The Shakespeare Stealer Page 5

  I clenched my teeth resolutely, determined not to be caught up in the play again, and set to work transcribing all that had slipped by me before. Now that I knew how the story came out, I could concentrate better on my task. But I was still nervous about being discovered, and jumped at every sound.

  Halfway through the performance, my writing hand grew cramped, but otherwise there were no problems. I believe I still lost a line or two during the riveting fencing match, but no one would miss them. As the end neared, I congratulated myself silently—and, as it turned out, prematurely.

  At Hamlet’s death, my work was done; I had copied the rest on my previous visit. Greatly relieved and, at the same time, a little sorry because I might never have a chance to see a play again, I closed the table-book and backed away, meaning to slip out as quietly as I had come in.

  It was then that I heard footfalls on the stairs—not the outside steps I had used, but a steep, narrow flight rising from behind the stage. I choked back a gasp and desperately glanced about for a place of concealment. Seeing none, I ducked between the end of the drapery and the wall. There was just enough room for me to stand there without being seen by the audience, provided I did not move so much as a finger.

  The footsteps drew near. The drapes parted in the center, and a man in soldier’s garb stepped onto the balcony, where a small cannon stood bolted to the floor. He dumped a charge of powder down the bore of the cannon, rammed in a wad of cloth, and set a fuse in the fuse-hole. As he lifted his smouldering stick of touchwood and blew on it, he caught sight of me for the first time.

  His eyes widened. He took a step toward me, then hesitated and glanced back at the cannon, obviously torn between apprehending me and being faithful to his cue. I started to slip away, but to my dismay, the point of the dagger in my belt snagged on the edge of the drape.

  I fought desperately with the fabric, struggling to free myself. The audience had now spotted me and were tittering and pointing. As the cannoneer started for me again, his cue was spoken on the stage: “Go, bid the soldiers shoot.”

  Glaring at me, he rushed to the cannon, knocking it askew in his haste, and thrust the touchwood against the fuse. Nothing happened. Furious, he blew on the wood and touched the fuse again. The cannon went off, a full thirty seconds late, and the man descended on me.

  I gave the drapery a prodigious yank and was free. As I stumbled for the door, the cannoneer burst through the center of the curtain and blocked my path. I looked about frantically. The only other route of escape was the inside stairs. I scrambled for them and, clinging to the rickety railing, half-ran, half-fell down them, with the soldier hard upon my heels.

  I was not quite halfway to the bottom when the burly, greybearded man who had played the second gravedigger suddenly appeared at the foot of the stairs. I was trapped.

  My only chance for escape lay in jumping off the stairs to the floor below, a fall of some six or eight feet—risky, but better to sprain an ankle than to be whipped or put in the stocks. I ducked under the railing and was about to leap when a cry rang through the theatre that stopped every one of us dead in his tracks. “Fire! Fire!”

  The stocky greybeard at the foot of the stairs shook a finger at me, as if to say he’d deal with me later, then hastened away. The cannoneer came thundering down the steps, but I scrambled faster than he and ran for the rear door. When I burst through it, Falconer was gone. I ran on, around the side of the playhouse.

  People were streaming out of the main entrance in panic. The elegant ladies from the gallery scurried fearfully down the steps, hoisting their vast skirts above their ankles in an unseemly way. One was sobbing, and the tears made tracks through her heavy white makeup.

  I was mostly afraid of being pursued. I pushed into the center of the noisy, milling mob. Some were staring at the roof of the theatre. When I followed their gaze, I saw a thick cloud of grey smoke rising from the thatch, to become lost in the darker grey of the sky.

  The players had set a ladder on the uppermost landing of the outside stairs, and several of them were now on the roof, beating at the smouldering thatch with their capes. A line of men, comprised of players and audience alike, formed between the playhouse and the nearest drainage ditch. They dipped up buckets of water and passed them from hand to hand along the line, up the stairs and the ladder to the men on the roof, who tossed the water onto the spreading flames.

  In the middle of the line, passing buckets with the rest, stood the slim boy who had played Ophelia. He was wigless now but still in his stage makeup. Above the waist, he wore the bodice of his lady-like costume; below it, he wore men’s breeches and hose.

  “What set it off?” said a man next to me.

  “The wad from the cannon, is my guess,” said another.

  My stomach twisted. If that was so, then I was partly to blame, for I had distracted the cannoneer and caused him to misdirect the shot. I had seen buildings burn before. In fact, it was not uncommon, even in a village as small as Berwick. But I had never before been the cause. Furthermore, I felt as though it were something more than a mere building at stake. It was an entire world, one into which I had been privileged to look briefly, and which was now in danger of crumbling.

  So distressed was I that I was on the verge of lending my efforts to the fire fighters, even at the risk of being recognized. Then someone jostled me from behind, bringing me to my senses. I whirled about, expecting to see Falconer at my elbow, demanding the completed script. But it was only a thin fellow with a red nose and a scraggly beard, smiling apologetically. “Begging your pardon, my young friend,” he said and moved off through the crowd.

  Now that my thoughts were on Falconer, I cast my eyes about for him, but my stature was so small and the throng so dense that I stood no hope of spotting him. I turned back to the drama being played out atop the theatre.

  The men on the roof were making little headway against the flames. They would, I believe, have lost their livelihood had not the gloomy sky chosen that moment to open up, dousing the burning thatch with more water than the poor players could have carried to it in a week. A cheer went up from the line of water bearers, then from the crowd. I joined in.

  I was so relieved that I scarcely minded the soaking rain. I turned my face up to it and laughed appreciatively. The timing of the deluge had been so perfect, I could almost believe it was some grand theatrical effect produced by the company for our amazement. The whole world practices theatrics, I thought, and laughed again.

  Then, as the crowd dispersed, I caught a glimpse of a sinister figure standing at a distance, looking out over the river as before. Sighing, I moved toward him. I laid one hand on my wallet, to reassure myself that the hard-won script was still safely tucked within. The pouch seemed flat and empty. My heart suddenly felt the same. I halted, yanked up the flap of the wallet, and plunged my hand inside. My fingers closed on the pencil, but the table-book was unquestionably, inexplicably gone.

  10

  For a moment, I stood unmoving and unthinking, feeling as though I’d been struck soundly on the brain-pan. Then my mind began to react. How could the table-book be gone? I clearly remembered putting it in my wallet back on the balcony of the theatre. I turned the wallet upside down and shook it vigorously, as if hoping the book was lodged in some out-of-the-way corner. It was not, of course.

  I glanced fearfully at Falconer. He was still gazing out over the Thames. Cautiously, I backed toward the playhouse. When I had put several groups of lingering theatregoers between him and me, I retraced the course I had taken when I emerged so hastily from the playhouse a short time before. I wiped the rain from my eyes and scanned every inch of the soggy ground. If I didn’t find the table-book soon, it would be a useless mass of pulp.

  But already I was halfway around the building and had seen nothing but orange peels and apple cores, discarded playbills and ballad-sheets. To proceed was to risk encountering the men from whom I’d just escaped. Yet, if it came down to it, I might be better off with th
em than facing Falconer without the script in my hands. After all, he had killed a man just for calling him a Jew. Though I doubted my fate would be so drastic, the man was unpredictable. Even if all he did was abandon me, that in itself was a frightening prospect. How would I survive in this strange city on my own?

  I went on, keeping my eyes open both for the table-book and for trouble. I came to within a few yards of the rear door and still saw no sign of either. “The devil take me,” I breathed. “It must be inside, then.”

  It took me some time to muster the nerve required to pull the door open an inch or two and peer inside. Just as I stuck my face up to the crack, the door flew open, knocking me on the forehead and sending me flying backward, to land on my huckle bones in the mud.

  Before I could scramble away, a strong hand took my arm and pulled me to my feet. “Well, now,” a hearty voice said. “What have we here?”

  Groaning, I held my hand to my afflicted head and squinted at my captor. It was the second gravedigger, the hefty old man who had blocked my way on the stair. “You’ve brast me costard!” I complained.

  He laughed at my Upland speech. “Brast your costard, have I? Well, it serves you right, for all your mischief. What are you up to, scuttling about behind the stage like a great rat?”

  “Me?” I tried to sound as innocent as I might while moaning in pain. “Behind the stage?”

  The old man laughed again. “Ho, quite the actor, aren’t you? Perhaps you belong on the stage and not behind it, eh? Yes, my lad, you’re the only one going about in a pudding-basin hair style and a skirt, I’m afraid.” He referred to my knee-length tunic and the bowl-shaped haircut common among country lads. He gently pulled my hand away from my head. “Hmm. That is a nasty bump you’ve suffered, though. Come. No use getting drenched into the bargain.” Keeping a firm hold on my arm, he led me inside.

  I considered breaking free and making a run for it. He was, after all, an old man, and I, though slow to sprout, was fleet of foot. But he was also a brawny man, and his grip was as inescapable as Falconer’s. My brain, which had always been as fleet as my feet, began to race instead, looking for a way out. What was it the man had said—that I belonged on the stage rather than behind it? Perhaps my salvation lay that way.

  The old player ushered me through the cluttered area behind the stage and into a large, windowed room where most of the company stood or sat about in various stages of undress. Several were grimy with soot from the fire, and one man had a large part of his beard singed away. All were rain soaked. Yet they did not appear miserable in the least; instead, they were laughing and joking, as though they had just played a game of bowls and not fought a potentially disastrous fire.

  The cannoneer, who was cleaning mud from his costume, was the first to notice our entrance. “So!” he called, over the uproar. “You’ve caught the dirty dastard, Mr. Pope!”

  My captor set me down on a stool. “Yes, he made the classic mistake of all criminals; he returned to the scene of the crime.”

  I tried to rise, but he pushed me down. “I’m no criminal!” I protested, wondering if someone had come across my lost table-book.

  A tall, kindly looking man who had been Polonius in the play said, “Of c-course you’re not.” I did not recall him stuttering on stage, but he did so now. He bent and looked closely at my bruised forehead. “Wh-what did you hit him with, T-Thomas? Your sh-shovel?”

  My captor, whose name, I gathered, was Thomas Pope, looked hurt. “I am not a violent man. The fact is, I opened a door into his head.”

  “A d-door into his head, eh? I hope his b-brains didn’t spill out.”

  “I’ll spill his brains,” the cannoneer threatened. “This is the hoddypeak who caused me to miss my aim, Mr. Heminges, and shoot that wad into the thatch.”

  “I hardly think he is to b-blame for that,” Mr. Heminges said. “However, it is t-true that you disrupted our performance. Would you c-care to explain why?”

  Though the throbbing in my head had subsided, I went on holding it and grimacing pitifully but bravely, to play on their sympathies. “I meant no harm. I only wished to see the play.”

  “The usual method,” Mr. Pope said, “is to pay your penny and stand in front of the stage.”

  “I ken that. But I ha’ no penny.”

  Mr. Pope clucked his tongue incredulously. “What sort of master would refuse his prentice a penny to see a play?”

  “Well, the truth is…I ha’ no master.”

  “You’ve c-come to London on your own?” said Mr. Heminges.

  “Aye.”

  “For what purpose?”

  It was time to bring into play the strategy that had been forming in my mind. But not too quickly. “You’ll laugh at me.”

  “Not I,” Mr. Heminges assured me.

  Hesitantly, I said, “I want…I want to be a player.”

  True to his word, Mr. Heminges did not laugh—but several of the others did, and he gave them an exasperated glance. “You t-truly believe you would want to t-turn Turk and become like these disreputable wights?”

  “Aye, by these bones, I would,” I lied earnestly. In truth, aside from wanting to escape a beating, or wanting a meal, I had scarcely ever given any thought to what I wanted. No one had ever asked.

  “Ahh, he’s as full of lies as an egg is of meat,” Jack, the cannoneer, said.

  “I believe him,” a voice beside me said. It was the first gravedigger, the man who had crossed swords so briefly with Falconer a few days before. “Though you did lie about not having a master,” he reprimanded me. “You told me Dr. Bright was your master. Come, the truth now. You’ve run off, haven’t you?”

  I hung my head in mock remorse. “Aye.”

  “There, now,” said the cannoneer. “If he lied about that, how do you know he’s telling the truth about wanting to be a player?”

  “Well,” the other man said, “for one thing, he’s seen the play before, and talked to me with some enthusiasm about it. Why risk a thrashing in order to see it a second time? And why desert his master and come to London alone unless he has a strong hunger for some food to be found nowhere else?” He looked about at the other players. “You’ve felt that hunger, every mother’s son of you. Would you refuse to let him satisfy it?”

  Mr. Heminges scratched his beard thoughtfully. “As f-far as that g-goes, we could use another b-boy. Nick’s golden voice threatens to turn b-bass any day now, and his b-beard to betray him.” There was general merriment over this, and the strapping boy who had played the queen flushed and kicked the shin of the laughing youth next to him.

  “This is a democratic c-company. Let us p-put the matter to a vote. All who favor t-taking on—What is your name, my young friend?”

  With no time to concoct a lie, I said, “Widge.”

  Mr. Heminges’s eyebrows raised skeptically. “All who favor taking on W-Widge as our new p-prentice.” Most of the hands in the room went up. The cannoneer and the boy named Nick were the sole objectors. “That settles it. Widge, allow me to w-welcome you to the Lord Chamberlain’s c-company.”

  11

  Though I had been transported by the magic of these players, I had no thought in the world that I could become one of them. I thought only of doing what I had been hired to do. I meant to retrieve my table-book or, failing that, to seek an opportunity to transcribe the play again. Better yet, I might manage to make off with the theatre’s copy, saving myself a good deal of toil and trouble.

  “Now,” Mr. Heminges said. “Who would like to b-be responsible for this b-boy?”

  Mr. Pope clapped a heavy hand on my shoulder. “I suppose I can make room for one more. He’s not very large. You don’t eat much, do you, lad?”

  “I hardly ken, sir. I’ve never had the chance to find out.” This, said in all seriousness, earned me a laugh from the players. I had been laughed at for being a fool, but never for being witty. I found it pleased me.

  “Well answered,” Mr. Pope said. “Come then. Goodwife Willi
ngson will be waiting supper for us.” As he ushered me through the door, he called over his shoulder, “Sander!”

  “Coming!” a voice from the far side of the room replied. As we passed behind the stage, I glanced furtively about for the incriminating table-book. The boy Mr. Pope had called Sander caught up with us just outside the rear door. He was of an age with me, but nearly a head taller, and as thin as Banbury cheese.

  “Widge,” said Mr. Pope, “shake hands with Alexander Cooke, known familiarly as Sander.”

  The boy pumped my hand as though he expected me to spout water. “Welcome to the company, Widge. It’s a lot of work, but it’s fun as well.”

  Work? I thought. What could be so difficult about dressing up in fine clothing and saying witty and poetic things already written out for you?

  The rain had dwindled to a fine drizzle—what we in Yorkshire called a cobweb day. We were soaked by the time we reached Mr. Pope’s home, though it lay a mere five minutes’ walk from the Globe. All the way there, I cast my eyes about furtively, wondering if Falconer would return to find me.

  “Sander,” said Mr. Pope, “see if you can hunt up a change of clothing for Widge. He looks as though he’s been wrestling pigs.”

  Sander led me upstairs to a small dormer room. The walls were papered with hundreds of broadsides and ballad-sheets, plus playbills for half a dozen theatres. While I looked them over, Sander rummaged through an ironbound chest and tossed me a short kersey tunic and a pair of plain breeches. “Try those. I’ve grown out of them.”

  As we changed, I glanced about the room. “You ha’ this all to yourself?”

  “Until now.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t mind. It’ll give me somebody to talk to—and to study lines with.”

  “They let you perform in the plays?”

  “Sometimes. Not the one today. Usually I play a serving maid or some such.”

  “So you ha’ no copy of Hamlet?”