The Opening Night Murder (21 page)

From there they visited the ’tiring room, freshly painted pale green because it was a calming color. Through the open door Suzanne could see the chairs and dressing tables were shoved to the walls to clear space, and a rehearsal of mummers
was in progress. This short piece, intended to precede the main play on opening night, involved a man cuckolded by his wife, and though the performers weren’t in costume at the moment, the man playing the husband wore a set of paper horns on his head, held by a strip of cloth tied at the nape of his neck. In performance the paper headpiece would be replaced by a more substantial one of stuffed, brightly colored cloth decorated with streamers and tipped with two tiny silver bells. The “wife,” played by a skinny lad who was Arturo’s son, wore a tight shirt sewn with enormous pockets stuffed with rags to represent a ridiculously ample bosom. He slung the false chest this way and that as no real woman would, which made the scene ever so much more comical.

When Piers and Daniel emerged from the room, Suzanne ducked again, this time behind some long boards leaning against a wall, but when she looked again she was glad to see Daniel’s earlier cheer had returned, at least as a façade. Piers still appeared angry.

She followed them up the rear stairs to the galleries above the stage, which could be used either for privileged audience or for musicians or actors. Balcony scenes could be staged in these areas, though in such cases the actors were sometimes swallowed up by being so far upstage they were distanced from the audience. Suzanne hid just inside the stairwell to listen.

Secluded from the rest of the troupe now, Suzanne was horrified to hear Piers say to Daniel, “My lord, I wonder whether you might allow me to ask a question of you.”

“Of course.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but what are your intentions regarding my mother?”

Suzanne opened her mouth to intervene, but was torn between stopping Piers from interrogating Daniel and wanting
to hear the answer to the question herself. In the end curiosity won out. She kept silent and hung back farther into the shadows. She couldn’t see Daniel’s face, but it was a long moment before he spoke and she could imagine his stunned expression. He replied, “My intention is to be her friend.”

“What sort of friend?”

Piers!
She rather wished he would mind his own business, but stayed put nevertheless.

“Piers, I understand that you might distrust me, and I suppose you have reason. However—”

“Your
lordship
, I’ve asked a simple, straightforward question. I hope for a response in kind.”

Suzanne took a step forward, but still couldn’t break up this conversation. Curiosity gripped her. More than anything, she would know the answer to Piers’s question and couldn’t bring herself to stop the answer.

Daniel said, “The question is not so very simple as you imagine.”

“Have you feelings for my mother?”

“Of course I do. Within her limitations as a woman, she is honorable and as respectable as anyone could be in her circumstances.”

“She’s a whore, so ‘within her circumstances’ isn’t very high praise.”

“She’s certainly nobody’s wife.”

“Thanks to you.”

Daniel harrumphed like an old man, momentarily stalled while searching for a reply. “Not at all. I made no decisions for her. She understood the situation when she ran away from her father’s house.”

“You made it so she had to leave, but gave her nowhere to go.”

Daniel had no argument for that, either, and only made a slow shrug of one shoulder, in grudging agreement. “It’s true. I had nothing for her, and your grandfather would not have received you kindly.”

“Neither has my father.”

Daniel drew himself up taller. “Life is filled with difficulties. We can’t always have things as we wish. In fact, complete freedom is so rare as to be nonexistent.”

Piers’s voice rose. “A fine excuse!”

Suzanne decided it was time to interrupt this conversation, so she stepped forward. “Oh, there you are!” The men both jumped a bit, startled that they might have been overheard. She continued, “Come! Sheila has some dinner for all of us.” A lie, but she would make it up to Sheila later for having to chastise her for being tardy with the promised food.

Piers glared at Daniel, who received the anger with utter aplomb, as if he didn’t notice. Then Piers guided Daniel back down the stairs. Dinner was a long silence, punctuated only by an occasional question from Suzanne followed by a short response from either Piers or Daniel. Like a Scottish call-and-response waulking song, she asked and they answered. The rest was only chewing.

After eating, Suzanne accompanied as Piers showed Daniel the house galleries. They circled the theatre along the third tier of seats, and Piers explained how improved the capacity would be once the benches were built. From there they went outside and around the perimeter of the property. The building was surrounded by clumps of tenements, some very old with upper floors overhanging, and the taller ones reaching far out over the street, blocking whatever sunlight might be had. Many had residents leaning out the windows to watch the work on the theatre or catch a glimpse of the Earl of
Throckmorton and his fancy carriage. Suzanne, Piers, and Daniel witnessed some boys loitering too close to it who were chased away by Daniel’s coachman, and the boys ran just far enough so he stopped chasing them. He returned to guard the coach, and they sneaked back one by one to lurk and spy again.

Once Daniel’s visit was finished and he mounted the steps to his carriage, Suzanne and Piers watched it make its way down Maid Street. Piers muttered under his breath, “Pompous ass.” Then without further comment he turned to resume his work in the galleries.

Suzanne watched him go, and wished Piers’s opinion of Daniel was more respectful. More like a son’s.

After that, Suzanne’s thoughts kept drifting back to Piers’s query to Daniel.
What are your intentions regarding my mother?
He’d thought it a simple question, but even Suzanne knew the truth must be so complex as to make it unanswerable. Daniel’s personal conflict of legal duty to his wife and moral duty to his son muddied those waters so horribly there was no telling what actually lay in his heart. Suzanne found herself passing through Pall Mall anytime she was in the vicinity, to gaze at the house and hope for a glimpse of its occupants. Those glimpses were few, and told her nothing.

One day in July she was in a shop near Whitehall, browsing some fabric that had just come from Paris, midnight-blue silk velvet that felt to her fingers like the fur of a newborn kitten. She longed to buy enough for a gown, but it was far too costly and she knew she would order only wool today, and flinch at the price for that.

The street door opened, and in came Anne Stockton, Countess of Throckmorton, a noble presence that made everyone in the shop turn to look. She was accompanied by her footman, who followed her like a stately shadow in blue livery,
silent and unobtrusive but never far. Suzanne watched from under lowered lids, pretending to assess the silk velvet in her hand but seeing it not at all. Anne had a smile for everyone she saw, and nobody could resist her grace and charm. She asked after some fabric suitable for a dressing gown, and the merchant invited his lady to have a seat on the upholstered sofa nearby while he would bring her some possibilities.

Close up, Anne’s beauty was undeniable. She wore little face paint and only one beauty mark, for on her enhancement was unnecessary. Her bright smile was infectious, and her cheeks were dimpled in spite of her age. Though the corners of her eyes were creased, it didn’t seem to matter because the wrinkles were apparently caused by constant smiling. She appeared to have all her teeth, and the ones in front were still light colored and hardly stained at all. It made her appear more than a decade younger than her actual age, and Suzanne felt like a hag.

The fabric merchant returned with some assistants bearing several bolts of silk cloth. Rich velvets in an array of reds and golden yellow, some of which were nice but not for Anne, and others that were just plain ugly. Anne’s reddish hair was tricky to complement, in some lights appearing blond and in others bright red, and the merchant wasn’t seeing that.

On the sort of impulse that had always seemed to rule Suzanne’s life, she reached for a nearby bolt of dark green. The silk was so dark as to appear nearly black, but it had a lustrous green highlight that flowed as the cloth moved. She carried it over to Anne and draped a short length of it over her hand to present it. “My lady,” she said in her gentlest voice. “Perhaps you might try this. I was just admiring it over here, and I see that it sets off your hair magnificently. I assume the dressing gown is for yourself?”

Anne graced her with the sunniest smile Suzanne had ever received, and though she struggled to hate the woman, she found it impossible. “Why, thank you,” Anne said. She accepted the length of fabric and held it against her skin. “Yes, it is. I’m having a new one made. I’ve tired of my old favorite and wish for a change.” She eyed the color against her skin, thinking hard. It seemed to Suzanne that she’d never in her life had a new dressing gown before the old one was threadbare, never mind having more than one, but of course she kept that to herself.

“My lady, if I may say so, green suits your complexion perfectly.”

“I quite agree.” With that, she ordered a sumptuous yardage of it, and quite a lot of two other fabrics as well. The merchant, a thin-lipped fellow with a Mediterranean look about him, fairly vibrated with pleasure at the sale. He set an assistant to cut and wrap the yardage while he himself recorded the tab in a ledger book on a nearby table. “I thank you, my lady. Is there aught else you might like today?”

“No, I think that will do for the moment. Though I might send my girl when I’ve decided what sort of gown I’ll want for my cousin’s wedding in September.”

“I’ll be most happy to accommodate you for that, my lady.”

“Until then, my man, and God bless you.” She turned her brilliant smile once again to Suzanne and said, “And thank you also for your help, mistress…”

“My name is Suzanne Thornton, my lady.” As she curtsied, she watched the countess’s face. No flicker of recognition. Apparently the name meant nothing to her, and Daniel hadn’t mentioned her at all. Anne was completely ignorant of Daniel’s relationship with her and Piers. “Suzanne,” said Anne. “How very nice to have met you. You’ve been a great help to me.”

“It was my pleasure. The green will suit you well, I think.”

“I think so, too. Good day, Suzanne, and God bless you.” Then Anne went through the door held by her footman, who also carried the large package of heavy fabric.

Suzanne watched her leave and thought how wonderful—and how impossible—it would be to hate that woman.

T
HE
work on the theatre continued through July and August, and it was late August when the work was finally finished on the Globe. The day before opening night The New Globe Players were fully rehearsed with fifteen plays by Shakespeare and twice as many mummeries and comedies. They would continue to rehearse in the days to come and increase their repertoire to the entire oeuvre of Shakespeare, but today they put a final polish on tomorrow’s selection,
Henry V
.

The atmosphere in the theatre was charged like an approaching thunderstorm. The very air over the stage crackled with anticipation of opening. The scene at hand was in Act V, the courtship between Henry and Katharine, lightly played as denouement to the Battle of Agincourt by a young thief named Matthew and the whore Liza.

Liza was proving a remarkable asset to the troupe, for once she heard something, she remembered it verbatim and forever. Contrary to what Horatio had told her the day she’d auditioned, he did recite the plays to her. But only once. She now had all fifteen in the repertoire memorized as cold as a priest knew his rosary, and not just the female roles. Every word of every role, including the prologues, was committed to memory, and she’d only needed to hear them once. If one gave her a cue, she would respond with the next speech in its entirety, however long or obscure it might be.

The icing on the cake was that as an actress she was a natural, and well experienced at playacting in her life on the streets. Her coyness as the beautiful and unspeakably proper French princess Katharine amused those who had come to know her as a blithe, insouciant, and vulgar prostitute, but Liza played the role as earnestly as if she were the Virgin Mary herself. The other actors spoke of her talent in awed whispers, and with not a little envy.

So that afternoon during rehearsal, Liza and Matthew were going through their paces in full costume as king and future consort, with a rapt audience of fellow performers and musicians clustered in the pit and scattered throughout the galleries. Suzanne watched from the top gallery over the main entrance, her arms crossed and a flutter in her belly from anticipation. Goose bumps rose and she rubbed them down as she imagined the audience reaction to these fine performers. The revived Globe would be a rousing success, she was certain.

An adamant pounding came from the large doors to the street, and voices lifted, shouting to open up. The actors onstage fell silent. Before anyone could move, loud thuds rattled the doors and splintered wood. It sounded like a battering ram. Suzanne leapt to her feet and ran to the back of the gallery where a window overlooked the street and the entrance below. The view wasn’t wide enough to reveal much, but she saw clusters of onlookers gawking, and three stories below her was a glimpse of madder red coats of infantrymen. A surge of panic made her gasp, and she turned to hurry down the stairs.

Horatio, standing in the pit, shouted to a boy sitting near the doors to open them up before the bolts were torn from the wood and made useless. Suzanne leapt down the stairs two at a time. But when the boy unlatched the doors and they flew
open, Suzanne’s concern became less for the doors and more for their troupe inside the theatre. For in rushed five king’s men, wearing armor and carrying pikes and maces. They spread out to address any defenders, but the theatre was large and the five soldiers were not an overwhelming presence, and they didn’t stray far from their sergeant. He shouted as Globe Players nearby scattered to avoid being bludgeoned.