Shakespeare's Spy Read online

  The Fortune Teller

  La Voisin stared into the ball for a long while. Finally she spoke, in a tone so bleak and ominous that it made me shudder. “I see,” she said, “that you will come into a fortune.”

  Sam’s face took on a look of surprise and indignation. “That’s the same thing you told me!”

  “Not so,” said La Voisin. “What I said was, ‘You will receive more money than you imagine.’”

  “That’s the same thing, isn’t it?” When the cunning woman made no reply, he fished out another coin and clapped it into her palm. “Tell mine again.”

  “As you wish.” While she peered into the ball, I sat weighing the words she had directed at me. A fortune? How could I possibly come into a fortune? I could hardly inherit it. My mother had died in the poorhouse, and I had no notion who my father was.

  La Voisin lifted her head but said nothing. “Well?” Sam prompted her.

  “You are certain you wish to hear it?”

  “Of course. What is it? What did you see?”

  The cunning woman turned toward him, and I caught for the first time a glimpse of her visage. The skin of her face was as thickly covered with warts as a pox’s victim’s is with scars. “I see that you will turn traitor.”

  OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY

  The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler

  The Great Brain John D. Fitzgerald

  Moonshiner’s Gold John Erickson

  Revenge of the Whale: The True Story of the Whaleship Essex Nathaniel Philbrick

  Shakespeare’s Scribe Gary Blackwood

  The Shakespeare Stealer Gary Blackwood

  Things Not Seen Andrew Clements

  Wild Timothy Gary Blackwood

  Shakespeare’s Spy

  GARY BLACKWOOD

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto,

  Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,

  Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre,

  Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland,

  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  Published in the United States of America by Dutton Children’s Books,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2003

  Published by Puffin, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2005

  7 9 10 8

  Copyright © Gary Blackwood, 2003

  All rights reserved

  CIP Data is available.

  Puffin ISBN 0-14-240311-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  For Emily, who is partly insane and totally great

  Shakespeare’s Spy

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  1

  Of all the dozens of tasks a fledgling actor is called upon to perform, surely the two most difficult are dying and falling in love.

  As a prentice with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, I was called upon to do both, sometimes on a daily basis. Not in earnest, of course; I was expected only to approximate them. This is not as simple as it may sound. I could feign sadness well enough, or fear, or loneliness, for growing up an orphan as I did, I had known more than my share of such things. But my experience with love and death was more limited. Though I did my best to persuade the audience that my groans of mortal agony and my melancholy, heartbroken sighs were real, they always seemed to me to lack a certain conviction.

  Most of the stories we acted out were rife with romance, but in our ordinary lives it was sadly absent, and no wonder. Since women were not permitted to appear upon the stage, all the parts were played by men and boys. As a result, I seldom came in contact with anyone of the fairer gender, aside from Goodwife Willingson—who kept house for my mentor, Mr. Pope—and Tetty, a young orphan girl who lived with us.

  Foul murders and duels to the death were also an important part of our repertoire. But, though we spent several hours each day hacking at one another with stage swords, either in practice or in performance, our lives were seldom truly in peril. Unless he fell victim to the plague, the worst a player could ordinarily expect was that he would misjudge his position and tumble off the edge of the stage, into the arms of the groundlings.

  But Fate cares little about our expectations. In the winter of 1602, the Lord Admiral’s company were performing Palamon and Arcyte at the royal court when the stage, hastily built and loaded down with heavy scenery, suddenly collapsed. Five of the actors were injured and three were crushed to death.

  Now, if the truth be told, there was no love lost between our company and theirs; in fact, in the ongoing struggle for ascendancy in the world of London theatre, the Admiral’s Men were our chief rivals. Still, not one of us would have wished such a calamity upon them. Though they might be the enemy, they were also fellow players, and we were saddened and sobered by the tragedy—especially when we considered that we might easily have been its victims, instead. Only a week before, we had presented Mr. Shakespeare’s play The Merry Wives of Windsor upon those same treacherous boards.

  Fortunately for the Admiral’s Men—though not for us—all their principal players were spared, and within a fortnight they were once again competing with us for the playgoers’ pennies—and there were far fewer pennies than usual to go around that winter.

  Ordinarily we played outdoors at the Globe Theatre right up until Yuletide, when we peformed at Whitehall for the queen and her court. But this year, winter had forgotten its cue and come on early. The groundlings were a hardy lot, willing to stand uncomplaining in the drizzling rain and the baking sun for hours on end, asking only to be rewarded with a bit of fine ranting, a reasonable number of laughs, and, from time to time, a limb or two being lopped off and a few guts spilled upon the stage. But we could hardly expect them to risk having their ears and toes bitten by frost for the sake of art.

  S
o in the middle of December we had forsaken the Globe and begun performing indoors, in the long gallery at the Cross Keys Inn. Though the audience was grateful, we players were not. The Cross Keys lay on the north side of the Thames, a long, cold walk from Southwark, where most of the company lived. The smaller confines of the inn meant smaller profits as well; no matter how tightly we packed them in, we could accommodate only half the number of playgoers that the Globe held.

  In January, the royal court made a move of its own, from the damp, drafty palace at Whitehall to warmer quarters upriver at Richmond. It was there that we gave our second command performance of the season for the queen.

  We were always a bit anxious when appearing before Her Majesty. After all, it was mainly thanks to her that the London theatre managed to flourish as it did. Without her support and protection, we would be at the mercy of the Puritans, who insisted that the stage was a breeding ground of sin. If something about the play displeased her—and, according to her master of revels, she had lately become even more difficult to please than usual—she might be more inclined to listen to the mounting protests of the Square Toes, and let them close us down.

  We had worried very little about how Merry Wives would be received, for it was an old favorite of Her Majesty’s. In fact, Mr. Shakespeare once told me that he had written it at her behest. After seeing Henry IV, she was so taken with the character of Sir John Falstaff that she insisted he must have a play of his own.

  Our second show, All’s Well That Ends Well, had no such favorable history. Mr. Shakespeare had composed it only the previous summer, while we were on tour to escape the plague. Thanks to a broken arm, he had been forced to dictate most of it; I had put the words on paper for him, using my system of swift writing. Though the script had been approved by Mr. Tilney, the master of revels, and given a trial run at the Globe, the queen would be seeing it for the first time.

  For my part, I was seeing the palace at Richmond for the first time. A year earlier, I had performed in the banquet room at Whitehall, playing Ophelia in Hamlet, and been awed by its magnificence. The great hall at Richmond was even larger and more lavish. When we entered, Sam, the youngest of the prentices, gave a low whistle. My other companion, Sal Pavy, glanced about with a rather bored expression, as though he were wholly accustomed to playing such places.

  “Widge.” Sam elbowed me and pointed upward. I followed his gaze. The entire ceiling was covered in great billows of muslin, painted with fanciful figures representing the constellations of the night sky. “I hope they fastened that up there really well,” said Sam. “If it lets go, we’ll all be smothered.”

  Perhaps,” I said. “But I’m more concerned about the stage.” Mr. Tilney’s men had constructed a platform for us at one end of the hall. The three-foot-high trestles that supported it looked far too flimsy and widely spaced to suit me, especially considering the amount of furniture, properties, and painted backdrops the Office of Revels felt was necessary for the production. “I don’t ken why we must ha’ so much stuff. We did well enough at the Globe wi’ naught but a few chairs.”

  Sam shrugged. “Perhaps royal folk don’t have much imagination.”

  “Well, I like it,” put in Sal Pavy, rather haughtily. “We always had elaborate sets at Blackfriars.”

  Sam groaned and rolled his eyes. Sal Pavy had said this same sort of thing so often about the theatre at Blackfriars, where he had belonged to the company called the Children of the Chapel, that it had become a standard jest. Sam would surely have had some choice comment to offer had not Mr. Armin, our fencing master, called out just then, “If you’re quite done gawking, gentlemen, there are costume trunks to be carried in.”

  One thing I had learned about royalty, in my few brief encounters with them, was that they kept later hours than us ordinary wights. Because our stage was in the banquet hall, we could not begin our performance until after supper—a meal that did not commence until eight o’clock or so, and might drag on for hours.

  While the queen and her court dined, we players donned our costumes, wigs, and face paint in an anteroom, then waited about anxiously for our summons. When Mr. Tilney, the master of revels, strode into the room, we all got to our feet, but he motioned for us to sit again. “Not yet, gentlemen, not yet,” he said brusquely. “Where is Mr. Shakespeare?”

  “P-pacing back and f-forth in the hallway, most like,” replied Mr. Heminges, our business manager. “I’ll f-fetch him.”

  When he returned with our playwright in tow, the master of revels approached them hesitantly, clearly embarrassed about something. “Ah, Will. I … I meant to tell you this earlier, but … you see, I’ve been so busy with—”

  “Tell me what?“ interrupted Mr. Shakespeare.

  Mr. Tilney shifted about uncomfortably and cleared his throat. “Well, just that … that you must … or, rather, that it would be in your best interests if you were to delete from the play any reference to the King of France’s illness.”

  Our entire company stared at him incredulously. Mr. Armin was the first to find his voice. “For what reason?” he demanded.

  Mr. Tilney glanced about, as though afraid of being overheard, and then explained, almost in a whisper, “Since you performed for her at Yuletide, Her Majesty’s health has declined considerably. The last thing she will wish to see is a monarch with a mortal disease.”

  Mr. Heminges, who played the king, scowled and shook his head. “I’m n-not sure it c-can be done, it’s such an essential p-part of the play. After all, if I’m not d-dying, Helena can hardly g-go to Paris to c-cure me, can she?”

  “How long before we go on?” asked Mr. Shakespeare.

  “Oh, half an hour, at least,” Mr. Tilney said blithley, as though that should be ample time to compose a whole new play.

  Mr. Shakespeare nodded grimly. “We’ll manage it somehow.”

  When Mr. Tilney was gone, Mr. Heminges cried, “We’ll m-manage it? How?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. But if I hadn’t said so, we’d never have gotten rid of him.” Mr. Shakespeare turned away and began toying with his earring, as he habitually did when deep in thought.

  Sam could be counted upon to offer some harebrained solution to nearly any problem, and he did not disappoint us now. “I have it! The king has really bad hair, and so he sends for the best hairdresser in all of France—Helena!” He clapped me on the shoulder. The role of Helena, of course, belonged to me.

  Mr. Shakespeare either did not hear Sam’s proposal, or chose to ignore it. Finally he looked up and said, “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll keep the illness, but instead of the king, it will be Lafeu, the king’s lifelong friend, who is dying. Can you reword your lines accordingly, Widge?”

  “Aye, I wis.” There was a time when such a request would have sent me into a panic, but in my year and a half with the company, I had become quite adept at thribbling—that is, improvising new lines when something went awry on the stage. It took a fairly serious calamity to throw me out of square.

  One was not long in coming. The first two scenes of All’s Well did, indeed, go well enough—except that the most important member of our audience seemed to be missing. Then, halfway through the third scene, Her Majesty made her entrance. We actors might as well have stopped speaking altogether, for the attention of everyone in the room turned to her.

  Had it not been for the red wig and the dozen or so maids of honor who clustered about her, I might not have recognized her, so changed was she. I knew well enough that Her Majesty was getting on in years; after all, Mr. Pope, who was nearing sixty himself, told me that he had been a mere boy when she took the throne. But never before had I seen the years hang so heavy on her.

  When we performed Merry Wives for her, she had looked remarkably well preserved. This was due in part, of course, to the thick mask of white lead and cochineal with which she concealed the ravages of time and to the well-made wig, which was far more natural looking than those we prentices wore. But her behavior, too, had belied her age
. She had laughed at Sir John’s antics, flirted with her male courtiers, and consumed a prodigious amount of ale.

  Though she still wore the makeup and the wig, she seemed to have forgotten how to play the part expected of her, that of the ever-youthful Gloriana. Mr. Tilney had warned us that her health was poor, but I had not expected to see her shuffling along, head bowed, like an old woman. In one hand she carried a rusty sword, which she used as a cane to support herself. When she reached her chair, she had trouble gathering in her skirts so she could sit properly. One of the maids of honor rushed forward to help, but she brushed the young woman irritably aside.

  So taken aback was I by Her Majesty’s condition that I dropped my lines, forcing Sal Pavy, who was playing the countess, to repeat his: “‘Her eye is sick on ’t; I observe her now.’”

  “‘What is your pleasure, madam?”‘ I replied.

  Before Sal Pavy could get out his next line, he was interrupted by the queen’s voice; despite her illness, it had lost little of its power or its sting. “It is our pleasure,” she said, “that you speak up! We can scarcely make out the words!”

  Though we put on our best Pilate’s voices, we got no more than twenty lines in before she berated us again. So exasperated was she that she neglected to use the royal we. “Can you hear me up there?”

  Sal Pavy and I glanced at each other. Though it was considered bad form for a player to break character, he turned to the queen and bowed. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Then why can I not hear you?”

  “I beg Your Majesty’s humble pardon. We will try harder.”

  But try as we might, we could not speak loudly enough to suit her. Finally she rose and, grumbling, laboriously dragged her heavy chair forward, fending off all attempts to assist her, until she sat only a few feet from the stage. I wished she had not. At that distance, no amount of paint or dye or elegant clothing could conceal the painful truth: the queen was wasting away.

  A blow that is struck without warning is always the most telling, and at that moment it struck me for the first time that Her Majesty was mortal, the same as ordinary folk—that she might not, in fact, live through the winter.