Alms for Oblivion (10 page)

“What would you do instead?” I said. “Slink back to Miching and your play-hating father – and your rapacious stepmother?”

I was pleased to see a twitch which almost amounted to a grin tug at Peter’s face.

“You’re right, I suppose. I can’t go home to them – or not quite yet. I don’t believe they’d welcome me back like the prodigal son. Though, God knows, my
London self has been prodigal enough.”

I made no reply but noted how Peter was now talking grandly of his ‘London self’. Well, if my friend wanted to think that the reprehensible acts he’d committed, such as
drinking and whoring, were somehow to be laid at the door of his ‘London self’ while a purer Peter was elsewhere at his prayers, that was his business – or his delusion.

It was odd that, whereas the day before I’d tried to dampen his enthusiasm for playing, now I was trying to prop him up. But I wish now that I had encouraged him to go home straightaway,
or to leave London and have nothing more to do with plays and playing. It would have been for the best after all. He might have lived.

This
Troilus and Cressida
is a funny piece, a sour piece. I don’t know whether WS was in a crabbed mood when he wrote the play or was exorcizing some internal imps
of mischief and cynicism but for sure there is something unaccountable at work within it. If I knew him better I’d ask – but perhaps he doesn’t know himself.

Still, there was something about the Trojan play which fitted that damp, foggy, bone-aching autumn. My own fortunes seemed to be going well enough but apprehension hung in the air. Our patron
Lord Hunsdon was sick, the Queen was dying by degrees, and nobody knew what the future held. The age of heroes, whether Trojan or English, the period of gallant deeds by land and sea, all of this
was done. An air of spiritless exhaustion hung over the town, as if London herself had endured a ten-year siege and could expect no relief from any quarter. (Some say London and Troy are linked.
There is a stone set in the middle of Candle-wick Street and brought here by Brutus, who was descended from Aeneas of Troy. I have seen the stone and can vouch for it. As long as the stone is
preserved our city will flourish, they say.)

And if
Troilus and Cressida
fitted that dying season, it also fitted the tastes of our audience at Middle Temple, as I quickly realized at an early rehearsal. Although we weren’t
due to perform for a week or so, word of this witty and scabrous piece had got abroad among the law students, and they started clustering around us players in the banqueting hall until Dick Burbage
or one of the other seniors shooed them away because a practice was starting. When I arrived at the next rehearsal I saw Peter Agate, who’d decided not to abandon the Chamberlain’s for
the moment, happily passing the time with some of my friends and with a couple of the law students. There was a gust of laughter from the little assembly of players and young lawyers.

“Helen of Troy is only a piece of property after all,” said one of the law students. I could identify him as such by his gown and the plainness of his clothes. The Inn lawyers were
not permitted to wear finery.

“Hotly contested property,” said the other student, also gowned and plainly garbed.

“
Property
? Where are your hearts and souls?” said Michael Donegrace. “Helen is the non-pareil of beauty. I would have played her once.”

Michael had been one of our boy-players, specializing in women’s parts. But over the past few months his voice had gone down while his height had gone up, and he was no longer fitted for
women’s parts. Now he was acting the young Greek warrior, Patroclus.

“Lawyers don’t have souls. And about their hearts there is some doubt,” said the first student, but in such a way that I wasn’t entirely sure whether he was joking. He
had a beaky face.

“Helen of Troy could be as ugly as sin,” said the second student. “Her beauty is not
in
question. Nor is it
the
question.”

“The question is one of possession, prior possession,” said the first student.

“The question is rather that of
spolia opima
– and also one of damaged goods,” said the second student. This young lawyer was round in the face, with carroty hair.

“Ah, a debate,” said Jack Wilson, rubbing his hands. “It could be good, if we knew exactly what they were talking about.”

I watched Peter Agate as he looked intently from speaker to speaker. His expression was absorbed, intent. My fellow Chamberlain’s men, Jack Wilson and Michael Donegrace, also looked as
though they relished the chance of seeing fledgling lawyers debate, for nothing.

The two young men acknowledged my presence – it struck me that they were waiting for a larger audience before they opened their ‘debate’ – and Jack took the hint to
introduce me. One was called Michael Pye, he of the beaky countenance, and the other, the carroty one, was called Edmund Jute. When it was clear that we were all ears, Pye and Jute opened their
gobs to begin the debate, just as they’d been trained to do in this very hall, but Jack Wilson got in first.

“One word,” said Jack, “if we’re to follow you gentlemen you’ll have to talk in good, honest English. We’re not in a court of law now.”

“Very well,” said Master Pye, with a slight sigh, “to put it plain. The Trojan prince Paris has seized Helen from her husband Menelaus, the King of Sparta. Now Menelaus and the
other Greek kings want her back. And the law of nature and the law of nations speak aloud to have her returned.”

“No,” said Master Jute. “The beautiful Helen is a prize of war, seized by the sword and retained by the sword. The spoils of war go to the victor. We are talking of heroes here.
And this lady’s not for returning.”

“The age of heroes is dead,” I said and the others looked at me in surprise.

No, I don’t know why I’d said it either (although it had been in my mind earlier in the day). In order to cover my confusion I added a lighter remark, “But I agree the
lady’s not for returning. Spoils of war or not, she is a little
spoiled
.”

Now Master Pye glanced disdainfully at me as if I had blundered into a complicated game and shown complete ignorance of the rules. But Master Jute looked pleased.

“Exactly so, Master . . . Revill, is it? Helen is the prize of war but she’s also spoiled goods, damaged ones.”

“Only a little handled, a little fondled,” said Michael Donegrace, the ex-boy-player. “She retains her beauty still.”

“But we don’t return a half-eaten sweetmeat to the cook, do we?” said Jute. “We don’t return soiled goods to the shopkeeper. So how can Helen be returned with any
honour?”

“She’s only been nibbled at,” said young Donegrace.

“A rare piece of goods,” said Jack Wilson.

I could see that the high-minded debate about rights and wrongs, about the spoils of war and spoiled goods, was breaking down into excited contemplation of Helen of Troy. What exactly did the
woman have about her person that caused a ten-year war – that launched a thousand ships, in Kit Marlowe’s words?

“Helen’s a hot morsel,” said Michael Pye.

“The Trojans’ strumpet,” said Edmund Jute. “Or their
trumpet
, you may say, for all the Trojans blow at her, or on her, or down her, or want to blow at, on or down
her.”

“A
quaedam
,” said Pye. “A certain woman.”

“A
quicumque vult
,” said Jute, not to be outdone in Latin wit.

It was perhaps rather a relief to see these two fledgling lawyers being young men too, enjoying their cracks (of a learned kind) about women, and being prepared to snigger along with the rest of
us.

At this point our jollity was cut short by Dick Burbage who announced that he wanted to get on with the business of playing in a few minutes. The scattered law students started to drift
reluctantly towards the door. Pye and Jute, however, showed no inclination to move. It’s odd how eager the laity – if I can use that term to describe non-players – are to hang
about on the margins of the theatre world. They even seem to enjoy attending rehearsals.

I’d noticed, of course, that Master Pye had used the expression
quaedam
to describe Helen of Troy. It was a term more usually applied to a strumpet (or trumpet) than to the wife of
a king. I remembered that Nell had taken pleasure in telling me that she had been so described – as a
quaedam
, as a
bona roba
– without seeming to be aware of the sneering
strain in such descriptions. I remembered also that her fresh lover and protector was a gentleman from one of the Inns of Court across the water. So naturally I couldn’t help wondering
whether, in the person of Middle Temple’s Michael Pye, he of the beaky face, I had stumbled across the new occupant of my old friend’s bed. My rival.

And with the certainty of intuition I was at once sure that I had identified my rival. Master Pye, with his prominent nose and cocky manner. Who did he remind me of now?

And, of course, if I had (perhaps) identified
him
wasn’t it possible that he had recognized me, although we’d never met? Nell would have mentioned me, wouldn’t she?
Revill’s a young player with the Chamberlain’s, she’d have said – a pleasant, witty fellow, she might have said, even if we were no longer on such good terms. Or maybe I was
deluding myself? Perhaps she never bothered to mention me at all.

They say that the purpose of art is to hold the mirror up to nature but it often seems to me to be the other way about. Life has a way of imitating art. Take this
Troilus and Cressida
play. I act a young lover who grows to suspect and then to hate a rival in the Greek camp, one Diomedes. Troilus suffers the violent anguish of betrayal when his Cressida switches her allegiance.
Now, believing I had a real-life rival in my gaze, I wasn’t certain what I felt. No grand heroic response for sure. But then it is hard to strike heroic poses over a whore.

“Let me show you something before I leave, Master Revill.”

I felt a touch on my arm. It was Edmund Jute, the redheaded law student.

“I would not like you to think that we lawyers are without hearts and souls, not completely without, whatever my friend Pye says.”

“I took that for a jest. I know you are not really dry fellows, but lusty and full of juice.”

This was perhaps a rather fuller commendation of lawyers than Master Jute had been looking for but he beckoned me to follow him down the banqueting hall, saying it would only take a moment. Out
of curiosity I went after him.

At the raised end of the hall, the opposite end to where we were about to rehearse, was a great table set beneath a mighty bank of portraits. The table was made out of a single oak tree from
Windsor Forest, Master Jute told me, the gift of the Queen. She had once dined at Middle Temple. It wasn’t this, however, which the student wanted to show me but another table below it, a
smaller one and rather battered-looking.

“If this wood could talk,” said Edmund Jute, rapping the top.

Seeing that he needed to be humoured, I simply nodded and looked attentive.

“It has circumnavigated the globe, this piece of wood, travelled further than we ever shall. It comes from Drake’s boat – I believe it is a hatch-cover.”

“Sir Francis Drake?”

“The very same. Drake of The
Golden Hind
that is now laid up at Deptford. He dined here many years ago after he had sailed round the world. Now his hatch-cover is used for ceremony,
for signing the roll of members and so on.”

I ran my hand over the surface of the table.

“There was a hero for you, Master Revill, if you are searching for heroes now . . . ”

“I wasn’t, particularly. The remark I made earlier came from nowhere.”

“He was from your part of the world if I’m not mistaken.”

“Who?”

“Drake. From the West Country. You still carry a trace of it in your voice.”

Once I’d have been irritated to think that my roots still showed, however faintly. Now it didn’t bother me so much.

“And Master Agate also, I’d say,” said Edmund Jute. “From
his
voice.”

“We come from the same village,” I said. “Not Sir Francis Drake, but Peter and I.”

“A small world,” said Jute musingly.

“If that hatch-cover spoke now, Master Jute, it would tell us that your small world was rather a great globe. Doubtless.”

Jute gave a small, snorting laugh. Then he said, “And if we’re talking of the Globe now – the Globe playhouse, that is – Master Agate tells me that he is here to play
too. Your village must breed players.”

“I am glad that Master Agate is so resolved. A little while ago he was all for quitting London and making for home there and then.”

“London is a fine place for a young man, full of opportunities.”

Jute was obviously referring to himself, but it was a curiously middle-aged thing to say. Not having exhausted the subject of the city, he went on, “Some of those who come to London expect
to find the highways made of gold. They never recover from their disappointment. Perhaps Master Agate is of that company?”

“Do you count yourself in that company, Master Jute?” I said, unwilling to say more about my friend.

“Oh, I have long since recovered, Master Revill.”

“You sound old beyond your years.”

“You could not pay a greater compliment to a lawyer,” he said, smiling.

At that instant there was a second, urgent summons from Dick Burbage. Even Edmund Jute could see that he had to leave the hall. I thanked him for showing me Francis Drake’s table. He told
me that he was looking forward to seeing
Troilus and Cressida
. We shook hands and parted. I walked to the other end of the hall, the screen end. The prologue was beginning.

Then it was my turn, since it is the love-sick Troilus who fires the first shot in this campaign.