The Secret of the Rose (12 page)

Master Marlowe’s head jerked up as if he’d been touched by a whip. The other man barely moved. Only his eyes shifted to me.

“You’re wanted at the playhouse, master,” I said, hoping that the faint quiver in my voice was only audible to my own ears. “Master Henslowe sent Sam to fetch you.”

“Did Henslowe say what he wanted?” Master Marlowe asked.

“No, sir. Sam only said ’twas urgent.”

“I must go, then,” he said, and reaching into a pocket, he pulled out a few coins and scattered them across the table. “Farewell, Pooley,” he added as he rose, without looking at his companion.

“Farewell, Kit,” Pooley said, still gently.

Outside the tavern Master Marlowe turned to me. “Didst hear aught of what was said in there?” he asked, jerking his head toward the door.

Unbidden, my fingers went up to rub my left ear. “No, master, I heard nothing,” I said earnestly.

He eyed me carefully and then nodded. “Good. Well done.” He took his way toward the playhouse and left me wondering if what had been well done was my failure to hear, or my lying.

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1592

Master Marlowe delivered my clean copy of
The Massacre at Paris
to the Rose, and Master Henslowe divided up the parts among the players. Even Robin was given a role, although without a word to speak, as a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of France.

Henslowe had hoped to perform the
Massacre
in the fall. But before the players could learn their parts, the playhouse was forced to close for the winter. No one could act on that stage, open to the sky, in the midst of rain or snow. By the time Henslowe shut down at last, the players were already grumbling about chilblains and frozen toes.

There was still work to be done, however, even if the stage was empty. Master Henslowe shut himself up to read scripts, looking for new plays to perform in the spring. The players studied new parts. Robin and the apprentices went on learning, practicing speeches and tumbling and
fencing as well as they could in the cramped lodgings of one player or another. And Will and his father spent the winter months going over the playhouse’s costumes, checking every seam, scrubbing every stain, tightening every loose point or lace.

Nor was the playmaker idle. Master Marlowe was writing a new play, and this time in collaboration. The mild-eyed playmaker I had once seen at the Rose was working on it with him. Master Marlowe did not introduce him to me, of course, but Robin told me his name. It was William Shakespeare.

“But must they cut out her tongue?” he asked plaintively as they were at work one cold afternoon in Master Marlowe’s lodgings.

“Of course they must,” Master Marlowe answered impatiently. “She must be silenced, else she’ll tell all she knows. And what, pray, would become of our plot then?”

“But to cut off her hands as well…”

“Or she will write down who ravished her.” In the bedchamber, which I was trying to set to rights, I shivered, and ran the thumb of my left hand along the scar that marked my right palm. The wound had healed clean, but the scar was red, and raised, and stiffened my hand slightly, making it hard for me to stretch out my fingers completely.

I tried to shrug off the chill that had touched me and went back to straightening the bed. Master Marlowe slept as though he had nightmares. Each morning I found the blankets twisted and tangled into knots.

“Richard!”

I looked up through the open door. “Yes, master?”

“Take thyself off.”

“I have not finished cleaning, sir.”

“He makes less noise than a mouse in the wall,” Master Shakespeare said, giving me a friendly smile.

“Aye, ’twill pull my nerves to pieces, listening to him make no noise,” Master Marlowe grumbled. “Get thee gone, Richard, we’ve work to do here.”

I was well used to being ordered from the room when Master Marlowe was writing, and I did not take it ill. Winter had the city in a tight grip by now, and it was too cold to wander the streets. But Mistress Stavesly never minded if I spent an hour or two in her kitchen.

When I came into the bakery, Mistress Stavesly was handing a few pence in change to a customer. He had an ordinary, friendly face, not one that would call attention. But I had seen that hat before, red velvet with the white plume quivering gently in a warm draft from the oven.

The man’s eyes flicked to me for an instant as I came down the stairs, and then he nodded in farewell to
Mistress Stavesly and was gone.

“Mistress?” I asked. “Who was that man?”

Surely there were many red velvet hats in London. Surely I had no need to feel afraid.

“Nay, how should I know his name?” Mistress Stavesly went back to kneading dough, working it vigorously with her floury hands. “He liked my apple tart, that is all I know of him. A pleasant gentleman. Why, dost know him?”

“No.” I had a strange urge to run upstairs and give a warning to Master Marlowe. To tell him—what? That a man with a red hat had bought an apple tart from Mistress Stavesly? And in any case, he had warned me not to pay heed to his affairs. Well, then, I would not.

But suddenly Mistress Stavesly’s kitchen did not seem such a warm and welcoming place as usual. “I must go, I’ve an errand,” I muttered, and risked Master Marlowe’s ire by returning upstairs for my cloak. By the time I reached the street, the man in the red hat was nowhere to be seen.

And what would I do now? I might drink hot wine or sack in a tavern, but it was better to save up my small store of coins against the day I would leave Master Marlowe’s service. Since I could not stay in the lodgings or the bakery, that left one place where I might keep dry and warm for free. Accordingly, I turned my steps toward the Rose.

The players might have decamped from the bare stage, but Master Henslowe would on no account suffer the costumes to be taken out of the playhouse. The silks and velvets and lace and leather were worth more, he said, than the building itself, and the thought of them being dropped in the street, or torn, or stolen by a rival playhouse was enough to make him look ill.

So Will cut and stitched and labored in the cramped tireroom, and when Master Marlowe had no use for my services, I sometimes joined him. He was always glad for company, and told me tales of strange lands and stranger people, farther from England, it seemed to me, than heaven is from earth.

I tried to keep quiet and listen—easily done, since Will liked well to talk. It was not that I had nothing to say in return. But I was afraid, if I let many words out, that something might show in my voice or my face, that he might look up from his needle and thread one day and read the truth in my eyes.

It would have been safer to avoid the playhouse altogether. But I was not wise or strong enough to do so.

This day I found Will, not in the tireroom, but just leaving the playhouse, wrapped in a dark blue cloak with the hood pulled up over his head. “Richard!” He hailed me with a wave. “I was choking in that room. My father’s
given me leave to walk for an hour and breathe the fresh air. Come down to the river with me.”

So we walked to the bank of the Thames, where between the poor houses and crowded tenements we could catch glimpses of the river and the ships. The sunshine was thin and weak, the wind bitter, and I shivered despite my new cloak with the sheepskin collar, given to me by Master Marlowe. Will, however, drank the frigid air in deep gulps, a smile on his face.

“There are cannibals in the New World,” he told me cheerfully. “I’ve just been reading of it.”

“Cannibals!” I shuddered. “Why you want to go there, I cannot imagine.”

Will laughed. “You have no heart for adventure, Richard.” He pushed his hood back to look up at the pale winter sky, and I saw a bruise, still fresh and blue-purple, over his cheekbone.

“Will! What happened to your face?”

All Will’s cheerfulness vanished in an instant. He scowled and walked quicker. “My father. He thought I needed a reminder yesterday to keep my mind on my work.”

We walked in silence for a moment or two. Then I spoke, hoping to turn Will’s mind back to more pleasant things.

“How do you know there are cannibals? Have people seen them at their feasts?”

Will gave me a rueful smile, as if to say he knew what I was trying to do, but he still answered. “A sailor with the Italian, Columbus, when they first landed, he went into a native’s hut and found a man’s thighbone cooking in a pot.”

“Disgusting! But then…”

“But what?”

“How did he know it was a man’s thighbone? Does it look so different from a pig’s or a cow’s? Could he tell at first glance?” Especially, I thought, if it was in a very thick stew or a pottage. Heaven only knew what kind of meat had been in some of the stews I had eaten.

“Marry, I know not,” Will answered, smiling more naturally now. “I have not made examination myself. But so it says in the book. A man’s thighbone. They kill and eat their aged and their sick.”

“Then they eat only tough old meat, or pestilent,” I pointed out. “It seems a shame.”

I had hoped to make him laugh, and did so. Being with him made me think of the day my father had returned from one of his trips to London, bringing with him an unheard-of treat—two oranges, one for Robin and one for me. I remembered that astonishing burst of sweetness in my mouth, so vivid I was thirsty for more even as the
first bite slid down my throat. It was like swallowing sunlight. That’s what Will Green was to me.

And to him I was only shy little Richard Archer, an orphan and a stranger he was kind to. I knew that well enough. He was glad for my company, since he liked company, and would have been glad for anyone to talk to as he sat and sewed in the room that seemed such a prison to him. But the sight of me did not make his face light up the way the sight of a three-masted ship on the river did.

And if I had shown myself to him in a skirt and bodice, my hair miraculously restored, what would he have said to me? Nothing. He would not recognize his new friend Richard if he were to see Rosalind.

“Boys!” It was a soft, sweet voice with a little laugh in it. I looked up with a start. We were passing a small, shabby store, the plaster flaking off the walls, a red cardinal’s hat on the sign. A woman stood in the doorway and stretched a hand out to us.

“You look like sweet, tender young boys. A shilling for the pair of you. Come in and warm yourselves, why not?”

Her smile was broad, her painted lips stretching wide. She should have been pretty. But her cheeks were too thin, her eyes desolate.

“Thank you, no, mistress,” Will called back indifferently, not breaking his stride.

“Come back another time, my dears….” Her voice faded away behind us.

“That was…” Words failed me. “Will, she was…”

“Aye, of course. Why, do you wish to go back?”

“No!” I could not help looking over my shoulder, even so.

“Have you lived in London all these months and never seen a whore?” Will asked, amused.

Perhaps I had and simply not known it. I had seen shops often enough with the cardinal’s hat on the sign, but I had never known what it stood for.

“What a country innocent you are, Richard,” Will teased me. “You’ll die of the shock unless you accustom yourself to London ways.”

I knew I must seem a fool to him, and yet I could not tell him why I felt compelled to look back at the woman a third time. She had called out to a man walking behind us, and now he stopped. She laid a hand on his arm and drew him closer.

If I had not fought off that apprentice my first day in London, if Master Marlowe had not taken me in….

“’Tis only…she looked so sad,” I said feebly to Will.

“Sad?”

“Aye. Did you not see?”

Will shrugged. “She looked like any other stale to me.
There!” He stopped and pointed to a tall ship. “See, that’s the
Swallow.
She’s back from Mexico. Can you imagine it, Richard, Mexico? They say ’tis like hottest summer all the year round, and the jungle is so thick a man must cut his way through it, and it springs up again behind him. Can you imagine?”

“I cannot,” I said softly. My mind was still on the woman we had passed, and on the unhappiness that Will had not even seen. But I tried to speak more brightly, to tease Will in my turn and keep him from noticing my abstraction. “I cannot imagine any sight worth packing myself into such a listing, leaking rowboat as that—”

But Will paid no heed. “Listen, Richard.” He turned to face me. “Tell no one, promise me?”

“I promise,” I vowed, confused at his eager manner.

“The
Swallow
has need of a new crew. So I’ve heard the sailors say down at the docks. She will be some months revictualling and making repairs, but when she sails again in the spring—”

“Will, thou wouldst not!” I was so startled I did not notice that I’d dropped into the familiar “thou” with him for the first time. “What of thy father? He would never give thee leave.”

“What of my father?” Will demanded angrily. “He has not bought me! I am not his by contract!”

“But thou owest him—obedience, dost not?” I faltered, seeing that I was saying everything he wanted least to hear. “Will, thou hast—a family, a trade. Thou hast a
place
.” It was what I had once had myself, what I could never have now that I spent each day as a living lie in my breeches and doublet. I had no place, no more than a ghost might, nowhere to be at home and at rest. “Wilt throw all of that away?”

“Aye!” Will boiled with fury. “’Sblood, Richard, you talk like my father. A place, as if that’s all that matters! A worm has a place, too, but ’tis naught but a hole in the ground. Should I stay in my hole, then, just because ’tis mine?”

Yes. Yes, else thou’lt be lost all thy life, adrift with no anchor and no harbor.
That was what I wished to say to him. But he had no notion of the value of what he was throwing so carelessly away, any more than Faustus in Master Marlowe’s play had known the value of his soul when he gave it over to the devil. I knew Will would not hear me.

I hated the awkward silence between us, but knew not how to break it. At last Will spoke.

“You’ll not tell?”

“Of course not. I never would.” I could not keep the touch of reproach from my voice. “I would not break my word.”

“Aye, I know.” But he was not pleased with me, and I could have bitten my tongue off for questioning him, for quarreling with him. He had been so happy with his plan, and I had only told him what was wrong with it.

“I—I must go,” I said awkwardly. “My master may need me.” This was a lie. Master Marlowe wouldn’t want me back for another hour at least.

I hated leaving him without a warmer word, and I lingered, until at last Will looked up and gave me a brief smile. It was not the wide grin I loved to see, but at least it showed he was not angry with me.

“Farewell, Richard.”

It was the kindest leave-taking I could hope for, and I was glad to have it. But it was poor, thin food indeed to feed my hungry heart.