activity which had preceded their arrival. Under the supervision of Nicholas Bracewell, the assistant stagekeepers swept the water off the scaffold and strewed it with dry rushes so that an attenuated rehearsal could commence. While that was in progress, the mud was brushed into the corners of the yard and the benches in the galleries were rubbed with dry cloth. George Dart, the lowliest member of the company, was given the job of wringing the damp out of their flag. When it was hoisted at two o’clock to show that a play was being performed, they wanted it to unfurl proudly in the breeze.

  Edmund Hoode was despatched to Barnaby Gill’s lodging with the fictitious tale that the latter’s role in the play had been assigned to Owen Elias instead. Professional pride was a shrewd surgeon. It effected a complete recovery in a matter of seconds and had Gill leaping from his bed of pain with a yell of indignation. Both men were soon taking their places on the stage at the Queen’s Head.

  Only a double blessing could have made the performance possible. Not only did the storm abate but a second wonder occurred. Jonas Applegarth behaved with impeccable restraint. Instead of cajoling the players, he watched the rehearsal in silence. Instead of unsettling the company with his fearsome presence, he was kept out of their way by Nicholas while the actors snatched refreshment before the performance.

  By the time that Lord Westfield and his cronies took their places on the cushioned chairs in their privileged position in the lower gallery, all was in readiness. Bright sunshine turned the thatch into spun gold. Ladies and gallants filled the seating with a veritable riot of colour. The book holder made a final check behind the scenes, then signalled to Peter Digby. Music played and The Misfortunes of Marriage began.

  The Induction had the spectators laughing within a matter of seconds. Four apprentices—Martin Yeo, John Tallis, Stephen Judd and Richard Honeydew—attired as choirboys, burst onto the stage i
n the middle of a fierce argument over who should take the leading roles in a play about Samson. They fought over Samson’s club, each grabbing it in turns to strike at the others. Since all four of them were far too young and puny to convince in the Herculean role, the audience shook with mirth.

  Competition for the part of Samson was matched by four-sided rejection of Delilah. None of the boys wished to don the long red wig of the betrayer, and they threw it at each other continually like a dead cat, hideous to the touch. In the space of a short scene, the stage had been filled with violent action, the audience’s attention had been seized and they had been given, as they would later come to realise, the central theme of the comedy.

  The interplay between marriage and religion fascinated Jonas Applegarth. It did not matter that Samson and Delilah were lovers rather than man and wife. The Biblical story was ingrained in the minds of all who watched. While the standees in the yard loved the wild antics of the boys, the sharper minds in the galleries also relished the satire on the children’s theatre companies. When the scene ended with Richard Honeydew, the youngest of the apprentices, in the guise of Samson, and with lantern-jawed John Tallis, the fattest of them, as Delilah, the deficiencies of the Chapel Children and the Children of St Paul’s were writ large. Championing the adult company with whom he worked, Jonas Applegarth mocked their fledgling rivals mercilessly.

  The Misfortunes of Marriage was a glorious romp with a serious undertone. Its plot revolved around Sir Marcus Coldbed, a wealthy landowner in search of a pretty young wife to satisfy his almost uncontrollable lust. When he marries the beauteous Araminta, he discovers that she is a strict Roman Catholic with a rooted objection to physical contact and an absolute horror of sexual intercourse. To keep her lecherous husband at bay, Araminta employs her Jesuit confessor, Father Monfredo, as a holy bodyguard, allowing him to sleep in the anteroom to her bedchamber in order to protect her virtue. Shuddering with comic frustration, Sir Marcus spends his wedding night in a freezing-cold bed.

  Out of sheer desperation, Sir Marcus turns for help to the weird Doctor Epididymis, a notorious mountebank who poses as astrologer, alchemist and necromancer, asking him to provide a potion that will send Father Monfredo to sleep and a powder that will arouse his wife’s passion to such a point that she will demand uninhibited consummation. Potion and powder are given to the wrong victims, and it is Araminta who slumbers for twenty-four hours while her aged confessor chases every woman in sight like a mountain goat. Sir Marcus Coldbed returns to a cold bed yet again.