Edward Marston - The Roaring Boy

‘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 putting 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.

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.’