Fools and Mortals. Bernard Cornwell
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the twins answered.
‘The Queen’s duty,’ the other one said.
‘This playhouse,’ Rust said grandly, ‘lies under the protection of the Lord Chamberlain.’
‘Oh, I’m terrified,’ one of the twins said.
‘God help me,’ the other said, then looked at Simon, ‘come on, boy, show us your bubbies!’
‘Leave!’ Kemp bellowed from the stage.
‘He’s so frightening!’ One of the twins pretended to be scared by hunching his shoulders and shivering. ‘You want to make us leave?’ he demanded.
‘Oh, I will!’ Alan said.
One of the twins drew his sword. ‘Then try,’ he sneered.
Alan Rust snapped his fingers, and one of the men who had been guarding the prisoner Egeon understood what the snap meant and tossed Rust a sword. Rust, who was standing close to the bulbous twins, pointed the blade at their smirking faces. ‘This,’ he snarled, ‘is a playhouse. It is not a farmyard. If you wish to spew your dung, do it elsewhere. Go to your unmannered homes and tell your mother she is a whore for birthing you.’
‘God damn you,’ the twin with the drawn sword said, but then, just before any fight could begin, the right-hand door opened and two of the three Percies who had evidently searched the tiring room came back onto the stage. One was carrying clothes heaped in his arms, while the second had a bag, which he flourished towards the twins. ‘Baubles!’ he said. ‘Baubles and beads! Romish rubbish.’
‘They are costumes,’ Will Kemp snarled, ‘costumes and properties.’
‘And this?’ the Pursuivant took a chalice from the bag.
‘Or this?’ His companion held up a white rochet, heavily trimmed with lace.
‘A costume, you fool!’ Kemp protested.
‘Everything you need to say a Romish mass,’ the Pursuivant said.
‘Show me the nightgown!’ the twin whose sword was still scabbarded demanded, and the Percy tossed down the rochet. ‘Oh pretty,’ the twin said. ‘Is this what papists wear to vomit their filth?’
‘Give it back,’ Alan Rust demanded, slightly raising his borrowed sword.
‘Are you threatening me?’ the twin with the drawn blade asked.
‘Yes,’ Rust said.
‘Maybe we should arrest him,’ the twin said, and lunged his blade at Alan.
And that was a mistake.
It was a mistake because one of the first skills any actor learns is how to use a sword. The audience love combats. They see enough fights, God knows, in the streets, but those fights are almost always between enraged oafs who hack and slash until, usually within seconds, one of them has a broken pate or a pierced belly and is flat on his back. What the groundlings admire is a man who can fight skilfully, and some of our loudest applause happens when Richard Burbage and Henry Condell are clashing blades. The audience gasp at their grace, at the speed of their blades, and even though they know the fight is not real, they know the skill is very real. My brother had insisted I take fencing lessons, which I did, because if I had any hope of assuming a man’s part in a play I needed to be able to fight. Alan Rust had learned long before, he had been an attraction with Lord Pembroke’s men, and though what he had learned was how to pretend a fight, he could only do that because he really could fight, and the twins were about to receive a lesson.
Because by the time the second twin had pulled his blade from its scabbard, Alan Rust had already disarmed the first, twisting his sword elegantly around the first clumsy thrust and wrenching his blade wide and fast to rip the young man’s weapon away. He brought the sword back, parried the second twin’s cut, lunged into that twin’s belly to drive him backwards, and then cut left again so that the tip of the sword threatened the first twin’s face. ‘Drop the rochet, you vile turd,’ Rust said, speaking to one twin while threatening the other, and using the voice he might have employed to play a tyrant king; a voice that seemed to emerge from the bowels of the earth, ‘unless you want your brother to lose an eye?’
‘Arrest him!’ one of the twins called to the Pursuivants. His voice was pitched too high, too desperate.
Just then the last of the Pursuivants came from the tiring room, his arms piled with papers. They were our play scripts that had been locked in the big chest on the upper floor. ‘We have what we want,’ he called to his companions, then frowned when he saw the discomfited twins. ‘What …’ he began.
‘You have nothing,’ my brother interrupted him. He looked angrier than I had ever seen him, yet he kept his voice calm.
For a heartbeat or two no one moved. Then Richard Burbage and Henry Condell both drew their swords, the blades scraping on the throats of their scabbards. ‘Not the scripts,’ Burbage said.
‘Not anything,’ Rust said, his sword’s tip quivering an inch from the twin’s eyeball.
‘We are here on the Queen’s business …’ the Pursuivant carrying our scripts began, but again was interrupted by my brother.
‘There has been a misunderstanding,’ my brother said. ‘If you have business here,’ he spoke quietly and reasonably, ‘then you must make enquiries of the Lord Chamberlain, whose men we are.’
‘And we are the Queen’s men,’ the tallest of the Pursuivants on the stage insisted.
‘And the Lord Chamberlain,’ my brother still spoke gently, ‘is Her Majesty’s cousin. I am sure he would want to consult her. You will give me those,’ he held out his hands for the precious pile of scripts. ‘A misunderstanding,’ he said again.
‘A misunderstanding,’ the Pursuivant said, and meekly allowed my brother to take the papers. The tall man dropped the costumes. He had seen the ease with which Alan Rust had disarmed one man, and he gave a wary glance at Richard Burbage, whose sword was lifted, ready to lunge. I doubted it was the swords that had persuaded him to stand down, despite Rust’s display of skill. I suspected it was the mention of Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, which had convinced him. ‘We’re leaving,’ he called to his fellows.
‘But …’ one of the twins began a protest.
‘We’re leaving!’
They took nothing with them, instead, trying to hold onto their damaged dignity, they stalked from the Theatre, and I heard the hoofbeats as they rode away.
‘What in the name of God …’ Richard Burbage began, then shook his head. ‘Why would they dare come here? Don’t they know Lord Hunsdon is our patron?’
‘Lord Hunsdon can’t protect us from heresy,’ my brother said.
‘There’s no heresy here!’ Will Kemp said angrily.
‘It’s the city,’ my brother sounded weary. ‘They can’t close us because we’re outside their jurisdiction, but they can hint to the Pursuivants that we’re a den of corruption.’
‘I should bloody well hope we are,’ Will Kemp growled.
‘They’ll be back,’ Alan Rust said, ‘unless Lord Hunsdon can stop them.’
‘He won’t like it,’ my brother said, ‘but I’ll write to his lordship.’
‘Do it now!’ Will Kemp said angrily.
My brother bridled at the aggressive tone, then nodded. ‘Indeed now, and someone must deliver the letter.’
I hoped he would ask me because that would give me a chance to visit the Lord Chamberlain’s mansion in Blackfriars, and it was there that the grey-eyed girl with the impish smile was employed. Silvia, I said the name to myself, Silvia. Then I said it aloud, ‘Silvia.’
But my brother asked John Duke