The Shakespeare Stealer (12 page)

I
let fly with the stool. It knocked the student's rapier from his hand and struck him on the shoulder. Without waiting to see what he would do, I knelt beside Nick and pulled his hands away from the wound. It was a serious one, but the knowledge of medicine and anatomy I'd absorbed willy-nilly in Dr. Bright's service told me that no artery had been severed. The thrust had struck next to his throat-bole and been stopped by his jaw. Still, there was a copious flow of blood. Using Nick's dagger, I cut off the sleeve of his linen shirt and pressed it into a ball over the wound.

Nick's eyes were wide, darting about as though searching for something. He tried to rise, and I put a knee on his chest. “Lie still, now. We've got to stop the bleeding.” When the first compress was dyed red, I had Sander cut another and pressed it to the wound until at last the bleeding slowed enough to allow me to bind it in place.

“Stay there a bit, yet,” I told Nick. When I rose and looked about, the two students were gone.

“How bad is he?” Sander asked, his voice anxious and unsteady.

“'A'll live, most like. What do we do wi' him now?”

“The tavern keeper's sent for a constable—which is why those two fled. You can go to prison for dueling.”

“That doesn't seem to keep anyone from it.”

“No. Some men's honor is easily insulted.”

“Not mine,” I said. “There's little in this world worth fighting over, as far as I can see.”

“Then why did you take Nick's part?”

“Did you not once say he was a part of the family?”

“So I did. All the same, it was a brave thing.”

I shrugged. “'A'd have done as much for me.”

Sander looked down at Nick, who lay staring at the rotted ceiling. “I doubt it.”

The authorities seemed to feel that Nick had suffered enough. Instead of taking him to prison, they took him to a hospital. Within a fortnight, he was on his feet again—too late to be of any use in our command performance at Whitehall.

We could have dealt with his absence alone, for Sander had been studying the part of Hamlet's mother, but we were deprived of our Ophelia as well. Had the decision been left to Julia, I feel sure she would have taken the risk, for she had gone on playing her old roles on the stage of the Globe, despite the fact that her secret was out. Though I didn't expect anyone would deliberately give her away, someone might let the truth slip, as Sander himself had done at the tavern.

I knew that, were my own secret revealed, I would not have had the nerve to face Mr. Pope or Mr. Heminges or Mr. Shakespeare or Sander. Julia was the only one I felt might understand. Yet I wasn't sure. When I believed her to be a boy, I had begun to think of her as a friend. Now suddenly I felt as though she were a stranger. Before, I had talked freely with her, more freely than I ever had with anyone, even Sander. Now, when we were thrown together, I scarcely knew what to say.

During a performance of
A Larum for London
I was assisting in the tiring-room when she came into the room to change costume. “You don't mind if I forgo your help, do you?” she said dryly.

“No, no,” I said, embarrassed. She disappeared into the wardrobe. It took me some time to think of how best to ask what I wanted to ask her. Finally, concluding that there was no good way, I said it straight out. “Why did you do it?”

After a long pause, her voice came from the other room. “Do what?”

“You ken.”

She emerged, still hooking her bodice together. “Disguise myself?” She shrugged. “For the same reason we all do it. To give others what they expect of us.”

“I don't ken what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. You do the same yourself.”

“Disguise meself?”

“Of course. Why do you speak so politely to Mr. Armin and Mr. Pope and the other sharers, and do as they tell you without complaint?”

I laughed. “Because they'd box me ears an I did not.”

“I doubt that. Anyway, you don't act that way with Sander and me.”

“You'd think me daft an I did.”

“You see? We play the roles others expect of us. If I'd come here as a girl and said I wished to be a player, they'd have laughed and turned me away. Girls are not permitted on the stage; it corrupts them.” She shook her head and smiled bitterly. “If I was not corrupted long since, growing up in Alsatia among thieves and beggars, then I must be incorruptible.” She hoisted herself up on the table next to me so casually that I had to remind myself that this was no boy made up to resemble a girl, but the actual thing.

“It was nothing new to me,” she went on, “dressing and acting as a boy does. My da wanted a boy, and made no secret of it—to carry on the family trade, you might say. He didn't provide me with much girl's clothing. ‘You can't outrun the law wearing skirts,' he always said.” She laughed and flapped the hem of her elegant costume. “In truth, I wore skirts and bodices regularly only after I began masquerading as a boy.”

“Will they let you go on wi' it?”

Her face grew solemn, and she shook her head. “They can't, now that they know. If the queen gets wind of it, we're all in the soup.”

“What will you do, then?”

“Would that I knew,” she said, with something nearer to despair than I had ever heard from her. “I've never wanted anything but to be a player, ever since the day I crept into the theatre at Blackfriars and watched
The Lady of May
through the crack of the door.” She stared into space, as though seeing that performance once more. A tear welled in her eye and coursed down her rouged cheek. She raised a sleeve to dash it impatiently away and forced a smile. “Perhaps I'll take up my da's trade after all. As I said, it's best to be what people expect of you.”

“It's not fair,” I said.

“No,” she said. “It's not.” She jumped down from the table. “I'll miss my cue.”

“Does it matter, now?”

She shrugged and gave an ironic smile. “It does to me.”

Of course what she said was perfectly true. The company could not let her go on performing for long. No matter how loyal or how closemouthed the other players were, sooner or later someone was sure to let the truth slip out, and this time the company might not be let off lightly as they had been in the Essex affair.

Even if we could have carried the deceit off successfully at the Globe, we dared not risk it under the very nose of the queen. The part of Ophelia would have to go to a boy. Sander was out of the question, being occupied with Nick's part. Sam and James, the hopefuls, were neither old enough nor experienced enough.

So the company was left with a clear choice: either they must hire a boy from some other company, someone who would be unfamiliar with the role and with the methods of the Chamberlain's Men, or they must settle for me.

They settled for me.

To the company's credit, they did not simply thrust the part upon me. Mr. Heminges asked me if I wanted it. I was not used to being asked my opinion on anything, and it confused me. Did I truly have a choice, or was this an offer, like Simon Bass's offer, that I was not permitted to refuse? “I don't suppose I could think on it.”

“We have less than a w-week left until the p-performance.”

“Aye,” I said mournfully. “I ken that.”

“Julia has offered to g-go over the p-part with you.”

“That would help,” I admitted. “But I'm just not certain. I mean, do you really think I'm ready to play so important a role? Before so important an audience?”

“If we didn't feel you c-could do it, we would not have offered it to you. Whether or n-no you have the ability is not the question, but whether or n-not you have the c-courage.”

If this was calculated to prick my pride, it worked, and that surprised me. I was sure that what small pride I had was buried deep, for it seldom bothered me. I had never been much of a hand for courage, either. When two paths were open to me—which is not often in the life of a prentice—I took the one easiest to travel, without regard to where it led. I had never deliberately chosen the perilous or demanding path.

But I had done many things recently that I had never done before, and never dreamed I would do. “Well,” I said with a sigh, “I suppose if Julian could be a boy for three years, I can be a girl for an hour or two.”

W
ithout Julia's help, I could never have hoped to be ready. Each afternoon, long after the others had gone, we sat and went over the lines again and again. She taught me not only the words but their proper reading and what gestures to use. As difficult as this was for me, it must have been doubly difficult for her, having to tutor me in a role she had worked so hard to make her own, a role she had gone through years of disguise and deception to be able to play.

And here was I, with no real notion of being a player until a few weeks before, having the part handed to me. Yet she made no complaint. In fact, she was so generous as to tell me that, if she had to surrender the part to someone, she was glad it was me. I feel sure, though, that her cheerful acceptance was itself a disguise. Something in her eyes spoke of sorrow, and in unguarded moments they sometimes shone with tears. I determined then to put every ounce of effort and ability I had into playing the part, so that she would not be disappointed in me.

I had no time for a prentice's lessons, or a prentice's tasks. Every available moment was spent rehearsing, sometimes under the eye of Mr. Shakespeare or Mr. Phillips, who pointed out my many flaws. For an hour or two each day, I worked with the other players. Only twice did I share the stage with our Hamlet, Mr. Burbage, and then only to work out where I was to move and on what line. He was patient enough with me and my blunders, but he seldom displayed any real warmth or friendliness.

That week was a paradoxical one. Because I trod the same ground over and over, repeating my lines until they threatened to choke me, each day seemed endless. Yet taken as a whole, the week passed with astounding speed. On Wednesday evening, we ferried across the river to rehearse before the queen's master of revels. The performance was a nightmare.

The stage was half the size of the Globe's, which drove us to distraction. To add to the confusion, there were all the new properties and painted backdrops our hired men had constructed. Whatever way I turned, I came up against another player or a piece of scenery. My lines, which were not yet securely seated in my brain, flew from it like startled birds.

To our tiny audience, it must have looked as though we were playing not
The Tragedy of Hamlet
but
The Comedy of Errors
. When at long last we came to the end of it, I had made up my mind that my best course would be to share Ophelia's fate—that is, to throw myself over the side of the wherryboat into the Thames and join the rest of the offal there, none of which could be any more putrid than my performance had been.

No one else seemed upset, either with the rehearsal or with my part in it. “You needn't look so glum, Widge,” Mr. Armin said. “A bad rehearsal means a good performance.”

“That makes no sense at all. You may as well say a bad cook makes a good meal.”

He laughed. “It's true, though. You'll see. Besides, we still have three days before the performance.”

I tried to take some hope from this, but secretly I was wondering how far I could get from London in three days.

Saturday dawned grey and gloomy, in keeping with my mood. Julia and Sander tried to cheer me, but the only thing that might have done the trick was to hear that the queen had changed her mind and would have the Lord Admiral's men instead.

Immediately after the performance of
Satiromastix
, the company set out for Whitehall, on a barge provided by Her Majesty—a gesture not unlike providing the cart to haul a condemned man to the scaffold.

Julia was asked to come along and assist behind the scenes, on the condition that she dress as a girl. She refused. But as we were climbing onto the barge, she came running down the landing stairs, clothed in her costume from
Love's Labour's Lost
, her skirts lifted so high we could see her ankles. She sprang onto the barge and took a place on the railing next to me, flushed and scant of breath and—something I had somehow failed to notice before—quite pretty.

“I'm glad you decided to come,” I said. “I can do wi' a bit of support.”

She shrugged casually. “You'll be all right without me. Actually I came along in order to meet the queen.”

“You lie,” I said, and she laughed.

I had always thought of Whitehall as being just that—a large hall, painted white. But what lay before us was more in the nature of a small, walled town. I gawked about me like the greenest country lad as we were escorted to a massive square hall with a lead roof and high, arched windows. Within, the hall was as grand as the grandest cathedral.

“Where is the stage?” I asked Sander.

“There is none. Only the floor.”

“Gog's malt!” I murmured. We would not be set apart from our distinguished audience at all; instead, we would be playing practically in their royal laps.

It was fortunate that my entrance came well into the play, for I spent the first quarter hour of the performance in the jakes, emptying my stomach of what little supper I had been able to force down. Julia found me there and pulled me like a balky sheep to the stage entrance. “Wait! Wait!” I whispered urgently.

“What is it?”

“I can't recall me first line!”

“Do you doubt that?” she said.

“What?”

“That's your line, Widge. ‘Do you doubt that?'”

“Oh.” The cue line came to my ears. Chris Beeston took me by the arm and strode onto the stage with me in tow. Ah, well, I told myself, there's no turning back now.

Sometimes in dreams we do things we could never do in everyday life. The moment I stood before that glittering crowd of sumptuously dressed courtiers, I lapsed into a sort of dream. Through some miraculous process, I ceased to be Widge and became Ophelia, except for some small part of myself that seemed to hover overhead, observing my transformation with amazement.

The lines flowed from me as though they had just occurred to my brain and not been penned by Mr. Shakespeare a year earlier. The audience seemed vague and distant. Only when I had spoken my final line in the scene and swept off the stage did I come to myself again, to find Julia grasping my hands and fairly jumping up and down with delight. “You were wonderful! You didn't miss a single word!”

I grinned back at her. “I did so. I forgot to say ‘So please you' to Polonius.”

She gave me an exasperated shove. “You sot. Admit it; you were good, very good.”

I shrugged, embarrassed. “An I was, I owe it to you. I'm only sorry you couldn't do the part yourself.”

Her gaze fell. “It can't be helped.” Then she put on something of a smile again and pulled at my wig. “You're all askew. Come sit down, I'll repair you.”

So in the end it was not courage that got me through; it was a trick of the mind. As I had survived my orphanage days by pretending I was someone else, someone whose parents still lived and were great and wealthy and would someday come for him, so I survived my hour or so upon the stage by pretending I was a wistful Danish girl, driven mad by love.

After the play, we were presented to the queen and her court, and I was compelled to be Widge again. “What do I say?” I whispered to Sander as we stood in line like soldiers awaiting inspection—or execution.

“Don't say anything,” Sander advised me. “Just smile and bow, and kiss her hand.”

I practiced my smile. It felt as though I had painted it on, and the paint was cracking. By the time the queen approached, my dry lips were stuck so fast to my teeth that I feared if I pressed my mouth to her hand, I would draw blood.

Mr. Heminges introduced each member of the company in turn. Even had I not known the queen's countenance from the likeness of her that hung in every inn and shop, I could not have mistaken her. Among all those elegant lords and ladies, she was the most elegant of all, in her bearing and in her appearance. She looked far too young and sprightly to have worn the crown for over forty years.

Or so I thought, seeing her at a distance. When she stood before me, her face not three feet from mine, I saw that the fair complexion was a layer of white paint, a ghastly mask, through which her age clearly showed, and the red hair the result of dye. When she smiled, her teeth were black with decay.

“This is our Ophelia,” Mr. Heminges was saying. “Widge has been with us but a few months.”

I bowed quickly, as much to hide my shock as to do homage to her. She held out her gloved hand, and I touched my lips to it. Now I thought, she will move on. But to my horror, she spoke to me. “What sort of name is that?”

Pretend you're someone else, I told myself—someone charming and witty, someone whose voice works. “It's a—a sort of nickname, Your Majesty,” I said, and the voice certainly sounded like someone else's.

“What is your Christian name, then?” She spoke with kindness and, it seemed, genuine interest.

“I don't ken. It's the only name I've got.”

“Well, Widge, if you go on performing as admirably as you did for us, you'll make a name for yourself.”

“Thank you, mum—I mean, Your Majesty.” I bowed again, and when I came erect, she had moved on.

That night in bed, the evening's events replayed themselves over and over in my head. In the space of a few hours, I had done more than transform temporarily into Ophelia. I had undergone a more dramatic change, from a shabby impostor, a thief and orphan who had been given a task far beyond his abilities, into a reliable, valued member of an acting company who performed daily at the center of the universe.

The queen herself had said I would make a name for myself. A name? Yes, I needed a real name. I would not be plain Widge any longer. I would be…Pedringano. I said it aloud, grandly. “Pedringano!”

Sander stirred next to me. “What?”

“My name,” I said, “is Pedringano!”

He hit me with a pillow. “Go to sleep, Widge. We have to haul scenery first thing in the morning.”