Crimson Rose (3 page)

‘I’m in love, Kit,’ the actor said, face straight, eyebrows knotted, tears in his eyes.

‘What, again?’ Henslowe said as he went to the head of the stairs, on his way down to supervise the arrival of some timber.

Thomas Sledd was with him. Timber was his concern, flats, for the making of. He wasn’t quite sure what the gates of Babylon looked like, but he wasn’t telling Henslowe that.
Signing
for the timber was Henslowe’s concern, however, and he was there, fussing around the builders’ merchants, scratching away with quill on parchment as the costs ran ever higher.

‘She’s a vision, Kit,’ Alleyn said, gazing into the middle distance before gulping his wine.

‘Could her face have launched a thousand ships, Ned?’ Marlowe asked.

‘Hmm?’ The actor got up and wandered across the room, striking a romantic pose, head back and leg bent, against the door jamb.

‘Nothing.’ The playwright smiled. ‘How’s Tamburlaine coming along?’

‘Who? Oh, well, Kit, well.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Villain, I say!’ he growled in a rumbling snarl which carried throughout the theatre and a builders’ merchant down below nearly died of fright. ‘“Should I but touch the rusty gates of Hell, the triple-headed Cerberus would howl and make black Jove to crouch and kneel to me” … Pretty good, eh?’ Alleyn was himself again.

‘Masterly!’ Marlowe laughed and took a swig of his claret.

‘No, this girl, Kit …’

‘Now, Ned,’ the playwright wagged a playful finger at him, ‘your heart belongs to Zenocrate, remember.’

Alleyn’s face dropped and he hauled off his helmet, shaking his hair free. ‘Which would be sheer delight,’ he said, ‘until you remember that Zenocrate is actually a cloth-footed fifteen-year-old baker’s roundsman with shoulders like cypress chests and pustules like the Pestilence.’

‘Ah.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘An actor’s lot, Ned, an actor’s lot.’

‘I hope you aren’t casting aspersions on the honourable art of boy players, Master Alleyn.’ Thomas came through the door, panting a little from the stairs, with his arms full of timbers to carve them into Babylon, or at least his approximation of it. ‘I was one myself once.’ He looked around him, distracted. ‘Has anyone seen my chisel?’ he asked the two men.

Marlowe shrugged. ‘Sorry, Thomas. I am happy to say I wouldn’t know a chisel if it bit me on the leg, but I think I have the general gist and there are no tools up here that I can see. Why have you hauled all that timber up here anyway?’

‘Master Henslowe is arguing about money down on the stage and I didn’t think he would want me to overhear.’

‘You are too sensitive for this job, Tom,’ Marlowe said. ‘We’ll come down in a minute and drown him out with a rehearsal or two. How would that be?’

‘Thank you, Kit.’ Thomas Sledd shouldered his timber again and began his slow and careful descent back on to the stage.

Marlowe drained his cup and made to follow him, but Alleyn stopped him, pulling at his sleeve.

‘I knew Thomas when he was with Ned Sledd’s company, but I never saw him perform, only rehearse. Was he any good?’

‘His performance in Cambridge when I saw him a year or so ago was as good as you would expect. Sledd’s company was going up in the world when I saw it next, but Tom’s voice had gone before I had a chance to see him.’

Alleyn preened. ‘Well, I like to think that I could have raised the tone of the company, given time,’ he said. ‘Sadly, business called me away before …’

‘Yes,’ Marlowe said drily. ‘Your business was stealing my
Dido
and trying to pass it off as your own, as I recall.’

Alleyn laughed, an actor’s laugh, head thrown back and hands on hips. He said, as he did whenever he had to make it clear to the furthermost groundling that he was amused. ‘Ha. Ha. Ha.’ Then he straightened up with no preamble. ‘Good days, Kit. Good days. But seriously, I never realized that Thomas was Ned Sledd’s son.’

Marlowe turned his back on the stair’s head and lowered his voice. ‘He isn’t,’ he said. ‘But he used to say that old Ned was the only father he knew. His mother was, I believe, a Winchester goose and his father –’ he looked at Alleyn without a glimmer of a smile this time – ‘some feckless actor, I expect, born to the wild road and the taverns. Ned brought up young Thomas when his mother dumped him on the company, made him the man he is today. Only natural he should take his name.’ He turned to go down to the stage. ‘Come on, Master Alleyn. We must help Master Sledd out of his predicament.’

Alleyn frowned, staring hard at the poet. ‘How old are you, Marlowe?’ he asked.

‘Twenty-three,’ he told him.

‘Hmm. Twenty-three going on sixty,’ Alleyn grunted. ‘Well, then, Methuselah, give me your words of wisdom on
my
predicament.’

‘If it’s Cupid’s measles, I understand Bucklersbury is the street you need. There are more apothecaries there than …’

‘It’s not the pox, Christopher.’ Alleyn pouted. ‘Thank you for caring. No, this woman is untouchable – a goddess.’

‘Married?’

‘No,’ Alleyn enthused now, pacing the floor as Marlowe waited patiently by the door. ‘No, that’s the very Devil of it.’ He unbuckled his epaulettes and gratefully slipped out of the breast and backplates of his armour. ‘No, she’s available. But I can’t touch her.’ He was standing next to Marlowe now and gripped his arm, shaking him gently to emphasize his words.

Marlowe frowned. He tapped Alleyn’s codpiece with his knuckles. ‘Something amiss?’

‘Certainly not!’ Alleyn sprang away, striking a manly pose, the great lover once again, if not yet the scourge of God. ‘No.’ His magnificent voice fell to a whisper. ‘It’s Shakespeare.’

‘What is?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Kit. I’m not making much sense, am I? You know Will Shakespeare’s playing Theridamas, King of Argier?’

‘Yes, I know who Theridamas is; I wrote the bloody play, remember? No, I didn’t know Shakespeare was playing him. It was what’s his name, that youngish chap with the funny walk, when I heard last.’

‘I forgot you hadn’t heard. Well, the funny walk turned out to be rather serious. Some kind of trouble …’ Alleyn waved a hand vaguely behind him. ‘We had to recast.’

‘I see. So, Shakespeare is playing Theridamas …’

‘Yes. Well, he’s taken a room in Blackfriars. Water Lane.’

‘And?’

‘His landlady is Eleanor Merchant.’

Marlowe waited. Surely, that couldn’t be it.

‘She has a sister.’

‘Ah.’

‘You know my reputation, Kit. If all the whores Ned Alleyn has had, all the morts and trulls …’

‘Not to mention the titled ladies,’ Marlowe reminded him.

‘Those too. If they were all laid down end to end I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’

‘But Mistress Merchant is not among them?’

‘Not Merchant. Shakespeare’s landlady is a widow. My beloved’s name is—’

‘Perhaps I had best not know. What if I met her and let her know, by word or look, that we have been discussing her?’

‘A good point, Kit. But no, she is certainly not among them. I can’t describe it. Her eyes, her brow, her lips, the way she talks, the way she moves. I can’t sleep for thinking of her. And when I do, she’s there in my dreams. You’re a poet, Kit. Tell me, is this what they call love?’

It was Marlowe’s turn to ask, ‘How old are you, Alleyn?’

‘Twenty-one,’ the actor told him.

‘Twenty-one going on six,’ the playwright teased him. ‘Why break the habit of a lifetime, Ned? Do your usual. Promise her the world, the moon, the stars. Get her into bed and get her out of your system.’

Alleyn’s face crumpled. ‘I thought you’d understand,’ he mumbled.

Marlowe looked into his face and held his arm. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ he asked.

‘As God is my judge. I need your advice, Kit. I mean it.’

Kit Marlowe had never seen himself as a matchmaker, a counsellor to the lovelorn. He was a scholar, grounded in Ramus and Plato and Aristotle. He was a poet, Ovid’s right-hand man and Lucan’s. And he was a playwright, the genius behind
Tamburlaine
of the mighty line. And, though it was behind him now, Marlowe had dubious friends in high places, men like Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s spymaster. There were some who called him Machiavel and said he supped with the Devil. Now Ned Alleyn, of all people, wanted him to help him overcome his new tongue-tiedness with a girl, the sister of Will Shaxsper’s landlady.

‘Can I meet the girl?’ he asked Alleyn.

‘Of course!’ The actor jumped at the offer and, shouldering Marlowe aside, ran down the stairs on to the stage. ‘We’ll go now.’

Marlowe gathered up the discarded costume and followed him down. ‘
Now
,’ he said, ‘you have a rehearsal to finish. Why don’t you invite your love tomorrow night? I understand Henslowe’s throwing a party afterwards – first night and all. Introduce me then.’

‘Done.’ Alleyn grinned, shaking the poet’s hand and taking his breastplate and shrugging it on. Thomas Sledd was at his elbow in an instant, buckling him in. Alleyn didn’t often stand still on stage for long enough for a rehearsal and Heaven knew he needed one. He gave Marlowe a grateful look over the actor’s shoulder.

Marlowe walked across the stage, then turned at the edge, his face dark and his eyes cold. ‘“Vile tyrant! Barbarous bloody Tamburlaine!”’ he rapped out.

‘“Take them away. Th …” Oh, bugger!’ Alleyn groped for his line.

Marlowe laughed. ‘As I said,’ he called as he crossed the groundling’s space of the Rose. ‘You have a rehearsal to finish.’

As he left the dark of the theatre and paused on the steps outside, he saw Philip Henslowe, bent towards a man he thought he knew but whose name he couldn’t bring to mind. He took a step towards them but then, seeing the expression on Henslowe’s face, thought better of it and, raising a hand in greeting, hurried off.

For the first time in his life, Kit Marlowe, the son of a Canterbury shoemaker, had a manservant. If you’d put the playwright into one of those iron boot contraptions they used on suspected traitors in the Tower, Marlowe couldn’t exactly tell you how he’d come to hire Jack Windlass. There were times when it seemed rather the other way round, as if Jack Windlass had plucked the name ‘Marlowe’ from the crossrow.

From what he knew of him, Windlass was a good man, but he had his foibles. Every Thursday, come Hell or the Flood, Jack Windlass served up a mighty shin of beef for supper. And woe betide the master who missed a meal like that.

And so Marlowe missed Philip Henslowe at his most patronizing.

‘I know it’s you, Burbage,’ Henslowe was saying, following the other man across the landing.

‘You mistake me,’ the man said, keeping his back to the light and his shoulder turned but Henslowe was persistent and hauled him round so he could have a proper look.

‘No, I don’t. You are Richard Burbage, joiner.’

The joiner stood up to become half a head taller and tore off his false nose and moustache, revealing a large nose and fledgling moustache beneath. ‘Allow me to correct you, sir,’ he said. ‘I am Richard Burbage, Actor.’

‘Whatever you say.’ Henslowe dismissed it with a wave of his hand, his mind already back with the calculating of whether he had enough timber. Then he stopped and turned back. ‘So what
are
you doing here?’

‘Looking for Cuthbert.’

‘Who?’

‘My brother,’ Burbage explained as though to an idiot. ‘You know, the actor.’

‘Oh, God,’ Henslowe moaned. ‘Another one?’

‘I was wondering if you’d cast Tamburlaine yet?’

Henslowe stood there with his mouth open. ‘Cast Tamburlaine?’ he repeated. ‘Man, we open tomorrow. If you want to make any kind of living in this business, I think you should try and keep your ear closer to the ground.’ He turned away, chuckling to himself at the arrogance of actors, when Burbage grabbed his sleeve in his turn.

‘It’s Alleyn, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Ned Alleyn’s got the part.’

‘So I’ve heard from several ladies.’ Henslowe nodded.

‘He’s wrong,’ Burbage said solemnly. ‘I don’t see him in the part. He’s … such a boy!’

Henslowe looked closely into the actor-joiner’s face. He was an ugly looking thing, with a great nose and a tight little mouth over a heavy chin, but he had a bloom on his cheek that could only be that of youth. ‘Talking of boys, Burbage, how old are you?’

‘I was twenty last January,’ Burbage told him.

‘Well, there you are, then.’ Henslowe chuckled. ‘Why not see if there’s a Children’s Troupe in need of an old hand. I hear the Boys of St Paul’s are usually desperate.’

‘Alleyn’s not much older than I.’ Burbage stood his ground.

‘Alleyn is a world older than you, boy,’ he said. ‘Come back to me when you can grow a beard.’

‘You haven’t heard the last of this!’ Burbage called after him, ever the master of the cliché. ‘I have my ways. You’ll see!’

Will Shakespeare, once Shaxsper, of Stratford-on-Avon, now of London, paced his tiny attic room, mouthing silent words and gesticulating wildly. He had already caught himself a nasty one on a beam and had reined himself in somewhat, but he was what he was – an actor who wanted to be a playwright, with another man’s words in this throat, trying not to choke on them. Making enemies with Kit Marlowe would not be a good idea, he sensed that, and making a hash of his performance tomorrow might well turn out the easiest way to make a powerful enemy. So, oblivious to the splinters and the pain, he mouthed and gesticulated on. His one consolation as he stumbled silently through his most difficult speech was that if his memory was bad, Ned Alleyn’s was infinitely worse.

A tap at the door broke his concentration and his arms fell to his side. This could only be one person. He cleared his throat, sore from the effort of not declaiming out loud. ‘Come in, Mistress Merchant,’ he said.

The door creaked open and a tousled head peered round it. Whilst no longer in the first flush of youth, the woman was not old by any means and if she was a little flushed and not very tidy she had every excuse: with three children and a house to run, there was scarcely a moment when she was not on her feet. But she had decided that she was due a bit of a lie down and she had also decided that she would be lying down with Will Shakespeare before the day was out, or her name was not Eleanor Merchant.