A Mystery Of Errors Read online

  “And Henslowe, who owns the Rose, has a pretty daughter, as I hear,” said Speed. “A comely, young, unmarried daughter. You’ve heard that, have you, Ned?”

  Alleyn turned red. “I’ll not dignify that with a response.” “You already have,” said Speed, with a grin. “Ned,” said Burbage, with concern, “you are the finest actor in the company. The best in all of England. It is only fitting that the best be with the queen’s own company of players!”

  “Dickie, my lad, my mind is set,” Alleyn replied. “And this company, sad to say, is no longer the best. That honor rests with the Admiral’s Men. They have the best playhouse in the Rose; they have the finest resident poet in Kit Marlowe and the best and freshest repertory. Once I have joined them, they shall have the best actor, as well. And meaning no offence to your father, young Dick, but Philip Henslowe is by far the better manager.” “Ned, he runs a brothel,” Burbage said, in exasperation. “Among other investments, aye, and it turns a very handsome profit for him,” Alleyn replied. “Besides, there is little enough difference between whores and actors, anyway. And a brothel is simply a playhouse with better furnishings.”

  “Ned, you cannot mean this!” Fleming said. “If you leave, ‘twill sink us sure as Drake sank the Armada!”

  “John, this ship is well and truly holed and sinking fast already,” Alleyn said. “There shall be no saving it, I think.”

  “What sort of creature is it that leaves a sinking ship?” asked Speed, scratching his chin and staring at the ceiling as if in deep thought.

  “Bobby, I shall ignore that because you are drunk,” said Alleyn, with an edge to his voice.

  “Truer words were never spoken,” Speed replied, raising his tankard. “I shall now proceed to get much drunker. It has been a privilege working with you, Ned. Now go sod off.” He drained the tankard in one gulp.

  “Well, there is my exit cue, I think,” said Alleyn, with a grimace. “Gentlemen, I wish you all the best. Except for that scoundrel Kemp, of course, but then, he is no gentleman. Good, sweet night to you.”

  “And a bleedin’ good riddance to you,” said Speed, with a prolonged belch, as Alleyn made his way toward the door.

  Shakespeare came back in just as Alleyn was leaving. He sat on the bench beside Smythe and grinned. “Well, he swore and frothed and shouted up a storm, but did not resist me beyond a mere token show. Once he saw that Alleyn was not hard upon his heels, he blustered for a while out in the street, shook his fist, then headed home. And thus the storm blows over.” He glanced around at everyone’s expressions of gloom and doom. “On the other hand, maybe not. They all look as if someone has just died. What did I miss, Tuck?”

  “Alleyn’s exit,” Smythe replied.

  “No, I passed him going out as I came in,” said Shakespeare.

  “I meant his exit from the company.”

  “What? He quit the company?”

  “Aye. That he did.”

  “An artistic show of temper, surely.”

  “I do not think so,” Smythe said. “He is off to join the Admiral’s Men and play the Rose. I had the impression that all of the arrangements had already been made.”

  “Oh, they were made, all right,” said Burbage, miserably. “He would never have gone off like that unless the deal were done.”

  “What of his share?” asked Fleming, referring to his part ownership of the company as an investor.

  “He shall sell it back to my father, I should imagine,” Burbage said. “They will come to some agreement, I am sure. These things are all accounted for under the general terms of purchase. ‘Tis no matter, either way. His leaving us is a devastating blow. Kemp remains a draw, because the groundlings like him, but without Tarleton and Ned Alleyn, we are crippled.”

  “Surely not,” said Fleming. “Very well, so we have lost two of our company, valued members, true, but there are always other players that we could take on to fill the vacancies.”

  “ ‘Tis not so simple. We have not just lost two of our company,” said Burbage, “but we lost our best comedic actor when Dick Tarleton quit the stage due to his failing health and now that Ned has left us, we have lost our best dramatic actor, too. ‘Tis a crushing blow. I do not see how the Queen’s Men can survive it.” He shook his head. “This is the end.”

  “Nay, ‘tis not the end until we say so!” Fleming insisted. “We are the Queen’s Men, gentlemen! We shall fight on until the last man falls!”

  Robert’s Speed’s forehead struck the table with a loud thump as he fell forward in a drunken swoon.

  “Well, that’s one,” said Burbage, wryly.

  “Perhaps the problem lies less with the quality of players than with the quality of plays,” said Shakespeare.

  “Eh?” said Burbage, as if noticing him for the first time. “And who might you be?”

  “Shakespeare is the name. William Shakespeare.”

  “Oh. I remember you. The chap from Stratford, was it? You wanted work.”

  “My friend and I were hired as ostlers,” Shakespeare said. “Admittedly, not quite what we had in mind when we applied to you, but ‘twas the best, you said, that you could offer us at present. However, it would seem that present circumstances have undergone somewhat of a change.”

  Burbage grunted. He reached out to refill his tankard from the large clay pitcher. “Aye, ‘twould seem so.” He grimaced. “So what do you want, Shakespeare? To act?”

  “Well, Tuck and I would both be pleased to help the company in whatever capacity ‘twas deemed we best could serve,” said Shakespeare. “For my part, acting is certainly within my compass, but more to the point, I also happen to be a poet. ‘Tis there that my true vocation lies. And, if I may be so bold, perhaps ‘tis in that capacity that I may best serve the company.”

  “A poet,” Burbage said. He nodded. “I remember. Marlowe sent you. But I also recall you said you had no formal academic training.”

  “True,” said Shakespeare, nodding. “And yet, no amount of academic training can teach a man to write if he has not the talent. Marlowe and Greene are both university men who hold degrees as Masters of the Arts. But do both hold talent in equal degree? I am not a university man, ‘tis true. But then, neither are most members of your audience. All I ask is a chance to show what I can do.”

  Burbage glanced at Fleming.

  Fleming merely shrugged. “What do we have to lose?”

  Burbage glanced at Speed, but Speed was unconscious. Burbage merely rolled his eyes. He sighed. “Very well, Shakespeare. You shall have your chance. Our next performance is tomorrow. The play is not working and we have just lost our leading player. We have some eighteen hours in which to salvage something of this mess. Let us see what you can do.”

  7

  WHEN HE CAME HOME TO discover that his daughter had gone somewhere to meet with her intended, Henry Darcie was very much displeased. For one thing, he had no idea where she had gone, and he did not like not knowing things or not being in control. For another, he knew his daughter all too well, and knew she had inherited his willfulness and stubbornness, two qualities which had served him well in achieving his success, but which, he felt, were unfortunate and highly undesirable in women. And when Elizabeth came home later that night, delivered to her door by a coach that pulled away as soon as she stepped down, Henry Darcie became absolutely furious.

  His worst fears were realized when he discovered that Elizabeth had done precisely what he had been afraid she’d try to do, given the opportunity. She had somehow managed to convince Anthony Gresham that she was utterly unsuitable. In just a matter of hours, Henry Darcie saw all the work that he had done in trying to arrange the match coming undone right before his eyes. The problem was, he was not sure what, if anything, he could do to remedy the situation.

  “You are a miserable, ungrateful, spiteful little wench!” he shouted at his daughter, when she had told him how she spent her evening. “How could you do this? Do you have any idea what you have done? You have ruined your
future!”

  “I have done no such thing!” Elizabeth protested. “Anthony Gresham made his own decision.”

  “Made upon seeing your behavior, no doubt, which must have been disgraceful!”

  “There was nothing wrong with my behavior, but a great deal wrong with his,” she said, following the story they’d agreed upon. She kept her voice very calm, as if struggling to do so despite great inner turmoil. “I accepted his ill-timed and presumptuous invitation-much to Mother’s dismay, I might add-because I believed you would have wished for me to do so. And having already displeased you, I did not wish to further anger you.”

  “That is true,” her mother said, nodding emphatically. “I was very much against it, but believed you would have wanted Bess to go.”

  “Indeed? How good of you both to consider my feelings for a change,” her father said, sarcastically. “And Bess had no feelings of her own in this regard, I take it?”

  “I have told you before that I wish to love the man that I would marry,” said Elizabeth, “but in Mr. Gresham’s case, that would be utterly impossible. He is an ill-mannered, loutish boor who found me unsuitable in all respects, from the moment that he first laid eyes upon me. He had his mind made up before I even spoke a word.” That much, she thought with some amusement, was actually true. “He found me unbecoming and had the lack of grace to say so.”

  “ What ! You mean he said so to your face?“ her father replied, astonished.

  “He said it plainly. I was not at all to his taste.” “He truly said so? Just like that?”

  Elizabeth decided that there was no harm in embellishing a bit. After all, it was what they had agreed to, more or less, and since they would, in all likelihood, not be seeing Mr. Anthony Gresham again, there seemed to be no reason not to embroider a bit more, purely for effect.

  “He said I was too skinny,” she said, “and that my bosoms were too small.”

  “Good God!” Her father looked aghast.

  “And he thought I was a bit too horse-faced for his liking.”

  “Horse-faced!” His jaw dropped.

  Her mother gasped.

  Elizabeth wondered if this was, perhaps, going a bit too far. She knew that she was pretty, and bore a strong resemblance to her mother. It would not be immodest to suppose that it would be a stretch in anyone’s estimation to call her horse-faced, but the very idea of his daughter being so horribly insulted made her father apoplectic, especially since, given the resemblance between mother and daughter, it was an insult to his wife, as well. His face turned bright red and he sputtered with outrage. Her mother, meanwhile, had turned as pale as a ghost.

  “Horse-faced!” he repeated, with stunned disbelief. “ Elizabeth…” He reached out and took her by the shoulders, looking her straight in the eyes. “ Elizabeth, are you quite certain you are telling me the truth?”

  She had expected this and she was ready. She widened her eyes, as if with shock that he should question her veracity after what she had been through, and allowed her lower lip to quiver slightly. “Oh, Father!” she cried. “Oh! How could you?“

  She pulled away from him and ran out of the room, sobbing.

  She listened, afterward, from the other room, as her father shouted, paced and blustered, expressing his outrage and threatening to demand satisfaction, though Elizabeth was fairly certain that was nothing but a bluff, merely idle threats to soothe his injured pride. For of course, it was his pride that was injured and not hers. He cared less about her feelings than about the fact that it was his daughter who had been called horse-faced and unsuitable, thereby impugning not only his abilities to raise a daughter properly, but even his very humors, which had produced her. It was the seed of his loins that had been found defective and he took it as a personal insult. Elizabeth went to bed content and secure in the knowledge that there would be no marriage now. At least not with Anthony Gresham.

  She was, therefore, caught completely unprepared when Gresham came calling the very next day, bringing with him a bottle of fine Portuguese wine for her father, a handsome gold brooch for her mother, and a lovely bouquet of red roses for her.

  Her father was at work when Gresham arrived, but her mother was at home and when she summoned Elizabeth, sending one of the servants to tell her that she had a caller, Elizabeth had absolutely no idea who it might be. When she came in and saw that it was Gresham, she was absolutely stunned.

  “Bess, dear, look who has come to see you!” said her mother, beaming. “Mr. Gresham, may I present my daughter, Elizabeth?”

  For a moment, Elizabeth was simply too taken aback to speak. Her mother was introducing her to Gresham as if they had never even met. Gresham rose to his feet and came toward her, smiling charmingly.

  “Miss Darcie,” he said, holding his hand out to her. She gave him her hand, numbly and without even thinking. He bent over it and brushed it gently with his lips. “How delightful to meet you, at last. I was told that you were very beautiful, but in all honesty, I must confess that the reports I had received simply had not done you proper justice.”

  “Is he not utterly charming?” said her mother, with a smile Elizabeth could have sworn had a malicious touch. “So well spoken, and so handsome, too! Is he not everything you could have hoped for?”

  Utterly confused, Elizabeth looked from her mother to Gresham and back again. “Mother, you speak as if Mr. Gresham and I had never met.”

  “Oh, do I?” her mother replied, innocently. “You mean to say you have?”

  “I am quite certain I would have remembered, madame,” Gresham said, with a smile.

  Elizabeth frowned. This was not making any sense at all. She could not understand why her mother was acting as if the events of the previous day had never happened. Or why Gresham was acting that way, for that matter. She had no idea what he was up to, but she was not going to have any of it.

  “Then you must have an exceedingly short memory, Mr. Gresham,” she replied, stiffly.

  Now Gresham frowned, infuriatingly. “I beg your pardon,” he replied. “I am fairly certain that we have never met. Perhaps you have mistaken me for someone else?”

  She stared at him with disbelief. “We were at the Theatre only yesterday,” she said. “Could you have forgotten that already?”

  Gresham stared at her with incomprehension. He glanced at her mother, as if seeking confirmation of Elizabeth ’s assertion.

  “ Elizabeth is having her little jest,” Edwina Darcie said, with a smile.

  “Ah,” said Gresham, as if he understood, though clearly, he did not understand at all. He still looked faintly puzzled.

  “Jest?” said Elizabeth. “Mother, whatever do you mean? There is no jest. You were right here when Mr. Gresham’s invitation arrived yesterday by messenger!”

  Now Gresham looked thoroughly confused. “Invitation? Messenger?” He shook his head, looking bewildered. “Am I missing something? I sent no messenger, nor invitation.”

  Elizabeth ’s mouth opened, but no sounds would come out. She was simply too stunned to speak.

  “Now, you see, Elizabeth?” her mother said, with a smug tone. “This is what happens when you dissemble. You have been caught out. As the saying goes, oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

  “I fear that I do not understand any of this at all,” said Gresham, looking lost.

  “ Elizabeth concocted a bit of a tale for us yesterday,” her mother said. “A drama, as it were. And a most complex little enterprise it was, too, even to the hiring of a messenger and coach! My goodness! Such an elaborate deception! Her father will be quite taken aback when he finds out. It seems he was completely taken in. As, indeed, was I. You see, she was having a bit of fun with her parents, Mr. Gresham. Her very gullible parents.”

  Elizabeth caught her breath. “Mother! You think that I…?” She could not even go on.

  “You see, Mr. Gresham,” her mother continued, “ Elizabeth is quite a clever girl, with a most sprightly, irrepressib
le, and independent spirit.” Her mother, to Elizabeth ’s chagrin, actually simpered. “She gets it from her mother, I suppose. Oh, the apple truly does not fall far from the tree, as they say. She had some foolish notion that she did not wish to subject herself to the most honorable and eminently sensible tradition of an arranged marriage, you see. In this regard, I must accept part of the blame, I fear, in that I… out of all the best intentions, you understand… had prevailed upon her father to engage for Elizabeth a tutor to instruct her in the finer points of appreciation of the arts. The young man we had engaged seemed most erudite and capable, but apparently he somewhat exceeded his commission and filled our daughter’s head with all sorts of romantic nonsense from the sensualist poets… why, I blush even to say it!”

  “I quite understand, madame,” Gresham replied, nodding. “I know the sort of thing of which you speak. These poets are quite the fashion now amongst the glittering gentlemen at court. They all go about enraptured over their productions. ‘Tis rubbish, really. Utter rubbish.”

  “I see that you are a discerning gentleman, Mr. Gresham,” Edwina Darcie said. “So then, perhaps you will understand how, being young and impressionable, Elizabeth came away from her instruction with the notion that a proper marriage was not one in which the practical considerations of estate and family and mutual suitability prevailed, but one in which the woman was swept away by the passions of romantic love! And so, when she discovered that our families had agreed upon a match of eminent sensibility and benefit for all concerned, she devised, it seems, a little stratagem to make her father and myself believe that you, her prospective husband, did not desire the marriage to take place, because you had found her totally unsuitable! Can you imagine such a thing?”