The True Prince Read online

  When the play ended and the groundlings began jostling their way toward the exits, the boy got away from us altogether. Starling, who had assumed responsibility for him, grew fretful as the minutes passed and we made very little progress through the crowd. “Suppose he's been kidnapped?”

  “Who would want him?” I replied lightly, even while admitting to myself that lawless men lurked everywhere and were not above stealing pretty boys for nefarious purposes. Thus I was almost as relieved as she when Davy met us outside, still bubbling over with excitement. I wondered why he never showed such animation on our stage.

  “Let's take a boat across the river,” he chirped.

  “Can't,” I replied. “I spent my last penny on the play.”

  “I'll put the fare.”

  Starling looked sideways at him. “How could you do that? You had to borrow a penny from me to get into the Rose.”

  “Aye.” The boy's face went as smooth as the summer sky. “And I'll pay it. But I keep a bit of coin put aside, for somewhat that may take my particular fancy.” Starling and I raised eyebrows at each other, silently vowing we'd not let him sponge off us so easily next time. But we did not refuse the boat ride. It made a fitting end to an afternoon that turned out pleasant and carefree, and the last of that kind that I was to know for some time.

  Master Allen sent word by his agents that he would allow access to the Company's tiring rooms for one day only, and Richard Burbage fired back a notice that he was bringing suit against the landlord for possession of his building. Setting the lawyers on it was all he could do; in the meantime we had a schedule to perform.

  After some hasty negotiation, the chief players worked out an arrangement with the owner of the Curtain Theater nearby. The entertainment offered by the Curtain tended toward bear and bull fights, wrestling matches and bloody spectacle. For a price, the owner canceled most of these and gave our Company the run of his stage for three weeks out of every month (the fourth week being reserved for bear fights). It was the best that could be made of a bad situation. Master Cuthbert sent out a division of boys to tack up notices all over London, and performances at the Curtain began the following Monday.

  The Curtain was built on a similar plan to the Theater, but different in dozens of ways one would not notice until forced to perform familiar actions in an unfamiliar space. The stage was deeper, but not as wide, so a player pacing off a speech might find himself teetering on the brink before a line was out.

  The trap was in a different place, the tiring room walls were closer together, the musicians' gallery was backed by a wall instead of curtains, and on and on. For the first week we continually got in each other's way. Tempers grew short and minor eruptions broke out and every man and boy said things he afterward regretted. Except Kit, who said very little.

  In spite of his defiant speech at the dike, he bottled himself up in a sullen attitude and continued playing imperious, passionate, or clever women as brilliantly as ever. As ordered, he had moved out of the Heminges household and now boarded with Richard Cowley in Southwark. This eased the strain between himself and John Heminges, although no one could mistake Kit's posture as one of resignation. He was a walking battle, and I could guess the conflict: one side of him defended his position as the finest boy player in London, while the other rebelled against that very position. No doubt he hated all of us, but for some reason he took it out only on the Welsh Boy.

  This antipathy began to show itself in crafty ways. One afternoon I was standing behind the stage with Davy, awaiting our entrance together as a mother and son. Kit was on the stage, as a scheming queen plotting mayhem in snaky tones that writhed and fascinated. Only gradually did I become aware of the boy fidgeting beside me. My own neck itched from the starchy ruff that choked it, but that was an inconvenience that players were expected to endure. After all, the Queen's courtiers spent entire days encased in jeweled prisons, and they managed to keep from scratching themselves in her presence. “Stop that,” I told him. “We must go on after Kit is done.”

  “I can't help it,” he whispered. “The shirt is crawling.”

  I pulled back the stiff high collar of his doublet and squinted down his neck, looking for lice. His skin was far from clean, but neither did it crawl. “I don't see anything.”

  “You wouldn't. 'Tis cursed.”

  I looked at him sharply, but before I could ask what he meant, we heard the words of our cue. During the scene I kept a hand on his shoulder and gave him a subtle scratch from time to time, which seemed to help. But he forgot all his cues unless I pinched him, and I noticed that every time Kit looked directly at him, the boy twitched worse than ever. Kit's usual manner with new apprentices was not to torment but to ignore them. But the looks he gave the Welsh Boy were pointed and cruel, as though by looks alone he might drive him out of the Company. After the scene I examined Davy's collar again and picked up a fine grayish powder on my fingers that made them itch unmercifully until I was able to wash it off. How strange—would Kit stoop to such meanness? And if so, why?

  Whatever Kit's wishes, the Company had determined to keep Davy, at least until the end of the season. He showed well as a page or young maid, and his tumbling and singing skills pleased our audience. His speeches had to be pared to the barest meaning, because his lifeless delivery of them did not improve, and whenever he had to speak at length, the audience became restless. This was too bad, because his memory was uncommon—just how uncommon no one knew until the day when he was asked to change his lines in rehearsal. “How, sir?” he asked, his wide blue eyes growing wider.

  “You are saying the part about the lilies, but we struck that,” Master Heminges explained. “Skip down to ‘The fairest rose doth bear a thorn,' and speak only the next four lines.”

  He might have said this in a foreign tongue for all the comprehension the boy showed. In an unlikely show of helpfulness, Kit crossed to him, took his scroll, and skimmed the lines. “Here,” he said, pointing. “This place here. Read that.”

  The boy seemed frozen, his mouth barely moving as he replied.

  “What's that?” Kit purred. “What did you say?”

  “I cannot read,” said Davy.

  This brought rehearsal to an abrupt halt, as Master Heminges exclaimed, “Can't read?” and other players clamored to know how any boy could get into a theater company without this vital mystery. Davy broke down and wept, pitifully enough to wring any heart, and revealed under questioning that Thomas Pope's housekeeper, who had taken a fancy to him, was drilling him on his lines in the evening until he could say them after her perfectly.

  “Well,” growled Master Burbage, “ask the lady to start teaching you your letters. And if you've not mastered the art by autumn, you will seek another place. Understood?”

  “Aye, sir.” The boy nodded and wiped his eyes, and rehearsal continued. I saw Kit's face darken, making me wonder if he had known the Welsh Boy's secret somehow and seized the opportunity to expose it.

  Other incidents occurred: if the two had a scene together, Kit was apt to do some small thing—like changing a cue—that would confuse the boy. He did not do it often enough to attract suspicion from the other players, only enough to reduce Davy to a bundle of nerves every time they went on together. One afternoon the boy cried out in pain during a scene when he was supposed to dance and laugh. After the scene I unlaced his gown and found a needle embedded in the corset, at an angle to pierce him when he bent left or right. I could guess who laced him up that day.

  These little nips and nudges had begun to stoke a low fire in me. Whatever Kit might have against the boy, no one deserved this. I myself, after a year, was only now settling into some consistency as a player—if Kit had treated me the way he was treating Davy, I would have been shattered early on. With righteous outrage, I climbed to the upper tiring room after the play and held up the offending object. “What's this?”

  Kit looked, making his eyes cross. “A needle.”

  “Do you know where I found it?
”

  “No. A haystack?”

  Robin and Gregory were watching us curiously, so I made my reply obscure. “Let us say that it was in a place where needles ought not to be, and from now on I'll make it my business to keep watch.”

  “Please yourself. Standing sentry for needles seems a … pointless occupation.”

  “Be that as it may, I've made it my own.”

  Words are curious things: “shaped and polished air,” according to Kit's reprobate friend Captain Penny. Yet they have an uncommon power. In the heat of the moment I had said more than I meant. Kit's unexplained cruelty angered me, but his arrogance on top of that pushed me to the brink. And with two witnesses I could not honorably take my words back. With no particular liking for him, I had made myself Davy's defender.

  MASTER BURBAGE DRAWS A CIRCLE

  nce I spread my wing, the Welsh Boy slipped under it; almost every time we were in sight of each other, I would soon find him at my side. His constant presence felt like a splinter—just enough irritation to notice, yet not enough to act upon. Part of the irritation was that he had never learned to keep himself clean. Master Pope's housekeeper gave him one good washing that killed the lice, but his neck was always dirty, and he had to be reminded to clean his fingernails. No amount of scrubbing could purge his smell—not a bad smell, but an old one, like moss under a rock, that worked its way up through the tang of his sweat when he stood still long enough.

  That very stillness unnerved me: the unblinking watchfulness, as though he was committing all my words and actions to memory. Sometimes, he was. His reading lessons with Dame Willingson seemed to be progressing slowly, and he used me as a line tutor in the meantime. At least by day's end I could leave him behind and sleep at night—unless Robin was in a mood to unburden his worries on me. Between Kit and Giles Allen he found much to worry about. My own worries increased when the Company scheduled a performance of Richard III.

  This is one of Shakespeare's most beloved plays: the story of the hunchbacked Richard of York, who schemed his way to the throne, leaving a trail of corpses behind him. The corpses included his wife and brother and two young nephews—mere boys, whom he imprisoned in the Tower and then murdered. The crown rested very uneasily on his head; none too soon he lost it, and his life, in the battle of Bosworth.

  King Richard III was one of Master Burbage's great roles. On any given day, it was not uncommon to hear an apprentice cry out in the street, “A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Burbage had made this line from the final scene almost a password in the city. Londoners shivered in delight every time he clumped on the stage with his dragging hunchback walk.

  All the other members of the Company were brushing up their accustomed parts, but one week before the performance Master Heminges announced a change among the apprentices: I was to play Queen Elizabeth, Richard's sister-in-law. Elizabeth, upon my reading of her lines, struck me as a woman who talked too much, but it was one of the most important parts ever handed to me. To be entrusted with her marked a step forward in my progress.

  Then Robin, looking as if he had swallowed a lemon, informed me that Kit had played Elizabeth's part since it was created. I considered declining the honor. I had taken one of Kit's parts before and he was not gracious about it; in his present state I feared an assassination attempt. But the Company assigned another role to him: Margaret, the former queen (together with Elizabeth and Richard's wife, Anne, there were more queens in this story than on a chessboard). Margaret had been exiled to France but unexpectedly returns, spewing bitterness and curses. Having no choice, Kit accepted this part—with a vengeance.

  Even though Saturday afternoon was drizzly and gray, play-goers packed the Curtain, eager to see the hunchbacked villain meet his well-earned doom. Since I was given only a week to learn them, my lines had been pared back, but even so, by performance time they felt only a little firmer in my head than a custard.

  My first scene began well, however. Most of the Company was on the stage as England's royal family, and I was holding my own—until Margaret glided onto the stage in a black gown and hood. I felt a chill run through the building. The heavy gray sky overhead required torches to be set, and a moody light trembled over the scene. Kit knew how to place himself to make the light his ally—when he threw back the hood, his white face leapt out so fiercely that our audience gasped.

  Margaret's office is to pronounce doom on all the supporters of Richard who heed not her warning: “Have not to do with him, beware of him; sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him….” Kit's glittering eyes burned through the lines, and it seemed to me he was not speaking of the hunchback. Davy stood close by me as Elizabeth's son, the young Duke of York. While Margaret berated the assembly for past wrongs, Kit glared upon the Welsh Boy:

  “God, I pray Him—

  That none of you may live his natural age

  But by some unlooked accident cut off!”

  The boy trembled and shrank next to me, obviously not acting. I put an arm around his shoulder, and I was not acting either.

  Kit knew better than to break out of character, but twice during Margaret's tirade he fixed Davy with such dagger-sharp glances that I could feel their edge myself. Shortly before leaving the stage, he turned his venom on the company in general:

  “Uncharitably with me have you dealt

  And shamefully my hopes by you are butchered.”

  The audience murmured when he left the stage, as though released from his grip, and a voice from among the groundlings called out, “Well done, Kit!” It was a most effective performance; Will Sly could have spoken for all when he said, in character, “My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses.” But soon I had cause to wonder if Kit, in his general anathema, had slapped a particular curse on me.

  From that time on I dropped lines and missed cues like a rank beginner, enough for some of the players to look at me curiously and Master Condell to murmur, “Are you well, lad?” As my performance declined, my anger grew. Of course Kit could not be blamed for all my failures, but when he tripped the Welsh Boy behind the stage, I felt myself coming to a boil. Davy was running to be on time for his entrance, and directly after passing Kit, he slammed the floor so hard it could be heard from the stage. Since no one saw the crime, Davy took the blame for clumsiness. When he could find me alone, he revealed what had really happened, sniffling, “What hurt did I ever do to him?”

  That I could not answer. But soon I was having my own troubles with Kit, in a conversation between Elizabeth, Margaret, and King Richard's mother, played by Gregory. The three ladies are supposed to vent their wrath upon Richard, the “vile bunch-backed toad,” but I found myself stumbling over lines worse than ever. My awkwardness threw Gregory off his stride as well. Kit's long speeches were perfect and spoken with such conviction that the crowd hung on every word. As Margaret he saved the scene, but it was Kit, the tortured boy player, who leaned forward suddenly and hissed at me, “Thou didst usurp my place, and dost thou not usurp the just proportion of my sorrow?”

  What do you mean, usurp your place? If he had not been leaving the stage, I might have so forgotten myself as to ask it out loud. With a stab of panic I realized he had dropped several lines. I was supposed to stop him but could not recall the words. In desperation I simply called, “Stop!”

  “‘Stay awhile,'” Gregory whispered, prodding my foot with his own.

  “Stay awhile,” I repeated weakly. “And …” (“‘Teach me how to curse—'” Gregory prompted.)

  Fortunately, there was not much to the scene after that— or to my part. Davy went on once more as the ghost of the young prince, but appeared to be so haunted himself, he could barely speak. The boy's miserable face, ashen under the ghostly powder applied to it, pushed me at last to confront his tormenter in the upstairs tiring room.

  At least, I tried to confront him. The attempt was not successful at first, for I could hardly get the words out. In moments of deep stress or high feeling my voice fails—a strange i
mpediment for a player, I've been told, but there it is. “What—” I began, and felt my throat closing up. “What—”

  Kit stared at me, feigning interest. “What's this? It has two legs, two arms, and a mouth—it looks like some sort of human but gulps like a bunch-backed toad.”

  I clenched both fists. “Wh-what's this game you're p-playing?”

  “Game? What game?”

  “This t-t-tormenting of …” I found myself struggling for breath. “Gregory—my points—would you?”

  Gregory stepped behind me and began unlacing the back of my gown. Robin, biting his lip, was already performing the same service for Kit, so we looked like two over-decorated barges unlimbering for combat. Gregory handed me a damp towel to wipe the paint and powder off my face, all the while with dark glances at the opposition as though to signal whose side he was on. Robin inclined more to peacemaking. “What are you talking about, Richard? Nobody is being tormented.”

  I took hold of myself, slowing my speech to a crawl. “I … know … it was you … who p-planted that needle last week. And what did you use … to cause the itch? P-p-powdered nettle?”

  “What … do … you … mean?” Even though he mocked me, Kit's complexion had flushed to a deep shade that his brisk rubbing with a towel could not account for.

  “You m-must tell me that—”

  “I must?”

  “Whatever your reasons … you've achieved your goal. The boy is—petrified.”

  “The boy,” he repeated, tossing the towel to one side, “is too small for you to hide behind. If you gave a bad performance, take it like a man.” I opened my mouth, but could say nothing, probably because he was so close to being right. “What I've achieved,” he went on, pulling off his shift, “is getting a r-r-rise out of you. This is lofty enough, considering what a milksop you normally—”