Jay Lewis Taylor
The Peacock's Eye
Published by Manifold Press
Text: © Jay Lewis Taylor 2015
Cover image: © oscarcalero|iStockphoto.com
Ebook format: © Manifold Press 2015
For further details of titles
both in print and forthcoming
see www.manifoldpress.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-908312-31-0
Dedication:
In memory of
Sam Wanamaker, 1919-1993
and to all who made and make possible
Shakespeare's Globe
With thanks to Louise for beta-ing yet again
Proof-reading and line-editing:
Zee of Two Marshmallows
(http://twomarshmallows.net/)
Editor: Julie Bozza
Characters and situations described
in this book are fictional
and not intended to portray real persons
or situations whatsoever;
any resemblances to living persons
are purely coincidental.
"To the Lords against Stage-Plays. From London the 28th of July 1597.
"… The inconveniences that grow by stage-plays about the City of London … They are the ordinary places for vagrant persons, masterless men, thieves, horse-stealers, whoremongers, cozeners, coney-catchers, contrivers of treason, and other idle and dangerous persons."
"The ladie … was charged to have nightlie conference with a spirit … to whome she sacrificed in the high waie nine red cocks, and nine peacocks eies."
Raphael Holinshed: The first and second volumes of chronicles.
London, 1586.
Chapter 1
July 1597
The shrill whistle from backstage startled Philip into dropping his paper. He looked up, the sun in his eyes, then down again; picked up the gather of paper, rolled it and hid it in his sleeve. The fair boy along from him was still scribbling, knees pressed against the edge of the gallery. He was a stranger and it was no business of Philip's, but still -
"Better move on, lad. They're on to you."
"Wh- ?" The boy glanced at his own paper. "I can't go until someone comes for me. I broke my ankle last week. Besides - "
"Give the paper to me, then."
"And a day's wages with it? No."
Philip scanned the crowd below. Yes … there were Langley's two watchmen, planted in the audience to keep an eye out for people making illicit copies. "I'll bring it back. After," he said. "I promise. If you don't give it to me you'll lose it anyway, and probably get a black eye into the bargain. Quick."
"Oh - all right." The boy gave Philip his own paper, grinned at him, and said, "At least I can stay for the play."
"I've heard it already." He had his own ways in the theatre during rehearsals, and into the tiring-room where the actors changed into their stage apparel, and he had been copying plays for years, but some lines from this one escaped his pen still. "You enjoy it." Philip turned away, stepped over a child who was lying on the floor to see the stage through a forest of legs, and slipped through the door as unobtrusively as possible before running down the stair to the street. He needed that one long speech … for a moment he considered shaking the paper from his sleeve, going back and trying again, but a glance over his shoulder told him that Michael and Gabriel were outside the Swan theatre's walls and looking for him.
Philip lengthened his stride and dived into the nearest alley. Pray God they hadn't seen him; they might have the names of angels, but they had the manners of demons when they caught anyone copying their company's plays.
The alley led to the Falcon stairs, a steep flight between two walls. If he had not grabbed at the iron ring set into the wall, Philip would have gone straight in to the river, for the tide was high and the water lapping directly below him. He had crossed the Thames often enough in the ten years since he came to London, and many of the watermen were friends. Tom Borden was nearest today, and sculled towards him. "A crossing for you, master Standage?"
"Not today. How much to take me along to the Crown for a drink while I wait for the flag to come down?"
"You left before the play ended? That's not like you."
Philip shrugged. "Ask no questions."
Tom laughed. "Oh aye? Well, the answer to 'how much?' is nothing, if you'll buy me a drink too for fellowship's sake." With a twist of one oar over the stern, he nudged his boat against the stairs. "Step aboard."
Hanging on the iron ring, one foot questing mid-air for a place to rest, Philip came close to falling in when someone - Gabriel, God damn him - shouted, "Philip Standage! Come here!" He gave up caution and dropped into the boat, making it rock like a leaf in a whirlpool.
"Quick as you can, Tom." He sat down in the stern and looked over his shoulder. The alleyway was blocked now, mostly with Gabriel; but behind him was a glimpse of livery that Philip thought he recognised. "Or - wait."
"Make up your mind, man," Tom grumbled, turning the boat and shipping his oars.
From the safety of twelve feet distance over water Philip said, "If you think I'm coming ashore for you, Gabriel Spencer, you can think again."
"Not me. This is Sir Robert Cecil's man," Gabriel called in an actor's whisper. "Come take him aboard and he'll tell you where to go."
The boy in the Swan would be expecting him. Master Henslowe and the Admiral's Men were waiting for their copy of the Swan's new play. It had been a long afternoon and Philip was thirsty as hell. But he said, "I'll buy you the drink another day, Tom. Turn back."
Again the skiff nudged against the stairs. Again Philip grabbed hold of the iron ring, and this time handed Sir Robert's man into the boat with as much ceremony as he knew how.
"Thanks, Gabriel," he said, smiling.
"You'd do better to thank God I didn't catch you." Gabriel, holding the prow with one hand and pushing his wild brown hair out of his eyes with the other, winked at him. How old was he now? Nineteen, Philip thought, and he had been big for his age three years ago, so big that he had rarely played a woman's part even then. Now, he could easily be mistaken for any hulking lout when he chose.
"Why do you stay with Langley? Come join us at Admiral's," he said on impulse.
The passenger coughed; Gabriel merely smiled, and let go the prow.
Philip settled back on the thwart and looked at the man opposite him. "How may I serve Sir Robert?" he asked. "I wonder that you found me, to be honest."
"Mistress Henslowe told me you were at the Swan. Sir Robert has given me no reason except that he wishes to see you," the man said.
A few months ago, Philip would have known the reason. The Lady Elizabeth had been ailing for much of last year; Philip's family were neighbours to Sir Robert's family, and Philip was no mean lutenist. Elizabeth had liked his music, but she had died in childbirth in January, and since then there had been no more river crossings to Westminster, and no more music.
It had been so cold, that Candlemas. Philip had followed the funeral procession to the Abbey, and although he had come face-to-face with Sir Robert, the pale, greenish eyes had shown no sign of recognition through the grief that clouded them. Philip shivered now, even in the July sunshine, at the memory.
The tide was with them, and Tom would not have rowed so hard if the other passenger had not insisted; past the Temple, then northwards to the Savoy Palace, overshooting it and tying up at the Ivy lane stairs.
"Tom," Philip said under his voice, "do me a favour and go to the Swan. There's a boy in the gallery will be waiting for me. Tell him I'll be there tomorrow."
Tom raised one eyebrow. "A pretty boy?"
"I - ah - yes, come to think of it."
"Oh, indeed, master Standage."
<
br /> "No," Philip said,
Tom's grip tightened on his arm. "What would your Kit Marlowe have said, eh?"
"He wasn't mine." I was his, but that's different. "No," Philip repeated, and shook the insistent hand from him.
Sir Robert Cecil was in the garden, on a bench beside his small daughter. He was fingering, soundlessly, the strings of a lute, while Frances beat her hands on its body, a noise like the whisper of a drum. Cecil glanced up, and Philip knelt on the dry grass; he was only a little taller than the average, but most men were taller than Cecil.
"Philip Standage," Cecil said, his voice soft and dry, but clear. "I am glad to see you here."
Philip bowed his head. "How may I serve you, sir?"
"Will is with his tutor, and I stole my daughter from her nurse this morning. It was Frances asked for you," Cecil said. "No, do not look surprised: she remembers your music. Will you play for her?"
"Then I am honoured." Philip hesitated. "I have no instrument with me."
"I thought you might not have time to fetch one. You think you can play this?" Cecil held out the lute. Philip rose, took it, and sat cross-legged next to the sundial. "It needs tuning," Cecil added abruptly.
Philip, already with fingers on fretboard and string, nodded. Here in this quiet garden, tuning was a matter of but a few minutes: no shouting, no carts rumbling past, no banging of doors to distract him or drown the note. Presently, he ran his fingers across the strings to satisfy himself that all was in accord, and smiled at Frances. "Well, sweet lady, what would you have me play?"
Frances had inherited her father's deformities. Long skirts hid the crookedness of her legs, but could not lend her grace, and her back was as hunched as his. But she had also inherited, or learned, his quiet dignity, for she walked to the nearest lavender bush, picked a single stem, and handed it to Philip with a curtsey not much more awkward than any four-year-old's would have been. "Lavender, if you please," she said.
"Lavender's blue, dilly dilly," Philip sang, "Lavender's green, When I am king, dilly dilly, You shall be queen." To his surprise Sir Robert began to sing along with him; for the next verse Philip shifted the harmony. "Sing, my lady," he said, and Frances joined in with a small uncertain voice like a robin's winter song.
They sang more songs, and catches, and a round or two. Butterflies danced over the flowers, and the bees buzzing at the thyme and marjoram made the very sound of summer. Light glinted on the lace that edged Frances' small ruff, and on the brocade of her stomacher; even Cecil's dark robes gleamed in the sun. The shadow on the dial swung on its way, inexorable.
The performance would be over and the flag down at the Swan, where the boy would still be waiting in the gallery unless Tom had found him. The Henslowes in their Bankside warehouse would be wondering what was become of their copyist. Philip lowered his arm at the end of a tune, and the roll of paper tickled the inside of his elbow. He shook it down to his wrist, pulled it out, and slipped it into the purse that he wore at his belt.
When he looked up Cecil was smiling, genuinely amused, or so it seemed. "What, are you turned secret messenger?"
He laughed. "No, sire. It's work only, I promise you. A copy of a play."
"I see," Cecil said; but there was something speculative in his look that made Philip uncomfortable. He dropped his gaze and tried the tuning of the lute once more.
"What next, my lady?" he asked.
"Something new, if you please," Frances said.
After a moment's thought he began: "Come away, come, sweet love, The golden morning breaks. All the earth, all the air, Of love and pleasure speaks - "
"No more," Cecil said. "No more. That was - Bess liked that one."
Philip bit his lip. "I crave pardon, sir. The book is so new-printed, I had not thought - "
Cecil pressed his hands together, and seemed to recover his composure. "Master Dowland and I are long acquainted. He visited last summer, before the book was printed, to sing the songs over for us. Today - " For a moment his voice faded. "This day nine years, Bess said that she would marry me."
I never heard you call her Bess, before. I never saw you moved.
"The Lady Elizabeth was kindness itself to me," Philip said. "I - "
Cecil interrupted him. "No matter. Sing another." He turned towards his daughter. "What song would you have, sweetheart?"
"Lavender again," she whispered, and Philip sang the song through once more.
"Let the birds sing, dilly, dilly, And the lambs play; We shall be safe, dilly, dilly, Out of harm's way."
Nick, propped against the inner wall of the gallery, scolded himself roundly. He should have known that the other copyist wouldn't come back, for all those professions of good intent, and the honest look of those dark eyes. He might indeed have saved Nick a beating at the theatre, but there would be one in store at St Paul's school, now. More, he had been so friendly that Nick had wanted to believe that he would come back; deceit made the boards he sat on harder still.
The theatre emptied fast; soon there was nobody left but the men clearing the stage, and sweeping the worst of the mess from where the crowd had stood. Nick began to think that nobody was coming for him at all, not even Jonas to carry him back to the school.
The shadow on the far side of the theatre was rising slowly as the sun set. A man, a waterman to judge by his cap and clothing, stepped into the light and squinted upward. Not Jonas; but all the same, he stopped when he saw Nick and started climbing.
Nick waited through the slow footsteps on the stairs, the heavy tread along the gallery floor. He was sure he didn't look gentleman-like, sitting there with yesterday's clothes on and one leg stuck straight in front of him, but the man doffed his cap all the same.
"You the young gentleman as is waiting for master Standage?"
"I don't know his name," Nick said, tipping his head back to see the man better.
"Philip Standage." He looked at Nick askance. "Are you sure you don't know him? Thin he is, and foreign-looking. Dark hair."
"Oh." The description fitted well enough. "Yes, I suppose so."
"He says to tell you, he'll be here tomorrow."
Much good that would be when Nick came through the door at St Paul's with no copy. "Can't you get hold of him tonight? He has something of mine." Nick looked as appealing as he could.
"Does he now?" The man rubbed the back of his head, making his hair stand on end. "Sir Robert Cecil sent a man for him, see. Can't say no to that."
"I see what you mean," Nick said, although he would happily have seen both Cecil and Standage to the devil at that particular moment. "B-but, if I don't take it back tonight, I'll be in trouble."
He grunted. "It has to be tonight?"
"Yes."
"Well - I can't go paddling back and forth for no good reason. But if I take another man to Strand side soon, I'll take time to walk to Sir Robert's and see if I can find master Standage and tell him."
"But - " Nick said.
"Don't you look at me like that. I tell you, 'tis the best I can do, so you must make the best of it and be thankful."
"Oh." Nick sighed. "I do thank you, sir, indeed."
The man nodded. "I wouldn't have you think anything but that master Standage is an honest man. Honestest man in Southwark, not that that's saying much; but Philip he's different."
Nick shrugged. Honest or not, Standage was doing him no favours that day. The waterman walked across the ground and through the doors; Nick took a deep breath and said, "By God's broken bloody bones and our Lady's ring, damn Philip Standage. And, and - oh, shit."
Jonas, the usher from the school, swinging the crutch Nick needed to walk, was on his way across the theatre floor; he must near as anything have passed the waterman in the doorway. It wouldn't take them long to walk to the river stairs and find a boatman to take them to Paul's; nor much longer after that for Nick to be in front of master Giles, trying to explain why he had no work. He closed his eyes, sent a brief prayer to the God whose bones he had onl
y a moment ago been busy cursing, and pulled himself up with both hands on the gallery rail.
Chapter 2
July 1597
As the last chord died, Cecil stood up. "It is time I returned you to your nurse, child," he said to Frances. "Come, let us go in. Standage, get you some drink from the pantry; singing is thirsty work in this heat. I will be in the book-room afterwards; I must talk to you."
I should have known there was more to this than music. Philip bowed his head, and followed Cecil indoors.
Refreshed with a cup of pale, weak, beer, he climbed the stairs, his own tread soft on the dark wood. The house smelt of beeswax and strewing-herbs. It was strange for this great place to be so quiet, with no Lady Elizabeth at the virginals nor singing about her sewing. Even after six months, the scent of her favourite perfume still lingered above stairs; it had been the same in Philip's old home, after his mother died.
He knocked on the book-room door and opened.
Sir Robert Cecil at his desk was no more than a dark shape against the green-grey diamond mesh of the leaded window. "Ah, Standage," he said. "Be seated."
Philip sat. There was silence, and more silence, save for the scratching of Cecil's pen. Does he not know what to say to me? Or does he think I will become afraid of silence? He smiled to himself, and let his gaze wander to the window. In a corner of the casement was a small, dark commotion; a butterfly, caught in a spider's web. Without thinking, Philip got to his feet, opened the casement and in the flood of light broke the web until the butterfly flew outside, down and was lost among the flowers.
Cecil was looking at him with a wry smile on his face. "There will be a hungry spider cursing you, Standage."
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