Sackett's Land

            By dint of much walking I priced coins in various shops, even bought two in a junk shop where they lay amid a lot of mixed stuff. One was of bronze, the other silver.

            'Look you,' Jublain protested, when once more we sat in the inn with tankards of ale before us, 'Essex is in Ireland. He will need fighting men. We could—'

            'I have naught against the Irish.'

            'How many wars are there, that you pick and choose?'

            'Go to Essex if you wish. I shall go to America, a quick voyage and home again with riches.'

            'You tell me to go? We are friends, Barnabas. Anyway, I must see what comes of this madness.'

            'Enough for now. There is a play at the Globe. In my life I have seen but one play and that in an inn yard. This is about Julius Caesar.'

            'If you must go, carry a sword. There are roving gangs, and even inside the theater there is trouble. The last time I went, some idle son threw a beef bone that near broke my skull.'

            'If you have not heard,' it was the man for whom I'd bought the meal, 'you had best know. The theater sits now on the Bankside near Maiden Lane. They took it up one night and carried it over the Thames.'

            'Carried a theater? What nonsense is this?'

            'The old man, Burbage, died and left the theater to his sons, Cuthbert and Richard. Left the building, that is. It stood upon land belonging to Alleyn, who would not lease it to them.'

            'So?'

            'One dark night a set of rough fellows, Richard Burbage among them, came across the river armed with swords, daggers, bills and hooks. They tore down the theater and took it over the river. The Thames was frozen, so they carried it over on the ice.

            'Alleyn was that beside himself, but he had not the men to stop them. Burbage had a carpenter named Streat with him, and William Smyth and who knows who else? Some say Will Kemp was along, and Shakespeare, too, that actor who writes.'

            'You seem to know a bit of all that goes on,' I commented.

            'Aye, if you've aught to sell, I will find a buyer. If there's a place you'd go, I can take you there. If there's a man you must meet, I can arrange that, too.'

            'And a woman?' Jublain suggested.

            'That a man must do for himself, unless. ...'

            'Unless what?'

            'If it were business, serious business ...'

            'And your name?'

            'I am Corvino, once an acrobat and a clown.'

            'No longer?'

            'I took a fall. I am agile enough, but not for that. Not again. Not me.'

            'Come with us to the theater, Corvino. I have a matter to discuss. There is a Society of Antiquaries. Do you know of them?'

            'A bit. '

            The plan that had come to me was not complicated. In our Elizabethan world, to succeed a man needed at least strength, courage, and, if not those, the favor of friends. I was ambitious, I suppose, but I had no connections at court, nor was I wishful to enter that world. I wanted to do something, to accomplish, to achieve, but even for that one needed opportunity. And opportunity could be had only through the favor of some great man.

            The discovery on the Devil's Dyke was an omen. It was a beginning, a foothold.

            America promised much, or seemed to. A new world with furs, hides, perhaps even gold or pearls. If the Spanish had found them, why not the English?

            Yet any move I might make required more capital than I had, and I had no wish to sell what my father had left me. The ancient coins had opened a way for me, had let me realize there were men who collected ancient things.

            Hasling had accepted me; but Hasling was a rare man. Others would be more skeptical—hence the new clothes, the step into a world of fashion.

            During my travels about to find work, or simply to look, I had come upon a ruined wall here, a bit of terrace there, a mound of earth, a grass-grown earthwork. And that section of mosaic I had glimpsed ... a villa? Working men in England were constantly turning up some odd bit. I would not only use what I knew myself, but would study Leland's notes. If I could find something of value, I might realize the capital I'd need. Moreover, there was the chance of meeting some man of eminence who might speak to a ship's master for me.

            I would not sit waiting for some vague tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime, and find nothing at the end of the waiting. I would begin here, I would make something happen.

            'To the theater then,' I said.

        Chapter 5

            Circumstance and heritage had produced a certain piece of raw material, the very raw material that was me. Yet, thanks to my father, my sophistication was beyond that of most fen-men.

            To the theater we went, an oval, wooden-walled building with its center open to the sky, the galleries thatched. There were six-penny, two-penny, even penny seats, and if rain fell, it fell upon those in the pit —upon the sailors, mercers, butchers and bakers as well as their apprentices and students who occupied the pit.

            There were also private theaters, but the audience for the plays of Will Shakespeare and many others was largely of the working-class and young.

            Waiting for the play to begin, they argued boisterously, drinking beer, eating fruit or bread, cracking nuts.

            We found a place in the balcony. From the pit somebody shouted a coarse remark at Jublain and he replied in kind. Next to us three young rowdies, albeit of good family, were throwing apple cores and nutshells on the heads below, and those in the pit threw them back.

            At one side of the pit was an upended hogshead for the relief of those in the audience who had drunk more beer than they could handle. When the odor grew too great even for those in the pit, a cry went up to 'Burn the juniper!'

            After the call had come from several throats, an attendant appeared on stage with a metal plate and some twigs of juniper, which he set afire. Soon the pungent smell of burning juniper filled the air.

            We watched the theater fill. 'He's popular, Will Shakespeare is,' Jublain informed us, 'and they say Julius Caesar is one of his best.'

            It was little enough I knew of the theater, and nothing of Shakespeare. Of Fletcher and Marlowe I'd heard.

            'The crowd likes him. He's been writing two plays a year, and playing parts in dozens of plays, his own and others. They usually change the bill twice each week. He's never played in the private theaters, although he has performed at court.

            'Owns a part of the theater, Will does. When Burbage needed money to rebuild his theater on this side of the river he sold off parts of it to several of the actors. Shakespeare, Kemp, and three or four others put up money.

            'But the crowd likes our Will. They understand what he says and like listening. He's one of the few who's had no trouble.'

            'Trouble?'

            'They've smashed up some theaters, beaten up a few playwrights ... actors, too. But not our Will.'

            Suddenly from behind me a harsh voice: 'There he is! Take him!'

            Turning swiftly, I saw Rupert Genester. A half-dozen hardfaced rogues were pushing up from behind him.

            Corvino got up suddenly, stumbled and fell in front of them. Sprawling just in time to trip them, he