Richard the Second, Will? he thought. Bolingbroke? The death of kings? Are you quite mad?
XXXI
Eve of Destruction
Quite mad, it appeared. Or so Dick Burbage vouchsafed, when John found him at the Globe.
It had taken too long to reach it. He’d set forth when the theatres were about to give out, so there was not a wherry to be had as oarsmen all sought fares on the Surrey side. He had hotfooted it to the bridge, over which he made the usual halting progress, ducking and weaving through the mob, looking only ahead and not glancing up at Nonsuch House where he had been arrested, nor at the gatehouse where his head might soon be spiked. Progress had been only a little swifter along Southwark’s back avenues, Clink Street and Rose Alley, for the crowds were exiting the playhouses and jamming these narrow ways.
When he finally reached the Globe, he ran through unattended front gates and passed the attendants in the pit, some of whom were sweeping the detritus of the groundlings into great piles of apple cores, nut shells and pie crust rims, while others scattered juniper to alleviate the stench of piss voided by spectators too idle or too enraptured to reach the jakes.
Though someone shouted at him when he mounted the stage, John paid no heed, passing across the boards and through the curtain into the tiring house. There he found at least one of those he sought.
Burbage sat at a table, his feet upon it, one hand around a tankard of ale, the other holding a roll at which he peered through spectacles. All were slammed down when John entered. ‘Beshrew me,’ he bellowed, ‘if it ain’t Clarence’s ghost!’ He rose and pulled John into a hug. ‘Lad, we were sure that this time you were dead, drowned in a butt of malmsey. Or on a bender of such epic features that it had taken you round the world again.’ He pulled back and stared hard. ‘And yet you bear few traces of debauch. Where have you been these many months?’
‘At her majesty’s pleasure.’ John frowned. ‘Did Will not inform you? Nor Ned?’
‘Nothing of that, no. I am sorry to hear of it now.’
John nodded, and fended off the player’s further questions for a few minutes while he considered. He supposed his son would not talk of his latest incarceration. Innocent or not, a father in the Tower was not something to boast of. Finally, when Burbage drew breath, he asked, ‘Is he about?’
‘Aye.’ The player sat again, took off his spectacles, rubbed his eyes. ‘I meant to speak to you of something, when next we met. Your boy . . .’ He tipped his head. ‘Your boy does not seem to have the fire he once did.’
John frowned. ‘What mean you? In his playing?’
‘Aye. His comedy is fair enough – though he has found a way to conjure the lesser laugh. Did he watch Kemp much?’ A slight smile came, faded. ‘But we tried him in some things more serious. Lady Anne to my Richard Three, for example. He . . .’ He hesitated. ‘He could not grasp it. There was no threat, no . . . vulnerability beneath. He spoke the lines credibly, but . . .’ He shrugged. ‘It may be his age. Not quite fourteen, is he? A time for changes, sure. And perhaps worry for you, since you tell me your news . . .’ He let the thought hang. ‘Yet you know as well as any, John, in a company it is difficult to keep putting opportunity in the way that is not seized upon. There are others below him, rising fast, hungry.’ Burbage shook his head. ‘I am not saying he has not the stuff, mind. It is just . . .’
‘. . . it may have been mislaid? Well, it has been a hard time of late . . .’ John cut himself off. What could he speak of? His incarceration? The threat that Sir Samuel’s return created? All true. Burbage would understand it too, nod in sympathy – yet in the end, all that mattered to him was the two-hour traffic of the stage. Players always had problems, perhaps more than other men, they went with the life. They had to leave them before they entered the tiring house. Nay, they had to leave them at home, howsoever disrupted. The life Ned sought was under threat here. On his behalf, John was being warned. ‘I will talk to him,’ he said.
‘Do so. ’Twould be a favour to us all.’ The player nodded. ‘Shall I send for him?’
‘In a moment.’ He’d noticed when Burbage embraced him that he had pulled him into something yielding, a much-padded doublet. ‘Have you been playing Falstaff?’
‘Aye. The Merry Wives of Windsor.’ He sighed. ‘Though it seems in these turbulent times the taste is not for comedy. We were barely a quarter full today.’
John’s voice lowered. ‘Only tell me this, Dickon. That you embark not now on a stale tragedy.’
Burbage started. ‘Which one?’
‘Richard the Second.’
Burbage sucked in breath. ‘How do you know already what has been arranged an hour since?’
‘That does not matter. Only tell me it is not true.’
‘It is.’ The player continued fast as John hissed. ‘Lad, I told you we are hard pressed. When the Earl of Southampton asked us to revive it, I demurred. “’Tis an ancient piece and may not now draw a crowd,” I says. “Leave alone that it will tax this poor globe,” he patted his head, “with trying to recall it.” He picked up the roll he’d been conning, dropped it again. ‘But then the rogue pulls out a purse of forty shillings and asks if that would help my memory. ’Tis not a ransom perhaps – yet it’s twice what we took today. And of course the earl was ever Will’s . . . dear companion.’
John stepped closer. There were other players moving about, and he wanted his warning to be for Burbage alone. ‘You should find some way to excuse yourself, Dick. Return the purse. Plead illness. You yourself mentioned the turbulent times. Believe me, this is not a piece to be doing now.’
The player laughed, but uneasily. ‘’Tis only a play, Johnnie.’
‘A play of regicide and revolt. The usurpation of a throne.’ His voice dropped still lower. ‘With people passing Essex House each hour and crying, “Bolingbroke!” Think, man!’
Burbage’s volume matched his. ‘Is this what has kept you from us this long time?’
‘Never mind that. Just consider what I say.’
The player did, concern in his eyes. But at last he shook his head. ‘I have no choice now, John. I have taken the purse, already sent to the printers for a playbill, assigned the roles to the players. Poor Heminges is near weeping, for he must try and remember the King. I will be . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Bolingbroke.’ He looked around, then back, spoke again, more cheerfully. ‘But your fears will be unfounded, I think. And perhaps this will be the best for us. You know how Will likes to reflect the times. This could be what we need to pull the crowds in, and take some away from the Rose. Henslowe’s revived Tamburlaine this week, and Ed Alleyn’s tyrant is drawing high and low. A tyrant falling here might do the same for us.’ He frowned, and his voice sank again. ‘If we had something new to offer ’twould be different. But your friend is stalled again, man. He won’t play at all, he’s not writing from all I can tell. He just sits in his attic, stares at parchment and mutters about ghosts.’
This was news. The last note he’d had from Will was a month before. ‘Has he dropped into melancholia, then? He has so before. ’Twill pass.’
‘Worse now. Far worse. Never seen him like it.’ Burbage sighed. ‘It is as if he is giving birth and the babe is breeched. ’Twill not come out, and I think that if it does, the child will rip all flesh away and kill the mother.’
‘What is’t that so obsesses him?’
‘An old tale he would make anew.’
John scratched his beard. ‘Not . . . Hamlet?’
‘Aye. It obsesses him once again. Nay, it is beyond obsession now.’ The player reached forward, squeezed the other’s arm. ‘Remember that day when I asked you to help prevent him writing it?’ John nodded. ‘Well, now I ask you the very opposite. By my holidame, by Christ and by the devil. By anything you can swear by! Get him to finish it. Get him to deliver it to us and perchance give us the success we need. Then we will not need to resort to . . . ancient tyrants.’ He stepped back. ‘And speaking of, I needs must study mine. No.’ He
smiled. ‘Bolingbroke’s the hero, is he not?’
‘Only if he wins,’ John muttered, then continued, ‘Where is Will?’
‘In an attic, hard by the Clink. It is next to . . .’ Burbage frowned. ‘It is hard to describe. I will send someone to guide you if you plan to go there straight.’
He had other people he needed to see, most urgently. Yet it sounded like his friend needed him immediately. And it sounded as if his son did too. ‘Can you spare Ned?’
‘I can. We did this play before he joined us so he has no role but groom and silent page. Holla, you!’ he called out to a servant engaged in stacking properties from the performance. ‘Fetch me young Lawley.’ The man dispatched, he turned back. ‘And, Johnnie, I will show my gratitude to you if you succeed here.’ He held up his hand at the protest he could see coming. ‘I know! I acknowledge it. I have promised before. But Will is in a greater crisis now than then. We all are. Be midwife to this birth, whether it be of monster or man, and I will make sure you are rewarded for it.’
If I survive the week, John thought, but received the hand Dick thrust out and shook it. ‘I will do my best.’
‘All I can ask,’ the player replied, then added, ‘And here’s your boy.’
John turned, as did his heart inside him. Ned had grown, and not only up. He was beginning to fill the way the Lawleys did. Even in the pale winter sunlight that came through the open curtains of the tiring house, John thought he could see a shadow of hair upon the upper lip. Boy was shading into man, and he felt his heart give another lurch. How much had he missed of his son’s life because men of power sought to use him?
What was not different was the look in Ned’s eyes – the disdain of youth for fallible old men with not even the previous glimmer of relief at his freedom. And something else had changed . . . the voice, which had been pitched high before, now wavered, as if he could not command it fully. ‘You sent for me, sir?’ he said coldly.
Burbage blanched. ‘Lad! Do you not see who is here?’
‘I see very well, sir. It is Master Lawley,’ he replied, without looking again at John. ‘What do you wish of me?’
‘Boy!’ The player’s face flushed with anger. But John stepped forward and grasped him by the forearm. Burbage looked at him, took a deep breath, then continued, his tone as icy as Ned’s had been, ‘I wish you to take your father to Master Shakespeare.’
‘Must I, sir? I have lines to con.’
‘You have your duty to me, whelp,’ snapped Burbage. ‘Do it and question me not.’
‘Sir.’ Ned bowed, then looked again at John. ‘This way, then.’
Releasing the player’s arm with a final squeeze, John followed his son to the tiring-house stair. They descended to the players’ entrance and exited to the street. Upon it, Ned turned around the theatre and set off swiftly down the main strand.
‘Hold, boy,’ said John, catching up. ‘I do not have your youthful legs.’
Ned nodded sullenly, slowed. His father fell into step and they progressed as fast as the crowds allowed them. John hesitated, not knowing how to breach the silence between them – then did, with what pressed him most. ‘How is your mother?’
His son did not look up. ‘You have not seen her?’
‘Not yet.’
Ned shrugged. ‘Well, she has been most busy since her affianced returned from the wars.’
His son said it with relish, with malice too . . . and with something less assured. ‘And how is he?’
‘Not as fat as he was – Ireland waned him, he says. Though he appears to be waxing again, judging from his actions at my mother’s table.’ Something was still there beneath the insouciance of the tone that undercut the boldness of the next declaration. ‘He says also that now he has done his country’s duty, he can tend to his own. So he had the banns read this Sunday last at St Mary Overies and thus, three weeks from now, he and my mother will be happily and forever joined in matrimony.’ He glanced up briefly. ‘I wouldn’t expect an invitation to the nuptials.’
There it was. In the glimpse of eyes, even within the cheek of the comment. ‘And you are not happy about this?’
‘Happy? Of course I am happy. My mother will achieve her life’s desire. She will be the village squire’s wife her family intended her to be before . . .’ He flushed, turned away.
‘Before the player disgraced her,’ John finished for him, and when he got no confirmation save a mutter added, ‘So have you changed your mind? Are you reconciled to life as a village squire’s son?’
‘I told you before. I would hate such a life,’ Ned muttered, his voice locked in its low register now and angry. ‘And yet I am not of an age to defy my stepfather.’
‘Are you not? And yet I recall that I was no older than you when I defied mine. And for the same reason.’
He could see Ned struggling between his pose of indifference and sudden interest. The latter won, grudgingly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Only this: that at the age of thirteen, when a travelling troupe of players came through Much Wenlock, I decided that I was not going to be the scholar my parents wished me to be. They played, then left. I left with them.’
The conversation had taken them off the main thoroughfare, on to Clink Street, past the throng at the entrance of the prison, and down an alley that reeked of cess, halting before a door. John looked up. ‘Is this where I will find him?’
That struggle continued on the innocent face. This time, indifference won. Ned shrugged. ‘It is. I will leave you.’
He turned away. But John caught his arm in a grip that could not be broken, despite the boy’s squirming. ‘Listen, lad. Listen!’ He jerked the arm, and Ned froze. ‘I understand why you are angry with me. I do not seek forgiveness. Not now. Perhaps never. Yet this I know: your upset is affecting how you play. Nay, do not ask me how I know. Think only of this: you have a crossroads before you, and a choice to make, the same I made at your age. And one way will be closed off to you unless you—’
A shout interrupted him, loud enough to penetrate the oak before him, followed by a series of curses, ending in a moan. Both started, and Ned at last slipped his father’s grip. Yet he did not run off. ‘I have obeyed my tutor’s command. Goodbye.’
‘Oh no,’ said John, seizing the hesitation and his son’s collar at the same moment, ‘for did not your master bid you take me to Master Shakespeare? This is only his door.’
With his free hand, John pushed and entered. A dank and gloomy stairwell lay before them. ‘Youth before wisdom,’ he said, shoving his son ahead of him.
‘Pearls before swine,’ muttered Ned, just loud enough to be heard as he stumbled forward.
John almost laughed – but as soon as he stepped over the threshold, a sound caught the laughter in his throat. It was a moan that could have come from a beast in a trap, if words did not punctuate the hum. Indistinct, the only ones he heard for certain were a piteous ‘Christ have mercy!’ ‘Will,’ he said, passing his son, taking the stairs two at a time.
The door was locked. He shook it, interrupting the noise within for a snarled ‘Leave me be!’
‘Will! Open here. ’Tis I, John Lawley. Let me in.’
A silence came, then the sound of a shuffling approach. The familiar voice hissed through the wood, ‘Begone.’
‘William,’ John said softly. ‘’Tis John. Open for your friend.’
There came a muffled sob. ‘I have no friends. I have . . . no one.’
John looked back at Ned on the stair. The boy shrugged, jerked his head towards the street. John looked at the solid oak before him, wondering if he could force it – and then he heard a bolt shot and feet moving away.
He entered, slowly opening the door before him. The stench hit him like a slap. It was composed of many things: unemptied chamber pots, an unwashed body, stale beer, and one scent that caught him in the throat, stuck there, enticement in the mire – whisky. ‘Will,’ he called, peering through the gloom, for no candle was lit and the one window w
as fogged with grime. There was a movement behind what John at last discerned to be a table. He stepped up to it, peered over.
Lying curled up on the floor, knees to chin, an arm flung over his face, was the Globe’s premier playwright. ‘What make you there?’ John asked.
The figure did not stir. Words came from under his armpit. ‘Begone. I know you not.’
‘You know me, Will,’ John replied softly. ‘’Tis your old friend Lawley. Come, now, st—’
‘John Lawley’s dead,’ the figure below cried. ‘Disappeared into the Tower, never to be seen again. Another ghost!’
‘You sent me notes there, man, until recently. Plays, too. Come, you could see that I do not come from beyond the grave if you would but look up.’
As he spoke, he moved around the table, then bent, touching the playwright’s arm, which flapped as if it would wave help away, then reached, caught. Bending, John took his friend’s weight, lifted, needing to turn his face away. The stink in the room emanated mainly from the playwright’s person. ‘Ned,’ John called, ‘the chair.’
There was one on its side behind the table. Ned, eyes wide in fascinated horror, set the chair up and John lifted the body on to it. But when he went to let go and step back, Shakespeare clutched at him, feeling his arm as if checking for fractures. ‘You are alive. You are not a ghost.’
‘Not yet. Let me . . .’
Again he tried to disengage, again he was held. ‘I have been visited by so many here,’ Will whispered, his gaze moving into dark corners. ‘They have all come. I thought you must be one of them, since I had no reply to my last letter. Broken like poor Thom Kyd upon the Tower’s rack.’ He began to weep. ‘Yet you live and I did not visit you. Not once. I am a poor friend.’
He let go his grip to cry into his palms. John put a hand upon his shoulder, shook it gently. ‘You would not have been allowed a visit, Will. Nor could you have risked it. And as for friendship? How many times have you come for me, when I was in your present state? How many times have you pulled my head from the jakes?’ He patted. ‘D’you remember in Bristol, the night we played Oedipus for the mayor and I puked within his worship’s carriage?’