The True Prince (14 page)

“Have you any reply?” prompted the servant.

“No. I mean—my thanks, of course. My humble thanks.”

The man bowed again, in that flattering yet superior manner of servants who belong to the best households, and took
his leave. Kit turned, with the velvet pouch in his hand and a distracted look on his face, and walked into the Welsh Boy, who was lurking nearby. Shoving him aside in a way that seemed more flustered than angry, Kit continued on to the back of the tiring room where he kept his things.

The words “certain expectations” lingered in my mind as I recalled the last time a servant in blue had delivered a gift to Kit—when his bail was secured in Fleet court. Most house servants wore blue, so I could not assume that the bail and the gift had come from the same hand. But if they had, why would the first make him smug and the second turn him pale?

It occurred to me that someone would be watching him very closely today. Perhaps I should do a little watching myself.

Shortly before the third trumpet that signaled the beginning of the play, I begged permission from Master Condell to sit in the musicians' gallery, provided I kept out of sight and came down well before my entrance. Once seated on a step behind the lute player, I had a decent view of the house, or most of it. The third gallery gleamed with silks and velvets, gold earrings and silver brooches. All the gentlemen and ladies seemed in high spirits, calling to each other across the house or waving down the penny takers to buy bottled ale or gingerbread. I smiled at the sight of Starling, curls escaping from her cap as always, in conversation with a thin, fair-haired woman in blue. By the way the lady ticked off arguments on her fingers,
I guessed this must be the “Mistress Critic” who thought so little of our Shakespeare. Starling tapped her thumbs against the rim of her ale tray, a sure sign of exasperation. As a serving maid, she had to hold her replies to “Aye, lady” and “Indeed, lady”—even when her thoughts were not so agreeable.

I wished I could get a message to her, to watch for … what? I myself didn't know what I was watching for, only someone who seemed to be taking a particular interest in Kit. Most of the faces showed little but anticipation for an already- popular play and delight when the play began. I watched closely during Kit's first scene.

This is the scene in which Poins sets up the Gad's Hill robbery and then, after Sir John departs, persuades the prince to go along. Since I couldn't see Kit, I had to judge his performance by voice alone, and he started out strong: “Good morrow, sweet Hal!” But when he began jesting with Sir John, his lines fell flat. It puzzled me. Kit knew, better than I, the tricks of timing and voice that made an audience laugh; he had played any number of witty women to great acclaim. But in playing a man he had lost the knack. As more clever insults went by the wayside, his voice changed—he spoke faster and higher, even as the other two players tried to slow him down. I scanned faces in the third gallery, but none of them revealed any obvious disappointment.

When the scene changed, I had to leave my post and get
myself into a broad-hooped farthingale and skirt. On my way to the upper tiring room, I glanced down to see Augustine Phillips come from the stage and take Kit by the arm. Though he spoke quietly, his voice carried, as a player's will: “What's this? We went over and over this scene yesterday, and you carried it well. Are you bewitched?”

They drew aside and I heard none of Kit's reply. Only one thing seemed clear to me: this would be a good day to avoid him.

I would have avoided Davy, too, but we had a scene together. While waiting for it, we perched on the edge of the loft with our skirts spread on a canvas sheet to keep them clean. The position gave us a fine view of players rushing to and fro below us, scanning the plot for their cues, adjusting costumes and rehearsing their lines. Roars from the house indicated that the tavern scene was working its charm again. “Well,” said I, for the sake of conversation, “We should end the season peacefully, at least.”

“Aye,” Davy remarked—never much for words. His fate with the Company was not yet resolved, for his abilities in June had not risen much above what they were in April. I supposed his uncle would take charge of him over the summer; if so, he might be well advised to find the boy another place. I still pitied Davy—poor motherless scab—but looked forward to a summer's relief from him. His attention was taken at the moment by one of those intricate string figures he wove
between his hands. The present design was rounded like a spider's web.

It occurred to me that perhaps this was no idle pastime. “Who taught you to do that?”

His shoulders twitched, as though the question surprised him. “My granny.”

“Back in Wales?”

“Aye.”

“Is she still living?”

“Aye.”

“How does she get on?”

“… What means that?”

“What is her occupation? How does she support herself?”

He raked a thumb over the whole pattern. “She is by way of being a conjure-woman. Spells and portents. And midwifery besides.”

Casting spells and delivering babies did not seem complementary work, but then I understood what he meant: his grandmother was a witch. Such women tucked themselves into dark pockets of the kingdom and scraped out a living in the black arts. “Wales reeks with magic,” Starling had said. Owen Glendower, the Welsh lord in the play, boasts of his power to command the devil, but the only “witches” I had ever heard of lived in wretched huts, unable to command from the devil so much as a good supply of firewood. No wonder the boy seemed strange, if he had been raised in a smoky den of
muttering spirits. After a moment I said, “Pray you, put that string away.”

To applause and cheers from the house, the stage door below burst open and a clutch of players crowded through it, loudly congratulating each other for the most successful performance of the tavern scene yet. As they scattered to change costume or find the plot, Kit remained behind for a moment. Then, believing himself to be alone, he clutched the nearest post and firmly knocked his head against it.

The gesture revealed such utter, naked despair that I had to wonder, along with Augustine Phillips, if perchance he
was
bewitched. My eyes wandered to Davy's hands, now folded serenely in his lap, and for a brief moment the string in his fingers appeared to writhe.

I did not believe in curses and spells. But the boy did. If his string figures were meant for cursing, he was not so innocent as he appeared. When I looked his way again, Kit was glaring up at us with absolute hatred. In a flash of understanding I recognized the source of it: he thought we were in league against him. Not true! I wanted to shout it out loud, but the words stuck. I scrambled to my feet and moved away from the boy, resolving to try and meet with Kit after the performance, to let him know that Davy's game, whatever it was, had nothing to do with me.

As it happened, though, the only meeting we were to have occurred during the battle of Shrewsbury.

Battles are acted according to pattern; if the stage master calls for “skirmish set” or “retreat set,” all the players know what to do, though each must be alert and shape himself to the overall design, or the effect is spoiled. When the trumpet sounded the first melee, all soldiers rushed onto the stage and made for each other with pikes and staves and swords. I found myself opposite Kit.

Soon after, I was fighting in earnest, as his swift, savage blows came at me faster than my staff could ward them off. The butt of his pike clipped me on one side of my head, so hard that tears of pain sprang to my eyes. “Stop it!” I hissed. A blow to the other side of my head was his answer; my vision blurred and my legs buckled. Next moment I was on the floor, too dizzy to stand. The trumpet sounded a retreat, signaling all the players to fall back and leave the stage clear for the duel of Hal and Hotspur. But I could not trust my feet just then. I rolled over on my stomach and impersonated a corpse, fighting alternate bouts of rage and nausea as Augustine Phillips's voice rose and fell over my head. “… I am the Prince of Wales … think not to share with me in glory…. Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere….”

As Hal and Hotspur fell to, my head clanged with their swords: Why?
Why?
What cause had Kit to attack me thus? Soon Thomas Pope as Sir John and Henry Condell as Douglas began their duel, and the ringing questions multiplied until I thought my head might crack. Pressed to the boards, my ear
picked up every step and slide—and, unexpectedly, a rush of footfalls from behind the stage.

The moment that Pope fell, with a quake of the stage boards and a gasp from the audience, I heard a shout from the tiring rooms. It was followed by a high-pitched cry, not loud— pathetic in its smallness, like the mew of a tortured kitten. No one in the audience seemed to hear it, but their attention was wholly taken by the duel between Hal and Hotspur. I managed to gain my feet and stagger through the discovery space at the back of the stage.

I stumbled into a snake pit—or so it sounded to my reeling brain, for the players had to keep their voices down to a hiss. A violent scene emerged: Kit had taken the Welsh Boy by the neck and slammed him against the center post. Davy's little feet hovered several inches off the ground, his eyes bulging with terror and his cherub's face turning an impossible shade of red as Kit's hands squeezed his neck.

I recall Will Shakespeare chiding, “Down boy, down!” as though to a dog, but the rest appeared to be frozen until Master Heminges stepped forward and broke Kit's hold. Davy collapsed in a heap.

On the stage, Hotspur had fallen as well, and for a moment silence claimed the entire theater. “This is the final outrage,” Master Heminges said, his voice drained of expression. He pointed two trembling fingers at Kit: “Gather your things and draw your quittance from Master Cuthbert. We will see you no more.”

I expected a protest—from the players, or Robin, or Kit himself—but heard nothing except a wispy voice saying, “Wait….” One of the hired men standing nearby turned his head my way, and I realized the word had come from me. I wanted to suggest that something was amiss here, that in all fairness we should examine the particulars. I opened my mouth to try it again, but Kit silenced me with a murderous look. He had turned to shoulder his way through the players, and at first it appeared he was coming at me to finish what he had begun on the stage. But his entire face looked gray now, as though the fire in it had burned so hot it was already ash. He went by, pushing past Robin as well, who remained with one hand raised.

“Richard,” John Heminges said. I turned to him. “Get ready. Two days hence you will set out on tour.”

He looked like a stern stranger, this kindly, patient man, but I saw his lower lip tremble as he straightened his crown. The other players murmured as they lined up behind him to make their final entrance, but none disputed him. I was supposed to take part in this scene but hoped they would excuse me. Robin stayed behind also, though the blow to him was not to his head.

“‘We will see you no more,'” he repeated as his eyes welled with tears. “After all the years, it ends like that? Just, ‘Gather your things and go'?”

“What happened?” I kept my own voice low because Davy
had rolled up in a wad not far away, sobbing. “What brought this on?”

“I know not. That is—” Robin glanced at the boy. “We were just standing about, waiting to go on. He was singing, that's all.”

“Davy? Singing what?”

“Does it matter? He always sings. He raised his voice a little as Kit passed, and next I knew he was being strangled.”

“What was he singing?”

Quick steps sounded in the back room and a door slammed; Kit leaving, never to return. I pushed myself away from the wall and reached the window in time to see him striding down the Shoreditch Road, a large bundle under his arm.
Never to return.

“This can't be,” Robin said, at my back. “I'll talk to him. If he would humble himself and ask to be taken back, I'm sure they would …” He was moving as he spoke, unbuckling his sword belt and searching for a cap.

“What was Davy singing?” I asked again as Robin tugged a cloak from a costume rack to throw over his soldier's garb.

“Leave off, jakes! I don't recall.” In spite of his calling me after a privy, I stuck close as we threaded our way through the clutter of the tiring room toward the side door.

“Think about it,” I persisted. “It wasn't that long ago.” I could not have said why this seemed so important. Persistence paid, however, for he paused at the door.

“Wait. It was that ballad you hear everywhere now. ‘The New Robin Hood.' That was it. Will that satisfy you?”

Next moment he was out the door, pelting down the Shoreditch Road, following in Kit's wake.

DUST AND DOUBTS