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10

‘This fellow is wise enough to play the fool’

Violetta stood up and began pacing the small room. Recounting the story had made her restless, agitated, reminding her of how far they were from their purpose.

‘That’s the reason we are here. Feste and I escaped from our different captivities and we have been following this man, Malvolio, ever since. He is here and he has our precious relic in his possession. He stole it from us.’ She turned to Will. ‘You must understand. The relic is Illyria. The country grew from the city, and the relic was the reason for our city’s foundation. Since my father is dead, I am the rightful ruler. I have vowed to return it, for without it our country does not exist.’

‘But what do you want from me?’ Will frowned, puzzled. ‘You set yourself up in my way. You engage me in conversation. You tell me your story. Then there is this.’ He picked up the Fool card from the table. ‘You insinuate it into a note telling me that we are in want of a clown . . .’

Time was running on. He needed to get back to the playhouse, with or without Feste. He felt the stirrings of annoyance. He was beginning to wish he had never set eyes on them. He did not like to be picked out in this way, selected and targeted like one of the marks that they tricked at cards.

‘You talked to us, master,’ Feste said. ‘Not t’other way about. If you don’t want me to help you . . .’ He threw the scroll he had been studying down on the table.

‘Hush, Feste.’ Violetta glared at him. ‘There is no point in pretending any longer.’ She turned to Will. ‘We did deliberately put ourselves in your way. If we could get you to stop and watch, then we would have a chance to engage you, tell you our story, and you might be willing to help us.’

‘But how, mistress?’ Will’s frown deepened. ‘You still have not told me.’

‘We have been watching Malvolio,’ she said, her expression intense. ‘We know he stays in the house of the Venetian Ambassador, north of the river. Near the Strand. We thought, I thought, that your company might perform there, and if they did, we could come with you. Then, when the audience was occupied with the play, we could steal the relic back.’

The words came out all in a rush. Violetta looked at him, her blue eyes anxious, searching for his reaction. Will stared back. Of all the things he thought she might say, he had not been expecting that. He would have laughed, if the girl had not been in such dead earnest. Such a thing was impossible. His company had to be invited to perform. They could not just set up in a great house as if it were an inn yard. An instant refusal sprang to his mouth, but he bit it back. She was young and very beautiful, but she had used no feminine guile to win him to this. Quite the opposite. She believed in her cause, the rightness of it. Her belief that others would see it came from her youth, but also her station. Despite the darns in her sleeves and the ragged hem of her faded blue dress, she was a duchess. Will could not meet her expectant eyes. The clown’s face was already twisting into a cynical smile. He knew that Will would refuse. Likely knew that such a thing was not in his power, but Feste had protected her, kept the truth away from her, lest it crush the little hope that she had left. He looked from Feste to where Maria sat, hunched up on her little stool, the only real stick of furniture in the room. Bright hope was fading in her eyes too; her face was falling back into its tired, sad lines as she looked to the room where her man lay dying.

‘You are very silent, sir,’ Violetta said at last.

‘I’m thinking.’ Will looked up at her.

‘And what are you thinking?’

He sighed. ‘That what you suggest is beyond my power.’

He had thought to be angry with them for presuming too far, for trying to trap him into helping them. Now that anger was fast turning to pity. Violetta saw it in his deep brown eyes that took in so much and gave so little away. She fought hard to hide her disappointment from him. She would not plead and she would not beg. Pride was all she had left. She would give it up for no man. Everything else had been taken from her. If he would not help them, so be it. They would find another way. But whatever happened, they would fulfil their part of the bargain. It was a matter of honour.

‘Very well.’ Violetta tried to smile and smooth her features. ‘I think Feste has the part now, Master Shakespeare. It is time we went to the playhouse.’

She led the way down the stairs. Will followed. He recognised all she had tried to hide. Her mask of affected indifference was as thin and brittle as glass. He might have been wishing that he had never set eyes on her, but at that moment she won his heart.

Richard Burbage, actor and theatre owner, was standing in shirtsleeves shouting directions up at the stage.

‘No, not there! To the right! That’s left!’

Someone dropped something, which fell from the height of the theatre and landed in the pit, puffing up dust and scattering nutshells. Three storeys up, the hammering and sawing stopped momentarily as the carpenters looked over to see if the fallen mallet had hit anybody or done any damage. Then it started up again. In the theatre, there was always something that needed doing: thatch replacing, holes patching, benches repairing, loose planks hammering back into place. Everyone shouted over the noise, adding to the din. The only time it was really quiet was in performance.

‘I’ve found a new clown.’

Will brought Feste forward for inspection. Richard Burbage owned a lion’s share of the theatre and felt losses keenly as pennies falling from his own pocket. If audiences were disappointed, they went elsewhere. Competition was sharp, with two theatres within throwing distance, not to mention the bear garden.

‘Good, that’s good, Will.’ He wrinkled his high forehead and pushed a hand through his thinning sandy hair. ‘Because until two minutes past, I thought you’d have to do it.’ He looked at his playmaker and laughed. ‘You may be many things, but a clown isn’t one of them.’ He turned his bright brown eyes to Feste. ‘Is he any good? Will I have seen him in anything? His face looks familiar, but I don’t recall from where. Who have you worked for, fellow? What company? Does he talk?’

‘He hasn’t worked here.’ Will spoke for Feste. ‘He’s a stranger. I found him performing in the street over by St Mary Overie.’

‘That’s where I’ve seen him. Juggling with chairs and such?’ Feste nodded. Burbage turned from him to Will. ‘Are you out of your wits? We’ll have the Revels Office down on us in a trice. Now, I’ve got a performance to stage.’ He was already walking away.

‘He’s good!’ Will followed after him. ‘He can do it. I swear it!’

‘How can he?’ Burbage turned back with an exaggerated sigh. ‘He can’t have had time to learn it properly. Anyway, he’s a foreigner! I’m not even sure it’s legal. And who’s this?’ His eyes fell on Violetta. ‘What’s she doing here? A playhouse before performance is no place for a woman. Get them out of here!’

‘Wait, Richard. He’s good, I promise! What’s the harm?’

Feste left the two men arguing and pulled himself up on the stage. He was small, thin as a starved hound, but very strong. He scampered about, reciting snatches of the play in different voices, peopling the stage with Rosalind and her cousin Celia; Touchstone himself, the banished Duke and his court, using Burbage’s jaded, world-weary tone for the melancholy Jaques. Actors emerged from the tiring house to watch, led by Tod with a long blonde wig in his hand, his face already whitened for Rosalind. They stood about the margins and watched the little man leaping from place to place on the stage. When he finished with a curtsy, they let up a roar, clapping and stamping and shouting for more. Burbage joined in, wiping tears from his eyes.

‘He’s hired!’ Burbage could already hear the money pouring in. ‘I’ve never laughed so much at one of your plays or seen one acted so lively. What’s his name?’

‘Feste.’

‘Well, Mister Feste,’ Burbage said as the clown jumped down from the stage, ‘let me shake you by the hand and welcome you into the company. Someone take Mister Feste and put him in Touchstone’s motley. No foreign tricks, mind,’ he said to Feste. ‘No tumbling or that kind of carry-on. Just stick to the play.’

Will took Violetta up to one of the small side galleries reserved for wealthy patrons.

‘I’ll make sure it’s roped off,’ he said. ‘You can watch the performance in peace from here. The crowd too. They are sometimes more interesting than what is happening onstage.’

He left her then, promising to be back when the performance began. The trumpets rang out above her and the place started to fill up with people. First a few, standing about in groups in the pit, dotted along the benches in the circling galleries, then more and more poured in until there were no spaces left. The ground was a solid mass of heads. All the galleries were filled.

Will returned just as the crowd was beginning to quieten. He did not speak, other than to utter a cursory greeting, but sat hunched forward, gnawing at his thumbnail, watching the audience. Violetta was waiting with as much anticipation as anyone. She welcomed any diversion from her own thoughts as they turned and twisted, meeting dead end after dead end. Something will turn up. That’s what Feste always said. Just put one foot after another. But what if it did not? She was glad to turn away from it all, if only for a little while, and lose herself in the world of the play.

The crowd was taking a time to settle. There was a disturbance in the upper galleries. People turned to stare as two young men, richly dressed in the Italian style, made their way late to their seats. They were sitting directly opposite Violetta.

Violetta sat forward, her attention momentarily drawn away from the jutting stage. There was something familiar about the men, but she was too far away to see their faces. They both wore beards and their hats shaded their eyes. Her gaze lingered on them for a moment. Could it be? Her heart beat harder and she half rose from her seat but then sank back, dismissing the possibility. This had happened before. On crowded streets, busy docks, in marketplaces, she’d thought to catch a glimpse of him, but had always been disappointed. Fancy supplies the face we want to see.

The actors took to the stage and Violetta watched the opening scene, but every now and then her eyes strayed to the strangers in the upper gallery. When Feste came on to the stage, the smaller of the two young men nudged the other. He pointed and they both stared down, caught by more than the clown’s words. The taller man looked up, his eyes searching the galleries, going through them row by row, studying each face carefully. His gaze stopped when he came to Violetta.

Will leaned forward, the girl’s presence forgotten for the moment, his lips moving silently as other men spoke his words to the world. He always felt the same mixture of dread and desire when the actors took to the stage. The play became a greater and a lesser thing. It no longer belonged to him, but to the actors and the audience. He had no power, no control over what would happen.

Equally, he knew almost straight away whether it was going to go well or ill. There was an air of expectancy. All talk ceased. Vendors were ignored. People were too busy with the play to concern themselves with nuts and fruit, bottles of beer. This was going to be a good performance. He knew as soon as Feste walked on to the stage. He seemed to know how Will wanted this played. His wit and energy spread to the others like quick running fire, spilling from the stage so the groundlings stopped thinking about the ache in their legs or the rain beginning to fall and the people up in the galleries stopped signalling to friends or flirting with the ladies present. They ceased to notice the need of a cushion, or the lack of a back to the benches, or the hardness of the seats, because they were no longer in the theatre at all; they were in the Forest of Arden.

The performance was fast, funny to the last. Even Will found himself laughing. Something that almost never happened. He left the box when Tod began his Epilogue, knowing that they would call for him. He was standing at the side of the stage when the final word was spoken. There was a moment of silence when the audience seemed to wake from a dream they had all been sharing. After that came the roar, a wave of applause that rose from all sides and crashed on to the stage. The actors looked at each other and smiled. They took hands and bowed. The crowd shouted for the clown and they shouted for Rosalind and Celia, they shouted for the Duke, they shouted for Will and then they shouted for the clown again. The actors took bow after bow, the greasepaint running down their grinning faces, while the crowd roared and cheered, whistled and stamped. Then the jigs began. Will joined in, grasping his actors’ sweating hands, as the crowd danced about the yard to the sound of fiddle, sackbut, flute and recorder. Feste pranced like an imp, playing on a short bone flute, keeping time on a tabor.

Violetta did not see them take their final bows. Just as the play was ending, one of the young men in the opposite gallery had signalled across to her. They met in the passage that ran along the back of the galleries. Violetta looked from one to the other, studying their faces, measuring the changes. Stephano smiled, his teeth showing white against the fine growth of his beard, and Guido laughed, shaking back his long curly hair. She embraced them both, holding them to her. They were taller than her now and she could feel hard muscle under the velvet of their doublets. Guido stepped back but Stephano could not let her go. He pushed away a wing of hair in order to see her face better, as if to be sure that it was really her. He tucked the stray lock behind her ear and his fingers travelled to her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw, dropping to the whiteness of her throat, as if he needed to touch her skin, find it warm, feel the beating of her blood. Then he tipped her face up to his and he kissed her. Violetta’s heart shifted inside her. The applause from the crowd rose up and roared around them, bouncing from side to side and all about, but in that moment they were utterly alone.

She linked arms with the two of them, just as she had done in Illyria, as they went down the stairs and out of the Globe.

Will returned to Violetta in a high good humour, but the gallery was empty. She was no longer there. He glanced into the pit, thinking she might have gone down there to wait for Feste. The clown was still on stage, jumping about, but there was no sign of the girl. Will shouldered his way down the stairs and out into the open, thinking to find her among those streaming out of the playhouse, but he was quickly recognised and captured by the crowd: shaking hands, being clapped on the back while he nodded his thanks at the praise showering down on him. He thought he caught a glimpse of her, arm in arm with two young men going towards the river, but the press was too great to chase after her and he had other claims on his time.

He went back into the playhouse wondering who the young men might be. He didn’t know she had any friends here, apart from Maria and Sir Toby. But what did he know about this girl? She kept much of herself hidden, like those ice islands said to float in northern seas. If the girl had chosen to make off with mysterious young men, then so be it. He went to collect the script. There were changes he wanted to make. What she wanted from him was impossible. His imagination was great, none greater. He could make cities, whole countries; people those with kings and princes, nobles and commoners. He could make the past live again, could create worlds that had never been, but he had been unable to think of one single way in which he could help this girl.

He began to wish again that he had never crossed paths with them. It was not fair to lay this thing upon him. People had an exaggerated idea of what he could do in the world. He was a player, no more than that. His influence was confined to the wooden walls of the Globe. Any power outside of that was as counterfeit as actors’ finery.

He could do nothing. That should be an end, and yet, even if he got his wish and never saw her again, he knew that he would not be able to stop thinking about her, gnawing at her problem as he gnawed his nails. She was young, younger than his own Susannah. Not that his daughter was likely to stir out of Stratford, but if she did . . . Life was precarious: death, disease, loss of fortune could tip the most ordered existence into chaos. Who knew what disaster could yet occur to force her to leave her home, to live among strangers? If that were to happen, he’d like to think that there were those who would offer what help they could give.

He went in search of the clown.