The Armor of Light

by Melissa Scott

  London Diocesan Records, 1510, quoted in Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 256

  The clouds pressed low over the city. Edward Alleyn, crossing London Bridge toward home, glanced up as he felt the first cold drops on the back of his neck, and grimaced at the ragged clouds drooping down between the housetops. He turned up the collar of his good wool cloak and quickened his pace a little, but as he reached the end of the bridge, the rain poured down as though a giant knife had slashed the sagging clouds. St. Saviour’s offered the closest shelter. Hunching himself into the suddenly inadequate cloak, Alleyn ducked into the churchyard and dashed between the tombs until he reached the door. It was propped open, and he slipped into the nave, to stand dripping on some worthy’s marking stone.

  It lacked some hours yet to evensong, and the church was hardly crowded. The drunken beggar-woman who cried flowers and curses at the end of the bridge span crouched by the nearest pillar, wringing out her filthy skirts. She darted a malevolent glance at Alleyn, but, to his intense relief, did not break out into one of her tirades. Nevertheless, he gave her a wide berth as he strolled up the main aisle.

  Beyond her—well beyond her reach, the actor noted, with sympathetic amusement—two more women, each with a shopping basket on her arm, stood chatting, clearly glad of the rain as an excuse to prolong their conversation. Alleyn recognized the stouter of the two as a near neighbor, and bowed to her. She rewarded him with a simper and a gap-toothed smile; her friend, however, sniffed ostentatiously, and looked away. The stout woman nudged her hard, expostulating with her, but Alleyn turned away before he could see the outcome. That was what came of troublemakers like Jonson, he thought, and directed his steps into the side aisle. Honest actors are tarred with his brush, and we’ve difficulties enough these days.

  At the far end of the nave, the verger was lighting one of the hanging lamps, stretching awkwardly up with a piece of slow match hooked on his long pole. The flames spluttered in the damp air, but drove away some of the gloom. Sighing, Alleyn seated himself on the edge of St. Saviour’s oldest tomb, running a hand idly across the deep-carved letters. Usually this link with past centuries was reassuring, but today it only reminded him of the security he could no longer provide his family. The London theaters were closed, and no one seemed willing even to consider setting a day on which they might reopen; that was beginning to sound like a summer’s tour, with all the hazards and slim profits travelling always implied. Damn Benjamin Jonson, Alleyn thought. I hope to God he hangs for this. It was an unworthy thought, particularly in this setting, but his fingers itched to strike the man.

  There was a movement in the shadows, up by the side chapel. Alleyn glanced toward it, and saw a liver-colored mongrel, its jaunty tail as tightly curled as a pig’s, making its way down the side aisle and sniffing at the tombs as it went. It was followed by a boy in a flat cap and a long-skirted coat—a familiar boy, Alleyn thought, his face easing into a smile, and an all too familiar hound. He lifted his hand to beckon to the boy, but even as he gestured, the boy looked up. He lifted his own hand in eager response, whistling the dog to heel, and came to meet the actor, his scarred and homely face breaking into a grin.

  “Hello, master, I was sent to look for you.”

  “And was it clairvoyance, Pig, that had you looking in the apse?”

  The boy’s grin didn’t waver, unperturbed by the mock reproof in Alleyn’s voice. “Well, it came on to rain, master, and I knew you wouldn’t walk in such a downpour. So Bartholomew and I came in here to wait.”

  “I’m glad you credit me with the sense to come out of the rain,” Alleyn murmured. John Pyk was his own apprentice, and the best, in Alleyn’s not always private opinion, of the half-dozen boys presently attached to the company. “Who sent you, Pig? Or who wants me?”

  Pig made a little shrugging motion. “Mistress Alleyn sent me, master, but it was Master Henslowe who sent to her. Master Henslowe says, master, that the Chamberlain’s Men have gone all together to the Recorder, and would you meet him at the Anchor to wait for their return?” Alleyn sighed, all his worries returning in a rush. Two days before, on a fine day that should have filled the Rose, he and his father-in-law had spent five hours in the mayor’s antechamber, waiting to deliver a petition begging his worship to reopen the theaters. They had been fobbed off in the end onto a junior clerk—and what reason, Alleyn thought indignantly, does Burbage have to think he’ll do any better? The jealousy passed in an instant: if he can get the playhouses reopened, Alleyn promised silently, I’ll thank him myself, and publicly.

  Pig was looking at him nervously, all the good humor gone from his expressive face. “Master,” he said, “will we go on tour this summer?”

  Alleyn sighed again, but forced a smile. “It’s early days, Pig, I don’t know. If the mayor won’t let us reopen—yes, I’m afraid we may. But there’s no need for your tragedy-voice yet. Maybe Burbage will have better fortune than we did.”

  “Maybe,” Pig agreed, but he did not sound very confident.

  Nor, to tell the truth, am I, Alleyn thought, shrugging his damp cloak more comfortably around his shoulders. He had been on tour two years before, during the plague summer of ’93, and still could taste the fears of it. Robert Browne’s wife in Shoreditch and all her children and household be dead, and her doors shut up: his own wife Joan had written that to him toward the end of the long summer, when they were all numb with grief and the protracted fear, and ever since, that had formed the core of his private nightmare. Edward Alleyn’s wife on Bankside and all her children…

  “God forbid,” he whispered, and crossed himself. A papist gesture it might be, but it did give God some evidence of one’s sincerity, and gave a man something to hold up against the dark. The verger was scowling at him, and Pig imperfectly hid his smirk. Alleyn ignored them both, bowing his head. “Sweet Lord Jesus, if we must go on tour, protect my family while I’m gone, amen.” The muttered prayer did little to reassure him: they lived through the great plague, a small voice seemed to whisper, why should they have such fortune twice?

  He shook the thought away, and glanced down at the still-smirking Pig. “Mind your manners, imp, and show some respect,” he said, and cuffed the boy lightly on the back of the head. “At the Anchor, you said?”

  Pig straightened his expression and his cap, cheerfully impenitent. “Yes, master, that’s what Master Henslowe said.”

  Alleyn nodded. “We’d best be off, then.”

  Pig seemed to droop visibly. “In this rain?”

  “You’re not made of sugar-candy,” Alleyn answered. He glanced up at the nearest window, its colors dulled by the cloudy day. “Besides, I think it’s stopped.”

  Pig gave him a rather doubtful look, but whistled shrilly. Bartholomew came loping up out of the shadows, and the apprentice scolded him to heel.

  The rain had not quite ended, but it had eased considerably. Alleyn loosened his cloak a little, letting the folds fall free, curtaining him from the rain. Pig pulled his cap down over his ears, then jammed his hands into his breeches’ pockets, hunching his shoulders against the damp. The dog Bartholomew frisked at his heels, darting from the house walls to the ditch at the center of the street in an ecstasy of investigation..

  Their way took them past Winchester House, its courtyard empty and rather forlorn now that the bishop was out of town, and then curved around under the shadow of the Clink prison. As always, there were a few ragged women, dirty children at their skirts, huddled in the meager shelter of the main gate, hoping to catch a glimpse of or even speak a word with some imprisoned kinsman. A stick-thin boy, perhaps twelve years old, perhaps older, waited with them, sitting in the mud with his back against the prison wall and his head bowed on his drawn-up knees. One of the women, baby in dirty clouts at her breast, called hopelessly after them.

  “Alms, sir, alms for a poor prisoner’s babe who’s never done no harm.”

  Alleyn’s mouth tightened painfully, but there was nothing to spare if
they were to tour this summer. He walked on, the woman’s plea turning to a spiritless curse, and was aware that Pig had drawn closer to his side. The poor you will have always with you, the actor thought, but the biblical saw brought no real comfort. Someday, if ever I make my fortune… He put the thought aside as unprofitable. “Run ahead, Pig,” he said aloud, “and tell your mistress you’ve done your errand.”

  Pig hesitated. “I thought you might let me come with you, master,” he said, with unwonted meekness.

  Alleyn sighed. “You may join me at the Anchor, if you hurry. Run, now.”

  Pig grinned, his always buoyant spirits fully restored, and darted off. Bartholomew bounded after him, the absurd curled tail beating madly. Alleyn felt his own spirits lift a little. There was always Pig, and the other boys of the company, too, to be cared for, and that was something.

  By the time he reached his own doorstep, Pig was waiting for him, and Joan Alleyn peeped out the door behind him, one rusty curl escaping from under her plain cap. Alleyn paused, knowing that his smile was foolishly fond, and was rewarded by her quicksilver smile of welcome.

  “Since you’re going to the Anchor, Ned, will you bring back a bpottle of clary? Margery wants it for the kitchen.”

  Alleyn nodded. “Gladly, Mouse. I’ll send Pig back if it seems like to go on late.”

  “I’d be grateful,” Joan answered, and vanished back into the house.

  “Well, come along, Pig,” Alleyn said, and started down the side street that led to the Anchor. Pig gave a little skip and followed, the dog still prancing at his heels.

  The Anchor was a prosperous tavern, with a well-kept main room and a garden that backed on the river, and prices high enough to keep away the rabble. When the playhouses were open, it was invariably crowded, yard, garden, and main room all filled with men of fashion and their companions, but today the yard stood empty except for a brewer’s cart, and the brewer’s boy asleep under it. Bartholomew showed a distinct desire to sniff at the creature, but Pig whistled him back, and took a firm hold of the leather strap that served as a collar. Alleyn nodded his approval, and ducked under the low doorway.

  The main room was surprisingly crowded, given the deserted yard, most of the long tables filled, but it was a very sober gathering. Alleyn paused for a moment, searching the crowd, and picked out any number of familiar faces both from his own company and from the Chamberlain’s Men. One or two of Pembroke’s Men were present, too, but they had withdrawn themselves into a corner and were making very little of their presence. As well they ought, Alleyn thought, with some bitterness. Had they used the intellect God presumably gave them, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.

  “Ned!” The voice and the waving hand were Henslowe’s. Alleyn lifted his own hand in acknowledgement, and threaded his way through the tables to join his father-in-law. Several of his fellow-sharers were seated with Henslowe, Thomas Downton very sober in his long-skirted rat’s-colored doublet, William Bird only a little brighter in a workaday suit trimmed with bean-blue ribbons, and Alleyn included them in his murmured greeting. The long faces matched the sad clothes, and he felt almost indecently cheerful to be wearing plain tawny wool.

  “Pull up a stool, “ Henslowe said, with an awful glance at the hovering Pig.

  Alleyn, unmoved, did as he was bid, and gestured for the boy to sit beside him. “Pig said you sent for me, sir?”

  “I sent for you,” Henslowe answered grimly, but declined to press the issue further. “Young Burbage has gone to the Recorder to see what—if anything—can be done. They’ve agreed to come back here, so that we can share the news, and make some decision.”

  Alleyn nodded. Rivals though they might be in almost everything else, the closing of the playhouses was too great a strain on everyone’s purses to permit anything less than cooperation. Touring companies were smaller than the companies employed in London; he and his fellow sharers—and the sharers of all the other companies as well—owed it to each other to make sure that the sharers, at least, would have work on the road.

  A potboy edged up to the table, his red livery badged with tarnished braid. “What will you have, my masters?”

  He spoke the standard appeal with a marked lack of interest.

  “Ale for myself, and small beer for the boy,” Alleyn answered. He glanced toward Pig then, and, reading the appeal in the apprentice’s face, added, “and a plate of bread and cheese.” Pig grinned, but the expression was banished by Henslowe’s quelling stare. The apprentice meekly gathered his dog between his legs, and sat very still. The potboy returned a few moments later with the tankards and a cracked wooden platter; Alleyn eyed the aged cheese rather dubiously, but Pig fell to with a will. Downton shuddered visibly.

  “What’s to be done?” Bird asked mournfully. “We’ll be touring again, you mark my words.”

  “Damn the bricklayer,” Henslowe said, between clenched teeth. “As for what’s to be done, that’s what we’re here to decide—when the rest of your fellows condescend to appear.”

  “Here’s Tom now,” Downton said, soothingly, “and Humphry Jeffes.”

  Alleyn smiled his greeting as the other sharers made their way to the table. Thomas Towne seemed to share the gloom that enfolded most of the company—not without cause, either, Alleyn thought, and took a pull of the thick ale—but Jeffes still managed an air.

  “Did you know, my masters, that there’s been a sermon preached about us?” he asked, pulling up his stool. Bird groaned.

  “That was all we needed,” Downton said.

  “Oh, it was most edifying,” Jeffes protested, fiddling with the none-too-clean ruffs at his wrists. When the pot-boy appeared, he called for a glass of genever, ignoring Henslowe’s snort of disgust, and continued, “I give you my word, it was.”

  “Did you attend?” Alleyn asked, and felt suddenly very old. He was not more than three or four years older than the other man, but somehow Jeffes’s cheerful irresponsibility made him feel ancient—rather the way Marlowe does, he thought, and bit back a grimace.

  “Most certainly I did,” Jeffes answered, his pale eyes sparkling. “Nay, Tom, it was indeed a valuable experience.”

  “God save us, has he become a precisian?” Downton muttered to his tankard.

  “What happened, Humphry?” Alleyn asked, and was not entirely sure he wanted to hear the answer.

  “Well, my masters, the parson preached on the wickedness of the actors, and told how all such were surely in the service of Satan and wore his livery, no matter what great ones’ names might be on their patents—”

  “That might land him in prison for a month or three,” Bird interjected, brightening a little.

  “—and sure, it must be so, for even as he said it, and called on all his hearers to tear out Satan from their hearts and cease spending their pennies on his wiles and ways, when crackle there came flames and smoke and the smell of sulphur, and one cried out that the devil himself had come to hear the sermon. The crowd fled, and the parson was knocked in the mud and trodden on, which greatly freed his tongue.” Jeffes grinned. “So in truth it ended as a filthy sermon, no matter how it began.”

  “The squibs from Faustus,” Towne said, into the pregnant silence.

  “Christ’s balls—” Downton began, and bit off the rest of his words, remembering that there was an apprentice present.

  Alleyn drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Did it never occur to you, Jeffes, that this sort of—further scandal—could only strengthen the Lord Mayor in his determination to keep the playhouses closed?”

  “Does he think at all?” Towne growled.

  “Did I say it was my doing?” Jeffes protested, unconvincingly.

  Downton snorted. “If that’s the best you can do, it was a mistake to let you buy your share.”

  Jeffes grinned.

  “Here’s Martin, and Black Dick,” Bird said hastily.

  “We’ll talk later, Jeffes,” Alleyn said, and turned his attention to the newcomers. Martin Slater
, who had been his closest friend at the founding of the company the year before, was wearing his most sober face, and Alleyn felt his heart sink. “What’s the news, Martin?” he asked, but it was Richard Jones who answered.

  “Bad news, Ned, did you expect otherwise?” As always when he was angered, the Welsh lilt was back in the dark man’s voice. He had dressed with defiant pride, Alleyn noted, a gaudy Spanish cloak—and the braid was gilt if not true gold—worn at the correctly careless angle over his best scarlet doublet and black-paned hose.

  “We met Richard Burbage on the London side of the river, and shared his boats across,” Slater said. “The Recorder can hold out no hope of the playhouses reopening this summer.”

  “Christ, have mercy,” Bird murmured, and seemed startled to hear his own voice.

  “He hasn’t so far,” Jeffes said, and the others turned on him.

  “Did you help the matter with your little games?” Downton demanded, and Towne snarled, riding over the other man’s words, “Kit Marlowe had more sense than you.”

  “You should be fined for a troublemaker,” Henslowe declared, and that awful pronouncement, coming from the man who financed them, silenced the company.

  Alleyn cleared his throat. “We can debate that later, sir, if you please. Where’s Richard, Martin?”

  “Coming up the garden,” Slater answered. Even as he spoke, the rear door opened, and a little knot of men pushed into the room, Burbage in the lead. They were all dressed in their best suits—or their second-best, Alleyn thought, treading the fine line between a proper conceit of themselves and their supplicant’s role. He nudged Pig gently, and, when the boy glanced at him, fished a sixpence from his purse. “Off with you now, and get the clary for your mistress. Tell her I shouldn’t be too late.”

  Pig pouted slightly, but did as he was told, starting for the serving hatch at a snail’s pace.

  “A bad business, this,” Burbage said, and leaned heavily on the table. Henslowe waved him to a seat, and the actor took the stool Towne slid toward him. The rest of the