The Nicholas Bracewell Collection (11 page)

The pit was almost empty now and the book holder with Banbury’s Men came out on the stage to see how his minions were getting along. When he spotted Creech, he went across and shook him warmly by the hand. They fell into animated conversation. Some joke passed between them and the actor pushed the other man playfully away. It was only a small moment but it triggered off a memory at the back of Nicholas Bracewell’s mind.

The last time he had seen Creech push someone away like that it had not been in fun. A fight had erupted and Nicholas had had to jump in and separate the two men. The memory came back to him now with a new significance.

Benjamin Creech had exchanged blows with Will Fowler.

Lady Rosamund Varley draped herself in a window seat and read the sonnet yet again. It was agreeably fulsome and its witty wordplay was very pleasing. The poem was unsigned but the phrase ‘Love and Friendship’ had been
written underneath it in a bold hand. Because the letters
L
and
F
had been enlarged and embossed, she had no difficulty in identifying the sender as Lawrence Firethorn. She gave a brittle laugh.

Fortune had smiled on her. A rich and doting husband had made light of a thirty-year age gap for a short while, then he had obligingly succumbed to gout, impetigo and waning desire. Lady Rosamund was free to seek her pleasures elsewhere. She did so without compunction and turned herself into a practised coquette. Her beauty and charm could ensnare any man and she toyed with them unmercifully. A whisper of scandal hung upon her at all times.

The court supplied most of her admirers – earls, lords, knights, even foreign ambassadors on occasion – but she had a special fondness for actors. Their way of life intrigued her. It combined danger and excess to a high degree. They were commoners who could be kings for an afternoon, men of great courage who could strut proudly on a stage for a couple of hours and blaze their way into the hearts of all around them. Lady Rosamund was captivated by the tawdry glamour of the theatre.

She glanced down at the sonnet again. Not for a moment did she imagine that Firethorn had actually composed it himself, but that did not matter. In commissioning and sending it, he had made it his own and she was flattered by the compliment. He was an extraordinary man who was adding to his reputation with each new performance. No role was beyond him, not even the one that she was about to assign to him.

Crossing the chamber to a small table, she opened a drawer in it and put the poem inside. It took its place alongside many other poems, letters, gifts and keepsakes. Lawrence Firethorn was in exalted company.

Lady Rosamund returned to the window to gaze down at the Thames. Her sumptuous abode stood on the stretch of river bank called the Strand. Before the dissolution of the monasteries, it had been the town house of a bishop, and she often imagined how he would have reacted if he saw some of the antics that took place in his former bedchamber. Her impish spirit was such that she felt she was helping to purge the place of Catholicism.

A gentle tap on her door disturbed her reverie.

‘Come in,’ she called.

The maidservant entered and halted with a token curtsey.

‘Your dressmaker is below, Lady Varley.’

‘Send him up at once!’ she ordered.

He had come at exactly the right time. Lady Rosamund wanted to give an order for a very special outfit. She was confident that it would secure Lawrence Firethorn for her without any difficulty.

Richard Honeydew was too inexperienced to sense what was coming. When the other apprentices started to be more pleasant to him, he took it as a sign of real friendship rather than as a device to lure him off guard. Notwithstanding all the things they had done to him, he was anxious to get along with them and to put the past behind him. Achieving the signal honour of a role like Gloriana had not made
him arrogant or boastful. He was far too conscious of his shortcomings and would have sought the advice of his fellow apprentices if he were on better terms with them. That time looked as if it might soon come. They were making efforts.

‘Goodnight, Dick.’

‘Goodnight, Martin.’

‘Would you like to borrow my candle to light you up the stairs?’ offered the older boy.

‘No, thank you. I can manage.’

‘Sleep well, then.’

‘I will.’

‘You have another busy day ahead tomorrow.’

Richard went off to say goodnight to Margery Firethorn, who was sitting in her rocking chair beside the open hearth and thinking fondly about her pendant. As soon as the boy had gone, Martin Yeo looked across at the others. John Tallis lowered his lantern jaw in an open-mouthed grin while Stephen Judd gave a knowing wink. They were happy accomplices.

‘Are you sure it will work?’ asked Tallis.

‘Of course,’ said Yeo. ‘The beauty of it is that no finger will be pointed at us. We will all be sitting here together when it happens.’

‘All but me,’ added Judd.

‘Oh, you were right here all the time,’ insisted Yeo.

‘Yes, Stephen,’ corroborated Tallis.

‘We both saw you.’

‘We’ll swear to it!’

‘I’ve always wanted to be in two places at once.’

‘Then so you will be,’ promised Yeo.

They fell silent as they heard the tread of Richard’s light feet up on the stairs, then they smirked as he creaked his way up to perdition. It was only a question of time now.

Oblivious to their plan, Richard Honeydew went up to his attic room by the light of the moonbeams that peeped in through the windows. Every other night, his first job had been to bolt the door behind him to keep outrage at bay. Lulled into a mood of trust by the others, he did not do so now. He felt safe.

The chill of the night air made him shiver and he got undressed quickly before jumping into bed. Through the narrow window above his head, the moon was drawing intricate patterns on the opposite wall. Richard was able to watch them for only a few minutes before he dozed off to sleep but his slumber was soon disturbed. There was a rustling sound in the thatch and his eyes opened in fear. It would not be the first rat he had heard up in the attic.

He sat up quickly and was just in the nick of time. Something came crashing down on his pillow in a cloud of loam, cobwebs and filth. Richard coughed as the dust got into his throat then he turned around to see what had happened.

The dormer window was set in the steeply pitched roof and small, solid beams formed a rectangle around the frame to keep the thatch away. Richard had often noticed how loose the lower beam was. All four of them had just come
falling down with a vengeance. He sat there transfixed by it all.

‘What is it, lad! What happened?’

Margery Firethorn was galloping up the stairs to the attic in her nightgown. Her voice preceded her with ease.

‘Are you there, Dick? What’s amiss?’

Seconds later, she came bursting into the room with a candle in her hand. It illumined a scene of debris. She let out a shriek of horror then clutched Richard to her for safety.

‘Lord save us! You might have been killed!’

Martin Yeo, John Tallis and Stephen Judd now came charging up to the attic to see what had caused the thunderous bang.

‘What is it!’

‘Has something fallen?’

‘Are you all right, Dick?’

The three of them raced into the room and came to a halt. When they saw the extent of the damage, they were all astonished. They looked quickly at Richard to see if he had been hurt.

‘Is this
your
doing?’ accused Margery.

‘No, mistress!’ replied Yeo.

‘That beam has always been loose,’ added Tallis.

‘We will sort this out later,’ she warned. ‘Meanwhile, I must find this poor creature another place to lay his head. Come, Dick. It is all over now.’

She led the young apprentice out with grave concern.

As soon as the two of them had gone, Martin Yeo bent down to untie the cord that was bound around the lower
beam. Fed through a gap in the floorboards, the cord had come down to their own room so that they could create the accident with a sudden jerk. But they had only expected to dislodge the lower beam. A blow on the head from that would have been sufficiently disabling to put Richard out of the play. They had planned nothing more serious.

Stephen Judd examined the dormer with care.

‘Those other beams were quite secure earlier on,’ he said. ‘Someone must have loosened them. They would never have come down otherwise.’

‘Who would do such a thing?’ wondered Tallis.

‘I don’t know,’ said Yeo uneasily. ‘But if Dick had been underneath it when it all came down, he might never have appeared in a play again.’

The three apprentices were completely unnerved.

They stood amid the rubble and tried to puzzle it out. A small accident which they engineered had been turned into something far more dangerous by an unknown hand.

Evidently, someone knew of their plan.

Susan Fowler went to London as a frightened young wife in search of a husband and returned to St Albans as a desolate widow with her life in ruins. The passage of time did not seem to make her loss any easier to bear. It was like a huge bruise which had not yet fully come out and which yielded new areas of ache and blemish each day.

Her mother provided a wealth of sympathy, her elder sister sat with her for hours and kind neighbours were always attentive to her plight, but none of it managed to
assuage her pain. Not even the parish priest could bring her comfort. Susan kept being reminded of the day that he had married her to Will Fowler.

Grief inevitably followed her to the bedroom and worked most potently by night. It was a continuous ordeal.

‘Good morning, father.’

‘Heavens, girl! Are you up at this hour?’

‘I could not sleep.’

‘Go back to your bed, Susan. You need the rest.’

‘There is no rest for me, father.’

‘Think of the baby, girl.’

She had risen early after another night of torture and come downstairs in the little cottage that she shared with her parents and her sister. Her father was a wheelwright and had to be up early himself. A wagon had overturned in a banked field the previous day and one of its wheels was shattered beyond repair. The wheelwright had promised to make it his first task of the day because the wagon was needed urgently for harvesting.

After a hurried breakfast of bread and milk, he made another vain attempt to send his daughter back to bed. Susan shook her head and adjusted her position in the old wooden chair. The baby was more of a presence now and she often felt it move.

Her father crossed the undulating paving stones to the door and pulled back the thick, iron bolt. He glanced back at Susan and offered her a look of encouragement that went unseen. He could delay no longer. The wagon was waiting for him outside his workshop.

When he opened the door, however, something barred his way and he all but tripped over it.

‘What’s this!’ he exclaimed.

Susan looked up with only the mildest curiosity.

‘Bless my soul!’

He regarded the object with a countryman’s suspicion. It might be a gift from the devil or the work of some benign force. It was some time before he overcame his superstitions enough to pick the object up and bring it into the cottage. He set it down on the table in front of his daughter.

It was a crib. Small, plain and carved out of solid oak, it rocked gently to and fro on its curved base. Susan Fowler stared at it blankly for a few moments then a tiny smile came.

‘It’s a present for the baby,’ she said.

N
icholas Bracewell confronted him first thing the next morning.

‘You must be mistaken,’ said Creech bluntly.

‘No, Ben.’

‘I did not go to The Curtain yesterday.’

‘But I saw you with my own eyes.’

‘You saw someone who
looked
like me.’

‘Stop lying.’

‘I’m not lying,’ maintained the actor hotly. ‘I was nowhere near Shoreditch yesterday afternoon.’

‘Then where were you?’

Creech withdrew into a defiant silence. His mouth was closed tight and his jaw was set. Nicholas pressed him further.

‘You were supposed to be
here
, Ben.’

‘Nobody told me that,’ argued the other.

‘I told you myself – in front of witnesses, too – so you can’t pretend that that never happened either. The tiremen were expecting you and you failed to turn up.’

‘I … couldn’t get here yesterday.’

‘I know – you were at The Curtain instead.’

‘No!’ denied Creech. ‘I was …’ He glowered at Nicholas then gabbled his story. ‘I was at the Lamb and Flag. I only went in for one drink at noon but I met some old friends. We started talking and had some more ale. The time just flew past. Before I knew what was happening, I fell asleep in my seat.’

‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ said Nicholas firmly.

‘That is your privilege, sir!’

‘We’ll have to fine you for this, Ben.’

‘Do so,’ challenged the hired man.

‘One shilling.’

Creech’s defiance turned to shock. One shilling was a steep fine to a person whose weekly wage was only seven times that amount. He had many debts and could not afford to lose such a sum. Nicholas read his thoughts but felt no regret.

‘You’ve brought this upon yourself,’ he stressed. ‘When will you learn? I’ve covered for you in the past, Ben, but it has to stop. You simply must be more responsible. There are dozens of players to be had for hire. If this goes on, one of them may be taking over your place.’

‘It’s not up to you, Nicholas,’ muttered Creech.

‘Would you rather discuss it with Master Firethorn?’

‘No,’ he said after a pause.

‘He would have kicked you out months ago.’

‘I earn my money!’

‘Yes, when you’re here,’ agreed Nicholas. ‘Not when you’re lying in a drunken stupor somewhere or sneaking off to The Curtain.’

‘That was not me!’

‘I’m not blind, Ben.’

Creech bunched his fists and he breathed heavily through his nose. Discretion slowly got the better of him. The book holder might seem quiet but he would not be intimidated. If the occasion demanded it, Nicholas Bracewell could fight as well as the next man and his physique was daunting. Nothing would be served by throwing a punch.

‘One shilling, Ben.’

‘As you wish.’

‘And no more of your nonsense, sir.’

Benjamin Creech risked one more glare then he withdrew to the other side of the tiring-house. The talk had sobered him in every sense. Samuel Ruff had watched the exchange from the other side of the room and he now came across to the book holder.

‘What was all that about, Nick?’

‘The usual.’

‘Too much ale?’

‘And too little honesty, Samuel. I saw the fellow at The Curtain yesterday in broad daylight – yet he denies it!’

‘He may have good cause.’

‘In what way?’

‘Where did you see him, Nick?’

‘Talking with a couple of the hired men.’

‘There’s your answer. He does not wish to admit it.’

‘Admit what?’

‘I never thought to mention this because I assumed that you knew. Obviously you do not,’ Ruff looked across at the man. ‘Ben Creech was with Banbury’s Men for a time.’

‘Is this true?’ asked Nicholas in astonishment.

‘Oh, yes. I was there with him.’

While the future of one hired man was being discussed in the tiring-house, the future of another was under dire threat in an upstairs room. No rehearsal period of Westfield’s Men was complete without a fit of pique from Barnaby Gill and he was supplying one of his best. Edmund Hoode bore it with equanimity but Lawrence Firethorn was becoming progressively more irritated. Pacing the room madly, the anguished sharer worked up a real froth.

‘He is not fit to belong to Lord Westfield’s Men!’

‘Why not?’ asked Hoode.

‘Because I say so, sir!’

‘We need more than that, Barnaby.’

‘The man has the wrong attitude.’

‘I disagree,’ said Hoode. ‘Samuel Ruff is probably the only hired man we have with the right attitude. He takes his work seriously and fits in well with the company.’

‘Not with me, Edmund.’

‘He’s an experienced actor.’

‘London is full of experienced players.’

‘Not all of them are as reliable as Ruff.’

‘He must leave us.’

‘On what pretext?’

‘I do not
like
the man!’

‘He will be relieved to hear that,’ said Firethorn with a wicked chuckle. ‘Come, Barnaby, this is too small a matter to waste any more breath on.’

‘I want him dismissed,’ said Gill, holding firm.

‘This is a mere whim.’

‘I mean it, Lawrence. He has crossed me and he must suffer.’

‘Why not challenge him to a duel?’ suggested Hoode.

Gill cut short their mirth by lifting a chair and banging it down hard on the floor. His nostrils were flaring now and his eyes were rolling like those of a mare caught in a stable fire.

‘I would remind you of just how much this company owes to me,’ he began. ‘In the face of constant temptation, I have remained faithful to Lord Westfield’s Men. Others have approached me with lucrative offers many times but I always refused them, believing – in error, it now seems – that I was needed and appreciated here.’

‘We have heard this speech before,’ said Firethorn petulantly, ‘and it does not grow more palatable.’

‘I am serious, Lawrence! He has to go.’

‘Why? Because he mastered you in a bout with foils?’

‘Because he unsettles me.’

‘We all do that to you, Barnaby,’ joked Hoode. ‘Are we to be put out as well?’

‘Do not mock, sir. This is in earnest.’

‘Then let me be in earnest as well,’ decided Firethorn, putting his hands on his hips as he confronted the smaller man. ‘We both know what lies behind all this. Young Dicky Honeydew.’

‘Have care, Lawrence.’

‘I do – for the boy.’ He wagged a warning finger. ‘I am not one to pry into a man’s private affairs. Live and let live, say I. But there is one rule that must always hold in this company, Barnaby, and you know it as well as I do. You understand me?’

‘Yes.’

‘
Not
with the apprentices.’

‘This has nothing to do with the matter, Lawrence.’

‘I have said my piece, sir.’

‘And I must support it,’ said Hoode. ‘As for Samuel Ruff, you are out on your own. Everyone else is happy with the fellow. We have fared much worse with our hired men.’

Barnaby Gill was profoundly offended. He walked slowly to the door, opened it, drew himself up to his full height, and put every ounce of disdain into his tone.

‘I will contend no further!’

‘Then what have you been doing all this while?’ asked Firethorn. ‘You have argued for argument’s sake.’

‘The choice is simple, gentlemen,’ said Gill.

‘Choice?’

‘Either
he
goes – or I do!’

He slammed the door behind him with dramatic force.

George Dart was much given to reflections upon the misery of his lot. As the youngest and smallest of the stagekeepers, he was always saddled with the most menial jobs, and everyone in the company had authority over him. One of the tasks he hated most was being sent out with a sheaf of playbills to put up around the City. It was exhausting work. He would be chased by dogs, jeered at by children, jostled by pedestrians, harangued by tradesmen, frowned on by Puritans, menaced by thieves, solicited by punks and generally made to feel that he was at the mercy of others.

His latest errand introduced him to a new indignity. With the playbills of
Gloriana Triumphant
fresh from the printers, he set off on a tortuous route through Cheapside, using every post and fence he could find along the way as a place of advertisement. With the market sprawled all around him, he had to push almost every inch of the way and his size was a real disadvantage. Hours of persistence, however, finally paid off as he posted up his last playbill outside the Maid and Magpie.

George Dart slowly began to retrace his short steps, wondering, as he did so, if anyone led such a pitiable existence as he did. They were always sending him somewhere. He was continually on the move, shuttling between this place and that, for ever heading towards or away from somewhere, never settling, never being allowed to dwell at the centre of action. He was one of nature’s
intercessaries. Every arrival was a departure, every halt was merely to pick up instructions for the next journey. He was nothing but a carrier pigeon, doomed to fly in perpetuity.

His reverie was rudely checked when he turned a corner and walked along a street where he had put up a number of his playbills. Most of them had gone and those that remained had been defaced. He shuddered at the prospect of having to report the outrage. They would send him out again with fresh bills to endure fresh torments.

When he looked around the crowded street, he saw dozens of suspects. Any one of them could have ruined his work. As he studied a playbill that had been scribbled upon, he decided that it was the work of a drunken ruffian who wanted a morning’s sport.

George Dart wept copiously. Watching him from a shop doorway on the opposite side of the street was a young man with a complacent smile. It was Roger Bartholomew.

The apprentices were still mystified. They had no idea who could have loosened the other beams in the attic chamber, nor could they understand the motive that lay behind it all. Was it some malign joke? Had the intention been to cripple Richard Honeydew permanently? Or were they themselves the target? Could someone have tried to implicate them in a much more serious business than the one they devised? If the apprentice had been badly injured – even killed – suspicion would naturally have fallen on them.

As it was, the luck which had saved Richard worked to
their advantage as well. Margery Firethorn railed at them but they were able to swear, with the light of truth in their eyes, that they had not been responsible for loosening the beams around the dormer. Martin Yeo, John Tallis and Stephen Judd were off the hook but one fact remained. Richard Honeydew would still play Gloriana.

Shedding their fears about the person who had exploited their first plan, they set about concocting another. This one was foolproof. It would be put into operation the next day and the venue was the yard at The Queen’s Head.

‘Here’s a fine chestnut,’ admired Yeo, leaning over the stable door. ‘Come and see, Dick.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Richard, looking at the horse. ‘He is a fine animal. See how his coat shines!’

‘Would you like to ride him?’ asked Tallis.

‘I’d love to, John, but I am no horseman. Who owns him?’

‘We have no notion,’ said Tallis with an artful glance at Yeo. ‘He must have arrived last night.’

They had come into the yard when the stage had been taken down to make way for a coach and a couple of wagons. The horses had been stabled. Knowing Richard’s fondness for the animals, Yeo and Tallis had invited him over to inspect them all, casually stopping at the last of the loose boxes to inspect the chestnut stallion. It was a mettlesome beast some seventeen hands high, and Yeo had watched it trot into the yard the previous afternoon. He had also overheard the instructions which the rider had given to the ostler.

A second trap had been set. Stationed in the window of the rehearsal room was Stephen Judd. He waved a hand to confirm that both Nicholas Bracewell and Samuel Ruff were fully occupied. Richard was now shorn of his guardians.

‘He looks hungry,’ noted Yeo.

‘I’ve an apple he can have,’ decided Tallis, pulling it out from his pocket. ‘Here, Dick. You give it to him.’

‘Not me, Stephen.’

‘He won’t bite you, lad,’ said Yeo. ‘Hold it on the palm of your hand like this.’ He demonstrated with the apple. ‘Go on.’

‘I’m afraid to, Martin.’

‘Horses love apples. Feed him.’

They cajoled the boy together until he eventually agreed. Opening the stable door, Yeo went in a yard or so with Richard. The chestnut was at the rear of the box, tethered to an empty manger and presenting its side to them.

Richard held the apple on the flat of his hand and approached with hesitant steps. The chestnut shifted its feet slightly and the straw rustled. Richard did not see Yeo move back through the door before closing it. He was now alone in the loose box with the towering animal.

‘Give it to him, Dick,’ urged Yeo.

‘Hold it under his nose,’ added Tallis.

‘Hurry up, lad.’

As Richard slowly extended his hand, the horse suddenly reared his head, showed the whites of his eyes, laid his ears back, then swung sideways with a loud neigh. His gleaming
flank caught the boy hard enough to send him somersaulting into the straw. When the animal bucked wildly and lashed out with his powerful hind quarters, Richard was only inches away from the flashing hooves.

Martin Yeo was disappointed but Stephen Judd was having second thoughts about it all. Keen as he was for his friend to succeed to the part of Gloriana, he did not want Richard to be kicked to death by a horse.

‘Hey!’ yelled an ostler as he came running.

‘Dick tried to give him an apple,’ said Yeo.

Throwing open the stable door, the ostler grabbed Richard and dragged him to safety. Then he lifted the boy up and shook him soundly.

‘What did you do that for, you fool!’ he shouted. ‘That horse will only let his master feed him. Do you want to be killed?’

Richard Honeydew turned crimson and fainted.

Lady Rosamund Varley expected the impossible and she was never satisfied until she got it. When she had given her dressmaker his orders, the man protested that he needed more time than he was allotted but she had been firm with him. If he wished to retain her custom, he had to obey her instructions. The impossible was once more accomplished, and the dressmaker arrived on time with his assistant at Varley House. She was duly delighted with their work but she had learned never to over-praise her minions. Instead, she found fault.