Death of Kings (29 page)

NELL
: No, stay a moment. Who is your friend?

NR
: This is Mistress Horner. And that is her husband over there.

NELL
: Yes, I know him, Nicholas. I know most of you, you know.

IH
: And who is this lady, Master Revill?

NR
: This is a – Nell.

IH
: Oh, a Nell . . . one of the tribe of Nell.

NELL
: Shove up, Nicholas, there’s room for me between the two of you. And now tell me what was making you smile when I saw you from the other side of the room.

IH
: Well, Nell, Master Revill here has been instructing me in how to recognise a whore by certain signs and tokens.

NELL
: Nicholas is a good teacher, so listen to him. He knows much about the sacking law.

IH
: Sacking law?

NELL
: Whoredom.

NR
: I protest I know nothing about it, next to nothing. Truly, I don’t.

IH
: You protest too much, I think.

NELL
: What signs and tokens, Nicholas?

NR
: I . . . er . . .

NELL
: I will tell you. A red dress like this one I am wearing, and cut so as this one is cut, and an inviting look like this one I am giving you now, Nicholas. You see
it? These are your signs and tokens.

IH
: Ah yes, Nell, I understand that I am a novice here.

NELL
: I am not coy about my trade, Mistress. Why should I be?

IH
: No reason at all. We are not the coy ones here. We are not engaged in a mysterious business. Leave that to the men. They will make up stories until your head spins.
Master Revill has been talking in a most peculiar way.

NR
(
making to rise
): Look, my companions are going. I must return to the Globe. Important rehearsal.

NELL
: Go, Nicholas, if you must. Leave me to enjoy Mistress Horner’s company.

IH
: Yes, Master Revill. There is obviously much for me to learn from this lady . . .

So I went off, uncomfortably, after my fellows. I noticed that Jack hardly acknowledged his wife Isabella, just as I’d noticed that she had never taken up Nell’s
hint about knowing her husband. I wondered what the women were going to talk about behind my back and was afraid enough that their subject would be me. (At the same time, though, if I’d been
told by a little bird that neither breathed a word about me after my departure, I’d have been disappointed.)

But the main thought that whirled around in my head was: how could I have been so foolish as to brand Mistress Isabella Horner with the mark of Cain? A strange, dark and passionate woman she
might have been, but that did not turn her into a murderess. It was not unlikely that she had harboured the odd homicidal prompting towards me – for certain, she was most indignant when I
announced that I wished to terminate our amour – but which of us has not occasionally harboured such promptings?

I had been misled by my alarm at Mistress Horner’s manner when we parted, her raging temper coupled with her gift of the bottled potion which would put my heart in order. Then came the
discovery in the Coven garret of Nat’s body, with his hand clawed round the little green bottle, drained of its contents. What more natural than to assume that his demise was linked to
Horner’s concoction? And that, in accomplishing his death, she had really intended to procure mine? In a peculiar way, it underlined my importance to her; that she would give me a poison to
take in my own good time – rather say, in my bad time. How much more likely, though, that a woman would give me a love potion compounded of some few simples . . . and something of herself
(naturally, I wondered from whereabouts that tantalising something had emanated). So in the same way that I had leaped to the premature conclusion that she was a murderess, now I jumped in the
opposite direction and became convinced of her innocence. Far from meaning harm, she had genuinely intended reform. She really did wish to win me away from the by-ways of vice, and perhaps to usher
me back towards her bed.

Remained the question: what had Nat the Animal Man died of? That was not so hard to answer either, even if the cause of his death might never be known for sure. Hadn’t I thought to myself
as I tucked his body into the leaf-strewn ditch beside the road that, if found, he’d be taken for one of the many vagabonds who died outdoors in the winter months through cold and hunger? The
only difference was that Nat’d died indoors, my indoors. But his life was essentially no different from a vagrant’s. Whether he had anywhere regular to lay his withered poll was
doubtful. What little money he earned from his stock of beastly sounds and from running little errands for individuals such as Nemo, he pissed away in ale. He must have been tough to defer death
for so long. Perhaps he’d succumbed to a sudden apoplexy, a fatal fit (I remembered his stretched mouth, his raggedy teeth, his huddled posture on the floor). Perhaps in some final agony or
confusion of mind, he’d ransacked my chest, found the bottle and swallowed its contents to the last drop. Perhaps, as I’d originally thought, he’d simply been rummaging through my
sparse belongings in search of liquid refreshment as he awaited my return.

Drank and died.
Post hoc sed non propter hoc.
After but not on account of. Nat died natural. So I settled it. So I thought.

These weren’t easy days for us at the Chamberlain’s. The ordinary business of February persisted but it was thin enough fare at the Globe, practically lenten fare,
and we were reduced to a couple of performances a week. Of course, we were still rehearsing for our presentation of
Twelfth Night
at Whitehall some days hence.

The strange aspect to this was that, even while we were mouthing Master WS’s words for the twelfth time and having our costumes checked for the twentieth – and all so that we might
shine bright in the presence of Her Majesty – we were apparently suspected of being enemies to her person and her realm. Although the Burbage brothers and Shakespeare and the other seniors
continued to attend to their duties both in the playhouse and at the Clerkenwell Revels Office, they did so with the air of men who were distracted. This was understandable for we all knew that,
from time to time during the days that followed on Essex’s failed rising, one or other of our shareholders was being hauled before some members of the Council or their agents to give an
account of the Company’s participation in the rebellion.

To wit: why had we agreed to stage
Richard II
, knowing the state of things, having regard to the pressures of time and place, being aware of the dangerous condition of London, indeed of
England?

Augustine Phillips, he was summoned on at least two or three occasions. This was perhaps not altogether surprising since, as I knew from my eavesdropping in the book-room, he had taken on the
principal role in negotiating with Merrick the Essexite, a knight who now found himself incarcerated in the Tower. It’s a measure of the closeness of our Company that the report of what
Phillips said in his – our – defence should have been so soon spread among the rest of us. According to Company talk, Master Phillips claimed that the play of King Richard was so old
and so long out of use that the Chamberlain’s Company had small expectations of an audience. Why then did they play it? Persuaded by the inducement of forty shillings, was his answer.

Now, if I’d been a member of the Council, this would not have convinced me. Why, had I not heard Master Phillips make the very same points to Merrick on their first meeting? That the play
was fusty and dusty. Identical objections had been raised at the general meeting of the Company. That Richard was indeed an old piece. That we might fail to draw an audience. That this was a giddy
moment to stage this particular play.

All true. Except perhaps for the point about the audience; although, even in this respect, the congregation on that Saturday had been mostly made up of devout Essexites, renegades who would have
watched the rain fall if their leader had instructed them to.

So the mystery remained: why had we staged this play?

And another mystery: why did the Council accept, or seem to accept, the reasons which Augustine Phillips and the other shareholders gave? Reasons? Excuses rather. I repeat: had I been a member
of the Council, or one of their agents, I would have probed further. They had, after all, sufficient instruments for probing at their disposal.

Don’t get me wrong.

I was relieved, I was delighted, that they – we – escaped unscathed from this dangerous pass. And if we were ever in real disfavour, which I doubt, it was very short-lived. The proof
of this? Well, we did indeed perform before Her Majesty on Shrove Tuesday, 24 February. You shall hear about that performance and its aftermath soon enough.

What puzzles me is how we – they – got away with it.

Only now do I have an inkling (and you’ll hear about that soon enough too).

The fortunes of the Chamberlain’s, and whether one or two of its senior members might be cast into gaol, was pretty small beer to anyone outside the playhouse. The eyes
of London were firmly fixed on the fate of the Earl of Essex. Within a few days, indictments were laid against him and Southampton and others. The trial of the two Earls followed hard at heels, and
it was clear to all that there could be only one sequel to this.

These things didn’t weigh very greatly on my mind, except for the passing regret about Wriothesley which I’ve already mentioned. Even here, I felt it greatly daring and presumptuous
to be concerned at the fortunes of a nobleman. I was slightly surprised not to have been summoned by Nemo to another midnight meeting. It was he, after all, who had instructed me to be a spy in the
house of Essex in the first place and who had then conveyed, via the unfortunate Nat, a message commanding me to attend an uprising. Except, of course, Nemo couldn’t have known that that
Sunday morning had been chosen as rebellion’s glorious dawn, could he? Any more than he should have been aware that the Chamberlain’s were going to stage the ‘foul play’ of
Richard
on the Saturday. Why, we hadn’t decided on this ourselves until the company meeting which I’d attended
after
receiving Nemo’s note (and eating his words,
literally).

I say ‘we hadn’t decided’ but of course the decision had already been made by the shareholders, baffling though it might have been to us common players. Now, Nemo’s note
suggested prior knowledge of which way we were going to jump. Which suggested, in turn, collusion – or, at the least, an understanding – between the authorities and the senior
Chamberlain’s, the very gentlemen who were now being quizzed by those same authorities. Which suggested . . . I didn’t know what. My poor brain reeled as it had when I’d been
blindfolded and led a dance through the dark streets to meet Cecil. All I knew was that I wanted nothing more to do with the world of spies and affairs of state.

Such thoughts ran in my head as I returned to my lodgings after a morning rehearsal for Richard Milford’s
A Venetian Whore.
In this comedy I played one of the three suitors for
Belladonna’s hand. She is, you will recall, the heroine of the piece, a lady who, to test her would-be lovers’ sincerity and purity, takes to a whore’s life, or to a whore’s
garb and manners at any rate. I was a nobleman – the Duke of Argal – come to woo the wealthy Belladonna with the prospect of an extensive champaign, with fertile meads and rich forests.
Unfortunately, during my return to the Dukedom of Argal I decide to drop into a brothel and there I take a fancy to a new woman. Who, just before she succumbs to my blandishments (viz. money),
reveals herself to be . . . the disguised Belladonna! No fit husband-to-be, I slink back to Argal.

It was a nice role, somewhere between small and large, and I played the nobleman with one or two touches of grace and ease which I’d picked up in my brief encounters with (whisper it soft)
the Earl of Southampton. And
A Venetian Whore
had the great advantage for us at this moment of being a light, frothy piece, nothing to do with kings, depositions or deaths. However, the play
isn’t the thing here. I mention it and my part in it merely to report on the behaviour of Richard Milford during rehearsals.

I’d already observed the manner of a handful of authors during my short association with the Chamberlain’s, and before that with the Admiral’s. They are strange creatures, not
seeming to realise their own strangeness. I except Master Shakespeare here. Though not indifferent to his own words, he showed a kind of casualness about their application. I have occasionally
watched him step forward so as to moderate a player’s delivery, to temper his gestures and motions, but I have not otherwise seen him seek to interfere in the player’s craft. This is
perhaps because he himself is a player, and understands how each man must be left to find not only his own voice, but his own stance and gait. With other authors it can be different.

Master Milford was an extreme case of fret and worry. Fitfully watching as we mouthed his lines (not really his, of course), he could hardly keep still. He strode around in the
groundlings’ area, casting sidelong glances at the stage. Then he would materialise backstage, ear pressed to the panelling, checking that we were sticking to his precious text – as if
he had actually written it! A moment later and there he was hanging about on the edge of the platform, biting his nails to the quick and getting in everyone’s way. He had something of the
quality of the ghost in
Hamlet
, able to be everywhere at once,
hic et ubique.
At one point, Heminges had to ask Milford to kindly leave the stage, which he did, blushing
furiously.

Now, I do not know whether Richard Milford would have been so resdess and troubled if he had been the genuine and only begetter of
A Venetian Whore.
Was he agitated as an author or as a
plagiarist? I alone knew that he was the guardian of another man’s words, even if that other was an anon. And he knew that I knew. This perhaps explained why I often noticed him observing me
during his perambulations about the fringes of the stage. Even during the ragged attendance at a rehearsal, a player soon learns not to fix his eye on any single member of the audience; it can be
disconcerting for the one so picked out, and besides it seems somehow discourteous to all those others who have paid their pennies. So I did not return Master Milford’s stare but it seemed to
combine two contradictory qualities: a kind of brazenness and a species of shame. As if to say, ‘Shog off, Master Revill, I care not what you think’ and ‘Please, Nicholas, do not
give me away at this point – just as my play is about to be given to the public’