Shakespeare's Spy (2 page)

While the queen and her court dined, we players donned our costumes, wigs, and face paint in an anteroom, then waited about anxiously for our summons. When Mr. Tilney, the master of revels, strode into the room, we all got to our feet, but he motioned for us to sit again. “Not yet, gentlemen, not yet,” he said brusquely. “Where is Mr. Shakespeare?”

“P-pacing back and f-forth in the hallway, most like,” replied Mr. Heminges, our business manager. “I’ll f-fetch him.”

When he returned with our playwright in tow, the master of revels approached them hesitantly, clearly embarrassed about
something. “Ah, Will. I … I meant to tell you this earlier, but … you see, I’ve been so busy with—”

“Tell me
what?
“ interrupted Mr. Shakespeare.

Mr. Tilney shifted about uncomfortably and cleared his throat. “Well, just that … that you must … or, rather, that it would be in your best
interests
if you were to delete from the play any reference to the King of France’s illness.”

Our entire company stared at him incredulously. Mr. Armin was the first to find his voice. “For what reason?” he demanded.

Mr. Tilney glanced about, as though afraid of being overheard, and then explained, almost in a whisper, “Since you performed for her at Yuletide, Her Majesty’s health has declined considerably. The last thing she will wish to see is a monarch with a mortal disease.”

Mr. Heminges, who played the king, scowled and shook his head. “I’m n-not sure it c-can be done, it’s such an essential p-part of the play. After all, if I’m not d-dying, Helena can hardly g-go to Paris to c-cure me, can she?”

“How long before we go on?” asked Mr. Shakespeare.

“Oh, half an hour, at least,” Mr. Tilney said blithley, as though that should be ample time to compose a whole new play.

Mr. Shakespeare nodded grimly. “We’ll manage it somehow.”

When Mr. Tilney was gone, Mr. Heminges cried, “We’ll
m-manage
it? How?”

“I don’t know, exactly. But if I hadn’t said so, we’d never have gotten rid of him.” Mr. Shakespeare turned away and began toying with his earring, as he habitually did when deep in thought.

Sam could be counted upon to offer some harebrained solution to nearly any problem, and he did not disappoint us now.
“I have it! The king has really bad hair, and so he sends for the best hairdresser in all of France—Helena!” He clapped me on the shoulder. The role of Helena, of course, belonged to me.

Mr. Shakespeare either did not hear Sam’s proposal, or chose to ignore it. Finally he looked up and said, “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll keep the illness, but instead of the king, it will be Lafeu, the king’s lifelong friend, who is dying. Can you reword your lines accordingly, Widge?”

“Aye, I wis.” There was a time when such a request would have sent me into a panic, but in my year and a half with the company, I had become quite adept at thribbling—that is, improvising new lines when something went awry on the stage. It took a fairly serious calamity to throw me out of square.

One was not long in coming. The first two scenes of
All’s Well
did, indeed, go well enough—except that the most important member of our audience seemed to be missing. Then, halfway through the third scene, Her Majesty made her entrance. We actors might as well have stopped speaking altogether, for the attention of everyone in the room turned to her.

Had it not been for the red wig and the dozen or so maids of honor who clustered about her, I might not have recognized her, so changed was she. I knew well enough that Her Majesty was getting on in years; after all, Mr. Pope, who was nearing sixty himself, told me that he had been a mere boy when she took the throne. But never before had I seen the years hang so heavy on her.

When we performed
Merry Wives
for her, she had looked remarkably well preserved. This was due in part, of course, to the thick mask of white lead and cochineal with which she concealed the ravages of time and to the well-made wig, which was far more natural looking than those we prentices wore. But
her behavior, too, had belied her age. She had laughed at Sir John’s antics, flirted with her male courtiers, and consumed a prodigious amount of ale.

Though she still wore the makeup and the wig, she seemed to have forgotten how to play the part expected of her, that of the ever-youthful Gloriana. Mr. Tilney had warned us that her health was poor, but I had not expected to see her shuffling along, head bowed, like an old woman. In one hand she carried a rusty sword, which she used as a cane to support herself. When she reached her chair, she had trouble gathering in her skirts so she could sit properly. One of the maids of honor rushed forward to help, but she brushed the young woman irritably aside.

So taken aback was I by Her Majesty’s condition that I dropped my lines, forcing Sal Pavy, who was playing the countess, to repeat his: “‘Her eye is sick on ’t; I observe her now.’”

“‘What is your pleasure, madam?”‘ I replied.

Before Sal Pavy could get out his next line, he was interrupted by the queen’s voice; despite her illness, it had lost little of its power or its sting. “It is our
pleasure
,” she said, “that you speak up! We can scarcely make out the words!”

Though we put on our best Pilate’s voices, we got no more than twenty lines in before she berated us again. So exasperated was she that she neglected to use the royal
we
. “Can you hear me up there?”

Sal Pavy and I glanced at each other. Though it was considered bad form for a player to break character, he turned to the queen and bowed. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Then why can
I
not hear
you
?”

“I beg Your Majesty’s humble pardon. We will try harder.”

But try as we might, we could not speak loudly enough to suit her. Finally she rose and, grumbling, laboriously dragged her heavy chair forward, fending off all attempts to assist her, until she sat only a few feet from the stage. I wished she had not. At that distance, no amount of paint or dye or elegant clothing could conceal the painful truth: the queen was wasting away.

A blow that is struck without warning is always the most telling, and at that moment it struck me for the first time that Her Majesty was mortal, the same as ordinary folk—that she might not, in fact, live through the winter.

I shuddered to think what effect her passing might have on England, which had known no other monarch for nearly half a century, and on our professsion in particular. What would become of us poor players when we no longer had her powerful presence standing like a breakwater between us and the swelling tide of Puritans? At that moment I had an inkling of how the Admiral’s Men must have felt when the stage gave way beneath their feet.

E
very member of the company was, I think, unnerved by having Her Majesty so close at hand. But we were accustomed to adversity. After all, we had acted in inn yards while the ostlers led horses back and forth; we had put up with conceited wights who took seats upon the stage in order to be seen; we had been pelted by hazelnuts and leather beer bottles when we failed to please our audience.

Though our performance before the queen was not the best we had ever given, neither was it the worst. We recalled a reasonable percentage of our lines, and for those we forgot, we usually substituted something fairly sensible. We even managed to remove the king’s deadly fistula and give it to poor Lafeu.

By the time we took our bows, it was past midnight, and we were, to a man, exhausted. Luckily the next day was Sunday, which meant we could sleep late. Ordinarily I went to morning services at St. Saviour’s, along with Mr. Pope and the orphaned children who shared our household. All Her Majesty’s subjects
were, in fact, required to attend church, or risk paying a substantial fine. But when I woke, it was nearly noon. Mr. Pope, as I later learned, had taken pity on me and told the priest that I was indisposed.

I scarcely had time to eat before Sam and Sal Pavy came to fetch me for our Sunday outing. In truth, after six long days in the constant company of my fellow players, I would have welcomed a bit of solitude. But I also welcomed the opportunity to see something new, and it was not the best idea to go wandering about London alone, especially those parts of London that appealed most to us.

Though Sam was not the most reliable or the most responsible member of the Chamberlain’s Men, he could be a good companion—provided he was expected to be neither serious nor silent. I had even learned to like Sal Pavy to some degree. Well, perhaps
like
is too strong a word. There were things I liked about him: he was talented; he was dedicated; he was determined. He was also vain, quarrelous, and ungrateful. But one of our many duties as prentices was to keep peace among ourselves. So I did my best to overlook his numerous and glaring faults and appreciate his few feeble virtues.

He and Sam and I got along well enough. Still, I could not imagine us ever truly being friends, in the way that I had been friends with our other prentices, Sander and Julia. It had been six months since the plague claimed Sander, but the thought of his death still made me feel as though I had been struck soundly in the ribs with a blunted sword, and not a day passed that I did not think of it.

Julia had not gone to paradise, only to Paris, where she could fulfill her desire to be a player. But there was little hope that she would return, unless the queen suddenly declared that
women would henceforth be allowed to act upon the London stage.

Her Majesty was as likely to do that as a gib-cat was to sing sweetly. Though she might ignore the protests of the Puritans, she listened closely to the voice of the common people. And their voice said unmistakably that though any woman was free to watch a criminal get his neck stretched on Tyburn Tree or a toothless bruin be savaged by dogs in the bear-baiting ring, or to dress in rags and beg for alms in the street, or to sell her favors to men for a farthing, she must not be corrupted by taking part in a play.

I had not lost touch with Julia altogether. Every few months a French sailor turned up bearing a letter from her. These were usually brief and disappointingly impersonal, devoted mainly to what roles she was playing at the Théâtre de Marais. But now and again she let slip some line that made me suspect she was not as happy with her lot as she would have us think. The letters I sent in return were as carefully cheerful as hers; if she was pining for home, I had no wish to make her burden heavier by reminding her of how much she was missed.

Though the premature winter had hurt our company’s profits, in the city as a whole commerce seemed unaffected. Shopkeepers went on displaying their goods in the street before their shops; St. Paul’s churchyard still swarmed with vendors and buyers; beggars still pleaded with passersby on every corner; ballad-mongers and sellers of broadsheets still waved their printed wares aloft and called or sang out enough of their contents to whet the appetite for more; and we prentices, on the one day of the week that we could call our own, still strolled through the streets, looking for an excuse to part with a bit of our weekly wage of three shillings.

Sam, the most daring among us, usually led the way, and Sal Pavy and I were content to follow after. On most Sundays, he led us first to the area of St. Paul’s churchyard where the agents of the royal lottery had their booths. And on most Sundays I tried to talk him out of it.

“You ken, do you not, that these wights must sell half a million chances at the least. That means the likelihood of you winning even one of the fourteen-shilling prizes is … um …”

“One in fifty,” put in Sal Pavy.

I cast him a peevish look. “I was about to say that.”

“No,” said Sam, “it’s one in twenty-five.”

“How’s that?”

“Because I intend to buy two chances.”

“At a shilling each? You noddy! If you kept the two shillings instead, you could save up the same amount in—” I held up a restraining hand in front of Sal Pavy’s smirking face. “Don’t tell me. Seven weeks.”

“Very good, young man,” said Sal Pavy, in a schoolmasterish voice.

Sam made a scoffing sound. “You don’t really imagine that I’d be content with fourteen shillings, do you? I’ve got my eye on the
big
prize.” He leaned forward, his eyes wide, and whispered as though it were a secret known only to him, “Five … thousand … pounds!” Sal Pavy and I burst into laughter, but Sam was unperturbed. “Go ahead and laugh, like the clap-brained coystrels that you are; I care not a quinch. You know what they say: Let him laugh that wins the prize. You see, I’ve been told that I am to win, and very soon.”

“Ah!” Sal Pavy said. “He’s been
told!
That’s different!”

“Told?” I said. “By whom?”

“By a soothsayer.”

“You mean”—I lowered my voice—”a
witch?
“ Where I came from, witches were not openly discussed, for fear one of them might overhear.

“No, just a cunning woman.”

“What’s that?”

“You know,” Sal Pavy said. “Someone who finds lost valuables, and tells your future, and so on.”

“Oh. I thought the city had a law against practicing that sort of thing.”

“It does. It also has laws against cutpurses and moneylenders—and, if it comes to that, against performing plays within the city limits.”

“How does it work, then?” I asked Sam, still half whispering.

“What?”

“How does she tell your future?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly. She has this ball, made of something black and shiny, and she stares into it.”

“And it tells her the future? I’d like to see that.”

“Well, come on, then.” Sam strode off abruptly, heading west on Fleet Street.

Sal Pavy was staring at me rather contemptuously. “Surely you don’t believe in all that?”

“Not really,” I replied softly. “But it’s got him away from the lottery, hasn’t it?” I hurried after Sam, calling, “You might wait for us!” The last word, though it was but one syllable, covered two octaves, for my voice broke, as it had been doing lately with alarming frequency.

Sam turned back with a mischievous grin on his face. “Was that your voice cracking, or were you attempting to yodel?”