Mistress Malevole assured him that she would answer his plea, only to create further confusion with another round of potions. In the leading female role, Richard Honeydew, the youngest of the apprentices, showed a delight in merry mischief that earned Mistress Malevole the complete sympathy of the audience. They rejoiced in the endless potions and the multiple changes of character. It was only in the last act that Loveless himself was prevailed upon to drink one of the concoctions himself. Seeing the havoc they had wreaked on others, he insisted that his servant tasted it first and he beckoned Hal Bridger forward.
His moment had arrived. Trembling nervously and with a throat that had suddenly turned into a parched desert, Bridger summoned up all his strength to say the one line that he had been given. He watched Mistress Malevole mix the potion then pour it into a cup. When it was offered to him, he forced a smile.
‘I will take anything from your fair hand,’ he said, bravely.
Accepting the cup, he drank deeply. Bridger was supposed to sway for a few moments before falling gently to the floor. Instead, he let out a cry of agony, flung away the cup and grasped at his stomach with both hands. When he keeled over, he went into a violent paroxysm, arching and kicking with such uncontrollable force that he knocked over the table, spilling its contents across the stage. The audience roared with mirth, thinking it was part of the play that had been carefully rehearsed.
Nicholas Bracewell was not fooled. Watching with dismay from behind the scenes, he knew that Hal Bridger was in real pain. No compassion was shown by the throng. The greater his convulsions, the more the spectators laughed. When he kicked over a chair and sent it cart-wheeling from the stage, there was a round of applause for him. But the hapless servant was no longer acting a part.
He was, literally, dying before their eyes.
Chapter Three
Bemused by the frantic display in front of them, the actors were quite uncertain what to do. They stood in a circle around Hal Bridger and watched him writhe dramatically on the boards to the misplaced amusement of the roaring onlookers. Lord Loveless’s servant then twisted upward in torment one more time before lapsing into immobility. It was Nicholas Bracewell who reacted first. Realising that the play could founder if it lost its impetus, he set his prompt copy aside and stepped onstage, nodding deferentially to Lord Loveless as if he were another of his retinue. With great gentleness, he scooped up the body and carried it quickly into the tiring-house. Lawrence Firethorn showed his presence of mind by turning the incident into a jest.
‘Is that what your potion does, Mistress Malevole?’ he asked. ‘I’ll have none of it or there’s not a piece of furniture in my house will be safe from my flailing limbs?’
The rest of the cast followed where he led, using all their skills to disguise the fact that they had been deeply disturbed by what had just happened. With a combination of witty dialogue, vivid gestures and the comic business carefully devised in rehearsal, they took the play at breakneck speed into its closing scenes. No more magic potions were needed. Restored to normality, the three beautiful women sought the same rich husband, but each was rejected in turn by Lord Loveless because they were only interested in his wealth. It was the scheming Mistress Malevole — renouncing her malevolence — who emerged as his true love and he disclosed his own secret passion for her. The happy couple were promptly married by a priest, and Barnaby Gill, as the effervescent Clown, brought festivities to a close with an hilarious jig. Cheers, whistles and loud applause reverberated around the inn yard.
Westfield’s Men had a resounding success on their hands.
Nicholas Bracewell took no pleasure from the ovation. All that concerned him was the fate of the youth who lay on the table in the tiring-house. Though he tried to revive Hal Bridger, he knew that his efforts were in vain. What the audience had found so diverting were, in fact, the death throes of a young and innocuous assistant stagekeeper, making his very first — and last — appearance before the public. Nicholas was shocked and saddened. He used a cloak to cover Bridger’s face and hide it from the actors who were staring with ghoulish fascination at the contorted features. George Dart was appalled.
‘Hal is dead?’ he gasped.
‘I fear so,’ said Nicholas. ‘The poor lad was poisoned.’
‘Poisoned?’
‘I could smell it on his lips.’
‘God forgive me!’ exclaimed Dart. ‘I prepared that potion.’
‘You were not to blame, George.’
‘And I let Hal drink it in my place. I should have played that servant.’ He began to quake. ‘In giving the part to Hal, I killed him!’
Dart was inconsolable. Weeping copiously, he retired to a corner of the room with his head in his hands. At that moment, Firethorn led the company offstage. Actors who had acknowledged the applause with broad smiles now gathered around the corpse with a mixture of sorrow and bewilderment. Lord Loveless gazed down at the body.
‘What on earth happened, Nick?’ he demanded.
‘Hal’s drink was poisoned.’
‘Send for a doctor at once.’
‘He’s beyond the reach of medicine,’ said Nicholas.
There was a collective sigh of despair. Rising above it was a piercing cry of horror from Richard Honeydew, who pushed forward to stand beside the table and pulled back the cloak from Bridger’s face. The apprentice was no longer the guileful Mistress Malevole but a frightened boy with blood on his hands.
‘This is my doing!’ he said, aghast.
‘No,’ said Nicholas.
‘But I gave him that drink.’
‘You were not to know that it was poisoned, Dick.’
‘I murdered Hal Bridger.’
The acclaim in the yard reached a new pitch of hysteria and Firethorn responded at once, calling his actors to order so that he could take them back onstage to harvest the applause. Fixed smiles returned to their faces but grief burnt away inside them. Stunned by the gruesome death of the servant, Mistress Malevole had difficulty in standing and Lord Loveless had to wrap an arm around her shoulder to prevent her from tumbling over. Spectators clapped and shouted until their palms were sore and their throats hoarse.
Nicholas Bracewell, meanwhile, remained in the tiring-house. His only companions were the distraught George Dart and the body of Hal Bridger. Closing his eyes, he sent up a silent prayer for the soul of the deceased. When he lifted his lids again, he saw the head of Alexander Marwood peering around the door at the corpse on the table. There was a note of grim satisfaction in the landlord’s voice.
‘I told you that this play would bring trouble,’ he said, baring his blackened teeth. ‘You should have changed the title.’
There was so much for the book holder to do that the next half an hour passed in a blur. Nicholas had to send for constables, report the murder and set an official investigation in motion. He also had to calm George Dart, reassure the tearful Richard Honeydew, keep the irate Lawrence Firethorn at bay and supervise the storing of costumes and properties. The first thing that he did was to slip onstage to retrieve the poisoned cup that had been tossed aside by Hal Bridger, sniffing it as he did so and noting the pungent odour. The potions that were given throughout the play were contained in a series of phials, filled with nothing more harmful than red wine, heavily diluted with water. Nicholas took charge of them all so that he could examine each one at leisure. As soon as the audience began to disperse, he was able to order the dismantling of the scenery and the stage.