King of Shadows (15 page)

 

“not a mouse

Shall disturb this hallow'd house.

I am sent with broom before

To sweep the dust behind the door.”

 

I turned, to shift their attention to Oberon and Titania moving slowly in with their band of small ethereal fairies, all now with rings of little lighted candles around their heads,
to keep watch over the house while its humans slept.

At the back of the stage, Harry and Alex moved unobtrusively in, dressed in white, with three younger boys brought in for the sake of their voices. And I joined them as the whole magical group obeyed Oberon's instruction to dance and sing “and bless this place.” I couldn't tell you now the tune or words of the song we sang, but it was slow and soft, rather like a lullaby I'd know it if I heard it again, though I never have.

When we had woven our way about the stage, and the song was done, a single recorder played softly on in the background under Will Shakespeare's last speech. He stood right in the center of the stage, holding a silver bowl of water, and each fairy came past him and dipped a hand ceremonially into the water as he spoke.

 

“With this field-dew consecrate

Every fairy take his gait

And each several chamber bless

Through this palace with sweet peace;

And the owner of it blest

Ever shall in safety rest.”

 

Very subtly, as he said those last two lines, he glanced up at the curtained Gentlemen's Room, so that although nobody else would know he was giving his words to the Queen as a blessing, the Queen herself would know. I was so caught in admiration of the simple directness of it that I almost forgot the next two lines were his last, and my cue.

 

“Trip away; make no stay;

Meet me all by break of day.”

 

One by one they tiptoed gracefully away, dividing to go through the two doors. And there I was, left alone on the stage, holding a single candle that at the last moment I had picked like a flower from the headdress of the final departing fairy. Now it was just Puck and the audience, Puck speaking out to each of the three thousand faces all around him, and to the one great creature made out of those three thousand; Puck speaking in the voice of his author.

As Will Shakespeare had told me to do, I said my lines so firmly and clearly that I was almost shouting. I held up my candle, facing the audience on my left, and moved gradually around as I spoke, so that just for a moment every one of them would feel I was looking at him, or her.

 

“If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended.

That you have but slumber'd here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding than a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend:

If you pardon, we will mend.

And, as I am an honest Puck,

If we have unearned luck

Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,

We will make amends ere long;

Else the Puck a liar call.”

 

They were dead quiet, listening. With a quick breath, I blew out my candle, and stretched my arms wide to the whole audience.

 

“So, good night unto you all.

Give me your hands, if we befriends,

And Robin shall restore amends.”

 

For a second I stayed there motionless, until they started to clap and shout, and then I dropped the dead candle and threw myself into one big beautiful cartwheel upstage center, as the company all came running out of the side doors and downstage, to take their bows. Most plays ended with a final dance, but we'd already done ours.

Will Shakespeare reached out as he passed and grabbed my hand, holding it hard, pulling me with him, and we bowed together amongst the rest as the audience cheered and clapped. And that moment above all is what makes me say I shall never have a day like that again.

The musicians struck up cheerful music from the stage gallery, and the audience was still applauding as we all ran out offstage, laughing, thumping each other on the back. There seemed to be no thought of separate star calls, perhaps because there is no one star part in this play. In the tiring-house Master Burbage held up a hand, stood there a moment amongst us, listening, to gauge how long the noise might go on—then grinned and shouted, “Once more!” And back we went, to hear them roar their enthusiasm again. And again.

That third time, when we came back, six large soldiers were standing grouped in the tiring-house, armed and armored and very awesome. With them was the young lord who had visited Will Shakespeare's house two days before. He wore a black velvet doublet and a black silk cloak, and he had pearls in his ears.

He took Shakespeare's arm. “Will—this must be very-fast. Her Majesty wishes to see you and Master Burbage. Now, before she leaves.” He glanced down at me, and pointed his finger. “And the boy too.”

There was no time to be nervous. Before you could blink, the soldiers were around us, and we were moving through the crowded tiring-house and out to the nearest stairway leading up to the Gentlemen's Room. More soldiers stood at every corner, out there; all the corridors and staircases of that part of the theater were cut off. We were an odd sight amongst all the armored breastplates, Richard Burbage in Bottom's ribboned workman's clothes, and Will Shakespeare and I in our glimmer and glitter and fantasy paint.

“Make way!” called the soldier in front of us. “Make way!”

The nameless lord in his black velvet was close beside us as we hurried along. I heard him say close to Burbage's ear, “A master stroke, the Gloriana costume—a master stroke, my dear. Whose inspired idea might that have been?”

Burbage said blandly, “Few things in the theater are one man's idea, my lord.”

“As in politics—or at least one should make it seem so.” He gave a little snuffling chuckle. “Well, it was a lovely gamble, my dear, and your luck was in. It gave the lady great pleasure.”

And then we were there, in the entrance to the crowded little gallery, the air smelling more of perfume than of the garlicky, fusty body smell of the rest of the theater. It was lit by lanterns, because the curtains were still drawn across the front, keeping the gallery from the sight of the groundlings and other more prosperous folk still milling about in the yard below. Past the bending backs of my masters, as they bowed low, I saw the central seated figure, and could hardly take my eyes off her from that moment.

Queen Elizabeth I. She was an old lady. I had expected her to be tall and grand and beautiful, like Sam in his Gloriana costume, but she was not. Only the bright auburn curls of the wig were the same. Underneath it was a wrinkled white face that had lived a long time, with no eyebrows but thin, painted, curved lines, and bright, black eyes like beads, moving constantly, very alert. When she smiled at Burbage and Shakespeare—as she did at once, holding out her hand for them to kiss—she showed badly discolored teeth that would have given my dentist fits.

“Thank you for your
Dream,
gentlemen,” she said. “It is a favorite of mine, as you know.”

Will Shakespeare said, “Your Majesty is very kind.” The antennae on his Oberon head were quivering a little, and I longed to pull them off. They belonged on the stage, not here.

“A gentle play, a merry play,” said the Queen, who was sitting back unfazed by antennae, makeup or anything else. “Carrying no political historical baggage. You are a clever fellow, Will Shakespeare, but I have had my fill of the history of my forebears.”

Shakespeare said meekly, “The audiences do love a history, Your Majesty.”

“I hope you are not writing another.”

Burbage said, “A Roman history only, Your Majesty. We have just played Will's tragedy of Julius Caesar.”

Elizabeth waved a long finger at them. On several fingers of each hand, she wore enormous jeweled rings. “Enough of the downfall of great leaders, Master Shakespeare. Julius Caesar, and all those senators with bloody hands—it is almost as painful as Richard II giving away his crown.”

I couldn't see Will Shakespeare's face, because I was behind him, but his shoulders were beginning to droop. “I beg Your Majesty's forgiveness,” he said, rather muffled.

The Queen flashed her terrible teeth at him, and the black eyes twinkled. For an old lady, she had an amazingly flirty way of talking. “Never mind. Thy
Dream
was excellent, and so was thine Oberon.” Her gaze flicked over to Master Burbage, standing there stiff and nervous in his leather jerkin with silly little ribbons crossing it. “Dick Burbage, I am pleased to have seen your new theater. The audience was as much an entertainment as the play.”

“We are honored by Your Majesty's gracious presence,” Burbage said. Everyone seemed to use long stiff words by instinct when they talked to the Queen, as if she wasn't a real person.

“Bottom the Weaver was wonderful tragical-comical. Well done. It was all well done.” She looked over his shoulder. “And where is the green boy?”

Some strong hand in my back pushed me forward to
stand between Shakespeare and Burbage, and I bowed so low that my forehead nearly touched my shins.

“Th'art a pretty sight, Puck,” said the Queen amiably as I came up, “and a good little player. With a way of speaking that I cannot place—where dost thou come from?”

I stammered out, “St. Paul's School, Your Majesty.”

“Wast
born
there?” said the Queen, and she made her eyes so comically wide that I couldn't help grinning.

“No, ma'am. I was born in Falmouth.” And so I was. It's a little town in Kentucky, where my parents lived at the time.

“A West Countryman!” said the Queen. “Like my good old pirate Sir Francis Drake.” Those beady black eyes peered at me thoughtfully, scarily intelligent. “And thou hast a particularity, a strangeness—wouldst like to be a page at Court, little Puck?”

I said without thinking, appalled, “I am an actor, Your Majesty!” And I guess it came out sounding ridiculous, because they all laughed, though it didn't seem ridiculous to me, just true.

The Queen was smiling. She wore around her neck a thick pleated white ruff, which would have made her head look tiny if it hadn't been for the tall red wig above it. She said to the room in general, “It is a lucky man whose ambition does not vault over his talent.”

Then suddenly she had had enough of us. She looked over my head at someone behind me. “Sir Robert?”

I turned to see. An odd, runty little man was standing there, with his head slightly crooked on his neck. But he wore a green satin cloak with a fur collar, and a plumed hat, and he was clearly someone important.

“Your barge awaits, Your Majesty, and the guard is thick-lined to the dock. I shall be glad to see Your Majesty safely homeward bound.”

They all started fussing about the Queen as she stood up, and two brightly gowned ladies-in-waiting draped an enormous hooded cape over her shoulders. “You are a fidgety old lady, Cecil,” she said irritably, “far more so than I. Did you not hear them cheer their Queen? Or at any rate a wicked replication of their Queen.” She patted Master Burbage's arm flirtatiously as she came past him, and she smiled at Master Shakespeare. “The hair a little too red, masters,” she said. “A little too red.”

Then she was passing me on her way out of the narrow gallery, so that I caught a whiff of perfume, and a hint of a much nastier smell, perhaps from those teeth. “Sweet Puck,” she said, “tell thy fellow that the Queen thought him a pretty boy too.”

I bowed very low again, and by the time I straightened up, she was gone.

I said to Sam, back in the noisy, hysterical, paintsmelling tiring-house, “She said, ‘
Tell thy fellow that the Queen thought him a pretty boy.'”

Sam was still caught under his long skirt, which hung from his shoulders from straps like suspenders. Joseph the tireman was carefully peeling off his pearl-encrusted bodice. “Stand
still,
boy!” he said.

Sam's face was a study in relief and surprise, overlaid by a big pleased grin. “She said that, truly? She wasn't angry?”

Dick Burbage said, swigging from a goblet of wine as he elbowed his way past us, “She said thy hair was too red. Mark that, Joseph.”

Joseph paused, looking stricken. “The Queen thought the wig too red?”

“A
little.
too red,” I said. “And she may have been joking.”

“No joke,” said Master Burbage, shaking his head with wicked solemnity. “She never jokes about wigs.” He took another pull at the goblet, and moved on to join the milling, celebrating company.

Sam said, “A pretty boy?”

Joseph was looking disapprovingly after Master Burbage. He yelled at his vanishing back, “No wine in the tiring-house!”

Sam said again, happily, “A pretty boy. The
Queen!”

Most of the Chamberlain's Men ended up in the tavern that evening, boys and all. We ate roasted meat and vegetables, and a sticky tart with apples and plums in it, all in the uninhibited greasy way they had of using nothing but fingers and knives. Still, there was a big bowl of water to rinse your fingers, and a napkin to wipe them on. The meat was good; it was mutton, which is like lamb only tougher, and something called coney, which I liked a lot. It was only several months later that I found out a coney is a rabbit.

This was a feast of celebration, because the Master of the Revels, who was in charge of all the Queen's entertainment at Court, had promised the company a performance
at the Queen's palace in Greenwich in a month's time. That meant a handsome amount of money, as well as a great deal of prestige. It was to make up for our
Dream,
which carried no prestige because the Queen had been there in secret, and no royal money either, because it had been the Queen's whim not to command us to take our play to her, but to come herself to our commercial theater.