Shakespeare's Spy (22 page)

Out of old habit, I nearly said, “Widge,” but I stopped myself. I had made up my mind to choose a new name, and what better time could there be than now, when I was entering upon a new stage, quite literally, of my career?

I had never really considered taking Jamie Redshaw’s family name, for I didn’t care to be identified with him. Yet there was no escaping the fact that he was my father. Though he himself had done his best to deny it, in the last moments of his life he had acknowledged it and made certain that I would know. It was his attempt, I supposed, to ensure that someone in this world would remember him when he was gone. Though I did not feel that I owed him much, I could at least see that some small part of him survived, even if no one realized it but me.

“James,” I said. “It’s James.”

T
he area behind the stage was very like that at the Globe, too—so much so that I would not have been surprised had Sam or Mr. Armin emerged from the tiring-room or the property room and greeted me. The Fortune was a good deal newer than our theatre, though, and less worn and weathered. I felt almost as though I had been transported back in time, to the Globe as it was when I first joined the company—before Julia left, before Sander died, before I knew Judith or Jamie Redshaw, before I was so burdened by ambitions and responsibilities, when I was still just Widge.

The sudden sense of loss that swept over me was so powerful that it staggered me, like an attack of vertigo, and I had to stop and steady myself. “Is anything wrong?” asked Mr. Alleyn.

“Nay,” I murmured. “Just gi’ me a moment.”

“You’re feeling a bit homesick for your old company, I expect.”

I nodded. “Aye.”

“Perhaps they’d take you back if Philip were to go to them and plead your case, tell them that you’re not his informant.”

“They’d never believe him. They’d only think ‘a was trying to get me back i’ their good graces so I could resume me spying.”

He placed a hand on my shoulder, much the way Mr. Heminges was accustomed to do, or Mr. Pope. I wished it had been them. “Well, I think you’ll find our company as cordial as the Chamberlain’s Men, once you get to know us.”

“I’ve not been accepted into it yet.”

“You will be, though, if I have my way.” He smiled a bit smugly. “And I usually do.”

We found Henslowe in his office, writing in a bound journal. When he saw me, his bulging eyes fairly started out of his head. “Well, well! When I invited you to come and see me, I never imagined it would be so soon. How’s your belly?” Before I could reply, he addressed Mr. Alleyn. “The lad tried valiantly to keep me from snatching
Sejanus
, and I was forced to resort to violence.”

“You have the script, then?” asked Mr. Alleyn.

Henslowe scowled. “Regrettably, no. I ran into Armin and Shakespeare, who took it from me at the point of a sword, like the pirates that they are.” He glanced at me. “I see you’re not bothering to defend them. Have you some grudge against them, too?”

“Aye. They’ve cast me out.”

“Why, the ungrateful wretches! After you practically risked your life trying to save their precious play?”

“They think I’m i’ league wi’ you—that I told you where to find the script, and gave you the key.”

Henslowe shook his head. “They’re even bigger fools than I
thought. You’re better off without them. I suppose you’ve come to ask me for a position.”

“You did offer me one.”

“Now, I didn’t promise anything. I merely said to come and see me. In any case, I didn’t expect you to take me up on it right away. We’ve been shut down, the same as every other company, and without money coming in, we can barely meet the expenses we already have.”

Mr. Alleyn laughed. “Oh, don’t go playing the pauper, Philip. With all your various enterprises, you have more money than you can count. The boy’s a fine actor; I’ve seen him. He’d be an asset to the company.”

“That may be. But we don’t need another actor, no matter how good he is, if they won’t let him act.”

“The theatres will open again eventually.”

“Then let him come back eventually.”

“And what do you expect him to do in the meanwhile? Starve?”

For all his skill as a player, Mr. Alleyn was playing this scene all wrong. I knew that Henslowe cared no more about whether or not I starved than he did about whether or not I could act. He was a man of business and was likely to be swayed only by the promise of a profit.

Luckily I had kept a trump card in reserve that I might play if the game was not going my way. “Oh, I don’t expect I’ll starve,” I said calmly. “I have more to offer to a company than just me acting ability.”

“Oh?” said Henslowe. “And what might that be?”

“Two things, actually. One is me skill at swift writing.” I opened my wallet, drew out a sheaf of papers, and laid it on the desk before him. “This is the other.”

“A script?” He picked up the first page, read it over rapidly, and gave me an incredulous look. “Unless I miss my guess, this is Shakespeare’s work.”

I did not reply, only sat there with what I hoped was a mysterious smile on my face.

Henslowe handed the page to Mr. Alleyn, who, after perusing it hut a moment, said, “If it’s not his, then it’s a very good imitation. Where did you get this?”

“Mr. Shakespeare gave it to me.” Even though this was perfectly true, I had a notion that it would not sound that way to Henslowe.

I was right. He smiled skeptically. “
Gave
it to you, eh?”

“Aye. ‘A said I might do wi’ it as I wished.”

At this, Henslowe laughed outright. “Did he, indeed?” He shook his head. “I suspect that you’re a better thief than you are a player, lad. I don’t believe your story for a moment.” He examined several more pages of the script. “So, I’m supposed to want this enough to hire you as a prentice, is that it?”

“Nay. You’re supposed to want it enough to hire me
and
to pay me eight pounds for the script.”

Henslowe’s bulging eyes went wide. “Eight pounds? Are you mad? What’s to prevent me from simply tossing you out on your ear and keeping the script?”

“Well, for one thing, you wouldn’t be able to read it.”

“And why is that?”

“See for yourself.”

He shuffled through the pages until he came upon the scenes that I had written in charactery. “What’s this?”

“ The swift writing I mentioned.”

“You transcribed this for Shakespeare, then?” He scowled at the strings of symbols. “You know, this looks very much like the … “ He trailed off.

“Like the code you and your spy use to communicate,” I finished.

“Yes. But it’s not, is it?”

“Nay.”

Henslowe leaned back in his chair and regarded me with a mixture of amusement and respect. “You’re a clever lad. I believe you’re right, Edward. He would be an asset to the company.” He drummed his fingers together thoughtfully. “I will pay you,” he said finally, “six pounds for the play—three pounds now and three more when you’ve put it into a form we can read.”

“And you’ll take me on as a prentice?”

“Yes.”

“Done,” I said. And, like two merchants concluding a business transaction, we shook hands on it.

My first task as a member of the Admiral’s Men was agreeable enough: to adjourn to the tavern for dinner. I’d had little to eat that morning and was growing light-headed from hunger, yet I was not at all eager to join the others. In fact, I felt as apprehensive as I did just before a performance.

Though playgoers might be raucous and hard to please, seldom were they downright hostile, as these wights were sure to be, considering I had come to them from the company that was their fiercest rival. Still, I could not refuse to appear before them, any more than I could refuse to make my entrance in a play.

To my surprise they welcomed me, as members of a congregation might welcome into their church a convert from some other, less enlightened faith. A few of the faces around the table regarded me with disapproval or suspicion, but those sorts were to be found everywhere, even within the Chamberlain’s Men. For the most part they were, as Mr. Alleyn had promised, a cordial and companionable lot—except when the conversation turned to the Chamberlain’s Men.

The Admiral’s Men held as low an opinion of my old company as the Chamberlain’s Men did of them. Their ill will was founded upon more than mere jealousy, though. They voiced several complaints that, even had I been in a position to defend my comrades, I would have been hard-pressed to answer satisfactorily.

They seemed to resent most the fact that Mr. Shakespeare was so closefisted with his plays. Most playwrights, they said, sold their works to a printer after a dozen or so performances so that other companies might have a chance at them. Only a handful of Mr. Shakespeare’s plays were in print, and those were pirated versions, scribbled down during a peformance, or recited, usually inaccurately, by some cast member in exchange for a few shillings.

They were also out of square over their rivals’ refusal to raise the price of admission. Mr. Henslowe was more than just out of square; he was fairly furious. “The amount we pay for costumes has nearly doubled in the past several years, as has the amount we pay for properties and scripts, and for hired men and musicians, and for meals, and for coal, and for renting rooms. How can we hope to survive, let alone make a profit, if we do not increase our prices as well?”

• • •

After dinner, he and Mr. Alleyn escorted me back to the office, where I was to begin writing out in a normal hand the indecipherable passages of my script. “If I were you,” Mr. Alleyn said to me in a stage whisper, “I would not set down a word of it until I’d seen the color of his money.”

Mr. Henslowe shook a huge fist at him. “I’ve given the boy my word; that should be good enough.”

“Not quite as good as gold, however,” I said.

The big man cast me a dark look, but he also cast three sovereigns upon the table, which I promptly put into my purse. “It’s just as I said,” he growled. “I have to pay twice as much for scripts as they’re worth. What’s this one called, by the by?”

I had been giving so much thought to my own name lately that I had neglected to christen the play. “
Timon of Athens
,” I said blithely, as though that had been in my mind all along.

“Hmm. Not much of a title. But at least Shakespeare had the sense not to set it in a Papist country. Although, once the queen is gone, who knows what will be acceptable and what will not? In six months it may be the Catholics who are taking us to task for sounding too Puritan.”

They went to deal with other matters, leaving me alone in the office. I copied out one page of the play as rapidly as I could. Then, after taking a quick look out the door to make certain no one was ahout, I began a systematic search through the various papers and ledgers on the shelf above the desk. Before I could discover anything of use, I heard footsteps approaching. I thrust the journal I was examining back into place and bent over the script.

One of the company’s clowns stuck his head into the room. Seeing how absorbed I appeared to be in my task, he murmured, “Pardon me,” and moved on. It went that way the rest of the
afternoon. Each time I tried to resume my search, one of the players passed by, forcing me to scramble back to the script.

In spite of myself, I had nearly all the play in a readable form by the end of the day. I did not reveal this to Mr. Henslowe, however. Instead, I complained that with all the interruptions, I was having trouble concentrating. I suggested that I might make better progress early in the morning, when the place was quieter.

“You’ll be here early, right enough,” he said. “We expect all our prentices to be in the theatre by prime. No doubt you were accustomed to sleeping late when you were with the Chamber Pot’s Men, but we run this company like a business, not a midsummer fair.”

T
hat evening, after supper and a round of shove-penny with the orphan boys, I was summoned to the library to give my daily report. “So, how is Fortune treating you?” asked Mr. Pope.

I smiled in appreciation of his wordplay. “Well enough.” I pulled out my purse and jingled it. “They gave me three pounds for the play, wi’ three more to come.”

Mr. Pope gave a low whistle. “Not bad, for a novice playwright.”

“Well; they assumed it was all Mr. Shakespeare’s work, of course, and though I didn’t actually say it was, neither did I say that it wasn’t. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find the key to their code. I’ll try again tomorrow.”

“They weren’t suspicious of you, then?”

“Not that I could tell. They considered the Chamberlain’s Men a bunch of blackguards already, so when I told them I’d been sacked unjustly, it only served to confirm their opinion.
What about our company? Did anyone suspect that it was all a sham, do you wis?”

“Not according to Will. He says you played your part very convincingly.”

“It wasn’t difficult. I just imagined how I would feel an I were truly given the chuck. It’s not as bad as I feared, though, being a member of the Admiral’s Men. They actually treated me quite kindly, except for Mr. Henslowe—and even ‘a was not altogether a swad. I’ truth, I feel a bit guilty for deceiving them.”

“They’ve never had any such qualms, you may be sure.”

“Perhaps not. All the same, it’s a pity the two companies can’t be on better terms. They’re not blackguards, either. They’re just players, like us.” I got wearily to my feet. “Me throat’s parched. I’m going to ha’ a drink of ale. Shall I fetch some for you?”

“No, thank you. I’m off to bed.”

“You don’t look as well as you might. I wish Mr. Armin and Mr. Shakespeare had not made you a part of their scheme. The doctor said you were not to be upset.”

He shrugged. “They didn’t want to send you off behind enemy lines, as it were, without my approval. Besides, I’m not upset, only tired. It’s something that happens when you get old, you know.”

I yawned. “Then I must be getting old.”

Goody Willingson was in the kitchen, wiping clean the supper dishes. As I drew a mug of ale from the keg, she sidled up to me and said softly, “You know, if you’re looking for a new name, you could do worse than take Mr. Pope’s. He’s been far more of a father to you than that Redshaw fellow ever was or ever would have been.”