And in hot pursuit of the Cecil faction come Robert Devereux’s snapping leash-hounds. Essex himself strides in like a young Charlemagne, his hose gartered, his cloth-of-gold half-cape swishing fetchingly despite there being not so much as a breath of a breeze because all the windows are shuttered. With him are his stepfather, Sir Christopher Blount, whom Essex has been trying, without success, to have appointed to the queen’s Council for Ireland, and the young Earl of Southampton, his preferred choice for General of Horse in the coming campaign. Bianca is intrigued when Nicholas points Southampton out to her. Who can fail to be spellbound by such a fair fellow? Especially when all London knows that the gentle face with its resplendent curtain of flowing locks is a disguise for a brawler who’s tupped one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, put an egg in the henhouse and – worst of all in the eyes of his monarch – married the girl.
Behind Southampton comes a clutch of poets and versifiers favoured by Essex House, amongst them Edmund Spenser. He walks by without so much as a nod. Bad manners or self-preservation? Nicholas wonders.
The queen sits. Everyone else sits. Onto the stage comes dear old Will Kemp, the most popular player the Lord Chamberlain’s Men possess. He’s a big fellow, almost as large as Ned Monkton, but without the fearsome mask. He bows deeply to the queen, makes a clever opening address and the play begins.
Nicholas finds himself as entertained as any other in the watching hall, no matter their status – right to the moment when Will Kemp, playing the role of the fat knight Falstaff, makes his speech about the quality of the men he has mustered to the service not of Elizabeth, but of the fourth King Henry, in preparation for the battle of Shrewsbury:
‘Slaves as ragged as Lazarus… No eye hath seen such scarecrows… I’ll not march through Coventry with them, that’s flat…’
Mindful of the derision he’s heard in the Jackdaw for the quality of the present muster for Ireland, Nicholas looks around to see if the audience is going to laugh. But in the presence of the queen and the Privy Council – nothing. Just the occasional knowing turn of a head to a partner or a companion. He wonders if Master Shakespeare is going to get his knuckles rapped later by the Lord Chamberlain and the Master of the Revels.
But in his own mind, Nicholas is seeing again the fellows he tended in the makeshift hospital in Cork, and the lad who should have been with them – the lanky, unmartial Lemuel Godwinson, murdered by persons unknown on Bankside. And while he does so, something makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. A sense of being watched.
He looks around at the attentive audience, their faces all fixed on the performance. Except one.
On the last row of benches, where the latecomers have sneaked in unobserved, he catches a movement. A head turning away from him. Evading his gaze. A familiar head. As handsome as Southampton, but far more murderous by comparison. A death’s head, Nicholas cannot help thinking, as Sir Oliver Henshawe returns his attention towards the stage.
20
When the performance is over the men from the Office of the Revels strike down the few pieces of painted scenery and carry away the benches. The hall is readied for the part Nicholas dreads most: the dancing. He tries his best. With Bianca resolutely holding back her laughter, he murders a galliard and does serious injury to a pavane. With the best grace he can muster, he accedes to the requests of other men to dance with his wife. For the two Williams, Shakespeare and Kemp, he is happy to withdraw. He knows them from their regular visits to the Rose theatre, and their accompanying diversions to the Jackdaw. Kemp has that unexpected grace that is sometimes the secret of large men. He leads Bianca through an athletic volta, to the acclaim of the other dancers. Even the queen applauds. Nicholas catches with his eyes, if not his ears, her brief aside to Robert Cecil. From the direction of her gaze and the softening of her mouth he can tell she is asking after the beauty in the orange satin de Bruges. It makes his heart swell.
Even Robert Cecil requests a fedelta d’amore. Half the size of Kemp but with no less grace on the dance floor despite his ill-made body, at the end he wins Bianca’s unstinting applause. As for the others who request his wife’s favour – Walter Raleigh, George Carey, the Lord Chamberlain, a lecherous old satyr old enough to be her father, and Southampton, who seems in his own mind to be the only one dancing – these Nicholas stomachs as charitably as he can. Until the Earl of Essex sweeps over.
Making a laborious bow to Bianca, Devereux asks Nicholas for his permission to dance a measure with the most gracious and comely lady in the chamber – saving the queen’s presence. ‘If it meets with your indulgence, Dr Shelby.’ His voice manages to be both oily and arrogant at the same time.
Bianca throws Nicholas a questioning glance. It’s obvious she’s not sure what to do. But what husband can deny England’s new Caesar?
Nicholas reassures her with a brief nod. Then he says something in acquiescence to Essex that jumbles in his mind the moment the words are out, and which he then spends some time trying to recall, in case what he actually said made him sound like a cuckold. Giving up, he looks around the hall for Edmund Spenser. He spots him talking to an official from the Office of the Revels. Mindful of the poet’s reluctance to be seen by the Essex faction conversing with anyone connected with Robert Cecil, Nicholas hails a passing liveried servant to deliver a discreet message. Then he leaves the hall by a narrow stone arch that gives onto one of the small quadrangles that he noticed on his journey from the Whitehall water-stairs.
Outside, the air is cold and misty, the daylight barely penetrating between high brick walls dotted with clumps of moss. Nicholas thinks he could be standing at the bottom of a deep cistern from which the contents have slowly leaked away. The place smells of sour, watery decay. He suspects the servants use it as a latrine.
‘You didn’t tell me Henshawe was back in London,’ Nicholas says when Spenser joins him a few moments later.
‘I didn’t know myself, until this morning,’ Spenser tells him. ‘He arrived yesterday, carrying privy dispatches for His Grace the earl.’
‘I caught him watching me. Do you think he has any suspicion that you’ve had an audience with Mr Secretary Cecil?’
‘If he had, I dare say I would not be here. I’d either be under interrogation at Cecil House or in the Tower.’
‘I seem to recall Sir Robert telling me that you were once in charge of the muster in Munster. Is that true?’
‘“In charge” is too grand a description, Dr Shelby. I was appointed one of the commissioners for the muster in that country. Why do you ask?’
‘Merely a passing interest – it was just a scene in the play, the one in which Falstaff decries the quality of the troops levied for the king’s army.’