The stage was set, there was a fanfare of trumpets and Owen Elias entered in a black cloak to declaim a Prologue. He cut such a dashing figure and attacked the lines with such vigour that he drew a burst of applause. Lawrence Firethorn then swept in as Charlemagne, leading four armed soldiers and yet somehow managing to convince the onlookers that he led a mighty host. He addressed his troops before battle to instil a sense of mission into them then he led the army off with a cry of such piercing volume that it shattered a bottle of Venetian glass that stood on a table for ornament. Martial prowess was followed by rustic comedy as Barnaby Gill took over to play a scene with Edmund Hoode from Cupid’s Folly. The whole room was soon awash with laughter, and Gill compounded their glee by concluding with one of the hilarious jigs that were his hallmark.
It was left to Richard Honeydew to restore order and raise the tone. Dressed as a French princess, he sat on a stool, stroking his long auburn hair and singing plaintive love songs to the accompaniment of the lute. He was the youngest and most talented of the four apprentices and his piping treble had a most affecting timbre. The audience was enchanted and Judith Grace was so struck with it all that she almost swooned. Her father steadied her with his arm.
‘It is only a boy who sings, Judith, no real princess.’
‘I will never believe that is a boy.’
‘She is a lad, I tell you. Cunning in his skills.’
‘It is a girl, father. As I am a girl — so is she.’
Her ogling admirer leant across to make contact.
‘Your father speaks true,’ he said in an oily whisper. ‘Our princess is a mere apprentice with a pretty voice. Girls are not allowed to appear upon the stage. Boys must take their parts and they do it with rare skill.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Judith, then she joined in the clapping as Richard Honeydew ended his contribution and curtseyed. ‘This boy is a girlish miracle.’
Watching from the side, Nicholas Bracewell had also been touched by the apprentice’s solo performance but for another reason. Edmund Hoode had written the lyrics of the songs but they had been set to music by Peter Digby, the brilliant if erratic leader of their consort, yet another to be discarded through the exigencies of the tour. Digby had been replaced by a hired man who, as an actor-musician, could offer double value, indeed, would have a range of functions that his former director could never fulfil. The substitute was now leaving the stage with his lute but the next day would find him harnessing the dray horses, loading the waggon, setting up a stage when they got to Oxford, sweeping and strewing it with fresh rushes, then conning his lines so that he could play half a dozen different roles in a play he had never seen before. An actor’s life was a rehearsal for the madhouse.
As Richard Honeydew and his accompanist left, Nicholas whisked all furniture from the stage so that the six dancers who now entered could cavort at will. Moving with formal grace, they went through a whole range of courtly dances, and the flagstones of the Fighting Cocks became a marble floor at a royal palace. Farce now surged gloriously onto the stage as Barnaby Gill, Owen Elias and Edmund Hoode played three gullible bumpkins who, rousing themselves from a drunken stupor, mistake an old friar for Saint Peter and imagine that they have died and been sent to heaven. In the robes of his order, Lawrence Firethorn was a jolly churchman who took advantage of the men’s stupidity to catechise them about their sins and see if they were fit to be admitted through the gates of what was, in fact, the very ale house where they had first become hopelessly inebriated.
Firethorn was so well versed in the part that he was able to touch off explosions of mirth and give himself the pleasure of gazing upon Judith Grace until the uproar began to fade. He noted that the portly man near the front of the audience had made her the object of his attention as well, but her father was too busy leading the laughter to observe this. Firethorn’s rising lust had the excuse it needed. He would not be pursuing the girl for his own gratification but in order to rescue her from the clutches of a leering stranger. His holy friar vibrated with irreligious intent.
The audience was now treated to music in a lighter vein as two other apprentices — Martin Yeo and John Tallis — sang duets with a fuller musical accompaniment. Wigs, gowns and make-up transformed them into winsome young ladies, though the lantern jaw of John Tallis had an unfeminine solidity to it. When they left the stage, the climax of the entertainment was reached in an extract from Vincentio’s Revenge, a full-blooded tragedy that was synonymous with the name of Westfield’s Men. Lawrence Firethorn, supreme as ever in the title role, had chosen to play the scene in which Vincentio declared his love for the beauteous Cariola, unaware that she was already dying from poison that had been administered in her wine. Richard Honeydew was a superb foil for him as the ill-starred heroine. Here were the two ends of the acting profession — veteran and apprentice — meeting in the middle to produce ten minutes of memorable theatre.
The audience was enthralled, but Firethorn’s interest lay in one particular spectator. His wooing of Cariola was an elaborate courtship of Judith Grace, and the girl eventually seemed to realise this. Surprise gave way to alarm but he soon turned that into burning curiosity. He could feel her gaze following him like a beam of light and when he finally allowed himself to meet her eyes over the fallen body of Cariola, he saw that the conquest had been made. Firethorn and Richard Honeydew took several bows before they were allowed to leave then they returned with the full company to take a final toll of applause.
Samuel Grace was positively hopping with joy. He pressed the five pounds into Firethorn’s hand and thanked him for bringing the magic of theatre into his daughter’s life. The actor-manager was given the opportunity to kiss her hand and inhale her fragrance. It was enough. The caress that she gave his fingers and the secret glance that she shot him were sureties of mutual pleasure and he vowed to bring even more magic into her life in the privacy of her bedchamber. Firethorn had a competitor. The plump man first paid up his share of the cost then tried to engage her in conversation, but Judith Grace turned away with head downcast and hands in her lap. Other guests came up to make smaller contributions for the entertainment and ten pounds in all went into the communal purse of Westfield’s Men.
As the guests dispersed to their beds, Firethorn treated the company to a last drink. One by one, they, too, began to slip away, conscious that they would be off again soon after dawn and hoping to snatch some sleep before first light scratched at the shutters. Lawrence Firethorn produced a monster yawn and pretended to drag himself up the staircase in order to fall upon his bed. The performance did not fool Edmund Hoode for a second.
‘The old cat is mousing again!’ he said bitterly. ‘How does he do it, Nick? Why does he do it?’
‘Because he is Lawrence Firethorn.’
‘Well, let him go his way! I do not envy him. I forswear all women. They will never ensnare me again.’
‘How so?’
They were among the last to linger in the taproom and sat companionably at a table. Nicholas Bracewell was in no mood to hear about a fractured romance, because the scene from Vincentio’s Revenge had reminded him irresistibly of his own loss. As the poisoned Cariola died in twitching agony, he saw the murdered girl from Devon stretched out on the floor of his chamber in Bankside. It was not only the young messenger who was beyond his reach. Anne Hendrik was gone as well. The killer had poisoned their friendship. Notwithstanding the twinges that it might bring him, however, Nicholas agreed to listen to Edmund Hoode’s tale of woe for two reasons. It was his duty as a friend to offer sympathy and it would advantage the whole company if he could help to dig their playwright out of his pit of despair and restore him to his rightful position. The chest that held his other plays also housed his foul papers of The Merchant of Calais, last of the three new dramas he was commissioned to write that year. If Hoode were allowed to rid his mind of its latest torment, he might find the impetus to reach once more for his pen.