‘Ursula?’
Her head snapped up. Who was this, that he felt he could be so informal? Then she smiled. ‘Benjamin! How lovely to see you.’ She turned and beckoned her maidservant nearer. It was so easy to lose one’s reputation. She looked flirtatiously at the river flowing between them, she on the Town side, he the Gown. ‘How can I get across?’
The maidservant thought for one horrible moment that her mistress was going to throw herself on the mercy of the Cam, with its darkling waters and deadly currents but no; Steane was pointing to his right, to where a bridge spanned the river into the college grounds and the sheep munched the sweet grass.
‘Cross the bridge,’ he called. ‘I will open the gate.’
The two women walked briskly along the bank, keeping pace with Steane, who was walking quite slowly as he tried to cultivate a suitably bishoply gait. When they got there, he was wrestling with the gate latch. It was quite obvious from their side how it worked and Ursula Hynde had to bite back a peremptory remark, couched along the lines of what sort of idiot was he?
‘Just a minute, dearest one,’ Steane said, as the gate finally yielded and he flung it open so the women could pass through. He looked at the maidservant. ‘Must . . . umm . . . ?’
Ursula looked the woman up and down, as if to appraise her for sale. ‘Dorcas?’ she asked him. It wasn’t the woman’s name, but Ursula Hynde had better things to do than keep learning new ones and her maids had a strangely short tenancy in the job. ‘I’m afraid she must, Benjamin,’ she said. ‘I have my reputation to consider. You hear such things about these colleges.’
It was as well that Mistress Hynde was not a mistress of men’s faces, because the expressions which flitted across Benjamin Steane’s told a very clear story, which Dorcas – whose real name was Anne – could easily read. In deference to them both, she took a step back and turned to admire the view, but stayed within earshot.
‘Your maidservant has a sensitive soul,’ Steane murmured, taking the arm of his bride-to-be and retracing his former path along the riverbank.
Ursula looked down and simpered. Steane tried to find it attractive in this woman, overweight, overbearing and easily overwrought. He hardly knew her, had been introduced to her at Madingley the year before and had earmarked her as future bishop’s wife material. It was the way of the world. He had heard a fund of stories on the top table at King’s and other colleges, about senior men who had been seduced into taking a young wife, after years of celibacy, only to have her make a cuckold of him with any number of lusty young servants. He risked another glance at Ursula from under his lashes. Even if she tried, the servant would have to be particularly lusty to keep his end of the bargain with Ursula.
But he wasn’t unkind, at bottom. Even his enemies would only label him as rather unusually single-minded. He thought that perhaps that was what had drawn him to Ursula. She too knew what she wanted and set out to get it; she would be an ornament to him as his wife. And if the Queen didn’t want to acknowledge her, as he had heard was often the case with bishop’s wives, well, Ursula was difficult to ignore.
‘The river is so lovely,’ Ursula remarked, thinking that the silence had gone on long enough.
‘It most certainly is,’ he replied, with a dip of the head. ‘But not, perhaps, so lovely as in Bath.’
Ursula Hynde was ever so slightly deaf in one ear. She was therefore shocked to hear a man of the cloth allude to bathing and blushed accordingly. ‘Why, sir,’ she said, ‘I bathe when called for, to be sure.’
Steane was nonplussed for a moment, then caught up with the side-turning the conversation had taken. ‘No, dear sweet one,’ he said, racking up his volume a notch. ‘Bath. Aquae Sulis. The town of Bath. Where I shall be bishop, along with Wells, of course.’ He smiled benignly at her.
‘Oh.’ She let the disappointment show. ‘Not Winchester?’
‘No, goodness me, no,’ he said, squeezing her arm. ‘Very unhealthy. Damp. And such low-life living around the Buttercross there. No, no, Bath is much better for you, dearest.’
She looked up at him. He really wasn’t too bad looking and not too old either, compared with some. She smiled. ‘How kind you are, Benjamin,’ she said, and patted his hand as it just managed to emerge from under her left breast. ‘I think we’re going to be very happy.’
‘I’m glad you think that,’ he said. ‘I think we will be very suited. I hope that I can live up to the standard set by your first husband.’ He felt her tense. ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ he said. ‘Have I upset you?’
Trailing behind them, Anne grimaced. Oh, no, the stupid fool had mentioned husband number one. Now they were in for hours of weeping, if she was any judge. She rummaged in her bag and brought out a kerchief which she handed silently to her mistress, who blew her nose into it in a not altogether bridely way. Startled mallards flew up from the reeds.
‘May we sit down somewhere, Benjamin?’ the woman asked. ‘I feel a little faint.’
He looked around and saw a felled tree at the edge of the path and led her to it, thoughtfully spreading the hem of his gown for her to sit on. He perched alongside her, tensing his legs to keep the trunk level as it took her weight. ‘Rest here,’ he said. ‘What is it, dear heart? You must tell me; after all, in three days, we will be man and wife.’ He felt a small chill go down his back.
She blew her nose again and cleared her throat. ‘My first husband was a prince among men,’ she began. ‘Older than me, of course, much older, but very gentle and courteous. He didn’t . . . trouble me.’ She blushed and looked down.
Steane patted her hand, in some relief. He hadn’t planned to trouble her too much either. ‘There, there,’ he murmured, in his best pastoral voice.
‘We had a beautiful home, while we waited for him to come into his inheritance at Madingley. He looked after his father’s affairs in Cambridge and London. He used to bring me presents when he had been away, jewels and books. He brought me a parrot once.’ She gave a resounding sniff and smiled through her tears at Steane. Her reminiscences had made her look younger and he almost loved her then.
‘And then . . . ?’
‘He died.’ She could hardly choke out the words. ‘He had been out all day hunting. When he came in, he said he was feeling tired and would go to bed. I sat by the fire with my maidservants and we sewed and chatted. Laughed.’ She seemed to be reciting a long-learned piece, which had no relation to her, and yet it was the story of the beginning of many lonely years. ‘Then, his manservant came running in. He said . . . he said his master was taken very ill. I ran to him. He was writhing on the bed. He reached out for me but, as I stepped forward, he took a huge breath in.’ She stopped and even the maidservant, who had heard this many times before, had tears in her eyes. ‘It was his last. He died.’ Then, reputation or not, Ursula Hynde leant against the shoulder of the Bishop of Bath and Wells-to-be and wept, for all those lonely nights, now hopefully almost at an end.
And Benjamin Steane put his arm round his wife-to-be and wiped a stealthy tear away with his free hand. He had no idea whether he could be a good husband. But this fat, annoying, bossy woman had somehow just made him want to do his best to be just that.
TWELVE
Constable Fludd heard them before he saw them. Shouts and whoops and clarion calls told dozing Cambridge that a troupe had come to town. They threw up dust as they rattled through Trumpington, their great carts groaning behind the heavy plod of the oxen. Dogs ran by them, barking and yelping and small boys and girls ran with them, laughing and calling to the spotty youths in their dresses and the jesters in their greasepaint.
There had been rumours for days that a theatre troupe was on its way. It was supposed to come for the Sturbridge Fair, but a horseman had arrived to tell the Mayor that a number of the chorus had gone down with something nasty they’d picked up in Chelmsford and, not to worry, it wasn’t the plague. It wasn’t even contagious. It just put actors off their stride and could the Mayor be patient for a few days more.
The truth was that the Mayor could have been patient for ever. The man was not only torn between Town and Gown, he was harangued on a daily basis by the Puritan persuasion, who wanted him to shut the taverns and take the pews out of the churches. A troupe of travelling players was the last straw. On the other hand, plays brought crowds and crowds brought money. The Mayor’s message to his Constable was that the company could come and the company could perform, providing their paperwork was in order.
‘I shall need to see your papers,’ Fludd told the player king as he swung down from the leading wagon. Behind him the seamstresses called and whistled. Some of them didn’t seem to know one end of a needle from another. The drums beat incessantly with a rhythmic, hypnotic pulse and each deafening clarion blast was matched by shouts and general hysteria.
‘Lord Strange’s Men?’ Fludd checked, having seen the seal on the parchment.
‘And they don’t come any stranger!’ The man nudged him in the ribs. ‘Ned Sledd, sir, at your service,’ he said, and he bowed low, doffing his plumed cap so that it swept the ground. Fludd looked at the man’s finery, the velvet and brocade, the silk and satin. He was breaking all the Sumptuary Laws rolled into one; the man was better dressed than the Chancellor of the University.
‘Where are we to perform?’ Sledd wanted to know.
‘Parker’s Piece,’ the Constable told him. ‘You can park your wagons nearby.’
‘Excellent.’ Sledd patted his arm and took his papers back. ‘You won’t mind if my people canvas the town?’
‘Er . . . ?’
‘Walk the streets, man. Advertise. It’s all about bums on seats, you know. Or feet on the ground for the poor buggers. Still –’ he breathed in the warm midday air – ‘it’ll be an honour for them, eh? To stand for an hour or two to watch The Fair Maid of Kent? I don’t suppose you get much real theatre this far north, do you?’
Fludd was stung. He’d lived in Cambridge all his life and here was a strolling player talking down to him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we have the May Day festivities – and the colleges perform their own stuff.’
‘Oh, really!’ Sledd laughed, shaking his head. Then, he was serious and closed to his man. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘You’re the Mayor’s man, I assume. His factotum?’
‘I am Constable of the Watch.’ Fludd was on his dignity. He hadn’t warmed to Sledd at all.
‘Of course you are,’ Sledd patronized. ‘How many taverns do you have? Fifteen? Twenty?’
‘Enough,’ Fludd told him.
‘Good, good. What about trugging houses?’
‘Sir?’ The player king had lost him.
‘Stews, man.’
Still nothing.
‘Brothels!’ Sledd whispered in the Constable’s ear.
‘None,’ Fludd told him flatly.
‘None?’ Sledd mouthed, but no voice came out.
‘This is a respectable town, sir. You’re lucky we’re letting you in.’
‘No, no,’ Sledd said, laughing. He’d heard this before, more or less at every town they visited. ‘It’s you who are lucky. Have you any idea of the skills my troupe possess? Dancing, singing, agility of body, memory, skill of weapon, pregnancy of wit. They are like springs of pure water –’ he was getting carried away with his own rhetoric and flung his arm wide – ‘which grows sweeter the more they are drawn from.’ He let out a breath, dropped his arm and turned to Fludd. ‘And we are bringing all this to you Cantabrigensians for the most trifling sum.’ He moved closer to Fludd. ‘What’s the Mayor’s cut? Ten per cent of the gate?’
‘I believe so, sir,’ the Constable told him.
‘And yours?’ Sledd thought it best to check in advance.
‘I don’t take bribes, sir,’ Fludd said, looking him in the eye.
The eye widened in disbelief and Sledd spread his arms wide.
‘Come on, Ned,’ a squawky lad called to him from the first wagon. ‘My arse is killing me on this thing.’
‘Keep your wig on, Thomas. I am in the presence of that rare beast, an honest Englishman.’ He put his plumed hat back on with a suitably theatrical flourish. ‘You’ll have to excuse him,’ he said, nodding towards the boy. ‘He’s playing the lead tomorrow. It’s gone to his head rather.’
‘You mean . . .
he’s
playing the Fair Maid of Kent?’
Sledd frowned. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You don’t think we’d be so perverse as to put
females
on the stage, do you? What do you take us for, man? There are laws in this great country of ours.’
Sledd moved away to mount the wagon, then turned back to Fludd. ‘Are you
sure
there aren’t any trugging houses?’
The camp fires of Lord Strange’s Men flickered in the cooling night air on the level open space that was Parker’s Piece, on the edge of the town. In the circle of carts and wagons, their carpenters had been hammering and sawing all day, adjusting the travelling stage they’d brought with them for the Fair Maid of Kent. Striped awnings flapped slightly in the breeze and rattled the painted flats that had been lashed to the wooden O.
All day the children and men of Cambridge had found reason to go there, snooping, prying, staring at the actors as they went through their paces, making passes with their swords and dancing to drum and fife. The women went nowhere near, not during daylight, for fear of what their neighbours would think. They just quizzed their menfolk on their return. What was the play the company was putting on? Was Lord Strange there himself? How handsome were the leading men? And would there be fireworks?
Kit Marlowe left it until nightfall to make his own visit. For most of the day he’d been closeted in King’s Chapel, more for Ralph Whitingside’s than Benjamin Steane’s benefit, although it would do the dear, dead man little good now. It was good to stretch his legs, striding past the flaming torches that marked the edge of the ground. Laughing girls passed him, nudging each other at the handsome roisterer in his doublet and colleyweston cloak. But they were otherwise engaged already with the lads of Lord Strange, even if one of them was wearing a dress.