Shakespeare's Spy

by Gary Blackwood

  But I knew his weakness. For all his skill at convincing folk that he was charming and a hard worker, when it came to scriming he was a poor deceiver. Each time he made a move, you could see it coming, in his eyes and in the way he set his body. I, on the other hand, was quite good at falsifying—feigning one sort of blow and delivering another.

  I started what seemed to be a right edgeblow, deliberately leaving myself open. When Sal Pavy lunged at me, I stepped aside and swung a downright blow that would sorely have cracked his collarbone if it had connected. Luckily for both of us, it did not. It met Mr. Armin’s singlestick instead, with a resounding clunk that numbed my forearm.

  “If you two wish to kill each other,” he said, “there are more efficient ways than with dull wooden swords.”

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, rubbing my tingling arm. “I got carried away.”

  “So I noticed. And if that blow had landed, Sal might have been carried away as well.”

  I recalled La Voisin’s prediction—that I would cause another’s death—and a shudder went through me. “I’m sorry,” I repeated, so earnestly that my voice cracked.

  “I know. It was not entirely your fault.”

  “Well, it certainly wasn’t mine!” put in Sal Pavy.

  Mr. Armin gave him a look that said he’d be wise to put his tongue in his purse. Then he turned to Judith and Mary. “Ladies, I must ask you to leave.”

  Judith bit her lip and folded her hands demurely in her lap. “We’ll behave, sir. I promise.”

  “The problem is not so much your behavior as the way you make these poor wights behave. Go on now, before I give you swords and set you to scriming.”

  “Oh, would you?” Judith exclaimed. “It looks like great fun!”

  When they left, I was both disappointed and relieved. I apologized to Sal Pavy for attacking him so fiercely.

  “Oh, were you?” he said. “I thought you were going easy on me, so I did the same.” One thing about Sal Pavy; he was reliable. If I should ever forget exactly why I had once disliked him so, I could count on him to remind me.

  After scriming practice, Sam did a bit more prying about the play. I dared not confess that the whole thing was a fabrication; however solemnly he might swear not to, he would surely let the secret slip out, and then Judith would know me for the liar I was. Besides, I might yet produce a play as promised, if only I could come up with a sensible story.

  “So,” Sam said, “what’s this play of yours called, then?”

  My original title, The Mad Men of Gotham, had begun to seem irredeemably stupid. I replaced it with the first thing that came to mind: “Let the World Wag.”

  Sam nodded thoughtfully. “Not bad. A comedy, is it?”

  “Aye. But not your usual comedy. It’s got ghosts, and revenge, and star-crossed lovers.”

  “Ah,” said Sam. “Sounds hilarious.”

  As the company stood behind the stage that evening, waiting to go on in The Spanish Tragedy, Will Sly said, “I hear you’re writing a play.”

  Thanks to the hubbub from the audience, he probably did not hear the curse I uttered under my breath. “I’m trying,” I said.

  “I hope there’s a part in it for me?”

  “Of course,” Knowing how fond he was of dashing, romantic roles, I added, “You get to play a leprous beggar.”

  To my surprise, he replied, “Excellent!” and rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Will I be horribly disfigured, with appendages falling off and such?”

  “I was only jesting, Will. There’s no leper.” I did not bother to mention that neither were there any other characters of any description.

  His face fell. “Oh. But you could put in a leper if you wanted, couldn’t you? I mean, it’s your play.”

  I sighed. This play was already getting out of hand, and I had yet to write a single word of it. “I’ll do me best. I can’t promise anything.” I took out the small table-book I carried with me and jotted down a new title possibility: The Leper’s Revenge. What audience could resist that? Well, in one way at least I had the advantage of Mr. Shakespeare—I had no shortage of compelling titles. Perhaps he and I should become collaborators; I could supply the titles, and he could write the scripts to go with them.

  Though I was tempted to peek around the curtain to see whether or not Judith was in the audience, I talked myself out of it. I was better off not knowing. That way, I would have no call to be either disappointed or self-conscious.

  As it turned out, I was wise to restrain myself. After the performance, Judith came clomping onto the stage in her chopines to congratulate us. She clasped one of my hands in hers; I would have expected them to be warm, but they were cold as a key. “You were very good, Widge. So convincing. If I hadn’t known, I never would have suspected you were a boy.”

  Before I could compose a reply that did not sound halfwitted, she had let go of me and latched onto Sal Pavy. “Master Pavy! You were … Oh, how shall I put it?”

  “Superb?” he suggested.

  She laughed. “I was about to say magnificent.”

  “That’s even better.” He swept off his wig as though it were a cap and made a small bow. “I thank you for your kind words, and will endeavor to be worthy of them.”

  “Oh, you are, I assure you! When you were lamenting Horatio’s death, I nearly cried.”

  I could bear no more. I flung open the door and took the outside stairs two at a time, avoiding a broken neck only by grace of the fortune that protects fools, for the steps were coated with ice. I changed quickly and left without waiting for Sam; I had no desire to talk to anyone. Though I had forgotten my cloak, I was so hot with spite and shame that I scarcely noticed the cold.

  By the time I reached Mr. Pope’s, I had cooled down a bit. When Goody Willingson asked how my day had been, instead of shouting “Utterly miserable!” I replied in a relatively calm voice, “I’ve had worse.” And it was true; I had had worse days—the day my mother died giving birth to me, for instance. The difference was, I couldn’t remember that one.

  Though I was hardly in a playful mood, I dutifully gave each of the younger boys a ride off to bed on my back, and consented to a game of One Penny Follow Me with the older ones. They seemed not to notice how distracted I was. But Tetty’s dark eyes did not miss a thing. “What’s wrong, Widge?” she asked as I tucked her in.

  “What makes you think there’s something wrong?”

  “Your face.”

  “What about it?”

  “You know how, when you’ve twisted your back, you hold it all stiff to keep it from hurting?”

  “Aye?”

  “That’s the way your face looks.”

  “I’m tired. That’s all.” And, though it was not all that ailed me, I was indeed weary. But before I could give myself up to sleep, I had to make my nightly report to Mr. Pope.

  Once again I skipped over certain selected portions of the day. I said nothing about the play that I was supposed to be writing but was not. Nor did I mention how Judith had been able to spare but a few bland morsels of praise for me, while Sal Pavy received a far more sweet and generous helping than he deserved. Though I was still secretly stewing over the incident, I did not wish to bring it up; it would only make Judith sound heartless and me sound foolish.

  I did not expect Mr. Pope to let me off so easily, though, and I was right. When I finished, he said, with a trace of mischief in his voice, “So tell me, how is the fair Judith faring?”

  I did my best to sound neutral. “Well enough, I suppose.”

  He gazed at me over the rim of his wine cup. “You certainly are taken with her, aren’t you?”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “The expression on your face.”

  This conversation seemed familiar somehow. “What sort of expression?”

  “Woeful, for want of a better word. Rather like a puppy who’s been chastised for leaving a puddle on the floor.”

  “There’s no call to make fun of me.”<
br />
  “I’m not, lad; I’m not. I’m only commiserating. I remember well enough what it’s like to be lovestruck.”

  “You do?”

  Mr. Pope laughed. “You sound as though you don’t believe me.”

  “I didn’t mean to. It’s just…”

  “I know. You find it hard to credit, a fat old fulmart like me, eh? But I was young once, and hot-blooded—and not bad to look at, either, if I say so myself.”

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to see him as he must have been. “You had a lady friend, then?”

  “Oh, several. But one in particular. A stout, spirited girl with a smile that could stop your heart—or start it.”

  “What became of her?”

  The wistful smile faded from his broad face. “She and her family disapproved of my profession. They gave” me a choice: I could give up acting, or give up her.” He sighed. “It was a difficult choice, and there are times when I ask myself whether I chose rightly. Especially now … now that I no longer have the company of the audience or of my fellow players to console me.”

  I had seldom seen him so melancholy. I searched for something to say that might lighten his mood. Before I found it, he drained his cup of clary and pushed his heavy frame from the chair. “Well, that’s enough feeling sorry for myself. A fellow has to do a little of it now and again, just to keep from getting too complacent.” He made a move to rumple my hair, as I had so often seen him do with the younger boys, but with my crown so closely cropped it did not rumple so much as bristle. “If you want my advice, Widge—and perhaps you do not—I’d advise you not to get too attached to the young lady; I have a feeling she’ll be going back to Stratford soon.”

  I turned to look at him in dismay, “But—but she told her father that she despises it. She said there was no one and nothing there that held the slightest interest for her.”

  Mr. Pope smiled. “You know, Will once told me the very same thing. But I rather suspect that Judith is less her father’s daughter than she is her mother’s.”

  17

  In my room, in the few minutes I had left before sleep claimed me, I tried to put my mind to work on the problem of the play, but it stubbornly insisted on bringing up again and again the same unanswered questions: Would Judith stay or go? Who was spying on the Chamberlain’s Men, and who was stealing from us, and were they one and the same person? Would the queen recover, and if not, what would become of us?

  I shook my head hard. What was the use in dwelling on such questions? They could not be answered, at least not by me. I could only wait and see. With the play, I had more control. I could make the story come out however I wished—provided I had a story—and could decide the fates of all the characters—provided I had characters.

  Perhaps where I’d made my mistake was in attempting to write about highborn wights and ladies. Though I had impersonated them enough times upon the stage, what did I truly know about them or their problems? I might do better to people my play with the sort of folk I knew at first hand.

  Let us say, for example, that the hero is an orphan, and that he’s taken in by … by a band of players? No, not exciting enough. As Sam said, actors never actually do anything; they only pretend to. What, then? A band of lepers? No, too much of a good thing. A band of madmen? Or thieves? Yes, thieves were exciting. And then suppose he falls in love with … with someone. With the head thief’s beautiful daughter, let us say. Only she’s not interested in him, because she’s in love with … with whom? A poet? No. A soldier? Yes! A soldier who has sworn to bring the band of thieves to justice. The hero knows, then, that he must kill the soldier, not only in order to save his friends, but also in order to get rid of his rival for the girl’s affections.

  Wait a moment. This was the hero? What sort of character would fall in with a lot of thieves in the first place, let alone wish to kill a wight just because he’s jealous of him? He didn’t sound much like a hero. He sounded, in fact, a good deal like me.

  My previous master had been a thief, after all, and had made me into one as well. And I had more than once imagined various unpleasant fates befalling Sal Pavy, my rival for roles and now, it seemed, for Judith’s attentions. Though I had never actually tried to kill him—at least not consciously—there was no denying that I was jealous of him.

  Well, audiences did not come to the theatre to see the likes of me up there on the stage. I laid my pencil aside and once more fed my efforts to the candle flame. I lulled myself to sleep with promises that I would try again in the morning, when I was more alert.

  • • •

  But in the light of day—or rather the half-light before dawn—the notion of my writing anything worth reading seemed even more absurd than it had the night before. I made a few halfhearted attempts at ideas, only because I had promised myself I would and did not like to lie to myself. But I came up with nothing very useful, only a couple of new titles: The Mad Monarch and Gamaliel Ratsey, the Masked Highwayman—the latter inspired by one of the ballad sheets I was using for writing paper.

  As I was up anyway, I thought I might as well get an early start at the theatre. After a quick breakfast, I set out for the Cross Keys alone. Sam would only have plagued me with questions I was in no mood to answer, such as how the play was going, or whether I had come into that fortune yet. Even worse, he might propose some harebrained scheme from his seemingly inexhaustible supply—an infallible method of winning the lottery, perhaps, or a plan for me to make Judith jealous by pretending to be in love with Mistress Mountjoy, or a method by which we might snare the costume thief.

  It occurred to me then, for the first time, that Sam himself might conceivably be the culprit. No, surely not. Though he might be impudent and unreliable, he was no thief, I was certain of it. And yet… and yet, Madame La Voisin had said that he would turn traitor. Was this what she meant? Suppose he truly did have a scheme to win the lottery? Suppose he sold the stolen costumes and bought dozens of chances, meaning to pay the theatre back once he won the big prize?

  I laughed aloud at my own folly. Such a story deserved to be burned, along with all the other implausible ones I had concocted. My suspicions had made me feel ashamed, and I quickened my pace, as though to leave them behind. I had another reason for making haste, of course: I had left my cloak at the Cross Keys, and though it was the second week of March, winter was stubbornly hanging on.

  I meant to set to work on the property room, but I had forgotten the sharers’ decision to keep it locked. I went looking for someone to let me in, and found Mr. Shakespeare in the office he shared with Mr. Heminges, hard at work on his script. Knowing now how much concentration the task required, I would have slipped away without disturbing him. But just then he put down his pen, sat back on his stool, and rubbed at his old injury.

  “Shall I do some transcribing for you?” I asked.

  He glanced up and, for a change, smiled; the play must be going well for him … the lucky wight. “God you good morning, Widge. Thank you for offering, but I’m not composing any lines just yet, only making some notes.”

  “Oh? I thought you were well into the play by now.”

  He laughed. “I may be quick, but I’m not that quick. I came up with the idea only last night.”

  “But… But two days ago you had half a dozen pages done.”

  “Oh, you mean the unnamed Roman play. I’ve given up on that. This is something new, and far more promising.” He toyed with his earring reflectively. “But then they all seem that way at first blush, don’t they?”

  Ordinarily I was comfortable enough around Mr. Shakespeare, but the subject I wished to broach now made me shy as a suitor. “An I might interrupt you for a moment, sir,” I said, my voice doing some of its octave shifting, “there’s something I’d like to ask.”

  He gave me a rather suspicious glance. “Does it have anything to do with my daughter?”

  “Nay! That is, not directly.”

  “Good. What is it?”

  “Well, I was wonderin
g … where do you get your ideas?”

  His eyebrows lifted. “My ideas? For plays, you mean?”

  “Aye.”

  He considered the question a moment, then leaned forward and said, in a low voice, “Well, you’re not to tell this to anyone, but there’s a certain stall at St. Paul’s where you can buy them for half a crown—five shillings for really good ones.”

  I gaped at him. “Truly? Someone sells them?” Then I saw the hint of amusement hiding in his eyes, and my face went red. “Oh. You’re tweaking me.”

  “Of course. Would that it were that simple. The truth is, I have no idea where they come from, or why. Sometimes they seem to rain down upon you from out of the ether. Other times, it’s as though a drought has descended, and everything dries up, including your brain. When that happens …” He shrugged. “The only thing left to do is to steal from someone else.”

  I was taken aback for a moment, before I concluded that he was jesting again. “Nay, you’ll not fool me again. I ken you don’t mean that.”

  “But I do, Widge.” He gestured at the pages of his abandoned script, which were crammed into a compartment at the back of the desk. “Take the story of Timon, for example. I found it in Plutarch’s ‘Life of Antony.’ Come, now; you needn’t look so dismayed. Don’t you know that there are no new ideas in the world? Every story has been told—and lived—a hundred times before The best we can hope for is to find some new way of telling them.” He rubbed at his forearm again. “Now it’s my turn to ask you something.”

  “All right.”

  “What do you care where I get my ideas?”

  I had known from the moment I broached the subject that I would end up telling him about my own poor efforts at playwriting. But how could I, without sounding hopelessly naive and foolish? “I, um … that is … I’m attempting to, um …”

  “To write a play?” he suggested.

  “Aye. How did you ken?”

  “It’s no secret. You seem to have told everyone else in the company. I was wondering when you would get around to telling me.”