There was a tap at my door, accompanied by a whispered ‘Master Revill? Nick?’
I recognised Lady Alice’s low tones. I picked up my candle and moved to the door, scarcely a stride away. I was a guest but not an important one – a player, for God’s sake – so my accommodation was at the top of the house in a tiny monk-like room. Lady Alice stood outside, dressed as she had been at supper and during the household prayers which followed.
‘May I come in?’
She leaned forward as she spoke so that I caught a whiff of her breath, still scented with the meats of supper, and glimpsed her small teeth, not too discoloured and with only a few gaps, considering her age.
For answer I drew to one side. You cannot refuse the lady of the house. My room was small, as I have said, but even so she brushed past me closer than required as she entered and I felt the soft graze of her breasts. ‘William isn’t here, I’m afraid,’ I said too quickly. Once or twice her son and I had sat up of an evening, discussing the philosophy of playing as well as exchanging gossip.
‘I know. It was you I wanted to see.’
She shivered slightly. There was no fire in the room and the casement was open. I made to shut it. From the window, positioned high up at the back of the house, I could see the river’s black sheen.
‘I thought that all country people disliked the night air.’
I had been brought up to believe that the night air was indeed unwholesome but I felt that the remark was intended somehow to ‘place’ me. I was no true Londoner, but a rustic.
There was a truckle-bed and a trunk in the room. I gestured nervously at the trunk which was covered with a thick cloth and served me as table. She sat down daintily. I perched uneasily on the bed, lower than her, and waited. She picked up my little notebook and glanced at its contents by the flickering candlelight.
‘Why, this is not English,’ she said.
‘It is Greek,’ I said, praying that she could not understand those symbols and not wanting to explain the feeble code I employed whereby each term was simply transposed into the letters of the Greek alphabet.
‘An educated man.’
‘Within my limits, my lady. My father insisted that I learn Latin and Greek from an early age. He undertook my tuition himself.’
‘Did he intend you for a schoolmaster?’
‘Possibly. That or the church.’
‘So you became a player.’
‘I did not set out to contradict his wishes.’
‘Then you must have been a very unusual son.’
‘My father – and my mother – are dead, but I like to think that he would not wholly condemn the place that I now find myself in, I mean with the Chamberlain’s Men.’
‘Ah yes. We heard at supper just how highly you esteem the stage and your company.’
I was slightly embarrassed by this reminder of my effusions at table, brought on in part by drink. I simply nodded in reply. I was aware too that, although I defined myself as a Chamberlain’s man, I was only one for as long as Jack Wilson was away at his dying mother’s. I resolved to be a little more sparing in future in giving the world my opinions on plays and players.
Lady Alice put down my little black book and leaned back on my trunk as if she were quite at ease.
‘I was interested to hear what you had to say about Master Shakespeare. I have been curious about him ever since I read his “Venus and Adonis”. You know that story?’
Is there anyone the length and breadth of this land who can read, and does not know Master WS’s “Venus and Adonis”? That tale of male reluctance and a ripe woman’s urging, whose theme is the chase – the hunting of the beautiful boy whose real wish is to hunt the boar. The book has been out in the world for a good few years now and kept our book-makers and our booksellers busy, for it has yet to slip into those Lethean waters which await all printed matter. How many young men have panted to its verses, as I have, and wished themselves smothered by the attentions of an older woman? How many unrequited lovers, boy and girl, have pored and sighed over its pages, seeing in the indifference of the chase-mad young man to Venus’s overtures an image of their own rejection?
‘I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:
Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower where the pleasant fountains lie.’
As she repeated these words from Venus’s attempted seduction of Adonis, Lady Alice leaned towards where I sat opposite and a little below her. Either of us could have touched the other one without quite straightening our arms.
‘If I remember it correctly,’ she said.
Again I caught the layered sweetness of her breath, but with a hint of something gross and yet stirring below. In the uncertain light of the candle her white front swelled out like a soft siege-machine, designed to tear away at the firmest bulwark. My eyes swam and I felt as if the earth had grown suddenly unsteady beneath the bed I sat on.
‘ “I know not love,” quoth he, “nor will not know it,
Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it . . .” ’
Quoth I – but my voice was not altogether steady as I drew the lines up from the well of memory. But she was able to give as good as she got.
‘At this Adonis smiles as in disdain,
That in each cheek appears a pretty dimple.’
I only just prevented myself from reaching up to feel for the dimples (which I do not have). The smile, disdainful or not, was already fastened on my face. It occurred to me that this was the second time in twenty-four hours that I had listened to someone reciting verses of unrequited passion. The difference between Master Mink and Lady Alice, however, was as great as the difference between the latter’s poetry and Master WS’s. Rather than continuing with the exchange of lines from Master WS’s V & A, I said, ‘You should have been a player.’
‘Boys make better women than we do. It is easier to believe they are what they pretend to be. A woman on stage would be a distraction.’
I was surprised at the earnest reply. It was as if she had actually given thought to the preposterous idea that a woman could play a woman’s part.
‘One day perhaps . . .’ She allowed her voice to trail away. ‘Now tell me, Master Revill, or Adonis, for you have something fresh-faced about you, something countrified, and besides a woman who is old enough to be your mother can be so familiar – tell me what is the boar that you’re hunting here?’
‘I’m not sure I understand, my lady.’
‘You do, but I will say it more plainly. Your presence in this house. Were you sent for? Is it of your own free will?’
‘Lady Alice . . . your son heard that I was embarrassed for lodgings and kindly offered to put me up here . . . for a short while. In fact I was considering just now that I ought to return.’
‘Return?’
‘To Southwark. When I have to leave the Chamberlain’s Men I am more likely to find further employment south of the river than on this side of it. There are more playhouses there.’
‘Why do you have to leave the Chamberlain’s?’
I felt myself reddening. Fortunately, the room was dim. Her face, with its firm, decided features, was suffused with colour too.
‘Because I am standing in the shoes of a player who is absent for a week or two only.’
‘I see. I thought from the way you were talking at supper that you were one of the pillars of the company.’
I blushed more furiously. To cover myself, I gabbled, ‘Jack Wilson’s mother is sick. She is dying, I believe. In Norfolk. In Norwich.’
‘Perhaps he will not come back.’
This was, of course, the hope that had passed through my mind, and more than once.
‘No, no,’ I said.
‘Yes, yes, you mean.’
‘Am I so transparent, my lady?’
‘Not transparent enough, Master Revill, I think.’
‘I do not understand you.’
‘Have you found what you’re looking for?’
‘I don’t know what I am looking for,’ I said, truthfully.
‘That is as good as admitting that you are looking for something. Remember what happened to Adonis in the chase after the boar,’ she said. She reached across – we were still less than an arm’s-length from one another – and cupped her hand above my crotch.
‘And nuzzling in his flank, the loving swine
Sheathed unaware the tusk in his soft groin.’
I was too surprised to respond for myself, although my member began to show a mind of its own under her near-touch. Lady Alice seemed pleased and also amused.
‘What Adonis would not do for the woman who wanted him was, alas, done to him. Thus was Adonis slain.’
She removed her hand, and so I was half relieved, half regretful.
‘Not a word, Master Revill.’
I wasn’t certain whether this was an injunction or a question. Before I might have asked Lady Alice what she meant she had slipped away from my room.
This wasn’t my last visitor of the evening, however. Moments later there came another tap, and my heart stirred for I thought it might be my lady returning to continue our discourse of “Venus and Adonis”. Yet the tap was less confident. I went to the door, candle in hand, and saw the creased features of Francis, the wiry little servant who had been the first to discover the body of Sir William Eliot in the garden. He looked troubled and began to gesture before he started to speak.
‘Oh excuse me, sir.’
‘That’s all right, Francis.’
‘You remember that you was asking me questions about Sir William and how I found him?’
‘You were very informative.’
‘Thank you, sir. And now it’s gone.’
‘I don’t absolutely follow you, Francis.’
‘My shirt.’
Here he drew out in the air a T-shape which I took to be the garment in question.
‘Your shirt has gone? Ah, your shirt. The one you were wearing when you found your late master.’
‘Sir William, yes. It has gone from the trunk which lies under my bed.’
‘Perhaps one of the other servants in your room has taken it.’
‘I have asked Alfred and Will and Peter and they have said no and besides they are bigger men than me so why should they take my clothes when they would not fit?’
His brow creased like rumpled washing.
It seemed as though the unfortunate Francis expected me to do something about his missing shirt, even that he held me partly responsible for its disappearance, perhaps because we had previously discussed the item of clothing. It was curious, I thought, that the garment he was wearing when he found Sir William – and the sleeve of which he had employed to wipe away a silvery mark from the dead man’s cheek – should apparently have vanished. Or it was not curious at all, and I was imagining all sorts of oddness where all was straight and even.
‘I’m sorry to hear this, Francis, but I, er, expect your shirt will turn up again,’ I said, sounding to my own ears like some harried mother reassuring a small child. ‘It is a small thing, after all.’
‘A man like me may measure his worth in the world by his shirts, and one or two further items,’ said Francis with dignity. Having got this off his chest, he withdrew.
It must not be thought that, even while I was busy in the house of Sir Thomas and Lady Alice trying to discover something about the death of her first husband and growing more and more certain that there was nothing to discover, I was undutiful in my playing. Quite apart from Master Burbage’s warning of the sanctions that waited on those who missed rehearsals, I had something stronger to urge me across the river every morning. My love of the profession, my hopes for advancement in it, both ensured that I was prompt in attendance. However small my parts, whether I was playing a respectable citizen or a boorish rustic, a Roman poet or a courtly poisoner, I was careful to have my lines off pat and not to trespass beyond the bounds of what I was set there to say and do. A licensed clown can carry out much of his own business, as I had indicated to Sir Thomas and Lady Alice, while the leaders of our company such as Master Burbage and Master Phillips have their own style which the crowd loves. But the newcomer does best when he holds quiet to his place while looking all about him. Besides all this, there was an air of intentness and responsibility which shaped everything that the Chamberlain’s did, in contrast to my time with the Admiral’s Men. It was as if we knew that we were engaged in a serious enterprise – why, we were holding the mirror up to nature.
True, the reason why many of our audience came to see us in pieces such as A Somerset Tragedy was because the plays were full of what Master Mink called fighting and fucking and fury. Burbage & co could not have afforded to turn their back on this gaudy stuff even if they’d wanted to. Nor do I believe that they would have wished it. To be a player, however elevated and respectable, is always to have the smell of the crowd in your nostrils, and that is a stench which you grow to love. Sometimes from the boards I would look out across the press, the sea of bobbing heads, bare and bonneted, the clouds of smoke wreathing upwards from dozens of pipes, the gallants who took their seats on the sides of the stage, the shadowy ranks of the galleries where well-to-do folk like the Eliots paid for their privacy and (perhaps) pleasures unconnected with the play. Underneath the lines being declaimed, I heard that continuous susurration which accompanies a crowd and which falls away altogether only when a prince dies or a courtesan gets her come-uppance. Out there in the press, bargains soft and hard were being negotiated, favours exacted, gossip exchanged, pockets plundered, ale gulped, pippins picked at by dainty teeth. Yet for all that, the press or congregation was with us and we with them. The Globe was like some mighty ship, and its glowing white walls were her sails, spread to take us into uncharted territory, while the utterance of speakers on stage and off, sacred and profane, was the breath that filled those sails.
And, no, even in the midst of these elevated thoughts, I did not forget my lines.
Two days after Francis had come to see me, anxious for his missing shirt, he was found face down on the muddy foreshore which lay between the wall of the Eliots’ garden and the river. He had evidently slipped and struck his head on a large stone embedded in the ooze. The tide might have lifted him up overnight and carted the body off altogether so that he was never seen again, but he had fetched up against a rotten pile that protruded from water like a diseased finger. As the tide receded he had dropped into the mud again. He was discovered by a boatman who recognised his crinkled features and wiry frame as those of one of the Eliots’ servants.
ACT III
This was too easy.
I arranged to meet him using Adrian as a go-between. Adrian is serviceable and malicious, and believes that he has a touch of the demonic about him. Hence the black apparel and saturnine gaze. He pulls his hat upon his brows, and looks and looks. He sees himself as a plotter, a cunning politician. Certainly he spent his time in my lady Alice’s household lining his own pockets. It was only William’s blindness to what was going on under his nose that enabled Adrian to remain so long in his position as steward – and it was only a matter of time before he was caught out and exposed. Our player had a hand in that business, and by his piece of legerdemain exposed the steward as a common thief. I am amused that Adrian considers himself to be an innocent in all this and blames the player for dishonesty. I remind him that he really did intend to steal my lady’s necklace. He reminds me that it was I who suborned him to steal it. Nevertheless, Adrian hates our player (so do I) and is waiting for a chance to make him atone. This fact may be useful.
In the meantime, Adrian is down on his luck despite all that pocket-lining, and for a consideration will carry out any small task, provided it be devious. I told him to accost Francis in private, and arrange a meeting between us. I did not want to see Francis face to face myself. He would have wondered. He might have taken fright and refused me an interview.
Adrian had to provide some vague talk about a shirt, and the offer of a little money if he would see me alone for a moment. Not too much money, mind, because nothing rouses a man’s suspicions so quickly as an over-large reward for a small business. Without saying who was behind this, Adrian was to tell Francis that someone had important matters to communicate to him – to do with the shirt. With so little a thing may a man be ensnared. I almost wish that the shirt had been something slighter, perhaps a handkerchief. Why, a man’s life might be laid down for a handkerchief.
The little servant came out of the side gate of the main garden. It was late in an autumn evening and a thin, insinuating mist had started to rise from the river. He did not like being out at this hour, no doubt believing, like many simple souls, that he would be blasted by the night air. If it hadn’t been for the promise of money, and more importantly, the mention of his shirt I don’t suppose he would have appeared at all. And oh the shirt! You would have thought from his anxiety that it had been woven of the finest holland rather than the coarse cheap thing it actually was – dowlas, filthy dowlas. I would not have have worn it on my back for ten pounds. Francis saw me standing in the shadows – or rather he saw my shape.
‘Master—’
I could hear the apprehension in his voice. He was shifting around like an animal about to be slaughtered. I was afraid he was going to bolt back through the door, so I put on my calmest, most reassuring manner.
‘No master now but a friend, Francis.’
‘I hope so, sir.’
‘Master Adrian has talked much of you and tells me what a fine servant you are.’
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