Текст книги "Hell and Earth"
Автор книги: Elizabeth Bear
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
“I was only straightening,” Will protested. “Thank you for the wine, Tom.”
“I was up.” Tom brushed it aside as unworthy. “I interrupted.”
“Not at all,” Chapman said. “We were discussing the foibles of Master Jonson.”
Will sighed and nodded, glad that Chapman had failed to answer his question once Nashe returned. Jonson owes too much to Tom Walsingham to give away what he knows of our tasks. But I cannot help but wonder, sulky boy that he is, if I made a mistake recruiting him. Still, it wouldn’t do to have Tom Nashe wondering why I’ve cut him out of Bible study.
Nashe rolled his eyes. “Ben’s all wind and no rain,” he opined, toying with his ale.
“Easy to say, when you’re not somebody he’s brawled with or cudgeled with his own pistol. Ask John Marston what he thinks of Ben’s fists.”
Nashe grinned at Chapman. “He’ll wind up stabbed in unsavory circumstances. Mark my words.”
Will marked them, all right. And, sitting at the table between two other friends and collaborators of Kit Marlowe’s, found them less than comforting. Well, if I can trust anyone with the news of Kit’s survival, it would have been smarter Tom Nashe or George than Ben, now that I think on it. Oh, hell.He caught Chapman’s eye and nodded while Nashe was fussing with the dice, and Chapman returned the smile and sipped his wine complacently.
Act IV, scene xvi
She whom thy eye shall like, thy heart shall have,
Be she as chaste as was Penelope,
As wise as Saba, or as beautiful
As was bright Lucifer before his fall.
–Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act II, scene i
Kit walked down the sweeping greens‑ward below the Mebd’s gold‑turreted palace and stopped on the bluff above the sea. A strange white tree grew there, where the lawn gave way to coarse and knotty salt grass. Kit let his viola swing from his hand, kicked the tree’s trunk with the side of his foot, and arched his head back to look up into the branches.
Murchaud told him it was a New World tree, or perhaps one native to Cathay. It flowered heavily, hung with white petals thick as paper and soft as the skin of a peach. A thick honeyed scent the sea breeze couldn’t leaven floated under the branches, cloying Kit’s throat.
It wasn’t what the tree was that interested Kit. It was who the tree had been. “Well, I hope thou’rt enjoying thy penance, Robin,” he said. “Can think of worse prisons…”
The branches whispered one on the other. Kit freed the bow and lifted the viola. “I came to play thee a tune. I thought it might lighten the weary hours….”
There was no answer, of course. But still he settled his instrument and played for an hour or two, there at the border between the sea and the land, with the tree reaching up to scrape the sky. He would have played longer, and perhaps stayed to watch the sunset under the white tree’s branches, but the heavy slip and sway of a caller’s approach across the grass distracted him.
He lowered the instrument and turned. “Good evening, Lady Amaranth.”
“A beautiful evening, Sir Poet,” she answered. “Play on, and lull me to sleep in this forgiving evening air.”
“Do snakes sleep?”
She smiled, that strange flat rearrangement of her face. “Snakes sleep with their eyes open, who was Christofer Marley.”
“Please,” he said, laying the viola down in a flat, dry patch of grass. He leaned back against the bark of the tree, wondering how long the Mebd would leave Robin stranded so before she deemed her lesson taught. “Call me Kit. ’
“Kit.” Her snakes moved like a lovely woman’s hair, tossed by the sea breeze. For a moment, he could almost imagine curls caught on her collar, limned like sculpture in the low angled light. “How likest thou the answers to thy questions?”
“The answers you’re guiding me to? ” He laughed. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Mehiel. The oaks. Puck. Other things …”
She inclined her head, smile broadening, the picture of womanly waiting except for the flicker of her tail tip.
He pushed a hand into his hair, as much to hide his shaking as to hold the wind‑tossed strands out of his face. “How do you know what you know, Amaranth?” He’d meant to ask the question more subtly, to dance up to it.
She coiled aside and smiled, rising up to pluck a palm‑broad blossom from the branches overhead. She buried her face in the flower, inhaling deeply, and then tucked the twig behind her ear. Threadlike serpents coiled over the petals as Kit watched in fascination. She leaned back, as if considering.
Kit straightened against the tree and folded his arms across his breast. “You are more patient than I, my friend. Older and more knowing.”
“But thou’rt more stubborn, and I should take it into account?” She showed him a bit of fang when she smiled this time, and fussed the lace on the cuff of her flowing white shirt. “I know because I know, Kit. Because serpents are for knowing things.”
“And sharing them with mortals to their detriment?”
Oh, that was fang indeed, and the flicker of a long forked tongue in silent laughter. It brushed his cheek as she swayed forward, and all her hair hissed in sympathy. “If thou knowest thy scripture. Or all the myths of all the world.”
“Is there a difference?”
She settled back on her tail, watching him with an arch assessment that left him quite unsettled. “No. Now that thou dost mention it, there’s not.”
Something–the stubbornness she’d named, or just long‑smoldering rebellion, flared in his breast. “And hast come to send me on the next errand of discovery, then, my lady?”
“I haven’t. I came to hear thy music, Kit.”
He stepped away from the tree, brushed past her–not roughly, and not within reach of her hair–on his way out of the bower. “There’s my instrument. Be so good as to lay it by my bed when thou hast done with it.”
“And where goest thou, Sir Poet?”
Kit laughed and turned back over his shoulder. “I’m going to see a witch about a boy.”
Geoffrey, who was currently too much a stag to be much use for conversation, had said of Morgan’s cottage that one could only find it if one knew already where it was. Kit found it true: he found his way to the stream and across the bridge–after no troll appeared to greet his hail–and down among the roses without difficulty. If it were spring on the bluff above the ocean, it was high summer at the witch’s cottage, and the roses hung damasked red and white beside the door like a lady’s mantle thrown over her shoulder to display the embroidery. The red wooden door was propped open, and Kit heard a familiar voice raised in song over the splash and clatter of washing.
As homely a sight and sound as he’d ever imagined. He let his feet crunch on the gravel path as he came along it, and on a whim raised his voice in harmony. The clinking of pottery stopped, but the singing continued, and a moment later Morgan le Fey poked her head around the corner and smiled. And Kit blinked, because her hair was as red as the red roses that grew by the door, and her skin gone as pale as the white.
“Morgan?” He stopped and blinked, midverse, his hands hanging limp by his sides. “You’ve changed,” he said, and walked closer when she summoned him.
“It happens,” she said, tugging a long red lock out to inspect it. “I blame Spenser. All Queens are Elizabeth, now.”
“Really?”
“No. Only in stories. I imagine Arthur’s still blond in his bower, though. Isn’t he?”
Rather than answer, Kit reached with numb fingers to lift the curl out of her hand. The hair felt coarse and real, not harsh with dye. He fought the sudden ridiculous impulse to lift it to his lips and taste it; instead he said, “You knew about Mehiel.”
She smiled and flicked her curl out of his hands, as Lucifer had flicked his wing. “Yes, Sir Poet. I knew about Mehiel. And I’ve underestimated thee, I see now.” She stood away from the door, gesturing him into her house.
He followed. “I scream within,” he assured her. “How knewest thou?” It was strange to speak to her so again, after such a long time, but he bit back a smile and thought, If thou canstthee Lucifer, Prince of God’s Angels, then thou canstthee Morgan le Fey.
“I have my sources.” She smiled mysteriously and went to stir something in the kettle over the fire, while he tried to decide if he liked her hair that brilliant shade.
Morgan–” He had layers and layers of questions. Careful, teasing questions that he’d written out and memorized before committing the sheets to the fire. He had a thousand interrogations troubling his soul, and moreover, he thought he had the right to know the answers. And what he said was, “My Queen, what is it thou dost desire?”
It was the right thing to ask. God help him. He knew it by the way she straightened, and wouldn’t look at him, but dipped a wooden mug in the spice‑scented decoction seething over the fire and stood and stared at the mud‑chinked wall while she drank it. “The impossible, Kit.”
“How impossible?” He came to her, his slowly lengthening cloak brushing aside the rushes on the fresh‑swept floor.
“Time to add another layer,” she said. “Or thou’lt find thyself tripping whenever thou dost step back.”
“Then I’ll have to learn not to step back,” he said, and touched her wrist with three fingers. “Answer me, Morgan.”
She turned her head away. Her throat had a fine, strong line, flowing into a stubborn chin. He lifted the hand from her wrist, caught that chin, and turned her face back to him, amazed at his own audacity. More amazed when he felt her shiver, before she brushed his hand aside and stepped back. “Peace. I want peace, Christopher Marlowe.”
“I’ll offer thee no war if thou wilt offer me none.” She smiled, but he knew from the way her breath fell that it wasn’t what she meant, and he returned her smile with a slight, thoughtful nod. “Thou’rt correct. It is impossible.”
“Most things worth fighting for are.”
“And is there anything thou’rt not willing to sacrifice to get it, my Queen?”
“Thou shouldst know the answer to that by now, Kitten,” she said, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the mouth. “And the more we love it, the more likely it becomes that it will be stripped from us.”
“Oh, thatI know.” He stepped back and bowed, a practiced gesture with his cloak. “May I be of service to a lady, then? What may I do?”
She laughed. “Don’t look back. Don’t step off the path. And never trust the guardian.”
“I’ve heard that somewhere before,” he said. She nodded.
“I know. I imagined he would tell you.”
“Geoffrey?”
“Geoffrey the Hart.” She smiled, and reached out to brush his lips with her fingers, and very carefully reached out and opened his collar to expose the brand high on his chest.
Her touch burned, but he bore it irritably. Thou dost inflict this pain thyself.
“It’s inevitable now, what happens, Kitten. The wheels are in motion. But I managed a little trick you might approve of.“
“Yes?”
“The battle–”
“The one when Elizabeth dies?”
“Not when Elizabeth dies any longer, ” she said, and dragged her fingers through her long, red hair. “It cost me something of myself, though it was Spenser op’ed the way. The Prometheans will have to manufacture their rift in the collective soul of London themselves. Elizabeth’s legend will linger past her death. Gloriana will not die with the Queen.”
“Gloriana,” he mouthed, and cocked his head at her. At the fine hooked arch of her nose and the cheekbones like panes of glass, and caught his breath.
“Elizabeth the First,” Morgan le Fey said on a breath like awe. “England’s greatest ruler. So shall she be remembered.” The sorceress offered him a bittersweet smile, and he knew that what she gave herself was not just peace, but a suitable sort of vengeance, after all these endless years. “A mere woman.”
Kit studied her. “There are no mere women.”
Her eyes shifted green to gray, smile rose‑pink as her lips compressed. She said nothing, amused.
He liked her in triumph. “It’s your revenge on Arthur.”
“Arthur and not Gwenhwyfar? Art certain?”
He was. He wondered, for a moment, what the legends might have been if this woman, and not her half brother, had been King. “Does the Mebd know what you’ve done?”
“She’ll learn soon enough. Come. Sit and have tea.”
Act IV, scene xvii
Some day that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.
–William Shakespeare, Hamlet,Act I, scene i
Will had learned by now to recognize the tingle of lifting hair at the nape of his neck that presaged Kit’s sudden appearances. The specter showed first flat as a painting or an image in a glass, and then stepping forward as if he rose through water into three‑dimensional reality. Will didn’t move from his place by the fire – hard won, in Tom’s cold parlor, and he wouldn’t sacrifice it willingly. Tom himself only nodded, but George Chapman –
Will hid his laughter behind his sleeve as Chapman turned to face the outlandish figure of Kit Marlowe–who had just materialized before the big window in his gaudy cloak – and dropped his half‑empty goblet on the floor. Tom didn’t even try to conceal his mirth as straw‑colored wine spilled over the rushes and Chapman’s jaw fell open, a red cavern within the bramble of his beard. He never even glanced down at the wine soaking his shoes, but when Kit smiled kindly at him and said, “Oh. Hullo, George. I hear you’ve been expurgating my poetry,” his eyes rolled up and only Tom Walsingham’s swift intercession kept him from dashing his brains out on the sideboard.
Kit considered the tableau for a moment, and then glanced over his shoulder and raised both eyebrows at Will. “He’s a prankster, our Will.”
Said direct to Will’s face and not in Tom’s direction at all, but it was Tom–tipping Chapman into a chair–who answered. “He is at that. Happy birthday, Kit.”
“Is it?” Kit glanced out the window, as if expecting rain and buttercups, and blinked at the cold gray slates and February darkness.
“February sixth, sixteen hundred.”
“It is,” Kit said wonderingly, putting his hand on the glass. He pressed the other against the center of his breast in a gesture that was becoming a habit, and one that quietly troubled Will. “Is’t afternoon or morning?”
“Before sunrise,” Will said. “We’ve been waiting up for thee–”
“And didst not tell poor George I was coming. Shame, William.”
Will grinned. “Congratulations, Kit. You’re thirty‑seven.”
“Strange, he doesn’t look a day over twenty‑nine.” Tom finished settling Chapman into the chair and pushed one long hand through hair that was streaked with gray now, like a careless daub of whitewash at the temples. Will’s attention was more on Kit, though, and he saw Kit flinch when Tom continued, “Worry not, Kit. Forty’s not the end of the world, for all they say it’s middle age and death on the horizon.”
“Aye, Sir Thomas,” Kit said, and crossed the room to crouch by Chapman’s chair. “Thou’rt forty now? It cannot be. ‘Twas only yesterday thou wert outriding and outshooting me day in and day out, and soon Thou’lt be as toothless as old Chapman, here” – he chafed Chapman’s wrists –“George, wake up. That was a cruel trick Will played thee–water, Will. If thou hast stopped the old man’s heart I shan’t forgive thee.”
“Old Chapman,” Tom scoffed, standing back. “Aye, he’s two entire winters on me.”
Will had left his cane by the door, and managed with some pride to fetch cold water and a cloth for Kit without stumbling. “As the youngest and baldest of the lot of you,” Will said, “I feel I should contribute, but–alas–I find myself at a loss to compete with elder wits.”
Kit snorted and ignored him, applying the cold soaked cloth to Chapman’s neck until the woolly poet opened his eyes and groaned. “Kit. A ghost? It can’t be Kit, so unchanged after a decade.”
“Not a decade, George,” Kit said, rising to his feet. “Eight years, a little less–”
Near enough a decade,” George answered, struggling upright, and Will saw Kit flinch again. “And not a wrinkle on thee–”
“Death is kinder than aging in that way,” Kit said, and walked to the sideboard to pour himself wine and sugar it lightly. “I hear a rumor thou’rt holding Ben’s pen for us now that the bricklayer has gone on to greener pastures.”
Chapman blinked, and cast about himself for the cup that he’d let fall. Will took pity and retrieved and refilled it, to Chapman’s effusive thanks. “Shall we begin?”
Kit sipped and laid his cup aside, turning to retrieve the precious Bible from its shelf while Will dragged a low table with ink and paper between himself and Chapman. But Tom raised his hand and cleared his throat, and Kit paused before he was properly begun. “What is it, Sir Thomas?”
Tom smiled at Will. “You didn’t tell Kit about his birthday gift, Master Shakespeare…”
A blush turned Will’s face hot.
Kit looked up, frowning. “Will… ?”
Wary as a stag at bay, and Will couldn’t blame him. “Supper at the Mermaid,” he said. “Everyone will be there. Tom Nashe, Mary Poley, and the lot–” ALL that are Left Living. And let him Look on young Robin with his own eyes, and make his own decisions, then.
Kit’s eyes grew wide. “Her Majesty would never permit it,” he said, when he finally found something to say at all. “Christofer Marley must stay dead, Will–”
Will grinned. “Aye, but Thomas Marlowe of Canterbury, a young man of, oh, perhaps twenty‑five, might just be of the age to have finished his prenticeship and come to London to meet the men his brother knew. What better excuse wilt thou ever have, my Christofer?”
Kit blinked and swallowed. Will saw his eyes too bright and his throat swelling above his collar, and hoisted himself out of his chair again. He crossed the floor and draped his arm over Kit’s patchworked shoulders, damning the trembling in his limbs for an inconvenience and a bother. He was as proud of Kit for not pulling away as he had ever been of anything, and prouder still when his friend leaned into the embrace.
“How didst thou know I had a brother?”
Will grinned to stop the sharpness that would have filled up his own eyes, and found himself supporting Kit as much as clasping him. “I wrote thy mother, fool, to tell her the rumors attending the ignominy of thy death were false, and that she could be proud of her eldest son. We’ve had quite the correspondence, since.”
Then Kit did pull away, and set the Bible down, and hid his face against the window glass. No one spoke for long moments, until he straightened his shoulders and forced his voice steady. “What time is supper, then?”
Will had to encircle Kit’s shoulders with his arm again to chivvy him through the Mermaid’s door: the fair‑haired poet froze with one hand on the door pull as if it were he and not Will who were halt. “Come on, Tom,” Will said, tapping the side of Kit’s shoe with his toe. “Your brother’s friends are waiting to meet you.”
“Tom,” Kit said softly, and shook his head. “I always was beset by them. A veritable thicket of Toms–Will, I cannot go in there and pretend to be mine own brother.”
“Hush. No one questions a truly outrageous lie. ‘Tis the niggling inconsistencies ‘twill trip thee.” Will shifted his clasp to Kit’s elbow, fumbling the cane in his other hand to free fingers for gripping. He grinned, and reached past Kit to open the door, pausing for one last inspection of his victim.
Kit wore the ill‑fitting brown doublet that Tom had loaned him as if it pained him, constantly tugging at the too‑long hem. His child‑fine hair was twisted into a club and greased so not a trace of curl remained, and Will had brushed blackener through both it and Kit’s fair reddish beard. The effect was to make Kit’s dark eyes unremarkable rather than startling, and a subtle blur of kohl underneath had made them seem deep‑set and a little sullen. He was thinner and fitter than he’d ever been in London, every inch the hard‑muscled tradesman.
He looked at Will pleadingly, and Will shook his head.
“Come, love. Put on a demure demeanor and keep the pipe‑weed in thy pocket, and no one will know thee for a Marlowe at all.”
“That’s half what I’m afeared of,” Kit answered, but he let Will bring him through the door.
A cheer went up as they entered. Will supposed God would forgive him for concealing from Kit the sheer number of well‑wishers, nostalgic friends, and curious bystanders who might be expected to populate the gathering, but his friend’s white pallor under wine‑red cheeks made him wonder if Kitwould do likewise. “See, Tom?” Under his breath, leaning close to Kit’s ear as Kit tugged back, edging for the doorway. “Your brother did have friends.”
Will thought he might need to interpose himself physically between Kit and the door, but then Tom Nashe extricated himself from the gawking crowd and hurried over. As one fish slipping through a weir is followed by a school, suddenly every body in the room moved toward them, and the erstwhile Tom Marlowe was surrounded and embraced and drawn into the center of the crowd so thoroughly that Will wondered if he would ever escape.
Nashe claimed Kit with a firm arm, introducing first himself – “Kit’s school friend, also Tom, he’ll have told you what we got up to at Cambridge with that play that almost got us all expelled. And why, when in London, didst thou to that hack Shakescene and not thy brother’s old friend Tom!”–and then every member of the great and varied crowd. Burbage neatly cut Phillip Henslowe off Kit’s other arm, and between him and Nashe they got Kit seated and feted and served with warmed wine.
Will himself smiled and tucked his hands into his pockets, and went to slouch at the fireside beside Ned Alleyn, who looked tall enough to have been leaned there for a prop. “We don’t see you out much these days, Ned – ”
“I’ve money enough not to miss slogging through the mud behind a cart on tour. Why are you still at it, Will?”
Will paused and stretched his shoulders against the rough fieldstone chimney. Robin Poley brought him a cup, and Will ruffled the boy’s hair before he remembered that Robin was too old for that now. “It’s in my blood,” he said at last, hopelessly. “The playing and the poetry. I’ll be too sick to tour soon, I suppose – ”
“Aye,” Ned answered. “Enjoy it while you can. I hope poor Master Marlowe doesn’t think his brother always received so warm a reception.”
Will shrugged. “Let him take the news home to Kit’s parents. It can’t have been easy on them.” He fell into the role of innocence so easily that it took him a moment to remember that the dark‑haired young man holding court in the corner, looking charmingly flustered and confused by the attention–and then perhaps not as shocked as he should have been when Mary Poley all but slid into his lap in a tangle of dark hair and kilted skirts–wasn’t Tom Marlowe at all, and wouldn’t be taking any tales home to Canterbury.
Will watched Kit’s face as Mary introduced him to Robin, and saw Kit’s eyes narrow a little before his brow smoothed, and he took the young man’s hand in a firm, unhesitant greeting. And then Burbage was leaning forward into the conversation, and Will caught enough of his shouted anecdote to know that he was telling “Tom Marlowe” an embellished version of the story of the ghost of Kit Marlowe accosting his killers on a rainy street –
To which Kit responded with startled and delighted laughter. And Will sighed, contented, and went to see the landlord about bringing out the feast.
It being a Friday, alas, they would eat fish. Not out of Papist superstition any longer, ironically, but of Elizabeth’s desire that the good fisherfolk and fishmongers of England not be put out of trade by something so frivolous as a change of religion. Still, as befitted the name, the Mermaid was known for its fish in pastry, so all was not lost.
Will encountered his brother Edmund returning across the hall, and made it back neither to Ned Alleyn’s side nor the table where Kit and Mary and Nashe and Robin and Burbage formed the focal point of the party. Rather he found himself standing in a little enclave with Edmund and John Fletcher, haphazardly snatching bites from passing trays and laughing as he hadn’t laughed in –
– months.
An abundance of food lowered the rumble of conversation to a contented mutter, and when Will turned to check on Tom Marlowe nй Christofer again, it took a moment to locate him. Finally, Will raised his eyes to the gallery and saw Kit standing with young Robin Poley, leaned against the railing like old friends, the boy pointing down and across at something that the man had leaned close to comment on. Kit caught Will’s eye, and the smile he sent down might have melted Will like a candle end.
Lovesick fool,Will thought, and looked down before someone could notice his silly grin and draw an entirely correct conclusion.
A bustle near the door drew Will’s attention from the careful study of his boots and the much‑trod rushes. Will turned, hoping with all his heart that it wasn’t Ben Jonson intent on troublemaking, but instead it was a pair of tall young men, one fair and one dark, each better favored than the other and both fabulously clad in white and gold. The blonder and taller was Robert Catesby, dressed as a member of a Lord’s retinue. The darker and broader wore a Baronet’s ruff and a knight’s chain about his neck, as if they had just come from court or some festivity.
The sight of the two of them there, in the Mermaid, killed Will’s smile and had him moving toward the door, his cane hitting the floorboards in steady staccato as he closed the distance. Edmund fell into step, the amiable redheaded hack John Fletcher on his other side.
“Will,” Edmund asked, “what’s Will Parker doing here?”
Will shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s Baron Monteagle now, though – ” And Essex’s man, knighted by him in Ireland along with the rest of the useless retinue.
“Who’s Will Parker?” asked Fletcher, blinking.
“Francis Tresham’s brother‑in‑law. Which makes him Edmund’s and my cousin by marriage,” Will said, and somehow despite his limp outpaced Fletcher and Edmund enough that when he bowed before Parker the other two were half a step behind him. “Lord Monteagle.”
“Cousin,” Monteagle addressed him, in that rich dark voice that the player in Will had always envied. “I have a business proposition for you and your partners in the Globe. Perhaps we could discuss it in private?”
“A business proposition?” Will smiled, the fearful tautness in his chest easing. For one mad moment he had thought something had gone terribly wrong, but if it was only a favor to a relative, even if he was a peer –“We have a patron, cousin.”
Catesby fell in beside them as they turned. Edmund led Fletcher aside, and Will caught Burbage’s eye, and Will Sly’s, and summoned them over with a stagy jerk of his head.
Monteagle laughed. “Oh, no. It’s just, I had planned a party tomorrow for a friend, and the arrangements. Well. Your Globe rents for performances, does it not? ”
Burbage joined them, Sly a half step behind. Will opened the door to one of the private dining rooms at the back of the Mermaid and poked his head inside; a quiet conversation broke up and a group of players made themselves scarce for the unexpected appearance of a peer. Places were exchanged, and Sly shut the door firmly.
“Can you three speak for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Master Players?” Catesby, his voice not so rich and refined as Monteagle’s, but clearly precise. Monteagle wandered away, trailing a white‑gloved finger along the woodwork like a master of servants in search of dust.
“I can,” Burbage said, with a smile that softened it. “As much as can any man speak for a parcel of rogues.”
Will exchanged glances with the other two players. “What do you need, Master Catesby? ”
He cleared his throat as if to answer, but it was Monteagle who spoke, cleaning his fingertips daintily on a lace‑edged handkerchief as he turned back. “A command performance? On a bit of an extreme schedule, I’m afraid.”
“Extreme?” Burbage, in charge.
“Tomorrow,” Catesby clarified, looking uncomfortable. “The facilities we had planned to use became unavailable.”
“Tomorrow!” Sly touched his lips with his fingertips, and cleared his throat. “I mean, sirs, it would be a challenge, may it please my lord.”
“It would have to be a play in repertory,” Burbage said thoughtfully.
“Richard the Second.”
“Oh.”
Will laid a hand on Burbage’s shoulder. “The Master of Revels–cousin, Her Majesty has let it be known that she is not overfond of that play– ”
The Baron smiled. “The Earl of Southampton will be in attendance, dear cousin, and he is very fond of Richard the Second.Surely, for our family’s sake, you could see your way to a private performance.”
And will a gang of players, sturdy villains all, deny a request on behalf of an Earl?Burbage moved a half step back; Will recognized the gesture. Richard was giving him the floor.
“Cousin. We could play something fashionable, and give better value.”
Monteagle smiled. “It’s Harry.” Meaning Southampton, of course. “You know how he is when he has his heart set on something.”
“We’ll pay forty shillings more than your ordinary fee, cousin,” Catesby added.
Again the look, Burbage to Sly to Will.
An Earl and a Baron. There’s no way to refuse without risking the company.
For forty pieces of silver.
Indeed.
“All right,” Will said, and Burbage nodded.
It wasn’t until Catesby had counted the silver into Will’s hand that Monteagle added, “Of course, you must include the scene in which Richard loses his crown.”
Act IV, scene xviii
I know sir, what it is to kill a man,
It works remorse of conscience in me,
I take no pleasure to be murderous,
Nor care for blood when wine will quench my thirst.
–Christopher Marlowe,
Tamburlaine the Great,Part II, Act IV, scene i
Mary Poley’s voice had never been musical. It was as gypsy‑wild as her mad black hair, but she leaned close to Kit now and leveled it as she laid a hand on his arm. “Thou didst send Will to look after us, Master Marlin.”
I told Will this was a bad idea.He turned to look her in the eye, his back to the gallery railing. “Mistress Poley, I’m not certain I take your meaning–”
