The Roaring Boy

Chapter One

Death came calling at a most inconvenient hour and in a singularly inappropriate place. The play being performed that afternoon, before an attentive audience in the yard of the Queen’s Head, was still deep in Act Three when its main character was summarily excised from the dramatis personae. It was an eerie sensation. Out went Alonso, the exiled Duke of Genoa: in came panic and confusion among Westfield’s Men. Each actor who stormed offstage brought fresh protest into the tiring-house.

‘Ben Skeat has fallen sick.’

‘The man is drunk.’

‘Fast asleep.’

‘I could get no sound from him.’

‘His memory has crumbled with age.’

‘Fright has seized him.’

‘Madness.’

‘Sorcery. Ben is plainly bewitched.’

Nicholas Bracewell, the company’s book holder, had only a limited view of the actor from his station behind the scenes but he could see enough to sense a crisis. In the habit of a friar, Ben Skeat sat silent and motionless in his chair. Instead of dominating the scene as the play required, he was completely detached from it. Nicholas felt a stab of pain as he realised what must have happened. It gave him no satisfaction to be able to contradict the other diagnoses of Duke Alonso’s condition. Ben Skeat was the oldest and most experienced member of the troupe, known for his prodigious feats of memory and for his total reliability. There was no chance that he was ill, drunk, asleep or lost for words. Still less had he taken leave of his senses or become spellbound.

Only one explanation remained and it gave Nicholas another sharp pang. Skeat was an unsung hero of Westfield’s Men. A versatile and talented actor, he was imbued with a deep love of the theatre, steeped in its traditions and wholly committed to his volatile profession. The irony was that he had a rare leading role in The Corrupt Bargain. Skeat’s more usual place was in the second rank of players where he habitually offered rock-solid support as a loyal earl, a worthy archbishop, a fearless judge, a conscientious seneschal or a white-bearded sage. He exuded a benevolence that invariably got him cast as a symbol of goodness.

Now, for once, he was being accused of downright evil.

‘He is thwarting me!’ said Barnaby Gill as he flounced into the tiring-house in the costume of a court jester. ‘There is wanton malice at work here. Ben Skeat is determined to ruin my performance.’

‘Not by design,’ said Nicholas.

‘I gave him his cue, he merely stared at me.’

‘Ben had no choice in the matter.’

‘I would expect you to take his side,’ said Gill with a characteristic snort. ‘It was on your foolish advice that he was given the role in the first place. And what does the idiot do? He dried up on me. I wait for his twenty-line speech and he stays hiding under his cowl.’ He stamped a peevish foot. ‘I’ll not abide it, Nicholas! His conduct is unforgivable. Had I not delivered a speech extempore to cover the gap in nature, the play would have fallen apart.’

Nicholas nodded. ‘You must do that office again.’

‘Never!’

‘Ben Skeat has spoken his last line.’

‘Do not look to me to rescue him.’

‘I look to all of you.’

‘Why so?’

‘He has passed away,’ said Nicholas, quietly.

‘What!’ howled Gill. ‘While I was acting with him! That is an insult that cannot be borne. I am mortified.’

His exclamation sent the rest of the company into a state of wild alarm and it was all Nicholas could do to calm them down so that the commotion would not be heard by the spectators. The book holder confided the awful truth in a whisper. Ben Skeat was dead. Cold terror spread quickly. Superstitious by nature, the actors turned the tiring-house into a Bedlam of speculation.

‘We shall be chased off the stage.’

‘This is a judgment on us.’

‘Someone has poisoned him to bring us down.’

‘I spy a devilish plot here.’

‘There is a murderer in our midst.’

‘Who will be his next victim?’

‘Abandon the play!’

‘Take to your heels!’

‘Run for your lives!’

‘Stop!’ ordered Nicholas, planting his burly frame before the exit and holding out his arms. ‘Ben Skeat has died but it may well be by natural means. Would you desert him at a time when he most needs you? Will you behave like cowards when valour is in request? Will you inflict such a dark stain on the reputation of Westfield’s Men?’ He pointed a finger at the makeshift stage behind the curtains. ‘The play must go on.’

Gill was distraught. ‘How can we act with a corpse?’

‘You have already taught us the way,’ soothed the book holder. ‘When no words came from Duke Alonso, you provided your own. Listen carefully and you will hear that both the Provost and Count Emilio follow your example.’

As they strained their ears, the company became aware that a small miracle was taking place out there in the sunshine. With its central character reduced to the role of a stage property, the play was somehow continuing on its way. Edmund Hoode, the company’s actor-playwright, was in somnolent vein as a kind Provost who escorts the disguised Duke to the condemned cell so that they may comfort the hapless Emilio. In the latter role, Owen Elias was at his best, suffering in the shadow of the headsman’s axe while busily plundering all the speeches for which Ben Skeat no longer had a use.

Edmund Hoode was not to be outdone. He had laboured long and hard over The Corrupt Bargain. The sudden departure of its main character was not going to disable his play as long as he had breath in his body to rescue it. Renowned for his comedies, Hoode had tackled a more tragic theme in his latest offering. The Corrupt Bargain was set in Genoa. The exiled Duke Alonso returns in disguise to seize power from his tyrannical younger brother, Don Pedro. Injustice runs riot in his unhappy land. Alonso is particularly struck by the plight of a devoted brother and sister, Emilio and Bianca.

Wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit, the brave Count Emilio is sentenced to death. The beautiful Bianca goes to Don Pedro to plead for her brother’s release. The tyrant is consumed with such a powerful lust for her that he offers her a corrupt bargain. If she consents to give her body to him, her brother will be set free. Bianca is duly horrified by the choice confronting her. She must lose either her virginity or her brother. Which is the more precious? While his beloved sister agonises over her predicament, Emilio spends anguished hours in prison. When Alonso calls upon him in the guise of a friar, he tries to offer a modicum of comfort to the prisoner.

Owen Elias was not going to waste the most telling speech in the scene. Leaning in close to the lifeless Ben Skeat, he cocked an ear and wrinkled his brow.

‘What says my holy father?’ he asked.

Edmund Hoode seized gratefully on the cue. Bending over the hooded figure, he pretended to listen to the friar’s words of wisdom before relaying them to the condemned man.

Hearken to his advice.

Subdue this groundless fear of death’s approach

And fast embrace him as your dearest friend.

You run from him who can your pain remove,

Your sins redeem, your sister’s honour save,

And all the rigours of this woeful world

Lift from your back. The end of life is but

The start of joy. Speak thus to welcome death.

“Light my way to heaven with burning torch

And take me from this hell of durance vile.”

The Provost was not merely recovering words from beyond the grave, he was giving the rest of the company invaluable time to consider how to proceed. In the version of The Corrupt Bargain that they had rehearsed that morning, Duke Alonso went on to overthrow his brother, restore good government, pluck Emilio from the block itself and marry the grateful Bianca. Such a resolution was now impossible. A cruel tyrant could not be ousted by a dead friar.

Frantic rewriting was needed and Nicholas Bracewell rose to the occasion with customary speed. Since he held the only complete copy of the play, he knew the piece almost as well as its author and saw the advantage of having Edmund Hoode in a role where he might help to pilot them all home. Sudden decisions were made with an instinctive skill.

‘Take note,’ said Nicholas to the remainder of the cast. ‘The Provost will banish the usurper, Don Pedro. The new Duke will be Count Emilio. We lose Alonso but his place in the action will be taken by the Jester. Bianca will marry the Provost.’

The firmness of his voice instilled confidence into his fellows and most of them were content to obey. There was one notable exception.

‘This is lunacy, Nicholas,’ complained Barnaby Gill.

‘It is our only hope of salvation.’

‘Then we are doomed. I am a court jester not a friar.’

‘Could you not be both?’ argued Nicholas. ‘To aid the company in its hour of need, could you not be two or twenty characters if it preserve our good standing?’

‘I have my own reputation to consider.’

It is difficult to stand on one’s dignity while wearing a cap and bells. When Barnaby Gill folded his arms and lifted a defiant chin, he simply appeared ridiculous. He was Petulance incarnate. His bells jingled in mockery.

‘Think of Ben Skeat,’ urged Nicholas.

Gill was unmoved. ‘Did he think of me when he went to his Maker in the middle of my performance?’

‘We have a duty to our audience.’

‘That duty is to give them The Corrupt Bargain, not some mauled and tattered version of it.’

‘Our patron is here today.’

‘Then we must not abuse him with this profanity.’

‘Would you rather send him away with two acts of the piece yet unplayed?’ said Nicholas. ‘Lord Westfield would be affronted, his companions would be disappointed and the rest of the spectators will demand their money back. Is that your wish?’ His final point was his most persuasive. ‘Master Firethorn would never forgive you.’

‘What care I?’ retorted Gill. ‘It is because of him that we are in this parlous state!’

But his resistance was now only token. The name of Lawrence Firethorn had brought him to heel. Firethorn was the company’s actor-manager and acknowledged star, the man for whom the role of Duke Alonso had been specifically written. Ben Skeat had only been elevated to the part because Lawrence Firethorn was indisposed. Their absent leader would pour molten contempt upon them if they dared to abandon a play in mid-performance, and the chief target of his attack would be the reluctant court jester. Barnaby Gill was Firethorn’s greatest rival, a brilliant clown who felt that his own art was vastly superior to that of any other player and that he himself was chiefly responsible for the continued success of Westfield’s Men. He could not permit himself to be seen as the architect of their downfall.

There was a more tempting consideration. With Lawrence Firethorn off the stage, Gill’s ascendancy would go unchallenged. He could rule the roost like a Chanticleer. Improvising scenes in order to cover the untimely death of Duke Alonso would place an immense burden on him but it was one he would cheerfully bear in view of the potential reward. Instead of merely stealing the occasional scene as the court jester, he could now pillage the whole play.

‘Take your positions,’ said Nicholas.

Act Three was coming to a close as the Provost offered a final crumb of comfort to Count Emilio. Both men were due to leave the prison cell in the company of the exiled Duke but the latter was clearly in no position to join them. Ben Skeat’s removal from the action was the main priority and Nicholas Bracewell took the matter into his own hands.

‘Dick Honeydew,’ he called.

‘Yes?’ said the boy apprentice.

‘We will have your lament now.’

‘But I do not sing it for two more scenes.’

‘It is needed presently.’

‘As you wish.’

‘Sing loud and clear, Dick.’

‘I will do my best.’

The boy apprentice cleared his throat and tried to stop his hands from trembling. In a dark wig and a brocade gown heavily ornamented with jewels, Richard Honeydew was a most winsome Bianca. Nicholas sent word up to the balcony overhead where Peter Digby and his consort of musicians waited to introduce the next scene with a fanfare. On the instructions of the book holder, the trumpets were replaced by the strains of a lute. Bianca stepped gracefully on to the stage with Nicholas himself in attendance. He crossed to the inert figure of Duke Alonso and gave an indulgent smile.

Our holy friar sleeps softly like a child.

I’ll straight convey him to a proper bed.

Ben Skeat was lifted bodily and taken swiftly away. His exit was covered by a tearful Bianca, who wept bitterly into a handkerchief before singing a lament to the accompaniment of the lute. Caught up in the emotion of the moment, the audience soon forgot the strange behaviour of the friar but it continued to exercise his fellows behind the scenes.

Nicholas lay the corpse down in the tiring-house.

‘Whatever has happened to him?’ wailed Edmund Hoode.

‘He is gone,’ said Owen Elias sadly. ‘I saw his eyes flicker, then it was all over. Poor Ben!’

Hoode shuddered. ‘Dead? What a comment on my play!’

‘It may yet be saved, Edmund,’ said Nicholas.

He acquainted the newcomers with the changes he had made in the action of the piece, drawing a groan of protest from the author. Owen Elias took a more practical view. If the afternoon were not to end in chaos, then the amended version of The Corrupt Bargain had to be played to the hilt. Duke Alonso had evidently gone into permanent exile.

Nicholas ordered the participants in the next scene to stand by, then signalled their entrance as Bianca swept off to sympathetic applause. The villainous Don Pedro was now onstage for five minutes or more with his cohorts. Temporary relief was offered. As in most of his plays, Hoode rested the central character in Act Four so that his protagonist could burst back into the action-restored and refreshed-in the final act. Nicholas Bracewell took advantage of the lull.

He carried Ben Skeat to a quiet corner and laid him gently on the floor. As he pushed back the hood, he saw the unmistakable signs of death. The mouth was slack, the skin white, the eyes stared sightlessly. No breath stirred, no pulse could be felt. An old man had passed peacefully away among his fellows at the very height of his career.

It grieved Nicholas that he was unable to treat the corpse with all due reverence but the play had prior claims. Raising the body up a few inches, he carefully divested it of the friar’s habit so that the disguise could be used by the court jester. He then covered Skeat with a cloak and looked up at the sorrowful faces all around him.

‘Play on, sirs. It is what Ben would have wanted.’

‘We owe it to him,’ agreed Owen Elias.

‘But my work is being mangled!’ hissed Edmund Hoode.

‘Would you rather call a halt to the proceedings?’

Nicholas threw down a challenge that he knew would be ignored. Unlike Barnaby Gill, the playwright would never put selfish concerns before the good of the company. Survival was the order of the day and Hoode recognised that. It was time to unite with his fellows to bring The Corrupt Bargain safely into port, even if the harbour was not the one that the author had originally intended.

‘Tell us what to do, Nick,’ he said. ‘Guide us through.’

‘Stand close and hear me out.’

Snatching up the prompt book once more, Nicholas flicked through the pages and reiterated his decisions. Westfield’s Men listened intently though their eyes occasionally strayed to the supine figure of their colleague in the corner. Ben Skeat had spent a lifetime responding to the various crises that were thrown up regularly by a capricious profession. It fell to them to meet this dire emergency with the courage and imagination that the old actor would have shown.

Two plays now ran side by side. What the audience saw was an attenuated version of The Corrupt Bargain but the drama taking place behind the scenes was much more intense. Actors rehearsed new roles in a matter of seconds. Music was changed, entrances were altered, costumes were reassigned. George Dart, the smallest and most lowly of the assistant stagekeepers, was in a state of near-hysteria as the scenic devices he was due to move were given fresh locations. He soon had no idea what scene, what act, and what play they were engaged in, and simply hung on the commands of Nicholas Bracewell, praying that he would come through the ordeal without earning himself a sound beating.

Most of the actors adapted swiftly and successfully. Owen Elias, an ebullient Welshman, set a fine example as Count Emilio, turning speeches that he should have addressed to Duke Alonso into moving soliloquies. Edmund Hoode, too, was able to mould his part into the required shape, growing in confidence with each scene and slowly emerging as a worthy contender for the hand of Bianca. In this role, Richard Honeydew, youngest but easily the most gifted of the four apprentices, gave a faultless performance as the tragic maid and had the entire audience ready to defend his virginity.

The nature of the double drama was best illustrated by Barnaby Gill. Onstage, he was a revelation, expanding his role in all manner of ways to give other actors more time to think and to adjust accordingly. As the court jester, he was the licensed fool who was able to speak the harsh truth-albeit couched in riddles-to the wicked Don Pedro. He now introduced a range of jigs and hilarious songs that were a blaze of light in an otherwise dark tragedy. Gill borrowed freely from other plays in which he had shone and gave what was effectively a free-flowing exhibition of his remarkable comic skills.

Offstage, the actor’s Janus-face came into view.

‘I will not wear that friar’s habit!’ he snarled.

‘You must,’ insisted Nicholas.

‘It is a shroud lifted from a corpse!’

‘Ben Skeat has no more use for it now.’

‘Take it away. It smells of decay.’

‘We have no other costume fit for you.’

‘Find one!’ demanded Gill. ‘I’ll not touch that.’

A bell chimed to announce the scene in the cathedral. There was no time for niceties. Nicholas Bracewell grabbed the friar’s habit and fitted it unceremoniously over the spluttering Gill before propelling him on to the stage with a firm shove. The raving actor changed instantly into a serene friar and padded across the stage with measured tread to play a scene with the distraught Bianca. Nicholas allowed himself a sigh of relief. It was all too premature.

They were now into Act Five and exploring uncharted territory. With the friar re-entering the action, the scope and delicacy of their manoeuvres increased sharply. They had to pick their way line by line through the text, making constant revisions and refinements. Mistakes soon crept in. Speeches were either forgotten or delivered in the wrong sequence. Indeed, there was one moment when both Edmund Hoode and Barnaby Gill declaimed the same rhyming couplet from Duke Alonso in unison. It produced a restrained laugh in the assembled throng but that laugh became derisive when George Dart blundered onstage as a servant and promptly collided with a bench which now occupied a wholly new position. Instead of imparting his one line and quitting the stage, Dart stayed rooted to the spot and perspired dramatically with naked fear.

The Provost hustled him roughly towards the exit.

‘Come, man. Your message. What is’t?’

George Dart was pushed out of sight before he could deliver it and fresh sniggers arose. Barnaby Gill quelled them at once with an impromptu prayer. Since the audience believed him to be Duke Alonso in disguise, he used a voice as deep and mellifluous as that of Ben Skeat. A master of deft comedy, Gill showed that he could cope with more serious material when necessary. His sure-footed performance led the rest of the cast safely across the stepping-stones of the play and inculcated fresh hope in their hearts. The final scene at last came into view.

The stage was set for the execution of Count Emilio and the grim ritual was enacted with all due solemnity. Soldiers rushed on to the stage in the nick of time to pull the condemned man from beneath the axe, then arrest Don Pedro. Thanks to the intercession of the friar, the tyrant was finally deposed but he did not accept his fate meekly. He roared and ranted at all and sundry. Breaking free from his captors, he ran to the friar to throw back the man’s hood with a yell of “Cucullus non facit monachum”-the hood does not make the monk. There was a gasp from the audience.

Instead of revealing Duke Alonso as they expected, he exposed the head of the court jester. It was a moment of pure theatre, at once so startling and so comic that they did not know quite how to react and simply gaped in astonishment. Barnaby Gill gave them no time to discern the more farcical aspects of the play’s resolution. Showing admirable invention and no small degree of authority, he announced that the exiled Duke had died of a fever contracted during a visit to the prison. Alonso’s last wish was that Don Pedro should be overthrown and replaced by the more worthy rule of Count Emilio. The liberated prisoner was greeted with general acclamation by his new subjects.

There remained only one more strand of the play hanging loose and Owen Elias tied it off neatly. Beckoning his sister and the Provost to him, he joined their hands together in a symbolic gesture. Their marriage would be the first public event of his rule. The play ended with a formal dance, then the whole court went off to church for the nuptials.

The audience was pleasantly mystified. It was not the conclusion they had anticipated, and some of them felt obscurely cheated, but the mass of spectators glowed with approval. Applause was most generous. When Barnaby Gill led out the cast to savour their ovation, there were very few who noticed the absence of the exiled Duke of Genoa. While he lay dead in the tiring-house, The Corrupt Bargain was hailed. London had never seen anything quite like it before and, though the play had some puzzling elements and some baffling twists of plot, it also had an undeniable novelty.

Nicholas Bracewell remained behind the scenes and knelt beside his old friend with a sad smile. Ben Skeat deserved his fair share of that applause. Until the moment when he suddenly stepped out of the play, he was giving the finest performance of his career, clear-voiced, expressive and full of rich detail. Death had perhaps not intruded at such an unseemly hour, after all. It could be argued that Ben Skeat had been offered the most perfect exit for an actor.

‘Nobly done, friends!’

‘I hated every moment.’

‘We plucked triumph from disaster.’

‘It was intolerable.’

‘Have you ever known such excitement?’

‘Nor such misery.’

‘We have a victory to celebrate.’

‘But no strength left for celebration.’

Torn between exhilaration and exhaustion, Westfield’s Men came pouring into the tiring-house. The last echoes of applause were fading as they retired to their lair. Some were buoyed up by what they saw as a signal achievement while others merely wanted to collapse and lick their wounds. Owen Elias belonged to the former party and gave all within reach a hug of congratulation. Richard Honeydew, by contrast, was shivering with fear, all too conscious of the narrow escape they had just had. The other apprentices-Martin Yeo, John Tallis and Stephen Judd-were putting on a brave face but their knees were also knocking beneath their farthingales. George Dart was so grateful to have come through it all that he lapsed into frenzied giggling.

The twin poles of emotion were exemplified by Barnaby Gill and by Edmund Hoode, respectively. Gill was suffused with joy, thrilled to have survived a harrowing experience with such honour and basking in the glory of having led Westfield’s Men as its undoubted star. An audience which would normally flock out into Gracechurch Street with the name of Lawrence Firethorn on its lips would now talk of little else but Barnaby Gill. Hoode collected no such bounty from their two hours upon the stage. For him, it was a headlong descent into chaos. His play had been cut to shreds and his own performance, he felt, was a cruel travesty.

The severe strain had attacked his moon-shaped face like the slash of a knife. Pale, drawn and sagging with despair, he dropped down on to a stool beside Nicholas Bracewell.

‘That was the most corrupt bargain I ever made!’

‘How say you, Edmund?’

‘I was paid money for writing a dreadful play.’

‘A fine play,’ said Nicholas. ‘And well-received.’

‘No, Nick,’ moaned the other. ‘It was an assault on the intelligence of the spectators. They came to see a well-tuned tragedy and we gave them that discordant comedy of errors. Instead of displaying our art, we foist base, brown paper stuff on to them. It was shameful. I’ll never call myself “poet” again.’

‘The company did what was needful, Edmund.’

‘It destroyed my work.’

‘No,’ said Nicholas, ‘it refashioned it so that it might live to be played afresh another day.’

‘Never! The Corrupt Bargain died out on that stage.’

‘So did Ben Skeat.’ It was a timely reminder and it checked the flow of authorial recrimination. ‘We all regret what happened to your play this afternoon but it is Ben who deserves our sympathy. Your art continues: he will never tread the boards again.’

Edmund Hoode was chastened. He nodded in agreement, then lowered himself on to one knee before taking the edge of the cloak and lifting it back from Skeat’s face. The old actor gazed up at him with a look of posthumous apology. He was deeply sorry for the injury he had inflicted on his friend’s play but the exiled Duke had no choice in the matter. A tear of remorse trickled down Hoode’s cheek.

‘Goodbye, Ben,’ he said softly. ‘I do not blame you, old friend. Your death has changed my life. You taught me the folly of my occupation. I thank you for that. Over your corpse, I make this solemn pledge. My writing days are past.’

‘Do not be so hasty,’ said Nicholas.

‘I never wish to endure that torture again.’

‘Nor shall you, Edmund.’

‘Indeed not.’ He let the cloak fall back across the face of Ben Skeat once more. ‘I am finished with it, Nick. Westfield’s Men can find some other fool to pen their plays. No more corrupt bargains for me. Nor more long nights bent wearily over my work. No more sighs and no more suffering. No more pain!’ His voice hardened. ‘I will never-never-take up my quill again.’

It was a vow that he would soon wish he had kept.