Shakespeare's Spy (7 page)

Though I prided myself on my excellent memory, I could not say two sentences together without consulting the side, or partial script, I had tucked in my wallet. Despite daily lessons in graceful footwork, I found myself stumbling over the other players’ feet, and occasionally my own. To make my mortification complete, my voice reminded me regularly of how unreliable it had become.

My one consolation was that none of the sharers was there to witness the debacle. They customarily went over their lines on their own, while the prentices and hired men practiced under the eye of a seasoned player such as Mr. Lowin. Very often our first performance before an audience was also the first time the entire ensemble was on the stage together.

From the the way the company clustered about Judith after rehearsal, anyone would have thought that she had been the one performing and that we were all complimenting her. I knew that, with all the attention being paid her, she would pay none to me. Heaving a melancholy sigh, I slunk off to the tiring-room.

Just as I reached the door, it opened and a tall, unfamiliar figure emerged, dressed in the apothecary’s robe from
Romeo and Juliet
. “Here!” I cried, my voice breaking yet again. “Who are you, and where are you going wi’ that costume?”

The man raised his hands, as if to show that he was unarmed and harmless. “It’s only me, Widge. John Garrett, remember?”

“Mr. Garrett?” He looked very different from the man I had met a few hours earlier. His hair was cut nearly as short as my own, and it was now an odd brownish hue. So were his mustache, his beard, and his eyebrows, which no longer met in the middle. His beard had been trimmed into a neat spade shape. The only feature I recognized was the coal-black eyes. Even his swarthy complexion seemed to have grown several shades lighter.

There was one other peculiar thing about him—he gave off a rank smell that I could not quite identify but that put me in mind of a stable somehow, one that had not been cleaned lately. Grimacing, I stepped back. “What—why are you wearing one of our costumes?”

“Mr. Armin will explain. Do you by any chance know where I might find Mr. Jonson?”

“Try Mr. Heminges’s office, two doors down. ‘A may be there, working on his script.”

“Thank you. And thank you for being so polite as to not mention my offensive odor. Mr. Armin will explain that as well.”

In the confines of the tiring-room, the awful odor was so strong that I could scarcely keep from gagging. Mr. Armin seemed not to notice. He was busy gathering up barber’s tools, sponges, and jars of makeup. “What reeks so badly?” I demanded.

“Horse urine,” Mr. Armin said matter-of-factly. He handed me an earthenware mug—clearly the source of the smell. “Will you empty that outside for me, please?”

“Horse urine?”

“Yes. You know, the yellow liquid sometimes known as—”

“Aye, I ken what it is well enough. What I don’t ken is why you’d want a mug of ’t.”

“For bleaching purposes.”

“Oh. Mr. Garrett’s hair and beard, I wis.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t suppose ‘a will be performing in a play wi’ us?”

“No.”

“So it’s a disguise?” I took Mr. Armin’s silence as an affirmative. “I expect that Garrett is not his true name, either.” Mr. Armin remained silent. “Has ’a done something wrong, then, that ’a must conceal his identity?”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Mr. Armin said. “I happen to think not. Still, it would be best if you do not inquire further into the matter. Can I depend on you?”

“Aye.”

“Good. Now empty that mug, will you?”

I
dumped the horse urine into the ditch that ran down the center of Gracechurch Street. The ditch had been designed to carry rainwater—and, along with it, household wastes and the contents of slop jars—downhill into the Thames. It did not fulfill its function very well, mainly because home owners tossed into it all sorts of inappropriate objects, some too large to be washed away by anything short of a flood—animal hides and guts, dead dogs, broken crockery, moldy straw from bed ticks, and the like.

Some folk felt that the plague was caused by corrupted air; if they were correct, then the city’s gutters must be the prime breeding ground for the disease. But the corrupted air theory was only one of many. Astrologers blamed some particular alignment of the stars. Others, depending upon their own religious convictions, claimed that the contagion was part of a Popish plot, or a Jewish one, or even a Protestant one.

I had my own tentative theory about the plague and how it spread. I had noticed how often the illness was preceded by a rash of tiny red marks on the victim’s limbs, like so many insect bites. My old master Dr. Bright believed that the contagion passed from person to person by means of invisible “plague seeds”; though he was not a particularly good physician, I suspected that, for once, he had stumbled upon the truth. Perhaps, then, the seeds could be conveyed not only through the air, but also through the bites of mosquitoes, fleas, bedbugs, and the like, that carried the seeds within them. After all, these insects were at their worst in the summer months, when the plague was also at its peak.

I had converted our housekeeper, Goodwife Willingson, to my way of thinking, and she had begun a crusade against all manner of bugs. So far her tactics had worked; since Sander’s death, no one in Mr. Pope’s household had been stricken. It remained to be seen whether or not they continued to work once the hot weather returned.

Just to be safe, Goody Willingson insisted that we have our daily spoonful of sage, rue, and ginger steeped in wine, and that we take the time-honored precaution of wearing about our necks small pomanders filled with wormwood and rosemary. I wondered whether she might know of some such measure one might take to avoid being stricken by love.

But perhaps it was too late for that. Perhaps I needed not a preventive but a cure. Each time Judith’s face entered my mind—though, in truth, I don’t believe it ever quite left—a curious feeling came over me, not unlike the one that always gripped me just before I was due on the stage. It was impossible to define, it was such a mingle-mangle of conflicting emotions—anticipation and uncertainty, eagerness and dread, pleasure and pain.

A rapping sound brought me out of my reverie. I turned to see Mr. Shakespeare beckoning me from within the dark parlor. I scoured out the mug with snow and went inside.

Mr. Shakespeare had obviously continued working on his unnamed play—or at least had attempted to. The booth was littered with wads of crumpled paper. The stack of completed pages, though, seemed no thicker than before. He was not writing now, only staring into his ale pot as though, like Madame La Voisin’s scrying ball, it might tell him how to proceed.

“Did you want me to transcribe for you, then?” I asked.

“Not really.” His voice echoed a little in the empty tankard. “Unless you can think of something yourself to set down. I certainly can’t—nothing that isn’t a pile of putrid tripe, at any rate.”

I perused the few uncrumpled pages. “Perhaps … perhaps an you found somewhere quiet …”

“What I
need
,” he replied sharply, “is not somewhere quiet. What I
need
is a decent story to work with—something with a bit of life to it. Plays should not be about
money
.” He flicked the pages contemptuously with one finger. “They should be about … about madness and betrayal, about love and death.”

“Like
Hamlet
.”

“Yes. Like
Hamlet
.” He rubbed his high forehead as though it pained” him. “Unfortunately, money is the thing that is uppermost in my mind these days. Perhaps I was trying to purge myself by writing about it.” He gathered up the wadded papers. “But that’s not your concern. The reason I called you in was to ask another sort of favor.”

“Gladly. What is’t?”

“I want you to escort my daughter to my lodgings. You know where I live?”

“Aye. The corner of Silver and Monkswell Street in Cripplegate.”

“I’ve sent her trunk on ahead, along with a note to the—” Mr. Shakespeare broke off as someone approached the booth. The scent of cloves infused the air around us.

Judith slid in next to me. I kept my eyes on the table, certain that the expression on my face must be a foolish one. “You were saying, Father?” she prompted.

“I was saying that I’ve sent your trunk to my lodgings, along with a note to Madam Mountjoy, asking if she will kindly put you up for a few days.”

“I would rather you had said a few weeks.” Judith picked up his tankard and peered into it to see whether any ale remained. I snatched up the mug that had held the horse urine, lest she decide to examine it, too. “In fact,” she said, “I’m not at all sure that I won’t decide to stay in London indefinitely.”

Mr. Shakespeare appeared alarmed by this prospect. “Oh? Have you discussed this with your mother?”

“Of course not. She’d have had a seizure.” Judith gave a long-suffering sigh. “Oh, Father, you know what Stratford is like. Aside from mother, there’s absolutely no one and nothing there that holds the slightest interest for me.” She gave an impish smile. “And, honestly, sometimes even Mother can be a bit tiresome.”

Mr. Shakespeare did his best not to look amused. “All the same, I don’t think it would be wise to stay in London. What would you do with yourself?”

“I don’t know. Be a gatherer for the Globe, perhaps. I’m good at managing money. On what you send us, I’ve had to be.”

“That’s enough of that!” Mr. Shakespeare snapped. Judith’s smile faded and she looked down at her lap as though a trifle
ashamed of her impudence—but only a trifle. “Now,” her father continued, “I’ve asked Widge to accompany you to the Mountjoys’.”

Judith’s gaze met his again, and it seemed puzzled, reproachful. “You’ve asked Widge? I thought that
you
would …”

Now Mr. Shakespeare was the one to look away. “I’m sorry. As I’ve told you, I’m very busy just now. We have a sharers’ meeting shortly. We must come to a decison on whether or not to raise the admission price of the plays.”

“Oh. Well. I can see how that would be more important than squiring me about.” She slid from the booth and held out a hand to me. “Come, then, Widge. You’ll no doubt be better company, anyway.”

Though Mr. Shakespeare pretended to ignore his daughter’s barbed remark, I could tell from the way he stiffened slightly that it had struck its mark. As I got to my feet, Judith said to her father in a voice as cool as a cowcumber, “I trust you were able to make some arrangements for Mr… . Garrett?”

“Yes. Ben Jonson has volunteered to take him in.”

“Good.” She slipped her arm through mine. “I suppose I’ll see you after the performance this evening, Father?”

“Yes. You needn’t wait up for me, though. I may be late.”

“Of course.” She swept out of the parlor, hauling me with her. After fetching our cloaks, we passed through the courtyard and onto Fenchurch Street. Judith drew in a deep breath of the cold air and put on the semblance of a smile. “Parents can be so vexing. Particularly fathers. Don’t you agree?”

“I … I wouldn’t ken,” I murmered.

“What do you mean?”

I was not anxious to reveal how little I knew of my mother and father and their station in life. Mistress MacGregor, who
ran the orphanage where I grew up, had given me a crucifix my mother once wore, inscribed with the name Sarah. Jamie Redshaw had told me a few more things about my mother, but whether or not any of them were true I could not say, any more than I could say whether anything he had said about himself was true.

Judith peered into my downturned face, making me so flustered that I missed my footing and very nearly sent us stumbling into the path of a costermonger’s cart. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

“Never mind. I want to know what you meant when you said you wouldn’t ken.”

“It means I wouldn’t
know
.”

“I ken that. But why would you not know?”

“Because.” I would have left it at that, but the way her bright blue eyes were fixed upon me somehow made me wish to tell her everything that was in my mind and in my heart, all in one great rush. “Because me mother died borning me, and me father … well, I’m not exactly certain who me father was.”

She bit her lip. “I see. You’re an orphan, then?”

“Aye,” I admitted mournfully, half expecting her to pull away, as though I’d confessed to being the bearer of some dread disease.

To my surprise, she drew even closer and patted my arm. “But that’s not such a bad thing, is it? I mean, if you don’t know who your parents are, then they might be anyone, mightn’t they? Who knows, perhaps you’re the illegitimate son of some great lord with piles and piles of money.”

“Would that were so,” I said fervently. “Then I might hope to—” My voice broke then, and perhaps it was just as well, for I had been about to say something I had no business saying, or
even thinking: that if I were rich and of noble birth, and not a poor prentice with no prospects beyond my next role, then there would be some chance, however small, that I might win her affections.

“What?” she urged. “What would you hope for?”

“Nothing,” I said. But the knowing smile on her face led me to suspect that she had guessed my thoughts.

She tossed her yellow curls. “Well, in any case, I believe it doesn’t matter whether a man is born high or low, not in this day and age. If you work hard and use your wits, you can make of yourself what you will. Look at my father, or Mr. Jonson. They’re the sons of tradesmen, both of them, and yet they’ve earned both renown and respect.”

“I didn’t ken that anyone had much respect for theatre folk—even for playwrights.”

“Of course they do. My father’s name and work are well regarded all over England.”

“It sounds as though you’re very proud of him.”

“I am. I may not always show it, I grant you. Even though he’s a genius and all that, he can be a bit of a dolt sometimes. My mother says that it’s not just him, it’s men in general.” She shook my arm playfully. “Tell me, Widge, are you a dolt sometimes?”

“Aye. More often than not, I expect,” I said glumly.