All the Queen's Players Read online

  Rosamund stayed close to Jenny as the flat craft was poled back towards the spires of the city, which were now showing clearly against the midmorning sky. The mare was restless and nervous in such close quarters. It was an ill-smelling crowd to boot, and Rosamund found the smell of warm horseflesh infinitely preferable to that of her fellow humans. Despite the discomfort she was excited. She had rarely left Scadbury and had never been to London.

  “We’ll lodge at the Four Swans in the liberty of Shoreditch,” Thomas said as they led the horses onto the far bank. “It’s a goodly inn, well thought of among theatre folk. It keeps a fair table, and it’s easy distance from the playhouses. The Theatre and the Curtain are hard by. And unlike most of the inns there it does not let rooms for whoring.”

  He glanced back at Rosamund as she mounted Jenny with the aid of a tree stump positioned for that purpose. “Listen well, Rosamund, in the liberty you’ll not stray from my side, is it understood?”

  “What is that . . . the liberty?” Rosamund answered his question, which was purely rhetorical, with her own.

  “There are several of them ringing the City of London itself,” he explained. “A liberty is a part of London but not under the city’s jurisdiction.” He touched his heels to his horse’s flanks, encouraging the animal to break into a trot. “The city officers hold no sway there, so there is little enough enforcement. It makes all manner of pleasures available without the supervision of the city officers . . . no place for a woman of your kind to go abroad.”

  If Rosamund needed further explanation it was provided by her own eyes as they rode into the narrow, crowded streets of the city. Women lounged on every corner and in every doorway, their necklines low enough to expose their nipples. Doors stood open to gaming houses, where she glimpsed men and women throwing dice, their exuberant shouts or vile curses on each throw filling her ears. A man leading a mangy and emaciated dancing bear was surrounded by a crowd of ragged urchins, poking the wretched animal with sticks in an effort to get it to dance. She averted her eyes when they passed the bull-baiting pit, the snarling and bleeding dogs throwing themselves at the staked animal amid the jeers and cheers of the spectators.

  By the time they reached the Four Swans Inn her head was beginning to ache from the raucous noise of the streets and the vile stench from the open sewers. The inn was a handsome building, galleried on four sides around a cobbled courtyard. Sleeping rooms opened off the gallery; the tavern rooms beneath opened directly onto the courtyard. Thomas had chosen their lodging with care. Apart from its proximity to the theatres, Seething Lane, where Master Secretary had his house and his offices, was but a short ride.

  Rosamund was shown to a small corner chamber while her brother and Marlowe occupied a larger apartment next door. “There’ll be dinner served in the ordinary, sir, unless you’d like a private parlor,” the landlord said, handing over the keys.

  Thomas regarded Rosamund doubtfully. He was not flush with funds, and for himself and Kit the ordinary would have done well enough, but his sister couldn’t really partake of the common meal in the common taproom with all comers. “A private parlor,” he said with a grimace, hoping that their sojourn in the Four Swans would not last above a day or two.

  They sat down to rabbit stew, and Rosamund began to feel better almost immediately. She sipped a little wine and waited until her brother had quaffed his first cup of burgundy before saying, “Are we to go to the theatre this afternoon?”

  “Not you, sweetheart,” Thomas declared, reaching for a manchet of bread. “ ’Tis no place for a gently bred maid. You’ll stay here in seclusion and first thing tomorrow morning we will pay a visit to Seething Lane. If nothing more important occurs, mayhap our cousin will be pleased to see you then.”

  “Why is it no place for me?” Rosamund speared a turnip on the tip of her knife and let the gravy drip onto her manchet before eating it.

  Thomas and Kit Marlowe exchanged a glance. “Because of the stews that surround it,” Kit said, pushing aside his barely touched bowl of food and reaching again for the flagon of wine. “I take it that your brother would keep you safe from such dens of iniquity.”

  “No respectable woman would be seen at the theatre,” Thomas stated.

  “But I’ve heard it said the queen herself enjoys the play.”

  “Not in the theatre. They are performed for her in the palace by her own company, the Queen’s Servants. The players are chosen by the Earl of Leicester, selected from all the acting troupes in the country. It is very different from the common theatre. You are not to go and that is all there is to it.”

  Rosamund held her tongue. She knew there was no point arguing with her brother when he spoke in that tone, but if their stay in London was to be extended, by hook or by crook she would see a play.

  At the end of a tedious afternoon and evening spent alone in her chamber, she was ardently hoping that nothing would prevent Sir Francis Walsingham from seeing her on the morrow and not keep her kicking her heels any longer. Scadbury for all its familiar tedium was better than this. She could not go out unaccompanied, despite the enticement of the bustle in the yard below. She had only her slate and chalk to occupy her, but her customary concentration deserted her with all the noise and bustle around her, and after a while she gave up trying to sketch the scene in the courtyard below her window and instead just sat on the deep sill and watched it. Her brother and his friend left for the theatre soon after dinner and had not returned by the time she took herself to bed.

  She slept fitfully, unused, after the country quiet of Scadbury, to the continuous racket from below that went on well into the night. She awoke at dawn to the sound of kegs being rolled across the cobbled yard amid shouted instructions. Doors banged, iron-shod hooves rang on the cobbles, footsteps raced along the gallery outside her door. With a groan she sat up, shivering in the chill of early morning. Her head pounded and her eyes were as tired as if she hadn’t closed them all night. Resolutely she lay down again, closing her eyes, willing herself to relax.

  Miraculously she dozed off despite the noise, and when Thomas knocked on her door an hour later, she awoke much more refreshed. He put his head around the door. “ ’Tis past time you were up, slugabed. If you want to break your fast before we ride, you must hurry. Master Secretary expects me before eight o’clock and he is a man who keeps careful time.”

  Rosamund sat up. “Is there water to be had? I would wash my face before meeting our august cousin.”

  “I’ll send someone up with a jug. Do you need help with your gown?”

  “Maybe with the lacing.” She pushed aside the coverlet and swung her legs over the side of the high bed. The air was still chill and goose bumps popped on her bare arms.

  “I’ll tell the girl to help you when she brings the water.” Thomas left and she stood up, stretching. She went to the window, peering down at the scene below. It seemed as chaotic now as it had the previous evening. Unlike yesterday, the day was overcast and a draft was coming from below the ill-fitting mullioned window. She shivered in her thin linen shift, her bare feet cold on the wooden floor.

  A timid knock at the door brought a young girl with a jug of water into the room. “ ’Tis not hot, mistress,” she apologized, setting the jug on the dresser. “Cook needs all the kettles on the range for boiling tripe.”

  “No matter.” Rosamund, hoping that tripe would not make an appearance at the breakfast table, poured water into the basin. She splashed her face and washed her hands, examining her wavering reflection in the polished tin mirror. She looked well enough, she thought, and her russet hair, freshly washed before the journey, still had a burnished luster to it. It was a good color for her new apple-green velvet gown.

  She pulled on her new cotton stockings, tying the ribbon garters above the knee, then stepped into the canvas farthingale, fastening the tapes at her back. With the help of the young maid she eased the velvet gown over her head. “How tight shall I lace, mistress?” The maid took the laces at the back
of the boned bodice and tugged.

  “Not too tight.” Rosamund was unaccustomed to the restrictive garment; such fashionable necessities were not needed with the simple country gowns she normally wore.

  “You’ve such a small waist anyway,” the girl said admiringly as she pulled on the laces. “You scarcely need the bones.”

  Rosamund smiled at the compliment and slipped into her new heeled shoes of green leather. She tried to see her full reflection in the wavery mirror. It was impossible to get the whole effect, but it felt right, even though the unaccustomed heels made her feel a little unsteady. She brushed her hair and then left it loose over her shoulders. The style suited her well and denoted her virginal state. Of course, once she’d lost that in the marriage bed, she’d have to confine the long, luxuriant locks, but not today.

  With a word of thanks to her tiring maid she made her way to the private parlor, where she found Thomas alone, slicing into a sirloin. Candles were lit to combat the gloomy outdoors. He looked her over with a critical eye, then nodded. “I have something for you . . . something of our mother’s.” He reached into the inside pocket of his slashed black velvet doublet and laid a delicate silver fillet on the table, where it winked in the candlelight.

  “Oh, how pretty,” Rosamund exclaimed, lifting the dainty piece. She had nothing of her mother’s and had often wondered what had happened to the various bits and pieces of jewelry that Dorothy had owned. She fastened the fillet around her forehead and felt instantly elegant and sophisticated.

  “It looks well on you,” Thomas observed, waving the point of his knife to a stool at the table. “Break your fast.”

  Rosamund took a manchet of bread and accepted the slice of sirloin that her brother cut for her. She buttered the bread lavishly, sipped the small beer in her tankard, and ate. “Where’s Master Marlowe?” she mumbled through a mouthful of bread and meat.

  “Still abed.” Thomas shrugged and was clearly displeased. He poured ale for himself.

  “Are we to go without him?”

  Her question was answered by the opening of the door. Kit Marlowe, bleary-eyed, waxen complexioned, came in and slumped at the table with a groan. “Ale,” he croaked.

  Thomas said nothing, merely filled a tankard from the copper jug on the table and pushed it across to him.

  Kit drank deeply, then, somehow instantly refreshed, sat up straight at the board, regarding Rosamund with a curious eye. “You look neat and tidy, Mistress Rosamund. In honor of your cousin I assume.”

  “You’d do well to smarten yourself up as well in honor of Master Secretary,” Thomas grunted. “Look at you. Anyone would think you were still drunk.”

  “Calumny.” Kit waved the comment aside with a careless flick of his hand. “Nothing that a touch of water and a comb won’t set right.” He brushed at his doublet, another one borrowed from Thomas.

  Thomas drained his own tankard and pushed his stool back from the table. “I’m going to order the horses. Be in the stable yard in fifteen minutes.” The door clicked shut decisively on his departure.

  “I have displeased your brother, I fear,” Kit mused, refilling his tankard. “But, alas, he is right. I cannot afford to make a poor impression on Master Secretary. Poverty and playmaking are natural bedfellows, and if I’m not to starve in a garret, then I must needs take more lucrative employment.” He stood up as he spoke, tossing back the contents of his tankard. Fascinated, Rosamund watched the way his throat worked as he swallowed in one gulp without taking a single breath.

  “I shall go and make myself respectable,” he declared, and departed the parlor.

  Rosamund went to fetch her cloak and gloves. On impulse she slipped her slate and chalk into the deep pocket of her cloak. She had a premonition that she would be spending a large part of this day in antechambers, particularly if Sir Francis had no time to see her today. As she made her way to the yard below, she drew the hood of her cloak carefully over the rich fall of her hair, setting it back a little on her head so that the dainty silver fillet was visible.

  Her gloves were of soft green leather to match her shoes. Thomas had grumbled at the expense, but he was far too much of a dandy himself to deny the need for symmetry of color. There was no knowing whom his sister might encounter in the corridors of Seething Lane, and she must be a credit to her name and her august relative.

  Thomas looked much more cheerful when Kit Marlowe appeared in the yard, spruced up, his linen clean, his hair tidy beneath a tall velvet hat, crowned with a black plume, his doublet and trunks brushed, his stockings straight, his shoes gleaming. He gave Thomas a mocking bow, his heavy-lidded brown eyes ironic.

  Rosamund mounted Jenny hastily. There was provocation in that look and it made her uncomfortable. Thomas grinned and buffeted Kit on the shoulder before swinging onto his own gelding and trotting out of the Four Swans’ yard and into the street beyond.

  Rosamund followed, her nose wrinkling at the stench from the open sewer running down the center of the lane. The stench was easily accounted for by the careless men untrussing alongside, letting loose odiferous streams into the reeking channel. She edged Jenny to one side of the alley, as far as possible from the danger of splashes, just managing to avoid a three-legged dog who darted beneath the mare’s belly, making her stumble on the slimy cobbles.

  A dark, forbidding building reared up at the end of the street and a crowd stood at the barred gates, shouting for admittance. A man appeared on the other side of the gates. He opened a small gate within the larger one and the crowd surged forward, but only one at a time could get through the gate, and before he would permit them entrance, he extended a filthy hand for a copper coin, which he dropped into a leather pouch at his waist, before waving them in.

  “What is that place?” Rosamund drew alongside her brother.

  He broke off his conversation with Kit to look. “Oh, it’s Bedlam,” he answered with a careless shrug.

  “The madhouse? But why are they all paying money to enter?”

  “Oh, they wish to see the madmen, they have all kinds in there. It gives good entertainment. . . . Keep up beside me, now. The streets are rough around here.”

  Rosamund needed no further admonishment and kept Jenny neck and neck with her brother’s gelding until they had passed the madhouse and the street widened a little with an archery butt set up in a small green space to one side. Two youths were practicing with their bows, and it seemed an incongruously peaceful, almost countrified activity compared with the bubbling, barely suppressed violence of the lanes behind them.

  This street, called Bishopsgate, was much wider than the lanes that surrounded it, and it still maintained some of the characteristics of the original old Roman road, although the paving was no less slimy and the kennel no more fragrant. Gardens stretched on either side, and she could hear from behind the unruly hedges giggles and murmurs and occasionally an uglier sound of flesh on flesh. It was not hard to guess what was going on behind the hedges, prostitutes at their work even at this early hour.

  Thomas turned his horse once more off the broader thoroughfare and into the narrower streets leading to the river. He drew up at the door of a substantial house on Seething Lane and dismounted. The door opened directly onto the street and he banged the brass knocker vigorously. It was opened by a dour manservant dressed in unrelieved black, who said, “Master Walsingham?”

  “The very same,” Thomas agreed. “I bring my sister Mistress Rosamund Walsingham to see her cousin Sir Francis at his bidding. And also a gentleman whom I venture to believe Master Secretary will be pleased to interview.”

  The manservant stepped aside, calling something over his shoulder. A young man came out at a run and took the horses as Thomas and his companions were ushered into the house.

  It was dark, gloomy, and chill in the hall and Rosamund blinked until her eyes had grown accustomed to the dimness. The air smelled stale and dusty, as if windows were never opened. The wood paneling was dark, as were the oak boards beneath her fe
et. She glanced over her shoulder at Kit, who for a moment seemed to have lost his arrogant self-possession. He looked uncertain, ill at ease.

  She wondered how much was at stake for him with this interview. He needed money, she knew. Was his need truly desperate? Dressed as he was in her brother’s finery, he didn’t look like an impoverished student, poet, and playmaker. But she guessed that the queen’s secretary of state was unlikely to be deceived by appearances.

  Thomas clicked his finger at her, shaking her out of her reverie, and she followed the two men, who were in turn following the manservant down a long corridor. They were ushered into a small, paneled inner chamber, furnished with a long bench that she guessed was there for the comfort of petitioners awaiting the favor of an interview with Master Secretary, and a bare pine table in the window embrasure.

  The manservant disappeared and they waited for a moment in an awkward silence. Kit began to hum one of his bawdy songs and Thomas leaned against the table drumming his fingers on the surface. Rosamund went to look at one of the two gloomy oil paintings that adorned the paneling. It was a particularly unpleasant rendering of the flaying of Marsyas, not that there could ever be a pleasant rendering of such a subject, she reminded herself when, after a moment’s horrified fascination, she turned away.

  The manservant returned. “Master Secretary will see you now, Master Walsingham, with your guest. Mistress Rosamund is to remain here.”

  Rosamund sighed. She’d expected nothing else. At least she’d brought her drawing materials.

  Thomas and Kit Marlowe followed the manservant.

  Chapter Four

  A DARK-VISAGED MAN rose from the chair behind the vast desk and regarded his visitors without expression for a few moments. His mouth was concealed by a lush mustache that curled at its ends, and his long, sharp chin was accentuated by a neat black beard. He wore a tight black cap over short-cropped graying hair, and his doublet and hose were both of purple velvet so dark as to seem black in the dimness of the room, which was lit by a brace of wax candles on the desk throwing their illumination almost exclusively onto the documents laid out beside the quill and inkstand.