Текст книги "The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez"
Автор книги: Ann Swinfen
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 20 страниц)
There was just one problem.
Babington had still been at Poley’s lodgings when the arrest party arrived. Although they paid no attention to him, as they had been instructed, Babington was not that much of a fool. He took to his heels and fled London.
Later, we found that he had left a final letter for Robert Poley. Like most of us, it seemed that he did not altogether trust Poley, for his letter concluded: ‘Farewell sweet Robyn, if as I take thee, true to me. If not, adieu, omnius bipedum nequissimus.’
In this I agreed heartily with Babington. Poley was, of all two-footed creatures, the vilest.
The next day, the Friday that was to have seen the arrest of Babington and the other conspirators, Sir Francis went to the Queen to inform her of the latest situation. He must have been furious and frustrated that he could only report the arrest of Ballard. If Ballard refused to speak, he would be moved to the Tower and tortured.
The whole of London was in an uproar. Lord Burghley issued a royal proclamation, demanding that all citizens turn out to search for Anthony Babington and Chidioke Tycheborne. The general hue and cry was raised throughout London. All the city pursuivants were mustered and began a house-to-house search for the conspirators. All roads out of town were watched and the watchmen in nearby towns and villages in all directions were ordered to carry out searches in case the wanted men had already slipped through the net which had been thrown around the city.
With this much public activity going on, the people in the streets were soon talking of nothing else, and a sense of panic began to spread. Shopkeepers boarded up their shops. Women and children were hustled away indoors, for fear that armed traitors were on the loose. The rumour soon started that a French army had landed in Sussex and was even now marching toward us. Gangs of eager apprentices, armed with heavy cudgels, roamed the streets, with their usual cry to arms: ‘Clubs! Clubs!’ They were the only ones enjoying the situation.
I had not been home for days and could only hope that my father was safe. Probably he was busy in the hospital, for it was certain that in the chaos and uncertainty there would be fights and violent attacks on innocent people. The citizens of London have always enjoyed an excuse for a good brawl.
The assassin Savage was arrested quite quickly and questioned by Sir Francis and Sir Christopher Hatton, the Queen’s vice-chamberlain. Phelippes gave me his notes of the interrogation to write up in a fair copy. It was clear from what Savage said that to the very end the conspirators believed that Gifford was a loyal follower of Mary and the means of conveying letters by beer barrel was their own secret and secure method.
About ten days after Babington and the other conspirators disappeared, a message arrived for Phelippes from one of the watchmen in Harrow, one John Lakely.
‘It seems,’ Phelippes said, ‘that certain unfamiliar vagrants have been seen in the town, begging for food. Lakely himself has not seen them, but their clothes and manner alerted one of the townsmen, who passed on the information.’
He tapped the letter against his lips. ‘It could be worth investigating. The appearance of these men corresponds to that of a group spotted briefly in St John’s Wood a few days ago. Not quite your usual rogues, but gentlemen in hiding and desperate want. Send for Berden, Kit. I think we will ride out to Harrow.’
When Berden arrived, the three of us took horse, accompanied by half a dozen armed pursuivants. It was a lovely summer’s day, the sky unmarked by any cloud, a soft southern wind caressing our faces as we rode toward the hilltop town. Phelippes had chosen Berden and me to go with him as we had seen all the conspirators when they had dined at the Castle Inn. In addition Berden had encountered several while engaged in spying on them, while I had met Babington face to face. I went unwillingly. The beauty of the day seemed a cruel mockery of our grim errand.
‘They was skulking about my yard,’ the townsman told us. He was a plump, self-important fellow called Howard Gardiner, a saddler and leatherworker. ‘My wife keeps a flock of hens at the back there.’
We were standing under the archway from the street and he jerked his head toward a chicken run at the far end of the plot which stretched away behind his shop. Beyond a ragged hedge which marked its boundary there was a copse of spindly trees, then the land fell away.
‘After our hens, they was,’ he went on. ‘As soon as they sees me, they come whining round, begging for bread, four o’ them, all together.’
‘And why did you think they were the wanted men?’ Phelippes asked.
‘Most beggars go about solitary, not in a group.’ Gardiner cast a contemptuous look at him. ‘And these fellows talked like gentlemen. Besides, they was dressed like gentlemen, though their fine clothes had had rough treatment, torn and dirty. They was starving, I could see that. Near despair, I’d say.’
‘Did you give them bread?’ I asked, curious.
He looked at me scornfully, up and down.
‘Not I! Do you take me for a fool? Give one beggar bread and they mark your doorpost. You’re never rid of them, after.’
I had a sudden sharp remembrance of Anthony Babington’s kindness and generosity to a poor messenger boy, and had to bite my lips to stop myself answering him back.
‘If they are starving,’ Berden said, ‘they’ll not be far off. They need to stay near a supply of food. They stole eggs and a chicken from a farm in St John’s Wood.’
‘That’s what I said.’ Gardiner smiled complacently.
‘Not that they know how to look after themselves,’ Berden added, ‘being gentlemen. The chicken was found barely plucked. It’s sure they didn’t know what to do with it. We think they ate the eggs raw, for there was no sign of a fire. They can have had barely bite or sup for ten days.’
The men were clearly long gone from Gardiner’s yard and Phelippes was considering what to do next when a boy ran up, red in the face and gasping for breath.
‘Master Lakely sent me, sir,’ he said. ‘He has the men cornered in a back alley. There’s no way out the far end.’
Mounting quickly, we followed the boy across the town to a huddle of poor streets, where John Lakely had posted two local constables at the mouth of a narrow, stinking alley.
‘They are down there,’ Lakely said. ‘Four of them. The alley turns to the left and they must have thought there was a way through, but it ends in a blank wall. Shall I send the men in?’
One of the constables held a savage-looking dog on a chain, like one of those beasts bred for bear-baiting. I began to feel sick.
‘Surely the dog isn’t necessary,’ I said to Phelippes, ‘if the men are as weak as it seems.’
He gave me an odd look.
‘We can take no chances.’
The armed pursuivants who had accompanied us dismounted and joined the two local constables. They formed a solid body, blocking the entire width of the alley, and began to move forward. Apart from distant sounds of the town going about its daily business, there was nothing to be heard where we stood, until a burst of vicious barking and a cry of pain, suddenly cut off.
The minutes dragged out, but at last we heard the returning footsteps and a few sharp commands, then the whole group came into view.
They were a terrible sight, their faces haggard, hair and beards wild and untrimmed, their once fine clothes torn and filthy, as though they had been sleeping in a midden.
Berden quickly identified them so that my own evidence was not needed. I drew away to the edge of the group, wishing myself anywhere but here, when Anthony Babington suddenly looked in my direction. I saw a flash of recognition cross his face as his sunken and reddened eyes caught mine, recognition changing swiftly to a kind of resigned sorrow. I avoided his eyes, feeling deeply ashamed, and saw that blood was dripping from a deep gash in his arm. The dog had been used, it seemed.
‘Master Phelippes,’ I said, ‘Sir Anthony is hurt. Will you permit me to bind up his arm?’
He turned aside from his discussion with Lakely and glanced at Babington.
‘Very well, Kit. We wouldn’t want to cheat the hangman.’
I held back my response to this cruel remark with difficulty, but walked over to Babington.
‘Sir Anthony, I am a trained physician. I always carry a few salves with me. I am going to treat that wound as best I can here in the street.’
He looked at me curiously, but said nothing and held out his arm. I took a small pot of salve from the scrip at my belt, and smeared it over the wound as gently as I could.
‘You must have this stitched as soon as possible,’ I said. ‘Keep the rest of the salve. I’ll use this torn part of your shirt to bind it.’
He took the pot and watched as I ripped off the trailing strip of his shirt and wound it round his arm.
‘You are a strangely accomplished messenger boy, young Simon,’ he said softly.
I felt the colour rising in my cheeks.
‘My name is Kit,’ I murmured, ‘and I am a physician at Barts. I am sorry to have deceived you. But the safety of the Queen and England must come before all else.’
‘Aye,’ he said, with the ghost of a sigh. ‘We meddle with the affairs of kings and queens to our peril.’
Soon after, the bedraggled conspirators were led away to return to London, and within the next few weeks the remainder were rounded up.
Imprisonment, torture, trial and death were all that awaited them now.
The mood in London swung to the other extreme. Panic turned to fevered relief. Amid the sound of joyous church bells, bonfires were lit in the streets and the citizens gathered about them to sing psalms and give thanks for deliverance from terrible catastrophe.
Phelippes had kept me on at his office to help with the paperwork, but after the arrests I begged to be allowed to go home. He sent me to Sir Francis, who was again at Greenwich.
There I sought out Sir Francis in that same small office near the Queen’s quarters and asked whether I might now be free to go home.
‘Thomas tells me you have worked well during this difficult time,’ he said. ‘Here’s gold for you.’ He drew a sovereign out of his purse and gave it to me. ‘We may have need of you in the future. Or you may be of service to Dr Nuñez or Dr Lopez. I will send for you when you are wanted, but for now you may regard yourself as on holiday.’
I was angry and resentful at his words, as if he supposed their dark and dirty work were everything to me.
‘I have my patients at the hospital, Sir Francis. My father has lacked my help in recent weeks.’ I glared at him, forgetting for a moment his high office and my need for caution. ‘That is my true calling, not this. . .’ I could find no word that was not insulting. ‘This. . .work I do for you.’
‘Of course, of course.’ He patted my shoulder, which surprised me, for he usually kept himself physically distant from those who worked for him. ‘Go back to your patients. I am sorry it has been necessary to keep you from them.’
For a moment I glimpsed again the kindly man behind the stern façade, the man I had known at Barn Elms and once or twice in private conversation. I gave him a hesitant smile.
With a sense of light-headed relief, like a condemned man at the last moment set free, I ran down the stairs, across the palace courtyard, and along the bank, where the glitter of the summer sun, cast in abundance across the river, shone more precious to me than all the ranked jewels of the courtiers whispering in palace corners. I was glad to go, taking a wherry back up-river to Blackfriars Stairs, then walking through to Duck Lane. Despite the stench of the animal pens and the slaughterhouse, it felt like a true home-coming. I wondered what Sir Francis had meant by being of service to Dr Nuñez or Dr Lopez, though I recalled what Phelippes had once told me about the usefulness of their trade in spices. I hoped that none of them – Walsingham, Phelippes, Lopez, Nuñez – would find me useful in their dark business again.
The door to our house in Duck Lane stood open to let in a little cooling breeze and ease the heat within doors. Joan was sweeping the step and raised her eyebrows when she saw me come bounding along the lane.
‘So you are back then,’ she said impudently, ‘I hope you have been enjoying yourself with your fine friends.’
Having known me since I was a shivering brat of twelve, she presumed too much upon her position, but I was so happy at having shaken the dust of Chartley and Seething Lane from my heels that I could not chide her.
‘Is my father in?’
‘Aye, just back from the hospital.’
Seeing me framed in the doorway, my father rose from his chair and came towards me, his arms outstretched. I flung myself into his embrace. After the sinister affairs in which I had been entangled, I felt suddenly safe again.
He kissed my forehead and ruffled my hair.
‘All is well?’ he asked cautiously.
‘All is well. And all the better for being home.’
I looked around at the humble room, which seemed even more dear after the luxuries of Greenwich Palace.
‘This is for you!’
I pressed my new gold sovereign and the rest of Babington’s purse into his hand with pride.
‘What is this?’
‘Reward for my services. And I hope that is the last of it.’
‘Books,’ he said, with a gleam in his eye. ‘We will be able to buy books!’
I laughed from sheer joy to be back where books were far more important that codes and conspiracies.
In the days that followed I was glad to be back with my father again, glad to be walking every day with him round the corner to the hospital, glad to spend most of my waking hours treating the patients who came each day to the cloisters and those more serious cases who were kept in the wards of the hospital. For me, there is no greater joy than seeing a sick person, in particular a sick child, grow well again under your care.
Now it was my calling to save life, not to send men to the gallows. And I would be able to see Simon again.
Chapter Fifteen
As far as I could, I refused to listen to the news on the street – how the men who had plotted to murder the Queen and bring French and Spanish invaders into England had been caught by Walsingham. I had returned to my work in the hospital, relieved to turn my back on Seething Lane and Walsingham’s secret service. Peter Lambert, however, seemed fascinated by the Babington case. He was passionately loyal to the Queen and in his eyes anyone who plotted against her was a vile monster. No punishment was too severe. I, who knew something of the twisted facts, the lies, the traps which had been set, was deeply uneasy. I had never been quite sure that Babington and his friends had ever really meant harm to the Queen. Knowing Poley, I was certain that they had been ensnared into something beyond their intentions. Unless, of course, my suspicions were right, that Poley was not working for Walsingham but for the traitors. To me Babington and the others (except perhaps Ballard and Savage) seemed more like boastful boys than dangerous traitors. They were nothing but bait in the trap to catch the Scottish queen.
When I suggested this to Peter, without revealing what I knew about the plots of Walsingham and Phelippes, he shook his head.
‘They readily confessed their crimes,’ he said, ‘and are to be executed by the most cruel means available. The Queen has demanded it, it’s common knowledge. Rightly so. They deserve nothing less.’
‘A man may confess anything under torture,’ I said, looked away, busying myself with packing my satchel, so that he might not read my face.
The creak of the strapado pulley. The screams. The stench of excrement. Mama, Mama!
‘They surely were not tortured,’ Peter said, ‘it is against the law!’
He was shocked, and I could not bring myself to tarnish his innocence. What did Peter and his kind know of men like Topcliffe and Waad? Or if they suspected, they blocked their ears to it. Had they not heard of the pamphlet defending the use of torture to examine traitors, written by the lawyer Thomas Norton, he who was known as ‘Rackmaster Norton’? I thought it was common knowledge.
‘What of the Scottish queen?’ I asked. I had kept my own ears shut long enough. Better to hear it now, and an end to it.
‘The Scottish queen, who conspired with them, is to be tried later,’ he said. ‘That is what they are saying in the alehouses. There is no doubt of her guilt. She is certain to be executed.’
I turned away. The whole affair sickened me and I was ashamed of my part in it. I hoped I would be able to avoid hearing any more, but a kind of ghoulish excitement infected the city. People were in a high state of relief that a plot to destroy us all had been foiled, and the release from fear made them cruel. They looked forward to watching the executions. There was talk of it every day, even in the hospital.
‘Will you come with us to watch the traitors die?’ Peter asked me, the day before the executions.
I shook my head.
‘They may be traitors,’ I said, ‘but I find no pleasure in seeing any man die.’
He shrugged and went off whistling, no doubt taking me for a squeamish Stranger who had not a good, full-blooded Englishman’s stomach for patriotic entertainment.
On the twentieth day of September, a little over a month after they were arrested, the first group of men were executed, including Sir Anthony Babington. They were hanged, but cut down before they were dead, their privates cut off and burned before their eyes, then, still living, they were disembowelled. Finally, their bodies were quartered, and the bloody sections spiked up at various gates into the City, as a warning to others who might think to conspire against Queen and State.
All that day I hid myself away in the hospital, unable to eat, my stomach twisted with revulsion and memory, but I heard later than the crowd’s first eagerness for vengeance began to wane when they saw the terrible butchery inflicted on the young men who were, after all, handsome and gallant and courageous in their suffering. When the rest of the conspirators were brought to execution the next day, the crowd turned threatening and demanded that they be hanged until they were truly dead, before the awful mutilations were inflicted.
‘Aye,’ said Peter, recounting what had happened. ‘You were right, perhaps, Kit. It was not honourably done.’
‘Was Robert Poley amongst those executed?’ I asked, keeping my voice neutral, but with a sudden flicker of hope.
‘Nay. They say that there is some doubt about his part in the Catholic conspiracy,’ Peter said. ‘He’s imprisoned in the Tower, but there’s been no word of his trial.’
Was this merely to conceal Walsingham’s use of Poley in the affair? Or had he found evidence of Poley’s treachery? Now I was no longer working at Seething Lane, I did not know what was really happening. As long as Poley was in the Tower, I felt I was safe from him. Simon, who heard the prison gossip from his old acquaintances at the Marshalsea, told me that Poley was living in the Tower in some luxury. Perhaps, I thought, he has been placed there in order to take up again his practice of spying upon Catholic prisoners. I longed to know whether, instead, he would himself be found guilty and executed. With Poley gone, my secret life would once again be safe. I could not longer be forced into work within Walsingham’s secret service by threats to reveal my identity.
The mystery of Gifford’s disappearance was solved about the time the conspirators were arrested. As he saw the jaws of the trap closing around Ballard, with whom he had been such a close companion, Gilbert Gifford had taken fright and fled to France, using Ballard’s own escape route from the Sussex fishing village. He was afraid, perhaps with good reason, that a court might judge him one of the conspirators. He was a known Catholic and had been sent to England by Thomas Morgan in Paris, with orders to aid Ballard and the others. The fact that he had been turned by Sir Francis and had worked valiantly for the State, and at great risk to himself, was known only to a handful of people. The Scottish queen and the conspirators all believed to the very end that he was loyal to them. In these circumstances there was every chance he would be caught in the trap he had helped to prepare. He was also terrified of appearing as a witness at their trials, fearing a knife in the back some dark night from one of their supporters.
Now he had written to Walsingham and Phelippes from Paris, explaining why he had fled England and saying that he was ready to work for them again as a spy in France. In many ways, Gifford suffered unfairly in all this. Both Walsingham and Phelippes needed to keep up the pretence that he was a traitor, to maintain his cover in France. Even his own father denounced him, writing to Phelippes that he wished his son had never been born. All this I learned from Mylles, when I encountered him one day near his home on my way back from the Nuñez house, where I had gone with a message from my father.
‘Well, Kit,’ Mylles said, ending the news about Gifford, ‘and when shall we see you again at Seething Lane?’
‘I am content with my hospital work.’
I smiled, for I did not want to appear discourteous. ‘There are always sick and needy to be found amongst the poor of London. Besides, now this great matter is concluded, I am sure Master Phelippes has no more need of my services.’
Mylles shook his head. ‘I would not be too sure of that. But we shall see. Times are quiet at present, certainly.’
I bade him farewell and headed towards Bishopsgate and the Theatre. My time was my own after my visit to the Nuñez house and I had a new ballad I wanted to show to Guy. I thought perhaps he might make use of it for an interlude in one of the plays. And of course it was possible Simon might be there.
In November, the Catholic Bishop of Armagh, who had been held in the Tower for twenty years, died suddenly of poison, after receiving a gift of cheese from Poley, though nothing could ever be proved against him. The news revolted me, and strengthened my fear and loathing of the man. That evening long ago at the Marshalsea again haunted my dreams. Had Poley’s own food poisoning given him the idea of administering poison in a gift of food? The man was despicable.
After the young men’s confessions had been wrung from them by torture, it was the Scottish queen’s trial. She was already judged and condemned before she was tried, and, though I know that she was guilty of conspiring in the invasion of England and the murder of our Queen, I could not forget the things I had seen by candlelight: the deciphered letters, my own forged postscript, the crude drawing of the gallows. Once sentenced to be executed, Mary would have to wait, counting out on her rosary her days to the block, until Elizabeth could bring herself to write her name on the warrant, thereby signing away the life of another queen, and her own cousin by blood. A dangerous precedent – for where one queen may be the subject of judicial procedure, may not another?
Winter came, with the matter of the Scottish queen still unresolved, but more and more my mind turned away to other matters. The bitter weather closed in around the middle of December and the annual influx of chest infections began. Every morning beggars were found dead in the doorways of shops where they had taken shelter during the night. Old folk shook their heads, saying there were far more beggars infesting the streets now than in the days when the monasteries cared for the destitute. The cold crept through the cracks into our little house in Duck Lane. Joan complained of chilblains and I took to wearing in bed the cap I had bought in Lichfield.
A brighter note came with Christmas. Marrano or not, no one could live in London and avoid being caught up in the seasonal festivities. The saving of the country from treason and invasion engendered a mood of particular thankfulness and gaiety this Christmas. Yule logs were dragged through the streets. The air was filled with the sweet, spicy scent of Great Cakes being baked for Twelfth Night. Everywhere there were swags of greenery and mistletoe draped across the lintels of shops and houses. These could be bought from stalls in Cheapside or from street pedlars, but some folk got up parties to go out into the countryside and bring back their own.
‘You will join us, will you not, Kit?’ Simon asked me, when I had managed to slip away from the coughs and wheezes for a few hours. ‘We are setting out early tomorrow morning with a handcart. We’ll go out past the tenters' fields at Finsbury into the country beyond, where there are woods. Guy has scouted out a good spot already – plenty of evergreens and ivy, and he has found a holly tree with berries. We must go soon or someone else will find it and strip it bare.’
‘You plan to decorate your lodgings?’ I said.
‘Perhaps, if there is anything left over. But mainly we want it for the playhouse. Usually we cannot play in this cold weather, but Master Burbage is going to put on a comical piece on Twelfth Night and we will serve hot Hippocras for an extra penny, to keep people warm. So we must make the playhouse festive.’
‘I will come if I can,’ I said. ‘Could we gather enough for the hospital too? I would like to make it cheerful for the children who must spend Christmas there.’
James Burbage overheard our conversation.
‘Excellent idea!’ he cried. ‘We will decorate St Bartholomew’s as well, and put on a little merriment for the patients.’
I was not sure the governors would approve of the kind of boisterous merriment Master Burbage probably had in mind, and indeed it might be a little overwhelming for the more seriously ill patients, but I promised to enquire.
The governors proved to be more in favour of the idea than I had expected, though they laid down that the entertainment was to be restrained. A little music and perhaps a seasonal tableau or two.
‘It might cause one or two of the wealthier citizens to take note of the hospital’s needs,’ Sir Jonathan said. ‘If poor players can be generous to the hospital, why then perhaps they might dip their own hands in their pockets.’
My father gave me leave to join the players when they went to gather the greenery. He had not entirely given up his dislike of my friendships there, but he had become resigned to the fact that I was growing up. The months I had spent in Walsingham’s service had changed things between us. I was no longer dependent on being his protected child and his assistant, but was beginning to have a separate life of my own. I assured him that the players took no interest in my true identity. They had come themselves from many different places and ranks in society. Some, I suspected, might have deeds in their past that were best concealed. They lived for their work and for the day, and did not dwell on what had gone before.
‘We will be taking two handcarts,’ Burbage said, herding his motley company together in the frosty December dawn. ‘One for the Theatre and one for the hospital. When we have decorated the playhouse we will trundle ourselves across London and help you decorate the hospital, Kit.’
Although it was so cold that we walked in a cloud of our own misty breath, the brisk pace soon warmed us up. By the time we reached the wood, one or two were even unwinding the scarves with which they had swathed their heads and noses. Every twig and lingering oak leaf, every clump of winter grass, was fringed and sheathed with the delicate tracery of hoar-frost, which gleamed and sparkled in the low-lying winter sun. With so many hands to the work, we had soon filled the two carts with evergreen branches of spruce, long festoons of ivy, and holly from the berried tree that Guy had discovered. It took longer to find mistletoe, but then one of the young lads, who had wandered off on his own, came running back with the news that he had spotted an old apple tree groaning under the weight of mistletoe.
‘Here,’ he said triumphantly, pointing to the tree on the edge of a farmer’s orchard. ‘Enough for us to set up shop.’
The old tree looked as though it would never bear apples again, for the mistletoe had colonised it entirely. Great balls of the fleshy growth sprouted from every branch, so large I would barely have been able to close my arms around one, each ball studded with berries as white as the pearls embroidered on one of the Queen’s gowns.
Burbage made a face. ‘We cannot help ourselves to this, not without the farmer’s permission. I shall enquire.’
With that he strode off. From the impressive straightness of his back, I knew he was casting himself into one of his kingly parts. It reminded me of Simon’s advice when I was about to go off to the Fitzgeralds’ house in the role of tutor. I had used it again, when playing the messenger boy.
Think yourself into the skin of the person you are playing, and everyone will believe you.
Burbage, in his own mind, was a king, an emperor, benignly bestowing a favour upon the farmer, in seeking his permission to gather the mistletoe. Who could resist him?
While Burbage was away on his royal embassage, we sat on the edges and shafts of the carts and ate the food we had brought with us until he returned, beaming.
‘He has granted us permission and has even given half a sovereign to the hospital. Here you are, Kit. Take charge of this.’
I put the half sovereign carefully into my purse. I had not carried so great a value in coin since Sir Anthony . . . But I would not let myself think of that.
Christopher Haigh twirled a ball of mistletoe over his head. ‘Are there many pretty maidens at the hospital, Kit? I’ll wager you know a few.’
I grinned. Christopher played the young lover in romances and fancied himself an irresistible ladies’ man.
‘There are all the nursing sisters,’ I said, wickedly. ‘Droves of them.’
His eyes sparkled.
‘I don’t believe any of them are a day over . . . seventy. And none under forty either.’
I ducked and ran as he chased me through the orchard, shouting abuse.
The entertainment at the hospital was a great success, neither as lively as Master Burbage would have liked, nor as restrained as the governors would have preferred. On the whole I think it did the patients good. Certainly the children had the best Christmas of their lives, for they came from homes where no one would ever have heard such music or eaten such bonbons as Guy extracted mysteriously from behind their ears or under their chins. Many families of the patients came too, and took back word of the players’ Twelfth Night comedy, so when the day came they had a good audience. Even my father agreed to attend. It was not the serious play I had hoped would change his view of the playhouse, but to my relief it was not too vulgar either.
