The Greatest Lover in All England Read online

  The stranger stalked across the alley, listing back and forth like a sailor on a stormy deck. With sword poised, he said, “I don’t like people to remember my past, but you’ve a grievous wound, my friend. Let me cure you.”

  Terror spurted through One-Eye’s veins.

  Lifting his sword high, the stranger plunged it deep into his former comrade, then jerked it free. With the edge of One-Eye’s cloak, he cleaned the blade and glanced in the direction of the theater. He would go there next.

  To take care of Rosencrantz.

  2

  Mischief, thou are afoot,

  Take thou what course thou wilt.

  —JULIUS CAESAR, III, ii, 262

  “Sir Danny Plympton’s in the house. Stop the play.” Uncle Will waved one arm at the actors on the stage of the Globe Theater and clutched the script with the other. “By great Zeus’s lightning bolt, stop the play at once! He’ll memorize it and produce it himself before we can make a pittance.”

  The performers ground to a halt while Rosie sagged against one of the columns of the ground floor gallery. Her joints shook, her muscles were flaccid with exhaustion. She constantly scanned the round, three-storied, open-roofed structure, examining every bench in every tier. She watched the entrance, listened for the tramp of heavy feet outside, and tried to convince herself she and Sir Danny were safe.

  She flexed her dirty fingers and watched the movement with weary fascination. She’d incapacitated the captain with her knife thrust, but she hadn’t killed him. Maybe if she’d had a long, sharp knife. Maybe if she’d stabbed harder. Maybe if Sir Danny would stop rushing to meet trouble with open arms…She laughed, a rusty, choking laugh, and then a sob caught her by surprise. Rubbing her eyes with the back of her wrist, she knew that as long as Sir Danny was Sir Danny—exuberant, flamboyant, outrageous—they would never be safe.

  “Hey, Rosie!”

  Dickie Justin McBride hailed her, and she jerked her hand down. She didn’t dare let the Chamberlain’s Men see her in tears. Every one of them had been with Sir Danny’s troupe at one time or another. Every one of them believed her to be a man, and a few of them scorned her as a craven. Nay, she didn’t dare let them catch her crying.

  “Hey, Dickie!” she yelled back. She had despised the handsome actor when they were youngsters, and she despised him now. He had an ugly tendency to pick on those less muscled than he—mostly Rosie, and mostly when they were alone. He had made her life a terror. Now he jumped down from the raised stage into the dirt yard from whence the standing-room customers watched the plays and swaggered toward her.

  “I haven’t seen you that dirty since you fell into the pigsty when you were eight.” He flashed a grin at the actors who fell in behind him. “Good fellows, circle ’round and let me tell you the tale of how Rosie squealed louder than the pigs.”

  They advanced toward Rosie, and she recognized the tactics. Gather a gallery of rogues, bring them in a circle around her, then taunt her with jeers and contempt.

  She was almost glad when Dickie swerved away. “Whew! Haven’t you washed since you fell in that pigsty?”

  All the men waved their hands in Rosie’s direction, making elaborate gagging noises, and her sweaty palms slipped down the column. Aye, she stank, although she and Sir Danny had run to the edge of the silver Thames and splashed the worst of it off.

  With a flourish of his extended arm, Sir Danny proclaimed, “’Tis a sad day in Londontown when the worms of the earth mock the rose. The silver showers from the heavens will wash the rose and it will again be the noblest of flowers. But when the silver showers wash the worms, they will still crawl on their bellies through the dirt.”

  “Aye, and if these worms don’t take their supper break now, their stomachs will wonder if their throats have been cut.” Script in hand, Uncle Will glared at the actors as they changed courses, heading for the entrance and jostling each other as they fought their way out. Uncle Will turned to Sir Danny. “They’re gone. What do you want?”

  “What makes you think I want something?” Sir Danny asked.

  “You never come unless you want something.”

  “Suspicious bastard,” Sir Danny said.

  “Pernicious knave,” Uncle Will replied, and reached out to ruffle Rosie’s hair. “At the risk of being called a worm, I must say you are more bedraggled than usual, my lad. Isn’t this reprobate treating you well?”

  “This reprobate almost did get his throat cut.” Rosie cupped her hand under Sir Danny’s elbow as if he were about to faint and wished someone was doing the same for her. “We’ve got to bandage him.”

  Sir Danny snatched his elbow away from her, clearly offended. “It’s nothing, I tell you! And you were nigh onto choked yourself.” He pushed her collar aside. “The bruises stain your skin like wine stains an ivory cup, and your youth would be more mourned than this old carcass. When next I tell you to escape, do so.”

  “I didn’t understand you.”

  He shook her slightly. “When I tell you to escape, do so.”

  “Not without you,” she said stubbornly.

  “When I tell you to escape—”

  “I can’t!” She pulled away and turned her back to him. New pain and old panic mixed, and she fought to control them, pressing her hands before her face in an attitude of prayer. “I can’t let you go again, Dada.”

  Sir Danny rubbed her back. “Look at me and listen, Rosencrantz.”

  “Nay. You’re not going to look at me with those big eyes and wipe my fears away as you do when one of the troupe comes to you with a toothache or a gallstone. No tricks with me, Sir Danny. I’d rather die with you than to live alone.”

  “And I don’t understand that,” he said softly.

  Sometimes even she didn’t understand the terrors that captured her with clammy fingers, yanking her from the real world into a terrain stony with menace. Usually the specters broke through only at night, but occasionally the phantasms confronted her in broad daylight.

  Like today. Swinging sharply away from his touch, she muttered, “I will not listen, Dada, and I will not let you go.”

  A moment of silence, then Sir Danny cleared his throat. “Modern youth is insolent, is it not, Uncle Will?”

  “I would my son still lived to be so loyal to me,” Uncle Will said.

  Rosie rubbed her arms, up and down, up and down, trying to disperse the fear that chilled her.

  Uncle Will studied her, then guessed, “You’re in trouble again?”

  “Aye,” said Rosie.

  “Nay,” said Danny.

  “Aye, then,” Uncle Will decided.

  “Some cowardly folk might say, ‘Aye.’” Sir Danny looked severely at Rosie, then muttered in an undertone to Uncle Will, “But send a message to Ludovic.”

  Uncle Will shuddered. “Ludovic? Better to call him Lazarus. He moves like one raised from the dead.”

  Sir Danny pressed a perfumed handkerchief to his nose. “But he has been ever loyal to me since I engaged him seven years ago.”

  “As I remember,” Rosie said, “he made that decision.”

  “He is a forceful man,” Sir Danny admitted. “There are times when I would have dismissed him, but for the suspicion he’d refuse to leave.”

  “You!” Uncle Will pointed at one of the stagehands. “Seek you Sir Danny’s manager and instruct him to bring Sir Danny’s troupe, wagons and all.” To Sir Danny, he said, “You can ride inside the wagons to escape the city. Come into the box office. We can be private there.”

  Still not totally convinced of Sir Danny’s good health, Rosie followed close behind the men to the tiny room where the receipts were kept. What seemed to be rivalry and distrust between Sir Danny and Uncle Will rested on a solid foundation of friendship. Not for the first time, she thought they resembled David and Goliath. In wit they were well matched; in size, the physically powerful, balding Uncle Will overshadowed the small-framed, dapper Sir Danny. Yet Sir Danny’s aggressive nature formed a counterpoint to Uncle Wi
ll’s thoughtful melancholy, and it was to Sir Danny that Uncle Will ran for inspiration when he wrote his more bellicose characters.

  Taking a large key off his belt, Uncle Will opened the door and ushered them inside. “Who wants to cut out your heart now?”

  “Oh.” Sir Danny tapped the money box. “Nobody much.”

  “Just the earl of Essex and the earl of Southampton,” Rosie said bluntly.

  Even in the dim light of the little room, she could see Uncle Will lose his ruddy color. “Southampton? My God, he’s my patron.”

  Sir Danny jumped like a flea in a circus. “He’s a damned traitor and deserves execution at the least.”

  “And Sir Danny told him so in Essex House with Essex sitting hard by,” Rosie informed Uncle Will.

  Uncle Will fell backward against the wall, clutching his chest in a gesture honed to perfection in countless theatrical performances. “This is disaster. Southampton knows we’re friends!”

  “That’s how it began,” Rosie said. “He called us in from the street and asked us to bring you a message.”

  Uncle Will placed the script on the table. “What message?”

  “Southampton wants you”—Sir Danny glared—“to perform Richard II.”

  Puzzled, Uncle Will pulled at his scrawny beard. “Why? ’Tis an old play, and not popular, dealing as it does with a monarch deposed.”

  Sir Danny grabbed him by the doublet and shook him with all the aggression of a rat terrier baiting a bear. “That’s why he wants it performed. With no shame—with no discretion, by God—Essex spoke of an insurrection.”

  “An insurrection?”

  “A revolt. A rebellion. A revolution.”

  “I know the meaning,” Uncle Will said in irritation. “But I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t understand?” Hand on hip, finger pointed skyward, Sir Danny stood like a monument to indignation. “They wish you to perform Richard II to perpetuate an atmosphere of unrest, and bring about a mutiny against the very captain who guides our island ship through the turbulent waters of war and peace!”

  “Against the queen? You are mistaken.” Uncle Will appealed to Rosie. “Isn’t he mistaken?”

  “Would God he were.” Rosie wandered to the table and looked down at the sheaf of papers. “But as you know, Queen Elizabeth is not pleased with Essex, and has cut off his income.”

  Still flabbergasted, Uncle Will said, “But insurrection? Essex was her favorite. He would have to be mad to think it would succeed.”

  Sir Danny nodded. “The queen has spoiled him with her favor, and that combined with his good looks and wealth has turned his head. He spoke of our gentle monarch in such agitation of spirit, I thought him mad. He cursed his poverty, and claimed”—he lowered his voice—“that the queen’s conditions for curbing him were as crooked as her carcass.”

  “She’ll have his head.” Uncle Will clutched his own throat.

  “I do so pray.” Sir Danny paced across the dim, tiny room, a whirlwind of emotion that stirred the dust. “He spoke of rousing London, capturing the queen, and forcing her to do his bidding.”

  “He said this to you?” Uncle Will questioned doubtfully.

  “Vehemently,” Sir Danny replied. “I told you I thought him mad.”

  Rosie rubbed her forehead and left a streak of dirt. “You told Lord Southampton, too. You told them both we would repair to Whitehall Palace and inform Queen Elizabeth of their plans.”

  “Do you not agree that is what we should do?” Sir Danny asked.

  “Aye, I do. But the basest intelligence tells me, also, that we should have performed the deed first and orated about it later.”

  Apparently unmoved by Rosie’s aggravation, Sir Danny said, “We do need to get out of London.”

  “As soon as possible.” Uncle Will turned on him savagely. “But this isn’t what I wanted.”

  “I know what you wanted.” Sir Danny flicked invisible dust particles from his sleeve. “We’ve already discussed it. ’Tis impossible.”

  Uncle Will picked up the script and dropped it with a thud back on the table. “I wrote this part with you in mind.”

  “Let Richard play it,” Sir Danny said.

  “You’re a greater actor than Richard Burbage. You know you are. If you’d play this part, you’d receive acclaim and wealth. But you can’t, because you slew yourself with your own jawbone again—”

  “Are you calling me a jackass?”

  “—And have to go into exile in the country.”

  Sir Danny shrugged. “I like the country.”

  “You hate the country,” Uncle Will corrected.

  Dropping her head, Rosie wished she were somewhere else. She didn’t want to hear about Sir Danny’s skill, for she knew it was true. When Sir Danny trod the boards, men sobbed and babes listened with rapt attention. Women found him irresistible, and the queen herself would applaud him. But he never remained in one place long enough to receive the acclaim he deserved.

  And she was the cause.

  How could he remain, when they both feared her masquerade would be revealed by extended familiarity? The waste of his talent sickened her, yet she knew of no steps she could take to end his exile.

  She could have wept easily. Too easily. She looked at the script Uncle Will had dropped. Leafing through the pages, she squinted at the ink scrawls that writhed across the paper like worms. They sought some destination, they formed some organization, but she couldn’t decipher them. Sometimes it seemed she could remember the letters. Sometimes it seemed she had learned to read a few words.

  But mostly, she guessed, she had only imagined a time when she had a tutor and a home and a father whose face she could not recall. It was all part and parcel of her desire to read, and she was too old for dreaming.

  “I used your name in this play,” Uncle Will said.

  She glanced up, and he was looking right at her.

  “That’s right. Rosencrantz. It’s not a big part, but it’s deliciously wicked, and you could play it.”

  Pointing to the script, she asked, “Where is it?”

  “Your name?” Uncle Will flipped through the pages much as she had, but unlike her, he had a clear comprehension of the writing which so puzzled her. Pointing, he said, “There.”

  She bent over the page and stared.

  He spelled it aloud, then laid his finger below a large, looping squiggle. “That’s an ‘R.’ It’s the first letter of your name, and it makes a growling sound.”

  He rolled the sound across his tongue, and she imitated him. “R,” she repeated. “R.” She stared again, committing the squiggle to memory.

  “Sir Danny, look at him.” Uncle Will gestured, and she shrank from the two men who gazed at her so intently. “He stands there and stares at the pages and wants more than the life you’ve given him. A bright lad like him should be able to read.”

  “Why does he need to read?” Sir Danny asked. “He has a memory the equal of mine. I can memorize anything the first time I hear it.”

  “Aye, aye, and you can recite the whole Bible—backwards. But don’t, because I’ve heard you do it before, and once proved a veritable bounty of holy script.”

  Sir Danny combed his shoulder-length hair with a comb he pulled from the purse at his side. Whatever happened, his vanity survived.

  “But Rosencrantz is not an actor. Not like you are.” Uncle Will shook his head sadly. “I know you don’t want to face it. I know you don’t want your protégé to be less than magnificent, but he has never progressed beyond playing women’s roles.”

  “Rosencrantz has his magnificent moments,” Sir Danny argued.

  “Followed by some terrible half hours. But if he could read, he could become a clerk. He’ll never learn if he continues to travel with that provincial touring company.”

  “That’s my provincial touring company,” Sir Danny reminded him.

  Uncle Will wrinkled his nose with scorn. “With wagons to move you from town to town and a scaffo
ld for a stage. Perhaps you long for nothing more, but Rosencrantz has been with you for fifteen years—”

  “Sixteen.” Sir Danny removed his short cloak and slapped the drying mud off the threadbare velvet.

  “And he must be nigh onto eighteen years old.”

  “I’m twenty-one years,” Rosie insisted.

  “A delicate-looking twenty-one.” Uncle Will sounded as if he didn’t believe it.

  Rosie lifted her hairless chin. “Sir Danny said I was four or five when he found me, so I am twenty-one.”

  “Hm.” Uncle Will looked her up and down. “Obviously, traveling doesn’t agree with you, or you wouldn’t be such a scrawny boy.” Displaying a fine-tuned intuition, he coaxed, “Rosencrantz, I’d teach you to read myself if you’d just remain in London.”

  “We can’t.” Sir Danny took Rosie’s hand and squeezed it. “I lost my temper and we’ve got to go.”

  Impatient with him, Uncle Will demanded, “Why didn’t you think of the lad for a change, rather than your egotistic emotions?”

  Sir Danny took on the role of noble defender, his depiction made compelling by his sincerity. “I was thinking of the lad. Do you know what would happen if the government was overturned? Queen Elizabeth has guided this nation for forty years and two, and brought us peace and prosperity. What life would there be for my Rosencrantz if our Good Queen Bess were stripped of authority?”

  “Aye, what life?” Grudgingly, Uncle Will concurred with Sir Danny’s assessment.

  “Someone must take action,” Sir Danny said, “and that someone must be you. You must warn the queen. I would do so, but I dare not show my face on the streets.”

  “Aye, I must warn the queen, and when I do, I’ll have lost my patron.” Nervously, Uncle Will dislodged the few strands of hair that covered his scalp, providing a clear view of the shining pate he so carefully concealed. “Pray God, Sir Danny, she listens without prejudice to an actor and playwright, and ignores the notorious reputation our fellows have begotten.”