Nicholas Bracewell was close enough to overhear the exchange between the two of them but he was not worried. Owen Elias was protection enough for the apprentices. Gill’s proclivities were well known and largely tolerated in the company, but there was an unwritten rule that its own boys would remain untouched. Whenever damson lips or an alabaster cheek or a graceful neck made Barnaby Gill forget this rule for a second, Nicholas was usually on hand to remind him of it. The older boys knew enough to take care of themselves when the comedian was around, but Richard Honeydew still had the unsuspecting innocence of a cherub. Nicholas would ensure that it was not taken rudely away from him.
‘That is the curious thing, Nick,’ said Edmund Hoode.
‘Curious?’
‘My sonnets, my verse, my inspiration.’
‘What of them?’
‘Stale.’
‘How so?’
‘Because she loved me.’
‘You make no sense, Edmund.’
‘Success was my very failure!’
Hoode was riding beside Nicholas and drifting off into a reverie from time to time. He emerged from the latest one with an insight that profoundly altered his attitude to his poetry. When he fell madly and inappropriately in love with some goddess, he was moved to pour out his feelings in honeyed sonnets and sublime verse. Indeed, the more unapproachable his beloved, the sweeter his lyrical vein. Only out of true suffering did his art achieve purity. Jane Diamond had mesmerised him at first then responded to his wooing with becoming eagerness. Hoode wrote poem after poem for her, hoping to construct a staircase of words so that he could ascend to her chamber and take the reward of a lover. When he recalled those verses now — line by embarrassing line — he saw that they were flat, mawkish and totally unworthy of their object. His staircase of words had led him down into a creative cellar. The divine Jane Diamond may have sharpened his self-esteem but she had blunted his talent beyond recognition.
The lovelorn author showed the first sign of recovery.
‘Her husband was a guardian angel in disguise,’ he said buoyantly. ‘In pulling me from the arms of his wife, he gave me back my invention. I am Edmund Hoode once more.’
‘We are glad to see you returned.’
‘If her husband were here, I would thank him.’
Nicholas looked ahead at Lawrence Firethorn but said nothing. The angel in disguise had been a ruthless actor-manager reclaiming a wayward playwright for a tour, but that was a truth that must not be allowed to rock the fragile vessel of Edmund Hoode’s fantasy. He was home again with his fellows and that was paramount. Nicholas prodded him about his recent tardiness.
‘How stands The Merchant of Calais?’ he asked.
‘Indifferently.’
‘It was promised for the start of the month.’
‘I’ll begin work on it again tomorrow.’
‘Why not today?’
‘Why not, indeed?’ decided Hoode, shedding his torpor as if it were a cloak. ‘You will help me, Nick. What man better? You come from merchant stock in Devon and you have been to Calais many a time. Tell me about Merchants of the Staple.’
It was a disagreeable topic for Nicholas — especially in present circumstances — and he chose his words with care. Before he could frame them into sentences, however, he was interrupted by the now soulful Edmund Hoode. Melancholy was returning.
‘Teach me the way, Nick. I’ll be an apt pupil.’
‘What is my subject to be?’
‘Happiness in love.’
‘Find another tutor.’
‘You are the example that I choose,’ said Hoode. ‘Since we have been friends, I have loved and lost a score at least of beautiful ladies who snatched my heart from my body and roasted it slowly before my eyes. And you? But one woman in all that time.’
Nicholas was evasive. ‘My case is different.’
‘That is why I pattern myself on you.’
‘Continue on your own course, Edmund.’
‘To further torture? You and Anne fill me with envy.’
‘Appearances can deceive.’
‘No, Nick,’ said his friend, ‘you two are made of the same mettle. I never saw a more contented couple — unless it be Lawrence and Margery when tearing small pieces out of each other! Mistress Anne Hendrik is a remarkable woman.’
‘She is, Edmund,’ confessed the other freely.
‘In your place, I would marry her and retire from this infernal profession. What else does a man need?’
It was a question that Nicholas had been compelled to address in the last couple of days. Losing Anne from his life had left a hollowness that was indescribable. Marriage had never been a serious option before, but it suddenly had an appeal he would not have believed possible. The theatre brought many joys but it was a precarious and abrasive living. With Anne beside him as his wife, he would find a more suitable and worthwhile employment. Given a chance of lasting happiness, why indeed did he stay with Westfield’s Men?
One look around the company gave him his answer and rubbed the tempting picture of Anne Bracewell out of his mind. Let her remain as the widow of a Dutchman. His place was here among his fellows, sharing their deprivations and revelling in their moments of glory. There was a play to complete and he must not let personal considerations hinder that. He smiled at Hoode and talked of someone he had not dared to think about for several years.
‘My father was a Merchant of the Staple,’ he said.
Oxford was infinitely smaller than London yet it came to assume a size and importance to the refugees from the capital that was out of all proportion to its true dimensions. It was their coveted destination, a haven of rest after an exhausting journey, a place to eat, drink and wench, to act on a stage in front of a proper audience, to feel once again the unique thrill of performance, to forget the horrors of the fire at the Queen’s Head and the hideous cost of their brief stay at the Fighting Cocks. The whole tone of the tour would be set at Oxford, and they were eager to get there in order to lift their spirits and regain their sense of identity.
Each man and boy in the company had his own vision of what the town would deliver. Lawrence Firethorn wanted to make its ancient walls shake in wonder at the brilliance of his art and reverberate with applause for a whole week. He also hoped that Oxford would harbour his persecutor, Israel Gunby, counterfeit father and cunning thief, so that Firethorn could hunt him down, dismember him with his bare hands then slice his miserable body into a hundred strips before feeding him to the stray dogs. Owen Elias had a humbler ambition. Though anything but an academic, he wanted to look at Jesus College, which had been founded over twenty years ago by a fellow Welshman, Dr Hugh Price, to instil a Celtic note into the voice of the university. Standing in the middle of the quadrangle, Elias would then declaim his favourite soliloquy, which he had translated into his native language for the occasion. Richard Honeydew, afloat on high expectation, saw a place that was dedicated to beauty and truth. John Tallis, with more immediate needs, thought only of Oxford food, Martin Yeo was drooling at the prospect of a surreptitious swig of Oxford ale and Stephen Judd, the oldest of the apprentices, now contending with a rising interest in the female sex he was paid to imitate, was dreaming of compliant young women with a sense of adventure. George Dart saw Oxford as a soft bed in which he could sleep out eternity.
Alone of the company, Edmund Hoode viewed the town as a noble seat of learning with an international reputation. He himself had been well taught at Westminster School by no less a tutor than Camden, but his formal education had stopped short of university and left him with the feeling that he had missed out on a vital stage of his intellectual and spiritual development. Most of his rival playwrights hailed from Oxford or Cambridge, while others had prospered at the alternative university of the Inns of Court in London. Though he read avidly and learnt quickly, there were still huge chasms in his knowledge and he was therefore planning — literally — to rub shoulders with the collegiate buildings in the hope that some of their learning would stick to him. Westfield’s Men were there to perform a play but he was repairing the deficiencies in his education.