Will sat and pined by the fishpond at Calhoun Hall. Scattered about him on the grass were loose sheets of notes for Lady Grace's masque. He hoped to pass as many of the arrangements as might be onto Ryder. A masque should be all made up of harmony and motion, surely, with as few words as possible, and those, poetry. Will had very few words, (suitable ones), to offer. He would get Jake to petition Finn for fantastical costumes to cover any lack. Jake had been difficult of late and he had been avoiding him, but wheedling Finn was something Jake could do for him. Absentmindedly, he sprawled into a position less poetical but more comfortable.
He could praise the lady's wit - but she had been scorned for meddling in men's affairs.
He could praise her skill with herbs in the still room - but there were those insistent whispers of poison.
He could praise her beauty - and she was beautiful, true, but so many men had called her beautiful - and all of them had fucked her.
He could praise her virtue - but masques do not have jokes.
Furthermore, Lady Bella detested her, and Grace's praise stuck in his craw.
A shadow loomed over his shoulder. "What's this?"
"Master Scout." Will smiled at the boy. He loved Lady Bella as a courtier loves the queen, but he could talk more easily to her younger brother.
"It is a fact universally acknowledged," Finn used to say, "that giving heed to a patron's interests will lead to due rewards." And thus here they were, currying favour by attending at the house of Lord Calhoun. Jake anticipated an evening of talking spritely, to distract Finn from Will. They were to go to Calhoun Hall as somewhat between guests and retinue. Their duty was to entertain. He had dim hopes of the wit to be heard from the mighty, but the food would be excellent. The great lord did not intend to feed the players, but Jake knew a scullion downstairs, in this pantry. To be honest, he knew an ostler or a turnspit boy in every grand kitchen in town.
Will had concealed a parchment (doubtless a sonnet) in his sleeve, and rustled gently as they handed their nags over to the ostler.
Would Will go touting for a new patron this evening, or would he devote himself to Love? Mistress Lena, Jake's best source within the household, said that Lady Bella was a downright woman who scorned flummery. The sonnet had poor prospects, in Jake's opinion, but nevertheless, Jake led Finn gently by the nose till he had found Calhoun's daughter. There he left him, discoursing fluently of the theatre of the ancient Greeks, and of how they played their plays in worship of the gods. Bella looked restive, and would rather have encountered Burleigh's ward Wriothesley, but Jake was satisfied that she was safe chaperoned. Who better than his employer's daughter, to benefit from Finn's didactic streak?
Now Jake's only fear was that Will would approach some likely new master for the company. The chamber held several candidates. As Jake looked around, he saw Will was by Raleigh. That old pirate was unmoved by any of the arts; the only occupation Crodsky could get from him would be pulling an oar across to the new world.
Over by the window stood Walsingham, and Jake dreaded his involvement in their lives far more. Sir Francis was a lover of sermons, true, but more privily he was the suspected instigator of men's sudden disappearances. Jake feared him. He was all eagerness to hear what men said on the street, cash down, and also paid to start a spurious rumour, but the men in his employ were on a tight rein, and Jake distrusted him. The bleakly godly sort were forever trying to run the players, the cockpits, the bowling alleys and all joyful things out of town, but beyond Walsingham's religiosity, Jake thought he had a hollow-eyed and cruel look. He was certainly uninterested in small talk with strolling players, and sent Jake to the rightabout very quickly. Jake watched Will approach him and be sent away as fast.
It was a surprise to see Sir Francis in the house, even though he was connected to Calhoun's friend Lord Burleigh. As the peace party they every day strove to stave off the inevitable war with Spain and keep matters down to a mere mutual ill will. Walsingham, it was said, was all for violence and domination.
"I saw you speak with Lady Bella between dances," Jake said to Will on their way home. Her father had vetoed the scandalous LaVolta, but she had contrived a pavane with him. Despite the time with his idol, he looked irritable.
"She could only talk of Burleigh's son, new arrived in court. Fresh from his tutor and already groomed for government." Will kicked his nag unnecessarily.
"They say young Cecil's brilliant," Finn contributed. His prentices looked glum.
"They say young Cecil is ugly as sin," snapped Will, "hunchbacked and obsessive."
If Will had half the wit he boasted, he'd make use of Mistress Lena as intelligencer. She'd know if Bella desired a lean and hungry obsessive suitor, or was inclined to a mellow and affable man. Lord! thought Jake, I do believe she told me this, and now I forget. "Ugly?" he said aloud. "Then he should be no rival."
"Rival?" Finn was puzzled.
"He's born to privilege. He can do anything. I always dreamed one day I'd be among people like that. For those lords and ladies, anything is possible." Will twisted in his saddle to see the lit windows of the mansion behind them. "I do not belong there."
"How is Robert Cecil your rival?" Finn wanted to know.
Will launched into a babble about excelling, about humanist aspirations, about Love, Life and capitalised absolutes. This kind of talk was meat and drink to Finn.
Jake drew his horse aside from the others and wrapped himself more deeply in his cloak.
Jake would have come downstairs earlier, but he heard a familiar voice in the innyard. It was Sean McGrail, the Irish traveller, who regularly brought Finn tidings from Galway town. He was talking in Gaelic right now, to Hamish. The Scotch and Irish tongues were close enough to reach out to each other.
For his part, Jake would as soon not meet Sean. He had heard, and heard again to tedium, the tale of great Granuaile, Grace O'Malley, the Irish lady sea trader (pirate, thought Jake privately, and as old as the Queen herself), and how Her Majesty summoned her to court to be the wonder of all the world. Of how when Granuaile sneezed, a courtier who had been staring as if she were a wild beast, gave her his kerchief; she wiped her nose and hurled the fine linen in the fire. To the courtier's dismay at losing a month's work of his wife in bobbin lace, she had announced that to keep a slimy handkerchief and reuse it was a filthy and barbaric practice.
After laughing (again) at this story, Sean generally coaxed Jake to learn the rules of hurling games, but on this score Jake was resolute. Will and Jake sometimes were drawn into an hour's football with Sean. He was a rough and tumble lad, always welcomed when he visited the players. Finn was immoderately proud of being Irish and delighted by contact with home. ("The Irish are the best in the world with words." "Yes, Master Finn.")
At length Sean departed to find the company master. They always met in privacy, Jake supposed so they can be Irish together. Jake thought Will's reverence for Finn not illfounded; if a barbarian Gael could make of himself a notable of dishevelled grandeur with a place in the capital of the world, then surely Jake and Will could re-invent themselves. He had read about Ireland in the book of Gerald of Wales, and been revolted. He and Will had only to ascend from the slums of London to civilisation - a far less dramatic distance.
Jake acknowledged, Men of London have well founded suspicions of those notEnglish. Notoriously, foreigners are spies, assassins, thieves and villains. Every civil unrest is revealed in hindsight to have begun in scufflings and stone throwings at the Dutch or the French. But Finn has overcome their hatred and forced them to respect him, cajoled them to trust him. Small wonder the Scottish innkeeper courts his advice.
Sean gone, Jake quit his lurking and sailed downstairs, slowly pulling on a pair of gloves, finger by finger. Jake was vain of his hands. Part of his languor was simple tiredness, though. He rubbed his eyes.
"What is it?"
"I slept little last night." He yawned. "Will, the boor, is to blame."
"Aye?" Ham's voice was cool.
"Learning a new part. Another cursed pining girl..." Jake paused, distracted. Like him, the Scottish boy was dressed his best for a day's jaunting. He wore a tilted narrow ruff, Spanish looking, which would have been stylish - ten years ago. Jake hoped his good features would make amends for his poor fashion. Hamish was not tall no thought Jake I am not so besmitten as to name him tall but he was a well made man, and his colour was exquisite. A pity that he neglects to shave. His stubbled jaw grazed his ruff. Jake's work obliged him to go cleanshaven himself, but he hankered on Ham's behalf for a clipped little beard, neatly surrounding his mouth.
Tomorrow they would be at the house of Burleigh, to view his art collection. Jake had bribed the steward with a free pass to Henslowe's theatre. Jake bounded up. "O God. You must shave." The grandees of the Cecil family might be absorbed in affairs of state, but they were not blind, and it would be discourtesy to visit him - he might see them - looking dishevelled.
Hamish was startled by Jake's sudden plunge back toward the stairs. "I'll do it," Jake said decisively. "I know just how you should look."
Ham was shy of the razor. He followed, slow and whining.
The two of them, together with a bowl of soapy water, sat on the windowseat in Jake's chamber, with the sun falling brightly on Hamish's face. He was silent while Jake scraped carefully. The room smelt of freshly strewn herbs.
The silence drew Jake's fears out of him. He could not stop worrying about the change in climate if Calhoun were replaced as their patron.
"Great lords are not so easy to woo," said Hamish, reaching for a towel.
Jake had arranged as fine a beard as he could on the lad. It looked well; better than Finn's, Jake thought. He said, "If Will is courting patrons, be very sure that some great lord will respond. The theatre has always had another agenda, from the guildmasters' covert meetings under cover of arranging mystery plays to these modern times when lords speak of Art, but hold us as unregarded spies, who bring them tidings from the bearpit, the street, or their rivals' homes. We can pass everywhere, we can dissimulate, and we have trained memories. Lord Calhoun has not exploited us as he could, thank Jesu. Will holds too cheap the value of what he sells."
"A new patron?" Hamish asked, puzzled. "What can that gain him?"
"Ask, rather, what it loses for him; no more the wrath of the company when he assails the modesty of Lord Calhoun's daughter."
Ignoring the fascinated cry of "...assails his daughter?" Jake paced across the room and back. "My heroines have been named for that lady this past month," he pointed out broodingly. "And I should be playing boys," he mumbled, aside.
Was that a smirk on Hamish's face?
"I am past ready to be playing men on the stage," he insisted. "I have wheedled lessons in fencing from John Shancke. Burbage himself praised my form." Burbage had said "not bad," but from such a source, to be noticed was praise.
"Can you not fight with swords?" Hamish evidently considered it a basic lifeskill.
"Stage fighting is different," Jake retorted, then admitted, "I can street fight, but that is not permitted on stage; we have to be careful of our fine clothing."
Hamish offered to teach him the use of a Scottish sword, then said, "About the matter of Lady Bella."
"What of it?"
"I had thought..." He trailed off. "You and Crodsky..." He lost his voice again.
"What? What! No!" Eww. "We both are prenticed to Master Finn, that is the sum of it." He added primly, "His affections do not tend that way."
Hamish looked happy. "Good."
Jake gave him a thoughtful and not entirely approving look, considering his meaning. Is this morality or jealousy?
"Why is it your place to stop Crodsky from making a fool of himself?"
Could be jealous.
"You could leave the company, if you hate the parts they give you to play," Ham was saying.
"O, yes," Jake agreed dourly. "Travel. Do not suppose it to be all sunshine and easy money. Bad beds, worse weather, truculent yokels, ill-cooked food, thrilling new sicknesses. I have toured England, when plague drove us from town." He shuddered. "I passed a season working as a cowherd, once, when things were bad."
Ham grinned. "You are a man of many talents."
"O, believe it. I learnt a thing or two of how to make it tolerable."
Ham clasped his shoulder. "I do believe it."