Fools and Mortals. Bernard Cornwell
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the last three words bitterly.
‘Enemies?’
‘Lanman and Langley? Lanman hates us. The landlord here hates us. The bloody city fathers hate us. The lord mayor hates us. Do you hate us?’
‘No.’
‘But you’re thinking of leaving?’
‘I’m not making any money,’ I muttered, ‘I’m poor.’
‘Of course you’re bloody poor! How old are you? Twenty? Twenty-one?’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘You think I started with money?’ Burbage asked belligerently. ‘I served my apprenticeship, boy, I earned my money, saved money, borrowed money, bought the lease here, built the playhouse! I worked, boy!’
I gazed out into the yard. ‘You were a joiner, yes?’
‘A good one,’ he said proudly, ‘but I didn’t start with money. All I had was a pair of hands and a willingness to work. I learned to saw and chisel and augur and shape wood. I learned a trade. I worked.’
‘And this is the only trade I know,’ I said bitterly. I nodded towards my brother. ‘He made sure of that, didn’t he? But in a year or so you’ll spit me out. There’ll be no more parts for me.’
‘You don’t know that,’ he said, though he did not sound convincing. ‘So what parts do you want?’
I was about to answer when Burbage held up a hand to silence me. I turned to see that a group of strangers had just come into the playhouse and were now standing in the yard, staring at the prancing boys on the stage. Four were grim-looking men, all with scabbarded swords and all wearing the white rose of Lord Hunsdon’s livery. The men stood, foursquare and challenging, to guard four women. One of the women was older, with grey hair showing beneath her coif. She signalled the men to stay where they were, and strode towards the stage, straight-backed and confident. My brother, seeing her, bowed low. ‘My lady!’ he greeted her, sounding surprised.
‘We have been inspecting an estate at Finsbury,’ her ladyship said in brusque explanation, ‘and my granddaughter wished to see your playhouse.’
‘You’re most welcome,’ my brother said. The boys onstage had all snatched off their caps and knelt.
‘Stop grovelling,’ her ladyship said sharply, ‘were you dancing?’
‘Yes, your ladyship,’ Ralph Perkins answered.
‘Then dance on,’ she said imperiously, before gesturing to my brother. ‘A word, if you please?’
I knew she was Lady Anne Hunsdon, the wife of the Lord Chamberlain, who was our company’s patron. Some nobles showed their wealth by having a retinue of finely clothed retainers ever at their heels, or by owning the swiftest deerhounds in the kingdom, or by their lavish palaces and wide parks, while some, a few, patronised the acting companies. We were Lord Hunsdon’s pets, we played at his pleasure, and grovelled when he deigned to notice us. And when we toured the country, which we did whenever a plague closed the London playhouses, the Lord Chamberlain’s name and badge protected us from the miserable Puritan town fathers who wanted to imprison us, or, better still, whip us out of town. ‘Come, Elizabeth,’ Lady Hunsdon ordered, and her grand-daughter, for whose marriage my brother had been forced to abandon his Italian play and write something new, went to join her grandmother and my brother. The two maidservants waited with the guards, and it was one of those two maids who caught my eye and stopped the breath in my throat.
Lady Anne Hunsdon and her granddaughter were cloaked in finery. Elizabeth Carey was glorious in a farthingale of cream linen, slashed to show the shimmer of silver sarsenet beneath. I could not see her bodice because she was wearing a short cape, light grey, embroidered with the white roses that were her father and grandfather’s badge. Her hair was pale gold, covered only with a net of silver-gilt thread on which small pearls shone, her skin was fashionably white, but she needed no ceruse to keep it that way, for her face was unblemished, not even touched with a hint of rouge on the cheeks. Her painted lips were full and smiling, and her blue eyes bright as she stared with evident delight at the four boys who had started dancing again to Ralph Perkins’s instructions. Elizabeth Carey was a beauty, but I stared only at her maid, a small, slim girl whose eyes were bright with fascination for what happened on the stage. She was wearing a skirt and bodice of dark grey wool, and had a black coif over her light brown hair, but there was something about her face, some trick of lip and bone, that made her outshine the glowing Elizabeth. She turned to look around the playhouse and caught my eye, and there was the hint of a mischievous smile before she turned back towards the stage. ‘Dear sweet Jesus,’ I murmured, though luckily too softly for the words to reach any of the women.
James Burbage chuckled. I ignored him.
Elizabeth Carey clapped her gloved hands when the dance finished. My brother was speaking with her grandmother, who laughed at something he said. I stared at the maid. ‘So you like her,’ James Burbage said caustically. He thought I was staring at Elizabeth Carey.
‘Don’t you?’
‘She’s a rare little kickshaw,’ he allowed, ‘but take your bloody eyes off her. She’ll be married in a couple of months. Married to a Berkeley,’ he went on, ‘Thomas. He gets ploughing rights, not you.’
‘What is she doing here?’ I asked.
‘How the hell would I know?’
‘Maybe she wants to see the play my brother’s written,’ I suggested.
‘He won’t show it to her.’
‘Have you seen it?’
He nodded. ‘But why are you interested? I thought you were leaving us.’
‘I was hoping there’s a part for me,’ I said weakly.
James Burbage laughed. ‘There’s a part for bloody everyone! It’s a big play. It has to be big because we need to do something special for his lordship. Big and new. You don’t serve up cold meat for the Lord Chamberlain’s granddaughter, you give her something fresh. Something frothy.’
‘Frothy?’
‘It’s a wedding, not a bloody funeral. They want singing, dancing, and lovers soaked in moonbeams.’
I looked across the yard. My brother was gesticulating, almost as though he were making a speech from the stage. Lady Anne Hunsdon and her granddaughter were laughing, and the young maid was still staring wide-eyed around the Theatre.
‘Of course,’ Burbage went on, ‘if we perform a play for her wedding then we’ll need to rehearse where we’ll play it.’
‘Somerset House?’ I asked. I knew that was where Lord Hunsdon lived.
‘Bloody roof of the great hall fell in,’ Burbage said, sounding amused, ‘so like as not we’ll be rehearsing in their Blackfriars house.’
‘Where I’ll play a woman,’ I said bitterly.
He turned and frowned at me. ‘Is that it? You’re tired of wearing a skirt?’
‘I’m too old! My voice has broken.’
Burbage waved to show me the whole circle of the playhouse. ‘Look at it, boy! Timber, plaster and lath. Rain-rotted planks on the forestage, some slaps of paint, and that’s all it is. But we turn it into ancient Rome, into Persia, into Ephesus, and the groundlings believe it. They stare. They gasp! You know what your brother told me?’ He had gripped my jerkin and pulled me close. ‘They don’t see what they see, they see what they think they see.’ He let go of me and gave a crooked grin. ‘He says things like that, your brother, but I know what he means. When you act, they think they see a woman! Maybe you can’t play a young girl any more, but as a woman in her prime, you’re good!’
‘I’ve a man’s voice,’ I said sullenly.
‘Aye,