‘Your father — Robert Bracewell.’
Chapter Eleven
Alexander Marwood had suspended all belief in the notion of divine intervention. After a lifelong study of the phenomenon, he concluded that there was no such thing as a benevolent deity who watched over the affairs of men with a caring love and plucked those in danger from beneath the wheels of fate. Marwood spent most of his existence beneath those wheels and they had left deep ruts across mind, body and soul. If there really was any pity in heaven, it would surely have been shown to someone in his predicament yet none came to relieve the unrelenting misery of his lot. His plight should make angels weep and archangels wring their hands in sorrow but compassion was always on holiday. He became ungodly.
Work, wife and Westfield’s Men. Those were the triple causes of his ruin. A man of his temperament should never have become an innkeeper. He hated beer, he hated people and he hated noise yet he chose a profession which tied him forever to them. His introspective nature was ill-suited to the extrovert banter of the taproom. It was a crime to make him serve out his sentence at the Queen’s Head. Marriage had compounded the felony. Sybil Marwood bound him to the inn and fettered him to her purpose. One year of muted happiness in her arms had produced a daughter who was miraculously free from the spectacular ugliness of both parents. It had also turned a tepid marital couch into a cold one and so much ice had now formed around its inner regions that Marwood felt he lay beside a polar bear. Westfield’s Men completed his nightmare.
Separately, each of his tribulations was enough to break the heart of man and the back of beast. Together, they were unendurable. The fire at the Queen’s Head had somehow welded all three of them together and the combined weight of his afflictions was now pressing the last glimmer of life out of him.
‘Have you come to a decision yet, Alexander?’
‘Not yet, my love.’
‘Move swiftly or we lose the advantage.’
‘There is no advantage in a theatre company.’
‘Then why does this other innkeeper woo them?’
‘Madness.’
‘Profit.’
‘Suicide.’
‘Respect.’
‘Ignominy.’
‘Fame!’ cried Sybil. ‘Do not lose that, Alexander, or we perish. Be wise, be proud, be famous!’
The polar bear roared at her husband every day now.
Marwood left his wife in the taproom and scurried out to the yard, bracing himself for the sight of devastation and vowing that Westfield’s Men would never again be given the chance to set fire to his premises. A surprise greeted him. The restoration work had advanced much faster than expected. Diligent carpenters had now completely removed all the charred timbers and replaced them with sound ones. Behind the wooden scaffolding, the gaping hole was slowly being filled. The galleries no longer sagged in the corner. Fresh supports had lifted them back up to something like their former shape. There was still much to do but the yard of the Queen’s Head was recognisably his again.
A less agreeable surprise awaited him. Though busy hammers still banged away and busy ostlers brought horses in and out of the stables, the yard was curiously quiet. There was no crowd of spectators jostling each other, no packed galleries setting up a further buzz, no servingmen calling out for customers as they carried trays of beer amid the throng. Above all there were no players strutting about the stage, flinging their speeches and leaving them embedded like so many spears in the minds of the audience. There was no Lawrence Firethorn to hurl his verbal thunderbolts, no Barnaby Gill to make the boards echo with his jig, no Owen Elias to put the rage of a whole nation into his voice. And there was no applause. Alexander Marwood missed them. It made him feel sick.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘You have work to do, Leonard.’
‘I’ll about it straight when I have done my duty.’
‘What duty, man?’
‘Give me time, sir, give me time.’
Leonard wiped the back of a massive hand across his mouth then motioned two figures across. Anne Hendrik had been shopping at the market in Gracechurch Street and brought Preben van Loew with her so that they could move on to the cloth market and buy fresh supplies of material. Since they were so close to the Queen’s Head, they slipped in to see how the repairs were progressing. Anne had another reason for the visit. Primed by Margery Firethorn, she was ready to lend her weight to the campaign to bring Westfield’s Men back to the inn. Though still unsure about one member of the company, she wanted the others to regain a home.
Marwood viewed the pair with cautious respect. Anne was patently a lady but the sober garb and austere manner of Preben van Loew suggested that he had never been inside a taproom. Leonard had no social graces but he managed a few clumsy introductions. As he moved off to work, he threw in a last tactless piece of information.
‘Mistress Hendrik is a friend of Master Bracewell.’
Marwood glowered. ‘He burnt my yard down.’
‘That is not what I hear,’ said Anne, coming to the defence of the book holder. ‘Report has it that he saved your inn from total destruction.’
‘He starts a fire, he puts it out. That is to say, he gives me a disease then helps to cure it. But I had rather the disease did not come in the first place.’
‘The carpenters work well,’ noted Preben van Loew.
‘When I keep them to their task.’
‘Your galleries will be stouter than ever,’ said the Dutchman, peering around. ‘I was here once before to see a play and I noticed the rot in some of your beams. It was worst in the corner where the fire struck which is why the flames got a hold so quickly. Rotten wood burns best. Had you replaced those old timbers yourself, they might have withstood the blaze much better.’
‘Do not lecture me on my inn, sir,’ said Marwood.
‘I make one simple point. You now have sound timbers where you had rotten. Such neglect was dangerous. Those pillars would have snapped under the weight in time.’
‘Preben is right,’ said Anne. ‘In a strange way, the fire may have done you a favour.’
‘It did, mistress. It showed me my folly.’
‘About not replacing bad timber?’ said the Dutchman.
‘About suffering the deadwood of a theatre company.’
‘Westfield’s Men gave you a name,’ said Anne.
‘It is one I disown entirely.’
‘That is a poor reward for their patron,’ she observed. ‘Lord Westfield has brought half the Court to the Queen’s Head. Was that not an honour?’
‘Indeed, it was.’
‘Then why discard it?’
‘Wisdom comes with age.’
‘Then you must be immensely wise,’ said Preben van Loew with a wry grin. ‘Please excuse me.’
He went off to view the renovations at close quarters. Anne Hendrik was left with the daunting task of improving the status of Westfield’s Men in the eyes of the innkeeper.
‘They are feted wherever they go,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘Westfield’s Men.’
‘God keep them far away!’
‘They prosper in the provinces.’
‘Let that prosperity hold them there.’
‘They will return in triumph to their new home.’
Marwood was interested at last. ‘You know where it is?’
‘In Southwark or in Shoreditch.’
‘Which? The two are separated by the Thames.’
‘What does it matter, sir?’ she asked. ‘You have thrown them out of here. They may go wherever they wish.’
‘On what terms, though?’ he wondered.
‘Better than they enjoyed here.’
‘That cannot be.’
‘I speak only what I have been told on good authority.’ Anne did not mention that the good authority was Margery Firethorn. Having gained his ear, she now pretended to walk away from it. ‘I grow tedious, sir. I will go.’
‘Wait, wait.’
‘Westfield’s Men are dead here. This is a tomb now. I will have to send them somewhere else.’