The Playmaker (27 page)

A great debt. Called in. Watch and wait. My heart flew up into my throat. I tore the paper in half, then put the two halves together and tore them again, and again and again, until the message was reduced to scraps. Then I scooped them up in my hand and rushed back down the stairs, through the great room and kitchen, and out the door of the buttery, making for the servants' privy in one corner of the yard. Once safely inside, I tossed
all the fluttering pieces of paper, with the seal, into the muck below. I stood in the near-darkness, one hand against the rough board wall. But the sensation of relief lasted only a moment. The burden of the message could not be made to disappear.

Starling was waiting for me when I opened the privy door—not a welcome sight.

“What?” I nearly shouted. “Is this where fashionable ladies and gentlemen meet now? Is there no place I can be at peace?”

“I have somewhat to show you,” she replied, quite calmly. “Come with me.” Without another word she turned and led the way past the garden and around the house, where the Condells were gathering for dinner. It crossed my mind that they would miss us and exchange glances when we came in late together, but Starling had no regard for the looks of the thing—or any other thing, else she would have marked my state, observant as she was. I followed her to the street and down to the corner, where moments earlier she had so abruptly left me. Here she turned and pointed to the row of hawthorns.

“Look at it. Four months ago the trees were all in leaf and from here you could see little behind them. True?” I nodded. “You remember Ned's tale of the bear?”

“I remember.”

“Now suppose—” I could see she hoped to present the calm face of a master of logic, but the ferment of her thoughts bubbled through. “Suppose you are Ned, standing here. You see a gentleman walking toward us on the street—a gentleman with a golden
beard and orange cape, crowned in a dark velvet cap with a partridge feather sticking out the side of it.”

“Star. I told you to let it alone—”

“This is only a surmise. You may do as you will with it. Mind the partridge feather; the eye goes at once to that, and marks not so much the rest of him, especially his face. Therefore, the feather goes first.” She trotted several paces away, then turned and started toward me slowly, reaching up her right hand to pull an imaginary ornament from an imaginary cap. “He can hide it away in his doublet. What is left is a plain black or brown cap, squarish like a lawyer might wear. By now he is at the corner, where he may pause a moment to make sure no one is passing. With his way clear, he steps behind the trees and reaches around his back”—she imitated this action—“where, under the cloak, is room to hide a barrister's gown. He pulls it forth, which he can do still walking, and throws the gown over cloak, sword, doublet, all. The beard may come off. I wager it does, and he can pull up his cowl to cover any redness it leaves on his jaw. In any event, he goes in as a fop and emerges as a lawyer. A changed man—or we may say, a changed beast.”

I passed a hand over my face. “Such as a bear.”

O“Now mark, a child of Ned's fanciful turn of mind could see a black robe appear where somewhat else was expected, and call it a black bear, could he not?”

“Especially after being exposed to your fanciful turn of mind.”

She waved that aside. “Follow you now what this might mean?”

“I follow, but like it not.”

“Meaning?” “Peter Kenton was John Beecham in disguise.” She clapped her hands with a crow of triumph, a delighted response I could not share.

“Or,” she proposed, “John was Peter in disguise.
Or
—” Her expression heightened, as though struck by a new thought: “John and Peter are both manifestations of someone we've not even met.”

I stared at her, then convulsively shook my head and started back across the street. She fell in beside me, obviously disappointed in my lackluster response to her brilliance. “It was clever of you to work it out,” I said, by way of compensation.

She made a modest shrug. “I only thought you should know. It is for you to act upon. I do wish the man would appear again, now that I know what to ask him—but be assured, I won't seek him out.”

I could only nod in reply. I knew the man might well appear again, for I had just heard from him to that effect. But all my questions for him now boiled down to one:
What do you want from me
?

All Hallow's Eve blew gustily and raw, from mid-morning all the way through a performance of
The Spanish Tragedy
. While an audience filling less than a third of the Theater milled about and shivered, we of the Company held on to our hats and fought to keep our voices steady. Afterward we walked—or ran, more like—through a tavern scene that would be played the next
day should winds and rain permit, then the Lord Chamberlain's Men broke rehearsal early and gathered in the tiring room to discuss a business matter. As the days were growing ever shorter, Jacob and Watt, the Heminges' footman, had arrived with torches to light us home.

“Fearful stirrings in the city,” I heard Jacob say to Robin.

“Why not?” was the reply. “‘Tis All Hallow's Eve.” Robin had already confided to me his intention to “slip out” this night.

Jacob shook his head. “More than that. There's real trouble on the boil. They say the papists are rising again. The master needs come quickly so we can get safe home, lest you fancy your head broke.”

The master was still in conference over a matter of lease and rents. Vital as the question was, our immediate peril seemed greater. I approached Master Condell to break it to him.

“How's that? Trouble?” he said to me, with an irritated frown. “Nothing out of common for All Hallow's Eve. Still, 'tis certain there's no untangling this coil tonight. John, shall we be off?”

Master Heminges agreed, and the party broke up with mutual mutterings and head shakings. We formed our usual procession, with the torch bearers in front and Robin, Kit, and me bringing up the rear. The air nipped as we started down Shoreditch Road; the setting sun spread a lurid glow of purple and scarlet over the scattered huts of Finsbury Fields. A quarter-moon hung over Bishopsgate like a strung bow, and bonfires pulsed across the landscape, built to discourage the demons abroad this night, or perhaps
welcome them. Whether they believed in demons or not, laborers and peasants in the country had used All Hallow's Eve as an excuse to get drunk and break all the commandments, and I suspected city folk did the same. Kit's first words bore this out.

“Are you for tonight?” he asked Robin, artfully shading his words just under our masters' conversation.

“Doubt not. I'll slip out on the second watch and meet thee on Cheapside. Buckler's Tavern?”

“No, the Wheel and Distaff. I know some lads there.”

“Content. And what say you to Richard here, as one of our party? Tomorrow is my birthday—we can make a proper celebration.”

Kit's pale eyes went to me, a flash in the gloaming. “What says he?”

I saw mockery in that glance, which pricked more than it should. “I say, if you mean to throw yourself in a brawl and get your noble face hacked, I had best stay home and learn your part for tomorrow.”

“No, Richard,” Rob put in. “That's not the way of it. He's a madcap, true, but I keep him out of trouble.” I heard a short, ironic grunt from the madcap and Robin went on more earnestly. “Credit us with more sense than to run a risk. Will you come?”

“Will our master player permit me?”

“I am not your master,” Kit said, his voice quite level and without any hidden meaning that I could catch. “You may come or no, as you will.”

“Will you?” Robin asked eagerly.

We were approaching Bishopsgate, where another bonfire blazed up against the city wall and the cavorting figures around it cast weird shadows. Too late I recognized that I had put myself in a bind: to refuse, now that I had been invited, would look like cowardice or ingratitude.

“I may,” was my answer—but we all knew that I would.

The Wheel and Distaff was roaring at half past eleven. Robin and I walked in upon a crowd of patrons engaged in a game of snapdragons: attempting to sip raisins out of a dish of flaming brandy without singeing their beards. Kit was seated below a smoky window surrounded by his “lads.” There were three of these, all common apprentices by their looks, and all armed. Rare is the Londoner who does not carry a weapon of some sort, though apprentices are limited to daggers no more than eight inches in length. As one of these weapons was employed in paring an apple, I could see that the boys were pushing that limit. Play lovers all, they fawned upon Kit and welcomed Robin and me as extensions of his glory. “Well met,” Robin giggled, sliding onto the bench beside Kit and drawing back almost at once. “Oho! Might this be a length of steel I perceive under thy nighted cloak?”

“It may,” came the reply, “but you'll hold your tongue about it.”

“What?” I hissed, well under the current of tavern noise. “You have a sword?” He nodded coolly. Rob had told me he went armed
for some of these midnight excursions, but I thought he meant daggers. By law, only gentlemen could carry swords. This promised more excitement than I wished. “If you bring on a fight, Kit, by this hand I swear I'll not stay to see it or lend you any aid.”

“I'll want no aid from you,” he replied, in his carrying voice as smooth and supple as a snake's body. “Go now, if you please, and may the sniveling goddess of the fainthearted speed your path.” His little crew cheered at this. I saw now why he put up with them: they were his protection, in case he got himself in too deep.

“Come around, the both of you,” complained Robin. “Mend your quarrel and be at peace for one night.” He stood to fetch two tankards from the shelf above his head and poured for himself and me from a flagon of ale. “What's afoot?”

Kit replenished his own cup. “More than mischief. We may stand in the way of doing our country some good this night.”

“The bloody Catholics are on the rise again,” one of his henchmen put in. (Kit had introduced them as Nat, Hal, and Jamie, but I never learned who was which.) “That's all the talk abroad.”

“That's always the talk,” said I. Suddenly thirsty, I drank down half the ale in my cup. There must have been a touch of scorn in my voice, for when I looked at them again, their stares were hostile. “Well, isn't it? I've been in London scarce seven months and all I hear about is the bloody Catholics.”

“We must be always on our guard,” one of the boys piped up. I shrugged and knocked back the rest of the ale. It seemed stronger
than usual, or perhaps only affected me that way, as I had little else on my stomach.

“True,” said Kit. “We must be on our guard, for in the wide world there is no creature as subtle and conniving as a papist.” He turned on me a look of perfect composure tinged with mockery. I abruptly recalled another time he had looked at me thus: on the stage, breaking my heartfelt portrayal of Perdita with an elegant fart.

I felt myself waxing hot. “Aye, there is no creature so cunning as a papist, unless it be an actor. But what would we do without them, else we would have no excuse to cry havoc or raise hell in the streets?”

“Why, you talk like a papist yourself,” snarled one of the boys.

“No fear, no fear,” Robin said nervously. “Richard is as true a Protestant as any of us—you should see how he dotes on Foxe.”

“Does he?” Kit murmured. “Does he read for his own edification, or is he making notes?”

I scowled. “Notes for what?”

“Why, for gutting, burning, and otherwise torturing Protestants, when your faction comes to power again.”

His lads guffawed at this, and I flushed with anger. The anger, a long time building, went so deep it made me speechless; I could only glare and sputter until my mind closed upon some words not my own. Words from a play: “D-do you bite your thumb at me, sir?”

The three apprentices let out a collective breath, sharp with ale fumes. They recognized this line from
Romeo and Juliet
and knew
what came after: a fight. A fight between actors was as good as any other, to their minds—perhaps better, for the novelty of it. Kit's reply showed he was willing to oblige them. “I d-do bite my thumb, sir.”

“But do you bite your thumb at
me
? Sir.”

“Heaven defend us!” Robin rose and grabbed the nearest dagger from Nat, Hal, or Jamie, then leaned over the board with an arm twisted behind his back and the blade pointed up. “If the two of you are so bent to carve up actor's flesh, then take mine! Only take it off the bum, where it won't be missed!”

After a very brief, stunned pause, the boys laughed. Kit smiled with one side of his mouth only and whacked the part of Rob's anatomy thus exposed. Somewhat deflated, I settled back on the bench and rubbed a hand over my face. Robin straightened up, with an anxious look that belied his merry words. “Is that sacrifice enough to make you friends?”

“Friends?” repeated Kit. “No.” (Friends? thought I.
Never
.) “But we may be allies, if only for tonight.”

Robin settled for that and poured another cup of ale all around. “Content. But you've yet to say what adventure we're allies for.”

Nat, Hal, and Jamie then contributed their notions, mostly having to do with vandalizing or otherwise tormenting suspected Catholics. Robin seemed willing, but I had already descended to this particular hell and had no desire to go back to it. Kit merely drew apart in his peculiar manner and implied, when asked, that such infantile tricks were not to his taste.

“What then?” asked the boys, in whining tones. “What to do?”

“Leave it to the moment,” said he. “Let fortune guide us. We'll venture out after this round and see for ourselves what's afoot.” This put them in a better humor, as if aimless mischief in Kit's company were better than mischief by design with anyone else. In tribute to their devotion he raised his cup.
“Bibete ex omnia—”

I cannot explain what happened to me then. I was stretched like a wire, weighted at both ends with fears and worries and enemies known and unknown. One of them was this boy, whom I could have admired so easily, yet who despised me for no reason and mocked me with words that had become a nightmare. I knew he was ignorant of their meaning to me, but my last thread snapped; I popped up and threw my remaining ale in his face.