“The enemy, my lord?” Will sipped his wine.
“Don’t blanch so. I would not be Burbage’s and thy master if I did not know some things.” Strange’s slick hair broke in locks as he turned a lopsided smile on Will. “Have a care. I may not be able to protect thee, but Burghley will. As long as thou dost remain useful to him.”
“Burghley? Not Oxford?”
Strange lifted one shoulder eloquently, appearing to watch the verbal sparring between rival players ride the edge between wit and acrimony.
“Oxford was a mistake. Oxford thinks Southampton can be convinced. Thou wouldst get better odds on Raleigh.”
“Noble rivalries, my lord?”
Burbage had caught Alleyn’s elbow and drew him away from the fire. The taller man bent his head to hear the smaller’s arguments. The cross Alleyn had worn ever since a particularly disastrous performance of Faustus dangled from its cord as he leaned down.
“If you like.” Fingers against the table, a nervous, rilling tap. “Don’t trust Edward de Vere, Master Shakespeare. And don’t trust too much in the patronage of Southampton, for all thou dost flatter him with thy poetry. He’s a boughten man.
“You know this, my lord?” Will noticed the dark line furrowed between Strange’s dark eyes. “Aye. You know it.”
“I know too much.” Strange finished his wine. He inverted his cup and pushed himself to his feet; the other men at the table jumped up as a lord stood. “I am expected home to sup. Finish the bottle, Master Shakespeare.” Strange threw coins on the table.
His tired smile struck Will hard. There was too much resignation in it. “Don’t give up hope on your poor players, my lord,” Will said, hoping that Strange would hear both his words and the meaning under them. “The playhouses will be open soon.”
Lord Strange turned back from the door and smiled. “See that you make me proud, Master Shakespeare. Masters Burbage, Master Kemp.” And with that, Ferdinando Stanley collected his hat from the peg by the door, and went.
Will’s letter to Annie dispatched the following morning netted only a stony silence in reply. He meant to send a second one a week after the first, but good intentions were lost in the whirl of rehearsal and rewrite and frenzied preparation of two plays at once: the tragedy Titus Andronicus, for which Will need not only learn his roles but also face down Oxford in a series of hour-murdering meetings; and a light-hearted comedy which was finally, after much argument, entitled The Taming of the Shrew.
The clownish Will Kemp was appointed lord of Misrule chief of Christmas festivities for lord Strange’s Men, thus ensuring that drunkenness and disorder would ride sovereign over the frantic preparations for the Twelfth Night play. And between a tailor’s visit or three, rehearsals all day and all night (and drinking at the Mermaid), occasional church services and the Twelve Days festivities, the first time Will had a moment’s silence between his own ears was on January 5. And only because a thin-lipped, towering Ned Alleyn, who, plied by Burbage with liquor and conversation, would perform with lord Strange’s Men this once, threw the entire company out of the Mermaid Tavern and into the street to ‘go home, the lot, and rest your heads so as not to lose them before Her Majesty!’
Will’s stomach had been too sour for much drinking, and now, as he lay in his bed against the warmth of the chimney, it was too sour for much sleeping.
Perform before the Queen.
He sat up in bed and let the bedclothes slip aside. A draft came between the floorboards as he set his feet down; he stood anyway, shivering with his coverlet wrapped around his shoulders, and crossed to light a candle. After unrelieved darkness, the glow warmed him as much as a fire. Perform before the Queen and her rival favorites, and remind them that their duty is to their sovereign, and not to their quarrels. Oh, I wish Annie were here to see this.
He set the candle on the sideboard and opened an oaken cupboard, drawing out the soft wine red velvet drape of his new doublet. Kit would have loved it: it fit like a second skin, snug at the waist and broad at the shoulders, slashed in peach taffeta and buttoned with knotted gilt. Kit would have been much calmer, Will thought, as he picked up a clothes brush and polished the nap of the already spotless velvet. The steady rasp of the brush on the cloth helped him think: his racing, exhausted thoughts rocked instead of spinning, and Will forced himself to breathe and contemplate.
Put on the role, and play it. Turn a trembling hand into a swordsman’s confidence, and quivering voice into an arrogant sneer. I’m a player, if I’m not a Burbage. I can manage a role indifferent well. So tomorrow I’ll be a role. And then the day after tomorrow, I will write to Annie, and see if she’ll have me home for lent.
January the sixth Twelfth Night dawned with a cold that settled over London like the locking of a chest, but even in winter of a plague year, festivity could be found. A solemn sort of merriment fought with nausea as Will peered through a gap in the draperies, amazed at the splendor of Westminster Palace bannered in holly and ivy and ablaze with more candles than a church. The great Gothic hall echoed with the busy footsteps of players and tirers, servants flitting like shadows through the bustle on any pretext to get a glimpse of the great Richard Burbage, of the famous Edward Alleyn. Alleyn was easy enough to mark: broad-shouldered as a monolith, his lips moving silently as he reviewed his cues. Burbage vanished twice for not above half an hour each time, and each time Will noticed a serving girl went missing simultaneously. One sweet dark-haired lass caught his own eye, and if it hadn’t been for fear of rumpling his doublet, he might have sought a kiss.
Just for luck.
But it was past time for that, and time to be tending to paint, reddening boys lips with carmine and lacing them into their corsetry. A black wig for Katharine and a blond wig for Bianca. Will swallowed his own fear: the younger boy, also named Edward, was trembling as Will made a mirror for his paint.
“Tis only a Queen you perform for,” Will said in the boy’s ear, tidying his kohled eye with a cloth. “Surely that’s happened before.”
Edward giggled, for all his cheeks stayed white as a bride s. Will patted Edward on the shoulder above his bodice before walking away. At least your name’s not under the title. He went to have Burbage mend his own painting. And found the round little player pacing five short steps, back and forth and back again.
Richard considered. “Too much on the lips.”
Too much indeed, Will thought, standing what seemed a moment later just out of the audience’s view.
There was the Queen, her chair surrounded by her admirers. Sir Walter Raleigh, glossy in his black, leaned to murmur in Her Majesty’s ear. Her hand came up to brush his shoulder, and the loosely sewn pearls on his doublet scattered at the snap of a thread. Will could plainly see the Queen’s condescending amusement at her favorite’s expensive conceit.
On her other side, ferret-faced Henry Wriothesley Southampton frowned at the dashing Earl of Essex in his white-and-gold, who frowned more deeply still at Raleigh, while Raleigh affected not to notice. Will noticed for all their posturing that it was Burghley’s son, Robert Cecil, to whom the Queen most often bent, and spoke, and smiled.
All fell silent as the prologue began. What would Marley do?The expected confidence did not burgeon Will, although Burbage stepped close enough to bolster him with a shoulder. But Marley was dead, or as good as: Will on his own, and‘boy: let him come, and kindly’— There’s my cue.
Will swallowed a painful bubble, let his hands fall relaxed to his sides, and stepped out on stage amid a swirl of trumpets, half convinced his voice would fail him.
“Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds:
Brach Merriman the poor cur is embossed;
And couple Clowder with the deep-mouthed brach.”
This is the stupidest thing I have ever written. She’ll have me whipped around town for stepping above my station.
A nothing part, a pompous lord, and Will had been playing on stage six years now. Still, his hand shook. The Queen. I am n
o Richard Burbage, to collect hearts like so many butterflies.
“Sawst thou not, boy, how Silver made it good
At the hedge corner, in the coldest fault?
I would not lose that dog for twenty pound.”
But the Queen was leaning forward in her chair, the last three fingers of her left hand moving in a faint, dismissive gesture when Essex tried to draw her attention. The Earl looked down sulkily, fiddling something in his lap. Over his shoulder, lord Burghley standing near to his son and a little further from the Queen caught Will’s eye. The boards creaked under Will’s foot. He upstaged the huntsman, forcing him to turn, so Will could follow Burghley’s gaze and catch a glimpse of Essex’s task. The Earl riffled the pages of a little book, an octavio, of a size for tucking in a sleeve or a pocket. He couldn’t be reading the playscript; it wasn’t published. And Southampton was leaning forward over Essex’s shoulder, his lips moving.
Interesting.
“Thou art a fool,
Will said.
If Echo were as fleet”
There was something, a pressure. Almost as if a stiff wind sprang up. But the Queen was laughing, and Will leaned on that, camped his dialogue, airy turn of a sleeve to offset a pompous thundering. The scene was almost all his, and he carried it. The prologue ended, and Will beat his retreat with a glance across the audience.
Engaged. Alive, at least. He gulped ale through a tight throat and leaned against a pillar, listening. It was a mistake to recruit Alleyn he’s too overblown for comedy, no, he’s managing it. Oh, this may work.He fretted his hands, one over the other, feeling the power rise up in opposition to his work. Feeling the play itself, its rhythms and stresses, the connection between player and playgoer. The surge of emotion and thought that bound the audience to the performance, and the energy that ran between them, like lovers giving one another all.
I should have taken out the jokes about tongues and tails. Not before Her Majesty.
But Elizabeth laughed again, a provoked and provoking sound that carried over the sedate chuckles of her courtiers, and Will grinned despite himself.
Tis no different before the Queen. But there’s a power here.
It was a heady thing, and he finished the ale and straightened against the wall as he grasped it. This is what Kit was trying to show me. This. This power. This consensus. This is the thing we manipulate. I can do this thing.
Will toweled the paint from his face, tossing the spotted cloth onto a pile. Someone thrust a cup into his hand. He quaffed it, choked when he found wine instead of ale, and turned to Burbage’s grin.
“You re a success. We re a success.” Will embraced Richard. His own shirt was transparent with sweat when he stripped it over his head, and he wet a cloth and wiped the salt from his chest.
Burbage, of course, looked pressed and dapper. “Hand me my clean shirt, wouldst thou? We must go be charming and earn our bread.”
“As long as tis Kemp singing for his supper, not thee.”
“What? I am a very nightingale.” Will tucked the shirt into his breeches and pulled his doublet on.
“In that thou shouldst sing only after dark, when they cannot see thy face to hunt thee, aye.” Burbage clipped Will about the shoulders while Will was still fussing with laces, and steered him back out into the hall. The Queen had risen from her chair to lead a galliard. Will let his gaze sweep the room, wondering if he could catch the eye of that dark-haired girl again, but instead found Essex’s gaze. Will bowed to the Earl, who affected a habit of white silk that contrasted sharply with Raleigh’s glossy black. Burbage, still holding Will’s elbow, caught the bow and echoed it in unison, making Will smile. Richard was many things. And the best at most of them. The players straightened as the Earl turned away, his brow thundering, his arms crossed as if he slipped something into a sleeve pocket. “He does not approve,” Will murmured.
“More intrigues. He’s of the other camp, and I no longer doubt it. Did you mark his ring?”
“Nay.”
“Some of the Prometheans wear them. But then again, so too do some mere mortals who meddle with magics. An iron ring on the finger, or steel in the ear. Who is that he spoke to?” Burbage arched his neck, as if searching the crowd. “The tall fellow with the lovely hair? In gold pinked with white. The very one.”
“The one coming toward us?”
“Why Will,” Burbage said, “that’s Master Thomas Walsingham.” A glance aside to Burbage, and Will swore under his breath.
Burbage’s color was high. Will noticed a drinker’s vein or two blossoming on his cheeks, that hadn’t been there a year before and his smile set.
“Kit’s … patron.”
“Kit’s betrayer, and ours, as I have it from Oxford. But yes, they shared a house and rumor says that isn’t all, though Master Walsingham a married man. That’s his wife, Etheldreda they call her Audrey, there. The gingery one.”
The lady was breathtaking in a rose-colored gown, cut low across her bosom, a mass of hair, Will thought, was probably nearly all her own, tired high. He shifted his attention back to Tom Walsingham, whose progression toward the players was slow but inexorable.
“Waste of a fine old Saxon name.”
“She rather looks like a Saxon Queen, doesn’t she? Ah,” Burbage said. “Will you have wine?”
“You re leaving me to his tender mercies?”
“He wants you. I’m only in the way. Drag him for information if you may: he’s got his hooks in Chapman too, and has a taste for poets, I’ve heard.”
“Chapman?” Will blinked to clear the unlikely vision from his head. “Oh, you mean his patronage.”
Burbage laughed and clapped Will on the shoulder as he moved away. “Just don’t mention Marley and you can’t go far wrong. I’m going to collect our payment from the steward.”
Will swallowed the last acid taste of the wine and pretended engagement with the dance. Gloriana’s grace was legend, her long oval hands raised high as she let her partners move her. Even in her sixtieth year, she moved as if the mass of her skirts and jewels and her gold-red jeweled tire weighed nothing. She dined alone by habit, Will knew, and imagined it was as much to conceal the unladylike appetite her exertions must give her as for fear of poison.
“Master William Shakespeare?” It was a smooth voice, a touch of Kent in it, and Will turned and met Thomas Walsingham’s querying gaze. Will had to lift his chin; Tom had a hand on him, at least, in height and half that across the shoulders, and might have been wearing heeled shoes for court.
“Master Walsingham.”
“An excellent performance.” Walsingham lifted a glass; the wine it held was clear dark yellow in torchlight. “I’m sorry we haven’t met. I’ve seen one or two of your plays from the galleries, and been impressed. Master Marley first commended you to mine attention, and after him George. You know Chapman.”
“Very well,” Will answered, glad he hadn’t a glass of his own, lest he choke on the contents. and you can’t go far wrong. Oh, excellent advice, Richard. Excellent advice.
“Master Marley? Of a truth?”
Walsingham’s lips seemed to vanish for a moment. “Though he was never a one to cast broad credit.”
“No,” Will said, and thought interestingagain. “I had understood you ended on bad terms.”
“Aye,” Walsingham answered, “in that he ended badly. But tis not a topic I wish to dwell on overmuch. That was a fine play, by a fine group of players performed.”
“I will convey your compliments.”
“Convey more than that.” Walsingham reached out, and Will almost flinched from his calloused, elegant hand. Will studied it, Burbage’s comments on rings fresh in his mind, but contrary to fashion Walsingham didn’t affect any. Instead he slipped a paper into Will’s doublet, smoothing the nap of the velvet before drawing away. “Convey that note to mine exchequer. He’ll see your company rewarded for lightening the Queen’s burden.”
“It is our joy and duty, and we are already we
ll compensated, Master Walsingham.”
The galliard ended; the dancers made courtesy to the musicians and called for drink. Will joined the polite applause.
“So I understand.” Walsingham smiled; it rounded the angle of his cheek and turned him from handsome courtier into dashing rogue. Even forewarned, Will felt himself charmed. “But a man should be of a mind to make friends where he may, and players are fair friends to have. Sometimes. And summer is coming, and my house at Chislehurst is not too far from London for a play.”
“Ah,” Will said. “Yes,” he said. “Carefully made friends are a good thing to have, if they return the care.”
Walsingham’s eyes darkened. “An excellent play. May you write many more, and be as careful in your friends. Sometimes their care can have an unexpected source. Do contact me. Oh, here is Doctor Lopez. Do wish to counsel this fine playmaker on his health, good Doctor?”
“A moment of his time, if you can spare it,” Lopez said in his accented voice. Walsingham, nodding, withdrew.
“Master Shakespeare, I wish to congratulate you on the success of your work tonight.”
He did not mean the play. As Will turned to him, he was as certain of that as he was of the mockery behind Lopez’s arch expression.
“The Ambassador honors my poor efforts,” he said. Lopez rubbed the tip of his nose.
“Honor puts no beef on the table,” he said, and dropped a clinking purse in the rushes at Will’s feet, where Will would need to stoop to retrieve it. “I’ve a word from Burghley. The word is well done.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Will said. Lopez patted him on the arm, a ruby ring worn over his glove glittering with the motion.
“You’re more biddable than the last one,” he said, as he turned away. “That can only bode well.”
Will’s shoulders tightened; his arms hung numb. Five heartbeats later he took a breath, and ducked down to retrieve the purse. However callously offered, a shilling was a shilling, and the purse had clinked like a great many of them. It had the aspect of a dance, he thought, as he stood and found himself facing Essex. “My lord,” he said, and bowed low.
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