Shakespeare's Spy (11 page)

I had a good idea what the reason was, for I had seen the stripes that decorated Sal Pavy’s back—the result, I did not doubt, of frequent and severe beatings. Sam had seen them,
too. But Sal Pavy, for all his talk of Blackfriars, had never talked of this. “You may tell us,” I said. “We’re all friends here.”

Sal Pavy glanced warily at me, then at Sam. “He’ll only make another jest of it.”

“Not I,” Sam vowed, and drew a cross over his heart.

“Don’t do that!” Sal Pavy’s tone was unexpectedly harsh. “It puts me in mind of
them
.”

“Who do you mean by
them?
“ I asked.

“Mr. Giles and Mr. Evans.”

I recognized the names. “They’re the wights i’ charge o’ the Chapel Children?”

Sal Pavy nodded. He looked about furtively, as if fearing that one of them might have infiltrated our theatre. Then he said, in a voice so low that I could scarcely hear him, “They’re also Papists.”

“
P
apists?” Sam said incredulously. “Running the queen’s own company?”

“You sound as though you don’t believe me!”

“I believe you, Sal, I believe you. It just seems a bit … risky, doesn’t it?”

“Well, obviously they don’t go about telling everyone. But we Children all knew. It would have been impossible for us not to. Every week we had to make a confession to one of them.”

“A confession?” I said. “Were they priests, then?”

Sal Pavy shook his head. “They insisted we confess our sins to them, all the same. If we couldn’t think of anything we’d done that was sinful enough to suit them, they accused us of holding out on them, so we’d have to make something up. Sometimes a number of us would get together the night before and share ideas for despicable things we could confess to.”

“Why didn’t you just refuse to do it?” Sam asked.

“I did,” Sal Pavy replied defensively. “Several times. And then I got tired of being beaten, and decided it was better just to do what they wanted.”

“Gog’s nowns,” I murmured. “Could you not simply leave?”

“I tried that as well, but my—” His voice faltered and he looked down at the floor as though ashamed.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Go on.”

“My parents always sent me back. When I tried to tell them what went on there, they wouldn’t listen. All they could think of was what a great honor it was for me to be one of the Chapel Children.”

“They didn’t object when you joined the Chamberlain’s Men?”

He gave a thin, bitter smile. “They were willing to sacrifice a bit of honor in favor of the fee the company pays them for my services.”

I placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “Now I ken why you were so desperate to stay on wi’ us.”

He shrugged off my hand. “I didn’t tell you all that in order to get your
pity
.”

Sam gave him a peevish look. “Why did you tell us, then?”

“A few days ago you asked me why I had such a poor opinion of Papists. Now you know.” With that, he stalked out of the property room.

“Well,” said Sam. “Just when I was starting to think that perhaps he wasn’t a complete ass after all, he began to bray again.”

“Don’t be too hard on him. ‘A let down his guard for a moment, and now ’a’s feeling a bit vulnerable, I expect.”

“That may be. But I expect he’s also feeling a bit smug.”

“Why is that?”

“Well,” Sam said, looking about at the still-cluttered room, “you’ll notice that he’s left us to clean up the properties without him.”

We did not see Sal Pavy again until rehearsal. He seemed resentful toward us, as though, like his former masters, we had forced him to confess to us against his will.

I prayed that Judith would not turn up to torment me again and cause me to turn our Spanish tragedy into a French farce, with me as the principal clown. But then, when she did not appear, instead of being grateful, I was sorely disappointed, even desolate, as though I had been forsaken.

Fortunately my mood was perfectly suited to playing Bel-Imperia, whose lover, Don Andrea, has been slain in battle. Mr. Lowin even commended me on how convincingly wretched I sounded. If I had said a word to Sam about how I felt—which I did not—he would surely have seen it as yet another sign that I had contracted a severe case of lovesickness. There was one classic symptom, though, that I had not yet suffered—a lack of appetite. I had not had much in the way of food that morning, and by the time our midday break came around, I was ravenous.

For most of the company, going home for dinner would have meant a walk of a quarter hour or more in the cold, so we customarily dined downstairs, at a long trestle table set up specially for us by the innkeeper. As we would not have the leisure for another bona fide meal until after the evening performance, we made a feast of this one, often lingering at the table until nearly nones.

It was my favorite part of the day—a time for companionship, conversation, a congenial game of cards. Today we had even more companionship than usual, for Mr. Garrett had
joined us. Before sitting next to him, Mr. Armin sniffed him warily, like a dog. “Just checking, to make certain you’d gotten the smell out.”

“And have I?” asked Mr. Garrett.

“For the most part. You smell less like a stable now, and more like a brewery.”

“That’s because I rinsed myself with ale, at Ben Jonson’s suggestion.”

“Well, you have it from an expert, then,” said Will Sly. “No one knows more about ale and its uses than Ben.”

“Are you a c-cardplayer, sir?” asked Mr. Heminges. “We n-normally engage in a r-rousing round of whist after d-dinner.”

“Thank you, sir. I’d be delighted to join you.”

Mr. Garrett proved an entertaining dinner companion. Though he seemed to know little enough about the theatre, he had something intelligent, and often witty, to say about nearly every other topic on which we touched.

I watched him closely and listened to him carefully, looking for some clue to his identity and why he chose—or was compelled—to conceal it. He spoke with a slight lisp, but not the precious sort so often affected by fops. His seemed, rather, to be the result of some injury to his upper lip, where a thin scar was still visible beneath his newly bleached mustache. When he turned toward me, I could see traces of other old wounds on his neck and on his forehead. Whatever else his past life might have been, it had certainly been dangerous.

I was, I noticed, not the only one in the company who was taking Mr. Garrett’s measure. Ned Shakespeare was regarding him with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow, as though still trying to recall where he had seen the man before. Ordinarily Sam paid far more attention to the food and drink than to the
conversation, but when Mr. Garrett began to speak of all the countries he’d traveled to and all the strange things he had seen, Sam hung on his every word, as though he hungered far more for adventure than for the mackerel and the parsnip fritters on his plate.

Mr. Garrett could also hold his own when the talk turned to such popular pursuits as hunting, falconry, and gardening. And, although he had been in London but two days, he was already knowledgeable on the subject of most concern to us all—the state of the queen’s health.

“This morning,” he said, “I spoke with … with someone in a position to know. He tells me that Her Majesty grows weaker with each day that passes. She often seems confused and forgetful, and will seldom speak except to complain that her limbs are cold. Yet she adamantly refuses to take any of the medicines prescribed by her physicians, apparently because she fears being poisoned.”

The sharers glanced solemnly at one another. “What I fear, gentlemen,” said Mr. Armin, “is that we players will not have Her Majesty’s protection much longer.” He turned to Mr. Garrett. “Do you know whether or not she has given any indication of who she wants to succeed her?”

“According to the man I spoke with, she has not. Everyone expects, of course, that her choice will be the Scottish king.”

“Lord help us,” said Mr. Shakespeare.

“Is that bad?” I asked. I knew nearly nothing about King James, except that he was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, who once tried to claim the English throne and had her costard chopped off for it.

“Well,” Mr. Shakespeare said, “let me put it this way: How many Scottish theatres have you heard of?”

I thought for a moment. “None.”

“And how many famous Scottish playwrights are there?”

“None?”

He nodded grimly. “How well do suppose we players are likely to fare, then, under James’s rule?”

“I understand, though,” said Mr. Garrett, “that his queen, Anne of Denmark, often presents elaborate masques at court, and even performs in them.”

“Oh, good,” said Mr. Armin. “We’ll all become courtiers, then, and prance about before a lot of fake scenery, pretending to be gods and goddesses, and spouting doggerel.”

“P-perhaps it won’t be as b-bad as you imagine,” put in Mr. Heminges, always the optimist.

“And perhaps it will be a good deal worse,” said Ned Shakespeare. “After all, His Royal Scottishness was raised by Puritans, and most, if not all, of his advisers are Puritans.” He took a great gulp of ale and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “If you ask me, we’d better all pray very hard that Her Majesty makes a miraculous recovery.”

The congenial, companionable mood had vanished. It was as though a sneaping southerly wind had swept into the room, bringing oh its wings a load of melancholy, which hung over the company like a dark and dreary cloud.

There was a long stretch during which no one spoke very much and everyone drank a lot. Then Mr. Heminges cleared his throat. “I w-was reluctant to bring this up b-before, but as we’re all in a f-foul humor anyway, I m-may as well.” He glanced at the other sharers as though for moral support, and then went on. A short wh-while ago, it was discovered that yet another c-costume has d-disappeared from its trunk.”

Murmured complaints and curses went up from one end of the table to the other. Mr. Heminges’s voice rose above them. “Now, one or two m-missing garments may be chalked up to c-carelessness, but when the t-toll reaches half a dozen, we c-cannot help suspecting …” He paused and cleared his throat
again. “Well, n-naturally we do not w-wish to accuse anyone, but—”

“If you’re looking for someone to blame,”put in Ned Shakespeare, “I’d begin with the tiring-man. He has the most ready access to the costumes, after all.”

“P-perhaps. But R-Richard has always been v-very reliable. Besides, the trunk I m-mentioned was sent over from the Globe only t-two days ago, and Richard has b-been laid up for n-nearly a week. In any c-case, as I said, we d-do not wish to accuse anyone, so we’ve decided to t-take the following m-measure: From n-now on, the t-tiring-room and property room will be kept locked d-during the day, until an hour b-before the performance. That should leave sufficient t-time for all of you to dress and c-collect your properties.”

There was another round of discontented murmurs. Mr. Heminges held up his hands for silence. “I would j-just like to add that the n-necessity of replacing the costumes p-puts rather a severe b-burden on the company’s finances. As you’ve n-no doubt noticed, the s-size of the audience has been gr-gradually diminishing these l-last few weeks.”

“Yes, I have noticed that,” said Sam. “It’s gotten so that they can scarcely see over the edge of the stage.”

The jest drew a few halfhearted chuckles from the company at large, and a faint smile from Mr. Heminges. “Thank you, S-Sam, f-for that attempt to introduce a b-bit of levity into the proceedings. But I’m afraid there’s n-nothing very amusing about the s-situation. Once we’ve m-met our expenses, gentlemen”—he lowered his voice a little—”including the p-percent-age we g-give to the Cross Keys, there’s b-barely enough left over to p-pay your wages. Now, as you m-may also be aware,
M-Mr. Henslowe has raised the pr-price of admission to the F-Fortune Theatre, by a p-penny.”

Will Sly gave a low whistle. “That means it’ll cost the groundlings twice as much to get in.”

“V-very good, Will. We considered f-following his example, but we c-concluded that we would be in d-danger of pricing ourselves out of b-business. I suspect that a g-good half of our audience s-simply could not afford to hand over an extra p-penny just to see a p-play. They have b-better uses for the m-money—such as buying f-food, for example.”

“How will we manage, then?” asked Sam.

Mr. Shakespeare answered. “We sharers have agreed to put some of our past profits back into the company, to keep it afloat until warmer weather, when, we trust, the playgoers will return to the Globe in great flocks, like so many swallows.”

“An it will help,” I said, “I’m willing to forgo me wages for a while.”

Sam gave me a sharp poke in the ribs, and a look that said,
Have you gone mad?

“Thank you, W-Widge,” said Mr. Heminges, “but that won’t be n-necessary.” I thought I heard him add, under his breath, “I hope.” I could not be certain, though, for the noise level in the room had escalated as the players began talking animatedly among themselves.

“You nupson!” Sam whispered. “Don’t offer to give up money that way! They might ask us all to do the same!”

“I’m sorry. I only wanted to do me part.” In truth, I would have given nearly anything—though heaven knew I had little enough to my name, and not even a proper name for that matter—to keep the Lord Chamberlain’s Men from ruin. Julia had once said to me, soon after I joined the company, that she
would gladly forgo her wages as long as she was allowed to perform. At the time I did not see how a person could want something so much. Now I understood. It was not just about performing; it was about belonging.

It had puzzled me, too, when Julia said that she and I were birds of a feather. I knew now what she meant: that neither of us had ever belonged anywhere before. Though she was not technically an orphan, she might as well have been, for her mother was dead and her father was a common thief with no interest in her beyond what money she could bring in.

Like me, she had found a family in the theatre. Unfortunately membership in that family was limited to men and boys, at least in England. I only hoped that, across the Channel in France, she had managed to make a more permanent place for herself.