Death of Kings (37 page)

Within a few days I was able to get about without too much discomfort, though I pleaded incapacity to get Nell to visit me at the Coven rather than have to find my way over to Holland’s
Leaguer, her place of work. Fortunately, we of the Chamberlain’s had just entered on the lenten period when companies had to obtain official dispensation if they wanted to play anything, so
there wasn’t much doing at the Globe now. In any case, after our unfortunate involvement with the Earl of Essex – although it had almost certainly been foreseen, even planned, by the
Council and the Company together – it might have seemed politic to lie low. Not that we were out of favour, as far as I could see. Hadn’t we just presented that melancholy but diverting
comedy
Twelfth Night
to the Queen, and hadn’t she told me with her own lips that she’d enjoyed the play?

I fervently hope that
Twelfth Night
distracted her for a couple of hours on that Shrove Tuesday night. On the next morning, Ash Wednesday morning, Essex was beheaded in the Tower yard.
They say he made a good end.

As for Southampton . . . that gentleman I will come to in a moment.

Oddly enough, I hadn’t been able to impress Nell with my personal account of meeting our Queen. Prompted by her at one of our earlier encounters, I’d run through the performance,
described the appreciative laughter that issued from the canopied chair of state, catalogued the interior of the great Hall (“How many candles, Nick? I don’t believe you.”), even
mentioned how, as I thought, one of my own lines had elicited a sigh from the depths of the chamber. But when it came to Sir Roger Nunn’s summoning of me to her majesty’s presence, Nell
flatly refused to believe a word of it.

“I’m telling you the truth, Nell,” I protested. “She asked to see me specially. The Queen asked for me.”

“I suppose
She
admired your black hair – or your playing.”

“Neither.” (Though the suggestions were flattering and not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility.)

“Why did
She
want to see you then?”

“I cannot speak of it.”

“Oh, we’re back to that again.”

“But I did see her nonetheless, and speak to her and she to me.

“Very well. What is
She
like then?”

“She is . . . she is an old lady now.”

“There, Nicholas. And you wonder that I don’t believe you. How can
She
grow old like other mortals?”

“Because she is like other mortals,” I said. “Because she is not a goddess.”

But Nell was clasping her hands to her ears, unwilling to listen to another sacrilegious word from me. I didn’t mind her adopting that position, at least when she was naked, since it
caused her breasts to swell as the billows do in the Bristol Channel. However, I soon saw that if I wanted to avail myself of what was on offer, I would have to drop any pretence of meeting the
Queen, let alone trying to present a truthful portrait of that great lady.

Similarly it wasn’t worth even beginning to describe to her the story of Nunn-Nemo-Noti, even had I not been bound by some notion of silence. Why, Secretary Cecil himself refused to accept
what had happened – and he’d been there! Accordingly, when Nell inquired how I’d received the wound in my thigh I had to adopt the lie which Cecil had forced on me, that I had
been careless and stabbed myself with my own dagger (the tiny one which I kept buried in my clothing and which was more suitable for nail-paring than flesh-gouging). This was also the story which I
retailed to my fellows in the Company, and although they laughed at my clumsiness and although one or two of them looked askance as if they thought I was hiding a deeper tale, it was soon accepted
that Nick Revill was not a man to be trusted with his own knife – or another man’s wife, as the saying goes.

Which brings me on to a final detail from my dialogues with Nell. On the spring evening mentioned earlier, I eventually got round to the subject of Isabella Horner. I hadn’t forgotten that
I’d left her and Nell discussing –
things
– in the Goat & Monkey. I was eager, though fearful might be a better word, to discover what had passed between these two
women. Judging that Nell was preoccupied with the smell of the blankets or with the efficacy of her remedies for my wounds, I saw an opportunity to mention casually what was on my mind. I contrived
to drop Isabella’s name in the conversation, and was surprised to see Nell smirk.

“You are a fool, Nicholas,” she said, though not unkindly.

“How so?”

“That you think I do not know.”

“Know what?”

“And still to keep up the pretence like this.”

“What pretence?” I said with a faltering heart.

“I know that you and Mistress Horner have shared a bed together.”

I – we – once—

“
Once?
”

“A handful only.”

“A small handful no doubt – like this handful,” she said, grasping my member, which had suddenly developed a desire to run for cover. She shifted her hand and squeezed my
cullions hard enough (but I was aware that she might have done it much harder).

“I have talked with Isabella, see,” said Nell. “And she has told me how matters stand.”

“Matters? Stand?”

“With you and with her and with her husband too. Her husband Jack.”

“Oh God.”

“He knows all.”

“Say you so?”

I felt myself going hot and cold at once, and blushes breaking out all over my face, and the wound on my thigh throbbing fiercely.

“I do say so.”

“He has not said anything to me.”

“Is there a law that says the cuckold must speak to the cuckolder? Should he not rather run him through?”

She removed her hand from my privates and jabbed me in the belly.

“Oh God,” I said. “Jack is a peaceable man. He is my friend.”

I buried my face in the stinky blankets and rugs that were piled on the narrow bed.

“The more shame for you if he is your friend,” she said remorselessly.

“I know,” I said, feeling very sorry for myself.

“But I can tell you why he has kept silent.”

“Because he means to stab me instead?”

I visualised Jack waiting in some dark corner and then leaping out to complete the work which Nunn had begun. No, the scene did not convince.

“I think we can leave you to stab yourself, Nicholas. You do that well.”

“I know the proverb about a knife and a wife,” I said.

“But that isn’t the reason that your friend Jack does nothing.”

“What is it then?”

“Because it suits him that you should occupy his wife.”

“What?”

“Though it does not suit me,” said Nell.

“What?”

“You are a parrot today, Nicholas, with your beak gaping in surprise and the same sound emerging. I say that it suits him because he is more interested in another member of your Company.
Mistress Horner says.”

“Who, Jack is?”

At this point my mouth must have been gaping even wider.

“He is on most friendly terms with a boy player – I forget the name—”

“Martin . . . Hancock, it must be,” I said slowly as light began to dawn.

“It is possible that was the name she mentioned.”

“They are often together, it is true. But I thought it was only . . . friendship.”

“So it is too. Friendship and other things besides. And Isabella tells me that her husband has not done her a good turn for, oh, eight months now.”

“A good turn?”

“What you did me some time ago now.”

“What
we
did together,” I said, though my mind was on other things. Jack and Martin . . . so.

“Therefore Isabella Horner was glad enough to turn to an energetic young player for a good turn . . .”

“Oh.”

“. . . and now she has her eye on another in your Company. Someone senior to you. A poor player was all
you
were, was what she said.”

“Perhaps she will give him some of her potions,” I said, inwardly relieved to have this confirmation that Mistress Horner was aiming her arrows in a different direction and brushing
aside her dismissive description of me. Well, almost brushing it aside.

“Oh, I think she hopes to be fed on
his
potions,” said Nell. “She is enchanted by his words. They weave a spell about her. And it is someone who you admire, I
believe.”

“I wonder who it is,” I said, not wondering at all. “Don’t tell me.”

Then I did a very childish thing and clapped my hands over my ears so as not to hear my friend Nell name the new suitor of Mistress Isabella Horner. Of course, with hands thus occupied, I had
left open the rest of myself to attack. And attack me Nell did – but in a loving way, a way which showed (without words) that she had forgiven me for my dalliance with Isabella and showed
furthermore what she meant by the expression ‘a good turn’.

A couple of mornings later I was lying at my ease in the spring sunshine and gathering my strength on a turf bank outside the Coven. I’d taken a scroll into the fresh air
so as to get acquainted with my next role which, as it happens, was in Master Richard Milford’s
second
play. His first,
A Venetian Whore
, in which I’d played the Duke of
Argal, had been staged in the brief interim between our last rehearsals for
Twelfth Night
and that Shrove Tuesday presentation before the Queen.

Whore
had been a modest success, though somewhat overshadowed by the Company’s royal affairs and, in my own mind, by the dramatic sequel to that evening. The playhouse audience was
pleased by this bawdy comedy, and Messrs Burbage and Shakespeare and the rest were pleased that the audience was pleased, and Master Milford, he was very pleased with life in general. No doubt
relieved too that I had not unmasked him as an unscrupulous plagiariser and sneak thief. I was fairly sure that he, like a number of others, had made free with my room at the Coven and searched
through my chest for those damning sheets which would link him to
The Courtesan of Venice.
As a result I’d suspected him of foul play in the matter of May and the cauldron, as well as
pursuing me down to hell in the netherworld of the Globe. Now, as I should surely have intuited, Master Milford might have stolen some scraps of paper, but he was no murderer, no hunting
hell-hound.

In fact, by comparison with the other things which people had been perpetrating around me in the last few weeks – murders, both attempted and accomplished; treason and insurrection; gross
lies of state and a politic duplicity – a spot of plagiarism and the theft of a few pages appeared positively innocent.

So, following the success of his first piece, Richard Milford’s second play was already in hand, to be staged by the Chamberlain’s after the lenten season had finished. It was titled
The Murder in the Garden,
and appeared to be a domestic mystery or tragedy. I had his own word that it was all his own work, and perhaps it was this time. Of course, I didn’t have the
full story, only the scroll of my role. I was pleased to note that my scrolls were slowly growing bigger as I too grew up into my place with the Globe players.

I’d taken my part to the turfy bank outside with the best intentions of committing to memory a hundred lines or so of
The Murder in the Garden
, but the soothing warmth of a watery
sun and an inclination to fall asleep at odd times (I was still a little weak from the thigh wound) tugged at my eyelids. I was enjoying the red play of light on the underside of those same lids
when a sudden shadow fell across them. I blinked, to see an individual blocking the sun. I assumed that it was a passer-by, come to purchase some of the sisters’ brew. As far as I could tell,
May’s death had made no difference to their business, and they were still using the fatal cauldron to mix their noxious messes. I hoped they’d scoured it after they’d removed her
corpse, while knowing perfectly well that they wouldn’t have done.

I gestured with my thumb in the direction of the Coven.

“They’re in there,” I said.

“Who?”

“April and the rest of the sisters in the Coven.”

“How do you call it?”

The Coven.

I sat up fast then because I recognised the voice of Master WS. Sure enough, it was the playwright and no common wayfarer who was standing in my light.

“I – I’m sorry, sir – I thought you’d come to buy their brew—”

“Later perhaps. I have come to see my wounded fellow. How are you, Nicholas?”

“Well enough, sir – William.”

“And your wound?” He gestured at my dressed leg.

“I am mending fast.”

“I am pleased to hear it. So it is not a case, Nicholas, of ‘Thigh no more, ladies, thigh no more’?”

I did not dignify this ‘joke’ with a response (there are limits), and after a time Master Shakespeare cast his eyes about in search of fresh material.

“So this interesting-looking place is where you lodge.”

“For the moment.”

I resolved to move as soon as I could properly walk again.

“Learning your part, I see.”

He sat down beside me on the bank of turf and took the scroll.

“Richard Milford’s new thing?”

“Yes.
Murder in the Garden.
”

“I enjoyed his
Whore.
More to the point, our congregation did too. A nice, light piece for the middle of winter, to distract our minds before the royal performance.”

“I thought it – it was – a little like . . .”

“Yes? Like what?”

WS turned his large, curious gaze on me.

“Like . . . your own
Merchant of Venice
, William.”

“Of course it was. All plays are made out of the scraps and fragments of other plays.”

“Of course,” I said.

“But I have come not to talk about Master Milford, Nicholas, but to commiserate with you.”

“Thank you.”

I felt myself growing warmer under the wintery sun.

“And to congratulate you. I hear that the Queen herself summoned you at the end of the performance.”

I had not made a great noise about this in the Company, perhaps fearing that (as with Nell) I would not be believed.