Apart from Master Oliver Rowe, two other players were not present to see the magnificent new Globe Theatre. Master Tom Hawkins was languishing in Newgate Gaol. However, he was not imprisoned for the fraudulent misuse of another playwrights work. In fact, The Vow Breaker Delivered had been taken off on the third night and had made a loss for the Blackfriars Theatre. No, Master Hawkins was imprisoned for breach of promise to the young lady who lived at the Boar’s Head Tavern in Eastcheap. As Constable Hardy Drew remarked, The Vow Breaker Delivered had been an inspired prophetic title, as apt a title as could have been chosen by Master Bardolph Zenobia.
The other missing player was Master Toby Teazle.
It was the very day after the new Globe Theatre had opened that Constable Drew was able to conclude the case of the murder of Master Oliver Rowe, sometime one of the Kings Men. Master Cuthbert Burbage asked Constable Drew to accompany him to the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem.
Drew was mildly surprised at the request. “That is the hospital for the insane,” he pointed out. Most Londoners knew of Bedlam, for as such the name had been contracted.
“Indeed it is, but I think you will want to see this. I have been asked to identify someone.”
An attendant took them into the gray-walled building, which was more of a prison than a hospital. The stench of human excrement and the noise arising from the afflicted sufferers was unbelievable. The attendant took them to a small cell door and opened it.
A young man crouched inside in the darkness was bent industriously over a rough wooden table. There was nothing on it, yet he appeared to be in the act of writing in the blackness. His right hand held an invisible pen, moving it across unseen sheets of paper.
The attendant grinned. “There he is, good sirs. He says he’s a famous actor and playwright. Says he is a King’s player from the Globe Theatre. That’s why you were asked here, good Master Burbage, just in case there might be truth in it.”
The young man heard his voice and raised his matted head, the eyes blazing, the mouth grinning vacuously. He paused in his act of writing.
It was Toby Teazle.
“Ah, sirs,” he said quietly, calmly regarding them. “You come not a moment too soon. I have penn’d a wondrous entertainment, a magnificent play. I call it The Friend’s Betrayal. I will allow you to perform it but only if my name should go upon the handbill. My name and no other.” He stared at them, each in turn, and then began to recite.
’Tis ten to one this play can never please
All that are here; some come to take their ease
And sleep an act or two; hut those, we fear,
We have frightened with our cannon; so, ‘tis clear,
They’ll say, ‘tis naught… naught…
He hesitated and frowned. “Is this all it is? Naught?” He stared suddenly at the empty table before him and started to chuckle hysterically.
As Constable Drew and Master Cuthbert Burbage were walking back toward Bankside, Drew asked: “Were those his own lines which he was quoting with such emotion?”
Master Burbage shook his head sadly. “No, that was the epilogue from Henry VIII. At least, most of it was. The poor fellow is but a poor lunatic.”
Master Drew smiled wryly. “Didn’t Will Shakespeare once say that the lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact?”
METHOUGHT YOU SAW A SERPENT
Methought you saw a serpent.
Master Hardy Drew, the newly appointed deputy to the Constable of the Bankside Watch, gazed from the first floor latticed window onto the street, watching in unconcealed distaste as a group of drunken carousers lurched across the cobbles below. The sounds of their song came plainly to his ears.
Sweet England’s pride is gone!
Welladay! Welladay!
Brave honor graced him still
Gallantly! Gallantly!
The young man turned abruptly from the window back into the room with an expression of annoyance.
On the far side, seated at a table, the elderly Constable of the Bankside Watch, Master Edwin Topcliff, had glanced up from his papers and was regarding the young man with a cynical smile. “You have no liking for the popular sympathy then, Master Drew?” the old man observed dryly.
Hardy Drew flushed and thrust out his chin. “Sir, I am a loyal servant of Her Majesty, may she live a long life.”
“Bravely said,” replied the constable gravely. “But, God’s will be done, it may be that your wish will be a futile one. Tis said that the Queens Majesty is ailing and that she has not stirred from her room since my lord Essex met his nemesis at the executioners hands.”
It had been scarcely two weeks since the flamboyant young Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, had met his fate in the courtyard of the Tower of London, having been charged and found guilty of high treason. Rumor and disturbances still pervaded the capital, and many of the citizens of London persisted in singing ditties in his praise, for Essex had been a hero to most Londoners, and they might even have followed him in overturning the sour, aging Queen, who now sat in solitary paranoia on the throne in Greenwich Palace.
It was rumored that the auspices were evident for Elizabeths overthrow, and even the usually conservative Master William Shakespeare and his theatrical company had been persuaded to stage a play on the deposing and killing of King Richard II but a couple of weeks before Essex’s treason was uncovered. It was claimed that many of Essex’s supporters had, after dining together, crossed the Thames to the Globe to witness this portentous performance.
In the middle of such alarums and excursions, young Master Hardy Drew had arrived to take up his apprenticeship in maintaining the Queen’s Peace with the aging constable. Drew was an ambitious young man who wanted to create a good impression with his superior. The son of a clerk, he had entered the Inns of Court under the patronage of a kindly barrister, but the man had died, and Hardy Drew had been dismissed because of his lowly birth and lack of social and financial support. So it was, he found himself turning from one aspect of law to another.
Old Master Topcliff rubbed his nose speculatively as he examined his new assistant. The young man’s features were flushed with passionate indignation. “I would not take offense at the songs you hear nor the people’s sympathies, young man. Times are in a flux. It is a time of ebb and flow in affairs. I know this from reading the Almanacs. What is regarded as seditious today may not be so tomorrow.”
Master Drew sniffed disparagingly. He was about to make a rejoinder when there came a banging at the door, and before he or Master Topcliff could respond, it burst open and a young man, with flushed features, his chest heaving from the exertion of running, burst into the room.
“How now? What rude disturbance is this?” demanded Master Topcliff, sitting back in his chair and examining the newcomer with annoyance.
The youth was an angular young man of foppish appearance, the clothes bright but without taste. Topcliff had the impression of one of modest origins trying to imitate the dignity of a gentleman without success.
“I am from the Globe Theatre, masters,” gasped the young man, straining to recover his breath. “I am sent to fetch you thither.”
“By whose authority and for what purpose?”
The young man paused a moment or two for further breaths before continuing. He was genuinely agitated. “I am sent by Richard Burbage, the master of our group of players. The count has been found murdered, sirs. Master Burbage implores you, through me, to come thither to the crime.”