by C. J. Archer
“About two thousand of ’em,” Edward Style said, rubbing his gloved hands together. Dressed in the somber robes of a learned gentleman of the law, he didn’t quite look the part yet.
“Your beard, Aquinus,” Alice said, holding up a flowing white false beard made from real hair. She positioned it carefully then attached it with pins to his own hair. “That’s better,” she said, standing back and admiring her handiwork.
Will Shakespeare came down the stairs wearing the livery to match Henry. Unlike the others, he looked out of place in costume. Although a middling actor, it wasn’t his preferred occupation, but Roger Style refused to put on the play he’d written, saying it wasn’t sophisticated enough to please the type of audience Lord Hawkesbury’s Players catered to. Alice couldn’t help wondering if Style had ever seen the groundlings pissing where they stood or starting fights to liven up a dull plot. His reluctance to buy Will’s play probably had more to do with Style’s prejudice against playwrights who’d not received a university education.
Will shot Alice a friendly smile as Roger Style himself stormed into the tiring house from the stairs leading directly out to the street. His face was flushed, his ruff askew, and his eyes bright as he scanned the room. “Is Freddie here yet?”
“He’s upstairs getting changed,” Henry said, eyeing the troupe’s manager with caution. Alice couldn’t blame him. Style looked to be in one of his unpredictable moods. She couldn’t be certain if he was going to shout at them all or clap them on their backs.
“Where in God’s name have you been?” Edward, the younger of the two Style brothers, said. “You look like you’ve been tumbling a Winchester goose.” Unlike the rest of the troupe, he had no qualms when dealing with his brother. Perhaps he thought Roger wouldn’t fire a family member. Alice didn’t think Edward should be so cocksure.
“Keeping an eye on the money gatherers at the front entrance,” Roger said, removing his hat. The feathers attached to it—rust in color to match the fine new doublet he’d purchased for opening night—brushed her father’s nose, and he sneezed. “A few of them are Henslowe’s men and I don’t trust them. He ropes in his fat-headed whore masters and probably tells them to pocket what they can. Course he’d make them declare the extra to himself but not to me.” He shook his hat at no one in particular but the feathers tickled her father’s nose once more before he shoved it away.
“He’s devious, that Henslowe,” Edward agreed.
“I wonder who’s watching out for the whores,” Alice said. They all looked at her. She shrugged. “Well, someone should be. Those poor wretches have enough to worry about without having to take care of their safety too.”
“I see your point,” Will said.
Her father clicked his tongue. “You do say some odd things, girl.” He shook his head and his long, white beard— the real thing—swung from side to side. Roger had asked him to shave it off for the good of the company when he saw the exorbitant prices the wig-makers charged for false beards but had been met with a firm refusal.
“You’d best get ready,” Edward said to his brother. “The trumpet will blow soon and we don’t want to be late.”
“Croft, with me,” Roger ordered Alice’s father. “Help me change.”
“Father’s still not feeling well,” Alice said, frowning at the steep stairs. Her father had wanted to come for their first performance at the Rose despite his wife’s attempt to convince him he wasn’t well enough. Although he hadn’t been deathly ill, Alice didn’t think he should overexert himself by traipsing up and down stairs all day. He’d already moved between the three levels several times.
“I can help,” Henry offered.
“I asked for Croft!” Style stamped his fists on his waist above his wide trunk hose. “If he’s too ill to work then perhaps he shouldn’t be working for me at all! The role of tiring house manager demands soundness of mind and body and I know several men who’d beg to be in his position. They don’t come with daughters who want to be sons either.”
A flash of red behind Alice’s eyes momentarily blinded her. Everything went quiet. Unnaturally quiet. That pompous little pizzle!
“I’ll go,” her father said quickly, watching Alice out of the corner of his eye. He grabbed Roger’s arm and steered him toward the stairs. “I might be needed to make final adjustments.”
Style put a foot on the first step only to be knocked back on his rump by Freddie barreling down them in the other direction. He was wearing the beautiful crimson gown Alice had worn the first time she met Lord Warhurst at the White Swan’s tiring house. She’d decided not to alter it too much, and the lad looked quite fetching in it with the addition of a blonde wig. But then he spoiled the effect by hiking up all his skirts to retie his garter and farting.
Alice giggled. Her anger vanished and suddenly the atmosphere in the tiring house didn’t seem so cloying. Edward, Will, and Henry also smothered smirks. Her father glared at her, putting as much of a warning into it as he could while trying not to laugh.
“You imbecile!” Roger shouted at Freddie. He stood and slapped his hat against his thigh. “Any more of this behavior and you’ll have your apprenticeship canceled!”
Freddie held his hands up in surrender and the crimson velvet skirts swished back into place around his hairy legs. “But I haven’t done anything! I’m even ready before you are.”
Style’s eyes narrowed and he looked like he wanted to argue, but Alice’s father ushered him past the lad and up the stairs. “No time for this now, we’ll be on soon.” They disappeared but their footsteps could be clearly heard clomping across the floorboards overhead.
“Will, a word if you please,” Alice said to Shakespeare as he passed her. The others dispersed throughout the tiring house, practicing lines or chatting with the hired actors who weren’t permanent members of the troupe.
“You may have more than one word if you please,” Will Shakespeare said. “Or if one will suffice, then so be it.”
She rolled her eyes. He was always playing with words, whether his own or someone else’s. “You drink with Kit Marlowe on occasion, do you not?”
“I do. And with other playwrights too when they consider me worthy of their company. What’s the devil done now?”
“What makes you think he’s done anything?”
“Would you be asking about him if he had done nothing?”
A fair point. “What can you tell me about him?”
Will shrugged. “He’s tall, quite handsome—”
“No, I mean what’s he like? Where does he come from? Who are his friends?”
“Ah.” Will accepted the sword Henry handed to him and sheathed it in the scabbard strapped to his hip. “You’ve heard about his recent jaunt in prison?” Alice nodded. “Well, that event sums up the enigma that is Kit Marlowe. He’s hotheaded. His temper flares at a moment’s notice. I’ve seen him start a dozen brawls and not hesitate to draw his blade when outnumbered.”
“So he’s violent.”
“Yes, but he also has the devil’s luck. Not only was he released from Newgate with a speed not usually associated with our legal institutions, but he was given his MA at Cambridge after long, unexplained absences and what some said was a poor application toward his studies.” He shook his head. “The devil’s luck and a God-given talent.”
Alice nodded solemnly. “His plays are good.”
“They’re masterpieces! Better than Mistress Peabody’s plays in my opinion, and you know how highly I think of her. I wish I had half the talent he has, and the luck, or at least divine intervention.”
“I don’t believe in luck,” she said, watching Edward pace back and forth in front of the curtain, muttering his lines to himself.
“What do you mean?” Will looked at her askance. “Everyone believes in luck.”
“Not I. Perhaps it wasn’t luck that he was bailed so quickly from Newgate, and perhaps it wasn’t luck that got him his MA.”
“What else could it be?”
Will’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about?” He leaned closer and whispered, “Are you insinuating that Marlowe works for the Crown?”
“I’m not insinuating anything, I’m simply stating a fact. They’ve been seen together. What do you think? Is it possible Marlowe is a spy?”
“Anything is possible but…why would Walsingham employ such a tempestuous and unpredictable person as Kit in a profession that requires a cool head?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Marlowe is clever.”
“Aye, and silver-tongued and brazen into the bargain.” They exchanged glances, but before either could say what they were thinking, Roger Style trotted down the stairs dressed in a fine green-and-silver doublet with slashed sleeves and silver buttons.
“Someone alert the trumpeter,” he announced. “We’re ready to start.”
One of the hired men dashed outside, and moments later a trumpet sounded three times. The audience hushed and Edward cleared his throat.
“Here we go,” he said to the troupe then bounded through the curtain and onto the stage. His clear voice could be heard announcing the play to raucous cheers and applause.
Henry beamed and looked every bit the handsome servant who would bring about Barnaby Fortune’s downfall. “They’ll love this one as much as Marius and Livia. Mistress Peabody’s a genius.”
Roger cleared his throat. “Her betrothed has certainly helped take her writing to new heights.”
Alice clamped her jaw down until her back teeth ached and her irritation subsided. Style simply didn’t like to admit that a woman could succeed at something as well as a man, sometimes better. Thank goodness he’d not known Min had written her first play before he bought it or it would never have been performed.
“Don’t mind him,” Will said with a wink. “You’ll not change his opinion even if women graduated from universities and became chief advisers to the queen.”
“He’d probably think our heads would explode from all that masculine knowledge,” she agreed. Her father came down the stairs looking a little hotter than when he went up. “Can you tell me where to find Marlowe?” she asked Will.
“What?” He’d been grinning but it vanished like a sunken ship beneath the waves. “Are you going to try to learn more about the Walsingham connection?” When she nodded, he shook his domed head. “You’re mad. After what you’ve just told me, I’d tread carefully around that subject if I were you. Besides, Marlowe doesn’t particularly like women.”
She slid her gaze to Roger Style, who was studying the prompt book. “I think I’m used to that.”
“Then if you insist upon meeting him…”
“I do.”
“Tell me why, and I’ll tell you where to find him.”
She’d expected the question and had an answer ready. “A friend wants to petition Walsingham on a family matter and thought Marlowe might introduce them. My friend has met Marlowe but knows not where he lives.”
If he didn’t believe her, he didn’t let on. “Why would Kit help your friend?”
“I cannot say specifically but I have been assured my friend is in possession of information of a…personal nature regarding Marlowe.” Everyone involved in London’s theatrical scene knew about Kit Marlowe’s preference for manly love and the necessity to hide it. Sodomy was illegal.
“Ah,” said Will, blushing a little. “I see. Very well.” He hesitated a moment longer then shrugged, evidently making up his mind. “He has a room in a house on Bishopsgate Street Without, facing the pillory at the corner of Hog Lane.”
“Thank you, I appreciate your assistance.”
Edward’s introductory narrative ended to loud applause and cries of “Get on with it” from the groundlings.
“Good luck with the performance,” Alice said to Will.
He caught her arm before she could move off to join her father. “I hope your friend does not take you along with him. Kit can be unpredictable, especially when drunk. And he’s almost always drunk.”
She’d been in two minds about whether to let Warhurst go with her to visit Marlowe—he’d made it clear he no longer wanted to see her—but Will’s warning had settled that decision for her. She wasn’t such a fool that she would not heed it. However, nor was she fool enough to be left out.
“Shakespeare, we’re next,” said Henry, beckoning Will to join him at the curtain.
Will nodded. To Alice he said, “Be careful. Kit has a prodigious talent and I admire his plays immensely, but I wouldn’t trust him, especially after what you’ve told me.” He squeezed her arm then let it go to join Henry. Together they drew their swords and burst through the curtain.
“Why don’t you get some fresh air,” she said to her father.
He shook his head. “Think I’ll rest in here awhile. You’ve organized things well in my absence, girl, so there’s little for me to do now.” He patted her hand and gave her a smile. It seemed to infuse him with some color. “You go. Watch the play if you can find room.”
“Are you sure you’ll be all right without me?”
“Yes, of course. Go.”
She left via the back stairs then made her way to the side of the stage. It was a magnificent structure. Two beautiful classical columns painted to resemble red marble held up the heavens, and matching smaller ones propped up the gallery directly over the stage that was used by the orchestra or for balcony scenes. Sometimes lords and ladies sat there—those with the money and a high opinion of themselves who wanted to see and be seen. None sat there tonight but the three tiers of gallery seating skirting the arena were full with paying customers looking down upon the stage, and the unfortunate groundlings crammed into the area just in front of it. They all watched, enraptured, as Henry Wells and Will Shakespeare, dressed as servants, listened to their master—Roger—lament his lover’s recent abandonment of their affair after her husband became suspicious.
Minerva Peabody did indeed know how to hook them, and Alice had to admit that Style reeled them in with his brilliant acting.
She searched the sea of faces for the woman playwright and her betrothed and easily found them seated in the front row in the middle of the first level. On Blake’s other side sat his mother, known as Lady Warhurst because her first husband outranked her second so she had kept the higher Baroness’s title as a courtesy. But it was none of these three that caught Alice’s attention. It was the fourth member of their party whom Alice couldn’t take her eyes off of.
Lord Warhurst.
And he was staring straight at her.
CHAPTER 8
She stood out from the rest of the audience. There was something otherworldly about Alice Croft, so tall and luminous among the grimy sameness of the groundlings amassed around the stage. She looked ethereal and fragile from his vantage point, as if the loud cheers from the audience might shatter her. But she wasn’t fragile in the least. In fact, he was beginning to think she was one of the strongest people he knew.
All that explained why he noticed her; it didn’t explain why he couldn’t stop staring at her.
Or why she stared back at him.
He should break the connection, look away. But he couldn’t. Watching her was like watching a sunrise, totally fascinating and always changing.
“She’s a beauty,” Min said softly into his ear.
“Who?” he said, shifting his gaze to the stage and the players romping about on it. He felt a twinge of guilt that he’d not been following Min’s new play but searching the audience instead. He’d been looking for Kit Marlowe but he’d found Alice and there his gaze had remained.
“You know who, my lord,” Min whispered, a smile in her voice. “The seamstress, Alice Croft. You’ve been watching her, and she you.”
“I admi
t I find her face intriguing, but she’s no beauty.” He applauded something one of the actors said because everyone else was doing so.
“Ah, but she is,” Min went on. She didn’t seem as interested in the play as everyone else, perhaps because she knew how it ended. Like Leo, she seemed far more interested in the audience. “She has a sort of subtle beauty,” she said. “You don’t notice it at first, but when you really look at her you realize nothing else compares.”
Exactly. “I suppose you’re right.” He had to explain why he was staring at Alice so he might as well acknowledge that he found her appearance interesting. It didn’t mean anything after all and it might shut Min up. “Her face seems to have a different expression every time I look at her. No,” he shook his head, “that explanation isn’t right.” He shifted his gaze back to the source. But Alice was gone. He sighed and turned to Min.
She blinked at him and offered him a warm smile. “Blake doesn’t understand you at all, my lord. Nor does your sister, I believe.”
“Oh? Did they tell you I eat small children for breakfast?”
She laughed. “They said you’re too proud to allow others into your life. Others who love you and wish to help you.”
“You think they are wrong?” he said, so softly he wondered if she’d heard him. When she didn’t answer immediately, he assumed she hadn’t.
Then she finally spoke in tones as equally hushed as his. “I think even the straightest, strongest flower in the garden will bend toward the sunlight eventually.”
He crossed his arms and thought about what she’d said. Eventually he gave up. He had no idea what Min was talking about although he was quite sure she was calling him a flower. Bloody playwrights with their convoluted words. He was not a damned flower.
He settled in to watch the rest of the play and actually enjoyed it. Min had a unique talent and the players weren’t too bad, although the boy in the main female role was lacking any feminine qualities that Leo could see. He much preferred the way Alice filled out that crimson gown.