But the principal reason for the quietness of the occasion I put down to one individual, someone who was both present and absent, someone whose fate had formed the pre-play conversation between Jack and Martin and me. If we humble players knew that the Earl of Essex was likely to die on the morrow then you could be sure that every last court-man and – woman in the audience knew it too. And, first and foremost in every sense, the Queen knew it. She, after all, was the one who would finally subscribe that fatal warrant. She alone could say where and when, and how, the Earl’s soul would be sundered from his body.
Did this knowledge, this mortal responsibility, weigh heavy on her? How could it not? The closeness betweeen the Queen and the Earl had once been the talk of the town. It was commonly believed that he had escaped the ultimate penalty for treason after his return from Ireland because of a lingering fondness on her part. Now she was brought to the point where, all-powerful as she was, she was yet impotent to save him – and perhaps no longer wished to do so. She alone had to bring down the man whom she had once raised up.
So, as I say, there was a subdued tone to the event. Not my imagination, I think, because a brief moment in the play seemed to strike some hidden chord with the audience. When, as Antonio, I talk of the danger of being captured by Duke Orsino’s men on account of having participated in a sea-fight against his galleys, I make mention of the penalty for resistance:
For which, if I be lapsed in this place,
I shall pay dear.
From some portion of the Hall, higher up near the top of the degrees, seemed to come a sigh which resonated as about a whispering chamber, broadcasting itself independently from different sections of the room. At the time I registered the effect but was puzzled. It was only afterwards that I connected the sense of Antonio’s words – the notion of capture and paying the price – to my lord of Essex.
But I’ve no idea whether this intuition was correct.
After we’d exited the stage for the final time, after Feste had sung his little piece about the wind and the rain and we’d done our little closing jig and then made a fresh set of obeisances in the direction of the canopied state and returned once more to our knees as She made her own exit – after all of this, I say, we trooped back to our temporary tiring-house. There was some back-slapping and hand-clasping, with Burbage and Shakespeare being especially prominent in congratulating and thanking not only their fellows of the Chamberlain’s but also the court people who’d assisted in the performance. I had noted before how assiduous these two were in paying their dues of thanks, and how their ouday was returned several times over in the quiet smiles or delighted grins of those they complimented. Even old Tilney, the Master of the Revels himself, and something of a dry stick – probably because he went right back to the days of Tarleton and must’ve shepherded dozens of productions past the Queen’s eyes – even old Edmund wore a little expression of relief on his face.
As I was disrobing myself, I noticed a splendidly dressed courtier enter the tiring-area. He spoke to Jack and Martin, who happened to be standing together at that point, and all three turned to examine the scene. After a moment, Jack nodded and pointed me out to the courtier. This elegant gentleman preened across the floor towards me. Unaccountably, I felt myself going as hot and red as Richard Milford.
I was half out of my costume, a condition which always puts one at a disadvantage. Especially so when the other man was as finely adorned as this one. He stopped in front of me, removed a well-feathered bonnet and half-inclined his head. I wish I might have snatched his hat to fan myself cool again.
“Can I claim the inestimable pleasure of addressing Master Nicholas Revill of the Chamberlain’s Company?” said this prim-mouthed figure. He was in the latest style, even down to being clean-shaven, a fashion which I’d observed among other courtiers. But his style of speech was as ornate as, contrariwise, his chin and upper lip were bare.
“You can, sir,” said I. “I am Revill.”
“Then may I make a further intrusion on that good gentleman’s time, leisure and liberty as to entreat him to listen close while I impart a thing?”
“You may, sir.”
Even as he spoke these long sentences, he was casting his critical eye up and down my person. My costume as Antonio was designedly rough and ready since I was just a faithful sea-dog. But I was hardly eager to crawl back into my street clothes while he looked on, for I feared that I would look no more significant in my own person than in another guise.
“Do please continue,” continued this individual, “with your divesture . . . so that you may proceed to your revesture.”
“Divest – ? Oh, you mean taking off my costume . . .”
The courtier looked pained at my low language.
“Only in order that you may the more speedily resume your customary habiliments,” he said, as if he was making himself clearer.
“My day clothes, you mean. But surely you haven’t come to talk to me about my clothes?”
I could sense two or three of my fellow players listening and sniggering nearby. Perhaps this gave me the nerve to talk plain. Here was your typical courtier. In fact, I wasn’t sure that I hadn’t earlier glimpsed him in the audience.
“No sir, the subject of your apparel is not within my compass—”
“Sir, I’m glad to hear it.”
“—but the matter I have come to impart to you cannot be communicated until you have resumed your diurnal attire.”
“Oh very well,” I said, irritated and hurrying to change so as to remove myself from this man’s company. As I shrugged myself into my street clothes, I said, “Would you do me the honour to acquaint me, sir, with the identity of the gentleman whom I am addressing?”
“I,” said this important being, “am Sir Roger Nunn.”
“Ah,” I said.
“Of the Nunns of Northampton.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Your organ of hearing is perhaps not unacquainted with the nomination?”
“Are you related to the Knotts of Nottingham?” I said. “Or the Nevers of Nuneaton?”
He narrowed his eyes but did not condescend to reply.
“Well,” I said, standing before him in my everyday garments. “I’m ready. Impart.”
“Come with me,” said Sir Roger, dropping his courtly manner. “Her Majesty wishes to see you.”
He clapped his bonnet back on his head and spun on his heel. I followed him, without thinking. It was only when I’d gone a few paces that I realised what he’d said. Her Majesty? To see me? I must’ve misheard. Or this was his way of paying me back for my cheek. Nevertheless, I did as I was told, conscious that Jack and Martin were looking at us as we exited the tiring-house.
We left the Hall via a small side room and from there proceeded down a wide passageway. Then a warren of smaller passages interspersed with lobbies and more open areas. All the time, the bobbing, feathered bonnet of Sir Roger Nunn kept a few yards ahead of me. Occasionally he’d glance round to check that I was still in attendance. We seemed to be going deeper into the bowels of the Palace. I started to regret my gibes about Knotts and Nevers.
Eventually, we arrived at a much larger ante-room. And there I began to fear the worst for, seated to one side of a great fire, was Sir Robert Cecil. On the far side of the room four Yeomen stood at attention, in two pairs, grasping their halberds and gazing straight in front of them. Sir Robert must have signalled something to Sir Roger because the next I knew – not that I was truly aware of anything at that instant – the beautifully bonneted being left the room.
“Well, Nicholas,” said Sir Robert, “you have done well.”
“I – I – if you say so, sir.”
“Yes, and now she wants to tell you so in person.”
The warm room felt suddenly airless. The fire flared up. The shadow of Sir Robert’s crooked back swelled and sank against the wall. I wanted to tear off my day clothes and to run screaming through the street. I wanted to hurl myself headlong
into a pit of fire. I wanted to drown in the next pond. Anything but understand what he’d just said to me.
Sir Robert saw my quick misery and smiled.
“Be calm, Nicholas. She only wants to thank you. I say that you have done well.”
“I – I – I have done nothing.”
I could only think that he was referring to the business with Essex and the failed uprising. Considering the tiny role I’d played, it was not false modesty that caused me to say I’d done nothing. For this, I required no thanks, especially no thanks from Her.
“Perhaps it’s also thanks for what you will do,” said Sir Robert cryptically. “Go in now.”
He gestured at a low door whose outline I now discerned in the oak panelling between where the splendidly uniformed guards stood in pairs. Like a creature deprived of the power to resist, like a beast being led towards the slaughter, I walked, walked as in a dream towards the small door.
This seemed to take hours – a lifetime – though it can’t have been more than a few seconds. Once at the door, I raised my hand irresolutely and then lowered it again without knocking. Instead, the guard nearest the door leaned over and rapped gently with the tip of his halberd on the oak, presumably at some signal from Cecil. There may have been a response from within; I don’t know, because my ears were suddenly filled with a roaring noise and I was conscious of my heart trying to batter its way out of my chest. Then the guard turned the handle and gently pushed the door open. Rather less gently, he prodded me in the back so that I found myself almost pushed through the entrance.
Once on the far side, I sensed rather than heard the door being closed behind me. Oh for a trapdoor like the one in the Globe to open up at my feet so that I might disappear forever into the dark depths beneath! Oh to be pursued by my dearest enemy into wastes beyond the reach of man! Oh to be anywhere but here in one of Her privy chambers.
What do I do next?
How do I describe to you our Sovereign, and what it meant to be in Her presence?
The room was not over-large, and this was the first surprise, that Elizabeth our Queen, she who had the run of the whole land, should on occasion choose to confine herself in close quarters. There was a good fire going and sitting by it, tall, upright and alert, an old woman.
My first thought was: where is Her Majesty?
My second: perhaps this is one of her ladies.
My third: perhaps it is all a joke after all.
Then I realised, of course, that the old woman in the chair was the Queen.
I sank to my knees and let my head bow down.
“Get up, Master Revill. I can’t talk with you in that position.”
I rose shakily to my feet but still kept my eyes low.
“And look at me, man. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that it was discourteous not to look someone in the face when you’re speaking with them?”
“My father gave instruction in my household, my – your majesty,” I said, a little surprised at the steadiness of my voice.
“And in mine,” she said.
The Queen said! Said to me!
Then, “Sit down. You must be tired after your performance.”
More by luck than by looking, I located a chair and positioned my buttocks on the edge of it. The room was ill-lit by the flicker of firelight and a handful of candles. Nothing compared to the blazing illumination of the great Hall. Two other doors, apart from the one I’d come through, were set into the walls. I assumed that her ladies must be near at hand behind one of them. It struck me as strange – I mean not at the time but later – that so far I’d seen only men in the neighbourhood of the Queen.
I looked timidly across to where the old lady sat. If I describe her now, it’s as a result of bringing together several tiny, quick impressions and forming them afterwards into a picture, however inadequate.
Firstly, she was old. Close to, there was no disguising it with face-paint and shadow. Old but very formidable; I mean formidable in herself, and not in what she was, if the two things can be distinguished. Even if she’d been an oyster seller in Eastcheap you’d have thought twice about crossing her. No, thought three times – and then you wouldn’t have done it. Her straight posture in the chair emphasised her tallness. Her hair was red like the flickering fire but (I whisper ungallantly) not a quarter so natural. The most prominent features in her thin, pale visage were a high aquiline nose and her striking eyes. Ah, her eyes. What colour they were I couldn’t have said. But they had opposing qualities: they seemed at once deep-set, almost buried, and also starting forward. For now, they were bent on me with an expression I couldn’t determine.
“Not so tired, your majesty, as – as amazed to find myself here when my place would be better occupied by any other member of my Company.”
“That is very modest for a player.”
“But I mean it,” I protested, forgetting formalities for a moment. And I did mean it. I wanted all my Company to share in the Queen’s favour. Why wasn’t Master Burbage here, or Master Shakespeare, or Jack Horner or Martin Hancock come to that? Why had she requested a minor player?
“Did you like the play?” I said, greatly daring.
“Oh yes,” she said absently. I noticed that her heavily beringed hands moved constantly in her lap. “How could one not like it? It is written to be liked. We were amused. Amused at the way Duke Orsino governs his realm of – Illyria, is it?”
“But he does not govern it, your majesty,” I said.
“That is what is amusing,” she said. “That he can devote himself to love rather than affairs of state, and yet come out of it clear at the end.”
“Well,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Well? Does he govern well? Perhaps he governs well because he does not know that he does,” she said. “In truth, fines principum abyssus multa.”
“The designs of Princes are a deep abyss,” I said, glossing her words automatically, almost without thought.
This seemed to delight her more than anything I’d said since entering the chamber. She leaned forward and, since she was wearing a low-cut gown, exposed a certain quantity of royal bosomry. Age had taken its inevitable toll here as well and the paps were somewhat shrunk and wizened.
“Master Revill, you are a scholar.”
“My father was a stern schoolmaster, your majesty” I said. “I mean he wasn’t a schoolmaster, he was a parson. But he insisted that I give many hours to the study of Greek and Latin.”
“For which you ought to give him thanks every day,” she said.
“I do, I will.”
And at that instant, watching the Queen’s hands shift unceasingly in her lap, I vowed to give daily thanks to the memory of my father and his severe regimen of learning.
“And you have other tongues?”
“Alas no.”
“Never mind, you are young and have plenty of time to learn.”
“I fully intend to, your majesty.”
“It is good to expose ourselves to the variety of the world,” she said, “and how better to do it than through a medley of tongues?”
“Of course, your majesty,” I said, still surprised at the calmness of my responses.
“Per molto variare la natura e bella,” she said, gesturing even more with her hands. “You understand?”
“Not entirely,” I said, “yet I can catch the gist of it.”
And at that moment my mind snagged on something else, and I did indeed begin to catch the gist.
“It is one of my favourite aphorisms. I have always loved the Italian music. Those are pleasures you still have before you, young man. French, Italian.”
“Your majesty’s learning is one of the wonders of her realm,” I said, feeling that I’d got the measure of this courtly dance pretty quick.
“Yes, there are not many can best me,” she said.
“None, madam, none.”
“How old are you, Master Revill?”
“Er, twenty eight, your majesty.” (Inex
plicably, I added more than a year to my age.)
“Do you know where I was at your age?”
“You were – were our monarch then too,” I said, hoping desperately that my guess was correct.
“I have outlived most of those who were my subjects when I first came to this place.”
“And w-w-will live to – t-t-t-to outlive – t-t-to l-l-l-live for ever – t-t-t-to live longer—”
Tangled up in my stuttering expressions, I came to a stop. She half smiled but in a scornful way, as it seemed, and I remembered Master Secretary Cecil’s words about the mortality of princes, and how the pious Elizabeth would subscribe to no blasphemous doctrine of divinity.
“Non omnis moriar,” she said, and looked a question at me.
“The poet Horace,” I said, hoping to please and make amends for my stuttering.
“And what does he mean?” she catechized.
“That – that – ‘I do not die entire’ – those are his words – and he implies, that no man dies entire if he has works that will survive him.”
“Just so,” she said, with satisfaction. “Tell me, Master Revill, since we were earlier talking of the designs of Princes, what is the supreme end of a Prince?”
“I am hardly in a position to say, madam.”
“I will tell you—”
I leaned even further forward on the edge of my seat. It is not every day that the Queen imparts to you the secret of her reign.
“—it is to gain time.”
“To gain time?”
I was not so much disappointed as baffled by her answer.
Death of Kings Page 26