Death of Kings (31 page)

Once again, I defer speculation on this question to describe what happened next.

We were three or four days away from our presentation of
Twelfth Night
at Whitehall. That we remained in good odour with the Queen and her court was evidenced by the fact that there was
no interruption in our rehearsals at Clerkenwell, no hint that we of the Chamberlain’s might suddenly find ourselves performing before an angrily vacated throne on Shrove Tuesday evening. Our
seniors, like Master Phillips and the Burbages, must have played sufficiently well before the Council to ensure that we still sunned ourselves in the royal favour.

(The plight of the Earl of Essex was not so rosy. We knew – all of London knew – that he lay in the Tower under that sentence of death which it was in the Queen’s power alone
to remit. Myself, I wondered at the fate of Wriothesley.)

Now, we’d already performed at the Globe playhouse that day and were in the process of shifting to the Office of the Revels for a final – yes, final! – rehearsal of
Twelfth
Night.
The piece we’d just performed had been a reprise of
A Merry Old World, My Masters
, the very play I’d been appearing in when I was introduced to Isabella Horner. After
all the madcap action of that comedy, a slightly subdued mood settled over the company as we made shift to go to the Clerkenwell Priory. (And I’ve noticed before how a tragedy will give the
players new heart while a comedy will leave them quiet and thoughtful.)

The crowd, not anyway a very large one, which had attended
A Merry Old World
was off home or on to their next diversion. Most of my fellows had already departed to cross the bridge or to
take ferries to the north shore. Dusk was fast encroaching. Master Allison the Bookman called across to me.

“Oh Nicholas, could you do me a favour?”

He was holding bundles of schedules, presumably connected with the royal performance.

“If I can.”

“I have left the plot in the book-room. The
Twelfth Night
plot. It is hanging up next to the trunk. I would go myself but . . .”

He gestured with his full arms.

“Of course,” I said, with a modified willingness.

“. . . and bring it across with you to the Priory. I must be on my way.”

“Whatever you say, Geoffrey,” I said.

I had grown a little wary over the last few weeks of undertaking ‘missions’, tasks and favours. Not only did a display of eagerness mark one out as a tiro – and by now I was
feeling myself past the apprenticeship stage with the Chamberlain’s – but the plain fact was that every recent little errand had landed me in trouble.

Nevertheless I did as I was bidden and made my way along the dark passage that ran past the playhouse offices. Here was the tiny room, scarcely more than a cupboard, where Mistress Horner and I
had briefly consecrated our amour. And here was Burbage’s room, where Phillips and Merrick had discussed the price of staging a play. And therefore next door to it was the book-room.

I went in, shut the door and cast my eyes about in the dimness for the plot. This is a significant item intended to hang on a backstage wall. Its real importance is not so much that it tells the
story of the play in summary but that it contains details of properties and noises and the like. It was surprising, therefore, that Geoffrey Allison had forgotten such a vital scroll of paper or
that he hadn’t taken the precaution of having another copy over in Clerkenwell.

I was beginning to think that he must be mistaken in his belief that he’d left the
Twelfth Night
plot in his room. It wasn’t hanging up near the open trunk. Other paper items
were pinned to the wall, however, and by the time I’d found the plot amongst them the final remains of a grey daylight were altogether extinguished. I had no candle with me and, as on that
earlier afternoon, a feeling of loneliness, almost of desolation, descended on me. By now the playhouse would be well and truly empty.

I listened, clutching the plot in my hand. Nothing or as good as nothing; just the random creaks of a newly emptied building and the thin pipe of the wind outside. I’d better hurry,
otherwise I would find myself locked in overnight. It was the responsibility of one of our gatherers to secure the Globe at the end of each day’s performance, and even now he must be working
his way round the building, fastening the entrances and exits.

Yet I was curiously reluctant to stir from the dark of the book-room.

Then I heard the gatherer in the distance, at the far end of the passage. I opened the door of the book-room. And closed it fast again. For, whoever was coming along the passage was not Sam the
money-collector. The steps that I was hearing now were steady ones, even ones. Sam, on the other hand (or foot), had a general lop-sidedness and, specifically, an unevenness in his gait which gave
him a walking rhythm like a string of Master Shakespeare’s poetic feet – the short-long sound of di-daa, di-daa, di-daa – as he came down slightly heavier on the leg which was the
shorter, whether left or right I couldn’t remember. This was the reason why he liked his job of sitting at an entrance on a little stool and receiving the pennies of the audience, preferring
to move about the playhouse only after everyone had left.

It wasn’t only the evenness of the footsteps which told me that this was not the sound of Sam doing his rounds. There was a combination of stealth and assurance in the tread – if
such a combination be possible – which told me that the individual heading in my direction was not a regular member of the Chamberlain’s. I think I’d have recognised my fellows,
or most of them, from the sound of their approach. And this individual was not one of us. A late leaver from the audience? Someone who’d lost his way as he exited the theatre? But when
you’re not sure where you’re going, your steps echo your mind, and this advancing tread sounded certain of itself.

Maybe it was the near-darkness in the book-room, maybe it was the sensation that I was indeed alone in the playhouse, maybe it was no more than the accumulated fears and terrors of the last few
weeks, but I became convinced that the man approaching along the passage, with a pace at once stealthy and confident, was coming in search of me!

It took only a second to visualise the scene: an outsider asks to see me – such requests for players were sometimes made at the end of performances – and Master Allison responds by
saying that he’s sent me on an errand to the book-room. It’s down that passage there, fourth on the left, you can’t miss it.

But it was dark now. Would he send someone off to look for me in the dark?

My heart beat yet louder. The conviction struck as quick as lightning that I was not merely being looked for but
hunted.
There was no reason for this, I told myself; but there was every
reason for this, I told myself. How many enemies had I made in the last few weeks, as if I’d gone round on purpose to gather them up!

This sequence flashed through my head in a tenth of the time it takes to read, and all the while the tread came on, steady and soft. Once again, the play-trunk looked to be my only recourse. An
instant later and there I was tucked between trunk and plaster wall, tears of anger and frustration pricking at my eyes. Anger at myself for being so womanish as to fear a step in a passage,
frustration at the ignominy of being compelled to play hide-and-seek for the second time in Master Allison’s room.

And yet I was glad I did so. We should trust our instincts.

No sooner was I crouched in my nest than I heard the door opening and someone advancing into the room. On the previous occasion when I’d been forced into this position, Augustine Phillips
had been on hand to usher out the suspicious Merrick. But this time there was no one to shield me from the enemy. And I was sure that it was an enemy who had entered the book-room.

He was carrying a dark lantern. There was a scraping sound as the shutter was slid back and what had been a mere gleam widened to a glow which illuminated the low ceiling. I was crouched down
most awkwardly on all fours, but with my head turned sideways I could see from the corner of an eye his shadow swelling and swaying on the dirty white ceiling. He was standing in the middle of the
room, casting his gaze about and holding his light aloft. The shadow of the play-trunk rose and fell at my side as the lantern swung slightly.

I prayed to the God of my father – and, believe me, at such moments He was my God as well – that the man with the lantern would not take it into his head to move a few feet to one
side and peer into the gap between trunk and wall. My clothes were dark-hued, it is true, but he could hardly have failed to glimpse my white nape, my clenched fists. From close to he might smell
my fear. Surely he could hear my heart banging?

Minutes seemed to pass. The light swayed across the ceiling. There was a short sigh. Then a single word, which sounded like “Bastard”, but uttered without venom or any particular
expression, followed by another sigh. The light was lowered and dimmed as the lantern shutter scraped once more and the intruder moved towards the door.

I waited while his footsteps passed down the passage with the same even, assured tread. I remembered playing hide-and-seek as a child in my father’s parish of Miching. How, when you were
being hunted, you would crouch, tense, almost quivering with the desire to be found. Because then the agony of waiting would be over. I remembered how I and my fellows would sometimes creep past a
potential hiding-place – an abandoned hovel on the edge of a field, a hollowed-out space among the willows at the stream’s edge – loudly declaring that we’d no idea where
Tom or Dick had hid themselves. Only to go and hide our own selves behind a neighbouring wall or a sheltering tree, there to wait for Tom or Dick to emerge. Then we’d spring up and shriek out
loud and chase and catch and pummel him, and all return home tired and happy at the end of a summer’s evening.

I thought of that now, not the summer’s evening and the innocence of boyish pursuits, but of the trick of waiting until the hider is comfortable that the searchers have gone off, and then
the leaping up to surprise him as he comes out.

There was no sound of footsteps now. Had the stranger gone to another quarter of the Globe in quest of me? Or was I altogether wrong and fearful, and it was not me that he was looking for at
all? Perhaps he really was an individual who had missed his way in the playhouse or someone who, for unknown reasons, wanted to scrutinise the interior of the book-room. I pondered these
possibilties, reassured by none of them. Instinct told me that it was Nick Revill that was being sought. I was the ‘bastard’, though why anyone should refer to me in that way was
baffling. Couched in the dark, I grew indignant. What had
I
done? It was more a question of what had been done against me.

I stayed in a half-crouch behind the trunk, delaying the moment when I’d have to exit the book-room. Eventually I judged it safe to shift. I straightened up and walked soft across the
floor, my eyes accustomed to the dark. Only now did I suddenly remember that I was due at the Revels Office in Clerkenwell for our final rehearsal of
Twelfth Night.
I’d been clutching
the plot tight in my right hand ever since plucking it from its hanging place and it was when I went to open the book-room door that I recalled the original purpose of Master Allison’s
errand. I transferred the plot to my left hand and eased open the door, which gave a tell-tale creak.

Wait. Count up to ten before moving out. . . no, twenty. Listen out for sounds. None. He’d gone for sure. Count another twenty for safety’s sake, and all the while wonder why I am
being forced to skulk and dodge about my own place of work. A faint light came through a casement at the far end of the passage. Since the playhouse would almost certainly be shut up by now, Sam
the gatherer having made his limping departure, I decided that I’d have to make my own exit by the window. There was about an eight foot drop down into Brend’s Rents, the alley that
– if my sense of my whereabouts was correct – ran beside this stretch of the playhouse. I couldn’t close the window after climbing through it but, with any luck, would be able to
fasten it the next morning before anyone noticed.

My anxiety to escape the Globe was stronger at this point than any fear of the unknown intruder. By now my fellows in the Chamberlain’s would have arrived at the Clerkenwell Priory –
with its fire-warmed hall, its blazing sconces on the oak-panelled walls, with the familiar air of bustle and expectation – while I was trapped in a cold, dark, empty playhouse. An abrupt
desire for their company seized my heart. I wanted to share their jokes and raillery, their good humour and disciplined excitement. Besides, there was a more practical reason for my attendance at
Clerkenwell. Antonio doesn’t appear for the first half-hour or more of
Twelfth Night
so I had a bit of leeway, but Burbage didn’t look kindly on players who were late for
rehearsal. I remembered his warning on the first occasion we’d met: a tardy arrival incurred a fine of one shilling, a day’s pay.

So I turned in the direction of the window-glimmer at the end of the passage. And stopped – for, with eyesight now well worn to the shapes of darkness, I saw something shift under the sill
of the window. And realised that, just as the boy searchers will sometimes wait for the hider, my opponent was waiting for me. Perhaps he’d worked out that the casement window was likely to
be my means of egress from the building, and was ready to catch me by the legs as I tried to climb out.

I didn’t stop to think what
his
intentions were. I didn’t stop to consider anything. I spun in the opposite direction and made off towards the tiring-house, running so
clumsily in this narrow, curving passage that I collided with the walls several times. It may be that my speed surprised the gentleman crouched underneath the window. It was a couple of seconds
before I became aware of noises of pursuit behind me. That is, there was first a gasp and then some incomprehensible oath and then a stumbling and a crashing as he started to chase me.