Ink and Steel

Burbage had caught Alleyn’s elbow and drew him away from the fire. The taller man bent his head to hear the smaller’s arguments. The cross Alleyn had worn ever since a particularly disastrous performance of Faustus dangled from its cord as he leaned down.

“If you like.” Fingers against the table, a nervous, rilling tap. “Don’t trust Edward de Vere, Master Shakespeare. And don’t trust too much in the patronage of Southampton, for all thou dost flatter him with thy poetry. He’s a boughten man.

“You know this, my lord?” Will noticed the dark line furrowed between Strange’s dark eyes. “Aye. You know it.”

“I know too much.” Strange finished his wine. He inverted his cup and pushed himself to his feet; the other men at the table jumped up as a lord stood. “I am expected home to sup. Finish the bottle, Master Shakespeare.” Strange threw coins on the table.

His tired smile struck Will hard. There was too much resignation in it. “Don’t give up hope on your poor players, my lord,” Will said, hoping that Strange would hear both his words and the meaning under them. “The playhouses will be open soon.”

Lord Strange turned back from the door and smiled. “See that you make me proud, Master Shakespeare. Masters Burbage, Master Kemp.” And with that, Ferdinando Stanley collected his hat from the peg by the door, and went.

Will’s letter to Annie dispatched the following morning netted only a stony silence in reply. He meant to send a second one a week after the first, but good intentions were lost in the whirl of rehearsal and rewrite and frenzied preparation of two plays at once: the tragedy Titus Andronicus, for which Will need not only learn his roles but also face down Oxford in a series of hour-murdering meetings; and a light-hearted comedy which was finally, after much argument, entitled The Taming of the Shrew.

The clownish Will Kemp was appointed lord of Misrule chief of Christmas festivities for lord Strange’s Men, thus ensuring that drunkenness and disorder would ride sovereign over the frantic preparations for the Twelfth Night play. And between a tailor’s visit or three, rehearsals all day and all night (and drinking at the Mermaid), occasional church services and the Twelve Days festivities, the first time Will had a moment’s silence between his own ears was on January 5. And only because a thin-lipped, towering Ned Alleyn, who, plied by Burbage with liquor and conversation, would perform with lord Strange’s Men this once, threw the entire company out of the Mermaid Tavern and into the street to ‘go home, the lot, and rest your heads so as not to lose them before Her Majesty!’

Will’s stomach had been too sour for much drinking, and now, as he lay in his bed against the warmth of the chimney, it was too sour for much sleeping.

Perform before the Queen.

He sat up in bed and let the bedclothes slip aside. A draft came between the floorboards as he set his feet down; he stood anyway, shivering with his coverlet wrapped around his shoulders, and crossed to light a candle. After unrelieved darkness, the glow warmed him as much as a fire. Perform before the Queen and her rival favorites, and remind them that their duty is to their sovereign, and not to their quarrels. Oh, I wish Annie were here to see this.

He set the candle on the sideboard and opened an oaken cupboard, drawing out the soft wine red velvet drape of his new doublet. Kit would have loved it: it fit like a second skin, snug at the waist and broad at the shoulders, slashed in peach taffeta and buttoned with knotted gilt. Kit would have been much calmer, Will thought, as he picked up a clothes brush and polished the nap of the already spotless velvet. The steady rasp of the brush on the cloth helped him think: his racing, exhausted thoughts rocked instead of spinning, and Will forced himself to breathe and contemplate.

Put on the role, and play it. Turn a trembling hand into a swordsman’s confidence, and quivering voice into an arrogant sneer. I’m a player, if I’m not a Burbage. I can manage a role indifferent well. So tomorrow I’ll be a role. And then the day after tomorrow, I will write to Annie, and see if she’ll have me home for lent.