by Ann Swinfen
The show was over.
There followed a moment’s stunned silence. Even the dullest person in that audience must have understood what they had just seen, even without being able to follow a word of the Italian dialogue. Then a great burst of cheering and clapping broke out from the standing audience, while those of us seated at the front on stools clapped dutifully as well. I suppose it must have occurred to others besides myself that someone might be watching us through a peephole in the curtains, to check on our reactions. All through the performance I had quite forgotten Robert Poley. Suddenly I remembered him again. He was part of this. But in what way, and to what end?
What was the purpose of this elaborate show, which must have demanded much money and effort to prepare? I was certain now that it was meant for more than simple comedy. There is some licence in the playhouse for a little good natured mockery of the great and famous, but never, ever, of the Queen. And this had been more than simple mockery. As we stood up and waited until the crowd had cleared enough for us to fight our way out of the tent, which had begun to feel as claustrophobic as a prison cell, I tried to reason out what it had all meant.
Part of the message was that, despite the policies of the Queen and Council, England was in love with popery and, given the chance, would go off with it, hand in hand like the lovers in the play. Anti-Semitism was blatant in the depiction of Ruy Lopez and Dom Antonio, with a hearty mixture of the ingrained English hatred of foreigners. The pompous idiocy of Essex had been shown with an unflinching accuracy, while Norreys simply seemed hopelessly incompetent. Burghley was a bumbling old fool. But the worst attack was on Drake and the Queen herself. Those promises to the common soldiers and sailors which were slyly betrayed – this was all too close to this very morning’s confrontation between the makeshift army and the Lord Mayor. There must have been collusion, but what did that signify?
At last we were able to struggle through the last of the crowd and regain the open air. It was still hot, but at least I felt I could breath again. By unspoken consent we made our way along the lane of shops to a booth selling small ale and found a couple of benches out of the way of the passing fairgoers. Ambrose came across to us with a lad carrying a tray of ale mugs. When the lad was gone, Ambrose sat down heavily and looked at his mother.
‘Well?’ he said.
She shook her head, giving a nod toward the younger children. She was right. Better not to worry them. I realised that all the adults had grasped the meaning of that sinister charade. Peter looked worried. His position depended on the favour of the governors of the hospital. He must hope he had not been seen coming out of the puppet show.
I looked back up the lane to where the puppeteers’ tent stood at the end of the row. It was laced shut again, but it was not empty, for I could see the signs of elbows or shoulders bumping against the canvas from within. Some of the audience had clearly remained behind. I did not like the smell of this.
‘Do you want to go home, Mama?’ Ambrose asked.
‘No, no!’ Cecilia and Tabitha were dismayed, tugging at their mother’s sleeves.
‘We’ve only just come!’ Anthony said, glaring at his elder brother. ‘You came yesterday and again this morning. We have done nothing but watch those horrible puppets talking foreign gibberish. I want to see the Fair! Mama, there is supposed to be a bear who will catch apples if you throw them to him. And there is a fire eater and jugglers, and fortune tellers.’
‘We want to go to the toy shop,’ Tabitha said. ‘Kit promised, didn’t you, Kit?’
‘Aye, I did.’ I shifted my gaze from the puppeteers’ tent to the toy stall. Even from here I could see that the counter had been lowered again, and a cluster of mothers and children had gathered in front of it.
‘I think it is open now, Tabby,’ I said. It would be interesting, I thought, to discover whether Nicholas Borecroft could be persuaded to say anything about the puppet show or his part in it. Did I dare mention that I had seen him with Robert Poley?
‘I will take the girls to the toy shop if you wish, Sara,’ I said.
‘We’ll all come.’ Ambrose was already getting to his feet.
‘Of course.’ Mistress Hawes smiled condescending at the two little girls. ‘The children must have some toys after sitting quietly through that horrid puppet show. It was horrid, wasn’t it, Ambrose?’
‘Ah, indeed.’ Ambrose looked flustered. I wondered whether he suspected, as I now did, that Mistress Margaret Hawes had not, after all, grasped the meaning of what we had been watching. Her father might own a coach, but perhaps she was not very clever.
Sara had noticed Peter and Helen exchanging glances. ‘The young people will not all want to come with the children. We need not stay together. There is something for everyone at the Fair.’
Indeed, I thought, you speak truly, Sara. Something for the decent citizens of London, but something also for those who may have treachery on their minds. I wondered who those people were, who had stayed behind in the tent.
Peter and Helen decided they would stroll amongst the shops and perhaps buy a fairing before Peter needed to return to his work at the hospital, so we bade them farewell. I thought Peter seems somewhat relieved to escape from our company. He had surely recognised who the marionette Il Dottore was meant to be. It could be embarrassing to be seen in the company of Ruy Lopez’s family.
At the toy stall Cecilia and Tabitha were entranced with everything on display, and Nicholas Borecroft, I observed, went out of his way to charm them, and Sara too.
‘Fair lady!’ he cried. ‘You cannot be the mother of this great tall young man!’
He waved his hand at Ambrose and pulled a comical face. I saw that Ambrose was prepared to be offended again, but, like Anne, Sara merely laughed.
‘What have you to show my little girls, toy man?’
‘I have babies of the fairest sort, madam, kept only for my best customers.’
He went through into the inner room of his stall and came back with a box covered all over with fancy paper, like the new wall paper Ruy had installed in some of his rooms. Cecilia and Tabitha were standing on tiptoe, trying to see over the counter as he reverently lifted out two dolls and laid them down under the girls’ very noses. They had carved wooden heads and I wondered for a moment whether they had been made by the puppet masters, but I decided these simpering maidens were not the puppeteers’ style of carving at all.
‘Real hair, you see?’ Borecroft ran his finger down a glued-on wig of brown hair, which had been tightly curled. It hardly looked very natural, but if it was not horse hair, it might well have been real hair. Poor girls of the streets will often sell their thick hair for the making of wigs intended for ladies of quality whose own hair has turned grey or grown thin. Better that than selling their bodies.
‘These are babies of the best,’ Borecroft said. ‘French made. See their fine gowns!’
The dolls were indeed, beautifully dressed, wearing the latest fashions, down to farthingales and crisply pleated ruffs. They reminded me of a doll I had once cherished as a child. The girls opened their eyes wide and looked at their mother with longing, but they were too well behaved to beg. Anne had picked up one of the dolls to examine it more closely and I suspected that she wished she were still young enough to have one. My attention wandered as Sara began to haggle with the toy man over the price. Anthony was experimentally tapping the tabor we had seen before, while Ambrose and Mistress Hawes had their heads together, probably wishing they too could wander off around the Fair on their own.
The deal for the dolls was finally struck. Cecilia and Tabitha each clutched a doll as if they could not believe their good fortune, and Anthony had persuaded his mother to buy him one of the simple pipes. While the Lopez family was discussing what to do next, I leaned over the counter to speak to the toy man.
‘We heard you playing for the puppet show, Master Borecroft.’
He seemed surprised that I knew his name, but I did not enlighten him that I had heard th
e Fair official shout it out the previous day. On the other hand, he did not appear at all concerned at my mention of the puppet show.
‘Last night,’ he said, ‘when we were buying pies from the hawkers who come round to sell to the shopkeepers and watchmen who spend the night here in Smithfield, I got talking to the puppeteers. They had heard me playing and asked if I could help them.’
He gave me a smile of such insincere blandness that I hardly knew what to believe.
‘Do they not have their own musicians?’ I said, equally blandly.
‘Oh, they must all turn a hand to everything. But it seemed there were so many puppets in this show that they must all manipulate the manikins and would need to do without music. They said if I could provide some fiddle playing and a trumpet blast, I should have five shillings, so I could not refuse.’
‘Indeed, you could not,’ I said, thinking of the men turned ashore with five shillings to pay for months of suffering.
‘Can I interest you in a toy, master?’ He gave me that wide, innocent smile again.
‘Nay, I thank you.’ I made as if to turn away, then said casually. ‘Did I not see another go with you to join the puppeteers? A stocky fellow, probably in his forties? Was he another musician? Or perhaps one of the puppet masters?’
He shook his head. ‘You must be mistaken, master. No one was with me. It must have been simply someone passing in the crowd.’
‘Aye, you are probably right.’ I walked away, but I knew that he lied.
Our party decided to break up. Ambrose and his lady strolled off with, I thought, some relief. Anne decided to go with her mother and the younger children. Although they urged me to come with them, I said something about perhaps visiting old friends at the hospital, promising to make my own way back to Wood Street.
I did not, in fact, intend to go into the hospital, for I still felt the hurt of being excluded. My principal friend there had been Peter, though of course I knew the other apothecaries and the nursing sisters. One of the sewing women was a former patient of mine. But I could not bring myself to go where I felt I was no longer wanted.
Instead, I sauntered about the Fair like any other member of the crowd, all the time keeping a sharp look-out for Robert Poley, for I knew I had certainly seen him, and he had certainly been in company with Nicholas Borecroft, however much the toy man might deny it. Whether he had also been going to the puppeteers I could not be absolutely sure.
I dawdled past stalls selling goods of every kind, from comfits to fine linens, from lucky charms to books of piety. As I turned the corner from one lane of stalls to another, I very nearly ran into the man I always thought of as the chestnut seller, though today he carried his tray of crystallised plums and other comfits. He looked much more cheerful than when we had seen him yesterday.
‘Oh, young master,’ he said, beaming with real warmth, unlike the false smile of the toy man, ‘you and your friends did me a good turn! I have earned more today at the Fair than even the best of my weeks at Newgate! I have had to fetch fresh stocks twice. My wife is busy making more comfits now, for me to sell tomorrow.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ I said. ‘Every Londoner has a sweet tooth. You should do well for every day of the Fair. I’ll take a cone of mixed comfits, if you please.’
He overfilled my paper cone, which I tucked into the pocket of my doublet, and we parted in mutual satisfaction. I thought of asking him to keep a watch for Poley, but decided it was better not to advertise my interest in the man.
By chance I came upon the Winterlys’ stall of leather goods.
‘Jake!’ I said, ‘and young Will as well. I hope you are doing a good trade.’
Will beamed at me over the counter. ‘We have sold five of my belts, Dr Alvarez, and Papa has sold a saddle, three satchels and I dunno how many purses.’
Jake laughed. ‘Aye, we do good business in purses. So many are stolen at the Fair, you would think we were in league with the cutpurses.’
‘Mine was nearly stolen yesterday,’ I said. ‘I grabbed it just in time.’
I held up my cut finger. ‘And got this for my pains.’
They both made sympathetic noises, and we fell to discussing the threat from the armed soldiers.
‘It would have been a sad loss to us,’ Jake said, ‘if they had run riot through the Fair and seized our goods.’
‘Aye,’ I said soberly, ‘it would indeed.’
I bade them farewell and walked on, to find myself at the edge of a cleared space where two men – by their looks, brothers – were demonstrating sword swallowing and fire eating. There were gasps of horrified astonishment as one man seemed to thrust a long thin rapier down his throat, and when the other began to wave his flaming torch about, everyone surged back several paces. On the far side of the space I saw Anthony watching with his mouth open, and gave him a wave, but he was too absorbed to notice. I do not know how such things are done, but I am sure it is some kind of trickery.
I was growing somewhat footsore and weary, and began to think of heading back to Wood Street. I would not waste my limited money on a wherry, so I would have to walk. There had been no sign of Robert Poley and everything seemed quiet and deserted around the puppet tent.
As I turned away from the flame swallower, someone nearby called out, ‘Dr Alvarez!’
I looked round. A solid built man was elbowing his way through the crowd toward me. His clothes were ragged and his feet were bare. Although he had a big frame, his flesh was shrunken with hunger and his eyes burned feverishly in his face. It was the man I had seen this morning amongst the makeshift army, the soldier who had once roused me and got me away from the attacking Spanish on the march from Peniche to Lisbon.
I raised my hand in acknowledgement of his shout and waited until he reached me.
‘I saw you this morning,’ I said, holding out my hand to him. ‘That was a strange business.’
He shook my hand heartily and I felt how hard and callused his palm was.
‘We meant every word. We have walked all those miles from Plymouth, most of us with no shoes to our feet, to ask for justice.’
‘It seems a little cruel to seize your justice at the expense of poor shopmen and hawkers, who are men of your own kind,’ I said, but I said it mildly.
‘I am not sure we would have wrecked the Fair,’ he said. ‘Well, probably the wilder lads would have done so. But we needed some lever with the City authorities, and the Fair seemed as good a chance as any. We could not hope to get near the Privy Council direct, nor that pirate, Drake.’
‘So although you sailed with Drake for the Azores, you do not admire him?’
‘You know as well as I, Dr Alvarez, that we had no choice in the matter. We was picked out like beasts at market – “You who are fit will board this ship, you who are not will board that one”.’
‘True enough.’
‘And then, not half a day after we had set out, our whole fleet turned north and scurried home.’
‘With all the food, while we starved.’
‘We did not know that at the time. It was only after all was turned ashore at Plymouth that the whole truth came out.’ He smiled grimly. ‘You can be reassured, I have starved along with the rest ever since.’
‘I can see that. Have you eaten today?’
‘Nay.’
‘Come with me.’
I took him by the elbow and marched him away to the inn at the north side of Smithfield where we had eaten at midday. We found a table and the innkeeper looked startled to see me returned in such vagabond company. I ordered Bartholomew pig followed by custard for the soldier and ale for both of us. When he had eaten half his meat and drunk his ale, he slowed down and gave me a weak smile.
‘My stomach is not accustomed to so much food. I think it has shrunk.’
‘Best not to stuff yourself,’ I said. ‘I will ask for a paper so you can wrap the rest of the meat and eat it later.’
We both sat back and looked at each other. We shared s
o many bitter memories that it was difficult to speak of trivial matters with the Fair swirling around us.
‘You know my name,’ I said, ‘you have known it many months, yet I have never known yours.’
‘Adam Batecorte, at your service!’ He raised his hand to his tattered woollen cap in a mock salute.’
‘Well, Adam, I do not know how successful the meeting between your leaders and the Common Council may be. Will the Lord Mayor or his advisors agree to take your case further, to the Privy Council? Matter can be very delicate between City and Court, you know. And I do not think any of the men in power will take kindly to being threatened by armed men.’
He shrugged. ‘We are desperate. And desperate men take desperate measures. There’s more than five hundred of us, nearly five hundred and fifty. All of us destitute. Some have lost their positions with masters who, back in the spring, urged them to fight for England. Some have lost their own small farms or shops to unforgiving landlords. Some have even lost their families.’
He began to draw a spiral with his finger in a puddle of ale on the table.
‘I am a blacksmith myself, by trade. I worked with my father in our smithy in a village a few miles north of Plymouth. When the country was preparing for the Spanish attack last year, we was kept busy making every kind of iron fitting for the ships at Plymouth. Then when the time came, my father said I should offer my services to the navy. My wife begged me not to go, but go I did.’
‘You fought against the Armada?’
‘Aye, I did, and that should have taught me a lesson, for it was months before we was paid, though we was paid in the end. And I was one of the lucky ones. I got ashore and home quickly and did not take the killing diseases.’
‘So when the call came to enlist this year, you answered again?’
‘More fool I. Once again my wife begged me not to go, but we was told it would be quick and well rewarded. Not as quick as the fight against the Armada, but much more profitable. We had some debts to our landlord, my father and I. The local lord of the manor. I thought I could earn enough to pay them off. Maybe even enough to buy the smithy and all for ourselves. So I went.’