Philip took three long strides towards Jonson, grabbed him by the shoulder, swung him round and said, "Out."
Jonson hooked his thumbs in his belt and stood in his way. "And who are you to tell me that?" He was smiling, his eyes glittering. "One of Henslowe's lame ducks, that is all."
Philip did not move, except to clench his fists. Enough. Don't answer him. A brief pulse of rage and misery - only a fragment of what had been simmering for all the five long years since that fatal evening in Deptford, and had been dormant since Tom Dekker had brought him home that night at the end of May - narrowed his throat.
"Who else would have taken you in?" the taunting voice went on. "Adrift after they killed the boy-lover."
The rage boiled over. Philip took two more strides forward, forcing Jonson to back away in a hurry. He did not recognise his own voice. "Kit did not love boys. He loved me."
Jonson stepped back another half a pace, recovered himself, and sniffed. "You? Well, if he was fool enough to love one that was both a catamite and a fool, no wonder he died."
The snarl that erupted from Philip's throat might have been ready waiting in his mouth: he was not conscious of having taken breath. He reached back for his dagger. A flick of his arm, and it was gone.
Everything seemed to happen with immeasurable slowness: steel spinning across the bright air; every man's gaze following its path; Ben Jonson stepping back.
The blade thumped into one of the wooden posts with a sound like a door slamming. Fragments of plaster scattered, but the knife stayed there, quivering. In the intense, intent silence, nobody moved. A dozen men, all standing as if turned to stone.
"You goddamn - Italian," Jonson said, and spat.
"Damned, maybe," Philip said, "but not by God nor by my mother's blood." He strode forward, pulled the knife out of the oaken vice that held it, and hurled himself at Jonson.
The movement seemed to break every other man from their marble stillness: Jonson drew his own knife, but there was no time for more than one scrape of blade on blade, enough to set teeth on edge, before Gabriel Spencer was at Philip's back and Sol Jeanes at Jonson's, pulling the two apart; Henslowe somewhere well back bellowing orders, Nick bouncing around the edge of the fray as if desperate to get his own blow in. Jonson swung to face Jeanes. The two, each as strong as the other, never moved; but Gabriel hauled Philip away, a hand on each shoulder. "Philip. Phip. Calm, there."
"Don't call me that. And throw that - that - " There are no words. He spat. "Out." Philip flung himself forward, only to put himself more firmly in Gabriel's embrace. "Let me after him."
"Too late," Gabriel said. "Jeanes and Henslowe have put him out. Leave it, Philip."
"I'll cut his - "
"Philip … Philip, man, enough," Gabriel whispered. "I'll deal with him. Maybe not today, but I will." He pushed toward Philip and held him tightly. "Hush … shh. You're making young Nick anxious."
"He is not so!" Nick said indignantly.
Philip chuckled and all the fight left him. He sank down on his heels, Gabriel still holding him. "Oh, Lord have mercy … Nick, did I frighten you? I'm sorry."
"No, you didn't," Nick said. "I don't frighten easy." Nonetheless, the boy was looking at him with something like awe. "I didn't know you could get that angry."
"It doesn't happen often." Philip pulled away from Gabriel and got to his feet. "Come on. Rehearsal."
"A-men," said a voice backstage, and life returned to something like normal again.
Chapter 7
September 21st-22nd 1598
Philip came to bed early that night, after the fight in the Rose. Later on, at the edge of curfew, there was a knock at the house door, and footsteps on the stairs. Nick recognised the tread. "Gabriel," he whispered.
"Oh." Philip rolled on his back, and then on his other side. The door opened; Gabriel crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed.
"Philip?"
"Mm?"
"May I get in?"
He yawned. "I'm not so cruel as to repay you coldly for climbing those stairs. Come in and welcome."
Gabriel unbuckled his sword, laid it on the floor and undressed before slipping beneath the covers. For a while they talked softly, too softly for Nick to hear the words, although once Gabriel said, "He's got no business - I said I would deal with him, and I will. He needs taking down a peg."
"Take care," Philip said sleepily.
"I will." There was a rustle and swoop of linen as Gabriel laid one arm across Philip. "Which circle of hell would you like him in?"
"Backbiters? Fornicators? Oh, I don't care. He can live, so long as I have no dealings with him." Philip yawned again; Gabriel chuckled, and the two were quiet. If they made love, they did it discreetly enough that Nick never noticed; but once again, it was Gabriel who woke him in the morning, leaving the bed while Philip still slept. He slipped out quietly, and before long came back and donned his clothes.
"Watching me again?" he whispered, as he did up his buttons.
"Not for any reason."
"Fair enough." He picked up his sword, blade and scabbard in one hand, and belt in another. A couple of steps across the floor, and then he turned back. "You have a sword yet?"
"Of course not. I'm only an apprentice."
He grinned. "The day will come; don't look so disheartened. Tell you what; come with me now, and we'll try some fighting on stage, hey?"
Nick shook his head. "I'll come, but master Henslowe says I'm not to fight even with a foil until I've been taught."
"Then I'll teach you. I'll even use a foil myself."
At that Nick pulled on hose, trunk-hose and shoes in a hurry, then his doublet. The jerkin could wait. "Don't you usually?"
Gabriel, already half out of the door, turned a wolfish grin back on him. "Oh yes; except when I want to frighten someone. Don't worry. It will be a foil, I promise you. Henslowe has a dozen or more hidden away somewhere. John he'll have opened up the Rose by now, and Stephen in the tiring-room knows me enough to trust me. We should be able to find one your length."
Backstage, it was warm and dusty: not household dust, but the dust of dried mud and wood-shavings. Almost the same, but not as cool, as that day ten months ago when Nick had come running to the Rose from the non-existent press-gang, and beguiled himself into the company. The same day that, later, he had first seen Gabriel with the dirt of the Marshalsea on him.
The swords were up in the loft over the musicians' gallery. Nick climbed up onto the beam beside them, and Gabriel followed, setting a hand to his back to steady him. Nick turned and blinked at him. "Thank you."
"Phip won't thank me if I let his prentice break himself," Gabriel replied, his eyes smiling but his face serious. "Let me see the length of your reach, stripling." He crouched down on the beam beside the line of hanging foils. "It's really Philip that should teach you, of course; he learnt from Saviolo, you know?"
"I didn't," Nick said, although he had no idea who Saviolo was. "Who did you learn from?"
"Oh, Philip, sometimes, or anyone that would teach me." Gabriel looked at the foils and back again at Nick. "I think this one should be your size." He took one foil down, and then another. "I'll use this one. Can you climb down safely?"
"Why, yes, thank you."
Gabriel, two foils under one arm, swayed on the beam, and put his free hand on Nick's shoulder. "Unlike me!"
They scrambled down the ladder, Gabriel first. Nick came after, facing outward. Almost at the foot of the ladder his eyes met Gabriel's, and he stopped and stared. It was dark; as dark as a moonlit night in Henslowe's attic. The dark centre of Gabriel's eyes was a deep mirror in which Nick could see nothing. "Gabriel," he whispered, and reached out.
"Oh no," Gabriel said. "No, you don't."
"I wish you would," Nick said, his heart thumping rather more strongly in his throat than he liked.
A look of sheer exasperation crossed Gabriel's face, before he leant the foils against the ladder, put one arm round Nick, pulled him
forward, and kissed him hard.
And all Nick could think was, what was meant to be so special about this, and whether his feet would still be on the ladder when Gabriel let him go.
At length Gabriel stopped, pushed him back on the ladder, drew a deep breath and said, "Faith, it's like kissing a little wax mammet. Leave it be, Nick. Leave it until you can't live without it; that's all I can say to you now. I was right when I said you didn't know what you were doing."
"Oh." Nick's voice sounded small and foolish in his own ears. "We couldn't - try again?"
"We could not," Gabriel said. "You get no more of me, lad." His voice softened. "Time will come, for one sword as it will for the other. Wait and be patient. Now," he said, ushering Nick before him, "down from the gallery, take these foils and we'll see if I can teach you to fight, though I won't teach you to fuck."
Choking back a gasp of laughter, Nick climbed down the stairs and into the sunlight on stage.
It wasn't long before the others, Philip too, joined them for rehearsal. The play was The Fountain of Fashions; a poor, cobbled thing, patched together from good scenes and stolen tricks. Nick played a merchant's daughter taking a forbidden lover into her room by night; except that the stage turned out to be wrong for it.
"Not one of your better efforts, George," Philip said, leaning on the pillar under the musicians' gallery. "How am I supposed to get up there? You were more thief than honest chapman when you filched this one."
"But it worked at the Theatre," George Chapman said, coming out from backstage and looking up as if it were the Rose that were at fault, before turning the same look on Philip. Overhead, the sky was murky blue, and the air was dull and warm.
"Your Theatre," Gabriel remarked, "is a foot or more lower at that railing than our Rose, George, as you should know. Can you not write the lady down a little?"
"Nay, it is the maid must be lowest," George protested. "Phip - "
"Don't."
"Philip, then - can you stand on a faldstool?"
"I can try." Philip glanced up, smiling. "Take care of me, Nick."
At first, it didn't seem that Nick needed to; but then the faldstool tilted. Philip thrashed one arm wildly at the rail, and missed, while Nick, clutching at the other arm, missed too. "Philip!" A second later, he was scuttling down the stairwell with his skirts up round his knees.
"I'm all right," Philip said, sitting up and reaching for Gabriel's outstretched arm. "Help me, Spence." He tried to walk. "I think - ouch." And sat down again, clutching his right ankle. "George, you - "
"I pray your forgiveness, Philip," George said, dropping his play and himself to the stage together. "What can I do?"
"You can have the maid let him in by the door. And you can buy me a drink when I'm on my feet again." Philip stood again, sat down on Gabriel's knee, and laughed. "God have mercy. Floored by a faldstool. Master Henslowe, I fear that you must find yourself another Antonio to Nick's Sapphira."
"Charles Massey can do it," Henslowe said.
Philip flipped one finger-tip against Nick's chin. "Not so bad, Nick. Charles is as good a player as I; and taller."
Nick pushed back the thoughts that had come into his mind. "Needs must."
Gabriel took Philip back to Henslowe's to apply a cold compress to his sprained ankle, while the rest continued rehearsing under the ever-darkening sky, with one of the musicians taking Gabriel's part, that of a servant with no more to do than open a door and shout an order.
When the play was done and they were all disrobed and ready to go home, there was still one sword propped against the wall of the tiring-room; a real sword, not a stage foil. "Is this Gabriel's?" Nick asked.
Master Henslowe glanced at it. "Maybe. I dare say he's still with Philip; you may take it to him if I can trust you to be careful."
Philip was not upstairs, but in the dining room at Henslowe's, going over some pieces on his lute. Nick leant the sword against the table. "Gabriel left this behind."
"I don't think so; he had a sword with him when he left." Philip went on playing, and then leant the lute against the wall and sighed. "Let me look."
Nick held the hilt towards him, and Philip said, "You're right, that is Gabriel's … he must have taken mine. I hope - "
"He'll be all right," Nick said. "He's in no fighting mood, surely?"
"He is, more often than not," Philip said, with an exasperated sigh. "And he's not a good fighter, neither; he's one of your sword-and-buckler men who can hit hard, but can't take care. If he does get into a fight, and he has my sword - it's ten inches longer." His calm was leaving him. "Anyone could get under his guard. And if he takes it into his head to look for trouble - " He stood up and took a single stride away from the table before his ankle folded under him. "Ow - God's bones - I can't - "
"Let me take it to him," Nick said. "It'll be safe enough if I sling it over my back. Where does he lodge?"
"Hoxton, just beyond Shoreditch," Philip said, lowering himself on to the bench again. "Any ale-house near there will tell you. They know him well enough."
The sky through the window blinked with raw light, and for a moment Nick thought that someone was banging on the door. Philip's mouth tightened. "Thunderstorm. On second thoughts, maybe you had better stay here."
"I'd rather go," Nick said. "At least we'll know all's well."
"Borrow this cloak, then." He smiled briefly. "Thanks, Nick. You're a good boy. Run along, and be quick."
Running was hardly possibly in Southwark or on the bridge; the crowds were swirling densely, perhaps in haste away from the ominous sky. Once across the river, Nick made better speed, striding out towards the grey-stone curving serpent of the City's curtain walls where the ground was open. Past the Curtain theatre, taller and narrower than the Rose; past the Theatre, two decades old now, the first of its kind that London had seen. Past St Leonard's church at the northern end of Shoreditch, where he stopped to get his bearings. Hoxton was in sight now, and Hoxton fields; and two men, fighting.
There were people gathered round them, some running for help, some simply calling for friends to come watch. In the blank blind terror of the moment, Nick ran headlong straight towards the two, not crying out for fear of distracting them. They might not have heard him if he had, for they showed no sign of seeing him when he stopped almost within reach of the blades, nor when the taller of them lunged forward and back under the other's guard.
Nick dropped to his knees as the other man fell. "Gabriel!" He stammered out the name again, and again, took his hand, held it. Gabriel's arm was limp and heavy, his skin cold, his face pallid and slick with sweat. Nick could neither hear nor see any breath, though once there was a small, voiceless noise from the labouring throat. "Gabriel?" he whispered.
There was a small cut in the front of Gabriel's jerkin; hastily Nick unhooked the fastenings, found the matching cut in the doublet, and undid the line of buttons with fingers that wouldn't stop shaking. There was a small, small bloodstain on Gabriel's shirt. Nick pulled at the linen, and it ripped at the sword-cut, exposing pale skin, unmoving, and a wound under the ribs on the right side, so small that it seemed nothing. There was no more blood, but a spreading darkness like a bruise beneath.
Shaking, Nick bent his ear to Gabriel's chest, where his heart was: nothing. To his lips: no breath. Only the wind getting up and blowing between then, and then the rain coming down. Nick pulled his cloak over them both, and tried to listen again.
A man thudded to the ground beside them. "I never - oh, say he's - "
"He's dead," Nick answered, the words falling from his mouth like stones.
"He can't be - I hardly - " Jonson's hands, rough hands, workman's hands, took Gabriel by the shoulders and laid him on his right side across Jonson's knees. The head with its wild hair slumped forward; and from the small wound under the ribs, slowly, trickled blood, and more blood, and more, to be washed away by the rain.
They say a dead man bleeds when his murderer touches him.
Jon
son swallowed an incoherent, startled oath, and crossed himself.
Chapter 8
September 1598
They buried Gabriel Spencer at St Leonard's church in Shoreditch, two days later, in grey, weeping weather, the air not cleared in the aftermath of the storm. Philip, his ankle still beyond taking his weight, rode there, and wept when the others wept; but when he was alone, he could not weep, only think, blankly, Could I have stopped him? What if he had had his own sword, and not mine? And once, in a night at the dark of the moon, It's as well we never said we loved each other, which kept him awake past midnight, struggling with the guilt of having taken joy in a man's body for reasons other than love.
Later that same night, when the light was turning grey through the shutters, he heard a stifled noise from the other bed. He listened harder, then said, "Nick … Nick lad, what is it?"
The noise was muffled at once; but after a little while, and prefacing his words with a sniff, Nick said, "Gabriel."
"I see. Yes."
"I didn't know him so well - not so well as you - but he was kind to me, and - and I liked him."
"Of course." Philip's own voice shook. Should I have loved him better? Could I have saved him? But he would not burden the lad with his own sorrows.
After a while Nick went on. "I never saw a dead body before. They say I saw my parents before their funeral, but I don't remember." He sniffed again. "I hope Ben Jonson rots in hell," he said savagely, and then set about crying in earnest. Philip, at last with tears to dash from his own eyes, got down beside the truckle bed, hauling his bed-covers with him, and put one arm around Nick's shoulders. "It's all right, Nick," he said, "it'll be all right," but of course it wasn't, and it wouldn't be, not for a long while. For the next few nights they slept so, Nick on his truckle-bed and Philip on the boards next to him, wrapped in sheets and blankets, each holding the other's hand so long as one of them was awake.
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