The Rogue's Princess (2 page)

And then the players had rolled into town in their wagons, bringing an explosion of colour, music and wonderful words. This was the world as it should be, not as Kit knew it: laughter, courage, wit and passion. Watching the Burbages perform, Kit realized what he wanted to do with his life. Using all the arts of rhetoric drummed into him in the classroom through mind-numbing hours of Horace and Cicero, he had talked his way into the company. He was helped by the fact that the voice of one of the boys had just broken. That made a space for a new recruit to play the female roles, which were by custom given to boys of Kit’s age as no women were allowed on the English stage. Burbage senior had been impressed by Kit’s silver tongue and offered him a trial, first as the troupe’s boy-of-all-work, and now, for the first time, on the stage. Kit knew he was fortunate to have snatched up this means of earning a living in the face of many rivals, and meant not to waste a second of it. It was no small thing to be part of the only company to have a licence to present plays from the Queen herself and to be listed as retainers of the chief man of the realm, Lord Leicester, for this made them – in a very distant fashion admittedly – royal servants.

The company dismissed, Burbage and son off to meet the Master of Revels to gain permission for a new play, Kit readied
himself to go home, tucking his earnings in the toe of his left shoe to beat cutpurses, and checking his knife was on his belt. He lodged in Throgmorton Street, which meant a good ten minutes walk down a rutted track so he couldn’t be too careful with his riches. The Theatre had been built to the north beyond the city walls in the tanners’ fields an arrow shot from Bedlam asylum. As Master Burbage was fond of saying with a nicely judged pinch of irony, all the undesirables were excluded from London itself: the mad, the foul-smelling and the players. Kit couldn’t understand why actors were held in such low esteem; to him, they seemed the noblest of fellows.

As Kit stepped out of the tiring house, he was startled to find a crowd of protestors in the yard. They must have gathered in haste after the quake for some bore signs on rough wood, words scrawled in charcoal:
The earth shakes
–
God hates players
and
Salvation or the stage.
They were already haranguing Master Appleyard, led at the front by a flush-faced preacher from one of the stricter parish churches in Bishopsgate ward. Kit had always made it a rule to steer clear of men like him. It had been his experience that they showed no mercy to bastards such as he. These churchmen had evidently been in the back of the line when God ladled out the milk of human kindness.

‘You players are an abomination, an offence to God!’ the preacher yelled over the hoots and jeers of the crowd. ‘Your plays have drawn down His wrath on this city!’

Appleyard, as peaceable a fellow as one could wish to meet, looked rather surprised by this accusation. His round-cheeked face wanted to smile, but he sensed the crowd would not react well to his usual charm. He held out his hands in supplication.

‘Good my masters, calm yourselves. God does not worry about our little plays; He has the whole of Nature to order. Go from this place in peace.’

But the preacher was not to be silenced. ‘You dare to interpret God’s word to me, old man? You play lewdness on the stage and then talk of our Lord’s ways as if you know them? Repent ye before devils drag you off to Hell!’

Appleyard shrugged, seeing that this crowd was beyond reason. ‘Then let me through so I can go and contemplate my doubtless manifold sins in the privacy of my own chamber.’

The priest was not sure what to make of so placid a response. The merry-natured player looked as if he were going to make good his escape. To do justice to the momentous occasion of an earthquake, the Puritan preacher needed another flint to ignite his followers, one with more of an edge to strike his wit upon. Unwittingly, Kit provided him with his tinderbox.

‘Look, my brothers, here is a young man they have already corrupted – dressing him in women’s clothing and getting him to simper and preen on the stage like a courtesan!’ The priest stabbed Kit in the chest with a bony forefinger before he could slide away in Appleyard’s wake.

‘Leave me alone.’ Kit brushed him off, anger building. He had never simpered, not now, nor would he ever. He’d played his role as true to life as he could, giving his character spirit and dignity. There was nothing lewd about the merchant’s daughter; she was as witty a daughter of Eve as any yet seen on stage. ‘I wager you didn’t even attend the play so how can you judge its merits?’

The priest vengefully twisted Kit’s ear. ‘Oh listen, my brothers! Listen to the boy-whore preach to his betters! Not
attend the play! Why, we don’t need to sniff brimstone to know Hell is here!’

‘Get off me! I’m not a whore!’ Kit tried to squirm free, looking for a way through the crowd, but the men were tightly pressed together. No stranger to the ways of the London mob, he began to feel truly alarmed for his safety. Their faces had become indistinguishable from each other: a thick crop of tawny circles, mouths opened in howls, pebble-hard eyes glaring at him; they were like nightmare scarecrows lined up against him, and he the poor crow about to be strung up by the farmer in warning to other scavenging birds.

‘On the very day God sends the warning of the earthquake, this creature dares correct me!’ The priest seized Kit by the hair and dragged him round to face his congregation. ‘Is it too late for him? Is he lost from the paths of righteousness?’

‘Now see here, sir: that’s enough!’ Appleyard tried to push through to rescue Kit, but ended up fluttering ineffectually on the edge of the crowd. ‘Have pity. Let the child go.’

‘What! Let him back into the clutches of evil doers?’ The priest swung Kit this way and that so all could see him. ‘This boy wallows in sin, wearing skirts and piping like a girl to entice good men from the paths of duty! His every sigh on stage promotes unnatural practices, sins of the flesh too heinous to be named. His masters: procurers, not players! He must be cleansed – purified before God!’

Kit shuddered at the hatred directed at him, but kept his teeth clamped together, determined not to plead for mercy. His life had been one long struggle to keep his pride and he wasn’t letting it go now, even though, like the mouse under
the cat’s paw, he could feel the hot breath of the preacher on his neck, the clutch of hands on his clothing as the crowd bore him along.

‘Cleanse him! Cleanse him!’ chanted the crowd. A wild holiday mood was upon them as the priest played them skilfully like a flautist his pipe.

They dragged Kit to a horse trough outside an inn, lifted him high and dumped him in. Kit gasped with shock as water soaked through his clothes, cheap dye running out and staining the water brackish brown as it leaked from his jerkin. The preacher pushed him under, harsh fist on his chest.

‘Wash away his sins, O Lord!’ he bellowed, thoroughly enjoying the performance he was giving at Kit’s expense. He pulled Kit up by the hair. ‘Do you repent?’

Kit gasped for breath, but refused to speak.

‘He still spurns the light,’ crowed the priest.

Hands pushed him back down, holding him under longer this time. Kit took a mouthful of water and came up choking, nose stinging, eyes streaming.

‘The Devil claims him – see how he squirms in the fires of Hell!’

Kit was fighting for his life now; another dowsing like that and he feared he would drown. He scratched and kicked, but nothing he did made his captors release their hold on him. Under again and no relief – all he could hear were the muffled sounds of his attackers, rough hands forcing him where he did not want to go. Hauled up a final time, Kit was dumped beside the trough face down, his vision narrowing as though he were being dragged backwards down a dark tunnel.

‘See, God’s judgement on a sinner!’ bellowed the priest.

When Kit did not move, the preacher realized his victim was barely breathing. He shuffled back at a loss how to complete the scene. He had been hoping for some grand finale, weeping and wailing from the player, begging their forgiveness, but a silent, broken boy did not make for a very good ending. Some in the crowd began to murmur against the priest.

‘Oi, you! What you doing to that lad?’ A new voice broke into Kit’s confusion. ‘Damn it, man, you’ve killed the poor sprat!’

‘No, no, Goodman Ostler, he feigns, he feigns.’ The priest gathered his robes about him, trying to regain some respect. Like any seasoned performer, he knew when he was losing his audience and this was one such moment. ‘And don’t you use such ungodly language in my hearing!’

‘Ungodly? I’ll give you ungodly!’ The ostler pushed up his sleeves.

‘Now, now, there’s no call for that sort of … help!’ Panicked that he might be charged with murder, or thumped by the irate ostler, the preacher fled the scene, taking his flock with him.

‘Good riddance to poxy rubbish,’ muttered Kit’s rescuer, kneeling down in the mud to check the boy over. It took a hefty thump on the back from the kindly ostler to push the water from Kit’s lungs, leaving him coughing and retching in the mire.

‘All right now, lad?’ the man asked, his smiling brown eyes a stark contrast to his beaten face. Nose off beam, he looked as though he had come out the worst in a kicking contest with
a horse. Not that Kit felt his appearance was any better at that moment.

‘Thanks.’ Kit got gingerly on to his knees then sank back to rest against the trough. His jerkin was ruined – and he’d loved that garment.

‘Damned bloodsucking Puritans, pardon my French.’ The man helped Kit to his feet. ‘Want to dress the rest of the world in their colours and leech away the fun.’

Master Appleyard appeared at Kit’s side. ‘Got our boy for us then?’

‘Aye, but not before they half killed him. He’s one of Burbage’s lads?’

‘Aye. First day acting for the troupe at that.’

‘Oh rare, there’s a famous beginning! I predict he’ll go far, this one.’

‘Are you well, Kit?’ Appleyard patted his arm awkwardly. ‘I beg your forgiveness that I couldn’t separate you from the mob earlier. Two of them had me by the neck.’

Kit hugged himself, shivering in the chill evening air. ‘No matter, master. You couldn’t have stopped them. They would’ve just ducked you too.’

‘Marry, but I would’ve tried and then I wouldn’t feel so cowardly now. What’s the good of playing heroes on stage if you fail at the first sign of trouble, eh, my lad? You’d best skip along. Get yourself to your lodgings and change before you take ill.’ Appleyard was still looking fearfully around, afraid that the preacher would return with reinforcements to finish the job.

‘I’ll see him home,’ offered the ostler.

‘Thank you, John. I would be most obliged to you. I fear
I wouldn’t be much protection for him on the streets this night, not with the citizens acting as mad as rutting bucks trying to spear us on their horns.’

The ostler settled a paternal hand on Kit’s shoulder. ‘Come on, lad. You have nothing to fear from me. We’d best take it at the double: you’re squelching in your shoes.’

Reminded of his precious earnings, Kit wriggled his toes, relieved to find his money still where he had put it.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Apace, apace, Kit, before they rise again like the dead at the last trump!’ Appleyard waved and hurried off for his own lodgings.

Delivered to his landlady like a cat fished from the Thames, Kit hurried to his attic room to change. Neither of the apprentices with whom he shared the chamber was home so he could change into dry clothes without smart remarks from them. Indentured to a coffin maker and a butcher respectively, his roommates scorned, as well as envied, Kit his employment, a confused state of affairs that had them insult then flatter him like changeable winds battering a weathervane – the southerly breeze of warm flattery when they were after free entry to a new play, the cold shoulder of a north wind when jealousy gripped them. This would only get worse now he had been made a proper member of the company and given an acting role: he’d be spinning like the cock atop Bowe Church with their contrary moods.

His landlady took his wet things to hang over the fireplace in the kitchen. She promised she would see what she could do for his poor jerkin, but neither of them held out much hope for it. Mumbling good-natured complaints about boys and
their mischief, she creaked her way down the narrow stairs. The ostler had spared Kit the humiliation of explaining to the goodwife exactly what had happened. Kit preferred to keep it that way.

Alone again, Kit huddled on the bed in the gloomy chamber and hugged his long legs to his chest, trying to clamp down on the shivering wracking his body. Left completely on his own in the world, he refused to regret his decision to come to London and take to the stage even if it brought such punishments upon him. On stage, he could be princes and queens, people of importance. When he was older, he would be able to act heroes, warriors and kings – he couldn’t wait for that. He needed this escape because, off stage, he was plain Kit Turner, an earl’s bastard, forgotten by his family, and loved by no one since his mother’s death when he was but seven years old.

Kit pulled a splinter from a finger then sucked the wound, wondering what his mother would say to see him here. An optimistic woman with an exotic dark beauty quite out of the common sort for Berkshire, she’d had such hopes for him, thinking his father would set him up in some honourable profession, such as a soldier or man of law. When the other boys at the grammar school had teased him for his birth, she’d always said: ‘Just you wait, Kit, they’ll be laughing on the other side of their faces when your father takes you into his household. You’ll be sharing tutors with earls and gentlemen!’

But his father had never taken in the stray son and Kit’s mother had died bearing another unwanted babe, the child surviving only a few hours after her. He couldn’t tarnish his memories of her and blame her for being a nobleman’s mistress –
he had never been old enough to ask the whys and wherefores of the relationship, but he guessed it would have been hard for a woman of humble birth to refuse such a man as an earl. No, the fault was in the father who neglected the son that he knew he had been responsible for siring.