‘It has brought me true friends and good fellowship.’
‘Then I will leave you to join them so that you may all get down on your knees together and pray for a miracle. Without a couple of hours of sunshine, you will have to watch your play float off down the river.’
Adjusting his hat and pulling his cloak more tightly around him, Caleb Hay bade farewell and moved away. Nicholas detained him by touching his shoulder.
‘One thing puzzles me, Master Hay.’
‘What might that be?’
‘The way you behaved at our last encounter.’
‘Was I rude or uncivil?’ said Hay with genuine concern. ‘Was I full of self-affairs? Pray, do not take offence, Master Bracewell. An antiquarian lives in the past. We sometimes forget the good manners we should display in the present.’
‘You were not uncivil,’ said Nicholas. ‘We talked quite amicably. But you departed in a fit of anger.’
Hay’s face clouded. ‘I remember now. Jonas Applegarth.’
‘You know the man?’
‘I know of him, sir.’
‘Enough to put you to flight in such a way?’
‘I saw a play of his once at The Curtain.’
‘So you do sink to our level from time to time,’ teased Nicholas gently. ‘What was the piece?’
‘A vile concoction set in Ancient Rome.’
‘You did not like Master Applegarth’s work?’
‘I detested it.’
‘Too bawdy for your taste?’
‘Too bawdy, too brutal and too full of bile. Only a person with a profound hatred of mankind could have penned such a malignant play. Clever, it certainly was. Laden with wit and scholarship of a high order. But, oh so cruel and so unkind. He even made jests in Latin and mocked a beautiful language until its face was covered in ugly sores. That is Jonas Applegarth for you, Master Bracewell. I hope this rain washes his new play into the ditch where it belongs!’
***
The Queen’s Head was a house of mourning. Drenched actors kept vigil around the slimy innyard as if it were a mass grave containing the accumulated bodies of their departed relatives. Edmund Hoode watched a piece of straw being carried on a meandering journey by a tiny rivulet and saw his own life re-enacted in miniature. Peter Digby and his musicians played a dirge. Owen Elias sang in lugubrious Welsh. Lawrence Firethorn could still hear his wife, Margery, hammering nails into the coffin of their marriage as she tore the offending letter to shreds and pronounced a death sentence on their connubial delights. Jonas Applegarth was so grief-stricken that he simply stood in the rain and let it augment the tears that were coursing down his fat cheeks.
Alexander Marwood responded with his usual gleeful misery. Moaning like a wind trapped in a hollow tree, he sought out Nicholas Bracewell and rolled his eyes in despair.
‘Your play is drowned,’ he said in a hoarse whisper.
‘Not yet,’ replied Nicholas. ‘It is but mid-morning and we have some hours to go.’
‘This rain will last a week.’
‘I doubt that, Master Marwood.’
‘You’ll be driven from the stage. No plays, no people to buy my ale. Disaster! How am I to sustain such a loss?’
‘The same way as we do, Master Marwood. With patience.’
‘But I rely on the income from Westfield’s Men.’
‘We pay our rent whether we play or no.’
‘It is your spectators who give me my profit.’
‘And so they will again as soon as the clouds move on. At the first sign of fine weather, they’ll flock back to the Queen’s Head to fill our seats and your coffers.’
‘Causing affrays and damaging my property.’
Alexander Marwood was impossible to please. When a performance was abandoned because of inclement weather, he groaned at the resultant loss of income, yet he complained just as much when Westfield’s Men were actually bringing customers into his innyard. His relationship with the company was as joyless as that with his termagant wife. The landlord was the voice of doom in a beer-stained apron.
As Marwood oozed away into the building, James Ingram joined the book holder beneath the thatched roof that overhung the stables. A dozen small waterfalls provided a splashing descant to their conversation.
‘What do you think, Nick?’ asked Ingram.
‘I have not given up hope yet.’
‘Our playwright has. He is weeping his own rainstorm.’
‘We all suffer in our different ways. But I am glad of a word alone with you, James,’ said Nicholas, turning his back on the depressing scene in the innyard. ‘I seek advice.’
‘On what subject?’
‘The Children of the Chapel Royal.’
‘I’ll tell you all you wish to know about them,’ said Ingram affably. ‘I joined them as a boy of eleven and spent four happy years there. They so imbued me with a love of theatre that I sought my livelihood in the profession.’
‘And you are set to rise swiftly in it, James.’
‘Your praise is kind. There is nobody whose judgement I would trust more readily.’
Nicholas liked the young actor immensely and had been instrumental in getting Ingram taken on as a hired man. The latter’s talent marked him out at once as a player of high calibre and he was now given more or less regular employment by the company. It was generally accepted that he would, in time, be invited to become a sharer with Westfield’s Men and thus have a modicum of security in a wholly insecure trade.
‘You must have many fond memories,’ said Nicholas.
‘I do, Nick. It was hard work, but the joy of performance is like no other. Whether you are thirteen or thirty, it sets fire to your blood. I am forever indebted to the Chapel Children and will never speak harshly of their work.’ He flung a hostile glance at Jonas Applegarth. ‘Unlike some.’
‘Was Cyril Fulbeck the Master in your time?’
‘Not at first. He was Master of the Children of the Chapel at Windsor. It was only in my last year that he took charge of the main choir here in London.’
‘What manner of man is he?’
‘A good and honest fellow. He began as chaplain at Windsor and rose to be choirmaster. He was also a noted composer and later wrote songs for our plays. I cannot speak too warmly of him, Nick. Why do you ask?’
‘I have a friend whose son has been impressed by the Chapel Royal. Like you, he is being trained to act in the theatre. The boy does not follow in your footsteps, alas. Where you were happy, he is sorely oppressed and begs his father to release him in every letter he sends home.’
Ingram sighed. ‘Things have changed at Blackfriars.’
‘Has Cyril Fulbeck grown stricter with his charges?’
‘No, Nick,’ said the other sadly. ‘He has grown older and is much hampered by sickness. It is an effort for him to fulfil his duties as choirmaster. The staging of plays has been handed over to another.’
‘Raphael Parsons.’
‘He is the manager of the Blackfriars company of boys.’
‘A sterner taskmaster, by all account.’
‘So I have heard.’
‘How long has he been in charge?’
‘Since the theatre was rebuilt and re-opened. Raphael Parsons took a lease on it and paid for the new construction. It is a fine indoor playhouse, Nick, much improved since my time there. Blackfriars may not hold as many people as we do here in the Queen’s Head but their plays are not plagued by this damnable bad weather of ours. In snow or rain, the Chapel Children can still perform.’
‘They hold the whip-hand over us there,’ agreed Nicholas with envy. ‘You have never met this Master Parsons, then?’
‘Only once, and that briefly. It was at their first performance at the new theatre. They played Mariana’s Revels and did so exceeding well. Raphael Parsons may be a tyrant but he is a true man of the theatre.’
‘A tyrant, you say?’
‘So it is voiced abroad. He is a martinet. Striving for perfection, he makes the boys work long hours and punishes them severely if they dare fall short.’
‘I have seen the letters I spoke of, James. They tell of harsh words and sound beatings.’