The Playmaker (22 page)

How odd to think that, although I had now performed in more than forty plays, this was only the second I had seen in London. My ability to judge it as a spectator was compromised, for by now I knew too well the workings of a play, and could not enter easily into the spirit of it. Just as well, for my purpose was not to be swept away but to compare this work to
The Winter's Tale
. The names were all changed—Fawnia for Perdita, Dorastus for Florizel, Podosto for Leontes, and so on—and though similar in its unfolding, the story ended very differently: the ruined queen died indeed and the king, overcome by his many sins (not least of which is falling in love with his own daughter) kills himself. The words seemed inferior to Shakespeare's overall, in ways I could not have explained, and I caught no outright borrowings.

Edward Alleyn, one of London's great players, carried the role of King Podosto with such authority that when he trod the boards, the audience fell into his hands. Some scenes without him dragged out too long. The groundlings fidgeted and made rude remarks, and Robin found fault with all the boy players. To the queen: “Look to your hands, mistress! Meat hooks, more like!” Of the shepherd's wife: “A tub of guts in a dress, and a voice like courting cats.” In my ear: “Kit could best them all together, with a meal sack over his head.”

In the middle of the fourth act, while Dorastus paid court to his love (and took too long about it) the groundlings grew restless again. “Behold the beauteous Fawnia,” Robin said to me, “simpering like a milkmaid—”

“Quiet!” I hissed, suddenly most attentive. For my ears had picked up, amongst the rustles and whispers, lines that rang out clear and silver as bell-tones:

“What ails thee?” Starling whispered, noticing my violent start.

I shook my head, unable to speak. Those words were set in my brain, chiseled as deep as our Lord's Prayer. My father wrote them to his love. They were on a piece of parchment folded up in a leather wallet, which was stolen from me. My father wrote them. “My secret wound enbalmed, my hidden hurts healed …” My father.

“And mark how Dorastus takes her hand,” groaned Robin. “He eyes her like she was a side of beef in the market.”

The rest of the play was dead to me, though I had to notice when Edward Alleyn stabbed himself in the final scene and expired in a fine crimson gush. The Admiral's Men have developed gory deaths to perfection with their artful use of sheep's
bladders and blood. The audience, completely won over, roared their approval when the players assembled on stage for the concluding dance.

“I must know the playmaker,” I said, once the dance was over and the audience thronged toward the open doors.

“Why bother with that?” Robin scoffed. “This piece of barnyard turf is so slight the public will forget it in two weeks. The Company has naught to fear.”

“That matters not. I must know the playmaker.”

“What's this?” Robin's dark, finely shaped eyebrows rose. “Did you hear something? Did he rob us?”

“No, it's not that,” I said, backing away. “Let it be, Rob,” Starling put in, with a searching look at me.

“I'll let it be, but I'm not disposed to linger here among these— dabblers.”

“Go on then,” I said. “Start your way home and I'll take the Bridge if I miss your boat. Go on. I mean it.” I left them staring after me as I vaulted onto the stage and aimed directly for the tiring rooms behind it, ignoring the outraged cries of a stage boy who was kneeling on the boards, scrubbing up sheep's blood.

One can ask nearly anything if it is done with an air of authority, and I went some ways toward my goal before the Admiral's Men caught on to me. To my repeated questioning, one player after another shook his head and declared upon his soul he could not remember the name of the author, even though the work was
heralded as a new play. Some thought it was a wit from Oxford, others an unknown hopeful. One swore the playmaker was dead until reminded that he was thinking of Robert Greene. In time I came face to face with Edward Alleyn himself, who had stripped off his kingly robes and sheep's bladder and now was lacing a splendid velvet doublet while a dresser combed out his perfumed hair. “The author?” He wrinkled his handsome brow. “‘Twas Owen Mercer—was it not, John?” This he addressed to another actor passing nearby, who thought about it for a moment.

“True, Ned—though he wrote the old version. Ben Jonson brushed it up for us last summer, dost recall? Wait, boy.” The actor took a closer look at me. “I've seen you about, haven't I? On the stage? Soft! I have it—”

“Thank you, sirs.” I bowed quickly out of their presence. “I am in your debt. Pardon, sirs. …” I turned then and made a hasty exit, followed by a laugh and an exclamation in Alleyn's rich, rolling voice: “Oho! A
spy
!”

My brain was in a whirl with this new name to ponder, but all the same, while passing through the door I felt a tug on my memory. I stopped and turned, and studied the rose carved into the upper hatch, wondering why it seemed familiar. Roses are seen everywhere about London, notably in the insignia of the Queen. But what set this rose apart was its stem, a curl in the shape of the letter “C,” bearing three thorns. I knew I had seen it before, under quite different circumstances; then it came to me.

A curious bystander would have been much amazed at what he
saw next, for I stood in the entrance to the Rose Theater and solemnly banged my head against the door. The last time I had seen this design, it was stamped upon a leather portfolio clutched in the arm of a supposed law clerk, a man now known to me as John Beecham.

I
F
T
HAT
W
HICH
W
AS
L
OST
…

took longer than expected getting home, first missing Robin's boat and then stopping at the White Horse Tavern on Cheapside, a gathering place for poets and balladeers. Here I looked for Ben Jonson. I did not find him, but after a few questions I learned where he was staying, and that was some compensation for the trouble I was in when I got home. Masters Condell, Heminges, and Shakespeare all pounced upon me, much annoyed after their long wait for my version of
Fawnia and Dorastus
. I had intended to ask them if they knew anything of a playmaker named Mercer, but in their current temper this seemed presumptuous. After my report, and a brief discussion, the men determined that the play offered by their rivals was not enough like
Shakespeare's to disrupt their schedule. Then the visitors departed and Master Condell laid a part on me to learn for the morrow. As I was also to double as a soldier, he insisted on putting Robin and me through the entire manual of arms in the garden, and by the time we finished it was dark.

I considered slipping out after curfew to continue the search, but decided to be a model apprentice instead: learn my part, obey my betters, and humbly ask for an hour off in the morning. Master Condell regarded me with suspicion when I claimed to have urgent business in the city, but in the end he let me go, “For one hour only. Mind you're back by eleven, or you'll be fined—or worse.” I set off down Shoreditch Road as swift as winged-heeled Mercury.

Lucky for me, Jonson's current lodging was not far from Aldgate, on the northeast end of London, but still it was a long distance to take at a run. I arrived in a sweat, panting, “Where's Master Jonson's room?” The housemaid mutely pointed up the stairs, thinking perhaps that I bore an urgent message for him. When I pounded up the stairs and hammered on the first door, the landlady arrived and demanded loudly what this was about. Despite the shouting, my ears picked up the sound of a man's voice behind the door. Hoping it was an invitation to come in, I lifted the latch and stepped inside a shuttered room, dark and close as a den.

“This,” came a voice from the bed, “had best be a matter of life or death.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “N-not death, but something meaningful to my life, sir.”

“Is it? What's o'clock?”

“About a quarter beyond ten, sir.”

I'll not repeat his next remarks, but once they were out, his temper improved a little. “Open the shutters, boy, and let me see who you are.”

I found the shutters by the slats of light glaring through them, swung them open, and turned back to the figure sprawled fully clothed upon the bed, now leaning upon his elbows and blinking fiercely at me. Ben Jonson had a boisterous reputation, but it appeared that literary pursuits had kept him up late the night before. The table by the window was covered with papers that drifted like snow around the inkpot. Blackened little commas— shavings from his quill pen—were sprinkled about randomly, as if in the heat of inspiration he dared not pause to throw them away.

“I give it up,” he said then, in a voice as gritty as sand. “The face eludes me. State your name and business.”

“My name is Richard, sir, and I apprentice with the Lord Chamberlain's Men. You've seen me—that is, I've seen you—well, what I was wondering … in your time in London have you ever known—or known of—a playmaker named Mercer?”

As I stammered to a pause, he lowered himself until his thick bricklayer's arms were stretched flat upon the mattress and his deep-set eyes fixed upon the timbered ceiling. “Apollo, god of wisdom, lend me patience,” he said. “Half the poets in London could tell you of that scape-grace. Why drag
me
out of a sound sleep?”

My heart made a leap at this, but whether from joy or dread I
knew not. “If you p-please, sir, I … trust your wit and memory. And because … you're right about there being no seacoast in Bohemia. I looked it up in Master Condell's atlas.”

He stared at me, then tossed back his head and let out a great bellow of a laugh, as frightening in its way as a wild animal let from a cage. “Well flattered! I'll strike a bargain with you then, young sir. Fetch me a pint of ale from the Bull, two doors south, and I'll tell you what I know.”

This put a strain upon my allotted time, but it could not be helped—I rushed down the stairs, ducked into the Bull Tavern, and completed my mission before Ben Jonson had fairly got out of bed. Then, after combing his hair and beard and taking a deep draught of the ale and allowing it to settle—during which time I nearly burst with anxiety—he told me what he knew.

Owen Mercer had appeared in London during the summer of the Armada, as near as my informant could recall, though it may have been a little later. He hailed from some northern province: no one knew precisely where, as the man was not consistent about his origins. He had set out to make himself the darling of the London stage, grinding out three or four plays per season, many of which were performed—“But ne'er seen thereafter,” Ben Jonson said, with a snort. Jonson himself arrived in London much later, but his path often crossed Mercer's at the taverns where poets and playmakers were apt to gather.

By then Mercer's star was in decline, and he had stirred up much bad feeling against himself. A clever fellow, he was known
for gaining one's confidence and looting one's mind.
Fawnia and Dorastus,
for example: scarcely had the ink dried upon Robert Greene's book than Mercer had tailored it into a play, never even bothering to change the characters' names. He also earned ill fame as a gambler and racked up debts he could not possibly repay. When Jonson saw him last, it was in a low dive surrounded by worthless companions, claiming that his latest work had attracted the attention of no less a personage than Lord Hurleigh (my ears perked up even more at the mention of this name). Mercer expected the gentleman to shower him with money, whereupon all the unfortunate misunderstandings of the past would be blotted out. In the meantime, perhaps Master Jonson could lend him a few shillings. “Hah,” said Master Jonson, his scorn returning with the memory. “Money may not remain overlong in my purse, but I don't throw it down wells.”