Shakespeare's Spy Read online

  “It seems quite enough to me.”

  “Can’t you tell me something more … well, specific?”

  “Just what did you have in mind?”

  “Perhaps something about …” I had no desire to discuss with this odd old woman anything as awkward and intimate as love. “… about other people?”

  “Other people,” she muttered. “I can try. But I see only what I see.” She held out her hand and I dropped another penny into it. This time she stared into the ball, motionless, for so long that I feared she had drifted into some sort of daze, or fallen asleep with her eyes open. As surreptitiously as I could, I waved the wood smoke away from my face. The motion seemed to bring her out of her trance. When she spoke, it was in a monotone, without inflection, without emotion. “Because of you,” she said, “someone will die.” Before I had quite gotten my mind around this ominous prediction, she made a second that was even more startling: “But another will return to life.”

  11

  “Return to life?” I said. “How is that possible?”

  “I do not interpret. I only—”

  “Aye, I ken. You only see.” I leaned forward to get a closer look at the scrying ball. “I don’t suppose you saw aught about someone …” I hesitated, embarrassed. “… someone named Judith?”

  She pulled the cloth protectively over the black ball. “No.” Then on her shrouded, wart-speckled face, I saw something approaching a smile. “But if you were to send this Judith to me, I could tell her future … and perhaps make certain that you appeared in it.”

  “For a price, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  So, not only did she tell her clients what they wished to hear, she would also tell them what someone else wanted them to hear. She was clearly a fake. And yet … and yet she had revealed to each of us one thing that we could not conceivably have wished to hear—that Sam would turn traitor, that Sal Pavy would lose his hair, that I would he the cause of another person’s death. Those were hardly the sorts of predictions that were calculated to keep us coming back for more.

  I got unsteadily to my feet, dizzy from breathing in the smoke—or from too many confusing thoughts buzzing in my brain. “I must go. God you good day.”

  “A good day,” she said, “would be a warm one.”

  I glanced at the smoldering sign. “You’ve run out of fuel, then?” She nodded and pulled her scarves more tightly about her. Impulsively I reached into my purse, brought out my last shilling, and laid it on the table. “To buy coal with.” As I left the tent, I thought I heard her murmur something in reply; I could not be sure of the words, but they might have been “May Fate be kind to you.”

  Only when I was halfway back to the Cross Keys did I realize how foolish I had been to give her that shilling. What would I use now to pay the fine Mr. Armin was sure to demand of me for missing scriming practice? And, as I soon discovered, that was not the only penalty I would be expected to pay.

  In my preoccupation with Judith, I had forgotten all about my costume for that night’s performance, and the fact that it had not yet been let out to fit me. With our tiring-man home ill and but two hours remaining before performance, it would have to wait. Perhaps no one would notice if I pressed into service my costume from The Spanish Tragedy.

  But when I dug through the trunk of clothing for that play, there was no sign of Bel-Imperia’s gown. Alarmed, I went through the lot again, piece by piece, and still failed to turn it up. “Oh, gis!” I sank to the floor, my head in my hands.

  “S-something wrong?” said a voice behind me.

  “Aye,” I groaned. “Me gown for The Spanish Tragedy has come up missing.”

  Mr. Heminges crouched down next to me. “I hate to t-tell you this, W-Widge, but we’re not d-doing The Spanish Tragedy. this evening.”

  “I ken that. But me dress for Two Gentlemen no longer fits, and I thought I’d substitute this one, only it’s gone.”

  Mr. Heminges sighed heavily, as though he’d heard this same tale before and was weary of it. “That’s unf-fortunate. But I’m n-not surprised. It’s the f-fourth item that’s d-disappeared in as m-many weeks.”

  “Is someone stealing them, do you wis?”

  “I’m afraid it’s a p-possibility. Of course, it’s also p-possible that they’re st-still at the Globe somewhere, though I d-doubt it. Richard is always very c-careful in p-packing the costumes.”

  “I suppose it’ll come out of me wages, then?”

  “I’m s-sorry, but that’s the r-rule. We c-can’t make an exception for you. If we f-find out who the th-thief is—assuming th-there is one—we’ll return the m-money to you.” He got stiffly to his feet. “N-now, let’s see about that other g-gown.”

  When I tried it on, the hem proved to be, as Judith had guessed, several inches too short, and no matter how Mr. Heminges tugged at the back of my bodice, the hooks and eyes could not be made to meet. “Well, we d-don’t have much t-time. If you’ll s-see to the hooks and eyes, I’ll l-let down the hem—pr-provided you thread the n-needle for me; my eyes are n-not what they were.”

  Though, like all prentices, I had made my share of emergency repairs, I was no great hand with a needle. Before I had managed to move all two dozen hooks and eyes to their new positions, I must have dropped each of them at least twice; several were never seen again. Mr. Heminges’s needlework; however, was swift and sure. When I commented upon this, he laughed. “When you have b-been on the road as many t-times as I have, without b-benefit of a seamstress or t-tiring-man, you learn to d-do for yourself.”

  “Will we go on the road again this summer, do you wis?”

  He paused and rubbed thoughtfully at his graying beard. “It’s hard to s-say, at this p-point. What we d-do will depend largely upon what the p-plague does. I hope it will not c-come to that. Our p-position is precarious enough as it is. If we had to c-close down the theatre for several m-months, it could be—” He broke off, then, as though he had said too much, and went back to his stitching. “Well, as I s-said, I hope not.”

  Though I did not wish to pry into matters that did not concern me, I had the uneasy feeling that this did concern me. “Are we—is the company in difficulty, then?”

  Mr. Heminges considered for several moments before replying. “A bit. But we’ll w-weather it. We always have.” He gave me a rather worn smile. “In any c-case, there’s n-no need for you or the other pr-prentices to worry. L-let us sharers do the w-worrying, all right?”

  I would willingly have obeyed him; I had more than enough on my mind already. But worry is like the plague—or, it seemed, like love. It’s no good at all ignoring or denying it; once the seed has found its way inside you, you are doomed.

  Even had I succeeded in casting aside my concern, it would not have been for long. As we players stood in the cramped space behind the stage, listening to the audience arrive and trying to judge from the sound of them what mood they were in, Mr. Shakespeare, still dressed in his street clothes, burst through the door that led to the outside stairway, bringing with him a gust of frigid air. “Widge!” he called above the din of the playgoers.

  “Aye!” I made my way toward him through the shifting mass of actors applying their face paint, adjusting their costumes, mumbling their lines to themselves, making all sorts of curious sounds meant to limber up their voices.

  When I was within his reach, Mr. Shakespeare drew me to him. “The master of revels sends word that some men from the queen’s Privy Council are out there tonight, checking up on us.”

  “Is there something amiss wi’ our privy?”

  He laughed. “The Privy Council is a body of Her Majesty’s closest advisers. No doubt they hope to catch us feeding the masses some morsel of Papist propaganda, as a priest gives out morsels of the host at Communion. I imagine Henslowe has put them up to it.”

  Our sharers had long suspected the manager of the Admiral’s Men of mounting various strategies to injure our reputation or our box—that is, the amount of money w
e took in—including attaching Mr. Shakespeare’s well-known name to plays written by Henslowe’s own committee of hacks, inciting Puritan preachers to stand outside the Globe railing at the playgoers, even planting his men in our audience, where they shouted insults at the actors.

  “You have a line about confession, do you not?”

  “Aye. Eglamour says, ‘Where shall we meet?’ and I say, ‘At Friar Patrick’s cell, where I intend holy confession.’”

  “Yes, yes. I want you to replace that line.”

  “Wi’ what?”

  “You’ll think of something. Are there any other Popish sorts of speeches that you can recall?”

  “Nay. But—”

  The sound of Mr. Phillips’s hautboy signaled that the play was about to commence. Mr. Shakespeare glanced down at his everyday doublet and breeches. “By the matt!” he whispered. “I nearly forgot; I’m playing the duke!” He left as precipitously as he had come, leaving me to invent some new bit of dialogue for myself. Well, if I had any hope at all of living up to my boast of writing a play, surely I could conjure up a line and a half of passable iambic pentameter. If nothing else, the effort would give me something to do besides fret, which is what I was ordinarily doing at this point in the performance.

  Mr. Pope had assured me that a certain amount of fear before going on was a good thing. “Without frets,” he was fond of saying, “there is no music.” But none of the other actors, not even the prentices, looked as though they were going to face the hangman, as I had been told I did. Sal Pavy was examining himself in a looking glass, touching the locks of his blond wig as though wishing they were his own. Sam, dressed in a gown borrowed from the As You Like It trunk, stood next to me at the stage-right curtain, whistling a tune under his breath and practicing a little jig step Mr. Phillips had taught him.

  I took a deep breath—or as deep as I could manage, considering how tightly my ribs were bound by the bodice of my dress—and tried to compose a line to replace the censored one. Where shall we meet? Ta tumpty-tumpty turn. Behind the abbey wall? No. Some nonreligious place? When I glanced again at Sal Pavy, who played my romantic adversary, Julia, a clever though totally unsuitable possibility entered my head: Let’s meet in Julia’s room, where I intend to strangle her with her wig.

  “What are you sniggering about?” Sam asked softly.

  “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of strangling Julia.”

  Sam nodded, as though this were a perfectly reasonable proposal. “May I help?” This set me laughing again, so violently that I had to cover my mouth to avoid being heard on the other side of the curtain. “Careful,” Sam said. “You’ll burst your bodice.” When I had gotten my mirth under control, he said, “I hear you’ve lost a costume, too.”

  “Aye. Between that and the fine for missing scriming practice, I’m afraid I’ll ha’ no money to help you out.”

  “No matter. Mr. Heminges has promised to withhold only a shilling each week.”

  “We’ll still receive two shillings, then? That’s good. That’s more than you imagined.” Something about those words struck me as odd, or perhaps familiar. I had to mull it over for a moment before I realized where I had heard them before. “Sam!” I whispered. “The cunning woman’s prediction!”

  “What about it?”

  “She said, ‘You will receive more money than you imagine.’”

  He stared at me. “No. That can’t be what she meant. Can it?”

  Out on the stage, Will Sly, our Proteus, delivered the last line of the scene: “I fear my Julia would not deign my lines, receiving them from such a worthless post.”

  Sal Pavy appeared beside us. “That’s our cue!” he told Sam.

  But Sam seemed not to hear. He was shaking his head in disbelief. “That can’t be what she meant,” he repeated. I had to plant my foot on his nether end and propel him onto the stage.

  Though Mr. Shakespeare was disturbed at having members of the Privy Council in the audience, I much preferred their presence to Judith’s. I was distracted enough just thinking about her in the abstract; to have her there in the flesh would certainly have undone me completely.

  Just in case I should happen to forget my infatuation with her for a second or so, the play seemed specially designed to make certain I would not, from Sal Pavy’s first speech—”But say, Lucetta, now we are alone, wouldst thou then counsel me to fall in love?”—to the end, when Mr. Shakespeare spoke the line with which Sam had teased me earlier in the day: “I think the boy hath grace in him; he blushes.”

  The one thing I did manage to forget was the need to think up a new line, until the very scene was upon me. When Mr. Armin, as Eglamour, asked, “Where shall we meet?” I froze. Seeing that I was speechless, he did as any good player would—he prompted me. “Shall we meet at Friar—” he began.

  “No!” I interrupted frantically, my voice cracking. “Let’s not! Let’s meet … somewhere else! In the forest!”

  Mr. Armin was too seasoned an actor to let this throw him. “An excellent idea, your ladyship,” he said. When we met behind the stage later, he gave me a look of mock disparagement. “In the forest?”

  “It was all I could think of,” I protested. “At least I said no rather than nay.”

  “Why did you say it at all? I was about to cover for you.”

  “Mr. Shakespeare told me to cut the line about Friar Patrick. ‘A says there’s a wight from the Privy Council out there.”

  “A pox on the Privy Council!” muttered Mr. Armin. “They were here last week as well, for Romeo and Juliet. John Lowin had to amend his line about going to confession. No doubt they would have been even happier had we made Friar Laurence an Anglican priest.” He smacked a fist into his palm. “They’ve never bothered us before. Why now? And why would they pick the very plays that happen to have references to Catholic rites in them?”

  “Perhaps because the plays are set in Italy?”

  “Perhaps,” Mr. Armin said. “Or perhaps someone is keeping the Privy Council apprised of everything we do.”

  “You mean …”

  “I mean,” he said, “a spy.”

  12

  By the time I returned home that evening, I was as bone weary as I had ever been, even the previous summer, when we sometimes slogged along a muddy road in the rain from dawn until dusk. Though for a prentice every day is a hectic one, this day had been without equal or precedent, as full of alarums and excursions and general hurly-burly as both parts of Henry VI put together.

  As was their custom, the dozen or so orphan boys who lodged with Mr. Pope were waiting to pounce on me the moment I came through the door, yelling like wild Irishmen, rifling my wallet in search of the sweetmeats I sometimes brought them, begging me to play a game of Barley-Break or Rise Pig and Go. But when Goody Willingson saw how haggard I looked, she chased them off to bed and brought me a cup of what she called clary—warm wine with honey, pepper, and ginger—and a bowl of frumety—wheat kernels boiled in milk—which she had kept hot for me on the back of the cast-iron heating stove.

  I was too exhausted to eat more than a few mouthfuls. “Has Mr. Pope retired for the night?” I asked.

  “He’s in the library.”

  I sighed, knowing that he was waiting for me, too—not so that I might play a game, but so that I might tell him all the day’s news. I did not like to disappoint him, for I knew how much he missed being a part of the company, and how eager he was to hear what we were up to.

  In warmer weather, Mr. Pope frequently made the short journey to the Globe, sometimes to watch a performance from behind the stage, sometimes simply to share conversation and a drink with his old comrades. But the combination of cold weather, ill health, and distance kept him from coming to the Cross Keys, so he relied on me to keep him abreast of things. We had a running jest about my being his informant, his spy within the company. Now, in light of Mr. Armin’s deadly serious remark, it did not seem so amusing.

  Mr. Pope had his feet propped up before the fire,
a mug of clary in one hand and a woolen blanket draped over his ample belly. “Come in, Widge, come in. Sit down. You look as though you’ve had a long, hard day.”

  “Good. I’m glad I’ve something to show for it.” Like the messenger in a play, who describes for the other characters and for the audience some action that took place off the stage, I proceeded to give him an account of all that had happened that day, in as few words as I reasonably could.

  In truth, I did not include everything. I did not tell of my visit to La Voisin and what she saw in her scrying ball. Nor did I repeat what Mr. Armin had said about a spy, or what Mr. Heminges had said about the company being in difficult circumstances. The physican who attended Mr. Pope had cautioned us that any undue strain or stress could worsen his patient’s condition, and I had no wish to fulfill the cunning woman’s prediction that I would bring about another person’s death, least of all his. I did describe for him the mysterious Mr. Garrett, thinking that they might have crossed paths before. But Mr. Pope had no notion who or what the man might be, or why he would feel compelled to disguise himself.

  When I introduced Judith into my story, I did my best to sound nonchalant, but I was not a good-enough actor to carry it off. Though I confined myself to facts, carefully avoiding any mention of feelings, Mr. Pope was not fooled for a moment.

  “I believe you neglected to clean all the rouge off your cheeks, my boy,” he said mischievously. “Either that, or the frost has nipped them a bit.”

  I ducked my head sheepishly. “Aye, I expect that’s it.”

  “I’ve met Will’s daughters a time or two. Judith is the fair one, is she?”

  “Aye.”

  “She is a pretty thing. I’m not surprised that you’d be smitten with her.”

  “I never said I was.”

  Mr. Pope laughed. “There’s no need to say it. It’s written all over your face.” His smile slowly faded then, to be replaced by a look of concern, and he leaned forward in his chair. “Widge. I hope you don’t mind my saying this. I know you haven’t asked for my advice, but … well, I think of you almost as a … as a son, and … while I don’t wish to meddle, or to say anything against Judith, I think you’d do well to be … careful.”