The Roaring Boy Read online

‘Tell us what to do, Nick,’ he said. ‘Guide us through.’

  ‘Stand close and hear me out.’

  Snatching up the prompt book once more, Nicholas flicked through the pages and reiterated his decisions. Westfield’s Men listened intently though their eyes occasionally strayed to the supine figure of their colleague in the corner. Ben Skeat had spent a lifetime responding to the various crises that were thrown up regularly by a capricious profession. It fell to them to meet this dire emergency with the courage and imagination that the old actor would have shown.

  Two plays now ran side by side. What the audience saw was an attenuated version of The Corrupt Bargain but the drama taking place behind the scenes was much more intense. Actors rehearsed new roles in a matter of seconds. Music was changed, entrances were altered, costumes were reassigned. George Dart, the smallest and most lowly of the assistant stagekeepers, was in a state of near-hysteria as the scenic devices he was due to move were given fresh locations. He soon had no idea what scene, what act, and what play they were engaged in, and simply hung on the commands of Nicholas Bracewell, praying that he would come through the ordeal without earning himself a sound beating.

  Most of the actors adapted swiftly and successfully. Owen Elias, an ebullient Welshman, set a fine example as Count Emilio, turning speeches that he should have addressed to Duke Alonso into moving soliloquies. Edmund Hoode, too, was able to mould his part into the required shape, growing in confidence with each scene and slowly emerging as a worthy contender for the hand of Bianca. In this role, Richard Honeydew, youngest but easily the most gifted of the four apprentices, gave a faultless performance as the tragic maid and had the entire audience ready to defend his virginity.

  The nature of the double drama was best illustrated by Barnaby Gill. Onstage, he was a revelation, expanding his role in all manner of ways to give other actors more time to think and to adjust accordingly. As the court jester, he was the licensed fool who was able to speak the harsh truth—albeit couched in riddles—to the wicked Don Pedro. He now introduced a range of jigs and hilarious songs that were a blaze of light in an otherwise dark tragedy. Gill borrowed freely from other plays in which he had shone and gave what was effectively a free-flowing exhibition of his remarkable comic skills.

  Offstage, the actor’s Janus-face came into view.

  ‘I will not wear that friar’s habit!’ he snarled.

  ‘You must,’ insisted Nicholas.

  ‘It is a shroud lifted from a corpse!’

  ‘Ben Skeat has no more use for it now.’

  ‘Take it away. It smells of decay.’

  ‘We have no other costume fit for you.’

  ‘Find one!’ demanded Gill. ‘I’ll not touch that.’

  A bell chimed to announce the scene in the cathedral. There was no time for niceties. Nicholas Bracewell grabbed the friar’s habit and fitted it unceremoniously over the spluttering Gill before propelling him on to the stage with a firm shove. The raving actor changed instantly into a serene friar and padded across the stage with measured tread to play a scene with the distraught Bianca. Nicholas allowed himself a sigh of relief. It was all too premature.

  They were now into Act Five and exploring uncharted territory. With the friar re-entering the action, the scope and delicacy of their manoeuvres increased sharply. They had to pick their way line by line through the text, making constant revisions and refinements. Mistakes soon crept in. Speeches were either forgotten or delivered in the wrong sequence. Indeed, there was one moment when both Edmund Hoode and Barnaby Gill declaimed the same rhyming couplet from Duke Alonso in unison. It produced a restrained laugh in the assembled throng but that laugh became derisive when George Dart blundered onstage as a servant and promptly collided with a bench which now occupied a wholly new position. Instead of imparting his one line and quitting the stage, Dart stayed rooted to the spot and perspired dramatically with naked fear.

  The Provost hustled him roughly towards the exit.

  ‘Come, man. Your message. What is’t?’

  George Dart was pushed out of sight before he could deliver it and fresh sniggers arose. Barnaby Gill quelled them at once with an impromptu prayer. Since the audience believed him to be Duke Alonso in disguise, he used a voice as deep and mellifluous as that of Ben Skeat. A master of deft comedy, Gill showed that he could cope with more serious material when necessary. His sure-footed performance led the rest of the cast safely across the stepping-stones of the play and inculcated fresh hope in their hearts. The final scene at last came into view.

  The stage was set for the execution of Count Emilio and the grim ritual was enacted with all due solemnity. Soldiers rushed on to the stage in the nick of time to pull the condemned man from beneath the axe, then arrest Don Pedro. Thanks to the intercession of the friar, the tyrant was finally deposed but he did not accept his fate meekly. He roared and ranted at all and sundry. Breaking free from his captors, he ran to the friar to throw back the man’s hood with a yell of “Cucullus non facit monachum”—the hood does not make the monk. There was a gasp from the audience.

  Instead of revealing Duke Alonso as they expected, he exposed the head of the court jester. It was a moment of pure theatre, at once so startling and so comic that they did not know quite how to react and simply gaped in astonishment. Barnaby Gill gave them no time to discern the more farcical aspects of the play’s resolution. Showing admirable invention and no small degree of authority, he announced that the exiled Duke had died of a fever contracted during a visit to the prison. Alonso’s last wish was that Don Pedro should be overthrown and replaced by the more worthy rule of Count Emilio. The liberated prisoner was greeted with general acclamation by his new subjects.

  There remained only one more strand of the play hanging loose and Owen Elias tied it off neatly. Beckoning his sister and the Provost to him, he joined their hands together in a symbolic gesture. Their marriage would be the first public event of his rule. The play ended with a formal dance, then the whole court went off to church for the nuptials.

  The audience was pleasantly mystified. It was not the conclusion they had anticipated, and some of them felt obscurely cheated, but the mass of spectators glowed with approval. Applause was most generous. When Barnaby Gill led out the cast to savour their ovation, there were very few who noticed the absence of the exiled Duke of Genoa. While he lay dead in the tiring-house, The Corrupt Bargain was hailed. London had never seen anything quite like it before and, though the play had some puzzling elements and some baffling twists of plot, it also had an undeniable novelty.

  Nicholas Bracewell remained behind the scenes and knelt beside his old friend with a sad smile. Ben Skeat deserved his fair share of that applause. Until the moment when he suddenly stepped out of the play, he was giving the finest performance of his career, clear-voiced, expressive and full of rich detail. Death had perhaps not intruded at such an unseemly hour, after all. It could be argued that Ben Skeat had been offered the most perfect exit for an actor.

  ‘Nobly done, friends!’

  ‘I hated every moment.’

  ‘We plucked triumph from disaster.’

  ‘It was intolerable.’

  ‘Have you ever known such excitement?’

  ‘Nor such misery.’

  ‘We have a victory to celebrate.’

  ‘But no strength left for celebration.’

  Torn between exhilaration and exhaustion, Westfield’s Men came pouring into the tiring-house. The last echoes of applause were fading as they retired to their lair. Some were buoyed up by what they saw as a signal achievement while others merely wanted to collapse and lick their wounds. Owen Elias belonged to the former party and gave all within reach a hug of congratulation. Richard Honeydew, by contrast, was shivering with fear, all too conscious of the narrow escape they had just had. The other apprentices—Martin Yeo, John Tallis and Stephen Judd—were p
utting on a brave face but their knees were also knocking beneath their farthingales. George Dart was so grateful to have come through it all that he lapsed into frenzied giggling.

  The twin poles of emotion were exemplified by Barnaby Gill and by Edmund Hoode, respectively. Gill was suffused with joy, thrilled to have survived a harrowing experience with such honour and basking in the glory of having led Westfield’s Men as its undoubted star. An audience which would normally flock out into Gracechurch Street with the name of Lawrence Firethorn on its lips would now talk of little else but Barnaby Gill. Hoode collected no such bounty from their two hours upon the stage. For him, it was a headlong descent into chaos. His play had been cut to shreds and his own performance, he felt, was a cruel travesty.

  The severe strain had attacked his moon-shaped face like the slash of a knife. Pale, drawn and sagging with despair, he dropped down on to a stool beside Nicholas Bracewell.

  ‘That was the most corrupt bargain I ever made!’

  ‘How say you, Edmund?’

  ‘I was paid money for writing a dreadful play.’

  ‘A fine play,’ said Nicholas. ‘And well-received.’

  ‘No, Nick,’ moaned the other. ‘It was an assault on the intelligence of the spectators. They came to see a well-tuned tragedy and we gave them that discordant comedy of errors. Instead of displaying our art, we foist base, brown paper stuff on to them. It was shameful. I’ll never call myself “poet” again.’

  ‘The company did what was needful, Edmund.’

  ‘It destroyed my work.’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas, ‘it refashioned it so that it might live to be played afresh another day.’

  ‘Never! The Corrupt Bargain died out on that stage.’

  ‘So did Ben Skeat.’ It was a timely reminder and it checked the flow of authorial recrimination. ‘We all regret what happened to your play this afternoon but it is Ben who deserves our sympathy. Your art continues: he will never tread the boards again.’

  Edmund Hoode was chastened. He nodded in agreement, then lowered himself on to one knee before taking the edge of the cloak and lifting it back from Skeat’s face. The old actor gazed up at him with a look of posthumous apology. He was deeply sorry for the injury he had inflicted on his friend’s play but the exiled Duke had no choice in the matter. A tear of remorse trickled down Hoode’s cheek.

  ‘Goodbye, Ben,’ he said softly. ‘I do not blame you, old friend. Your death has changed my life. You taught me the folly of my occupation. I thank you for that. Over your corpse, I make this solemn pledge. My writing days are past.’

  ‘Do not be so hasty,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘I never wish to endure that torture again.’

  ‘Nor shall you, Edmund.’

  ‘Indeed not.’ He let the cloak fall back across the face of Ben Skeat once more. ‘I am finished with it, Nick. Westfield’s Men can find some other fool to pen their plays. No more corrupt bargains for me. Nor more long nights bent wearily over my work. No more sighs and no more suffering. No more pain!’ His voice hardened. ‘I will never—never—take up my quill again.’

  It was a vow that he would soon wish he had kept.

  Chapter Two

  Shoreditch had once been a tiny hamlet, growing up at thejunction of two important Roman roads, and offering its inhabitants clean air, open fields and a degree of rural isolation. That was no longer the case. The relentless expansion of London turned it into yet another busy suburb, tied to the city by a long ribbon of houses, tenements and churches, and further entwined by the commercial and cultural needs of the capital. Shoreditch could still boast fine gardens, orchards and small-holdings—even common land for archery practice—but its former independence had perished forever.

  Chief among its attractions were its two splendid custom-built playhouses, The Theatre and The Curtain, and the populace of London streamed out of Bishopsgate on those afternoons when the flags were hoisted above these famed arenas to indicate that performances would take place. Shoreditch competed with Bankside as a favourite source of entertainment but not all of its denizens were happy with this state of affairs. As well as the largely respectable and law-abiding spectators, theatres also attracted their share of whores, cheats and pickpockets in search of easy custom. Rowdiness, too, was a constant threat but the major complaint was against the barrage of noise that was set up during a performance.

  Occupants of houses in Holywell Lane were especially vulnerable as they dwelt between the two theatres and thus at the mercy of rival cacophonies. They cringed before explosions of laughter and bursts of applause. They recoiled from strident fanfares and deafening music. Alarums and excursions afflicted them in equal measure. Even on the most sunlit and cloudless afternoons, thunder, lightning and tempest had been known to issue simultaneously from both playhouses as cunning hands usurped the role of Mother Nature. Gunpowder was frequently used with deafening effect. To live in Holywell Lane was to live cheek by jowl with pandemonium.

  ‘Arghhhhhhhh!’

  A new and terrible sound shattered the early evening.

  ‘Noooooooooo!’

  It was a roar of pain fit to waken the long-dead.

  ‘Heeeeeeeelp!’

  Was it some wild animal in distress? A wolf caught in a trap? A bear torn apart by the teeth of a dozen mastiffs? A lion in the menagerie at the Tower, speared to make sport?

  ‘Yaaaaaaaaaa!’

  The voice was now recognisably human but so full of grief, so charged with agony, and so laden with despair that its owner had to be enduring either the amputation of both legs or the violent removal of all internal organs. The cry came from a house in Old Street but everyone in Shoreditch heard it and shared in its fathomless misery. Was the poor creature being devoured alive by a pack of hungry demons?

  ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhh!’

  Lawrence Firethorn was not one to suffer in silence. When he was in travail, the whole world was his audience. He lay in his bedchamber and bellowed his torment, quivering all over as a new and more searing pain shot through him.

  Firethorn had toothache. To be more precise, he had one badly infected tooth in a set that was otherwise remarkably sound. The actor could not believe that so much tribulation was caused by such a minute part of his anatomy. His whole mouth was on fire, his whole head was pounding, his whole body was one huge, smarting wound.

  His wife came bustling into the room with concern.

  ‘Is there anything I may get for you, Lawrence?’

  ‘A gravedigger.’

  ‘Let me at least send for a surgeon.’

  ‘A lawyer would be more use. To draw up my will.’

  ‘Do not talk so,’ she said, crossing to the bed. ‘This is no time for jests. You have a bad tooth, that is all.’

  ‘A hundred bad teeth, Margery. A thousand!’

  An invisible hammer struck the side of his face and he let out such a blood-curdling yell that his neighbours thought he had just given birth to a litter of giant hedgehogs. Margery Firethorn wanted to put a comforting arm around him but she knew that it was inadvisable. Her husband’s cheek was twice its normal size and throbbing visibly. The handsome, bearded countenance of the most brilliant actor in London was distorted into an ugly mask of woe. On the posted bed with its embroidered canopy, they had spent endless nights of pleasure but it was now a rack on which his muscular torso was being stretched to breaking-point.

  ‘Let me fetch you another remedy,’ she suggested.

  ‘Dear God—no!’

  ‘This one comes with the apothecary’s blessing.’

  ‘More like his curse!’

  ‘It may reduce the swelling in your gum, Lawrence.’

  ‘I will take nothing!’ he snarled.

  Firethorn had already submitted to three of his wife’s well-intentioned remedies and each had signa
lly failed. The last—a compound of vinegar, oil and sulphur—had not only sharpened the pain to unbearable limits, it caused him to vomit uncontrollably. He vowed that nothing else would go into his diseased mouth. A fresh spasm made his eyes cloud over for a second. When he rallied slightly, he was hit by a tidal wave of guilt.

  ‘I have betrayed my fellows!’ he wailed.

  ‘Put them from your thoughts.’

  ‘How can I, Margery? Westfield’s Men rely on me and I was found wanting. For the first time in my life. I was prevented from doing my duty and exhibiting my genius as a player.’

  ‘You are not to blame,’ she said.

  ‘The name of Lawrence Firethorn is a symbol of true quality in our profession. Where was that true quality this afternoon? Flat on its back!’ He slapped his thigh with an angry palm. ‘I failed them. I, Margery! Who once played Hector with a broken toe. Who once conquered the known world as Antony with my arm in a sling. Who once led the company to triumph in Black Antonio when the sweating sickness was upon me. Disease and discomfort have never kept me off the stage until this fateful day. They needed me at the Queen’s Head as the exiled Duke of Genoa but I have been imprisoned here by this damnable toothache!’

  In an unguarded moment, he jabbed a finger at his cheek and prodded the inflamed area. Another roar of agony made the low beams tremble. In his anguish, he believed that he could actually hear the stabbing pain as it beat out its grim message, but Margery placed another interpretation on the repetitive sound. Someone was at their front door.

  ‘We have a visitor,’ she said. ‘Will you receive them?’

  ‘Not unless it be Nick Bracewell. He is the only man I would trust to see me in this dreadful condition and not mock my plight. Nick has real compassion and I am in sore need of that.’

  A servant admitted the caller. Margery stood at the door of the bedchamber and listened to the voices below. Feet began to clatter up the oaken staircase.

  ‘Barnaby Gill,’ she announced. ‘I’ll head him off.’