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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Nicholas Bracewell
- Sprache: Englisch
One play, two murders and a grievous miscarriage of justice After a calamitous performance and the death of one of their own, Lord Westfield's Men are more than despondent. So when the mysterious Simon Chaloner follows Nicholas Bracewell home with an offer of a new play, anonymously penned, his offer seems too good to refuse. It is a story of a simple death used to conceal a greater treachery, perhaps even treason. But they could never have known how dangerous one play could be. Or how telling the tale of a murdered mathematician might put them all in jeopardy. It is up to Nick to once more save the acting troupe from disaster, to reveal the traitor that threatens both Queen and country, and to prove who really killed The Roaring Boy.
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Seitenzahl: 406
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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The Roaring Boy
An Elizabethan Mystery
EDWARD MARSTON
To my good friends Tom and Enid Schantz in appreciation of their twenty-five tireless years as Moguls of Mystery
We’ll have him murdered as he walks the streets. In London many alehouse ruffians keep, Which, as I hear, will murder men for gold. They shall be soundly fee’d to pay him home.
– Anonymous, Arden of Faversham
Contents
Chapter One
Death came calling at a most inconvenient hour and in a singularly inappropriate place. The play being performed that afternoon, before an attentive audience in the yard of the Queen’s Head, was still deep in Act Three when its main character was summarily excised from the dramatis personae. It was an eerie sensation. Out went Alonso, the exiled Duke of Genoa: in came panic and confusion among Westfield’s Men. Each actor who stormed offstage brought fresh protest into the tiring-house.
‘Ben Skeat has fallen sick.’
‘The man is drunk.’
‘Fast asleep.’
‘I could get no sound from him.’
‘His memory has crumbled with age.’
‘Fright has seized him.’
‘Madness.’
‘Sorcery. Ben is plainly bewitched.’
Nicholas Bracewell, the company’s book holder, had only a limited view of the actor from his station behind the scenes but he could see enough to sense a crisis. In the habit of a friar, Ben Skeat sat silent and motionless in his chair. Instead of dominating the scene as the play required, he was completely detached from it. Nicholas felt a stab of pain as he realised what must have happened. It gave him no satisfaction to be able to contradict the other diagnoses of Duke Alonso’s condition. Ben Skeat was the oldest and most experienced member of the troupe, known for his prodigious feats of memory and for his total reliability. There was no chance that he was ill, drunk, asleep or lost for words. Still less had he taken leave of his senses or become spellbound.
Only one explanation remained and it gave Nicholas another sharp pang. Skeat was an unsung hero of Westfield’s Men. A versatile and talented actor, he was imbued with a deep love of the theatre, steeped in its traditions and wholly committed to his volatile profession. The irony was that he had a rare leading role in The Corrupt Bargain. Skeat’s more usual place was in the second rank of players where he habitually offered rock-solid support as a loyal earl, a worthy archbishop, a fearless judge, a conscientious seneschal or a white-bearded sage. He exuded a benevolence that invariably got him cast as a symbol of goodness.
Now, for once, he was being accused of downright evil.
‘He is thwarting me!’ said Barnaby Gill as he flounced into the tiring-house in the costume of a court jester. ‘There is wanton malice at work here. Ben Skeat is determined to ruin my performance.’
‘Not by design,’ said Nicholas.
‘I gave him his cue, he merely stared at me.’
‘Ben had no choice in the matter.’
‘I would expect you to take his side,’ said Gill with a characteristic snort. ‘It was on your foolish advice that he was given the role in the first place. And what does the idiot do? He dried up on me. I wait for his twenty-line speech and he stays hiding under his cowl.’ He stamped a peevish foot. ‘I’ll not abide it, Nicholas! His conduct is unforgivable. Had I not delivered a speech extempore to cover the gap in nature, the play would have fallen apart.’
Nicholas nodded. ‘You must do that office again.’
‘Never!’
‘Ben Skeat has spoken his last line.’
‘Do not look to me to rescue him.’
‘I look to all of you.’
‘Why so?’
‘He has passed away,’ said Nicholas, quietly.
‘What!’ howled Gill. ‘While I was acting with him! That is an insult that cannot be borne. I am mortified.’
His exclamation sent the rest of the company into a state of wild alarm and it was all Nicholas could do to calm them down so that the commotion would not be heard by the spectators. The book holder confided the awful truth in a whisper. Ben Skeat was dead. Cold terror spread quickly. Superstitious by nature, the actors turned the tiring-house into a Bedlam of speculation.
‘We shall be chased off the stage.’
‘This is a judgement on us.’
‘Someone has poisoned him to bring us down.’
‘I spy a devilish plot here.’
‘There is a murderer in our midst.’
‘Who will be his next victim?’
‘Abandon the play!’
‘Take to your heels!’
‘Run for your lives!’
‘Stop!’ ordered Nicholas, planting his burly frame before the exit and holding out his arms. ‘Ben Skeat has died but it may well be by natural means. Would you desert him at a time when he most needs you? Will you behave like cowards when valour is in request? Will you inflict such a dark stain on the reputation of Westfield’s Men?’ He pointed a finger at the makeshift stage behind the curtains. ‘The play must go on.’
Gill was distraught. ‘How can we act with a corpse?’
‘You have already taught us the way,’ soothed the book holder. ‘When no words came from Duke Alonso, you provided your own. Listen carefully and you will hear that both the Provost and Count Emilio follow your example.’
As they strained their ears, the company became aware that a small miracle was taking place out there in the sunshine. With its central character reduced to the role of a stage property, the play was somehow continuing on its way. Edmund Hoode, the company’s actor-playwright, was in somnolent vein as a kind Provost who escorts the disguised Duke to the condemned cell so that they may comfort the hapless Emilio. In the latter role, Owen Elias was at his best, suffering in the shadow of the headsman’s axe while busily plundering all the speeches for which Ben Skeat no longer had a use.
Edmund Hoode was not to be outdone. He had laboured long and hard over The Corrupt Bargain. The sudden departure of its main character was not going to disable his play as long as he had breath in his body to rescue it. Renowned for his comedies, Hoode had tackled a more tragic theme in his latest offering. The Corrupt Bargain was set in Genoa. The exiled Duke Alonso returns in disguise to seize power from his tyrannical younger brother, Don Pedro. Injustice runs riot in his unhappy land. Alonso is particularly struck by the plight of a devoted brother and sister, Emilio and Bianca.
Wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit, the brave Count Emilio is sentenced to death. The beautiful Bianca goes to Don Pedro to plead for her brother’s release. The tyrant is consumed with such a powerful lust for her that he offers her a corrupt bargain. If she consents to give her body to him, her brother will be set free. Bianca is duly horrified by the choice confronting her. She must lose either her virginity or her brother. Which is the more precious? While his beloved sister agonises over her predicament, Emilio spends anguished hours in prison. When Alonso calls upon him in the guise of a friar, he tries to offer a modicum of comfort to the prisoner.
Owen Elias was not going to waste the most telling speech in the scene. Leaning in close to the lifeless Ben Skeat, he cocked an ear and wrinkled his brow.
‘What says my holy father?’ he asked.
Edmund Hoode seized gratefully on the cue. Bending over the hooded figure, he pretended to listen to the friar’s words of wisdom before relaying them to the condemned man.
Hearken to his advice.
Subdue this groundless fear of death’s approach
And fast embrace him as your dearest friend.
You run from him who can your pain remove,
Your sins redeem, your sister’s honour save,
And all the rigours of this woeful world
Lift from your back. The end of life is but
The start of joy. Speak thus to welcome death.
“Light my way to heaven with burning torch
And take me from this hell of durance vile.”
The Provost was not merely recovering words from beyond the grave, he was giving the rest of the company invaluable time to consider how to proceed. In the version of The Corrupt Bargain that they had rehearsed that morning, Duke Alonso went on to overthrow his brother, restore good government, pluck Emilio from the block itself and marry the grateful Bianca. Such a resolution was now impossible. A cruel tyrant could not be ousted by a dead friar.
Frantic rewriting was needed and Nicholas Bracewell rose to the occasion with customary speed. Since he held the only complete copy of the play, he knew the piece almost as well as its author and saw the advantage of having Edmund Hoode in a role where he might help to pilot them all home. Sudden decisions were made with an instinctive skill.
‘Take note,’ said Nicholas to the remainder of the cast. ‘The Provost will banish the usurper, Don Pedro. The new Duke will be Count Emilio. We lose Alonso but his place in the action will be taken by the Jester. Bianca will marry the Provost.’
The firmness of his voice instilled confidence into his fellows and most of them were content to obey. There was one notable exception.
‘This is lunacy, Nicholas,’ complained Barnaby Gill.
‘It is our only hope of salvation.’
‘Then we are doomed. I am a court jester not a friar.’
‘Could you not be both?’ argued Nicholas. ‘To aid the company in its hour of need, could you not be two or twenty characters if it preserve our good standing?’
‘I have my own reputation to consider.’
It is difficult to stand on one’s dignity while wearing a cap and bells. When Barnaby Gill folded his arms and lifted a defiant chin, he simply appeared ridiculous. He was Petulance incarnate. His bells jingled in mockery.
‘Think of Ben Skeat,’ urged Nicholas.
Gill was unmoved. ‘Did he think of me when he went to his Maker in the middle of my performance?’
‘We have a duty to our audience.’
‘That duty is to give them The Corrupt Bargain, not some mauled and tattered version of it.’
‘Our patron is here today.’
‘Then we must not abuse him with this profanity.’
‘Would you rather send him away with two acts of the piece yet unplayed?’ said Nicholas. ‘Lord Westfield would be affronted, his companions would be disappointed and the rest of the spectators will demand their money back. Is that your wish?’ His final point was his most persuasive. ‘Master Firethorn would never forgive you.’
‘What care I?’ retorted Gill. ‘It is because of him that we are in this parlous state!’
But his resistance was now only token. The name of Lawrence Firethorn had brought him to heel. Firethorn was the company’s actor-manager and acknowledged star, the man for whom the role of Duke Alonso had been specifically written. Ben Skeat had only been elevated to the part because Lawrence Firethorn was indisposed. Their absent leader would pour molten contempt upon them if they dared to abandon a play in mid-performance, and the chief target of his attack would be the reluctant court jester. Barnaby Gill was Firethorn’s greatest rival, a brilliant clown who felt that his own art was vastly superior to that of any other player and that he himself was chiefly responsible for the continued success of Westfield’s Men. He could not permit himself to be seen as the architect of their downfall.
There was a more tempting consideration. With Lawrence Firethorn off the stage, Gill’s ascendancy would go unchallenged. He could rule the roost like a Chanticleer. Improvising scenes in order to cover the untimely death of Duke Alonso would place an immense burden on him but it was one he would cheerfully bear in view of the potential reward. Instead of merely stealing the occasional scene as the court jester, he could now pillage the whole play.
‘Take your positions,’ said Nicholas.
Act Three was coming to a close as the Provost offered a final crumb of comfort to Count Emilio. Both men were due to leave the prison cell in the company of the exiled Duke but the latter was clearly in no position to join them. Ben Skeat’s removal from the action was the main priority and Nicholas Bracewell took the matter into his own hands.
‘Dick Honeydew,’ he called.
‘Yes?’ said the boy apprentice.
‘We will have your lament now.’
‘But I do not sing it for two more scenes.’
‘It is needed presently.’
‘As you wish.’
‘Sing loud and clear, Dick.’
‘I will do my best.’
The boy apprentice cleared his throat and tried to stop his hands from trembling. In a dark wig and a brocade gown heavily ornamented with jewels, Richard Honeydew was a most winsome Bianca. Nicholas sent word up to the balcony overhead where Peter Digby and his consort of musicians waited to introduce the next scene with a fanfare. On the instructions of the book holder, the trumpets were replaced by the strains of a lute. Bianca stepped gracefully on to the stage with Nicholas himself in attendance. He crossed to the inert figure of Duke Alonso and gave an indulgent smile.
Our holy friar sleeps softly like a child.
I’ll straight convey him to a proper bed.
Ben Skeat was lifted bodily and taken swiftly away. His exit was covered by a tearful Bianca, who wept bitterly into a handkerchief before singing a lament to the accompaniment of the lute. Caught up in the emotion of the moment, the audience soon forgot the strange behaviour of the friar but it continued to exercise his fellows behind the scenes.
Nicholas lay the corpse down in the tiring-house.
‘Whatever has happened to him?’ wailed Edmund Hoode.
‘He is gone,’ said Owen Elias sadly. ‘I saw his eyes flicker, then it was all over. Poor Ben!’
Hoode shuddered. ‘Dead? What a comment on my play!’
‘It may yet be saved, Edmund,’ said Nicholas.
He acquainted the newcomers with the changes he had made in the action of the piece, drawing a groan of protest from the author. Owen Elias took a more practical view. If the afternoon were not to end in chaos, then the amended version of The Corrupt Bargain had to be played to the hilt. Duke Alonso had evidently gone into permanent exile.
Nicholas ordered the participants in the next scene to stand by, then signalled their entrance as Bianca swept off to sympathetic applause. The villainous Don Pedro was now onstage for five minutes or more with his cohorts. Temporary relief was offered. As in most of his plays, Hoode rested the central character in Act Four so that his protagonist could burst back into the action – restored and refreshed – in the final act. Nicholas Bracewell took advantage of the lull.
He carried Ben Skeat to a quiet corner and laid him gently on the floor. As he pushed back the hood, he saw the unmistakable signs of death. The mouth was slack, the skin white, the eyes stared sightlessly. No breath stirred, no pulse could be felt. An old man had passed peacefully away among his fellows at the very height of his career.
It grieved Nicholas that he was unable to treat the corpse with all due reverence but the play had prior claims. Raising the body up a few inches, he carefully divested it of the friar’s habit so that the disguise could be used by the court jester. He then covered Skeat with a cloak and looked up at the sorrowful faces all around him.
‘Play on, sirs. It is what Ben would have wanted.’
‘We owe it to him,’ agreed Owen Elias.
‘But my work is being mangled!’ hissed Edmund Hoode.
‘Would you rather call a halt to the proceedings?’
Nicholas threw down a challenge that he knew would be ignored. Unlike Barnaby Gill, the playwright would never put selfish concerns before the good of the company. Survival was the order of the day and Hoode recognised that. It was time to unite with his fellows to bring The Corrupt Bargain safely into port, even if the harbour was not the one that the author had originally intended.
‘Tell us what to do, Nick,’ he said. ‘Guide us through.’
‘Stand close and hear me out.’
Snatching up the prompt book once more, Nicholas flicked through the pages and reiterated his decisions. Westfield’s Men listened intently though their eyes occasionally strayed to the supine figure of their colleague in the corner. Ben Skeat had spent a lifetime responding to the various crises that were thrown up regularly by a capricious profession. It fell to them to meet this dire emergency with the courage and imagination that the old actor would have shown.
Two plays now ran side by side. What the audience saw was an attenuated version of The Corrupt Bargain but the drama taking place behind the scenes was much more intense. Actors rehearsed new roles in a matter of seconds. Music was changed, entrances were altered, costumes were reassigned. George Dart, the smallest and most lowly of the assistant stagekeepers, was in a state of near-hysteria as the scenic devices he was due to move were given fresh locations. He soon had no idea what scene, what act, and what play they were engaged in, and simply hung on the commands of Nicholas Bracewell, praying that he would come through the ordeal without earning himself a sound beating.
Most of the actors adapted swiftly and successfully. Owen Elias, an ebullient Welshman, set a fine example as Count Emilio, turning speeches that he should have addressed to Duke Alonso into moving soliloquies. Edmund Hoode, too, was able to mould his part into the required shape, growing in confidence with each scene and slowly emerging as a worthy contender for the hand of Bianca. In this role, Richard Honeydew, youngest but easily the most gifted of the four apprentices, gave a faultless performance as the tragic maid and had the entire audience ready to defend his virginity.
The nature of the double drama was best illustrated by Barnaby Gill. Onstage, he was a revelation, expanding his role in all manner of ways to give other actors more time to think and to adjust accordingly. As the court jester, he was the licensed fool who was able to speak the harsh truth – albeit couched in riddles – to the wicked Don Pedro. He now introduced a range of jigs and hilarious songs that were a blaze of light in an otherwise dark tragedy. Gill borrowed freely from other plays in which he had shone and gave what was effectively a free-flowing exhibition of his remarkable comic skills.
Offstage, the actor’s Janus-face came into view.
‘I will not wear that friar’s habit!’ he snarled.
‘You must,’ insisted Nicholas.
‘It is a shroud lifted from a corpse!’
‘Ben Skeat has no more use for it now.’
‘Take it away. It smells of decay.’
‘We have no other costume fit for you.’
‘Find one!’ demanded Gill. ‘I’ll not touch that.’
A bell chimed to announce the scene in the cathedral. There was no time for niceties. Nicholas Bracewell grabbed the friar’s habit and fitted it unceremoniously over the spluttering Gill before propelling him on to the stage with a firm shove. The raving actor changed instantly into a serene friar and padded across the stage with measured tread to play a scene with the distraught Bianca. Nicholas allowed himself a sigh of relief. It was all too premature.
They were now into Act Five and exploring uncharted territory. With the friar re-entering the action, the scope and delicacy of their manoeuvres increased sharply. They had to pick their way line by line through the text, making constant revisions and refinements. Mistakes soon crept in. Speeches were either forgotten or delivered in the wrong sequence. Indeed, there was one moment when both Edmund Hoode and Barnaby Gill declaimed the same rhyming couplet from Duke Alonso in unison. It produced a restrained laugh in the assembled throng but that laugh became derisive when George Dart blundered onstage as a servant and promptly collided with a bench which now occupied a wholly new position. Instead of imparting his one line and quitting the stage, Dart stayed rooted to the spot and perspired dramatically with naked fear.
The Provost hustled him roughly towards the exit.
‘Come, man. Your message. What is’t?’
George Dart was pushed out of sight before he could deliver it and fresh sniggers arose. Barnaby Gill quelled them at once with an impromptu prayer. Since the audience believed him to be Duke Alonso in disguise, he used a voice as deep and mellifluous as that of Ben Skeat. A master of deft comedy, Gill showed that he could cope with more serious material when necessary. His sure-footed performance led the rest of the cast safely across the stepping-stones of the play and inculcated fresh hope in their hearts. The final scene at last came into view.
The stage was set for the execution of Count Emilio and the grim ritual was enacted with all due solemnity. Soldiers rushed on to the stage in the nick of time to pull the condemned man from beneath the axe, then arrest Don Pedro. Thanks to the intercession of the friar, the tyrant was finally deposed but he did not accept his fate meekly. He roared and ranted at all and sundry. Breaking free from his captors, he ran to the friar to throw back the man’s hood with a yell of “Cucullus non facit monachum” – the hood does not make the monk. There was a gasp from the audience.
Instead of revealing Duke Alonso as they expected, he exposed the head of the court jester. It was a moment of pure theatre, at once so startling and so comic that they did not know quite how to react and simply gaped in astonishment. Barnaby Gill gave them no time to discern the more farcical aspects of the play’s resolution. Showing admirable invention and no small degree of authority, he announced that the exiled Duke had died of a fever contracted during a visit to the prison. Alonso’s last wish was that Don Pedro should be overthrown and replaced by the more worthy rule of Count Emilio. The liberated prisoner was greeted with general acclamation by his new subjects.
There remained only one more strand of the play hanging loose and Owen Elias tied it off neatly. Beckoning his sister and the Provost to him, he joined their hands together in a symbolic gesture. Their marriage would be the first public event of his rule. The play ended with a formal dance, then the whole court went off to church for the nuptials.
The audience was pleasantly mystified. It was not the conclusion they had anticipated, and some of them felt obscurely cheated, but the mass of spectators glowed with approval. Applause was most generous. When Barnaby Gill led out the cast to savour their ovation, there were very few who noticed the absence of the exiled Duke of Genoa. While he lay dead in the tiring-house, The Corrupt Bargain was hailed. London had never seen anything quite like it before and, though the play had some puzzling elements and some baffling twists of plot, it also had an undeniable novelty.
Nicholas Bracewell remained behind the scenes and knelt beside his old friend with a sad smile. Ben Skeat deserved his fair share of that applause. Until the moment when he suddenly stepped out of the play, he was giving the finest performance of his career, clear-voiced, expressive and full of rich detail. Death had perhaps not intruded at such an unseemly hour, after all. It could be argued that Ben Skeat had been offered the most perfect exit for an actor.
‘Nobly done, friends!’
‘I hated every moment.’
‘We plucked triumph from disaster.’
‘It was intolerable.’
‘Have you ever known such excitement?’
‘Nor such misery.’
‘We have a victory to celebrate.’
‘But no strength left for celebration.’
Torn between exhilaration and exhaustion, Westfield’s Men came pouring into the tiring-house. The last echoes of applause were fading as they retired to their lair. Some were buoyed up by what they saw as a signal achievement while others merely wanted to collapse and lick their wounds. Owen Elias belonged to the former party and gave all within reach a hug of congratulation. Richard Honeydew, by contrast, was shivering with fear, all too conscious of the narrow escape they had just had. The other apprentices – Martin Yeo, John Tallis and Stephen Judd – were putting on a brave face but their knees were also knocking beneath their farthingales. George Dart was so grateful to have come through it all that he lapsed into frenzied giggling.
The twin poles of emotion were exemplified by Barnaby Gill and by Edmund Hoode, respectively. Gill was suffused with joy, thrilled to have survived a harrowing experience with such honour and basking in the glory of having led Westfield’s Men as its undoubted star. An audience which would normally flock out into Gracechurch Street with the name of Lawrence Firethorn on its lips would now talk of little else but Barnaby Gill. Hoode collected no such bounty from their two hours upon the stage. For him, it was a headlong descent into chaos. His play had been cut to shreds and his own performance, he felt, was a cruel travesty.
The severe strain had attacked his moon-shaped face like the slash of a knife. Pale, drawn and sagging with despair, he dropped down on to a stool beside Nicholas Bracewell.
‘That was the most corrupt bargain I ever made!’
‘How say you, Edmund?’
‘I was paid money for writing a dreadful play.’
‘A fine play,’ said Nicholas. ‘And well-received.’
‘No, Nick,’ moaned the other. ‘It was an assault on the intelligence of the spectators. They came to see a well-tuned tragedy and we gave them that discordant comedy of errors. Instead of displaying our art, we foist base, brown paper stuff on to them. It was shameful. I’ll never call myself “poet” again.’
‘The company did what was needful, Edmund.’
‘It destroyed my work.’
‘No,’ said Nicholas, ‘it refashioned it so that it might live to be played afresh another day.’
‘Never! The Corrupt Bargain died out on that stage.’
‘So did Ben Skeat.’ It was a timely reminder and it checked the flow of authorial recrimination. ‘We all regret what happened to your play this afternoon but it is Ben who deserves our sympathy. Your art continues: he will never tread the boards again.’
Edmund Hoode was chastened. He nodded in agreement, then lowered himself on to one knee before taking the edge of the cloak and lifting it back from Skeat’s face. The old actor gazed up at him with a look of posthumous apology. He was deeply sorry for the injury he had inflicted on his friend’s play but the exiled Duke had no choice in the matter. A tear of remorse trickled down Hoode’s cheek.
‘Goodbye, Ben,’ he said softly. ‘I do not blame you, old friend. Your death has changed my life. You taught me the folly of my occupation. I thank you for that. Over your corpse, I make this solemn pledge. My writing days are past.’
‘Do not be so hasty,’ said Nicholas.
‘I never wish to endure that torture again.’
‘Nor shall you, Edmund.’
‘Indeed not.’ He let the cloak fall back across the face of Ben Skeat once more. ‘I am finished with it, Nick. Westfield’s Men can find some other fool to pen their plays. No more corrupt bargains for me. Nor more long nights bent wearily over my work. No more sighs and no more suffering. No more pain!’ His voice hardened. ‘I will never – never – take up my quill again.’
It was a vow that he would soon wish he had kept.
Chapter Two
Shoreditch had once been a tiny hamlet, growing up at the junction of two important Roman roads, and offering its inhabitants clean air, open fields and a degree of rural isolation. That was no longer the case. The relentless expansion of London turned it into yet another busy suburb, tied to the city by a long ribbon of houses, tenements and churches, and further entwined by the commercial and cultural needs of the capital. Shoreditch could still boast fine gardens, orchards and small-holdings – even common land for archery practice – but its former independence had perished forever.
Chief among its attractions were its two splendid custom-built playhouses, The Theatre and The Curtain, and the populace of London streamed out of Bishopsgate on those afternoons when the flags were hoisted above these famed arenas to indicate that performances would take place. Shoreditch competed with Bankside as a favourite source of entertainment but not all of its denizens were happy with this state of affairs. As well as the largely respectable and law-abiding spectators, theatres also attracted their share of whores, cheats and pickpockets in search of easy custom. Rowdiness, too, was a constant threat but the major complaint was against the barrage of noise that was set up during a performance.
Occupants of houses in Holywell Lane were especially vulnerable as they dwelt between the two theatres and thus at the mercy of rival cacophonies. They cringed before explosions of laughter and bursts of applause. They recoiled from strident fanfares and deafening music. Alarums and excursions afflicted them in equal measure. Even on the most sunlit and cloudless afternoons, thunder, lightning and tempest had been known to issue simultaneously from both playhouses as cunning hands usurped the role of Mother Nature. Gunpowder was frequently used with deafening effect. To live in Holywell Lane was to live cheek by jowl with pandemonium.
‘Arghhhhhhhh!’
A new and terrible sound shattered the early evening.
‘Noooooooooo!’
It was a roar of pain fit to waken the long-dead.
‘Heeeeeeeelp!’
Was it some wild animal in distress? A wolf caught in a trap? A bear torn apart by the teeth of a dozen mastiffs? A lion in the menagerie at the Tower, speared to make sport?
‘Yaaaaaaaaaa!’
The voice was now recognisably human but so full of grief, so charged with agony, and so laden with despair that its owner had to be enduring either the amputation of both legs or the violent removal of all internal organs. The cry came from a house in Old Street but everyone in Shoreditch heard it and shared in its fathomless misery. Was the poor creature being devoured alive by a pack of hungry demons?
‘Ohhhhhhhhhhh!’
Lawrence Firethorn was not one to suffer in silence. When he was in travail, the whole world was his audience. He lay in his bedchamber and bellowed his torment, quivering all over as a new and more searing pain shot through him.
Firethorn had toothache. To be more precise, he had one badly infected tooth in a set that was otherwise remarkably sound. The actor could not believe that so much tribulation was caused by such a minute part of his anatomy. His whole mouth was on fire, his whole head was pounding, his whole body was one huge, smarting wound.
His wife came bustling into the room with concern.
‘Is there anything I may get for you, Lawrence?’
‘A gravedigger.’
‘Let me at least send for a surgeon.’
‘A lawyer would be more use. To draw up my will.’
‘Do not talk so,’ she said, crossing to the bed. ‘This is no time for jests. You have a bad tooth, that is all.’
‘A hundred bad teeth, Margery. A thousand!’
An invisible hammer struck the side of his face and he let out such a blood-curdling yell that his neighbours thought he had just given birth to a litter of giant hedgehogs. Margery Firethorn wanted to put a comforting arm around him but she knew that it was inadvisable. Her husband’s cheek was twice its normal size and throbbing visibly. The handsome, bearded countenance of the most brilliant actor in London was distorted into an ugly mask of woe. On the posted bed with its embroidered canopy, they had spent endless nights of pleasure but it was now a rack on which his muscular torso was being stretched to breaking point.
‘Let me fetch you another remedy,’ she suggested.
‘Dear God – no!’
‘This one comes with the apothecary’s blessing.’
‘More like his curse!’
‘It may reduce the swelling in your gum, Lawrence.’
‘I will take nothing!’ he snarled.
Firethorn had already submitted to three of his wife’s well-intentioned remedies and each had signally failed. The last – a compound of vinegar, oil and sulphur – had not only sharpened the pain to unbearable limits, it caused him to vomit uncontrollably. He vowed that nothing else would go into his diseased mouth. A fresh spasm made his eyes cloud over for a second. When he rallied slightly, he was hit by a tidal wave of guilt.
‘I have betrayed my fellows!’ he wailed.
‘Put them from your thoughts.’
‘How can I, Margery? Westfield’s Men rely on me and I was found wanting. For the first time in my life. I was prevented from doing my duty and exhibiting my genius as a player.’
‘You are not to blame,’ she said.
‘The name of Lawrence Firethorn is a symbol of true quality in our profession. Where was that true quality this afternoon? Flat on its back!’ He slapped his thigh with an angry palm. ‘I failed them. I, Margery! Who once played Hector with a broken toe. Who once conquered the known world as Antony with my arm in a sling. Who once led the company to triumph in Black Antonio when the sweating sickness was upon me. Disease and discomfort have never kept me off the stage until this fateful day. They needed me at the Queen’s Head as the exiled Duke of Genoa but I have been imprisoned here by this damnable toothache!’
In an unguarded moment, he jabbed a finger at his cheek and prodded the inflamed area. Another roar of agony made the low beams tremble. In his anguish, he believed that he could actually hear the stabbing pain as it beat out its grim message, but Margery placed another interpretation on the repetitive sound. Someone was at their front door.
‘We have a visitor,’ she said. ‘Will you receive them?’
‘Not unless it be Nick Bracewell. He is the only man I would trust to see me in this dreadful condition and not mock my plight. Nick has real compassion and I am in sore need of that.’
A servant admitted the caller. Margery stood at the door of the bedchamber and listened to the voices below. Feet began to clatter up the oaken staircase.
‘Barnaby Gill,’ she announced. ‘I’ll head him off.’
‘He is the last person I want at this hour.’
‘Leave him to me. He shall not pass.’
Margery closed the door behind her and confronted the newcomer on the narrow landing. She was a big, bosomy woman with an iron determination. When fully roused, she was more than a match for her husband, so Firethorn was confident that she would soon send the visitor on his way. A dozen armed soldiers would not be able to force their way past his wife. He lay back on his pillow and gently closed his eyelids. A tap on the door made him open them with a suddenness he instantly regretted. His swollen jaw ached vengefully.
Easing the door ajar, Margery put her head around it.
‘Barnaby brings sad tidings,’ she said.
‘I’ll none of that leering clown today!’
‘They concern Westfield’s Men.’
‘Send the rogue on his way without further ado.’
‘His news will brook no delay. Please hear him.’
Before he could protest, she stood aside to let Barnaby Gill strut into the bedchamber. Wedded to ostentation, he wore a high-necked bombasted doublet in the Spanish fashion with its collar edged at the top with pickadils. The doublet was slashed, pinked and embroidered with a centre fastening of buttons from top to bottom. Its startling lime green hue was thrown into relief by hat, gloves and hose of a darker green. Short, squat but undeniably elegant, Gill doffed his hat in greeting, then gazed down at his stricken colleague with a mixture of sympathy and cold satisfaction.
‘What ails you, Lawrence?’ he asked with token dismay.
‘You do, sir!’
‘But I have saved all our lives this afternoon.’
‘Mine is far beyond recall.’
‘Listen to Barnaby,’ prompted Margery. ‘It is needful.’
Firethorn turned a bloodshot eye on his visitor.
‘Well?’
Gill sighed. ‘Ben Skeat is no longer with us.’
‘He has no choice in the matter. His contract binds him to Westfield’s Men in perpetuity.’
‘You do not understand, Lawrence. The poor man is dead.’
‘If he feels the way I do, I am not surprised. I expect to pass out of this world myself at any moment.’ Firethorn gulped as he heard what he had just been told. ‘Dead? That dear old workhorse, Ben Skeat? Deceased? Can this be so?’
‘Sadly, it can.’
‘When did this tragedy befall us?’
‘In the middle of Act Three.’
Firethorn sat up. ‘Ben Skeat died onstage?’
‘In full view of the audience.’
‘What happened?’ asked Margery. ‘Did you bring the play to an end? Did you send all the spectators home?’
‘Did you return their money?’ said Firethorn in alarm.
‘No,’ said Gill with studied nonchalance. ‘I stepped into the breach and rescued us from a gruesome fate. Had I not led Westfield’s Men with such spirit and authority, there would not be any of them left to lead.’
‘Nick Bracewell took control, surely?’ said Firethorn.
‘Yes,’ added Margery with brisk affection. ‘Nicholas steered you through, I’ll wager.’
‘Not this time, alas!’ lied Gill, ‘I was the saviour.’
They listened with rapt attention as the visitor told a story that he had rehearsed very carefully on the journey from the Queen’s Head to Shoreditch. According to Barnaby Gill, the book holder and the rest of the company had been ready to abandon the play as soon as Ben Skeat’s death became apparent. It was left to the court jester to berate them for their faint-heartedness and to insist that they press on with the performance, albeit in an amended form. The new version of The Corrupt Bargain – Gill emphasized this – was his brainchild. As actor and as author, he had led from the front and dragged an unwilling company behind him.
Lawrence Firethorn knew him well enough to be able to separate fact from fantasy. He was so closely acquainted with Nicholas Bracewell’s handiwork that it could not be passed off as someone else’s. Margery, too, sensed that the unassuming book holder had been the real hero in this crisis as in so many previous ones. One consolation remained. The performance had continued in such a way as to disguise the true nature of the emergency from the audience. No money had been returned but a high price had still been paid.
‘Ben Skeat dead?’ Firethorn was shocked. ‘May the Lord have mercy on his soul! He will be greatly missed.’
‘As were you, Lawrence,’ said Gill pointedly.
‘Not from choice, I assure you,’ said Firethorn.
‘Indeed not,’ agreed Margery. ‘He was laid low.’
Gill raised a derisive eyebrow. ‘By a mere toothache? It would take more than that to keep me from the practice of my art. The plague itself would not detain me from my place upon the boards. Thank heaven I was there this afternoon! Ben Skeat dying on us. Nicholas Bracewell failing us. Lawrence Firethorn deserting us.’
‘I did not desert you!’ howled the other man as the pain flared up once more. ‘I was unfit for service. Felled by some malign devil.’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Leave we my condition until another time. Ben Skeat must now be our prime concern. What was the cause of his death? Who has examined the body? Where is it now? Have his relatives yet been informed? How stands it, Barnaby?’
‘I left all that to Nicholas Bracewell,’ said Gill with evident boredom. ‘Cleaning up a mess is the one thing at which he has some moderate skill. My task was to ride post-haste to Shoreditch to put you in possession of the full facts. We have lost one of our sharers, Lawrence.’
‘The best and sweetest of men.’
‘I’ll say “Amen” to that,’ said Margery soulfully.
‘When I was a raw beginner,’ continued Firethorn in nostalgic vein, ‘it was Ben Skeat who helped me, advised me and taught me all I know about the craft of acting. He let me feed on his long experience. There was not an ounce of selfishness in that dear creature. Ben was a rock on which we all built our performances.’
‘Yes,’ said Gill with heavy sarcasm. ‘Ben was a rock. But this afternoon – like a rock – he could neither move nor speak. If it had not been for my sterling courage in the face of mortal danger …’
But his hosts were not listening. Margery Firethorn was too busy recalling a thousand and one pleasant memories of an actor who had served Westfield’s Men with honour since the inception of the company, and who had always been a most welcome visitor to the house in Old Street. Her husband was concentrating on practicalities. Ben Skeat was a sharer, one of the ranked players who were named in the patent for Westfield’s Men and who were thus entitled to a portion of such profits as it might make. Sharers also took all the major roles in any play. They had real status and a qualified security. To become a sharer with one of the London companies was to join an exclusive brotherhood. Ben Skeat had just resigned from that charmed circle.
Lawrence Firethorn weighed all the implications.
‘Ben must be mourned,’ he decreed, ‘then replaced.’
‘You are too hasty,’ said Gill. ‘One less sharer and the rest of us have a slightly larger slice of the pie.’
‘Fresh blood is needed in the company.’
‘I beg to differ, Lawrence.’
‘When do you do otherwise?’
Gill tensed. ‘I am entitled to my opinion.’
‘No question but that you are, Barnaby,’ said the actor-manager with light irony. ‘I value that opinion. I shall, of course, ignore it as usual but I can still respect it. The matter is decided. As one Ben Skeat leaves us, another must be found to take his place.’
‘The issue has not even been discussed.’
‘We just discussed it – did we not, Margery?’
‘What more debate is needed?’ she said.
‘Much more,’ argued Gill, irritated that she should be brought into their deliberations. ‘Edmund has a voice here. When he hears reason, he will side with me.’
‘Reason will incline him to my persuasion.’
Lawrence Firethorn had no doubt on that score. He could invariably win the resident playwright around to his point of view. All the sharers had a nominal voice in company policy but it was effectively decided by its three leading personalities. Of these, Barnaby Gill and Edmund Hoode were allowed only the illusion of control. It was Firethorn whose guiding hand was really on the tiller.
‘Think back, Barnaby,’ he counselled. ‘When Old Cuthbert retired from the company, what did we do? We promoted from within. Owen Elias rose from the hired men to become our new sharer and he has been a credit to us ever since.’
‘You bitterly opposed his selection,’ reminded Gill.
‘That is all in the past.’
‘You hated Owen because he joined our sworn enemies.’
‘We have put the incident behind us.’
‘It was the one time when you were overruled.’
Firethorn breathed in deeply through his nose and tried to remain calm. Owen Elias’s elevation from hired man to sharer had taken place in exceptional circumstances and was largely the work of Nicholas Bracewell. The book holder’s astute stage management of the situation had overcome Firethorn’s serious qualms about the Welshman. Although Owen Elias was now an established player of the first rank in Westfield’s Men, the recollection of his promotion was not untinged with bitterness for Firethorn.
‘We will look outside the company,’ he said firmly.
‘Why look at all?’ countered Gill.
‘A new sharer would invest money in Westfield’s Men.’
‘Owen Elias did not.’
‘Forget Owen. He has no place in this argument.’
‘I believe that he does.’
‘So do I,’ said Margery.
The men stared at her. Ordinarily, she would have no right to be present – let alone involved – in the dispute. Acting was a male prerogative. No woman was permitted to take part in a play, still less to assist in the running of one of the companies, but Margery Firethorn had a habit of breaking rules that hindered her. Gill was patently annoyed by an intrusion he had no power to stop, while a weakened Firethorn was unable to assert himself over his wife. Margery stated her case with blunt clarity.
‘Choose the best possible man,’ she said.
‘Why, so we will,’ consented her husband.
‘Then turn to Owen Elias.’
‘We cannot make him a sharer for the second time.’
‘Take him as your example, Lawrence,’ she said. ‘You looked with Westfield’s Men and the right choice came.’
‘More or less.’
‘Do the self-same thing again.’
‘How so?’
‘Nominate the only person fit for the honour.’
‘And who might that be, my dove?’ he wondered.
‘Who else but Nicholas Bracewell?’
‘Anyone else!’ exclaimed Gill. ‘I forbid it!’
Firethorn pondered. ‘Margery guides us along the path of logic,’ he said. ‘Nick Bracewell is the obvious choice.’
‘Where would you be without him?’ she said.
‘Consigned to oblivion.’
‘No!’ said Gill with outrage. ‘This is madness. He is just one more hired man. You cannot turn a mere book holder into a sharer. Who is to be next in line? Hugh Wegges, the tireman? Nathan Curtis, the carpenter? George Dart, that shivering idiot of an assistant stagekeeper? You make a mockery of our standing.’
Margery’s eye kindled dangerously. ‘Nick Bracewell is as good a man as any in the company.’ She shot a meaningful glance at Gill. ‘Far better than some I could name, who stand much lower in my esteem. I’ll not hear a carping word against Nick. It is high time that his worth was fully appreciated.’
Gill curled a lip in scorn. ‘Oh, it is, it is. We took his measure this afternoon.’
‘What say you?’ asked Firethorn.
‘Your precious Nicholas Bracewell was at last revealed in his true light. He is not the paragon of virtue you take him for, Lawrence.’ Gill was working himself up into a mild rage. ‘He not only let us down in our hour of need, he committed the most foul assault on my person.’
‘With good reason, I dare swear.’
‘He attacked me, Lawrence!’
‘I have often thought of doing so myself.’
‘Violent hands were laid upon me.’
‘How I envy him!’
‘Our book holder became a vicious animal.’
‘Never!’ said Margery. ‘Nick is as gentle as a lamb.’
‘Your opinion was not sought,’ snapped Gill.
‘I offered it gratis.’
‘Please keep out of this discussion.’
‘Do not bandy words with my wife, sir!’ said Firethorn.
‘Then ask her to withdraw from our conference.’
‘Will you be assaulted again!’ she threatened.
‘Desist, woman! You are not a sharer in the company.’
‘I am,’ said Firethorn, leaping off the bed, ‘and that gives me the right to box your ears first. Nobody speaks to Margery with so uncivil a tongue and escapes rebuke. Though she is not one of Westfield’s Men, she is a sharer in a house and home whose hospitality you dare to abuse.’ Still in his nightshirt, he took a step towards the now quaking Gill. ‘You have denounced Nick Bracewell, insulted my dear wife and presumed to call in question my role as the manager of the company. Whipping would be too soft a punishment for these transgressions. Mutilation would be too kind. You deserve to be dragged through the streets on a hurdle, then set in the stocks for a fortnight.’ He towered over Gill and vented his spleen. ‘Get out of my house, you prancing ninny! Take your fine apparel and your false reports away from Shoreditch. Or by the affection that now guides me most, I’ll tear you limb from limb and feed your rotten carcass to the pigs. Avaunt! Begone! Away, you seagreen sickness!’
