a play was the most valuable thing a company held, after its costumes. They had paid Tom to protect both.
'Why indeed?' the Actor responded as his heart jolted. He knew why. And not even one of his oldest friends could be allowed to share in the secret. He had brought death to old Tom. Was he to murder his oldest friends as well by telling them a truth they did not need to know?
'And then all this fuss about Marlowe's lost play… When ever has there been such fuss about manuscripts?' Henry looked into the Actor's eyes. There was no response.
The trumpet blew for the last time. As much of a hush as ever fell over an audience at The Globe dropped down on them. They opened.
'Who's there?’
'Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself!'
Hamlet was still one of the great attractions, old as it was. And even greater with Burbage in the lead. The audience were moved in a moment from an English summer to the freezing battlements of Elsinore, moved by words alone. Two frightened men on guard, terrified by a ghost. It shut the crowd up like a finger snap. They were off and away.
The Actor had fallen asleep for a while, something he noted he often did after the sickness came upon him, and woke with a start. In the play-within-the-play Old Hamlet, played by Ben in place of the Actor, was about to have poison poured in his ear. Lucianus, the poisoner, flourished the bottle with much evil gesturing and grimaces. Strange, the Actor thought, it was a different bottle. His usual prop was a nasty green thing, its colour screaming something wicked. This time Lucianus had an expensive blue bottle, rather elegant in fact. He poured the poison into Old Hamlet's ear.
The Actor had always hated this part. Whatever he did, the fluid in the bottle was cold, and he could never persuade the others to leave the bottle empty and mime it. It had become something of a joke within the company. When the cold water hit his inner ear he always jerked convulsively with the shock. It was no bad thing, of course. As the stuff was meant to kill him he would have to jerk up and down anyway.
'Ben's going overboard on this one, isn't he?' Condell had drifted back to the Actor's side. Old Hamlet was throwing huge spasms, hurling himself around on the bed with gasps and muffled shrieks of heart-breaking proportions.
What a pity, thought the Actor. All that effort from Ben for no reward. The play was broken up in chaos just after the moment of the poisoning, the real King rising in guilt and anger and storming out. With Hamlet mouthing off and the King just about to ruin the party, no one would have time to look at an old actor going way over the top in a death scene no one was interested in anyway. Ben was wasting his energies, even to the white froth he had managed to make come from his lips.
Something was wrong.
The Actor could sense it, even on the sidelines. The actors on stage had picked up a signal, the tremor that goes round live performers when things start to go wrong. Horatio's eyes were flickering backwards and forwards, Hamlet ill at ease and muffing some of his lines. The King, Claudius, had risen to his feet in uncontrollable anger. The whole assembly — courtiers, actors — should have splintered from the stage in apparent chaos. Old Ben's body was still on the stage.
'Bloody hell!' said Condell. 'Sodding bloody buggering fucking hell! Why doesn't he get up and go?'
You never left a body on the stage. It was the golden rule. It spoilt it if the audience saw a character they had just been told was dead suddenly get up and walk off before the next scene. It wasn't as if they could draw a curtain over the stage. Yet this was different. The audience knew that the body in the play-within-the-play was an actor's, had not really died. He was expected to run off with his tail between his legs, realising the actors had caused offence. Yet Ben lay there, stiff, unmoving.
They were seconds away from the audience realising something had gone tragically wrong. Ben lay flat out on the bed, eyes agape and mouth open, a thin line of dribble from his lips over his chin. *I do believe,' said Condell, in a tone of hushed disbelief, 'that the stupid old bastard has gone and died on us.'
The Actor turned to Condell. He had only half-heard. 'It's all over,' he said sadly.
The great Burbage, playing Hamlet, had gone glassy-eyed and had lost the plot completely. The line should have been: 'O good Horatio, I'll take the Ghost's word for a thousand pound!' Instead, Burbage started to gabble complete nonsense, 'For thou dost know, O Damon dear…'
'Damon? Damon! Who the fuck's Damon when he's at home?' Condell was incandescent.
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself; and now reigns here
A very, very…
There was an appalling pause… 'Paiock!'
'Oh sweet Jesus!' moaned Condell, wringing his hair. 'What's he doing?'
'He's regressed,' said the Actor. 'Don't you remember? He's mangling lines from that monstrous load of old garbage we did years ago — Gorboduck, wasn't it? — and it was bad enough then.'
On stage, Horatio turned to Hamlet, a look of total scorn on his face. 'You might have rhymed…' he said tersely.
Horatio saved the day, with no help at all from Hamlet. He motioned firmly to one of the actors off stage and together they draped Old Ben over their shoulders. Never explain. Never apologise. If you make it look as if you meant it, the audience will believe you. It was a basic rule.
They dumped the body by the Actor's feet. He gazed into the staring eyes of Old Ben and a pain like an icicle in his chest clutched his heart. Vaguely he was aware of Hamlet's voice: 'O good Horatio, I’ll take the Ghost's word for a thousand pound…'
Burbage had got it together again. They were back on track. It hardly seemed to matter to the Actor. Old Ben was dead, clearly. Condell bent down to feel in his neck for a pulse, for form's sake. There was nothing.
The Actor smelted something. His hand shot out, stopping Condell just as his bony fingers were to touch the corpse's flesh.
'Hold it! Don't touch him!'
The smell, that metallic, vinegary stench with an acidic burn to it. He had researched poisons, knew their reality. This was not water that had been poured into Old Ben's ear. Someone had substituted the green bottle with its harmless contents for a sophisticated and expensive poison, the ingredients known to only two or three men in London at most. Someone, carefully and methodically, had sought to murder the actor taking the part of the Player King. Only at the last minute had a different man taken on the role for that one performance. Ben's death was no accident.
Which meant that someone had tried to murder the Actor. Or to be more precise, actor, poet and playwright. Shakespeare. William Shakespeare, the author of this very play, Hamlet. William Shakespeare, the actor who had always taken the role of the Player King, the actor who should have been playing it this afternoon except for a last-minute change because he felt sick.
The sickness came upon him again, wave after wave, and did not go away. Cecil, he thought to himself, I must tell Cecil. It had gone too far, gone on far too long.
One moment he was there. The next moment he had gone. In his tension and sickness he failed to take note of the small, cloaked and hooded figure, following him with burning eyes and a strange, high-prancing step.
2
May, 1612 The Merchant's House, Trumpington, near Cambridge
'There was given me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me.'
