Death of Kings (4 page)

Deliberately selecting a fellow member of the crowd who didn’t look too quick-witted, and wouldn’t therefore be inclined to mock my rusticity and ignorance, I asked him what all the
to-do was about. Amid great washes of ale-breath, I was informed that a great lord called Middlesex who I could see at the head of the procession – “there, yes, ’im, that’s
the one!” – was about to depart for a land far away over the sea. An island beyond the place where the sun sets. Where men’s heads grow out of their chests or their arses, or some
such. Where they boil up their young alive and eat ’em for supper. Where they daily have congress with the beasts of the field. And what, I asked, was the lord commander Middlesex going to do
when he got there? “Why, kill ’em all,” said my informant, turning away from me in disgust that I’d asked such a stupid question.

Someone else standing nearby, an apparently more reliable and relatively sober individual, told me that it was the Earl of
Essex
and that he was going to subdue the Irish once and for
all. It was already settled. The Queen had given him the commission. At this moment the head of the procession drew level with where we were standing and the crowd, already bubbling, went wild with
pleasure. My ears were deafened with cries of approbation and screams of delight. Some of the women had tears streaming down their faces. Others held up babies, as if they expected the Earl to
bless them. He turned his head and the upper part of his body from side to side and smiled benignly on the crowds but in a way that seemed to me somewhat abstracted, as if his mind were already on
the other side of that sea which separates the greater island from the lesser.

And now a very unexpected thing happened, and one that augured ill too. Though it was, as I have said, a day in March when this great company set off for Ireland, the weather had been
unseasonably fair. The sky over the streets of Islington was bright and clear. All at once there arose a great black cloud to the north-east, as if cast up by a giant hand. And moments later came
thunder and flashes of lightning. Then a great shower of hail and rain. The parade of lords and knights on horseback, sitting so proud and erect, huddled inside their finery and tried to make
themselves all small, while the honest citizenry crammed into doorways or cowered beneath the eaves of houses. I found myself sharing a nook with my drunken informant, the one who had identified
the Earl of Middlesex. The mood of the crowd, which had been one of celebration, now turned to its opposite, “’tis a hominous progeny, this ’ail and thund’rin,” he
said, enveloping me in his reeky breath. “No, I misspeak, ’tis a hominous prodigal.”

And so it was – a prodigy and ominous both. The Irish enterprise, begun with such fair expectations, was soon enveloped in its own bad weather.

So much for my introduction to the Earl of Essex.

But I couldn’t spend all my waking (and sleeping) hours thinking of him and his co-conspirators, and of Secretaries of State and mysterious men who seized one off the street at midnight
– I had, after all, a working life to get on with.

You might consider that the life – or at least the revenue – of a player during the winter is as pinched and bleak as the hours of daylight. Who wishes to pay for the privilege of
standing in an unroofed playhouse, stamping their feet and rubbing their mittened hands against the cold? What eloquent words from the playwrights and, more importantly, what fine gestures from the
players are scattered by the winter winds or sogged in the winter rains? And it is true, of course, that we are almost as governed by the seasons as those who till the soil. Nevertheless, if we
stage plays, the customers come, though in diminished numbers. And since players must continue to live even when what Dick Burbage calls our ‘congregations’ are thin, we in the
Chamberlain’s must continue to play (intermittently) during the cold months. When you consider how matters stand, when you survey our principal enemies – City authorities, plague,
Puritans, changes in fashion – then the vagaries of winter come limping some way in the rear.

Yet our limited performances in the playhouse are not the business that really keeps us warm in January and February before the arrival of Lent curtails our activities.

The Chamberlain’s Men are the prime company in town. We are the Queen’s favourites, and
that is
something to warm your hands by. Every winter the Chamberlain’s are
commanded to play before Her Majesty at one of her palaces, usually Whitehall. Our playwright, shareholder and occasional player, Master WS, provides the fare to put before her and we do our best
to serve it up piping hot and spicy for her delectation. I say ‘we’ (like an old hand) but this is the first year in which I’ve been privileged to be a member of the Company, so I
(like new hands everywhere) do my best to appear all easy and unconcerned at the terrifying prospect of appearing and
speaking
before our sovereign lady – but my heart bangs to think
about it and my palms start to sweat a little. Others in the Company, however, really do seem all easy and unconcerned at the idea. To them it’s just another performance, a little special
perhaps, more finely honed and better dressed, but essentially no different from playing before the penny knaves on the ground and the gents and ladies in the gallery.

We have to prepare for this royal appearance. The play must be read beforehand. All plays must, in fact, be read beforehand in the office of the Master of the Revels to see whether they contain
anything that might offend or undermine those in authority. The ones intended for the Queen’s eyes and ears are studied with particular care. Of course, our costumes should gleam while Master
WS’s lines have to glitter in our mouths. This demands much more time, care and patience than we are accustomed to in rehearsal. A great room, well-lighted and well-heated, is made available
to us at the old Priory of St John’s in Clerkenwell where the Master of the Revels holds sway. Here, generally after dark, we prepare Master WS’s
Twelfth Night
for Her Majesty.
Now, the Chamberlain’s had performed this before but never in the royal presence so it was most necessary to plane and polish what was well enough for the general public, plane and polish so
that the grain of the play shone through for the Queen. I had been returning from a Clerkenwell rehearsal of this piece when I had been so rudely intercepted in the street and led before Sir Robert
Cecil.

Nevertheless, Queen or no Queen, Secretary of Council or no Secretary of Council, life goes on, art goes on. As I’ve said, the play-business continues through the winter, not in full spate
but with a steady trickle of new material and old matter mingled together. If there is work, we players must go to it. I was only too pleased to go to work anyway. I had the strongest reasons for
being out and about during the day and, if possible, sleeping somewhere apart from my lodgings at night. This was because my lodgings were more fitted for a pig or a dog or a chicken than a human
being. As it happens, they also housed representatives of those farm creatures and others besides (such as rats and bats and cats) as well as four human specimens. At least, I think they were
human.

A poor player cannot be a chooser when it comes to accommodation. He needs to be close to his place of work; he is helped if he has a landlord or landlady who is not implacably hostile to the
drama; but above all he requires a bed and a roof that are cheap. South of the river is almost a necessity. The climate of acceptance (or indifference) is warmer down there, the questions are fewer
and, I am persuaded, the air is better. Of course, when you’re searching for a place to live, a personal recommendation helps. It was someone connected with the Company who told me that he
knew of four sisters who were looking for a man to share their abode off Broadwall.

So, once I’d got a fairly firm footing with the Chamberlain’s, I took myself down there one autumn morning. It was a few minutes’ walk from the Globe. The day was sharp but
only so as to give briskness to one’s stride. My head was clear and my spirits high. Who knew but that the quartet of sisters might not be youthful and limber supporters of the drama? Who
knew what they might not be prepared to share with a young and, even though I say it myself, not completely unattractive player? Sisters! – and four of them, a tetrad! Of course, a
moment’s thought should have told me that if
that
was what was in question then my informant in the Company would hardly have passed on the location to me. He’d have kept it for
himself.

The point south of Broadwall is where the town and the country fight it out for supremacy and, as usual on a battlefield, the result is somewhat messy. There were buildings but they were not
particularly respectable or well-kept; there was countryside but it was not especially pure and uncluttered.

I asked a one-eyed man if he knew the whereabouts of the four sisters’ residence – I’d been given no more precise information than that – and after I’d repeated the
question some half dozen times he backed away from me, proceeded to make various slurping noises and then stuck out a scarcecrow’s arm. He was pointing at a ragged building a little further
down the road. After that he crossed himself.

The house I’d been directed to seemed to have grown out of the ground. There wasn’t a single straight line or clean angle in it anywhere. Rather, it humped and lumped and swelled
like a monstrous dun-coloured vegetable. Weeds sprouted among the moss on the roof. The walls were pocked and blotchy. The windows squinted or leered at me. I approached the door with some
trepidation. In the gaps between the boards I could see the darkness of the interior. I knocked but with no result except to roust some pigeons out of the hairy eaves. I knocked again. And
again.

After a time a rustling sound approached the door. It opened a crack and a pig’s snout poked out. A cat darted out beneath the snout. Then a human face peered round above the snout.

“Whadjoowant?”

“I – I – am looking for – the sisters.”

“Hoosentjoo?”

“What? I’m sorry . . .”

“Izedhoosentjoo?”

“Ah, yes. I understand now. It was Master Richard Milford who told me of you.”

“Hoozee?”

Another face appeared above the first one. It was this face that now asked “hoozee?”

“He’s with the Chamberlain’s Company. He’s a playwright . . .”

My voice faltered. It did not seem as though the name of my Company was going to work its usual magic. This was obviously not a good idea. I wasn’t so desperate for lodgings, was I, that
I’d take anything on offer? (Yes, I was that desperate, and down to my last couple of shillings.)

“Notim . . . hoozisun?”

This was the second speaker. Then a third voice came from further down the crack in the barely open door.

“Broo?”

The face of this third speaker was as bewhiskered and carbuncled as the first two. You could not have put a hair between them for ugliness. Seeing them lined up with the pig, you might have
looked from one to the other and not been entirely sure which countenances represented womankind and which the beast.

“Er . . . I . . . not sure . . .”

“Youbroo?”

“Probably not,” I said. “Almost certainly I am not broo – although I
am
Nicholas Revill, player.”

“Naynay,” said this creature impatiently, as if it was my fault that I had no idea what she meant. “Youwantbroo?”

This was evidently a key question because the other two faces, hanging lopsided round the door-edge, regarded me with eyes that were an unappetising mixture of the milky and the blood-shot.

Then there came words from the area of the pig’s snout.

“What my sister means is, do you require any of our brew?”

Jesus, a talking pig!

I looked down and saw that the snout had withdrawn from the lowest point and been replaced by a different (human) face. There they were, lined up, four heads poking out from a door ajar. All of
the faces left everything to be desired. The one at the bottom, however, was the least far from the feminine.

“I am looking for the four sisters,” I began again. “I was told that they have lodgings available. I do not know of any brew.”

The expression on the bottom one’s face broadened.

“Go, April and June, go, July. I will attend to this person.”

The other three vanished as if they’d turned into thin air. Then the door was opened in full. The woman who’d spoken last stood there, dressed in a filthy smock.

“Forgive them, sir, they do not trust strangers and they are not used to talking. I am called May.”

“Nicholas Revill.”

I bowed slightly. Never let it be said that Nick Revill does not know how to comport himself before a woman, even one who is somewhat carbuncular and whiskery.

“This is the right place?” I said.

“We are the four sisters, April, May, June and July, and we are famous throughout the town,” she said. “Surely you have heard of us? We were named for the spring and the first
breath of summer.”

“Oh yes,” I said.

In the background I saw the other three fiddling around with a sort of cauldron and sipping with ladles at its contents. The fumes of something heavy and spirituous crept across the floor
towards the door. I guessed that, if this unholy quartet marketed their concoctions (hence the one-eyed man’s slurping sounds, hence the incomprehensible ‘broo’ query), they also
sampled their own wares extensively.

“Lodgings, you want?”

“Only looking,” I said, wondering how fast I could extricate myself from this.

“We are not dear.”

“That surprises me.”

“See your room?”

“Not mine yet,” I said. But she plucked at my sleeve and led me across a filthy, uneven floor. The pig had retreated to a corner. A chicken squawked in the gloom. A dog with an
interesting ancestry growled at me. One of the other sisters, April or June or July, had already succumbed to the contents of the cauldron and was lying flat out on the ground.

May urged me up a rickety staircase. At the top was a little room, amply supplied with fresh air (from the holes in the wall) and running water (down the same gappy walls). However, it had a
bed.