The True Prince

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The True Prince Page 14

by J. B. Cheaney


  Inside the Curtain, Masters Burbage, Kempe, Heminges, and Shakespeare were gathered on the first gallery, huddled like conspirators. In the thick bars of light that fell from the narrow windows I saw eyebrows raised, heads nodding, fingers pointing. They seemed in a cheerful mood, making me wonder if they had come to an agreement with the landlord. A burst of laughter jumped out at me as I crossed the sawdust floor, then Kempe said, “But this must go no further. Keep it close, except for—” He broke off as Master Heminges nudged him, then turned to me. “What is it, boy?”

  “Pardon, sirs. Master Condell sent me with the tour receipts.”

  “Well done, Richard.” John Heminges, the Company treasurer, climbed over the gallery rail and took the packet from me. “I spoke with your master last night—so the tour went well, eh? He says you found your feet—and lost them once.”

  His blue eyes crinkled, inviting me to laugh along with him. I managed a smile. “Aye, sir. Thanks to Crab.” He had some questions for me, which I answered as the other men broke up their meeting.

  “By the bye,” concluded Master Heminges, “pass along word that we will perform here at the Curtain for six weeks, beginning Monday. Today is a bull-baiting—we will have to watch where we step.”

  He tucked the receipts under his arm and caught up with the Burbages, on their way out. The stage keeper of the Curtain had arrived, along with two of his boys, who began setting up partitions to form a bull pit. I turned to go, but a movement in the gallery caught my eye. Master Shakespeare had taken a seat and pulled out his table book. Since he was lingering, this seemed an opportunity to ask him a question that had gnawed for some time—and bit especially hard last night. I approached carefully, trying to read his mood.

  To look at, he was like any other man of ambition: quietly but elegantly dressed, with a manner nicely calculated not to offend. But I had known him to snarl and snap, especially when under pressure to finish a play. Everyone left him alone when he tucked himself into an alcove behind the stage and set up his writing desk. At other times, like now, he appeared to be merely scribbling, setting down thoughts and lines as they came to him. “He leaks poetry,” Robin said once.

  To me it was more like spinning poetry, trailing lines like cobwebby strands that caught in the minds of other men. I learned his words because I was required to, often with little notion what they meant—but once learned they were not easily forgotten. They would come back to me on restless nights, or in jostling crowds, or apply themselves unexpectedly to situations I found myself in. Ever since last night, for instance, I kept hearing his words in Kit's voice: “There's a devil haunts us, in the likeness of an old fat man….”

  Master Will glanced up. “What is it, lad?”

  I stopped. “If you please, sir. I would … I've had a thing in mind to ask, if you could spare the time.”

  He considered. Then, “Ben Jonson and his new play are to meet me here at any moment. Until he claims my time, it is yours.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I stepped close enough to put my hands on the railing, like a petitioner before a judge. “There's a thing that troubles me about Sir John Oldcastle—Falstaff, I mean.”

  “Aye?” He made a little frown; it had irked him to change Oldcastle's name.

  “What troubles me … is that everyone likes him so much. I mean, there is nothing in him that warrants liking, yet the stage seems duller when he's not on it, and that shouldn't be … should it? A man who lies and cheats like that should scarcely be tolerated, much less given the best lines of the play … and …”

  A smile had lit on his face soon after I began my speech, and as I spoke on, it spread and quivered and finally broke out in a laugh. Embarrassed, I fell silent. “And that's your complaint?”

  I wished some of his poetry would leak out on my clumsy tongue. “Well— Aye, sir.”

  “So your question is: Why do we love a rogue?”

  “I don't love the rogue, sir—”

  “Don't you?”

  “Well …” Perhaps I did, a little. And perhaps that was the main thing that troubled me.

  “Do you think Jack gets away with the king's ransom, and murder besides?”

  “God is not mocked, sir. Thievery should not go unpunished.”

  “True.” He thought for a moment. “You were raised in the country, were you not? So was I. Have you ever been close to a peacock?” Puzzled, I shook my head. “The great houses keep them for show. God never framed creatures so beautiful, but they bear it with ill grace—they're noisy, evil-tempered birds, and two cocks confined together will tear each other's lovely blue throats, ere long. The beauty and temper together are their nature. And there is in one part the capacity to destroy the other. Do you see the point?”

  “No, sir.”

  He sighed. “Then wait for Part Two of the play.”

  “Wait … do you mean that Sir John's own nature will bring him down?”

  “Ah. Now you are asking me to give too much away.”

  His smile encouraged me to go a little further. “But I know someone like him, sir.” Master Will's expression of polite interest gave no hint he knew what I was talking about. “It's one thing to watch justice work in a play, but real life is … different.”

  He looked at me keenly for a moment, then shut his book. “Perhaps not so different. A good play is like life, except that it tells, swift and at a safe distance, what life can only tell over time and up close. And you cannot merely watch your life from a place of safety in the gallery; you must act in it, at your peril.”

  “But what if you don't know how to act? Or what your role is?”

  His eyebrows rose. “Are you asking me that? I am a humble poet, not Holy Writ.”

  “Of course, sir. Forgive me, sir.” I dropped my hands from the railing and backed away. “I shall look forward to Part Two.”

  “You and all the rest of London. I pray you will not be disappointed.”

  He had a reputation to maintain as the city's leading author, and it must have weighed heavily on him at times. I bowed a farewell as Ben Jonson bustled into the theater with a bulky manuscript under his arm. Master Jonson's plays had thus far been the property of the Admiral's Men, but we were to perform one of them in September. I had heard that our rivals were not pleased. “Ho, Will!” he cried. “I made the cuts—raw butchery, I call it!”

  I took my leave, mostly unsatisfied, but more eager to learn the outcome of Part Two. For now, half the day remained for me to snatch some time for myself in St. Paul's churchyard.

  As the day was fine, most of London seemed to be struck with the same notion, and I had to dodge shoulders and elbows while making my way down the rows of stalls. St. Paul's is home to almost all the booksellers and stationers of the city. The larger shops cluster around the cathedral walls, where a patron might find elegant bound copies of theology, poetry, history, and law. The stalls were friendlier to my purse, and livelier as well, with broadsides, ballads, and quartos rippling in the breeze and apprentices bawling their wares: “What do you lack, sirs? Here's a marvelous strange account of the late voyage to the New World, and the wild men there encountered!” “Here, friends! Here be the last words of the murdering fiend Black Hand before his hanging on Tyburn Hill!” “What do you lack, gentlemen? Here's news of the latest adventure of him they call Robin Hood—”

  “What's that?” I stopped, as though I'd run against an invisible wall, and made a grab for the paper.

  “Ah no, sir.” The boy who had been crying the ballad stuck it behind his broad back. “I'll see your penny first.”

  “Little chiseler! Ballads are a halfpenny.”

  “Not when they are this fresh, and no other stationer has them.”

  I didn't believe this, but paid the penny anyhow and stepped aside to scan the sheet of paper he gave me.

  It was illustrated with a woodcut showing a young girl beside a river, hands raised so stiffly she resembled a fork.

  Two men in a wherry were rowing toward he
r, while another man stuck his head out of the water off their bow, grinning like a crocodile. The picture raised all sorts of questions, answered by the ballad: a tale of how Robin and his accomplices set up a vague, colorless knight called “Sir Biscuit.” At “dusk of day” (Master Hood's favorite time for mischief) while on his way upriver, Sir Biscuit was diverted by a cry of distress from the bank. A pretty little child in costly dress was sobbing that her brother had fallen into the water.

  “Ay me!” cried she, in woe and weal.

  “My brother slipped below the peel

  Of cruel Thames—

  Yonder he floats amongst the reeds;

  I fear he's dead. O help! Make speed!

  Thy vessel trimmed …”

  Sure enough, a body was floating facedown near a bed of reeds. But when Sir Biscuit's boatman rowed closer, the “corpse” rose up, grabbed the oarlocks, and turned over the wherry, spilling both knight and boatman into the river. Robin, in black and gold, sprang out from behind the tree and offered to throw a line to Sir Biscuit (who couldn't swim) at the price of his ruby cuff pins—and his purse.

  So Robin, corpse, and decoy made off with the money, tra-la.

  I returned to the stall where the boy was still crying the ballad and selling one copy after another. “Look you,” I demanded. “Is this all true?”

  “Of course it's true,” he said indignantly. “We sell nothing untrue.”

  “Who is this ‘Sir Biscuit,' then?”

  “I dunno—some gentleman at court.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Dunno that either— Thank you, good sir.” He took another penny for another ballad. “'Twas only printed up last night. My master kept us at the press until near dawn.”

  “Who wrote it? How did your master come by it?”

  “Do I look like an oracle?” Turning his back on me, he raised his throaty voice again. “What do you lack, sirs! Here's news of the latest exploit of the new Robin Hood—!”

  I read the lines over and over while making my way down the narrow aisle. If the ballad was a disguise for a real event, why had Bartlemy not mentioned it the night before? Might it have happened so recently even he had not learned of it? If so, these robberies seemed to be occurring at intervals of about one per month. And who had played the part of drowned corpse—Kit, or another accomplice? The quilted satin doublet taken from our wardrobe seemed to be still in use, but a costly gown for a little girl might be harder to come by, unless …

  At this point, I pulled rein on my galloping thoughts. “Here.” I thrust the ballad at the nearest passerby, a young 'prentice with his maid. “The latest deeds of Robin Hood.” I shouldered my way through the crowd, angry with myself for wasting a penny on what I had decided was not my affair. With the little money I had left, all I could buy for Starling was a pair of ribbons.

  Robin Bowle returned from Kent later that day, more than glad (he said) to be home. The holiday with his mother was marred by his stepfather, who (he said) could not abide him. His arrival made an incomplete set of three apprentices, and I devoutly hoped the Welsh Boy would not be the one to round our number to four. My feelings about him clashed too violently for comfort, even though I could hardly blame him for the fault of being himself. So I could not suppress a groan, Monday morning, when Gregory came back to the tiring room to tell me that the streaky-bearded uncle had brought Davy to the Curtain and left directly after, like a cuckoo depositing her young in another bird's nest.

  A brief audition showed Davy's reading had improved and his delivery too—not greatly, but enough to keep his place for the present. On the previous Saturday evening, the chief players had met to set a schedule for September and shuffle apprentices to fill the gap left by Kit. They had lost lead boys before and managed to survive, but this loss might prove difficult to cover. Our first play, revived from the previous spring, featured a scheming queen whose part was clearly written with Kit in mind. As our most experienced boy player, Robin took it, but he lacked a certain snap and fire. He had grown almost two inches taller over the summer and gained more weight too, which he seemed unsure what to do with. His voice still rang pure and unbroken, but there was a threat in it. Some boys' voices changed without obvious cracks or drops—mine had, even before I came to the stage. But one never knew. Robin's might play him false when the time came. That fear, and his disappointing holiday, and missing Kit, all combined to set him off balance at the start of the season.

  As for me, I found another reason to bless the summer tour: I walked back onto the stage of the Curtain with scarcely a ripple in my confidence, as though I had never been off. Gregory had gained in assurance, too, and the Company seemed to think that, for now at least, the three of us could make up for Kit until one emerged as the leader.

  Meanwhile, Davy seemed less inclined to hang on me, except for one morning when he sought me out, sniffling and wide-eyed. He said that a tall, ugly, red-headed man had come to Thomas Pope's house and asked him some hard questions about Kit. “I know naught, but he kept asking and asking and went away mad. Will the Queen's Men come for me, Richard? Will they take me away?”

  I assured him that this would not happen, taking a measure of satisfaction that Bartlemy had stubbed his toe on this particular stone. But then the stone fell on us.

  In the middle of the second week we performed a comedy, followed by a Morris dance. The dance had just concluded and we players were capering off the stage with bells jingling, when a sharp cry from the second gallery stopped us in our tracks. After a heartbeat of silence a clamor arose from that quarter, informing us that a cutpurse had been caught there, like a weasel in a trap.

  Will Kempe marched to the corner of the stage. Or perhaps I should say he pranced, since he was dressed as the hobbyhorse rider, with the head and body of a stuffed horse around his middle. “Order in the house!” he called. “Order, I say!” But the shouts continued until Richard Burbage strode forward with his powerful voice.

  “We'll not abide a thief. Pass him forward, good people!”

  In a moment we saw the culprit being lowered from the second gallery to the first, and thence passed along over the heads of the groundlings. All participated willingly. No one likes a cutpurse, who is as apt to prey on a poor laborer as a rich gentleman—all he requires in his victim is a money-pouch hanging from a belt. The Company could not tolerate nips and pickpockets during their performances, lest word get out that they ran an unsafe theater. But the next moment they were stunned to silence when the thief was heaved upon the stage, and rolled over, and turned out to be the Welsh Boy.

  Davy lay so still he might have been dead, except for the quick rise and fall of his thin chest. Master Kempe was the first to recover his wits. Betraying no hint that he knew the boy, he turned to the crowd and raised his hands, crying, “Safely delivered, God be praised! We will deal with him—may all evil- doers take heed! Justice awaits all who harbor such—”

  In the midst of the sermon Davy came to himself. He blinked once, then jumped to his feet and screamed out a few words in his own language, directed at the Company. I shall never forget the sound: the soft burbling syllables were twisted into spiked metal by his screeching voice, and I needed no Welsh to know it was a curse.

  Then, quick as a cat, he disappeared through the discovery space at the back of the stage. Gregory bolted after him, followed closely by me. Just as we reached the tiring room we caught sight of a curly head disappearing from the ledge of a narrow window. Since neither of us was small enough to take the same route, we circled around to the door. But by then he had vanished among the rows of dikes and irrigation channels that lay to the north.

  A search by many dozen self-appointed scourges of justice failed to turn him up, which did not surprise me—why would such an accomplished thief not be an accomplished escape artist as well? “That settles it,” Gregory remarked dryly, as we trudged back to the Curtain. “The boy has no future with this Company.”

  Davy had left behind the b
ag that held his personal belongings. When we returned, I took it off the hook and drew aside to spill the contents. I found a spoon and a needle, a fox's paw, and a broken arrow fletched with black feathers. There was also a vial of some powdered herb which, when I shook a little in my hand, made me sneeze for a good five minutes and itch for the rest of the day.

  But one object stopped my breath for an instant. I recalled it clearly: a small black velvet pouch with a golden cord—the one given to Kit by someone who had “certain expectations” of him. My hands trembled as I opened it and shook out a silver brooch, of the kind that gentlemen use to fasten their cloaks. It was in the shape of a crescent moon within a circle, set with a single pearl.

  Apparently the boy was not scrupulous about stealing from his fellow players, either.

  THE PRINCE RETURNS

  here had Davy come from? the men of the Company wished to know. Who brought him in? By piling all their memories together, they recalled only that the boy was first presented at the Mermaid Tavern by his uncle, who asked that he be taken in trial. All who were present at the Mermaid remembered that the uncle lived outside London, but could not agree if he had said where, or even given his name. He never lingered long enough for chat. So the boy's appearance was as mysterious as his departure, though not so dramatic. Richard Burbage was all but gnawing stage timbers in his wrath at being cozened: “Suppose he's been robbing patrons all along, directly under our noses?”

  “Sure we would have heard some complaint,” Cuthbert said reasonably. “Though he must be a better cutpurse than a player, else he'd be hanged by now.”

  For myself, I felt a little sick, recalling the time Starling and I had taken him to the Rose, and he stood us for a boat ride afterward. The money for that had doubtless come from some unsuspecting theater patron. Now knowing Davy's true vocation, I could see his brief stage career in a new light: his steady watching while he sized our character with the instincts of an animal, his tricks of winning sympathy, his skill at pitting Kit and me against each other. The uncontrollable itching, the needle in the corset, and the tripping behind the stage—he had done those things to himself. And I had fallen in perfectly with his schemes. He'd played me like a flute.

 

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