The Playmaker (18 page)

“No. I must be in the first rank.”

His face fell, as resoundingly as the walls of Jericho. “But lad! Thou wouldst be an ornament to the procession. And second-rankers get more in pay.” I surveyed the other mourners and guessed why. Most of them looked as though they'd been scraped from the city's underside—beggars, brawlers, and cutpurses who could be made respectable only by covering them head to foot. One seemed a notch above, if only by his bearing. He sat on a stone bench beside the cathedral, with the hood of his mourning robe pulled over his face—so unearthly still he seemed the very image of death. A cold presence, on this sweltering day.

I turned back to Zachary. “It's first rank, or I'm off.”

He sighed gustily, then shrugged. “So be it. Am I correct in taking thee for a scribe? Take this slate and set down these names. First rank: Sly Jack, Old Blind Peter, Mark the One-Handed, Ned Cut-Nose, Flat-Faced Francis. And thyself, if it must be.” I paused, then wrote “Tom Brown” for myself. “Second rank,” Zachary continued: “John Pinch, John Wood, Black John, French John, Simon the Jew …”

Once the names were listed, he took the slate from me and
counted them, to ensure he would not be slighted on his commission. Next I was outfitted, but the robe they gave me was so long I looked like a child dressing up. Zachary tied a pair of pattens to my feet, which elevated me a couple of inches but made me feel as though I was walking on stilts. While this was going on, two gentlemen arrived on horseback, followed by two ladies in covered chairs. The gentlemen dismounted and crossed the common: one an elderly fellow dressed in gray velvet, of noble bearing and amiable countenance. In one hand he carried a paper, rolled up like a scroll. A younger man followed, bearing a parcel tied with ribbon. He bore some resemblance to the elder man in face, but not in attitude—by the pinched look about his nose and mouth he might have been wading a sewer.

“Look sharp!” Zachary hissed to his comrades. “‘Tis our chief mourner, the Lord Chamberlain himself with his noble progeny!”

I watched with renewed interest as the gentlemen approached, for I had never seen our patron. Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, proved to be a pleasant-looking man with an easy manner that did not stand on ceremony. He nodded to Zachary, who had made one of his earth-kissing bows, and turned to consult with the Yeomen. Then he spoke to all of us, raising his hand with the paper.

“I have here an ode, written in honor of the deceased. If there be anyone here who can read it, it will be worth a shilling to him. Is there such?”

A long moment of silence; it seemed I was the only mourner who could read, unless the robed figure on the bench was able but
unwilling. At my side, Zachary became fidgety. He gave me a jab or two with his thumb, shifted from one foot to the other, finally whispered, “Come, we'll split the money.” Then he burst out, “My lord! Here's a youth can read passing well. An actor, my lord. In fact, a member of—”

I lifted my left foot and brought it down, patten and all, on his right. Zachary took it like a stoic, though his eyes bulged out a little and his smile turned grimacy. “—A member of a proud and honorable profession.” He made another low bow, quick of thought as well as hand.

Lord Hunsdon looked at me, but I saw no recognition in his eyes. To my knowledge he had attended no Company performances since I joined, so my identity remained safe. “Is this true, lad?”

“True enough, my lord.”

He extended the paper to me. “Will you, then?”

His manner was so gracious I could not refuse. So I took the ode, vowing that whatever happened they could not make me read it with my head uncovered.

The hearse arrived directly, pulled by two black horses and bearing an open coffin. In the confusion of sorting ourselves, I stepped up on a ladies' mounting block in order to see into the coffin. His lordship Philip Shackleford had shrunken a bit in the heat but appeared respectable otherwise; no rosary beads or other tell-tale symbols about him. The procession formed: first the drummers and halberd-carriers, then Sly Jack, who dolefully rang the mourning bell. Lord Hunsdon, resplendent in his gold-trimmed mourner's
robe, occupied the place of honor before the hearse. He was flanked by the two ladies while his son, looking supremely bored, held up his train. Then came the hearse, followed by Zachary's crew. Last of all the silent figure on the bench stood, picked up a pottery urn, and brought up the rear. As the procession filed out of the churchyard and headed for Ludgate, he solemnly dipped ashes from his urn and spread them upon the road.

“Who's that fellow?” I asked Zachary. “Never saw him,” was the reply. “For all we know, it's just a robe with no body inside, eh?” I was glad he bore me no ill will for his sore toes, but this was a right chilling thought to lay upon me.

Our destination was Westminster Abbey—a journey of a mile and a half under the remorseless sun, and by the time we arrived our countenances were sorrowful indeed. As we progressed down Fleet Street and the Strand, Londoners stopped and uncovered, and a few knelt in prayer. Some appeared to be truly grieved, others smug that it wasn't their funeral; a few seemed outright hostile. After turning at the Abbey gate, the procession finally entered the cool stone walls. There were more people inside than I expected, though from the looks on their faces it was curiosity brought them in, not sorrow.

I got through my ode reasonably well, but later could not remember a word in it, or guess whether Master Will could have written a better one. I pitched my voice as low as it would go and ignored the repeated motions from Lord Hunsdon at one end of the coffin and Zachary at the other, indicating I should uncover my
head. When I finished and stepped down, the latter made an apologetic bow to my lord as though to say, Forgive the boy; he has a ready tongue but a dull wit.

The Archbishop of York read the service; the choir sang their responses; the congregation knelt, and stood, and knelt again; we first-rank mourners beat our breasts on cue. Lord Hunsdon gave a short eulogy, which made his peer out to be a model subject and most worthy gentleman; then he paused and the urn-bearing specter approached the coffin and sprinkled ashes on the corpse's chest.

“Ashes to ashes,” intoned the Archbishop. “Dust to dust. To earth we consign thy bones, to heaven commend thy soul.” The younger Lord Hunsdon came forward with his wrapped parcel, suppressing a yawn. His father untied the ribbon and rolled out the grave cloth in full view of all. I took one look and uttered an involuntary cry, which I covered with a cough. And once the coughing started, I found I could not stop.

The device on the cloth was a hand holding a cup with Latin words arched over it.

When I felt in control enough to look up again, the grim figure of the ash carrier was the first thing I saw. It seemed that his eyes were fixed upon me. If, indeed, he had any eyes in the smoky depths of the black hood.

R
UMORS
S
WIFT AND
H
OT

tarling worried my account of the funeral almost to death, but could make no more sense of it than I. If the cup-and-hand device was connected with Philip Shackleford's house, what interest did my aunt have in it? Or my father, who had carried that very image on his own person? “It's not a symbol of the house,” she decided, “not like a coat of arms. Perhaps it's more the symbol of a society or faction. Perhaps a secret society, like the Knights Templar.”

“Secret societies don't fly their flags,” I pointed out. “Yet they rolled out that grave cloth as bold as the Queen's arms. If it's a Catholic symbol, could it mean that the Lord Chamberlain has papist leanings?”

“No,” she said, quite firmly. “Lord Hunsdon has been the Queen's own man from the very beginning,
and true as gold. If he was flaunting that cloth, it would be for some good reason.” But neither of us could fathom what that reason might be.

In mid-July came a report that the Queen had fallen ill in Northumberland. The news varied widely: she was recovering; she lay at death's door; she leapt from her sickbed and danced a reel; she was taken by seizures. Within days, some were saying that she had been poisoned—by a Catholic. I recalled how King John, in the play, had met his end likewise. As I was beginning to learn how art could echo life, the rumors gave me a terrible foreboding. True, Catholics had not threatened the Crown for eight years, or not since their last plot was cut off along with the Queen of Scots' head. But Elizabeth was old—destined to go the way of all flesh in God's good time, and had yet to name an heir. Surely the papists would not let her do so without an attempt to maneuver one of their own into the line of succession, and perhaps even hasten the Queen's end if she took too long to die.

This is what the servants were discussing late one afternoon, in the coolness of the great room. With the mistress and children gone and Master Harry usually out, they had the run of the house and liked to gather during the hottest hour of the day for a cup of ale or cider. Almost the entire household was present—Nell the cook, Tobias the butler, Jacob the gardener, Starling, and me— when Betty rushed in with flushed cheeks, waving her hands excitedly.

“Disporting with the neighbors' footman again!” Nell chided.

“But wait until you hear what he told me!” Betty fluttered. “Such news!” Of course, that got our attention, and she went on to impart what she had learned from her swain: at noon that very day, an apprentice was pushing a loaded wine cart through Ludgate when the little keg on top worked its way to the edge of the pyramid, overbalanced, and fell to the street. There it bounced on the rough cobbles, struck a curbstone, and broke apart. Amid jeers and laughter from the bystanders, a young music master happened to notice a flash of paper between the two oak disks that had formed one head of the keg. He picked it up.

The exact message of that paper was never made known, but within an hour all of London buzzed with the news of a conspiracy. The excitable music master had been heard to shout something about foreign agents and treason, and soon the crowd was a mob. The city marshal, ever vigilant during the plague season, arrived quickly to put down the disturbance. But word was out, and rumors can never be put down. “These devils are called the Knights of the Crossbow, or some such,” Betty concluded.

“What sort of name is that?” asked Jacob. “Belongs back in the Crusades, sounds like.”

Nell clucked her tongue. “Such foolishness.”

“No, it's their device. The keg was marked with a little cross-bow burnt into its head.”

Old Tobias began one of his lengthy explanations of the obvious. “The French, now—”

“Wait!” I interrupted. “A crossbow, did you say?”

“Aye, upon my honor and virtue,” replied Betty, with a little simper. She flirted with everything in breeches, even me. But my mind was wholly taken with the image of a crossbow about two inches square, stamped upon every keg of wine from the Châlons vineyard in the southeast of France. Very choice, very select, and imported only by Motheby and Southern. I pushed away from the table. Starling followed me from the great room, through the buttery, and out to the stone walk.