The Mad Courtesan (12 page)

‘How so?’

‘My choirboys would not be safe in his presence.’

‘But the king is married.’

‘His wife may be but a cloak to his true designs,’ said Fellowes. ‘But there are other obstacles which make him a fearful choice as our monarch. The Earl will look elsewhere. However …’ He became more confidential. ‘The Scottish King will have his party and I know who will help to lead it.’

‘Who is that?’

‘Lord Westfield.’

‘Why?’

‘King James likes the theatre.’

She was there. Long before he stepped out onstage to gain visible proof of the fact, he knew that Mistress Beatrice
Capaldi had come to the performance of
Love’s Sacrifice
at the Queen’s Head that afternoon. Lawrence Firethorn felt her presence and purred with delight. His book holder’s counsel had borne fruit. The latest play by Edmund Hoode was the love-knot that would bind actor and inamorata together. It was the answer to his prayer. Since the departure of his wife, Firethorn’s bed had been intolerably empty and his heart gaped equally wide for a new tenant. Beatrice Capaldi would fill both venues with sublime ease. She had come. It was the proof for which he had longed.

Others were quick to perceive the change. Edmund Hoode was relieved that his play would get a stirring performance out of its leading actor. When Lawrence Firethorn was below his best – as he had been for days – he dragged down the whole company and took the shine off even the finest drama. A toiling playwright like Hoode wanted due recognition of his talents and this could only come from a committed rendering of
Love’s Sacrifice.
Barnaby Gill flitted between pleasure and disappointment. He was glad that the reputation of Westfield’s Men would not suffer any more but peeved that he would no longer be able to gain at its expense. When Firethorn was subdued, it was the agile comedian who came to the fore to steal the plaudits. Gill also expressed rank disgust that a mere woman could have such an effect on the work of an actor and, by extension, a whole company.

The situation caused Nicholas Bracewell quiet alarm. He hoped that Beatrice Capaldi was a bird of passage who would not return to haunt them and he was confident that
Firethorn would soon forget her when some other female sparked off his lechery. Nicholas foresaw grave difficulties and knew that he would be pressed into service.

‘Nick, dear heart!’

‘We begin in five minutes, sir …’

‘I was never more ready. But first, a favour.’

‘Ask it when I am less busy,’ suggested Nicholas.

‘It will not wait,’ said Firethorn, thrusting a letter at him. ‘When the performance is done, give this to her.’

‘But I will be needed here, sir.’

‘Do as I bid, man. Put it into her hand and wait for a reply. My happiness depends upon it.’

Nicholas sighed and slipped the missive inside his buff jerkin. It was not an assignment to relish. He turned his full attention to the play itself. Its success at The Rose had brought a full audience to the Queen’s Head and, although the piece would be given in a slightly attenuated form, its merits were still plentiful. One of the omissions from the text, however, was causing deep resentment. Owen Elias had lost his funeral speech. Retained in the part of Benvolio at the insistence of Nicholas Bracewell, the actor had seen that part trimmed and weakened at the morning rehearsal. Elias brooded malevolently in a corner of the tiring-house. He would not be able to make the same impact again.

Firethorn came up with a growled reminder to him.

‘We want no final speech from Benvolio,’ he said.

‘It suits the play best,’ argued Elias.

‘It does not suit me, Owen. Remember that.’

‘You give me no choice.’

‘Breathe one word of that funeral oration and I will rise from the dead to cut out your treacherous Welsh tongue! Do you understand, sir?’

Owen Elias crackled with an anger that found no outlet because Nicholas Bracewell took charge of affairs and
Love’s Sacrifice
began. King Gondar now ruled supreme. Benvolio could only fume away in the background.

She was very definitely there. Beatrice Capaldi once again sat in a prominent position in the centre of the lower gallery with a poise that set her apart from all the other young ladies around her. The dark velvet of her earlier appearance had now given way to a brightly coloured dress in the Spanish fashion. She wore a pale-green corseted bodice with a deep point. The long, heavy stomacher front in a deeper hue dipped to a point over the stiff farthingale skirt. Full trunk-type sleeves of blue with large, laced wrist cuffs were revealed under the huge hanging sleeves. The royal-blue gown fitted the shoulders and the figure to the waist then blossomed out over the hips to fall stiffly to the ground. The wide lace ruff was starched and wired. A narrow jewelled sash encircled the waist with a pomander dangling from it. Black hair was drawn back from her exquisite face and set off by a few well-placed jewels. A folding fan was carried in a gloved hand.

Lawrence Firethorn took it all in at a glance and read the message in her apparel. Beatrice Capaldi had warmed towards him. Though she was as aloof as before, her vivid attire conveyed her true feelings. The actor responded by
displaying the full rainbow of his talents. His performance was a tour de force which made a fine play seem brilliant and which drew his company up to the very summit. The momentum gathered until it became its own undoing. Benvolio was simply carried away by it.

The funeral speech was laid over the sad carcasses like a soft and respectful shroud. Owen Elias had never been more moving with his soft lilt. He tasted each line with care and let it roll around his mouth until he had exacted its full sweetness. Lawrence Firethorn hissed unregarded at his feet. The Welshman drew even more tears than at The Rose. It was not just an epitaph for a pair of fallen lovers. Owen Elias knew that he was delivering the funeral oration over his own career with Westfield’s Men. His moment of supreme glory was also an act of suicide but it was worth it.

King Gondar was carried out once more to solemn music. He leapt off his untimely bier in the tiring-house to accost the traitor but the ovation drowned out his curses. With an audience to enjoy and a love to advance, he swept out onto the stage with his company and took his first bow. His eyes went straight to hers and a momentary flame was lit between them. Beatrice Capaldi showed no emotion
but she applauded politely as she gazed down at him. Her presence was a signal to him, her bright attire an invitation, her restrained approval a firm promise.

Lawrence Firethorn capitulated before her.

Giles Randolph knew the importance of keeping a spy in the enemy camp. A sharp-eyed ostler at the Queen’s Head reported all that was needful. Basking in his renewed success as The Spanish Jew, the leading light of Banbury’s Men was annoyed to hear of another triumphant revival and of the scintillating performance by his rival as King Gondar. Lawrence Firethorn had once again eclipsed him but good news followed this all-too-familiar intelligence. Randolph took immediate action. After dining with friends that evening, he made his way from Shoreditch to Gracechurch Street. A large hat and a long cloak guaranteed him an anonymity which let him slip into the Queen’s Head unobserved. It was very late and only the very drunk still lingered.

Owen Elias was slumped over a table with an empty pewter tankard in his hand. He groaned as he contemplated the ruins of his theatrical career. Westfield’s Men – in the person of their moving spirit – had expelled him. The company which had been his whole life for so long had now hurled him out into the wilderness. After touching real power on a stage at last he was reduced to complete impotence. His prospects of fresh employment were slight. A twenty-line speech had sealed his doom as an actor.

He became aware of a figure sitting down beside him
and of an arm looping around his sagging shoulders. Owen Elias turned bloodshot eyes upon the newcomer but it was a full minute before he recognised Giles Randolph. Jerked out of his maudlin self-pity, he sat up with a start and blinked. He knew the other actor by sight and respected him for his achievements but he had never expected to share a bench in a tavern with such a luminary.

Randolph made his offer with a persuasive smile.

‘We have need of you, Owen.’

‘Of
me
, sir?’

‘Of you, my fine friend.’

‘How so?’

‘Join a company where your true mettle is appreciated.’

‘Banbury’s Men?’

‘We have a part that only Owen Elias may play.’

‘This is no jest?’

‘Come with me, sir, and I will prove it.’

The Welshman needed no time at all to think it over.

They left together.

M
argery Firethorn was deeply bored with Cambridge. She found the town far too provincial for her taste, the university far too exclusive and the prevailing atmosphere of Puritanism far too oppressive. Most important of all, she found the company of her brother-in-law far too depressing and she was soon asking herself yet again why her sister had married such an inferior creature. Jonathan Jarrold was a studious man with the deficiencies of such a life writ large upon him. Small in stature and sparse of hair, he was anxious and preoccupied, his busy eyes imprisoned behind spectacles and his shoulders already rounded into a scholarly hunch. He spent as much time reading books as selling them and had no conversation that did not touch on the literary world. Jonathan Jarrold rightly feared his sister-in-law for her temper and her termagant bluntness. In Agnes, he had certainly married a more suitable and
sweet companion for his academic ways. She was a dutiful wife with a pale beauty that was not entirely muffled by the dullness of her apparel. Agnes Jarrold loved her husband with a kind of defensive resignation.

‘He is a good man, Margery,’ she said plaintively.

‘His goodness is not in doubt,’ said her sister. ‘It is his manhood that I question. Can such a fool really perform the office of fatherhood?’

‘You do him wrong!’

‘Only because he has done you a graver injustice.’

‘He is a fine husband.’

‘Jonathan Jarrold is married to his books.’

‘We have been happy here in Cambridge.’

‘That shambling skeleton would not make me happy!’

‘Margery!’

‘I expect real passion in my bed!’

‘Silence! He may hear you.’

Agnes Jarrold quivered with apprehension. They were sitting in the garden of her little house in Trinity Street and she was finding her sister’s presence a mixed blessing. While Margery undoubtedly gave her unstinting affection and reassurance about the trial that lay ahead, she also brought an abrasive note into a gentle household. The quiet and ineffectual Jonathan Jarrold somehow enraged his sister-in-law who loathed him for his very inoffensiveness. There were still two weeks to go before the baby came to term and Agnes was praying that domestic calm could be sustained until the moment when motherhood would unite them all.

Her husband was prepared to make a supreme effort. As he came out into the garden, he manufactured a smile that had particles of real sincerity and pleasure in it.

‘Are you ready for me, Margery?’ he said politely.

‘No, sir,’ she grunted.

‘The entertainment will soon begin.’

‘Do not miss it on my account.’

‘But I hope you will accompany me.’

‘My wits are turned enough already.’

Agnes interceded. ‘Go with him, sister. You have sat with me long enough. Jonathan offers you a diversion.’

‘Yes,’ he added. ‘It is not only London that can delight with its theatrical presentation. We have drama of our own here in Cambridge.’

‘It may ease the tedium,’ said his wife.

Or make that tedium even more unbearable, thought Margery. Nevertheless, she allowed herself to be talked into witnessing the performance. Agnes herself was in no condition to attend a public event and she was pathetically grateful to her sister for taking her place. As soon as she set off with her brother-in-law, however, Margery regretted her decision. In his usual sober attire, he shuffled beside her through the narrow streets and washed his blue-veined hands in the air. Jonathan Jarrold sought desperately to please.

‘It is a tragedy about Richard the Third,’ he said.

‘I have seen four such plays in London.’

‘Students bring a freshness to the drama.’

‘I am married to a Titan of the stage.’

‘We’ll win you over yet, Margery.’

‘Do not build on that vain hope, sir.’

The beauty of Queen’s College took some of the jaundice from her eye and she actually smiled when she saw the sun glancing off the River Cam and turning the flotilla of swans into a picture of feathered radiance. In the cloistered tranquillity of an academic foundation, Margery did find some objects of interest and her attentive companion was lulled into the belief that Cambridge might yet surprise her with its talent. The performance of plays, revels and
scenici ludi
in the college halls and chapels was a vital part of university life and Jonathan Jarrold shared joyfully in it. That joy was kept from Margery Firethorn. When she took her seat in the hall at Queen’s College, she discovered that the play about Richard the Third was called
Richardus Tertius
because it was written entirely in Latin.

‘I will not understand a word of it!’ she complained.

‘The acting will explain all,’ said Jarrold.

‘Wake me if I snore.’

It was a prophetic utterance. The play began and she sank beneath the weight of its dreariness.
Richardus Tertius
was an earnest work that drew a sort of blundering eagerness out of its undergraduate cast. They entered with spirit then stood with wooden awfulness while they tried to declaim the tortuous Latin. Those who attempted gesture and movement made so many errors that they quickly abandoned the experiment and resorted to tableau acting. Classical scholars found much to admire and there was a deal of nodding throughout but there was nothing to hold a
simple playgoer. Margery’s head only nodded forward onto her ample bosom. Caught up in the severe brilliance of the verse, her brother-in-law was well into Act Three before he heard the unladylike snoring beside him.

Before he could wake her, real drama intervened.

‘Come, sir. Come quickly, sir.’

‘What is it, Nan?’

‘Your wife has need of you, sir. Come at once.’

The old servant plucked at her master’s sleeve and earned a broadside of protests from the audience all around her. Jonathan Jarrold was annoyed at the interruption but immediately aware of its implications. His third child was about to make its entry into the world. A sharp nudge brought Margery back to life and an urgent whisper made her leap to her feet. Her voice rang out through the hall and brought the play to a halt.

‘Take me to my sister!’ she yelled imperiously. ‘Her ordeal can be no worse than this one – and at least she will not have the baby in Latin!’

Lawrence Firethorn missed his wife dreadfully and was quite unable to take advantage of the fact. It rankled. Days of licence had yielded nothing more than disappointment. Nights of freedom had yet to be marked by a conquest. He writhed in torment. His life as an actor had always been one of peaks and troughs but the two had never been simultaneous before. As he scaled the very heights of his profession, he was cast down into the abyss of misery. Beatrice Capaldi had turned him down. The letter which
Nicholas Bracewell delivered was an invitation to dine with him that evening but she rejected it with a disdainful shake of her head. Two hours of King Gondar had left him in a state of blissful delirium but a spectator in the lower gallery destroyed it instantly. Nor was there compensation to be found. Firethorn had summoned an old acquaintance to warm his bed but she had failed him badly. While his head lusted for her, his heart remained true to Beatrice Capaldi and his naked body voted with the latter party. For the first time in his life, a beautiful woman left his chamber unsatisfied.

His work inevitably suffered. During the performance of
The Two Maids of Milchester
on the following afternoon, he was so subdued that Barnaby Gill was able to wrest scene after scene from him. Firethorn did not even seem to notice the indignity, let alone to care. His mind was on higher things. When the play was over and a disgruntled audience had filed out of the Queen’s Head, the actor turned to the one man in the company who might yet save him.

‘Advise me, Nick!’ he begged.

‘My advice is to forget this lady,’ said Nicholas.

‘She
spurned
me. No woman has ever done that before. Am I not Lawrence Firethorn? Am I not King Gondar and Tarquin and Black Antonio and Pompey the Great and Richard the Lionheart and all the other giants of the London stage?’

‘You are indeed, sir.’

‘Yet she spurns me. She spurns every one of me!’

‘It may be for the best.’

‘When it murders my very soul!’

Firethorn’s howl shook the timbers of the private room where they conversed. Nicholas Bracewell had to balance honesty against diplomacy. He was thankful that Mistress Beatrice Capaldi had turned down the invitation from his employer but he would not dare to say that to an infatuated man of legendary temper. Besides, he had come to understand the nature of that infatuation now that he had seen the lady herself at close range. Beatrice Capaldi was a cut above the conventional beauties who idolised the famous actor and who flung themselves at his feet. They were all victims of his charm and his arrogant manliness. Beatrice Capaldi would never join their number. She liked victims of her own.

‘Why does she dare to scorn me?’ demanded Firethorn.

‘The lady may be fast married, sir.’

‘That is no barrier. I have borrowed a wife from many a husband before now and will do so again. Besides, she brought no Master Capaldi to watch me perform. When you gave her my letter, you said she was attended by two manservants.’

‘It is true, sir.’

‘Then her husband is of no account,’ decided Firethorn with a snap of his fingers. ‘If he exists, it is my bounden duty to cuckold the rogue. If not, let’s waste no more breath upon him. Beatrice came to me alone. I cling to that.’

‘Consider her name,’ suggested Nicholas, making one last attempt to deter his employer. ‘Mistress Capaldi.’

‘I consider it every minute of the day, Nick.’

‘The lady is of Italian extraction.’

‘It is the essence of her beauty.’

‘She may also be wed to an Italian gentleman.’

‘Your conclusion?’

‘Beatrice Capaldi is a Roman Catholic.’

‘Love is without denomination!’ said Firethorn grandly. ‘Were she Protestant, Jew or Presbyterian, I could worship her no less. Were she a godless child of an African heathen, it would not alter my heart. Were she got between two Druids in some pagan rite, I would not stay my hand here. I
love
her!’

‘That is plain, sir.’

‘Then help me, Nick!’

‘I am yours to command.’

‘What game does she play with me?’

Beatrice Capaldi stood bolt upright while her dressmaker made a few final adjustments to his latest creation. With an ingratiating bow, he then backed away so that she could inspect the result in the huge gilt-framed mirror that dominated one wall of her bedchamber. The dress was a work of art in white and silver. Simple and heavily padded, it had a close-fitting bodice with a long-fronted stomacher that dipped in a deep point to the stiffened basque of the French farthingale. The basque was made of the same material as the flounced bell-shaped skirt and concealed the hard line of the wheeled farthingale. Trunk sleeves were full at the top and tapered to the wrists, giving the demi-cannon effect that was now in fashion. Beatrice Capaldi examined
each detail with care until she was entirely satisfied. She then walked around the room to get the feel of her new dress and to enjoy the sensual swish of its skirt. When she had had her fill, she repaid her dressmaker with an indulgent smile. He bowed frantically then backed out with servile gratitude. Left alone in front of the mirror, she toyed with the low square décolletage across the front of the dress so that she could display a more generous area of her full breasts. There was a tap on the door and a manservant entered with writing materials on a tray. Beatrice Capaldi crossed to sit at the little table and the paper was put in front of her. Dipping the quill in the inkwell, she wrote a single line.

‘True love requires a true sacrifice.’

The letter was sealed but not signed and the name of Master Lawrence Firethorn was added with a flourish. She handed the missive to the manservant with a curt order.

‘See it delivered to the Queen’s Head directly.’

Nimbus was equal to the occasion. The London debut of Cornelius Gant and His Amazing Horse was a comprehensive success. It took place in the yard at The Feathers where fifty or more casual bystanders were transformed into a rapt audience. The performers showed enough of their skills to dazzle the spectators while holding back their principal tricks for use before larger gatherings at a later date. Dancing and counting were the basis of their act. While the versatile Gant played on a pipe, Nimbus went through a whole series of dances, beginning
with a coranto and ending with a sprightly galliard. But it was the money trick which tricked money out of purses.

‘Place your coins in this hat, sirs,’ invited Gant as he held it out. ‘You’ll get it back with interest, I warrant.’ When the spectators hesitated, Nimbus grabbed the hat in grinning teeth to take it around. Twenty or more coins were tossed laughingly into the receptacle which was then taken back to Cornelius Gant. Taking hold of the hat, he pulled out a gold coin and held it up.

‘Who gave you this, Nimbus?’

The horse picked out the donor at once and nudged him. Gant indicated another man and asked how much he had contributed. Nimbus promptly tapped his foot three times and three coins were returned to their astonished owner. And so it went on. The animal was able to identify both the giver and the amount given until the hat was completely empty. The applause was vigorous and coins came back more plentifully. By way of an encore, Gant let his partner tip the takings onto the ground so that they could be added up with a tapped hoof. Nimbus was a precise accountant whose nimble work brought forth another hail of money.

It was a gratifying response to an unusual act but it was not only his full purse that pleased Gant. He took more satisfaction from the impact they had had upon the watching patrons. Those men would spread the word throughout and beyond Eastcheap. The seeds of reputation would be sown and future audiences would be primed and set up.

Cornelius Gant and Nimbus had arrived.