I returned uneasy to my slumber, wishing for my late youth where, with unstuffed brain, golden sleep did reign.
CHAPTER 21
“And what brings such a fine gentleman, like yourself, to these parts this good morning?”
My sleep troubled, I had risen early and made to those districts nearest the river where the chambermaid thought Mary Norton’s father lived. The woman asking after my presence was less than my own years by some margin, but those years as she had lived had marked her dear. Her teeth were most evident in their absence, her eyes much dulled, the skin of her face sallow beneath its rouge and powder. The tops of her breasts, pressed up for display by her tightened corset, had a slackened aspect, like sacks of flour half emptied.
I bowed with some theatre. “Why to make the acquaintance of the city’s good people, milady, so as to gain their console on a matter of some consequence.”
She laughed, seeming honest amused, and her features, to be true, were some improved by what I suspected was for her an uncommon moment of mirth.
“You have a mouth on you, you have,” she said. “As have I, and I can put it to such use as I promise you will well enjoy for two pence. Which I am sure you would not deny me, you already having had my acquaintance for free.”
“I will pay your two pence glad,” I said, holding out the coins, “if I can have use of your mouth in conversation for some minutes instead.”
She eyed me with some suspicion, but then pursed her lips and took the coins. “I will take your offer, sir, if we might sit for our talk. I spend my waking hours on either my feet, my knees, or my back, so to take some leisure on my arse instead during my working day is a small luxury.”
And so we sat on a wall along the river’s bank, and her face softened as she lifted it to the morning sun, a quiet moment spent in some joy known private to her alone.
“I thank you, sir, for pretending at least to think I deserve your courtesy. I was not always thus and am not now by choice. But a child’s hungry mouth consumes what it will and made snack of my dignity long ago.”
“Madam,” I said, “I have no such claim to virtue by which to stand judge of another. But I am surprised that you work your trade this side of the river, having thought our increasingly Puritan city fathers would have all entertainments off to Bankside or Shoreditch or the other liberties.”
She snorted. “Entertainments? Dear God, at least have the mercy not to compare me to the bear baiters and actors. What little reputation I might still have I would keep.”
“Actors, madam? Having known them long and you only little, I know already not to make such claim, for you are too much a lady to keep their company.”
“And Bankside, sir? Where I would need compete with ladies less long in my trade and more fair in their charms and for clients more used to their custom? Here I am oft alone to serve those Puritans who are much shamed to find that their human needs do oft o’ermount their spiritual zeal, so that, in their shame, they do conclude their business quick and pay for it most dear, thinking it some rare evil and not some common urge.”
“And so you are as wise in business as you are rich in beauty,” I said.
“And you, sir, are a kind liar, and are wasting your two pence, for you have already lasted longer in conversation than a Puritan does in lust.”
“Then I will ask you plain. I am looking for a young girl, in years short of twenty, dark haired and of some considerable beauty, who did until recent work in service at Somerset House, known by name as Mary Norton. I am told she lived close near the water in this district, with her father.”
My companion drew a breath and blew it out, pursing her cheeks in the doing. “I did know a Norton, a John,” she said, “who had a room near, and who, I remember, until recent, had a daughter such as you described – and well short of twenty. He died in winter. A Yorkshireman I think, by his accent.”
Yorkshire, as the chambermaid had mentioned.
“Have you seen the daughter since?”
“No, sir.”
“What more do you know of him? What work did he do?”
“Most common, he begged alms. He had but one hand, the other supposed lost at war in his youth.”
For two pence more, she agreed to show me the building where he had lived, and I marked its place that I might return later and ask after Mary in those locales where she would be best known. Pressing a final two pence on the woman in thanks for her service, I wondered more at the nature of the city and our place in it. For me, it had been the stage on which I had acted a new self, only imagined in my youth in Stratford but here made real in service of the city’s appetites. And as London had been the fount of my fortune, I had pretended it such for all. But every sense made plain the city’s ills as clear as its glories. The sight of the poor begging alms – dirty, poxed, and of too much bone and too little flesh. The smell of the squalor that did affect all but that I noticed much stronger in this district of estates meaner than my custom, as people here lived in such close congress that the stench that accompanies any human enterprise was oppressive thick. The sounds in this district, too, fell harsher on the ear. The calls from the keepers of such shops as this area’s custom could support being in tone more desperate than those coming from the finer shops nearer my rooms, for a shopkeeper strives for the coin that brings that same day’s bread far more urgent than he does to add just another to an already fattened purse. Children’s cries, too. Some crying only in that innocent insistence of infancy, their cries being their only tongue. But the deprivations of this quarter schooled even its babes and made their cries more fluent so that I could hear plain tales of hunger, of illness, of despair spoken only in wails and tears, for they were conditions which the young knew full well in experience long before they could speak their names.
As I made my way from this district toward that of the courts and my appointment with Webb, I knew suddenly that this city I had thought a kind of jungle was indeed such. But I knew, too, that its rich foliage had its roots sunk deep into the soil of those tens of thousands of poor. The city, sucking from them their natures and humours to sprout this vainglorious display, but returning to them nothing except the brown and discarded leaves from which the poor must hard derive their sustenance. For they know any excess will almost immediate be claimed by the roots of those finer flowers that they serve but in whose glories they will never share. And on that dark forest floor, a woman whose soul had no less claim to grace than my own would sell her virtue cheap in private unto those who would revile her in public. And yet she willing accepted their dishonest congress if only in hope that one mouth, a mouth that likely already cried full fluent in the despair that somehow dimmed even the sun in these narrow lanes, at least would live and perhaps one day climb this tangled foliage sufficient high to bloom.
Meanwhile, we creatures that lived in those higher branches considered our debts and fortunes in congress with one another, ignoring complete that larger debt. For our lofty perch was owed to those soiled thousands that did faithful support its roots, even while those same roots did use them so foul. I realised sudden and in shame that what we call charity is only a late and partial payment to parties we have much abused and who have no hope in law to make claim, as the law is a creation of us finer creatures and bent at every turn to our purposes. We use it to harsh hold the poor to their stations and us to ours. Then, as we shit our waste to the forest floor, we call it charity and congratulate ourselves on our generous exercise of God’s mercies.
CHAPTER 22
“As to your lease, we can reach what accommodation we will with Miller,” said Webb. I was seated again in his rooms. “But that accommodation will only last some few days.”
“We shall need more than a few days,” I answered.
“This matter seems mischief to its core,” Webb said, “for the more I uncover the more I find beneath. I met with Miller, explained what of this Shoreditch scheme I knew, and hinted at what I did not. It was clear in his reacting
that he knew only little of the larger plan, and not at all of the persons involved. It being also clear that, as we surmised, the matter of your lease was not one of conscience but rather of commerce, and that his delay was simply a small cruelty to satisfy his distaste, which seems to be as much for your person as for your art. The plain fact, Will, is he does not like you.”
While I had been in my dealings with Miller perhaps sharp in tongue, as I find his manner near as offensive as his philosophy, I was surprised to hear that he focused his animus on me direct. “Why so hard for me?” I asked.
“You are, for him, the embodiment of all he despises. An actor and playwright both, and thus you author and display the evils he imagines. But it upsets him, too, that you have risen to a status near equal to his own from what he sees as common roots, for this does dispute that Calvinist thinking that Puritans much embrace – the faith that men are born each to their station, that station reflecting the favour in which God holds them. For you to have reached this status, and by means of such art as he views sinful, means that either his religion is false or your means are Satanic. Few thoughts push a man harder toward evil than an argument against his religion.”
I could only agree. “A man will in the name of God do ready such ills that he would never consider of his own accord. And I do true believe that many hear God’s voice in what are in fact the whisperings of the darker chambers of their own hearts, so as to excuse such evils that they cannot admit are sprung whole from the cauldron of their own appetites.”
Webb patted his desk with his hand. “The matter of Miller’s conscience aside, it is commerce that drives his hand. My having made plain what cause for damage we could bring against him, his delay in notice being clear fraud, he did ready agree that you may remain in the theatre for so long as he is its master. But those days are short numbered, as he has agreed to sell, and such sale scheduled to conclude just one week hence.”
“Giving us eight more days than we had, but not nearly so many as we need. What of the property’s new owner? If we assume the theatre sold as part of these conniving speculations, then the new owner sure has no true purpose for it, save to sell it soon again. Would they not, then, welcome such rents as we could compel Miller to pay so that we can remain in residence sufficient long to make an orderly retreat?”
“An inquiry I already made. And I was much surprised to have it so quick rebuffed, until I learned who the new owner would be. Henslowe. And not owner of the theatre alone. It seems he is one of those agents the Somerset Company employs in its purchases. He has bought three other parcels in Shoreditch, having already sold two at profit, and is entertaining offers on the third. “
“What of the threat of disclosure? If Henslowe is in league with Somerset, then he knows the stature of its players and what ills might befall him should their plot be thwarted through cause of his actions.”
“I tried that tack, but he replied that any knife we hold to his throat we hold equal to our own – or even more so, as the disclosure would come by our hands, not his.”
“And yet he holds the theatre instead of selling it.”
“Of those properties he holds,” Webb said, “it is the largest and will thus fetch the dearest price. So, by holding it some weeks longer as this scheme unfolds, he can not only enrich himself but also impoverish your company by denying you access to its stage, which some new owner would sure lease to you most ready. And thus by one mischief he can cause another.”
This new knowledge of Henslowe’s hand even tighter around my throat bubbled so angry in me that I could not stay seated, but instead rose and paced in Heaton’s room. An idea was forming that I would have whole before speaking it – so that, when Webb tried again to speak, I rose a hand to still his tongue.
Finally I answered him.
“I learned yesterday that Henslowe had, some weeks ago, made payments to block every stage in Bankside from our use, and so I already knew that he had knowledge of our misfortune in advance. But by this we now know that he not only had knowledge of it, he was in truth its architect, as he schemed first to drive us from our own stage and then to keep us from any other.”
“This would seem true,” Webb said.
“Answer me this. Some weeks or months hence, when the Somerset Company’s final properties have been sold and so the false infection of this speculative fever stayed, what then becomes of Shoreditch?”
Heaton sat back for a moment, tapping a finger against his chin. “Those leases that will concentrate much commerce within its boundaries already in force to support the fiction giving fire to this speculation, Shoreditch will be new home to more shops than current. As the Somerset Company will have sold all those properties out of its inventory as part of their scheme, these parcels will be held by varied owners, all of whom will have paid dear. So, those owners will strive hard to increase the area’s commerce in hopes that prices might one day equal those they paid and justify such rents as will allow them to afford those mortgages they may have secured to buy them.”
“So, this mall of shops that was created as a myth will become a fact?”
“It will. And, in truth, for those owners patient, it may well in time be a worthy investment. Not the sort of investment that the Somerset Company would prefer, though. For why breed your cow and take the risk and trouble to raise a calf when you can instead steal your neighbour’s herd and sell it whole?”
“But, Shoreditch, being outside the city’s walls, and thus its laws, and thus at liberty, we can expect that this now more-thriving district will see much traffic in those entertainments that are to the liberties confined?”
Heaton’s finger stopped tapping his chin, and instead pointed at me straight. “And be the ideal site for a theatre. Especially one bought not at the height of any speculative frenzy but instead at its start, and, thus, owned free by its company.”
I slumped once more into my chair, the energy derived from discerning Henslowe’s plot exhausted by having realised its end. “And so I find myself already mated in a game I had not known begun.”
“Take heart, Will,” said Webb. “The solution to any ill is found only after its diagnosis. Give me some time to reflect on this matter, now that we know it more whole, and I may well find unbarred some door that Henslowe has forgotten.”
“And if no?”
“Why, then we make a new one.”
It was short past noon only, but I was considerable wearied by the morning’s adventures and by the night’s interrupted slumber. And so, instead of returning toward the river to inquire further after Mary, I decided to return to my rooms. I needed to reflect on my company’s dangers, for the plot that was now shown as a direct attack at me held more currency at the moment then that which had felled my dead patron.
In walking to Bishopsgate, I saw the city now not as a jungle, but instead as an abstraction. Its buildings and lands were props only, their meaning most clear in a web of deeds and ownerships and shares and mortgages at whose centre new and malevolent spiders did pluck and spin such strings as did hold or loose our lives at their pleasure. And I wondered how we had become enslaved to such mysteries. For we had taken that simple world of God’s giving – which in its fruits did all our needs meet and under whose sun we had once stood all equal – and made in our society a machine of such complex devising and unclear purpose that some were careless ground within its wheels while others were ascended to true dizzying heights. The cause of either fortune or calamity now seemed so random and arbitrary that, while we imagined we worked each to our own benefit, we did oft instead simply toil – perhaps to our ill or perhaps to no end at all. Our labours left us wearied, but a weariness gave birth to no dreams by which to divine any purpose to either our sleep or our waking.
That afternoon, for the first time since drawn by Carey into this strange service, I took stage with my fellows for our company’s performance. I was much comforted to have lines that required only my remembering, to have my steps and actions foretold, a
nd that my agency caused no harm but instead merriment. We were performing a comedy of considerable antic confusion in which some of us men were dressed as women, who were in fact men, who for purposes of the story were pretending to be women. And so I spent some hours lost in the easy practice of my art, lit with laughter, and dear glad of my circumstances if only for those brief instants. For such rare blessings as life offers cannot be saved or hoarded but must be ate complete in their moment, and we must find in that meal sufficient mercy to sustain us until we find its kind again.
.
CHAPTER 23
“Norton? None that I recall, sir, though I have truck with many each day and might never know their names.”
I was speaking with a baker only a few doors from that building where I was yesterday told that Mary Norton’s father lived. It was my fifth inquiry of the morning, and in each case I received similar answer. If the lady yesterday had steered me true, and I did believe she had, then this Norton lived quiet and was of little note to his neighbours.
“He had but one hand,” I added, “having lost the other, I am told, at war in his youth. He would beg alms, I hear.”
At this, the baker stole a short glance to his wife, who stood to his left, moving just his eyes as though he had thought better of the effort before he could move his head. Her features made a small shiver of quiet alarm that I also saw before she made her face a mask.
“I can’t speak for your district, sir,” the baker continued, “though judging from your dress and manner, it be finer than this, but there are many hereabouts some insulted by life: many lame, many ill.”
Clear, he knew something, but clear also he wished not to say it, and seeming from fear. Not a little ashamed, I decided to prey hard on that fear.
“I’ll be plain, sir. I inquire in service to the Baron Hunsdon, son of the late Lord Chamberlain and soon to assume that post, and on a matter of some concern to his household. I will remember well those helpful to my mission.”
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