The remainder of that day slips my memory. I went about, as Robin put it, with my head in a bucket. The few words I spoke upon stage echoed back at me and I missed one cue. Midway through the performance, Will Sly gave me a sharp jab in the ribs with his thumb. All actors have their bad days, but are expected to leave their woes behind the stage and carry nothing on but the part assigned them. I still had much to learn about acting. My tongue, which had felt thick and clumsy all day, locked up entire after the performance and soon even Starling gave up her attempts to get anything out of me.
This was grief, or close kin to it. I had felt much like this on my journey to London, numbed by my mother's death. Strangers on the road had tried to talk to me and I could not answer. So it was with me now, only what had died was not a man but a hope. In a sense, my father had died to me long ago, but I had sought to resurrect something good from the bones: some noble purpose, some redeeming grace that might make it easier to forgive him, as Leontes is forgiven. Ben Jonson's tale planted a dagger in that fond wish. And yet …
The lines of a poem kept running through my head: “My secret wounds enbalmed, my hidden hurts healed.” That was my father also. The self-seeking, dissolute rogue Ben Jonson remembered could not have thought those thoughts or penned those lines or won my mother's honest heart. It was that man who would not let me rest until I had found him. The facts of his death might be known, but the truth still lay hidden. And so my search was not yet over. There was no help for it; I must have another try at Martin Feather.
Later that week the north wind blew in a cold autumn rain and the white silk flag did not rise over the Theater. After leaving the Condell house on a made-up errand, I spent a long afternoon at Middle Temple, huddled under the thatched eaves of a sausage vendor's stall opposite Martin Feather's chambers. The vendor was glad of my company; his trade was slow and we had time to strike up a little friendship as greasy steam from his brazier oiled my flesh and bones until I could have slipped through a keyhole. He showed no curiosity as to why a boy of my appearance was not in school or occupied in some trade. Like many people, he filled his own world, noticed little outside it, and enjoyed talking of what he knew.
“Master Feather? A goodly gentleman. Courteous to all, though he's not the sort you can ask about the wife and children. Come to think, I believe he hasn't any. I'll point him out if he appears, but likely he won't. We've not seen him much since the riots.”
“The July riots?” I asked. “Was there trouble here, too?”
“Trouble! They took that steward at the Lion and Lamb because he was receiving secret messages from France. Papist plot, mind you. I hear they racked all his bones out of joint but all he could say was who he got the messages from and who he passed them on to. Next we know, here come the Yeomen of the Guard all but rolling up the street in search of this Kenton fellow and Master Beecham.”
“You know them?”
“Used to know John Beecham—we all did. A right amiable man, though he's used up all his credit here. Owes me a sixpence yet.”
I bought a sausage from him and paid promptly to remain on his good side. “What was his position?”
The vendor scratched his stubbly chin and screwed up his eyes. “Truth, I never knew for sure. He was much in company with Master Feather at one time. A partner or some such.”
“How long ago was that?” “Oh, two or three years. It's been some time since he's showed himself.”
“No wonder,” I said, “if he's a sneaking plotter.”
“Aye. I'd never have thought it of him, though. A fair shell can hide a black heart, eh?”
I nodded sagely and wondered where to go next. “Was Master Feather suspect, too, do you think?”
“By the Lord's sweet mercy, you'd think we was all suspect the way the Guard nabbed everybody in sight. Even questioned me. They did spend a deal of time in Master Feather's chambers, though there was no one to question but the clerk.”
I cleared my throat. “Master Merry, you mean?”
“Aye.” The vendor's lip curled. “Matthew Merry. Know him?”
“I met him once. He seems somewhat other than merry.”
This primed the pump, so to speak, and for some time I heard many examples of the clerk's insufferable attitude toward all the vendors of Middle Temple. While listening with half a mind, I watched a stocky, red-faced man in brown wool carrying a ceremonial pike—an official of some sort—huffily ascend the stair. No more than five minutes later he huffily descended.
“Is Master Feather in some sort of trouble?” I asked, when the recital of his clerk's obnoxious behavior came to a pause.
“Just money, such as besets every gentleman from time to time. That fellow, with the face like a radish—he's a collector.”
Small wonder the attorney had money trouble, as I had seen nothing like a client approach the stairway all afternoon. This opened an avenue for my last question, which I made to sound indifferent: “I hear that money was the issue when he killed a man, some years back.”
“Old news, that. Some poet, I recall—but soft!” I looked in the direction of his gaze and immediately shrank back against the wall. The odious Matthew Merry had emerged and was now descending the stairway. I felt a dreadful chill, a reminder of that moment when I recognized his high-boned face, eerily lit by the quayside fire, and I knew him for the one who had held a knife to my throat. Hiking up my cloak, I leaned out far enough to see him pause at the corner of the building and glance in both directions before proceeding toward Ludgate.
“Aye,” said my companion, too loud. “Off he goes, to worry widows and kick dogs.” Shortly thereafter a customer approached, and I made a fateful decision. It had been at the back of my mind, and Merry's departure made it seem a God-given opportunity. While the vendor was occupied, I pulled my cap lower, wrapped my cloak higher, and crossed the street. I mounted the steps two at a time, fearing my nerve would fail if I gave it pause, pushed open the door to the outer chamber, and demanded, “I must speak with Martin Feather!” Then my nerve faltered indeed.
I had expected to deal with the cherub-faced Samuel, who could be tricked into betraying information. But it was not Samuel who occupied the scrivener's desk.
I had never seen him before: a gangly youth with carrot-red hair. Startled by my sudden appearance, he swept a handful of Paris wafers into his copy desk. “The master's gone to the country for the week,” he mumbled, wiping his mouth. His shiny chin glared with pimples.
The cloak slipped away from my face as I repeated stupidly, “The country?”
“It's a place outlying from the city. With trees and ponds”—he paused to swallow—“and pigs. Do you have a case, or do you like standing about with your mouth open?”
How these chambers managed to contain two such upstarts as this fellow and Matthew Merry was beyond me. Like the Lady Constance, I felt continually out-maneuvered. I borrowed a saucy lip from her and a sentiment from The Winter's Tale. “Aye, a case. Something lost, that must be found.”
“Shall I tell him that?” He was watching me, his hazel eyes very keen, and I guessed that for all the wafer crumbs about his desk and on his chin, this was no fool. He was older than the general run of scrivener—upwards of eighteen perhaps, while the displaced Samuel was close to my own age.
“Tell him that,” I said boldly. “And tell him I mean to keep looking.” I backed away on these words.
“And who are you?” he asked, rising from his desk.
But I was already out the door. Pulling an edge of my cloak over my head, I stalked down Fleet Street, dodging the puddles and despairing that I would ever meet Martin Feather. I had begun to doubt that such a man existed. He was like a phantom, who haunted every pathway but disappeared when I whirled around for a plain look at him.
At that thought, I stopped dead just outside Ludgate and turned completely around.
The youth was clever and almost too quick for me. He stepped behind a brewer's booth so smoothly I could have missed th
at flash of carrot-red sticking out from a cap. A little more thought may have caused me to doubt my own eyes, but instinct took over: I ran through the gate, cut across the south common of St. Paul's, and doubled back down Watling Street. After weaving through enough lanes and alleys to confuse even me, I headed back to Cheapside and took the lane behind Aldermanbury Street. By then I was winded, but satisfied that I had shaken off the scrivener.
In between regular performances, the Lord Chamberlain's Men knocked together The Winter's Tale, which was to be the first new play of the season. Its story presented a few difficulties to the tiring master, who had to outfit twelve “men of hair”—that is, shepherds who perform a satyr's dance in Act IV dressed in animal skins. To make it worse, the costumer had also to devise a passable bear. Rather than run one up from scratch, it was thought that the Company might fall heir to a real bearskin, which, tanned and dressed, would suit out a player. Perhaps Master Will's imagination misled him when he was inspired to write such a beast into the play: bears are no longer easy to come by in England. Most of the pit champions are imported from Germany, and all seemed to be enjoying wonderful longevity that season. The tiring master was nearly at his wit's end when Brutus, a favorite at the Bear Garden, met his end at a most fortunate moment for us. John Heminges, grumbling all the while over the expense, bid for the hide and won it.
“Now the question is, who shall wear it?” asked Master Condell. The hide had been delivered, dressed out according to instruction, only two days before the performance. It was constructed with a long opening in the belly through which an actor could step into the creature's hind legs, slide his arms into the forelegs, and set the head upon his own. The costumer had padded it out to resemble a well-made beast, but once on, it could suffocate a well-made man. It was not only hot but ripe, as the tanners had not time to do their job properly. One by one, players began to explain why they could not double as the bear, but the excuses ran thin; none of them wanted to play the bear, and none of them would have to. The job would fall to an apprentice—me, I feared, except that as Perdita I would be called upon stage shortly after Antigonus, the bear's bait, was chased off it. Gregory and Dick, playing shepherd maids in the same act, had the same excuse. That left Robin, who was too short, and Kit, who as Hermione would feign death in plenty of time to outfit himself. Kit it would be, then. I saw him smoldering over the Company's decision, and it did me good to see him put in his place by the men who indulged him overmuch, but I caught him glaring at me as if his misfortune were my fault.
On the first Wednesday in October, a white flag went up from the Theater at noon. “Now God guide the issue,” said good John Heminges, as he always did when a new play was afoot. All week, agents of the Company had tacked up playbills about The Winter's Tale. From the hut, shortly after noon, I observed a dark stream of humankind flowing up Shoreditch Road. “Full house, fat purse,” remarked Harry Smithton, scanning the sky for clouds. He penned up the two cannonballs so they would not get loose before it was time for the thunderstorm, gave an affectionate pat to the cannon, which he would have no chance to fire this performance, and ordered me out of the hut.
I slowly climbed down to the tiring room with apprehension lying like a rock in my stomach. Even now, I was never so easy about going on the stage as Robin or some of the others appeared to be, and Perdita handed me my greatest challenge yet. Sweet-tempered maidens are more difficult to play than strong-minded women such as Constance, for it is harder to charm than it is to command.
But what made me even more uneasy was The Winter's Tale itself. In the three months since I copied it, the play threatened to rearrange me, setting deep roots that pushed up the settled soil and disturbed old longings. Henry Condell met me at the bottom of the stairs. “Dost know thy part?” he asked. I nodded, puzzled, for he himself had drilled me on it. Then he added, “See that you play only that.”
This was the only instruction he had ever given that concerned somewhat other than posture and voice. The whole Company was feeling their customary apprehension about a new play. Master Will had admitted he was not quite satisfied with it, and when the playmaker doubted his own work, how could the players launch upon it with confidence? All summed, it was a tense company belting and lacing themselves for the public, none more tightly strung than me.
The third horn blew as the dresser set a wig upon my head. Robin and Dick were trading tales in a corner, cracking and eating nuts as they were often warned not to do before a performance. Young Lawrence Bates, a child borrowed from St. Paul's Chapel to play Mamillius, sat on the edge of the tiring-room loft, swinging his legs and humming a monotonous tune. Kit had already descended and now paced the length of the downstairs rooms with a majestic sweep of train, picking at the chapped skin of his lips. His fingernails were stubs. I backed down the steep stairway as the noise of the audience faded to murmurs, then whispers, then dropped to that quivering, expectant silence I had come to know well. The musicians in the gallery struck up a brief and lively version of “Nutmegs and Ginger,” at the end of which John Heminges and Augustine Phillips strolled out upon stage as courtiers of the two kings, engaged in a conversation that would serve as introduction to our story.
Most actors can recall performances in which the play becomes so real, in speech and deed, that they could be acting their own lives. This is a hazard of the profession, not a benefit, and any player who values his sanity will put some distance between himself and his part, even if that distance is no wider than a hair. Still it happens: the edge dissolves; the player and character drift into one skin and become so joined they cannot tell each other apart.
This happened to me, though not all at once. In the second act I appeared as a nameless lady of the court, and my only work was to look dismayed at the accusations heaped upon Hermione by her husband. Even a doorpost could have done this, in the heat of Kit's portrayal. His back remained straight as a rod throughout; it was the set of his shoulders that betrayed the inner turmoil—disbelief, outrage, grief. As always, his hands spoke as eloquently as voice or face, whether pointing in accusation, laid upon a fevered brow, or entreating heaven with palms up and fingers spread. He and Master Burbage as Leontes formed an axis between them, a wave of feeling that caught the players up with it and crested at Hermione's trial.
By then I was not acting. As Leontes brought lie after lie upon his wife's character, I ached with the lady. Hermione made her defense with a calm fury and utter conviction, appealing at last to heaven for the verdict: “Apollo be my judge!” Then the two courtiers appeared straight from the Temple at Delphi, bringing the words of the Oracle which would vindicate or condemn her. In a booming, breathless silence a courtier read them out: “Hermione is chaste, Polixenes blameless … and the king shall live without an heir if that which is lost be not found.”
“Ah,” sighed our audience, and I jumped. I had forgotten them.
“Hast thou read truth?” demanded Leontes of the courtier.
“Aye, my lord, even so as it is here set down.”
A pause drew out, longer and longer until the very air seemed heavy enough to crack. Then Leontes said, “There is no truth at all in the Oracle. The sessions shall proceed. This is mere falsehood.”
Cries of “No! No!” broke out from the surrounding galleries. They were still protesting when a servant arrived, bearing news of the death of Mamillius. Hermione swooned at this ill word and Leontes, shocked into reason, repented his destructive folly. He swore to repair the damage, but it was too late. Paulina rushed into his presence half-crazed with grief, heaping damnation more harsh than his own: “Thy tyranny, together working with thy jealousies—O, think what they have done, and then run mad indeed, stark mad!” To this she added a sorrow to top them all. “The queen, the queen, the sweetest, dearest creature's dead, and vengeance for it not dropped down yet!”
A moan ran through the Theater. Paulina's news and the lamentation that followed seemed to release pent-up remembrances of past sorrows. Women wep
t; men shook their heads. Some small part of me noticed that Robin was overplaying Paulina, that sweat was plastering the corset to my chest, that Richard Burbage had dropped a passage from his repentance speech. But none of it mattered; a family was ripped apart before my eyes, the bond between man and wife broken, and I myself bore the consequences. The family was mine.
In the tiring room I shed my court gown with no sense of relief—the performance was only half done, my part not even begun, and already I was exhausted. On stage Master Will, as the unfortunate Antigonus, observed the weather—“The skies look grimly, and threaten present blusters”—this said in the face of a clear October sun. Then he sadly abandoned his wrapped bundle, the “poor babe,” to the will of heaven. The threatened storm approached on a roll of thunder pealing ominously from the hut above, and Antigonus made his hasty exit—pursued by the bear, which emerged so suddenly from the curtained space at the back of the stage that ladies in the gallery shrieked aloud. Close upon this horror arrived the simple shepherd who took up the infant, and with her, the story.
Starling found me behind stage in costume for Perdita, a country gown with a soft collar, laced up with a flutter of colored ribbons. No ruff or farthingale, but the dresser had insisted upon filling out the bodice in front. Gregory and Dick were stuffed likewise, all three of us enduring the sly remarks of the stage boys. On stage, the wily Autolycus was cozening the shepherd's son out of his money while pretending to be a traveler in distress; the audience loved this rogue, laughing with delight. As for me, I felt bruised all over with an excess of feeling, and Starling's news did nothing to calm me.
“That medal,” she began breathlessly. “The one that belonged to your father, that you carried the image of in your wallet, and—”
“What?” My mind, moving slowly, suddenly caught up with her meaning. “Yes! What of it?”
“What were the words on it? ‘Bibite ex—'”
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