The Shakespeare Stealer (9 page)

I
sat up, dazed and frightened, to find the dark, hooded figure of Falconer crouching over me like some rough beast over its prey. “Where is it?” he demanded, in that harsh and hollow voice.

I tried to rise. “I—I—I've been having trouble—”

He shoved me back. “Trouble? You haven't begun to learn what trouble is! Where is the script?”

“It was—it was stolen from me wallet. By a thief.”

“The devil take your lying tongue!” He snatched his dagger from his belt and thrust it under my chin. “The truth, now!”

“It's true!” I cried frantically. “As true as steel, I swear it!”

“Then you've made a new copy for me?”

“I'm trying.”

“Trying? You think I haven't watched your comings and goings? You've been at the Globe every day, and you've nothing to show for it!”

“I can't do 't wi'out being seen!”

He let out a hiss of disgust and let the tip of the dagger drop an inch or two. Gasping, I rubbed at the spot where it had pricked my skin. “Well,” he said, “there's nothing left to do, then, but to take the book.”

“I meant to, but they keep such a close watch on it.”

“Take it from the trunk. It'll be kept in the property room.”

“Suppose it's locked?”

“Break the lock! I want that script, and I am accustomed to getting what I want. Have it for me tonight. I'll be waiting. Understood?”

I nodded, very carefully in view of the dagger so near my chin. Falconer suddenly lifted the point again and pressed it against my chin. “And mark me, boy. Breathe no word of this to anyone, or I'll cut out your wagging tongue.” With that he stood, stepped over the hedge, and was gone.

I lay in the grass for some time, my heart clamoring in my chest and my limbs weak as water, before I could compose myself enough to continue on to the playhouse.

When I came through the rear door, Mr. Pope was just making an exit from the stage, his face set in the jolly grin required by his role. When he saw me, he resumed his usual gruff expression. “Ah, Widge, you've decided to join us.” He shook his head in mock exasperation. “Give a boy a few lines to say, and he thinks he owns the theatre.” As he came nearer, his face took on a look of concern. “Are you well, boy? You look as if you'd eaten a batch of bad oysters. Sander said you'd been upset, but—”

“It's naught,” I said. “I ran too hard getting here, that's all.”

“There was no need. We can manage without you for an hour or two.”

“I ken that. I don't like it thought that I'm shirking me duties.”

“No one thought that.” He lifted my chin. “What have you done to yourself? You're bleeding.”

“Oh, that. I—ah—I stumbled and fell into a hedge.”

Mr. Pope pulled his kerchief from his sleeve. “Hold that on it. Now, will you need the morning free to study your daunting part, do you think?”

I flushed. “Nay, I can speak it well enough.”

In the practice room, Mr. Armin was strapping a metal plate to Sander's waist. “Just in time, Widge.” Mr. Armin tossed a short sword to me. So shaken was I that I dropped it, drawing a derisive laugh from Nick. “We'll have to practice that,” Mr. Armin said. “But for the moment, you will all be learning how to die properly.”

I had come as close to dying as I cared to for one day, but I kept silent and tried to attend to Mr. Armin's words. “We'll be enlisting you prentices for battle scenes soon. Your weapons will be blunted, but there will be no protective tips. So, lest you die
too
convincingly, you'll wear a metal plate.” He tapped the one at Sander's waist. “It is the responsibility of your adversary to see that he strikes this, and not your gut. Of course, in Nick's case, it may be difficult to avoid.” He gave a wry glance at the pronounced belly Nick had begun to develop as a result of his regular carousing.

“Now, you've all seen the small bladders full of sheep's blood which we use. They are tied flat to the plate, and the point of the sword bursts them. We'll try that another time. For now, pair off and take turns being killer and victim.” He handed Julian a metal plate. “You and Widge trade blows. Carefully.”

“Are you sure he's ready for this, Mr. Armin?” Julian asked anxiously as he strapped on the plate.

“He'll do well enough. Now. Low ward.
Dritta. Riversa. Incartata.
” I thrust under Julian's singlestick; the sword hit the protective plate, but to my astonishment, the plate did not stop it. My momentum carried the hilt forward six inches.

“Oh, God!” I cried. “I've stuck him!”

But Julian did not appear to be stuck. Indeed, he was laughing. “It's your sword. It collapses into the hilt!”

I gaped at him, then at the sword. “It's a trick sword? Why didn't you tell me?”

“And miss the look on your face?”

“I was afeared I'd slain you,” I said sulkily.

Julian laid an arm upon my shoulder. I shrugged it off. “Come now, no hard feelings, eh? It was a jest.”

We took up our positions again. When I struck Julian this time, he gave a halfhearted groan and clutched at his belly. “You look as though you'd eaten too many sweets, not suffered a mortal wound,” Mr. Armin said. “Trade roles, now.”

I handed my sword to Julian and strapped on the protective plate. In the school of hard knocks where I had become a Master of Dodging, I had also learned to feign injury, as a way of lessening the severity of a beating. The experience stood me in good stead now. When Julian struck me, I gave a howl of agony and crumpled to the floor, my face a very picture of pain and terror.

“Mother Mary!” Julian breathed. “Are you wounded?” I grinned up at him. He gave me an exasperated nudge with one foot. “You sot!”

“Very dramatic,” Mr. Armin said dryly. “No one will even notice the principals, they'll be so busy looking at you.”

During our rest time, Julian and I sat against the wall, sipping cups of water. “Well,” he said casually, “perhaps you're not such a bad sort after all, for a country wight.”

I stared at him. “Is that the London way of giving a compliment?”

He smiled. “I suppose it is.”

“In that case, I suppose you're not such a bad sort, either. For a city wight.”

“Touch. Your point. So, how do you come to be in London?”

“That's something of a long tale.”

“Just give me a brief summary.”

“I ran away from me master, that's the long and short of it.”

“And your parents?”

“Me mother's long since dead. Me father…” I hesitated and then, seeing Julian's sympathetic look, went on. “I don't ken who me father was.”

Julian nodded. “We're birds of a feather, then. I lost my mum when I was small, to the plague. And my da is—” He shrugged. “Well, my da will die of the dropsy one day, I've no doubt.”

“The dropsy?”

“One of the words we use to mean hanging from Tyburn Tree.”

“Hanging? Why? What has 'a done?”

“What
hasn't
he done, you might as well ask. As far as I know, he's never murdered anyone, and I don't suppose he's ever betrayed one of his fellows. Anything else he'll do, if there's money in it. That's why he lets me prentice here—they pay him a small sum yearly.”

“Aye? Do you think that—”

“What?”

“Oh, I was just wondering whether me master might be willing to do the same—let me stay on an they paid him a bit.”

“You think he'll come after you, then?”

“Aye, I'm afeard 'a will.”

“I hope he doesn't,” Julian said. “You're just beginning to show some promise.”

I felt myself flush. “Do you truly think so?”

Julian grinned. “Well, if you can feign love or compassion half so well as you can feign an agonizing death, you'll be as famous as Burbage.”

“I've had no experience in such things,” I said. “But I'm willing to learn.”

We were kept so busy through the morning that I scarcely had time to dread the afternoon, when I would step onstage and say my three lines. Yet the threat of it hung over my head, along with the more dire threat of Falconer out there, waiting for me to deliver the script.

An hour before the performance I was in costume, not wishing to see my dream come true. I paced about behind the stage muttering “Pedringano, Pedringano” like an incantation.

“Widge,” Sander said, “sit somewhere and practice breathing deeply. I'll call you when you're due on the stage.”

“An you forget, what then?”

“I won't forget.”

Nonetheless, I was unable to sit still. I went on stomping about, repeating my lines and getting in everyone's way until at last Julian took me by the arm. “Come. You're going to help me with my lines for
Satiromastix
.”

It did calm me a bit, having something to do, and Sander was as good as his word, though he got me to the stage with a scant half-minute to spare. “Gives you less time to fret,” he said. When my cue came, I froze, and he was forced to propel me onto the stage.

My actual moment of glory is a blank in my memory. I must have gotten out my lines, Pedringano and all, without disgracing myself or the company, for afterward, in the tiring-room, I was congratulated by the other players as though I had passed through fire—which, in a sense, I had.

“I remember well my first faltering steps upon the boards,” Mr. Pope said.

“I'd no idea they had boards so long ago,” Mr. Armin said.

“Oh, we knew how to make boards well enough. It wasn't until your time that we learned how to make an
audience
bored.” There was much laughter. “To return to my story, I was given the part of gluttony in a play called
Nature
. I was not so well upholstered in those days, so they strapped a sack of buckram about my waist. Halfway through the play it came loose and descended about my knees, so that I resembled not a glutton so much as a pear with legs.”

“I had much the same experience,” Mr. Phillips said, “save that I was playing a woman, and it was my bosom which migrated south.”

I was enjoying the players' tales so much that I neglected to undress and remove my makeup. When everyone else was ready to leave, I was still wiping off my face paint.

“Want us to wait for you?” Sander asked.

I hesitated. If I was in their company, Falconer could not accost me again. Yet I could not avoid him forever. He had said I must have the script for him that very night, or—well, he had not made it clear what the alternative was, but I knew it would not be pleasant. “Nay,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Go on wi'out me. I'll be along.”

When they were gone, I sat staring into the looking glass as I had seen Mr. Shakespeare do, pondering my dilemma. All my life I had done what I was told to do without question, without thinking about the right or the wrong of it. This time I couldn't help questioning.

I had no doubt that what Falconer and my master, Simon Bass, were asking me to do was wrong. Even a thief, Julian had said, would not betray his fellows. And if I took the script, I would indeed have betrayed my fellows. I had no desire to do so. They had taken me in and shown me kindness and trust and friendship. I had been alone and friendless a long time and had accepted it as my lot. But in the past weeks, I had learned something of what it meant to have friends, and to be a real prentice, not a mere slave. It was a piece of knowledge late to come and hard-won, and one I did not wish to forget.

Yet I had learned what it means to have an enemy, too. As I scrubbed the makeup from my chin, I wiped the spot where Falconer's dagger had pricked the skin. I flinched. Another piece of hard-won knowledge I did not care to forget, lest it be impressed upon me again, more forcefully and more permanently.

I turned away from the looking glass. I had been contemplating the matter as if I had a choice. The truth was, if I hoped to save my own skin, I had no choice.

B
y the time I shed my costume and hung it in the wardrobe and dressed in my customary clothing, the light coming through the high windows had faded. I stepped from the tiring-room and looked about and listened. The area behind the stage was deserted.

Cautiously I moved across to the door of the property room. It was unlocked. I stepped inside and pushed it closed behind me, leaving a gap of a hand's breadth to let a bit of light into the windowless room.

It contained half a dozen trunks, several of them secured with locks. There was no way of knowing which one contained the play books. I had long since learned to look for the easiest way of pursuing a task. It would be far easier to look in the unlocked chests first, on the slight chance that one of them might hold the treasure.

I raised the lid of the nearest one. The hinges protested feebly and I halted, fearing someone might still be in the theatre. Hearing nothing, I yanked the lid open and peered inside. Small weapons of all sorts, from bucklers to broad-swords, were piled within. I went on to the next trunk.

The light was so far gone that I had to lay the lid back and bend close in order to see. I gasped and stumbled backward in horror. The trunk was packed with parts of human bodies—bloody arms, hands cut off at the wrist, severed heads with staring, sightless eyes.

I knocked against another chest and sat heavily down upon it. Holding a hand over my mouth to muffle my frantic breathing, I gaped at the trunk as though the awful contents might crawl from it. Slowly it came to me that these were mere stage properties, made of plaster and paint, and then I had to keep my hand over my mouth to stifle the relieved laughter that rose in me.

I was suddenly sobered by the sound of footfalls close by. I rolled off the trunk and crouched behind it. The footsteps approached and halted before the door of the property room. For a moment there was utter silence. I held my breath. Then I heard the door swing on its hinges—not open, but closed. The thin shaft of light was eclipsed. The latch clicked; a key rattled in the lock; the bolt slid into place. Then the footsteps retreated. Finally there was a distant, muffled thump—the rear door of the theatre being closed and locked.

I crawled out from behind the trunk and felt my way across the black room, banging painfully against racks of weapons and corners of trunks. As I expected, the door was locked as surely and securely as those locked trunks. If I groped about in the dark long enough, I might manage eventually to break into the book keeper's trunk and liberate the script. But what good would it do me if I was still a prisoner?

In the end, I made no attempt to force the trunks or locate the play book. If discovered here in the morning, I could contrive some explanation of how I came to be shut up in the property room. But even with my skill at lying I would have a hard time explaining broken locks and a missing script.

There was one advantage, at least, in being locked up so securely: Falconer could not get to me. There were also several distinct disadvantages: I had no food, no water, no place to relieve myself, and no bed to sleep in. Such discomforts were not new to me, but lately I had become accustomed to regular meals and soft bedding.

I found by touch a helmet to relieve myself in, and a pile of carpets in one corner of the room to lie down upon and sleep the untroubled sleep of the prisoner who is resigned to his prison.

I woke in the morning to the sound of footsteps, and the property room door being unlocked. Like a mouse, I scrambled for a hiding place, but I need not have bothered. The door was not opened. When I heard the footsteps climb the stairs, I stole across the room and out the door, and thence out of the theatre.

The sun had not yet shown itself, and I hoped I might be at Mr. Pope's in time for breakfast. Fearing that Falconer might lie in wait, I took a roundabout route and came upon Mr. Pope and Sander as they were leaving the house.

“And where have you been the whole night long, my lad?” Mr. Pope demanded.

“Well,” I replied, to buy a bit of time, “it's rather a long tale.”

“Then you'd best begin at once.”

“Well, sir, the truth is, it's…it's me old master. 'A hunted me down here—'a kenned how I had me heart set on being a player, you see—and 'a tried to force me to return to Yorkshire wi' him. I went along as far as St. Albans”—such details add credibility to a lie—“where I slipped away, and I've spent the night walking back.”

“Saints' mercy,” said Sander. “You must be exhausted.”

Mr. Pope was more skeptical. “You walked all the way from St. Albans? That's upwards of twenty miles.”

“Nay, nay,” I said quickly. “I never walked the whole time. A farmer brought me half that way on his cart. I even slept a bit on his load of straw.” I brushed imaginary chaff from my tunic.

This seemed to satisfy him, and he grew more solicitous. “Have you eaten, then?”

“Aye,” I said, not wishing to try his patience. “The good farmer shared his bread and cheese wi' me.” Would that I could have lied so convincingly to my complaining stomach.

As we walked on, Sander hung back and whispered, “I didn't tell him you were gone. He just noticed. He was anxious about you.”

“About me? Truly?”

Sander nodded. “He takes the welfare of his boys very seriously.”

I was accustomed to being called someone's “boy.” Like the term “his man,” it can mean you are the servant, or chattel, of that person. But the way Sander used the word, it implied something more, something better—that I was not merely part of a household, but part of a family.

My empty belly made the morning's lessons seem interminable. We were well into them before Nick appeared, looking as though he'd slept in his clothing, and at the same time as though he hadn't slept at all. Mr. Armin left us to perform our
passatas
, and drew Nick into a corner, where they had a lengthy conversation. As their tempers mounted, so did their voices.

“I'm not a child!” Nick was saying. “When will you stop treating me as one?”

“When you stop behaving as one! Drinking and gaming until all hours is not the mark of a man!”

“Neither is wearing skirts and prancing about the stage like a woman!”

“Ah, that's it, is it? You feel you're ready for men's roles, do you?”

“Well, I—” Nick hesitated. “I'm sick of playing a girl, that's all.” He rubbed at the stubble on his cheeks. “And I'm sick of being thought a callow boy wherever I go, because I'm forced to shave my beard.”

“So you feel you're ready to move from prentice to hired man. Are you quite certain you've learned everything you need to know?”

Nick's voice faltered. “Perhaps…perhaps not everything.”

“No, I think not. Come. Let's try to fill in what you lack, so that when the time comes for you to play a man's part, you'll be ready.” Mr. Armin glanced at the three of us, who had been eavesdropping. “You lot have far more to learn than he does,” he called. “Get back to work. Fifty more
passatas
.”

As we thrust over and over at the unyielding wall, I whispered to Sander, “An Nick is so much of a trouble, why do you not give him the chuck?”

Sander gave me a puzzled look. “The chuck?”

“Aye. Throw him out.”

Sander stopped to wipe his brow. “Would you throw out your brother, if you had one?”

“I don't have one.”

“But if you did?”

“That's different.”

“Not really. Don't you see? The theatre is a sort of family and, like him or no, Nick is a part of it.” A few weeks before, I would not have understood his meaning, but now I felt I did. “Besides,” Sander went on, “he's having a bad time just now, that's all. He'll come around.”

“Perhaps,” I said doubtfully. “I'd just prefer 'a didn't come around me.”

Later, as we were on our way downstairs, Will Sly stopped me. “Mr. Heminges wants to see you.”

“Me?”

“Do you know another Widge? He's in the property room.”

“The—the property room?”

“Has anyone checked this boy's ears? I believe he's a trifle deaf.”

“Perhaps you're not saying things properly,” Julian countered. “You haven't been drinking, have you?”

Will grinned. “No more than usual.”

“Ah, that's the problem, then. You've not lubricated your chawbones.”

I was not in a mood to appreciate their jests. What business could Mr. Heminges have with me, particularly in the property room? I could think of but one possible topic, and it was not one I was eager to discuss.