Fools and Mortals. Bernard Cornwell
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a gull, unmoving, stern, beneath red hair piled high and crowned with silver or gold. She sat still as a statue except when she laughed. Her face, so white, looked disapproving, but it was evident she enjoyed the plays, and the courtiers watched her as much as they watched us, looking for clues as to whether they should enjoy us or not.
Her bosom was white like her face, and I knew she was wearing ceruse, a paste that makes the skin white and smooth. She wore her dresses low like a young girl enticing men with a hint of pale breasts, though God knows she was old. She did not look old, and she glowed in her expensive fabrics, which were studded with jewels that caught the candlelight. So old, so still, so pale, so royal. We dared not look at her, because to catch her eye would break the illusion we offered her, but I would snatch a glimpse when I could, seeing her paste-white face above the perfumed crowd, who sat on the lower seats.
‘I might have to sew new silk into the skirt,’ Jean said, still talking softly, then she shivered as a gust of wind blew rain against the antechamber’s high windows. ‘Nasty night to be out,’ she said, ‘raining like the devil’s piss, it is.’
‘How long before this piece of shit ends?’ Will Kemp asked.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ Alan said without looking up from the paper he was reading.
Simon Willoughby came through the door from the great hall. He was playing the younger woman, my rival, and he was grinning. He is a pretty boy, just sixteen years old, and he tossed the coronet to Jean then twirled around so that his bright pale skirts flared outwards. ‘We were good tonight!’ he said happily.
‘You’re always good, Simon,’ Will Kemp said fondly.
‘Not so loud, Simon, not so loud,’ Alan cautioned with a smile.
‘Where are you going?’ Jean demanded of me. I had gone to the door leading to the courtyard.
‘I need a piss.’
‘Don’t let the velvet get wet,’ she hissed. ‘Here, take this!’ She brought me a heavy cloak and draped it around my shoulders.
I went out into the yard where rain seethed on the cobbles, and I stood under the shelter of a wooden arcade that ran like a cheap cloister about the courtyard’s edge. I shivered. Winter was coming. There was a deeply arched gateway on the yard’s far side where two torches guttered feebly. Something dark twitched in the arcade’s corner. A rat perhaps, or one of the cats that lived in the palace. A pox on the palace, I thought, and a pox on Her Majesty, for whom time does not exist. She likes her plays to begin in the middle of the afternoon, but the visit of an ambassador had delayed this performance, and it would be a wet, dark and cold journey home.
‘I thought you needed to piss?’ Simon Willoughby had followed me into the courtyard.
‘I just wanted some fresh air.’
‘It was hot in there,’ he said, then hauled up his pretty skirts and began to piss into the rain, ‘but we were good, weren’t we?’ I said nothing. ‘Did you see the Queen?’ he asked. ‘She was watching me!’ Again I said nothing because there was nothing to say. Of course the Queen had been watching him. She had watched all of us. She had summoned us! ‘Did you see me dance with that tall candle-stand?’ Simon asked.
‘I did,’ I said curtly, then strolled away from him, following the cloister-like arcade about the courtyard’s edge. I knew he wanted me to praise him because young Simon Willoughby needs praise like a whore needs silver, but there could never be enough compliments to satisfy him. Other than that he is a decent enough boy, a good actor and, with his long blond hair, pretty enough to make men sigh when he plays a girl.
‘It was my idea,’ he called after me, ‘to pretend the candle-stand was a man!’
I ignored him.
‘It was good, wasn’t it?’ he asked plaintively.
I was at the courtyard’s far side now, deep in the shadows. No hint of the flames guttering in the archway could reach me here. There was a door to my right, barely visible, and I opened it cautiously. Whatever room lay beyond was in even deeper darkness. I sensed it was a small room, but did not enter, just listened, hearing nothing above the wind’s bluster and the rain’s ceaseless beat. I was hoping to find something to steal, something I could sell, something small and easily hidden. In Greenwich Palace I had found a small bag of seed pearls which must have been dropped and lay half obscured beneath a tapestry-covered stool in a passageway, and I had hidden the small bag beneath my skirts, then sold the pearls to an apothecary who ground them small and used them to cure insanity, or so he said. He paid me far less than they were worth because he knew they were stolen, but I still made more money in that one day than I usually make in a month.
‘Richard?’ Simon Willoughby called. I kept silent. The dark room smelled foul, as if it had been used to store horse feed that had turned rotten. I reckoned there would be nothing to steal and so closed the door.
‘Richard?’ Simon called again. I remained silent and did not move, knowing I would be invisible in my dark cloak. I liked Simon well enough, but I was in no mood to tell him over and over how good he had been.
Then a door on the courtyard’s far side opened, letting a wash of lantern-light into the rain-soaked courtyard. At first I thought it would be one of the players, come to let us know we were needed, but instead it was a man I had never seen before. He was young and he was rich. It is easy to tell the rich from their clothes, and this man was dressed in a doublet of shining yellow silk, slashed with blue. His hose was yellow, his high boots brown and polished. He wore a sword. His hat was blue with a long feather, and there was gold at his throat and more gold on his belt, but what stood out most was his long hair, so palely blond that it was almost white. I wondered if it was a wig. ‘Simon?’ the young man called.
Simon Willoughby answered with a nervous giggle.
‘Are you alone?’
‘I think so, my lord.’ Simon had heard me open and close a door, and must have thought I had gone into the palace. Then the far door closed, plunging the newcomer into shadow. I was utterly still, just another shadow within a shadow. The young man walked towards Simon, and the guttering torches in the gate arch threw just enough light for me to see that his boots had heels like those on women’s shoes. He was short and wanted to look taller. ‘Richard was here,’ I heard Simon say, ‘but he’s gone. I think he’s gone.’
The man said nothing, just pushed Simon against the wall and kissed him. I saw him haul up Simon’s skirts and I held my breath. The two were pressed together.
There was nothing surprising in this, except that his lordship, whoever he was, had not waited till the play’s ending to find Simon Willoughby. Every time we had played at one of the Queen’s palaces, the lordlings had come to the tiring room, and I had watched Simon disappear with one or other of them, which explained why Simon Willoughby always appeared to have money. I had none, which is why I needed to thieve.
‘Oh yes,’ I heard Simon say, ‘my lord!’
I crept nearer. My tapestry slippers were silent on the stones. The wind fretted loud around the palace roofs, and the rain, already relentless, increased in vehemence to drown whatever the two said. There was just enough light from the becketed torches to see Simon’s head bent back, his mouth open, and, still curious, I crept still nearer. ‘My lord!’ Simon cried, almost in pain.
His lordship chuckled and stepped back, releasing Simon’s skirts. ‘My little whore,’ he said, though not in an unkind voice. I could see that even with the women’s heels on his boots he was no taller than Simon, who is a full head shorter than me. ‘I don’t want you tonight,’ his lordship said, ‘but do your duty, little Simon, do your duty, and you shall live in my household.’ He said something more, though I could not hear it because the wind gusted to drive hard rain on the cloister’s roof, then his lordship leaned forward, kissed Simon’s cheek, and went back to the tiring room.
I stayed still. Simon was leaning against the wall, gasping. ‘So who is the dwarf?’ I asked.
‘Richard!’