‘Our dear Queen,’ he said with reverential familiarity, ‘first visited Oxford in the year of our lord 1566 and lodged at Christ Church. It was there she witnessed a performance of Palamon and Arcyte.’
‘I have played in such a piece,’ boasted Firethorn.
‘That was by another hand, Lawrence. It is an old tale and told by many a playwright. At Oxford, it was the work of Richard Edwardes that the Queen witnessed in Christ Church Hall.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Unhappily, that is not all Her Majesty saw on that fateful night.’
‘What else, Barnaby?’
‘Tragedy, misfortune, chaos!’
‘You must have been a member of the cast.’
‘I was not in the play!’ returned Gill. ‘Nor yet of an age when drama had claimed me for its own. To return to my story about the Queen … Her courtiers occupied balconies that had been built onto a wall and she herself sat in a canopied chair on a platform with scenic decoration around it. Now we come to the disaster—’
‘Enter Barnaby Gill!’
‘Enter a large crowd from university and town. They came in with such force that they breached a wall protecting a staircase and brought it down upon them. Three persons were killed and five injured. The Queen was mightily upset.’
‘Had she hoped for more slaughter than that?’
‘She sent her own surgeons to attend to the injured.’
‘What of Palamon?’
‘It was well played, by all accounts, and made the Queen laugh heartily. She was very pleased with the author and gave him thanks for his pains.’
‘Actors create plays,’ boomed Firethorn, ‘not authors!’
‘Give a poet his due.’
‘Keep the scribbling rascals in their place.’
‘This Richard Edwardes had left the university to become Master of the Children of the Chapel, but he returned to present the first part of his play. The Queen was also favoured with the second part of Palamon days later, when no mishap occurred.’ He wagged an admonitory finger. ‘You have heard a cautionary tale, Lawrence.’
‘I marked its warning.’
‘What is it, then?’
‘Do not invite the Queen to our plays.’
‘Beware of wild behaviour. Control our spectators.’
‘My performance will keep them in strict order.’
‘Yes, they will fall asleep together.’
‘I can captivate any audience.’
Gill sniggered. ‘As you did at the Fighting Cocks, named after you and your fat rival.’
Firethorn turned to strike him but the mocking clown had already pulled on the reins of his horse and sent it trotting to the rear of the party. While the actor-manager fumed alone, his colleague struck up a conversation with the apprentices, who lolled on the waggon. Richard Honeydew had an enquiring mind and a natural respect for his elders.
‘Have you been to Oxford before, Master Gill?’ he said.
‘I have been everywhere, Dicky.’
‘What manner of place is it?’
‘A comely town, set in lovely countryside, and bounded by a wall. It has fine colleges, large churches and excellent hostelries. Let us hope it will be kind to Westfield’s Men.’
‘They say that Cambridge is prettier.’
‘What do you know of prettiness?’ asked Gill with a twinkle in his eye. A shrewd glance from Owen Elias in the driver’s seat made the horseman amend his tone. ‘Cambridge? No, boy. It does not hold a candle to Oxford. If you have a mind to listen, I’ll tell you why …’
Nicholas Bracewell was close enough to overhear the exchange between the two of them but he was not worried. Owen Elias was protection enough for the apprentices. Gill’s proclivities were well known and largely tolerated in the company, but there was an unwritten rule that its own boys would remain untouched. Whenever damson lips or an alabaster cheek or a graceful neck made Barnaby Gill forget this rule for a second, Nicholas was usually on hand to remind him of it. The older boys knew enough to take care of themselves when the comedian was around, but Richard Honeydew still had the unsuspecting innocence of a cherub. Nicholas would ensure that it was not taken rudely away from him.
‘That is the curious thing, Nick,’ said Edmund Hoode.
‘Curious?’
‘My sonnets, my verse, my inspiration.’
‘What of them?’
‘Stale.’
‘How so?’
‘Because she loved me.’
‘You make no sense, Edmund.’
‘Success was my very failure!’
Hoode was riding beside Nicholas and drifting off into a reverie from time to time. He emerged from the latest one with an insight that profoundly altered his attitude to his poetry. When he fell madly and inappropriately in love with some goddess, he was moved to pour out his feelings in honeyed sonnets and sublime verse. Indeed, the more unapproachable his beloved, the sweeter his lyrical vein. Only out of true suffering did his art achieve purity. Jane Diamond had mesmerised him at first then responded to his wooing with becoming eagerness. Hoode wrote poem after poem for her, hoping to construct a staircase of words so that he could ascend to her chamber and take the reward of a lover. When he recalled those verses now – line by embarrassing line – he saw that they were flat, mawkish and totally unworthy of their object. His staircase of words had led him down into a creative cellar. The divine Jane Diamond may have sharpened his self-esteem but she had blunted his talent beyond recognition.
The lovelorn author showed the first sign of recovery.
‘Her husband was a guardian angel in disguise,’ he said buoyantly. ‘In pulling me from the arms of his wife, he gave me back my invention. I am Edmund Hoode once more.’
‘We are glad to see you returned.’
‘If her husband were here, I would thank him.’
Nicholas looked ahead at Lawrence Firethorn but said nothing. The angel in disguise had been a ruthless actor-manager reclaiming a wayward playwright for a tour, but that was a truth that must not be allowed to rock the fragile vessel of Edmund Hoode’s fantasy. He was home again with his fellows and that was paramount. Nicholas prodded him about his recent tardiness.
‘How stands The Merchant of Calais?’ he asked.
‘Indifferently.’
‘It was promised for the start of the month.’
‘I’ll begin work on it again tomorrow.’
‘Why not today?’
‘Why not, indeed?’ decided Hoode, shedding his torpor as if it were a cloak. ‘You will help me, Nick. What man better? You come from merchant stock in Devon and you have been to Calais many a time. Tell me about Merchants of the Staple.’
It was a disagreeable topic for Nicholas – especially in present circumstances – and he chose his words with care. Before he could frame them into sentences, however, he was interrupted by the now soulful Edmund Hoode. Melancholy was returning.
‘Teach me the way, Nick. I’ll be an apt pupil.’
‘What is my subject to be?’
‘Happiness in love.’
‘Find another tutor.’
‘You are the example that I choose,’ said Hoode. ‘Since we have been friends, I have loved and lost a score at least of beautiful ladies who snatched my heart from my body and roasted it slowly before my eyes. And you? But one woman in all that time.’
Nicholas was evasive. ‘My case is different.’
‘That is why I pattern myself on you.’
‘Continue on your own course, Edmund.’
‘To further torture? You and Anne fill me with envy.’
‘Appearances can deceive.’
‘No, Nick,’ said his friend, ‘you two are made of the same mettle. I never saw a more contented couple – unless it be Lawrence and Margery when tearing small pieces out of each other! Mistress Anne Hendrik is a remarkable woman.’
‘She is, Edmund,’ confessed the other freely.
‘In your place, I would marry her and retire from this infernal profession. What el
se does a man need?’
It was a question that Nicholas had been compelled to address in the last couple of days. Losing Anne from his life had left a hollowness that was indescribable. Marriage had never been a serious option before, but it suddenly had an appeal he would not have believed possible. The theatre brought many joys but it was a precarious and abrasive living. With Anne beside him as his wife, he would find a more suitable and worthwhile employment. Given a chance of lasting happiness, why indeed did he stay with Westfield’s Men?
One look around the company gave him his answer and rubbed the tempting picture of Anne Bracewell out of his mind. Let her remain as the widow of a Dutchman. His place was here among his fellows, sharing their deprivations and revelling in their moments of glory. There was a play to complete and he must not let personal considerations hinder that. He smiled at Hoode and talked of someone he had not dared to think about for several years.
‘My father was a Merchant of the Staple,’ he said.
Oxford was infinitely smaller than London yet it came to assume a size and importance to the refugees from the capital that was out of all proportion to its true dimensions. It was their coveted destination, a haven of rest after an exhausting journey, a place to eat, drink and wench, to act on a stage in front of a proper audience, to feel once again the unique thrill of performance, to forget the horrors of the fire at the Queen’s Head and the hideous cost of their brief stay at the Fighting Cocks. The whole tone of the tour would be set at Oxford, and they were eager to get there in order to lift their spirits and regain their sense of identity.
Each man and boy in the company had his own vision of what the town would deliver. Lawrence Firethorn wanted to make its ancient walls shake in wonder at the brilliance of his art and reverberate with applause for a whole week. He also hoped that Oxford would harbour his persecutor, Israel Gunby, counterfeit father and cunning thief, so that Firethorn could hunt him down, dismember him with his bare hands then slice his miserable body into a hundred strips before feeding him to the stray dogs. Owen Elias had a humbler ambition. Though anything but an academic, he wanted to look at Jesus College, which had been founded over twenty years ago by a fellow Welshman, Dr Hugh Price, to instil a Celtic note into the voice of the university. Standing in the middle of the quadrangle, Elias would then declaim his favourite soliloquy, which he had translated into his native language for the occasion. Richard Honeydew, afloat on high expectation, saw a place that was dedicated to beauty and truth. John Tallis, with more immediate needs, thought only of Oxford food, Martin Yeo was drooling at the prospect of a surreptitious swig of Oxford ale and Stephen Judd, the oldest of the apprentices, now contending with a rising interest in the female sex he was paid to imitate, was dreaming of compliant young women with a sense of adventure. George Dart saw Oxford as a soft bed in which he could sleep out eternity.
Alone of the company, Edmund Hoode viewed the town as a noble seat of learning with an international reputation. He himself had been well taught at Westminster School by no less a tutor than Camden, but his formal education had stopped short of university and left him with the feeling that he had missed out on a vital stage of his intellectual and spiritual development. Most of his rival playwrights hailed from Oxford or Cambridge, while others had prospered at the alternative university of the Inns of Court in London. Though he read avidly and learnt quickly, there were still huge chasms in his knowledge and he was therefore planning – literally – to rub shoulders with the collegiate buildings in the hope that some of their learning would stick to him. Westfield’s Men were there to perform a play but he was repairing the deficiencies in his education.
Nicholas Bracewell experienced trepidation. Oxford took him nearer to a life he had relinquished and farther away from a woman he loved. It also held the possibility of a second attack from the man who had tried to kill him. There was safety in numbers, but he could not expect the company to form a cordon around him throughout their entire stay in the town. When Nicholas was alone, unguarded or asleep, he would be an inviting target for a man who could wait in the dark with catlike patience before leaping on his prey. Having failed with his knotted cord, he would next time choose a swifter means of dispatching his victim. Nicholas had to be ready for the flash of cold steel. He had a problem. In the hurly-burly of setting up the stage, marshalling the company and controlling the performance, he would be constantly distracted. Other eyes were needed to watch his back. He acquainted Edmund Hoode and Owen Elias with his plight and swore both to secrecy. When the former was not trailing his doublet against collegiate stone and the latter was not bouncing his Welsh cadences off the quadrangle at Jesus, they would be welcome sentries for a beleaguered friend.
Barnaby Gill was the real surprise. Renowned for his impish humour onstage, he was equally renowned for his morose behaviour off it, yet he was so excited when they came within sight of the town that he rode up and down the column to cheer on his colleagues and assure them that Oxford would redeem the miseries they had so far encountered. He was offering the leadership that Firethorn normally provided. His ebullience was due in part to the choice of a cherished play for the Oxford audience and in part to the fact that he knew of a tavern where he could get the sort of congenial company for the night that was difficult to find outside his London haunts. In addition to all this, Oxford gave him the opportunity to display his theatrical lore.
He drew his horse in beside Lawrence Firethorn again.
‘When the Queen came here last year—’
‘Spare me, Barnaby!’
‘She saw two comedies presented by university actors in Latin. They were meanly performed yet Her Majesty listened graciously throughout. She enjoyed them enough to invite the actors to stage their work at Court, but as their repertoire was imprisoned in the cage of a dead language, they did not oblige. The Court is too stupid to understand Latin.’
‘Is this another cautionary tale?’ said Firethorn.
‘I simply enlighten you about academic drama.’
‘It is a contradiction in terms. Too much learning silts up the drama, and too much drama destroys the supremacy of the mind.’ Jealousy rippled. ‘Besides, what can prattling, pox-faced, pigeon-chested students know about the art of acting? We have no competition here.’
‘That is my point, Lawrence.’
‘They will have seen no talent of my magnitude.’
‘Except when I last played here.’
‘Stand aside and let true greatness take the stage.’
‘I couple my first warning with another. Look for envy and suspicion from the scholars. We will meet opposition here. They hate strolling players and treat them as no more than vagabonds.’
‘Lawrence Firethorn will mend their ways.’
‘Ignore the gown and entertain the town.’
‘I want every man, woman and puking student there!’
‘The undergraduates will be on holiday.’
‘Fetch them back! Or they will miss an event as rare and memorable as an eclipse of the sun.’
‘Memorable, I grant you,’ said Gill, ‘but hardly rare. I eclipse your sun every time I pass in front of you onstage.’
They fell into a companionable argument until the town in the distance took on size and definition. An anticipatory buzz ran through the troupe. Relief was finally at hand. Wood and water gave Oxford a superb setting. Meadow, corn and hill added to its picturesque charm. Some towns were an imposition on the landscape, an ugly mass of houses, inns and civic buildings hurled by an undiscriminating hand onto the countryside to subdue the souls of those who lived there and offend the gaze of those who passed by. Oxford, by contrast, seemed to grow out of the earth like a stately mushroom, enhancing the quality of its environment while drawing immense value from it in return. Town and country sang in harmony and this impressed visitors from a capital city whose thrusting boundaries more often than not produced loud discord at its outer limits.
It was late afternoon and the sun had dipped l
ow enough to brush the towers and steeples with a glancing brilliance. As they approached Pettypont, the fortified stone bridge over the River Cherwell, they marvelled at the Norman ingenuity that had constructed the crossing point. Christ Church Meadows stretched out expansively on their left but it was the looming tower of Magdalen College on their right that commanded attention. Directly ahead was the town wall with a cluster of buildings peering over at them with friendly condescension. Eastgate was a yawning portal that beckoned them on and gave Lawrence Firethorn a cue for a speech.
‘Enter, my friends!’ he exclaimed. ‘Where sieges have failed, we will conquer. Where university actors have bored in Latin, we will delight with the Queen’s English. Where religion has burnt men at the stake, we will be kinder parsons to our flock. Where learning flourishes, we will teach unparalleled lessons. Where drama is respected, we will give it new and awesome significance.’ His rhetoric took him through the gate and into High Street. ‘On, on, my lads! Buttress your backs and hold up your chins. Let the people of Oxford know we are here among them. Westfield’s Men arrive in triumph. We are no skulking players or roaming vagabonds. The finest actors in the world have come to this town and we must make it feel truly grateful. Smile, smile! Wave, wave! Make friends with all and sundry. Brighten their squalid existences. We wage a war of happiness!’
The brave words resuscitated the travellers and carried them up High Street in a mood of elation. The low buildings of St Edmund’s Hall were on their right, followed by the ancient Gothic front of Queen’s College. Almost directly opposite was the University College, reputedly the oldest foundation, and the heads which measured its imposing façade now switched back to the other side of the street to view the quieter majesty of All Souls. That pleasure was soon superseded by another as the imperious Parish Church of St Mary rose up to dwarf all the surrounding buildings and to spear the sky with perpendicular accuracy. Brasenose came next with Oriel College off to the left, fronted by a green that was speckled with trees. Beyond this open space and the scattered buildings around Peckwater’s Inn was the largest college of them all, Christ Church, first called Cardinal College when it was begun in 1525 by Cardinal Wolsey and now reaching out with easy magnificence even beyond the scope of its founder’s grandiose plans. Though still unfinished, it had an air of completeness and permanence, an architectural landmark against which all future collegiate building would take direction.
The Silent Woman Page 10