Fools and Mortals. Bernard Cornwell
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this piece of shit, didn’t know his arse from his shrivelled prick,’ Alan Rust said forcefully. ‘Now will you all be quiet and let Will speak his lines?’
‘If it’s so bad,’ George asked, ‘why are we doing it again?’
‘Can you think of another play we can fit by tomorrow?’
‘No.’
‘Then that’s why.’
‘Go on, Will,’ my brother said tiredly.
‘There’s a loose board here,’ George said, stubbing his toe at the front of the stage, ‘that’s why I almost fell over when I bowed.’
‘I lack both drink and meat,’ Will Kemp appealed to the empty galleries of the Theatre, ‘but, as I say, a dog hath a day, my time is come to get some!’
‘Get some!’ Simon Willoughby almost peed himself with laughter. He had arrived at the Theatre before me, and looked surprisingly sprightly and alert. ‘You didn’t go home last night?’ I had asked him, but instead of answering he just grinned. ‘Did he pay you?’ I asked.
‘Perhaps.’
‘You can lend me some?’
‘I’m needed onstage,’ he had said, and hurried away.
‘Shouldn’t that be “meat and drink”?’ George now interrupted the rehearsal again.
‘It’s my line,’ Will Kemp growled, ‘why should you care?’
Isaiah peered at the text. ‘No,’ he said, ‘Will got it right, it’s “drink and meat”, sorry.’
I was feeling tired, so I wandered out of the yard and through the shadowed entrance tunnel where Jeremiah Poll, an old soldier who had lost an eye in Ireland, guarded the outer gate. ‘It’s going to rain again,’ he said as I passed, and I nodded. Jeremiah said it every time I passed him, even on the warmest, driest days. I could hear the clash and scrape of blades, and emerged into the weak sunlight to see Richard Burbage and Henry Condell practising their sword skills. They were fast, their blades darting, retreating, crossing, and lunging. Henry laughed at something Richard Burbage said, then saw me, and his sword went upwards as he stepped back and motioned with his dagger hand for the practice to stop. They both turned to look at me, but I pretended not to have noticed them and went to the door that led to the galleries. I heard them laugh as I stepped through.
I climbed the short stairs to the lower gallery, from where I glanced across at the stage where George was still fretting about apples or loose planks, then, as the sound of the swords started again, I lay down. I was playing Uashti, a queen of Persia, but my lines would not be needed for at least an hour, and so I closed my eyes.
I was woken by a kick to my legs and opened my eyes to see James Burbage standing over me. ‘There are Percies in your house,’ he said.
‘There are what?’ I asked, struggling to wake and stand up.
‘Percies,’ he said, ‘in your house. I just walked past.’
‘They’re there for Father Laurence,’ I explained, ‘the bastards.’
‘They’ve been before?’
‘The bastards come every month.’
Father Laurence, like me, lived in the Widow Morrison’s house. He was an ancient priest who rented the room directly beneath my attic, though I suspected the widow let him live there for free. He was in his sixties, half crippled by pains in his joints, but still with a spry mind. He was a Roman Catholic priest, which was reason enough to have most men dragged on a hurdle to Tyburn or Tower Hill and there have their innards plucked out while they still lived, but Father Laurence was a Marian priest, meaning he had been ordained during the reign of our Queen’s half-sister, the Catholic Queen Mary, and such men, if they made no trouble, were allowed to live. Father Laurence made no trouble, but the Pursuivants, those men who hunted down traitorous Catholics, were forever searching his room as if the poor old man might be hiding a Jesuit behind his close-stool. They never found anything because my brother had hidden Father Laurence’s vestments and chalices among the Theatre’s costumes and properties.
‘They’ll find nothing,’ I said, ‘they never do.’ I looked towards the stage. ‘Do they need me?’
‘It’s the dance of the Jewish women,’ James Burbage said, ‘so no.’
On the stage Simon Willoughby, Billy Rowley, Alexander Cooke and Tom Belte were prancing in a line, goaded by a man who carried a silver-tipped staff with which he rapped their legs or arms. ‘Higher!’ he called. ‘You’re here to show your legs. Leap, you spavined infants, leap!’
‘Who’s that?’ I asked.
‘Ralph Perkins. Friend of mine. He teaches dancing at the court.’
‘At the court?’ I was impressed.
‘The Queen likes to see dancing done well. So do I.’
‘One, two, three, four, five, leap!’ Ralph Perkins called. ‘It’s the galliard, you lumpen urchins, not some country dump dance! Leap!’
‘Goddam ill fortune about Augustine and his boy,’ James Burbage grumbled.
‘They’ll recover?’
‘Who knows? They’ve been purged, bled, and buggered about. They might. I pray they do.’ He frowned. ‘Simon Willoughby will be busy till Christopher recovers.’
‘That’ll please him,’ I said sourly.
‘But not you?’ I shrugged and did not answer. I was frightened of James Burbage. He leased the Theatre, which made him the owner of the building if not the land on which it stood, and his eldest son, called Richard like me, was one of our leading players. James had been a player himself once, and, before that, a carpenter, and he still had the muscular build of a man who worked with his hands. He was tall, grey-haired, and hard-faced, with a short beard, and though he no longer acted, he was a Sharer, one of the eight men who shared the expenses of the Theatre and divided the profits among themselves. ‘He drives a hard bargain,’ my brother, another of the Sharers, had once told me, ‘but he keeps to it. He’s a good man.’ Now James frowned at the stage as he talked to me. ‘Are you still thinking about leaving?’
I said nothing.
‘Henry Lanman,’ Burbage said the name flatly, ‘has that bastard been talking to you?’
‘No.’
‘Is he trying to poach you?’
‘No,’ I said again.
‘But is your brother right? He says you’re thinking of walking away from us. Is that true?’
‘I’ve thought about it,’ I said sullenly.
‘Don’t be a fool, boy. And don’t be tempted by Lanman. He’s losing money.’ Henry Lanman owned the Curtain playhouse that lay just a brief walk to the south of ours. During our performances we could hear their audience cheering, the beat of their drummers, and the sound of their trumpeters, though of late those sounds had become scarcer. ‘He’s showing sword fights these days,’ Burbage went on, ‘sword fights and bear baiting. So what does he want you to do? Piss about in a frock and look pretty?’
‘I haven’t talked to him,’ I insisted truthfully.
‘So you’ve a lick of sense. He’s got nobody to write plays, and nobody to play in them.’
‘I haven’t talked to him!’ I repeated testily.
‘You think Philip Henslowe will hire you?’
‘No!’
‘He’s got plenty of actors.’ Henslowe owned the Rose playhouse, south of the Thames, and was our chief rival.
‘Then there’s Francis Langley,’ James Burbage