The Playmaker (34 page)

Then I had to stop, for I was crying, too.

T
HE
B
EAR'S
G
RIN

ext day the weather held, and we performed
Romeo and Juliet
. That was good for me, as I carried only a small speaking part at the beginning and merely stood about (or leapt about, in some semblance of fencing) for the rest of the play. It was all I could do. The night before, Starling and I had reached home just before supper—a fortunate time, because the household was gathering around the table. I shed the beggar's clothes and climbed the roof to my attic room wrapped only in my cloak, while she scouted Master Condell's disposition. By God's good providence, no one had missed me that afternoon, with Thomas and Ned in school most of the day and the mistress down with a headache. Of course Ned knew I had been summoned to the Bear Garden, but he was a flighty child, easily distracted. Besides, Starling
had threatened to strangle him if he said anything. Rob knew I was not in bed when he got home, because he couldn't help looking, but he spoke not a word, either for or against me.

Or
to
me—he remained oddly silent throughout the night and the next morning. Since our discovery of the hanging man, his manner toward me was never entirely easy, and now he appeared to think I might be marked out for the Tower or the scaffold. I could have used another friend, but loyalty is a mature virtue. Robin, for all his worldliness borrowed from the stage, was still just a boy— a frightened boy. So was I.

Directly after the performance of
Romeo and Juliet
as Robin and I made for the stairs behind stage, an unseen hand reached out of nowhere, clapped over my mouth, and pulled me into the farthest corner of the tiring room. It was that quick. One moment I was a weary performer making to change out of costume; next moment I was a prisoner in my own place of refuge, face to face with a gentleman in black. We were in the keeping room, a sort of closet where the tiring master stores costumes that want mending or cleaning before another performance. The cold sun, low on the narrow windowsill, cut a beam of brightness across the silver chain on the man's shoulder. He had taken the plume out of his hat, but otherwise looked exactly as he had appeared on the day I followed him from the Theater.

“My name is John Clement,” he began abruptly. “The young man beside you is Bartholomew Finch, my very able assistant. We serve the Lord Chamberlain in defense of Her Majesty.” I glanced to
my right, but already knew it was Bartlemy who had abducted my person so ably I doubted if Robin knew it even yet. The surprise was that they worked for our patron, but I had no time to ponder it as the man continued. “We have told you the truth, and from you we expect no less. Where were you yesterday at eventide?”

“I was …” I cleared my throat, but could not stop the dreaded hand closing around it, choking off not only words but wind. To my horror I recognized what happened: my father had made it impossible for me to lie. The barest suggestion of becoming like him in that way caused my tongue to swell, my mouth to dry up. No cat and mouse now, with Master John Clement; I was caught by the tail.

“What is your association with the man known as John Beauchamp?”

But how could I tell the truth? Telling the truth would seal not only my doom, but Robert Malory's, and my aunt's, and put Starling in danger also. Plain fear waved me off that path.

“It is no use pretending there is no association,” Master Clement went on. “We know that a man so named set out for the Port of Deptford yesterday around five o'clock. We also know that you did not appear in yesterday's performance. Another boy played your part.”

“Badly too,” put in Bartlemy—not only kidnapper and mauler but theater critic as well. He leaned against the wall, arms folded, regarding me with his sharp eyes.

“Well?” said his master. “Where were you yesterday at eventide?”

“So please you, sir …” My voice came out as the barest whisper—both of them had to lean close to hear it. “I was sick—”

“All day? Can anyone swear that you were in your bed around the first watch?”

Starling would, but she was now in her own bed with a nasty cough picked up from yesterday's adventure. Besides, I could not let her lie for me.

“Let me acquaint you with what we know, lest you try to dodge us again with some lame tale about losing your wallet. We have had an eye on you since you appeared at the chambers of Martin Feather. Since Bartlemy recognized you from the funeral, we marked you for questioning, but you appeared to be innocent when I confronted you. So we set you aside. But then last November a body was found in an abandoned house in Southwark. Know you the house I mean?”

I managed a nod.

“We got word of that body through one connected with this Company. Was it you?”

“N-n-no, sir. It was not me.”

“Would you swear to that?”

“I would, sir.”

“Have a care. We have caught you in one lie already. You claimed to know nothing of one Peter Kenton, yet Bartlemy discovered that you used that name to get a job on the wharf. Redeem yourself now with the truth. Where were you last eventide?”

I said nothing. My father must have got away, else they would
not be so desperate for information. And I had enough information now to hang me. The relief I felt at Robert Malory's escape was far outweighed by a sense of certain doom.

“We are in no haste,” Master Clement said, his words grinding. “We can keep you here all night, if need be. Where were you last eventide?”

I held my silence, which seemed to double and multiply until it filled the tiny room, pressing down upon me with inconceivable weight.

“Where were you—”

“Well, I'll tell you, since he can't,” came a voice from the curtained doorway, and my questioner started in surprise. It was Kit, half-changed into street clothes with his doublet unlaced, standing with one hand on his hip and the other grasping the door frame as though he had just leaned in to drop an indifferent word. Then he dropped it, and stunned us all. “He was in the play.”

John Clement glanced from him to me, and back again. “We have reason to believe he was not. Why did Master Finch not recognize him?”

“‘Tis unlikely anyone could have recognized him, covered head to foot in yon coat of fur.” Kit nodded to the opposite wall, where a huge ghostly form, hung upon two hooks, loomed out of the dim light.

“You're saying he was the
bear?
” The man's tone clearly implied disbelief.

“Just so. He was sick yesterday morning, and still sick when he
arrived late. The Company thought it best not to let him on stage in a costume he could puke over. Puking within a costume matters not—the skin is due for cleaning anyway.”

Master Clement released a short breath through his nose, then turned to his able assistant. “Well?”

“What can I say to that?” Bartlemy exclaimed. “Anybody looks like anybody else in a bear skin.”

“I can set you right on the other thing,” Kit continued smoothly. “‘Twas I got word to you about the body in that old house, though it wasn't supposed to come back to me.”

John Clement—reluctantly, it seemed—shifted the focus of his questioning. I heard, as through a fog, Kit explaining our fracas on All Hallow's Eve, making it sound like nothing more than a boy's adventure that turned grim. He told it mostly as it happened, and so plausibly even the false elements made perfect sense. A long pause followed the tale before Master Clement spoke again, returning to the matter at hand. “So you still claim it was this boy in the bear skin yesterday.”

“Aye. It was to be me, but I get out of playing the bear anytime I can.”

The man turned abruptly to me. “Why did you not say so at once?”

I opened my mouth and tried again, but still could not force a single word.

“What ails you, that you can't speak for yourself?” young Finch demanded.

“He frights easy,” Kit explained, with the hint of a sneer. “He used to freeze like this even during a performance. If he weren't his own worst enemy, I would have choked him myself, long ago.”

“What suits him for the stage, then?” Master Clement challenged.

“Come and see for yourself, sometime,” Kit replied, his voice cold. “If you doubt me otherwise I pray you ask Master Condell, or any of the others.”

The Queen's agents were not convinced, but they were out-faced. I recognized their dilemma: Lord Hunsdon, their master, was also our patron, with a long habit of protecting the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Unless John Clement possessed hard evidence to convict me, he could not lay a hand on my person, nor confront a respectable member of the Company with suspicions that might be groundless. So there the matter lay, at an awkward angle: he could get nothing out of me and could open no cracks in Kit's tale.

After a few more questions, mere stabs in the dark, the two of them had no choice but to pack up their doubts and leave with as fair a grace as could be managed—though Bartholomew Finch sent me a look on his way out that clearly expressed his opinion:
Guilty
.

I followed them to the doorway, and found myself trembling violently. Mixed with the relief was a strong tincture of guilt, for I had deceived them. Or allowed them to be deceived. A lie consented to was no different than one spoken, to my mind. But honesty was not so simple a proposition as I once had thought.

Nor was friendship. Once the Queen's men were out of sight, a rustling sounded among the costume racks and a disheveled figure emerged—Robin, still in Juliet's white shroud, who had eavesdropped on the interview and made no bones about it. All came clear to me then: it was he who sized my peril when I disappeared and decided he could not let me sink after all, but fetched Kit to my rescue. Not entirely the scared rabbit. “Rob—” I began, my voice catching.

He flung up a hand and backed away. “Say no more. If you are off the hook you were dangling from, 'tis well, but pray you have a care for my virgin ears.” With that, he scampered off to change.

I turned to Kit, who had, against all expectation, saved my backside. He spoke before I could: “Someday, we may talk. You interest me; I'll not deny it. There is more to you than can be seen in a sixmonth, and curiosity has the better of me. For now we consider all debts canceled. Content?”

“Content.” They were calling for us from the stage. I put out my hand, which he pretended not to see, but turned away with his straight back and gliding walk, ever a figure to inspire and provoke.

That left only me and the bear.

By now, he was little more than a shadow on the wall, but the fading sunlight brushed a gleam upon his glass eye and ivory tooth. He seemed alive and breathing, a broody presence haunting the edges of my life—not just now, but always. He was the unexpected element in the play that reared itself so suddenly the
audience gasped aloud; that changed everything, then disappeared. Slowly I crossed the little distance that separated us, raised an unsteady hand, and placed it on his foreleg, high up where the shoulder would be. A powerful muscle had once inhabited that skin, the living flesh of a Brutus or Benjamin or Ajax, that could rip me open with a single swipe. Or, in another mood, fold me to himself and keep me warm. With a long sigh, I leaned my head upon the empty chest.