Grace read his mind and tried to soothe it.
'We do not expect a Youngthrust in every play, sir,' she said.
'I am not well-favoured in Friday's offering,' he admitted.
'We will make allowances for that. Ill not condemn you because you appear as a villain. I hope I've learned to separate the player from the play.' She touched his arm lightly. 'My brother and I saw you as the Archbishop of Canterbury in The History of King John but I did not then imagine Edmund Hoode to be weighed down with holiness. Whatever you play, I take pleasure from your performance.'
'This kindness robs me of all speech,' he murmured.
Grace Napier crossed to the door and Isobel followed her. Hoode moved swiftly to lift the latch for them. Isobel bestowed a broad smile of gratitude on him but he was not even aware of her presence. Grace leaned in closer for a final word.
'I would see Youngthrust on the stage again,' she confided.
'The Merry Devils?’
'Your part in your play. A double triumph.'
'I am overcome.'
'But next time, sir, let him sigh and suffer even more.'
'Youngthrust?'
'He should not have his love requited too soon,' she said. 'The longer an ardent wooer waits, the more he comes to prize his fair maid. It can only increase their happiness in the end.'
She touched his arm again then went out with Isobel, their dresses swishing down the corridor and their heels clacking on the paving slabs. Edmund Hoode was tingling with joy. He had clear direction from her ar last. Grace Napier welcomed his love and urged him to be steadfast. In time, when he had endured the pangs of loneliness and the twinges of despair, she might one day be his. She had transformed his life in a few sentences.
From the depths of Hell, he now ascended to the highest Heaven.
Chapter Three
St Paul’s Cathedral was the true heart of the city. It dominated, the skyline with its sheer hulk and Gothic magnificence. Within its walls could be found the teeming life of London in microcosm. Paul's Walk, the middle aisle with its soaring pillars and vaulted roof, was a major thoroughfare where gallants strutted in their Finery, soldiers escorted their ladies, friends met to exchange gossip, masters hired servants, jobless men searched the advertisements on display, lawyers gave advice, usurers loaned money, country people gaped, and where all the beggars and rogues of the neighbourhood congregated in the hope of rich pickings.
Crime flourished in a place of divine worship and yet the sacred glow was somehow preserved. St Paul's was not simply an imposing structure of stone and high moral purpose, it was a daily experience or everything that was best and worst in the nation's capital.
The cathedral stood at the western end of Cheapside. Its churchyard covered twelve and a hair acres with houses and shops crowding around the precinct walls. At the centre of the churchyard was Paul's Cross, a wooden, lead-covered pulpit from which political orations were made on occasion and from which sermons were regularly preached.
'There indeed a man may behold hideous devils run raging over the stage with squibs in their mouths, while the drummer makes thunder in the tiring house and the hirelings make lightning in the Heavens.'
The sermon which was being delivered there on that sun-dappled morning was fiery enough to draw a large audience and to capture the interest of those who were browsing in the bookshops or loitering by the tobacco stalls. Standing in the pulpit, high above contradiction, was a big, brawny man with a powerful voice and a powerful message. He waved a bunched fist to emphasise his point.
'Look but upon the common plays of London and see the multitude that flocks to them and follows them. View the sumptuous playhouses, a continual monument to the city's prodigality and folly. Do not these vile places maintain bawdry, insinuate knavery and renew the remembrance of heathen idolatry? They are dens of iniquity!'
There was a ground swell of agreement among the listening throng. Isaac Pollard developed his argument with righteous zeal.
'Nay!' he said. 'Are not these playhouses the devourers of maidenly virginity and chastity? For proof whereof, mark the running to The Theatre and The Curtain and other like houses of sin, to see plays and interludes, where such wanton gestures, such foul speeches, such laughing and leering, such winking and glancing of wanton eyes is used, as is shameful to behold. The playhouse is a threat to Virtue and a celebration of Vice!'
Pollard was really into his stride now, his single eyebrow rising and falling like a creature in torment. He pointed to the heavens, he pummelled the pulpit, he smashed one fist into the palm of his other hand. In launching his attack on the theatre, he was not averse to using a few theatrical tricks.
'But yesterday,' he continued, 'but yesterday, good sirs, I went to view this profanity for myself. Not up in Shoreditch, I say, not yet down in Bankside but within our own city boundaries, at the sign of the Queens Head in Gracechurch Street. There I beheld such idleness, such wickedness and such blasphemy that I might have been a visitor to Babylon. Men and women buy this depravity for the price of one penny and our city authorities do nought to stop them. Yet upon that stage-I call it a scaffold of Hell, rather-I saw the visible apparition of devils as they capered for amusement. That is no playhouse, sirs, it is the high road to perpetual damnation!'
The more vociferous elements gave him a rousing cheer.
'The theatres of London,' said Pollard with booming certainty, 'are the disgrace and downfall of the city. Among their many sinful acts, there be three chief abominations. First, plays are a special cause of corrupting our youth, containing nothing but unchaste matters, lascivious devices, shifts of cozenage and other ungodly practices.'
Support was even more audible now. A woman in the crowd clutched her two children to her bosom, as if fearing that they would go straight off to the nearest playhouse to lose their innocence.
'Second, theatres are the ordinary places for vagrant persons, thieves, beggars, horse-stealers, whoremongers, coney -catchers and other dangerous fellows to meet together and make their matches to the great displeasure of God Almighty.'
Pollard drew himself up to his full height and his shadow fell across those who listened down below. Both arms were outstretched for effect as he came to his final indictment.
'Third, plays draw apprentices and other servants from their work, they pluck all sorts of people from resort unto sermons and Christian practices, and they bind them to the worship of the Devil. Playhouses mock our religion. Destroy this canker in our midst, say I. Perish all plays and players!'
There was a deathly hush as his imprecations hung upon the wind, then a derisive laugh was heard from the rear of the congregation. Isaac Pollard turned eyes of hatred upon a personable figure in doublet, hose and feathered hat. The man had the look of a gallant but the air of a scholar.
It was Ralph Willoughby.
*
The house in Shoreditch was not large and yet it served Lawrence Firethorn and his wife, their children, their servants, the four young apprentices with Westfield's Men and sundry other members of the company who needed shelter from time to time. It fell to Margery Firethorn to make sure that people did not keep bumping into each other in the limited space and she presided over her duties with a ruthless vigilance. A handsome woman of ample proportions, she had an independent mind and an aggressive charm. Firethorn could be fearsome when roused but he had married his match in her. Pound for pound, Margery was redder meat and she was the only person alive who could rout him in argument. He might be the captain of the domestic ship but it was his wife's hot breath which filled the sails.
'The room is ready, Lawrence,' she said.
'Thank you, my dove.'
