below.
Glancing back across the sea of heads in the upper gallery, he accepted the truth: there was no way to go but down.
Steeling himself, the spy made a graceful pivot and grasped one of the rose carvings on the timber column. His cloak billowed in the updraught from the hot yard. Knuckles white, he clung on to the carving, praying that Henslowe’s carpenters had done a masterful job. Blood pumped in his head. Will allowed himself one look down into the depths, and then felt around for a foothold on the carving below.
His leather shoe slipped on the polished wood, and caught, just. The drop pulled at him.
Then, through the cacophony of screams below, a single cry rang out clear: ‘The devil is here! The devil!’
CHAPTER FOUR
Will swung down the timber post from carving to carving and dropped the final few feet to the now-deserted yard in front of the Rose’s stage. On it, a knot of players huddled in fear. Leaping up to them, the spy grabbed the huge-bellied, white-bearded man who played the lead role, Faustus, and shook him alert.
‘What caused this outcry?’ Will demanded in a cold, authoritarian tone.
In the stage’s lantern light, the make-up that made the player’s features stand out to the upper galleries transformed him into a grotesque — white skin, red lips and cheeks, dark rings around his eyes.
‘The devil-’ the player croaked, barely audible above the shouting audience crowding towards the doors.
With his fist gripping the neck of the costume, Will shook the man roughly once more. ‘No superstition. Keep a clear head. What was seen?’
A young, smooth-cheeked man stepped forward, his hair tied back ready for the wig that would transform him into the spirit of the beautiful Helen of Troy. ‘I saw it,’ he declared in a clear voice that belied the terror in his eyes. He indicated the magic circle inscribed on the boards, surrounded by anagrams of Jehovah’s names, astrological symbols and ancient sigils. ‘When Faustus completed his incantation to summon the devil Mephistophilis, in the presence of Lucifer, a second devil did appear. But this was no man! He … it! … wore no make-up!’
Faustus gripped his head, reeling. ‘The devil was summoned here this night to torment us for speaking his name, and making a mockery of his dark majesty!’
‘There are devils aplenty in this world to worry me first before I turn my attention to Hob. Now, good lad, which way?’ Will glanced around the empty yard.
The young player pointed backstage.
Faustus caught Will’s arm. ‘He will take your soul,’ he said in a tremulous voice.
‘If I still have one to give.’ Drawing his rapier, Will jumped back to the mortar floor and slipped along the side of the stage to a small cluttered area with a space for the players to await their cue, heavy with the smells of paint, chalk and make-up. Timber frames, winches, painted scenery, and the artefacts used to make sound effects looked strange and unsettling in the half-light.
Watching the shadows for signs of movement, Will edged beyond the backstage jumble. He found himself in a walkway leading past the tiring house to a series of small chambers used for storage or recreation, places where the players would game with dice or cards while waiting for their moment on the boards. The backstage area was still. Yet he noticed it was unaccountably colder than the rest of the hot, crowded theatre, and an unpleasant smell hung in the air. Brimstone.
He glanced into the first room on his left. The stub of a single candle guttered on the floor in the far corner, its flickering light revealing row upon row of costumes in emerald and crimson and sapphire, as well-made as the finest court clothes to cope with the wear and tear of multiple performances. A pair of intricately constructed wings of goose feathers hung from the ceiling, like an invisible angel taking flight.
A whisper rustled somewhere ahead in the gloom of the walkway, the words unclear.
Will’s breath caught in his throat. With a fluid movement, he stepped into the costume room just as a shadowy presence emerged from a room three doors ahead. He remained still, his breathing measured, the tip of his sword resting on the floor so it made no noise when he moved.
Soft footsteps came to a halt, and Will pictured whoever was there waiting outside the room. He heard a low growl, like one of the beasts in the Queen’s menagerie.
From that inhuman sound, Will tried to imagine what stood in the walkway, but nothing came to mind that made any sense to him.
The rumbling sound ebbed and flowed. The echoes suggested the intruder was turning his head, looking up and down the walkway.
The spy tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, his muscles taut. The blood pulsed in his head, the familiar rhythm of his life, the music of impending death.
After a moment, the footsteps padded away. Will waited a few heartbeats and then stepped out into the shadowy walkway. He glimpsed a figure disappearing around the edge of the backstage, too indistinct in the gloom to tell if it was devil or man. Silently, he followed, keeping close to the wall, and low.
When he turned along the rear of the stage, he came up hard. The figure waited for him. Instinctively, Will swept his sword up ready for a fight before he had even registered the identity of his opponent.
It was Jenny. His long-lost love.
The spy reeled from the shock. Long-dammed emotions flooded up, his incomprehension washed away by the plangent yearning of all those desperate years without her, followed immediately by a pure joy that he was seeing her again, not a hazy, half-formed memory, but Jenny, really and truly there. He lowered his rapier, his lips silently forming her name.
She looked exactly as she had done the last time he saw her all those years ago, when she had disappeared from his life, in full view, in that Warwickshire cornfield on that hot summer day. When she had walked out of life and into mystery. Still wearing the same blue dress, the colour of forget-me-nots. Her hair still a lustrous hazel, tumbling across her shoulders, her features pale and delicate yet filled with strength of character and intelligence.
Questions flashed through Will’s mind, each one dying in the heat of her glorious return.
‘Jenny,’ he murmured. The word fell close to him with the dull resonance of a pebble dropped on wood.
The woman held out a hand to him, and he wanted to feel her fingers in his more than anything in the world; it was all he had thought of, for years, since that awful day.
Sheathing his rapier, Will stepped towards his love, unable to take his gaze from her face. All around him, the world fell into shadow until there was only the moon of her presence, drawing him in.
Jenny’s face remained still and calm. Will watched her lips for the familiar ghost of a wry smile, but it was not there.
‘Speak to me,’ he whispered.
And then Will looked deep into his love’s eyes. They were as black as coal from lash to lash, not the green eyes of his Jenny; devoid of any of her warmth, empty of all her love and her compassion. These were the eyes of a devil. In them, Will saw his own pale, desperate face reflected, and he realized he had been tricked. But there was no time to feel the bitterness of hope dashed, or the anger of the cruel blow that had been struck at him. The hands of Jenny-that-was-not-Jenny clamped on the sides of his head and pulled him in until those black eyes were the only thing he could see. His vision swam, and any thought he had of fighting free was washed away. With barely a murmur of protest, he tumbled into deep waters that were beyond his understanding.
