The Secret of the Rose (17 page)

She must be silenced,
Master Marlowe had said to Master Shakespeare,
else she’ll tell all she knows.
Surely,
once Pooley had the letter in his hands, disposing of Master Marlowe’s inconveniently knowledgeable servant boy would be his very next task.

I had dodged Pooley once by running to earth, like that rabbit dashing into her burrow. But this was only a brief respite. Now I needed something more. If I were to keep myself safe for good, I needed to manage it so that, no matter how hard he looked, Pooley would never find a boy named Richard Archer.

And the thought lit sparks under my heels. I set off running for London Bridge.

MAY 1593

When I arrived at the Rose, I was so out of breath that I had to pause, with my hands on my knees, to gasp and wheeze until I was able to stand upright again. My whole plan, if I could call it that, depended on Pooley believing I had told the truth about the letter, that it was hidden in the playhouse. But it also depended on my reaching the playhouse before he did.

Luckily I knew my way. Six months ago I could barely tell north from south in the maze of London streets. But it had been a rare day that Master Marlowe had not sent me to the Rose on some errand or other. Now I knew every street, every alley, every shortcut. I could only pray that my knowledge and my desperate speed would be enough.

I did not see Pooley anywhere. He might, of course, have hidden himself somewhere to watch the playhouse
entrance. I could not wait; I would have to take the risk.

“Ah, Richard,” John said as I approached. “Ill news, about thy master, indeed—” I did not stay to hear him finish.

Onstage a fencing lesson was taking place. Nat and Sander were battling back and forth across the boards, rapiers whistling, while Master Cowley shouted out praise and corrections and the other apprentices watched from the yard.

“Good, excellent, Sander. Nat, mind thy feet! Better. Now, Sander, strike at his head—”

“Ow!”
Nat dropped his sword to ring and clatter on the wooden stage. “Thou pig, thou slicedst off mine
ear
!”

Since he had a hand clapped to the side of his head, no one could tell if this was actually true. But they all crowded around to see, and that gave me a chance to snatch at Robin’s arm.

He jumped nearly out of his skin. “
Richard?
What dost here? We heard of Master Marlowe—”

“No time,” I hissed in his ear. “Come, I need thy help. Backstage.
Please
.”

Master Cowley was fussing over Nat, who had taken away his hand to show a trickle of blood running down his neck, though his ear still looked to be firmly attached to his head. Sander was stammering apologies. No one
noticed as Robin and I ducked backstage.

“What is’t?” Robin asked, worried. “Thou lookst terrible. And—” He wrinkled his nose. “Hast been crawling in a trash heap?”

“Yes!” I snapped. My stomach was in a boil with anxiety, my throat and lungs still aching from my wild dash through London. “Robin, listen. I need thee to get Master Green away from the tireroom. Now, this instant. No, do not question me; I’ll tell thee after. Just do it. Please.”

Saints bless my little brother, he saved me. Quickly, without one more question, he led me to the tireroom. “Wait here,” he whispered, and opened the door to stick his head in.

“Master Green, Master Edmont sent me for you. He says his new doublet does not fit and that the color is wrong for his skin.”

“Tell Master Edmont to come here and say this to me himself,” said Master Green from inside the room. I closed my eyes in silent agony.

“Master Henslowe said that you’re to go and see him,” Robin improvised. “I left him in the galleries.”

“Oh, well enough.” Master Green emerged, carrying a length of purple velvet over one arm. “My layabout of a son is nowhere to be found, and now I am sent to follow after foolish players and minister to their vanity. But I will
not be to blame when the apparel for Master Achelley’s play is unfinished, tell Master Henslowe that.” I squeezed myself into the shadows behind Robin. Master Green did not look my way, but stalked down the hall, grumbling.

Robin looked at me anxiously. “I’d best see that he does not meet with Master Edmont, or ’twill all be for naught.”

He was risking a beating for my sake, and I knew it, but thanks would have to come later. “Go,” I whispered, and slipped into the tireroom, shutting the door behind me.

Cloaks and doublets and gowns, silks and velvets and lace, scarlet, emerald, russet gold, midnight blue. For the first time, the richness of cloth and color gave me no joy. Had these players never heard of
plain
clothing? The last thing I needed was a magnificent dress to call attention to myself. I threw open a chest, looking for simpler garments. Doublets and hose. I tried another. A black mantle, a pair of green sleeves. And at the bottom, a plain brown woolen skirt, such as a servant might wear, with a bodice and sleeves beneath it.

My heartbeat seemed to shake my body, as if I were a drum being beaten from the inside. I paused a moment to listen for Master Green’s voice, or the sound of footsteps outside, but heard nothing.

I pulled my doublet over my head and kicked off my breeches. Still no sound from outside. My hands trembled
as I wrenched at the strips of linen wound around my chest, at last loosening them enough to drop them to the floor. The bodice, when I pulled it on, was a trifle snug, and I could barely draw breath once I had laced it up. All to the good. I thought back to morning, when I’d noticed the difference in my figure. My hands shook as I clumsily tied the points that held the skirts and the sleeves to the bodice.

Now, my head. A third chest yielded a store of coifs. I tied one quickly over my cropped hair, licking my hands to moisten stray strands and tucking them under the white linen. Then I kicked my breeches behind one of the chests, picked up my doublet, and drew out the letter.

I hesitated. My plan was risky enough already, and I had no time to waste. Master Green might return at any moment. Pooley might be at the playhouse already.

But this letter had brought me into peril of my life. I could hardly be in worse danger than I was now. Since I was to suffer the penalty, I thought I might as well commit the crime.

The paper crackled in my hands. It was still warm from the heat of my skin, the wax seal soft as flesh. I unfolded it and read.

Or, I would have read, had the writing been anything I recognized. The paper was covered with strange symbols—
a cross, a star, a scrawl like a range of mountains. I remembered the paper covered with such symbols that I had once seen on Master Marlowe’s table. I had thought it was an incantation, a conjuror’s spell. But it had only been, like this, a code.

Beneath each symbol someone had carefully written, in neat, thin printing, a word. Someone had broken this code. It was not Master Marlowe’s careless, heavy hand. Was it Tom Watson’s writing? Someone else’s? How many hands had this letter passed through?

I brought the paper closer to my eyes, so that I could read the small, precise words. The letter was not Pooley’s after all, although he had claimed it so. It was a letter from Robert Cecil. And he wrote to James, King of Scotland.

My eye skipped about from sentence to sentence.

I believe and trust you to be the rightful heir to our dear and precious sovereign…. I do herein truly and religiously profess that I offer my service and loyalty to Your Majesty…. Let Your Highness have patience and be ruled by my advice, and you shall in time come to rule England.

Robert Cecil, who had been to Master Marlowe’s play, who was the queen’s right hand. Who had a twisted spine and one shoulder higher than the other.
I warned thee not to cross the hunchback,
Pooley had told Master Marlowe. Robert the devil.
The devil gets souls by whispering.

Master Marlowe had said that Elizabeth refused to name an heir, for fear that her subjects’ loyalty would flow, like a diverted stream, to her successor. What would she think if she knew that her most trusted servant had written to a claimant for her throne, promising his service? What would this mean to a queen so quick in jealousy that she jailed her favorite simply for marrying? Elizabeth would not tolerate a divided devotion. No wonder Robert Cecil had killed to have this letter back.

I wished now that I had not read it, that I did not know the true deadliness of what I held. It had been bad enough to think it was a letter of Pooley’s. But Robert Cecil, the queen’s councilor—he was the one behind it all. Pooley was just his hound. It was Robert Cecil who was the master of the hunt.

There was no time to think of it, no time to let fear clog up my brains. I opened the tireroom door and looked around. Master Green was nowhere in sight. Quickly I slipped out.

The fencing lesson was back in full force onstage. I did not dare look up to see if Robin was there. People were in and out of the playhouse all day, running errands, carrying messages. With luck and God’s mercy no one would notice me.

I had forgotten how it felt to have the weight of skirts
around my ankles. I nearly tripped more than once before I remembered to take smaller steps. The coif around my face helped to shadow my features, for which I was grateful, but it cut off my vision to the sides as well. I looked modestly down at the ground before me, and wondered if my skirts would tangle my feet, should I need to run.

At the playhouse door, Pooley was speaking with John.

I felt as if my heart were a knot that had been yanked tight. But I made myself keep walking.

“No strangers during rehearsals,” John was saying. But his attention was on Pooley’s hand, on the flash of silver between his fingers.

“Simply an errand,” Pooley said persuasively. “A message for a friend. ’Twill only be a moment.”

“No harm, I suppose,” John mumbled. Neither of them glanced at me as I slipped by.

I was tempted to keep walking. Pooley could search the whole playhouse for Richard Archer and never find him. But the letter was in my hand. Walking away from Pooley now would not settle the matter, only postpone it. I turned and touched Pooley on the arm, and moved a few steps aside to draw him away from John.

“Master?” I remembered to curtsey and not bow my head as he turned to me, though my knees felt stiff, out of practice. And I tried to lose the hints of a London accent
that my voice had acquired over the past months. I wanted to look and sound like a simple country girl. “A boy gave me this for you. He said ’twas yours by right.” With another little bob, I held the letter out to him.

Pooley did not snatch at the letter, but took it slowly. I did not raise my eyes to his face, but only as high as the base of his throat. I saw him swallow.

His gaze felt substantial; I could almost feel it brushing, like a feather, over my skin. This could so easily go wrong. He only needed to reach out and pull the coif away from my cropped hair, and my disguise would be no more. One quick movement would do it, and I would have no defense.

I could feel the heat rising off his skin. So close.

“And this boy,” Pooley said, considering. “Where is he gone to?”

“I know not,” I replied, as innocently as I could. “He only said he was in a great hurry and could not stay for you.”

He was not looking at my face. I felt his eyes linger on the bare skin above my bodice, on the swell of my hips, every curve made clear by the tight lacing. It was very plain that I was not a boy. Then his eyes went to the letter in his hand.

“The seal is broken,” he said sharply. “Hast read this?”

I opened my eyes wide, as if in surprise.

“Marry, sir, I cannot read,” I answered.

He tucked the letter safely away inside his doublet and gave me a penny for my trouble before going on his way.

I waited for some time in the streets outside the bakery, to make sure that Pooley was not there, watching for Richard. But I did not see him. I could only hope that he was satisfied to have the letter back and would trouble no more about an insignificant servant boy.

Mistress Stavesly had left on an errand, her basket over her arm, which was all to the good. I did not care to risk my thin disguise on her sharp eyes. Moll was another matter; I did not worry about her simple mind. In fact, she was on her hands and knees, scrubbing a sticky spill of honey off the floor, and did not even notice me as I slipped by on my way upstairs.

Nothing had changed. I knelt, and as quickly as I could, gathered coins up from where they lay scattered across the floor, mixed with the straw and chaff from the bedding. I stuffed it all in my purse.

There was nothing else in the room that belonged to me. The few pieces of clothing were Richard’s, not mine. Everything else was Master Marlowe’s, and I supposed would be sent home to his family. To the father he had
said would not weep for him.

No, that was not quite true. There was one thing more. Master Marlowe’s satchel still sat where I had dropped it that morning. I opened it to look inside.

Master Marlowe was not a tidy man, but even he would not have left such a mess as this. His shirts had been stuffed in helter-skelter, to wrinkle and ruin the fine linen. The box holding his writing materials had been opened, and the quills were broken. Luckily, the ink bottle was still firmly stoppered, or the disaster would have been worse. Pooley, of course. Looking for his letter.

The manuscript had been cut loose from its cords, and the crumpled pages were loose inside the bag. I pulled them out and quickly sorted them. Thank heaven, they were all there.

I dared not stay longer. With the manuscript in my hand, I slipped back downstairs. Moll was still scrubbing the floor, but when I stood behind her and cleared my throat, she jumped up.

“Richard!” She smiled broadly. “Why art dressed so? Is’t a game?”

And I had thought her too lackwitted to see through my disguise—or rather, to recognize me in my true self. More fool I. It took complexity to lie and plot; it
took schemes and plans and strategies. But Moll was simpleminded.

She had at least given me an excuse I could use. “Aye, a game.” I smiled at her with affection. “And a secret. Thou canst keep a secret, Moll? Tell no one. Only thou and I must know.”

She nodded eagerly. “Aye, Moll can keep a secret.”

“Good. Silence, then.” I handed her six shillings from the hoard I had gathered up off the floor. “This is for thy mother. Here.” I tied it up in a corner of her apron so she would not lose it. There was the rent for the week and two shillings extra for the damaged bedding and the mess upstairs.

“Farewell, Moll.” I kissed her cheek lightly. She smelled of butter and honey and strong soap. “Give thy mother my thanks.” It was little enough, but I had nothing else to leave.