2

PLAYHOUSE GHOSTS

‘Do you see nothing there?’ he screamed, arm flung out, eyes wide in terror.

Sarah knew what to say. Knew that she was meant to deny the ghost – and she could not. Because there was one there – the ghost of a man who was not dead. The ghost of William Coke.

Thomas Betterton, his arm still thrust before him to ward off the spirit, looked down at her upon the bed. His eyes narrowed.

Speak, she thought, and still couldn’t. Not when it wasn’t Bill Tarbuck the actor gazing at her from the far side of the stage but the man she loved. The man whose child she carried, who had left their bed not three hours before. His eyes, that had always held pain deep within them, were clear of it now. He even had a slight smile upon his lips. In another moment perhaps his laugh would come – so rare, and doubly prized for its rarity. But what made the apparition even stranger was that he was not dressed as he had been when he left her that morning. Then he had been attired in his customary black – while his spirit was bare-footed, wore a patched grey shirt, knee-length breeches, every item as soaked and dripping as his hair.

‘Mrs Chalker!’

She couldn’t look away. Not yet. Not when the spirit was turning and she saw…that the right side of his face was freshly scarred.

‘Ah!’ She could not help her cry.

‘No!’ Betterton slammed his hand onto the bedpost. ‘You are not meant to see him. Only I am! You know this!’

Sarah forced her gaze up. From the grey, calm eyes of the man she loved to the black and angry ones above her.

‘Are you pausing for effect, madam?’ Betterton continued. ‘I forbid it. I have told you – this exchange must build swiftly to the point of the ghost’s exit,’ he hissed. ‘ ’Tis why we are rehearsing this bit – yet again! – with the doors of the playhouse to be opened in a moment to admit the audience. To admit the king, damn me.’ All restraint went. ‘For the love of God, ye dumb whore, just say your fucking line!’

It was as if he’d slapped her and, by the way he waved his hands, he looked as if he ached to do so in more than foul words. It made her take a breath – another, yet deeper. The first restored her to the place and time she was. The second mastered her anger: there was no good to be gained from fighting with the leader of the company, however insulting. Not with his new production of Hamlet about to open in half an hour.

Her third breath, the deepest yet, allowed her to look across to where Coke’s ghost had stood – and see no ghost there – or at least only the actor playing Old Hamlet. ‘I am sorry, Thomas,’ she said. ‘ ’Twas your performance, seeing your father’s spirit. I swore I saw him too.’ It was not the most heartfelt of her deliveries so she hurried on. ‘I apologise.’ She looked across at Tarbuck. ‘And to you, Bill. May I try again?’

With a grunt, Betterton resumed his position and flung his arm out. He said his line, she replied promptly, and carried on thus to the end of the scene. The feeling did not matter, this last rehearsal was about precision not passion. The audience, it was hoped, would stimulate them to that. It was understood in the theatre that all final run-throughs must be poor to make the first performance great.

The scene ended. It was the last one they would rehearse. ‘To your preparations, all. Admit the audience!’ Betterton bellowed and as other actors hurried away, he took Sarah’s arm, ungently. ‘And you, ma’am, get some food into you. Every moment I think you are going to faint upon the stage.’ He looked pointedly at her belly. ‘Your baby still irks you?’

It was said with no concern for her, only himself. He had been persuaded that Sarah’s illness was a passing thing and that she could undertake roles still. She had to maintain him in that belief. She did not know what she would do for money if she could not act, with the babe’s birth still five months away and Coke in his new and uncertain trade. ‘Nay, ’tis fine, Mr Betterton,’ she said, patting her stomach and smiling. ‘Indeed, I am quite recovered. You are kind to ask.’

It was the best performance she’d given that day. Betterton walked away, muttering. And as soon as he did, Sarah moved to the opposite side, to the bucket she’d discreetly placed there, parting her long auburn hair just in time to void a thin stream. She crouched, awaiting more, remembering. Why had her William’s shade visited her like that? He was not dead. She would have known it instantly if he were, Coke’s presence being as strong as that of their child within her. She may not have had all her mother’s gifts as a cunning woman, a communicator with the departed, but she could still tell a ghost apart from…a premonition? What had he been trying to tell her, this future William? He was clad as if for the sea. Must he go abroad? Must they?

Shivering, she bent again to heave nothing into the bucket.

She felt a hand, gentle upon her back. ‘Sarah?’ came a voice as soft as the touch.

‘It’s all right.’ She raised herself, managed a little smile. ‘I’m well.’

Dickon’s eyes wandered as they ever would, as did his other hand through his hedge of wheaten hair. William had rescued the orphan from his doorway three winters since and had restored him to health, though his full wits would probably be ever beyond him. ‘You are s-sick, Sarah,’ he said.

‘I am.’ She put her hand over her belly. ‘ ’Tis the baby.’

‘The cap’n’s baby.’ He smiled, then frowned suddenly. ‘The cap’n –’

Chill, brought by the memory of a premonition, displaced the heat on her brow. ‘Any news?’

‘Nay, n-none.’

The boy would get upset too long apart from his ‘cap’n’ – especially if he suspected his guardian was in any peril. ‘All is fine, I am sure,’ she said quickly. ‘They are celebrating success in some tavern, sure.’

It worked. ‘In some tavern, sure,’ Dickon repeated, then frowned again. ‘The b-baby? Why does it make you sick?’

‘I do not know. It was not so last year…’ She cut herself off. She did not want to think of that lost child, nor of the man who had fathered the babe, the man whose name she still carried – her late husband, John Chalker. There were enough ghosts about the stage of the Duke’s Playhouse already, especially as she had last seen him, a torn and bloody carcass.

She closed her eyes, rose from her crouch, mastered her stomach – for from a few feet away came excited voices, the first of the audience jostling for places on the front benches in the pit.

Dickon straightened too. ‘C-candles,’ he said. She had got him the work behind the scenes at the playhouse and he took his job – mainly the trimming and setting of the candles in the chandeliers that would light the scenes – most seriously.

He moved away but she paused to listen beyond the shouts and arguments in the pit. Words came clear, from a multitude of voices.

‘Your Majesty!’

‘Your Royal Highness!’

‘Huzzah! Huzzah!’

There could be no doubt. King Charles, together with his brother James, Duke of York, had arrived at the theatre’s doors. He’s early, she thought, gathering her dress to squeeze between the painted wings depicting Elsinore’s battlements and bedchambers. She had work to do – to eat if she could; and to paint herself so that she looked as if she could be Hamlet’s mother, though Betterton and her were of an age, both twenty-eight. Still, she knew she looked how she felt: ill and old. Very little ceruse would be needed for which she was grateful – the scent of the white lead paint always made her giddy. And she knew that seeing Coke’s spirit had left her quite pale enough.

—

‘Your Majesty!’

‘Your Royal Highness!’

‘Huzzah! Huzzah!’

The man of blood watched them, a little sheltered from the downpour beneath the branches of a sycamore, his cloak tight about him and his uncocked hat pulled low. He did not join in the cheers that greeted King Charles and his brother as they stepped from the coach. He observed – Charles’s finery, a scarlet coat whose colour was near suffused in all the gold trim and creamy lace; the king’s four guards, men as large as he with the same gimlet stares; the mistress Charles handed down, who shrieked at the rain, its effect on her elaborately set coiffure, tendrilled and tonged for hours, and ran under the theatre’s portico. Laughing, Charles acknowledged the acclaim again with a smile and a wave. Then he and his brother strode down the avenue his guards had created through the mob which folded after them like the Red Sea closing after Moses and Aaron.

He turned away to lean against the trunk and listen to the drops patter onto his hat brim, thinking of the last time he’d seen the king. Five years before, in 1661, when he’d been one of a party of Irish Protestant landholders who’d come to petition the newly restored monarch to not return to the Papists the land that had been stripped from them and given to God’s own people – themselves. To no avail. Too many Catholics got their land back. Too many of the righteous lost theirs. And his own hatred was kindled for the betrayer, this Stuart king, this Charles whose mother was a Papist, who was said to be a secret one himself, intent on restoring more than himself upon the throne; restoring alongside himself the Antichrist himself, the Devil in Rome, to rule over them all.

He raised a hand. He was surprised to see it shaking. He was surprised to feel tears in his eyes. Seeing the king had done that to him. He breathed deeply, then prayed. ‘ “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.” ’

He watched his hand steady, his tears dry up. Well, he thought, rubbing his eyes, there will be more death before the glory, if God has chosen this day, and me as his instrument. Me – and this man whose footsteps I hear now.

He softly spoke a name. ‘Jeremiah?’

‘ ’Tis I.’

‘Prove it.’

The voice that came was high-pitched and tremulous. ‘ “Thou…thou art,” ah! I am sorry, I –’ He broke off, cleared his throat and tried again. ‘ “Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee I will…will I break in pieces the nations. And with thee will I destroy kingdoms.” ’

It was close enough. This fellow, nicknamed for the prophet who wrote those words, was an apprentice in the cause. His nervousness was understandable. As long as it did not prevent him doing the Lord’s work. ‘And here is your weapon of war,’ the man replied, reaching inside his doublet to the object that had caused such chafing to his back. He grasped the metal sphere, withdrew it, held it still under his cloak. ‘Make ready. We do not want any part of this to be exposed to rain, even for a moment.’

‘I see. I –’ ‘Jeremiah’ swallowed. ‘It will not go off?’

The man grunted. It was extraordinary to him, he who had spent his life at war, that any man could be so ignorant. ‘Nay, sure. For that you must introduce it to flame. Swiftly now. We must not linger here.’

The transfer was quickly made, though Jeremiah’s hands shook as he took the ball. ‘And how must I –?’

‘Put it away, fool!’ The man took another deep breath to quell his irritation, reminding himself that this youth had been chosen by Brother S partly because of his inexperience, the fact that he was not known to any – along with a type of fanaticism that only came from the very newest of converts. Besides, it was all in God’s hands – not his, not this Jeremiah’s. Though the young man would hurl the grenado, it was God who would decide if the time was right by guiding his aim. God, with a little help from his Saints. ‘You remember what is planned?’

‘I…do?’ It came out more like a question and he chewed at already ragged lips. ‘I am to wait until the first scene is playing –’

‘Do not tell me,’ the man interrupted, ‘for I do not need to know. My task is done and all is now in God’s hands. Trust in him, brother. Praise him!’ He turned to go.

Jeremiah grabbed him. ‘Tell me, please!’ Tears spilled out of his eyes. ‘I will do this. The Lord will guide me, I know. But in my desire to serve Him, I seem to have forgotten some…some details.’ He reached up, wiping his eyes. ‘When I light the…the fuse, is it?…how long must I wait before I throw the grenado? I was told that too soon and it would go out, too late and…’ He broke off, gave a strange, choked laugh. ‘I have forgotten the count.’

The man stared at the youth. When Brother S, his sole contact among the Fifth Monarchists in London, had asked for help with this plan, he’d thought it a weak one. He thought so even more now. How many more times would the great cause be betrayed by poor planning and cowards? Still, in the end, did it require him to believe it would work? No. It only behooved him to believe that God would decide if it did. His only task? To do his utmost to help Providence fulfil itself.

He smiled. It was not a natural set for his long, lean, much-scarred face and the youth blinked up at him. ‘Brother,’ he said, letting his rough voice go soft, ‘it is very simple. When you are ready you put the fuse,’ he reached under the other’s cloak and tapped it, ‘into the candle’s flame, see? I am an expert, and fashioned the paper myself, with just enough gunpowder in it so sparks will come. At the first flash you count – one chicken, two chicken.’ He said them slowly, steadily. ‘Then you simply reach over and lay it into the king’s box. As soon as you have done so, you turn, and run from yours. The grenado will explode on six and with God’s favour you will be clear of its blast by then. If not,’ the smile came again, wolfish, ‘you will the next instant be at His right hand in heaven.’ He reached over, gripping the other’s forearm. ‘Pray with me. Our father, who art in heaven…’

Jeremiah joined in the only prayer God’s saints would countenance. He saw that it steadied the youth, and in his eyes he remembered when he’d first truly heard the Word. As if Jesus himself had come and whispered it into his ear. He would have done then what this ‘Jeremiah’ was about to do now. Yeah, he thought, with a song of praise on my lips, I would have done it.

The prayer finished, the Amens spoken, he continued, ‘I will tell you what I will do. I cannot come inside. There are those who might know me. But I will wait for you here, beneath this tree. Come to me straight when you have fulfilled your vow and I will spirit you to safety. And if you do not come…’ – he clasped the other’s hand – ‘why then, I will go and join with all your other brothers in praising your name. And see you again at the resurrection which cometh soon. Amen!’

‘Amen!’ The youth stepped away. His eyes were clearer now. His hand did not shake as much. ‘Bless you, brother. Praise God!’

With that, he turned about, crossed the roadway and pushed his way into the theatre. The man of blood watched him, his strange smile still upon his lips – which vanished when he saw the two men he’d last seen in the alley behind the tavern come from opposite directions and meet before the playhouse. A boy emerged from it to join them there. He capered about, full of jerks and shakes like one palsied. After a moment he dragged the cavalier, the one who’d feigned drunkenness in the Seven Stars, into the playhouse, leaving the huge man to turn and stare.