‘Yes.’
‘I'm groom to Sir Philip Morton.’
‘Yes?’ I braced myself for flight, but I knew it would be difficult in my stage-clothes.
‘Sir Philip liked your acting,’ said the groom.
‘He – he doesn't want to see me, does he? I couldn't possibly –’
‘See you?’ The man snorted. ‘What would he want to see a boy like you for? No; he just told me to give you this.’
And he walked off, with his bow-legged groom's walk, leaving me with a box of sweets in my hand. I looked after him, speechless, and, when he had gone, everyone wondered why I burst out laughing and leant back against the wall, unable to stop.
Five minutes later, when I had just stepped out of my costume and was standing in my own short pants and shirt, Burbage appeared.
‘Good lad,’ he said briefly. ‘You just saved us.’
I should have been immensely pleased, but I saw a look in his eye.
‘Where's that rascal?’ he demanded.
‘Who d'you mean?’ I said stupidly, knowing only too well.
‘I'm going to thrash him within an inch of his life,’ he said with a terrible gusto, and I knew he meant it.
I put my feet into my hose, pulled them up, and began fastening the points at my waist line. I was wondering what had happened to Kit. Had she gone home? That was the best place for her till Burbage's wrath had abated. He wasn't safe company at present.
‘I think she – he wasn't feeling well,’ I started, but Burbage cut me short.
‘Don't make excuses for the little beast!’ he raged. ‘There is no excuse for throwing up a part without notice. If the cursed boy didn't act like a – like an angel, I'd throw him out neck and crop, and never let him set foot in the theatre again. As it is, I'm going to give him the thrashing of his misspent life.’
Kit chose that very moment to swagger in, looking as pleased as if she'd just laid an egg. All her fear had gone. She was on top of the world.
‘Congratulations, Pete! You –’
Then she saw Burbage turning grimly to face her, and her jaw dropped.
‘You'd better run, Kit!’ I shouted. But Burbage stepped between her and the door.
‘Well?’ he said, and that one syllable held as much terror as a sentence of execution.
‘I'm so sorry, sir,’ said Kit, ‘but you see –’
‘You are going to be sorry,’ he corrected her. ‘Very sorry. Sorrier than you have ever been about anything in your life.’
‘But – but,’ she stammered, ‘Peter was so good – ’
‘He might not have been,’ said Burbage. ‘You didn't know.’ He moved slowly towards her, his hands outstretched.
‘You mustn't,’ I shouted, clutching his arm. ‘You mustn't really, Mr Burbage. Listen. Kit isn't –’
‘Shut up, Peter! said Kit fiercely. She was determined to take what was coming to her. Perhaps she thought it was going to be a mere spanking; I think she had never seen a boy thrashed by an angry man till the blood flows.
‘Get out of the way,’ said Burbage quietly, and with one jerk of his arm he sent me tumbling into a corner. He was towering above her now. ‘You disobedient, worthless, disloyal, irresponsible, ungrateful, unprofessional –’
‘What's this?’ Shakespeare's voice came smoothly from the doorway. ‘Is this a new punishment, Dick? Sentenced to receive a hundred and one adjectives! Better than strokes, anyhow.’
‘He's going to get the strokes as well.’
Shakespeare crossed the room and took his friend gently by the arm. ‘No, Dick.’
‘Leave this to me, Will. You're too kind-hearted. The young actor scoundrel must have his lesson. The first rule of an actor is never to let down his company.’
Shakespeare didn't move from his side. ‘If anyone is to teach him the rules of acting, let it be I.’
‘You? My dear Will, you may write like the Muse her-self, but when it comes to acting –’
‘I bow to you every time,’ Shakespeare admitted, with a smile. ‘None the less, these two boys are my apprentices. No one else in the company lays a finger on them.’
‘All right.’ Burbage stepped back with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘So be it. But it's your job to keep your apprentices in order. If we have any more of this nonsense, out of the company they go.’
‘Leave them to me. There will be no more nonsense.’
Burbage stalked out. Kit looked at Shakespeare meekly.
‘Are you going to thrash me?’
He laughed. ‘You know perfectly well I'm not – my dear.’
We both gasped, Kit and I. He closed the door and motioned to us to sit down.
‘I guessed some days ago,’ he said. ‘No boy could have played Juliet as you did. Though,’ he added, with a friendly glance at me, ‘Peter echoed you very cleverly. Now, won't you tell me all about it?’
And, to my amazement, Kit (who had kept so many secrets from me all this time) poured out her whole story. As I said before, Shakespeare was an understanding man. You felt you could tell him things.
‘I was a bit like Juliet,’ she said. ‘I s'pose that's why the part came easy to me. My guardian wanted me to marry a man I didn't like –’
‘You're young,’ said Shakespeare, raising his eyebrows.
‘Thirteen. Nearly as old as Juliet. Anyhow, the wedding wasn't to be for a year or two, but the formal engagement was all planned ready.’
‘And Romeo?’ The author's eyes twinkled.
Kit laughed scornfully. ‘There wasn't any Romeo. I don't want to marry anybody. So all I did was to run away from my guardian's house one evening as soon as it was dark, and then I joined Desmond's company as a boy, and you know all the rest. I mean to stop away from home till I'm old enough to please myself, and not be bullied by any of them.’
‘I pity the man who marries you against your will,’ chuckled Shakespeare.
‘Why should he want to?’ I asked. It sounded daft to me.
‘It may surprise you to know,’ said Kit, turning to me with great dignity, ‘but I'm extraordinarily well connected. And when I come of age I inherit a magnificent estate.’
‘So there!’ cried Shakespeare, with a triumphant grin. ‘Now we know why the man wanted such a quaint little imp for his wife.’
‘Pig!’ she said.
‘You still haven't explained, Miss Katharine Russell, why you were seized with panic just before the play began and risked ruining our whole performance.’
‘I'm terribly sorry,’ she answered, and for the first time she looked genuinely ashamed of herself. ‘I was so frightened I forgot everything else.’
‘But why?’
‘The man who wants to marry me was in the audience. I knew he'd recognize me at once if he saw me dressed as a girl.’
‘What's his name?’ asked Shakespeare.
‘I know!’ I cried, seeing daylight suddenly. ‘Sir Philip Morton!’
11. The House of the Yellow Gentleman
IT was good to have finished with secrets, at any rate between Kit and me and our friend. When Kit heard the full story of my own dealings with Sir Philip, she was full of apologies for sending me into the danger she had avoided herself. But, as I pointed out, the cases were different. I, as Juliet looked utterly unlike myself. Kit, in the same costume, looked far more like Katharine Russell than ever she did in her everyday disguise as a boy.
‘The man's a brute,’ she said viciously. ‘He doesn't care twopence about me, really – treats me as a child. All he wants to do is to lay hands on my estate. That's why he tried to fix up a formal public engagement before I was old enough to realize how serious it all was. He thought I wouldn't dare break it off, and soon as I was fifteen or so he'd marry me and take everything.’
‘What was your guardian thinking of?’ asked Shakespeare.
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don't know. Mr Norman used to be so nice; he was Dad's best friend. But since he got in with Sir Philip…’ She paused, and actually
shivered. ‘Sir Philip's queer. He seems to have a power over people. He's the only man I've ever met who really scares me.’
Shakespeare thought for a moment, stroking his tiny pointed beard. ‘I'll speak to the door-man,’ he said at length. ‘If Sir Philip comes to the theatre again, you'll get word at once and you won't go on. It's a confounded nuisance, but it's better than losing you entirely.’
‘What about Mr Burbage?’
‘I'll speak to him, too. No, I won't tell him about you, my dear; that's a secret best locked in our bosoms. But I'll think of something.’ He chuckled. ‘They all make fun of me, you know, because I never invent my own stories for my plays. But I'll cook up some tale, never you fear.’
Luckily, our anxiety was soon removed, for two days later we heard that Sir Philip had left his lodgings for Cumberland, and it was not likely that he would make the long journey again for many a day. I think that, much as he liked London life, he wasn't too popular with the old Queen and did not move in Court circles. He wasn't a man who could bear to play second fiddle to anyone, so for the most part he preferred to busy himself in Cumberland, where he certainly had plenty to do, what with stealing common lands, scheming to marry heiresses, and practising even more ambitious villainies which at that time we didn't suspect.
It was fine to know that he was safely started on the long northward road. We didn't realize how soon his shadow was to fall across our path again….
Kit played Juliet at last. The town went mad over her – as we'd known they would. Even Burbage, as Romeo, was quite eclipsed, but he was too great a player to be jealous. That night he and Shakespeare took us out to supper at a tavern, and we ate till it was a wonder our skins didn't split like sausages. Burbage got sad after a few glasses of wine and looked mournfully at Kit.
‘It was great acting,’ he admitted, ‘but what future has the boy got?’
‘What future?’ Shakespeare echoed.
The manager sighed. ‘All very nice – pretty as a girl – the best boy we've ever had for the part. But you know how they all go.’ He turned to Kit and addressed her solemnly. ‘In another year or two, young man, you'll be sprouting black hairs on your lip and chin, and your voice will crack. Of course, you may get over it, and blossom forth in male parts; but somehow they never do, they never do… I can see you as Juliet, but never as Romeo.’
Shakespeare was chuckling. ‘Don't meet your troubles half-way, Dick. I'll bet you a pound that Kit has no beard ten years from now.’
‘No, thanks.’ Burbage poured himself more wine. ‘The theatrical business is the only gamble I touch – and it's quite enough, believe me.’
‘But who'd give it up?’ said Desmond challengingly.
‘I would.’ That was Shakespeare. We all looked at him.
‘You?’ cried Burbage. ‘But, man, you're going to be great; you're writing as well as Marlowe now. You may even write better some day. You wouldn't give it all up?’
‘I think so… when I'm ready.’ Shakespeare looked into the crackling fire, and as he went on quietly talking I knew he was looking straight through the flames and the black chimney into Warwickshire. ‘That house I bought last year at Stratford –’
‘New Place?’
‘Yes. That's the home for me, not those poky rooms in Bishopsgate. I want a garden. I want a river; the Thames isn't a river here; it's a street and a sewer and a cemetery!’ He turned suddenly to me. ‘What do you say, Peter? Where do you mean to end your days? London – or Cumberland?’
I smiled at him, and we seemed like two countrymen meeting in a city crowd. I thought of Blencathra under a blue satin sky, and Skiddaw Forest when the heather is new, and Derwentwater mirroring all the fells, and young larches standing out against a hillside sugared with snow… and a thousand such things. And I said huskily: ‘Cumberland, please God!’
‘Me, too,’ said Kit. I felt very glad that she agreed with me.
Not that London wasn't a grand place just then, with Christmas coming and the Lord Chamberlain's Men commanded to act before the Queen at Court on Twelfth Night. That was the climax of nearly a fortnight's hard work and festivities: when we weren't acting to crammed, good-natured audiences, we were enjoying ourselves at Shakespeare's place in Bishopsgate, or the Desmonds' rooms at the Flower de Luce, or skating on the ponds out Kensington way. But I shall never forget Twelfth Night at Whitehall Palace, with our stage set in the great hall. It was all hung with holly and ivy and bays and rosemary and mistletoe, and a thousand candles winking on the ladies' jewels, and the Queen sitting just in front of us, her silken skirts curving out around her like a cascade of silver, her great ruff framing her face like a halo…. We did Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, which he had written to please her, because she wanted to see the fat man, Falstaff, in love. Kit was Anne Page and I was Mistress Quickly. Several times I made the Queen herself laugh right out loud. We got ten pounds for the whole show, which was good, but nothing extraordinary. The Queen was very economical, and felt that we really ought to be satisfied with the advertisement we got through being her favourite actors. It didn't make any difference to us apprentices, anyhow; what pleased us was the marvellous food they gave us, dishes left over from the banquet – roast peacock and swan, buttered oranges, tansy, and ‘snow’, which was mostly cream, sugar, and white of egg, and slipped down very pleasantly when we were stuffed with the heavier things. It's true I was rather ill during the night afterwards, and Kit called me a fat Christmas hog, but it was worth it.
Winter passed, and spring followed. Soon we should move to our summer quarters, the new Globe Theatre. Shakespeare was writing a play about King Henry the Fifth, which was likely to be popular because war was in the news that year, owing to Lord Essex's campaign in Ireland. Kit was to be the French Princess Katharine, for she had to talk French, which she did easily, because she'd had a good tutor at home. I was Mistress Quickly again, for she came into the new play, too, and I'd made rather a speciality of her character. We hoped that with any luck we'd get a command to play before the Queen.
I remember we got our copies of the script just after May Day. And a strange thing happened, which set a number of other strange things in motion.
Perhaps I ought to explain that by this time we were quite well-known London characters – anyhow, in the two theatre districts of Finsbury and Southwark, and, of course, among the courtiers and fashionable people who came regularly to see our company. That's why I thought nothing amiss when the yellow gentleman started to speak to me outside St Paul's. It was quite usual for perfect strangers to greet us, and say something complimentary.
I didn't know his name, but I called him the yellow gentleman because of his yellow doublet, all slashed very fashionably, in some material that must have cost a fortune. He looked a very fine person, and I was fool enough to feel quite flattered to be seen talking to him.
‘Mistress Quickly, I think?’ he said, with a smile. ‘And Juliet's Nurse, and Lucetta, and –’ He rattled off half a dozen parts I regularly played. ‘And what are you at work on now?’
I told him about Henry the Fifth – there was no secret about it – and the probable date of the first performance. He looked disappointed.
‘What a pity! I shall miss it. I shall be in Italy by then. Is this the script?’
I passed it to him. He scanned the opening lines.
‘O, for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!…’
he read softly under his breath. ‘Magnificent stuff!’ he exclaimed. ‘How like my luck to miss it!’ He read on silently, fairly eating the play. At last he lifted his eyes with a sigh. ‘I suppose you couldn't spare this copy, just for this evening? If I can't see it, I should like to read it.’
It was difficult to refuse. Anyhow, he gave me a shilling. If shillings are as scarce in your life as they are in mine, you'd have done the same.
He'd only just left me when Kit came along; we'd arranged to meet in St. Paul's Churchyard, and
of course she was late. That was the one trick of hers she could never get rid of.
‘Idiot! Country bumpkin!’ she said pleasantly when she heard. ‘What was his name? Where does he live or lodge?’
‘I – I didn't ask.’
‘Oh, Peter! You do need me to look after you!’
‘It's quite all right,’ I protested. ‘He's going to meet me here, in the very same spot, tomorrow morning at nine.’
‘He never will,’ she said decidedly.
Nor did he. Kit came with me to keep the appointment, and we waited till the clock struck ten, but the yellow gentleman did not appear.
‘He's a pirate,’ said Kit, ‘a playhouse pirate. He'll sell that play to someone else, and they'll rush it into production and do it before we do.’
I began to have a terrible conviction that she was right. I wondered how on earth I should confess to Shakespeare that I had sold his new play for a shilling.
‘Cheer up,’ said Kit. ‘I may be wrong. He may have overslept or something. Anyhow, he knows who you are, and if he's honest he can return the script to you at the theatre.’
Of course he didn't. And we both knew he wouldn't. There seemed nothing left to do but go to Shakespeare and confess. If he thought the yellow gentleman was a pirate, he could hurry on our own production and bring it out before the others. That would be a great pity though, because it was now practically fixed that the first performance should be given to the Queen, and that date couldn't be altered because the Court was on one of its periodical ‘progresses’, or tours, round the country.
We were walking down Fleet Street, Kit and I, thrashing out the matter for the sixteenth time, and I had just said I'd go straight to Bishopsgate and tell him, when – wonder of wonders! – I saw the yellow gentleman.
‘There he is!’ I cried, and grabbed her arm.
‘Where? Who? Oh, I see.’
He was riding the other way, out of the city. I shouted, but the rumble of carts and the cries of the shopmen were too loud. He rode on without turning his head.
‘After him,’ I gasped, and we began to trot, threading our way through the passers-by and the bales of merchandise on the pavement. Mounted though he was, he could be overtaken if we hurried. Until he was through Temple Bar, and well along the Strand, he couldn't canter. Of course, if he reached the open country, we'd never catch him.
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