The Queen's Head nb-1

by Edward Marston

  What had released Nicholas to see the play was the fact that the afternoon was given over to a costume fitting at The Queen's Head. Visual splendour was an imperative in every stage presentation and care was taken to produce costumes that would enthral the groundlings and combat those worn by the gallants. In the forthcoming production, Creech was due to wear three costumes, two of which at least would require a lot of work. His presence at The Queen's Head was thus very necessary.

  Nicholas was surprised and dismayed to realize that the actor must have ignored his appointment. It was not the first time that Creech had given cause for complaint. His fondness for the alehouse was a standing joke among his fellow actors, and he had more than once been late for rehearsal because he was sleeping off a night of indulgence. Nicholas had to fine him now and again for his unpunctuality and it had not endeared him to the actor.

  The hired men of any company tended to come and go at will but Nicholas had persuaded Firethorn to build up a small knot of actors with a fairly permanent contract. It made for company loyalty and stability. The nucleus of regulars could always be augmented for individual plays if a larger cast was required. Firethorn had seen the value of it all. A handful of semi-permanent hired men would commit themselves to a company that offered them a more long-term future, and--the clinching argument for Firethorn--they might accept a lower wage in return for security.

  Benjamin Creech was part of the nucleus. He was a big, solid character with a rather surly temperament, but he was an actor of some range with two additional recommendations. He had a fine singing voice and he could play almost any stringed instrument. An actor-musician was a valuable asset, especially on tour when the size of a company would be restricted to the bare essentials. Creech more than earned his keep, which was why Nicholas was sometimes lenient about the man's drinking habits.

  The pit was almost empty now and the book holder with Banbury's Men came out on the stage to see how his minions were getting along. When he spotted Creech, he went across and shook him warmly by the hand. They fell into animated conversation. Some joke passed between them and the actor pushed the other man playfully away. It was only a small moment but it triggered off a memory at the back of Nicholas Bracewell's mind.

  The last time he had seen Creech push someone away like that it had not been in fun. A fight had erupted and Nicholas had had to jump in and separate the two men. The memory came back to him now with a new significance.

  Benjamin Creech had exchanged blows with Will Fowler.

  *

  Lady Rosamund Varley draped herself in a window seat and read the sonnet yet again. It was agreeably fulsome and its witty wordplay was very pleasing. The poem was unsigned but the phrase 'Love and Friendship' had been written underneath it in a bold hand. Because the letters 'L' and 'F' had been enlarged and embossed, she had no difficulty in identifying the sender as Lawrence Firethorn. She gave a brittle laugh.

  Fortune had smiled on her. A rich and doting husband had made light of a thirty-year age gap for a short while, then he had obligingly succumbed to gout, impetigo and waning desire. Lady Rosamund was free to seek her pleasures elsewhere. She did so without compunction and turned herself into a practised coquette. Her beauty and charm could ensnare any man and she toyed with them unmercifully. A whisper of scandal hung upon her at all times.

  The court supplied most of her admirers--earls, lords, knights, even foreign ambassadors on occasion--but she had a special fondness for actors. Their way of life intrigued her. It combined danger and excess to a high degree. They were commoners who could be kings for an afternoon, men of great courage who could strut proudly on a stage for a couple of hours and blaze their way into the hearts of all around them. Lady Rosamund was captivated by the tawdry glamour of the theatre.

  She glanced down at the sonnet again. Not for a moment did she imagine that Firethorn had actually composed it himself, but that did not matter. In commissioning and sending it, he had made it his own and she was flattered by the compliment. He was an extraordinary man who was adding to his reputation with each new performance. No role was beyond him, not even the one that she was about to assign to him.

  Crossing the chamber to a small table, she opened a drawer in it and put the poem inside. It took its place alongside many other poems, letters, gifts and keepsakes. Lawrence Firethorn was in exalted company.

  Lady Rosamund returned to the window to gaze down at the Thames. Her sumptuous abode stood on the stretch of river bank called the Strand. Before the dissolution of the monasteries, it had been the town house of a bishop, and she often imagined how he would have reacted if he saw some of the antics that took place in his former bedchamber. Her impish spirit was such that she felt she was helping to purge the place of Catholicism.

  A gentle tap on her door disturbed her reverie.

  'Come in,' she called.

  The maidservant entered and halted with a token curtsey.

  'Your dressmaker is below, Lady Varley.'

  'Send him up at once!' she ordered.

  He had come at exactly the right time. Lady Rosamund wanted to give order for a very special outfit. She was confident that it would secure Lawrence Firethorn for her without any difficulty.

  *

  Richard Honeydew was too inexperienced to sense what was coming. When the other apprentices started to be more pleasant to him, he took it as a sign of real friendship rather than as a device to lure him off guard. Notwithstanding all the things they had done to him, he was anxious to get along with them and to put the past behind him. Achieving the signal honour of a role like Gloriana had not made him arrogant or boastful. He was far too conscious of his shortcomings and would have sought the advice of his fellow apprentices if he were on better terms with them. That time looked as if it might soon come. They were making efforts.

  'Goodnight, Dick.'

  'Goodnight, Martin.'

  'Would you like to borrow my candle to light you up the stairs?' offered the older boy.

  'No, thank you. I can manage.'

  'Sleep well, then.'

  'I will.'

  'You have another busy day ahead tomorrow.'

  Richard went off to say goodnight to Margery Firethorn, who was sitting in her rocking chair beside the open hearth and thinking fondly about her pendant. As soon as the boy had gone, Martin Yeo looked across at the others. John Tallis lowered his lantern jaw in an open-mouthed grin while Stephen Judd gave a knowing wink. They were happy accomplices.

  'Are you sure it will work?' asked Tallis.

  'Of course,' said Yeo. 'The beauty of it is that no finger will be pointed at us. We will all be sitting here together when it happens.'

  'All but me,' added Judd.

  'Oh, you were right here all the time,' insisted Yeo.

  'Yes, Stephen,' corroborated Tallis. 'We both saw you.'

  'We'll swear to it!'

  'I've always wanted to be in two places at once.'

  'Then so you will be,' promised Yeo.

  They fell silent as they heard the tread of Richard's light feet upon the stairs, then they smirked as he creaked his way up to perdition. It was only a question of time now.

  Oblivious to their plan, Richard Honeydew went up to his attic room by the light of the moonbeams that peeped in through the windows. Every other night, his first job had been to bolt the door behind him to keep outrage at bay. Lulled into a mood of trust by the others, he did not do so now. He felt safe.

  The chill of the night air made him shiver and he got undressed quickly before jumping into bed. Through the narrow window above his head, the moon was drawing intricate patterns on the opposite wall. Richard was able to watch them for only a few minutes before he dozed off to sleep but his slumber was soon disturbed. There was a rustling sound in the thatch and his eyes opened in fear. It would not be the first rat he had heard up in the attic.

  He sat up quickly and was just in the nick of time. Something came crashing down on his pillow in a cloud of loam, cobwebs and fil
th. Richard coughed as the dust got into his throat then he turned around to see what had happened.

  The dormer window was set in the steeply pitched roof and small, solid beams formed a rectangle around the frame to keep the thatch away. Richard had often noticed how loose the lower beam was. All four of them had just come falling down with a vengeance. He sat there transfixed by it all.

  'What is it, lad! What happened?'

  Margery Firethorn was galloping up the stairs to the attic in her nightgown. Her voice preceded her with ease.

  'Are you there, Dick? What's amiss?'

  Seconds later, she came bursting into the room with a candle in her hand. It illumined a scene of debris. She let out a shriek of horror then clutched Richard to her for safety.

  'Lord save us! You might have been killed!'

  Martin Yeo, John Tallis and Stephen Yeo now came charging up to the attic to see what had caused the thunderous bang.

  'What is it!'

  'Has something fallen?'

  'Are you all right, Dick?'

  The three of them raced into the room and came to a halt. When they saw the extent of the damage, they were all astonished. They looked quickly at Richard to see if he had been hurt.

  'Is this your doing?' accused Margery.

  'No, mistress!' replied Yeo.

  'That beam has always been loose,' added Tallis.

  'We will sort this out later,' she warned. 'Meanwhile, I must find this poor creature another place to lay his head. Come, Dick. It is all over now.'

  She led the young apprentice out with grave concern.

  As soon as the two of them had gone, Martin Yeo bent down to untie the cord that was bound around the lower beam. Fed through a gap in the floorboards, the cord had come down to their own room so that they could create the accident with a sudden jerk, out they had only expected to dislodge the lower beam. A blow on the head from that would have been sufficiently disabling to put Richard out of the play. They had planned nothing more serious.

  Stephen Judd examined the dormer with care. Those other beams were quite secure earlier on,' he said. Someone must have loosened them. They would never have come down otherwise.'

  'Who would do such a thing?' wondered Tallis.

  'I don't know,' said Yeo uneasily. 'But if Dick had been underneath it when it all came down, he might never have appeared in a play again.'

  The three apprentices were completely unnerved.

  They stood amid the rubble and tried to puzzle it out. A small accident which they engineered had been turned into something far more dangerous by an unknown hand.

  Evidently, someone knew of their plan.

  *

  Susan Fowler went to London as a frightened young wife in search of a husband and returned to St Albans as a desolate widow with her life in ruins. The passage of time did not seem to make her loss any easier to bear. It was like a huge bruise which had not yet fully come out and which yielded new areas of ache and blemish each day.

  Her mother provided a wealth of sympathy, her elder sister sat with her for hours and kind neighbours were always attentive to her plight, but none of it managed to assuage her pain. Not even the parish priest could bring her comfort. Susan kept being reminded of the day that he had married her to Will Fowler.

  Grief inevitably followed her to the bedroom and worked most potently by night. It was a continuous ordeal.

  'Good morning, father.'

  'Heavens, girl! Are you up at this hour?'

  'I could not sleep.'

  'Go back to your bed, Susan. You need the rest.'

  'There is no rest for me, father.'

  'Think of the baby, girl.'

  She had risen early after another night of torture and come downstairs in the little cottage that she shared with her parents and her sister. Her father was a wheelwright and had to be up early himself. A wagon had overturned in a banked field the previous day and one of its wheels was shattered beyond repair. The wheelwright had promised to make it his first task of the day because the wagon was needed urgently for harvesting.

  After a hurried breakfast of bread and milk, he made another vain attempt to send his daughter back to bed. Susan shook her head and adjusted her position in the old wooden chair. The baby was more of a presence now and she often felt it move.

  Her father crossed the undulating paving stones to the door and pulled back the thick, iron bolt. He glanced back at Susan and offered her a look of encouragement that went unseen. He could delay no longer. The wagon was waiting for him outside his workshop.

  When he opened the door, however, something barred his way and he all but tripped over it.

  'What's this!' he exclaimed.

  Susan looked up with only the mildest curiosity.

  'Bless my soul!'

  He regarded the object with a countryman's suspicion. It might be a gift from the devil or the work of some benign force. It was some time before he overcame his superstitions enough to pick the object up and bring it into the cottage. He set it down on the table in front of his daughter.

  It was a crib. Small, plain and carved out of solid oak, it rocked gently to and fro on its curved base. Susan Fowler stared at it blankly for a few moments then a tiny smile came.

  'It's a present for the baby,' she said.

  (*)Chapter Eight

  Nicholas Bracewell confronted him first thing the next morning.

  'You must be mistaken,' said Creech bluntly.

  'No, Ben.'

  'I did not go to The Curtain yesterday.'

  'But I saw you with my own eyes.'

  'You saw someone who looked like me.'

  'Stop lying.'

  'I'm not lying,' maintained the actor hotly. 'I was nowhere near Shoreditch yesterday afternoon.'

  'Then where were you?'

  Creech withdrew into a defiant silence. His mouth was dosed tight and his jaw was set. Nicholas pressed him further.

  'You were supposed to be here, Ben.'

  'Nobody told me that,' argued the other.

  'I told you myself--in front of witnesses, too--so you can't pretend that that never happened either. The tiremen were expecting you and you failed to turn up.'

  'I...couldn't get here yesterday.'

  'I know--you were at The Curtain instead.'

  'No!' denied Creech. 'I was...' He glowered at Nicholas then gabbled his story. 'I was at the Lamb and Flag. I only went in for one drink at noon but I met some old friends. We started talking and had some more ale. The time just flew past. Before I knew what was happening, I fell asleep in my seat.'

  'I don't believe a word of it,' said Nicholas firmly.

  'That is your privilege, sir!'

  'We'll have to fine you for this, Ben.'

  'Do so,' challenged the hired man.

  'One shilling.'

  Creech's defiance turned to shock. One shilling was a steep fine to a person whose weekly wage was only seven times that amount. He had many debts and could not afford to lose such a sum. Nicholas read his thoughts but felt no regret.

  'You've brought this upon yourself,' he stressed. 'When will you learn? I've covered for you in the past, Ben, but it has to stop. You simply must be more responsible. There are dozens of players to be had for hire. If this goes on, one of them may be taking over your place.'

  'It's not up to you, Nicholas,' muttered Creech.

  'Would you rather discuss it with Master Firethorn?'

  'No,' he said after a pause.

  'He would have kicked you out months ago.'

  'I earn my money!'

  'Yes, when you're here,' agreed Nicholas. 'Not when you're lying in a drunken stupor somewhere or sneaking off to The Curtain.'

  'That was not me!'

  'I'm not blind, Ben.'

  'Stop calling me a liar!'

  Creech bunched his fists and he breathed heavily through his nose. Discretion slowly got the better of him. The book holder might seem quiet but he would not be intimidated. If the occasion demanded it, Nicho
las Bracewell could fight as well as the next man and his physique was daunting. Nothing would be served by throwing a punch.

  'One shilling, Ben.'

  'As you wish.'

  'And no more of your nonsense, sir.'

  Benjamin Creech risked one more glare then he withdrew to the other side of the tiring-house. The talk had sobered him in every sense. Samuel Ruff had watched the exchange from the other side of the room and he now came across to the book holder.

  'What was all that about, Nick?'

  'The usual.'

  'Too much ale?'

  'And too little honesty, Samuel. I saw the fellow at The Curtain yesterday in broad daylight--yet he denies it!'

  'He may have good cause.'

  'In what way?'

  'Where did you see him, Nick?'

  'Talking with a couple of the hired men..'

  'There's your answer. He does not wish to admit it.'

  'Admit what?'

  'I never thought to mention this because I assumed that you knew. Obviously you do not.' Ruff looked across at the man. 'Ben Creech was with Banbury's Men for a time.'

  'Is this true?' asked Nicholas in astonishment.

  'Oh, yes. I was there with him.'

  *

  While the future of one hired man was being discussed in the tiring-house, the future of another was under dire threat in an upstairs room. No rehearsal period of Westfield's Men was complete without a fit of pique from Barnaby Gill and he was supplying one of his best. Edmund Hoode bore it with equanimity but Lawrence Firethorn was becoming progressively more irritated, facing the room madly, the anguished sharer worked up a real froth.

  'He is not fit to belong to Lord Westfield's Men!'

  'Why not?' asked Hoode.

  'Because I say so, sir!'

  'We need more than that, Barnaby.'

  'The man has the wrong attitude.'

  'I disagree,' said Hoode. 'Samuel Ruff is probably the only hired man we have with the right attitude. He takes his work seriously and fits in well with the company.'

  'Not with me, Edmund.'