The True Prince (10 page)

I shook my head, and he dug among his effects for a lead spoon. Giving me the glass to hold, he showed me how to draw the back of the spoon down the swollen side of my face, creating the palest of shadows. “Don't do it often, or your skin will rough up like a pig's hide.”

“Thank you,” I said, mightily confused as to where I stood with him. It occurred to me to ask: Do I threaten you? Did our fight settle anything? Is there any way we could be friends? But a silence stood between us, like a wall of glass I dared not break for fear of getting myself cut.

As for Davy, he hooked onto me as I climbed upon the stage and hung close all morning, but spoke no word about the fight. I thought he might have shown some gratitude; did he know what it was about?

“He knows,” Gregory told me as we waited for an entrance together later that afternoon. “Robin let it slip when he was trying to feel out the little weasel. The boy all but laughed in
his face. Depend on it; you're the only friend he will have soon.”

“Why do you say that? Has the Company turned against him?”

“No, but they haven't warmed to him.” Gregory's mouth twisted. “There's something about him that's not right.”

“In that case, he's more an object for pity than—”

“Do as you please,” he said abruptly. “Only if I were you, I would drop him like a hot iron.”

That evening the entire Company adjourned to the Mermaid Tavern for the casting of Master Will's latest play. I had heard some of the chief players discussing the work with happy anticipation, though the meat of it did not sound promising to me: a history of the troubled reign of Henry IV. This king had usurped the throne from his cousin but never sat easily on it; his reign, from what I could remember, was plagued with rebellion and unrest. Master Will could coax life from it if anyone could, but I expected a rather solemn evening when I squeezed onto a bench at one end of the table, with Robin on one side and Davy on the other.

On casting nights the proprietor of the Mermaid reserved the long board in the loft for the Company to discuss their work in private. By the time we broke up to go home, we'd be cured like hams in the close, smoky air, but one advantage was that the tavern servers were always bringing us more ale and
meat. They liked to eavesdrop on the new plays and be great men amongst their friends when they shared their knowledge the next day.

“Before I begin,” Master Will announced, “you should know that I have found so much matter for this subject that it can't all be packed into one performance. Therefore the reign of King Henry IV must be presented in two parts: the first for the spring and the second, God willing, next fall.”

Will Kempe laughed. “By all the saints, what treasures did you mine out of old Holinshed to fill a double dose of theater?” He was referring to Holinshed's
Chronicles
, our author's main source of information for the history plays. I had read some of it in school and felt as doubtful as Master Kempe. But Shakespeare surprised me, once he plunged into his reading of all the parts.

As the play begins, King Henry is sick and sad and longs to ease his troubled conscience with a crusade to Jerusalem. But he must first deal with ill winds in his own country. Two of his strongest supporters, Henry Percy the elder and Henry Percy his son (called “Hotspur”), have become dissatisfied with the king's treatment of them and join forces with other unhappy nobles to plot rebellion.

If these three were not enough Henrys already, there is yet one more: the king's oldest son is Henry too, but better known as Hal. Hal prefers carousing in taverns to sitting in council with his father's advisors, and his companions are the sort that no respectable prince would expose to the light of day—
chief among them a fat and cowardly knight called Sir John Oldcastle.

The Percys, father and son, join forces with Owen Glendower, a Welsh lord who has never submitted to English rule. This Glendower is a sorcerer who claims to command supernatural powers, but the real heart and soul of the rebellion is the gallant Hotspur. He lives for glory and holds complete faith in his own brilliant reputation: “By heaven,” he cries, “methinks it were an easy leap to pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon!”

The rebellion gathers strength and power as allies from Scotland join them, and the king is seriously threatened. He hopes for support from his son, but Prince Hal is playing an elaborate prank on his friend Oldcastle: when the fat knight holds up a band of pilgrims on the way to Canterbury and takes their gold, the prince appears in disguise soon after and robs the robbers. (To his credit, he later returns the money to its rightful owners.)

Such conduct makes the king despair of his own son, but when the rebellious Percys bring on a war, Prince Hal heeds the call to honor. He manages to gain back some of his father's regard, especially after saving the king's life on the battlefield. In the final clash at Shrewsbury, Hal and Hotspur go sword to sword, and the prince slays the valiant but misguided rebel. Thus the rebellion is put down and King Henry reconciled with his son, though not perfectly.

And Part Two was still to come.

The Company fell in love with the play at first reading and immediately after joined in spirited discussion over who would play what. The argument was mostly show, since it was assumed that Shakespeare held certain men in mind as he wrote the parts. The portly Thomas Pope would fill Oldcastle's round doublet to perfection, with Will Kempe and Richard Cowley as his fellow soldiers and reprobates. Will Sly was known for dashing roles such as Hotspur's, Richard Burbage would shine as the mysterious Owen Glendower, and John Heminges could outfit King Henry with the proper careworn gravity. Prince Hal seemed almost an afterthought in the midst of more colorful roles. There is more to him than meets the eye at first: though he appears a shallow ne'er-do-well, he reveals strength and purpose as the story unfolds. The role was assigned to Augustine Phillips, but seemed not to have any particular name on it.

Concerning the boys' parts, there would be little discussion; the chief players had already determined these, and all that remained was to hand out the sides. The closest to a “Juliet” was Lady Percy, Hotspur's spirited wife—“And that falls to Richard,” announced Master Will, passing down the scroll with my lines written on it. “Robin, you are for Mistress Quickly.”

This was a comic role, not a romantic one, and I felt Robin's arm stiffen as he drew away from me. A glance at his
face showed his hurt, mixed with the bitter knowledge that he had grown too stout for Juliet. I felt for him, but did not look forward to the sulky mood that was sure to follow.

David Morgan received the role of Owen Glendower's daughter, an announcement that surprised no one. His side consisted only of cues, for the part was all in Welsh. Playing a grown woman would be a stretch for him, but Master Will could not resist making use of his peculiar gifts.

Gregory was handed a mixed bag of messengers and servants, as usually befalls an apprentice when there are not enough female roles to go around. “As for Kit—” Master Shakespeare paused.

Kit was sitting across from me, carefully maintaining an inch of space between himself and Gregory. Throughout the evening he had sat in stone-faced silence, even while the rest of the Company roared with laughter at the antics of Oldcastle and the prince. Now he raised his head, and I was struck by a thought that probably struck the rest of the boys as well: there were no more female parts. “You shall play Ned Poins, the prince's companion.” Master Shakespeare passed down the scroll as if it was no great matter, but the Company fell silent for an instant, understanding what this meant. The part was not large, but it could be lively—Poins, I recalled, was the one who proposed the robbery scheme, and he and the prince have a rare old time in the tavern scene that follows. The clear message to Kit was that the Company was willing to help him master
this great leap in his career, so long as he stayed out of trouble. I gazed at his face, rewarded by one of the rare moments when it actually revealed him—though what it revealed was a clash of gratitude and resistance. What he said would be a natural response, from most people, but sounded odd coming from him: “Thank you, sir.”

Shakespeare nodded, and across the table from him Thomas Pope burst out in a loud laugh. “This fellow Oldcastle—God's truth, this time you've outdone yourself, Will.” He had been scanning his lines and now threw his voice into a pious, canting pitch as he read, “‘Do I not bate? Do I not dwindle? Why, my skin hangs about me like an old lady's loose garment. Company, villainous company hath been the spoil of me.'” He gleefully rubbed his hands together, chortling, “Fat Jack is worth a fortune to us!”

“To Fat Jack!” cried Richard Cowley, raising his ale tankard. Everyone downed a toast to Oldcastle, who was just the sort of outrageous rogue our audiences loved—yet with a difference that troubled me, even as I drank to him. Plenty of plays included witty servants or fast-talking thieves, but Oldcastle was a gentleman of sorts, and much more than a mere thief. He reminded me of someone, or some thing, but in the smoke and noise of the tavern, with the oil lamps beginning to gutter out and ale buzzing in my head, I could not think clearly.

The assembly began to shift and sigh. In the middle of a
yawn, I caught a view of Kit's face, with an expression of such naked malevolence on it my jaw locked for a moment. The look was not for me but for Davy, who had turned sideways on the bench with his legs dangling over the end and his spine digging into my side. I glanced down at his dark head, bent over a long loop of string between his hands. It appeared to be a game of cat's cradle, but the design was unfamiliar to me. His fingers shuttled with a skill that could only come from long practice. “What's that?” I asked him.

The fingers froze, like a nest of startled rabbits. Then he twitched his thumbs, and the string pattern disappeared as he pulled his hands apart. “'Tis nothing.”

Later that night, I sat up in bed with a cry of revelation: “Aha!”

Robin stirred. “What?”

“Sir John Oldcastle. There was something about him I couldn't remember, but now I do—he's one of the martyrs in Foxe.” Only the ale had kept me from remembering this earlier; as a boy I had read Reverend Foxe's
Book of Martyrs
countless times, and the copy given me by Master Condell was among my prized possessions.

“Fat Jack, a Protestant martyr?” Robin groused. I had been right in predicting his mood. “Not likely. Now shut up and let me sleep.”

I was sure of it, though. Sir John Oldcastle had suffered under Edward III for denying certain doctrines of the Church of
Rome. He made a most noble end, burned for the true faith. Didn't Master Will know that? Or might he have some reason for resurrecting a pious saint as a wine-guzzling libertine? Oh well, thought I, sinking back into the straw mattress; the real Oldcastle died two hundred years ago. He could not come back to haunt us now.

As with most new plays, the Company allowed about three weeks for the players to learn their parts, but this particular new play set an additional task for them: Master Will wished a better setting for it than the creaky old Curtain. Across the river, in Southwark, a new theater had gone up west of the Rose. It was called the Swan, said to hold upwards of three thousand people. Cuthbert Burbage began negotiations to secure it for the opening performance of
Henry IV
, and when he interrupted a rehearsal one morning to announce that the Swan was ours for the last week in May, all the men of the Company cheered.

But most of them were groaning two weeks later, when we had to load our properties and costumes in carts and haul them from Shoreditch to Southwark. The distance was not so great by measure, but it took us all the way through London: over every pothole, past every cart collision, and through every street quarrel that happened to be going on at the time.

The apprentices were given charge of a large barrow loaded with royal properties: crowns, orbs, some costume pieces, and a
very heavy throne, all covered in buckram to conceal the cargo from light fingers. Davy added little muscle, so we kept him on watch for most of the journey, while the rest of us sweated and strained and managed to get our clumsy cart stuck in at least half the holes we tried to avoid. The evening had turned rainy, and we all looked like half-drowned rats by the time we had lumbered through Bishopsgate and entered the city.

As we approached Buckingham Tavern, on Gracechurch Street, the door of the establishment burst open and a score of contentious men boiled out of it. We stopped to watch, glad for the diversion. The quarrel surged back and forth like an angry sea until the sense emerged: it seemed to be about the honor of certain people at the Queen's court. As the smaller group slandered the loyalty and fighting ability of the Earl of Essex, a sizable body of defenders spoke vigorously for him, and soon a young man in their midst stepped forward to engage in single combat for their hero. He had some personal insults to revenge as well.

“Call
me
a prissy dame?” he shouted at someone in the opposing crowd. “Call
me
a prancing duck? I'll show you a duck. Have at thee!”

A hard laugh rang out like steel. “Your blade is no quicker than your tongue, boy. I'll test you on that point as easily as any other.” An older man stepped out of the shadows, his hand on the hilt of a rapier. When their blades flashed in the damp twilight, my blood surged, as though I had stumbled on a body.

“Make it two points, then!” The “boy's” words sounded fiercer than he looked, with his slim body and refined, almost girlish features. But his fair complexion was flushed with wine and rage. He pulled a velvet cape off his shoulder with one hand and tossed it to the servant hovering nearby, then pulled his dagger. His foe likewise removed his cloak—a plain, sturdy wool one—and looked around for an honest bystander to hold it for him. To my surprise he ignored many eager outstretched hands and tossed the garment to Kit. Then he pulled his own dagger.

The onlookers cheered, for this would be rare sport. Men slashing at each other with swords, or stabbing with knives, were common enough on the London streets, but only gentlemen and fencing masters preferred the new style of rapier-and- dagger. One of each appeared to be squaring off now in the drizzle and the hissing torchlight; the older fellow was no gentleman, but he clearly knew his business.