Death of Kings (6 page)

It may be that she detected my distraction that night in her crib.

“Why, Nicholas, this is not like you. To go only once and then without much – much spirit.”

“I have played twice today,” I said.

“You are practising for the – Queen?”

There was a breathy pause before she uttered the last word. Needless to say, Nell would have kissed the ground on which her Majesty trod. I have noticed that girls like her, and those of her
class in general, reverence royalty. So do I, but in an educated way if you see what I mean. Some weeks before, Nell had almost kissed the ground where I stood when I revealed that we were to
present
Twelfth Night at
court. Not that I was standing at the time. Well, not entirely.

“Rehearsing for her this evening, yes we have been.”

“
Her?
”

“That’s what I said. Her.”

But I hadn’t said it with sufficient awe for Nell. Her question was a little rebuke.

Another reason I was tired was that, as on the previous night, I’d had to make my way across from Clerkenwell after the rehearsal session at the Old Priory. This meant walking to
Blackfriars to take the ferry to reach the south bank and then doing another foot-slog to reach Holland’s Leaguer, where Nell plied her trade. It also meant that I was constantly looking over
my shoulder or keeping my ears cocked for another arrest like last night’s. I jumped at the shadows. I flinched at cats and other late passengers. All this to-do – two plays, and a
couple of miles paced out in the star-lit dark, and a hidden mission for the Secretary of the Council – it took it out of a man, even a young, vigorous one like myself. My head whirled and,
exhausted as I was, I could not fall asleep in Nell’s loving arms. For her part, Nell seemed not inclined to rest but to talk and later on, I very much feared, to another bout of
night-work.

“Is this not a grand privilege, Nicholas?”

“What?” said I, deliberately obtuse.

“To play before our sovereign lady.”

“The Chamberlain’s are often before her. We are her men in all but name.”

“Yes . . . but for you, Nicholas, it is the first time.”

I had recently noticed that when Nell wanted to speak to me seriously, and particularly when she was discussing the royal performance (a subject to which she frequently adverted), she called me
Nicholas. Now I was Nick only in her careless or affectionate moments. I had noticed also that there was a kind of balance – or rather, imbalance – in these things, so that as the
woman’s eagerness mounted higher in the scale so it behoved the man to sink down and underplay his own excitement.

“Remember, Nell, that my work is playing. Whether we have the highest in the land in our audience or the lowest, it is all one to the player. He performs his office for the love of it and
regardless of anyone’s regard.”

“Then you don’t care if no-one is watching?”

“Well, no, of course not. What I mean is that the player plays while the king is watching – or the beggar.”

If I hadn’t been tired I could have continued in this king-beggar vein for some time, although I would have been laughed at if I’d spoken thus in the presence of a fellow-player.
Such talk would do, though, for one not initiated into the mysteries of our craft. Nell, however, was having none of it.

“I do not believe you. For one thing, the king will pay and the beggar cannot.”

“You’re right. I’m not sure I believe myself.”

“That’s better, Nick, now you are smiling.”

“I am always smiling with my Nell.”

“Not tonight. You have looked grim and distracted ever since you arrived.”

“The light is bad in here.”

We had a feeble candle to light us to bed. Nell was prudent in her housekeeping. No doubt too her customers preferred themselves in that dim way, although Nell showed to advantage in any light.
(Such thoughts, to do with her and her customers, entered my mind unbidden.)

“You fool, Nick, do you think I need to see you to tell how you are? I can hear it in your voice. I can feel it in you while you lie beside me. You are all stiff and uneasy.” I
am?

“Except in the one part.”

“I am tired. Two plays, a deal of walking about and . . . and . . .”

“And?”

“Other matters, which I cannot talk about.”

“Very well.”

I expected her to press me further. Women are bound to be curious, aren’t they? I was ready to hint – in the most general terms – at large concerns, important business, sundry
weighty reasons, etc. This might have afforded me some slight relief from the burden of secrecy. And I didn’t altogether dislike the way Nell treated me with a new respect now that the
Chamberlain’s were to play before the Queen. Accordingly, I sensed I might win an even more reverential favour from her if I touched on, only
touched
on, the great affairs of state in
which I was becoming entangled. This may seem to contradict the silence which had, in effect, been enjoined on me by Master Secretary Cecil but I reasoned that
hinting was
not
telling.

“You don’t want to know?” I said.

“It doesn’t matter whether I want to know or not. The only thing that you want me to know is that you don’t want to tell.”

Perhaps it was because of the tiredness which I’d just mentioned to her, and which I hadn’t much exaggerated, but I really found it a bit difficult to follow what she was saying
here. I took refuge in repetition.

“I cannot speak of it.”

“Very well,” she said again.

I waited.

“So this is behind your absences from my bed?” she said. “This thing you cannot speak of.”

I saw then the sudden use to which I might put the state business on which I was engaged. It could serve my turn too. For it was true that I had not been so frequent an occupant of her bed of
late. There was – there had recently been – another matter about which I was not willing to hint at all to Nell, and I realised that I could hide it behind the larger, shadowy
business.

“Yes,” I said. “Forgive me, Nell. I do not willingly absent myself.”

This was both true and not-true.

“I believe you do not, Nicholas.”

I wasn’t sure from the tone of her voice whether she did believe my words. As she had said, my friend was well able to ‘read’ me through my voice and attitude, even though she
could neither read nor write. But I, book-learned as I was, was still so unschooled in her that I could not clearly construe her expression by the candle’s feeble glimmer.

“But men will do as they please,” she said. “Even as women will do everything to please them.”

“It pleases me to be here with you, now,” I said, stroking her warm flank.

“Here and now is easily said.”

“Easily said may be heartfelt too,” I said, putting well over half a heart into my words.

“Here and now,” she echoed. “What about there and then?”

“I do not understand you,” I said.

“I think you do,” Nell said. “But it doesn’t matter. Let us sleep now since you are so tired out at the hands of these things which can’t be spoken of.”

After that I soon fell asleep. That sleep, and the few minutes’ talk which led up to it, were the last vestiges of ordinary life which I was to enjoy for some time.

After the rigours of that day with its two plays, the next one was, for me, one of comparative ease. Or should have been. Yet it turned into one of the most difficult, and
alarming, of my life.

Although I had no diversion apart from yet another rehearsal of
Twelfth Night
in the evening, habit and the love of work drew me to the Globe in the morning. There might be something for
me to do. I might be useful.

I should have stayed in bed.

Sure enough, the Book-keeper of the Globe spoke to me. He was a sallow-faced gentleman named Allison who played a variety of roles in our Company. While a new play was preparing, it was his task
to ensure fair copies were made from the author’s foul papers, since no-one can use a splotty, scrawled and scratched-out manuscript, all warm and illegible from its creator’s hand.
Therefore the foul papers must be sent to the scriveners to be copied out neat and fair several times over, one of these copies being required by the Master of the Revels for allowance. Then Master
Allison writes out a Plot on a piece of paper which hangs near one of the entrances to the stage, telling all when they are required to appear and with what gear (a drawn sword, a severed head, a
fluttering handkerchief). And during performance Allison is our prompter. Dick Burbage and one or two others excepted, I don’t suppose that anyone knew the plays we put on as well as did
Master Allison, that is, knew them from paper scrawlings to their fleshly incarnation in performance.

But perhaps his chief role was to be the Company’s memory and treasurer. I had heard Master Geoffrey Allison liken a play to a poor, lone boat on the high seas of this world, a little
bobbing bark freighted with the author’s hopes, prey to passing adventurers and pirates who might wish to possess another’s work by force and pass it off as their own or, more likely,
to offer it up dismasted and mutilated as sacrifice to an ignorant public. Until a play is entered at the Stationer’s Hall for printing, the author’s words are like the blossom that
floats through the spring air: the product of Mother Nature and any man’s for the sweeping up. This rather charming analogy between words and blossom was another of Master Allison’s
tropes. He had a taste for elaborate images. It was probably caused by hanging around poetry for too long.

Anyway, he said, it behoves a self-respecting Company of players not only to keep their own hands out of other Companies’ pockets and plackets but also to ensure that what is theirs (for
once the author has been paid his £5 or £6 the play becomes as much the property of the Company as are the costumes) remains safely stowed.

In the Book-keeper’s office there is a locked chest. In the chest is a treasure which is the equal of the golden fleece sought by Jason in the far reaches of Colchis. This is my comparison
and not Master Allison’s. For the chest contains play manuscripts. I have glimpsed this treasure, or, to be more precise, the solid oak trunk which contains it, bound about with iron hoops
and secured with two padlocks.

It was about this great trunk and its contents that the Bookkeeper spoke to me.

“Nicholas, you have some time at leisure this morning, I believe.”

“Nobody would know that better than you, Geoffrey,” I said. “You are aware of all our comings and goings.”

You see on what easy and familiar terms I was with the other toilers in the playhouse even if there were a few, such as the Burbages and WS, whom I addressed more formally.

“Well, since you are free for now, perhaps you would do me a little favour.”

“Willingly,” said I, full of helpfulness.

“I am occupied elsewhere.”

“You are a busy man,” said I, full of a junior’s approbation.

“In fact, it should suit someone of your bookish habits and disposition. Master Shakespeare suggested that you would serve. Also I have heard that you possess a good hand and write
neat.”

“Then I am at your service,” said I, even more pleased at being described as bookish, though I am aware that this compliment would not do for every young man, as well as being
preferred for a task by WS.

“I have a chest in my office which contains fair copies of many of the pieces that we have put on.”

“I know it.”

“I need a master-register of what is in the chest. Even
I
do not know everything that is there. There is a mass of material in the bottom of the chest which might as well be at the
bottom of the sea. Can you swim?”

“I do not like the water,” I said, humouring him and his figures of speech.

“Oh well. All that I require for now is the names of plays, names of playwrights, no more.”

“A catalogue you mean.”

I was, for some reason, surprised by the request. I don’t know what I’d been expecting but it wasn’t this.

“I need someone that I can trust. Perhaps I should say
we
need someone we can trust,” pursued Master Allison. “Ever since our move across the river I have been intending
to catalogue what the chest contains but, like many small tasks, it continually slips just beyond one’s fingers. Then Master Shakespeare, finding that this had not been done, he says to me
yesterday, ‘Why not ask the new man, Nicholas Revill? He looks sharp and has a fair hand, and he is a lover of plays.’”

“Master Shakespeare said all that about me?”

“Indeed he did.”

“How does he know I write neat and clear?”

“Oh I don’t know, Nicholas, and I don’t propose to enquire. You know how ready he is with a compliment. You must ask him yourself. The question is, will you make this
master-list of the treasure in our chest?”

“Of course.”

“Then there is no better moment to begin than now. We should seize time by the forelock.”

“Undoubtedly,” I said.

“I do not think there’s more than a few hours’ work in it. I will bring you pen and paper. Here are the keys to the locks.”

He handed them over rather unceremoniously but made it all right by adding, “Be sure that I will tell Burbage and Shakespeare how happy you were to undertake this little task for the
Company.”

A few minutes later found me on my hands and knees – a posture of obeisance not entirely inappropriate, in view of the contents – before the great chest in Master Allison’s
office. Beside me were ink, pen, paper. The lid of the trunk was propped open. Inside were bundles of paper, secured with ribbon or string or cord. A certain disorder prevailed. I wondered whether
the trunk had been examined since the move across the river little more than a year before, when the Chamberlain’s Company secretly decamped from their site in Finsbury and established
themselves here on Bankside.

I settled myself, cross-legged, on the floor. I took out a bundle of paper, undid the cord and spread out the half dozen vellum-covered scripts which it secured. I picked one up, brought it near
to my eyes and flicked through the pages. I wondered whether Master Allison would begrudge me the extravagance of a candle. The play was called
Uther Pendragon
, a tale of King Arthur’s
father. The next was titled
Vespasian
; and the next
Vortigern
; and I was beginning to think that there was some system to Master Allison’s bundling of scripts together –
for these ones all dealt with the olden times in Britain or imperial Rome – when I picked up the fourth and found it was some light piece called
A Woman Hard to Please.
After that
there was a play with which I was familiar, since it was one of the earliest I’d participated in at the Chamberlain’s, namely
A City Pleasure.