‘I was careless.’
‘You are never careless, James.’
‘Then my mind was elsewhere.’
‘Our spectators will be elsewhere if we give such a poor account of ourselves. There’s hardly a member of the cast who has not stumbled over his role.’
‘The lady has unnerved us.’
‘Will you let one solitary person affect you thus?’ said Nicholas, loud enough for his reprimand to reach everyone in the tiring-house. ‘I begin to think she has been planted on us by Banbury’s Men to drive you all to distraction and make our rivals seem the finer company. This is a poor way indeed to serve our patron and our play.’
Ingram accepted the rebuke with a nod and vowed to make amends for his lapse of concentration during the next scene. But the list of casualties lengthened steadily. One by one, the actors succumbed to the subtle impact of the face in the lower gallery. Even the apprentices were not immune. Schooled to portray maiden modesty themselves, they became its hapless victims. Nicholas was shocked to see Richard Honeydew, the youngest, most talented and reliable of them, falling prey to the charms of the singular spectator and gabbling his words as if they were hot coals in his mouth that had to be spat out as soon as possible.
George Dart was the most spectacular casualty. The assistant stage-keeper, a reluctant actor at the best of times, was too busy in the early scenes trying to remember his lines and his moves as a Turkish soldier to notice any of the spectators. It was only when he saw the growing wonderment of his colleagues that he thought to look up at its source. It was a disastrous mistake. Instead of rounding up Maltese prisoners, Dart was an instant captive himself and gazed up at the gaoler of his heart so stead-fastly that he lost his bearings completely and wandered off the edge of the stage and into the arms of the standees in the front rank.
The smallest soldier ever to serve in the Turkish army now became the funniest, and the audience roared with laughter. By the time that Dart was thrown back onstage, the next scene had started and he found himself marooned in the middle of the enemy stronghold. Not knowing whether to stay or flee, he did both alternately, and his madcap indecision drew fresh hysteria from the crowd. It was only when the Grand Master lashed at him with a sword that Dart realised that a hasty retreat was in order.
Scurrying into the tiring-house, he fainted with relief at his escape and fell into the book-holder’s arms. Nicholas winced. A tale of heroism was in danger of becoming a farce. He would have stern words for George Dart when the latter recovered to participate in the siege of Malta.
Predictably, there was only one survivor. Barnaby Gill, the company’s acknowledged clown, was impervious to feminine beauty of any kind, treating all women with a police disdain as a necessary evil put upon the earth for the sole purpose of procreation. Gill’s darker passions led him in another direction. When he first spied the lady who was causing such commotion among his fellows, he accorded her no more than a cursory glance. However, his attention soon returned to her when he realised that she was admiring his performance above all else on stage.
Gill took the role of Hilario, jester to the Knights of Malta, a man whose songs and dances brought welcome comic relief to a fraught situation. Hilario was also a key figure in the romantic sub-plot which enlivened the play. Whenever he appeared, the young woman clapped her gloved hands with polite enthusiasm and his jig in Act Three had her trembling with mirth. Gill responded by directing much of his performance at her, coaxing smiles, laughter and, eventually, tears of delight. In pleasing an honoured guest of their patron, he would earn Lord Westfield’s gratitude and that was always to be sought.
Lawrence Firethorn was galled by his rival’s success. As Hilario skipped nimbly offstage to sustained applause, the Grand Master was waiting to intercept him.
‘There was no dance set down for that scene, Barnaby.’
‘I invented one to satisfy my admirers.’
‘The only admirer you have is the one who gazes back at you from the looking-glass. Play the scenes as they are written.’
‘Save your strictures for our fellows,’ said Gill with a dismissive wave. ‘They deserve them, I do not. It is they who are enslaved by that creature beside our esteemed patron. While she has bewitched every man in the company, I alone have enchanted her. She rose to her feet after my last jig.’
‘To break wind in disgust, no doubt.’
‘The lady is a shrewd playgoer. She recognises genius.’
‘That is why she hangs on every word I say.’
‘Only hangs, Lawrence? She drools over mine. Your Knights of Malta may defeat the Turk, but Hilario is victor over both armies. Ask of the creature in blue. She worships me.’
Firethorn blustered impotently. The hideous truth had to be faced. Barnaby Gill was stealing the play from its leading player. The gorgeous young lady in the lower gallery somehow preferred a licensed fool to the Grand Master of the Order. Smarting from this blow to his professional pride, Firethorn blazed even more gloriously in the ensuing scenes. The rest of the audience were beneficiaries of this extraordinary display of his talent but he could still not win over the one person who mattered to him. Patently fascinated by his portrayal, she did not sigh at his setbacks or stir at his heroism. When he sent twenty lines of exquisite poetry winging its way up to her, all she could do was to watch him with quizzical interest. Then the clown stepped back into the action and her little hands were clapping once more.
It was humiliating. For once in his career, Firethorn was made to feel that he was failing both as an actor and as a man. Yielding the palm to Barnaby Gill-of all people-made the pain almost unendurable. The spectators at the Queen’s Head saw none of his personal suffering. What they were witnessing was a stock play from the company’s repertoire being turned into a small masterpiece by the spirited performance of the Grand Master and the comic genius of Hilario. Between them, the two men rescued the drama from its string of early mistakes and inspired the whole company to do itself justice.
Nicholas Bracewell was relieved that The Knights of Malta was now recognisably the piece which they had rehearsed. As the drama moved with gathering force into its final scene, he could sense the power it was exerting over its audience. It was then that Edmund Hoode made his only appearance. Having laboured so strenuously to refine and improve the play, the resident author of Westfield’s Men made sure that he himself had a small but decisive role. Where better to impress himself upon the spectators’ minds than at the very close? What part could be more ideal for this purpose than that of Don García de Toledo, Viceroy of Sicily and the man who finally raised the siege by coming to the aid of the gallant knights?
When Hoode made his triumphal entry, spontaneous cheers and applause broke out in the yard. It briefly turned a competent actor into an accomplished one and he declaimed his first few speeches with a panache worthy of Firethorn himself. When the Grand Master embraced him with thanks, however, Don García got his first glimpse of the face in the lower gallery. It took his breath away so completely that he could barely get his tongue around his lines. Eventually, after an interminable pause to collect himself, Hoode put tremendous feeling into the finest speech in the play.
Unfortunately, The Knights of Malta was not the play in question. Jolted out of character by the vision before him, he ended up in Love’s Sacrifice, one of his own pieces. When it slowly dawned on the audience that Don García de Toledo, a military hero, was not celebrating his victory but declaring his undying passion to someone in a totally different play, the chuckles began in earnest. They soon turned to raucous jeers, and two hours of unremitting work upon the stage were in danger of being sunk beneath a sea of mocking laughter.