it come to pass, in faith, then he is sped!”
Will tried to resist but Beeston and Kit pushed him up the stairway and through the curtains. He stumbled out on to the stage, almost tripping over the hem of his overlong dress. The crowd gave a roar of laughter at his clumsiness and he looked up to find himself confronted by a sea of expectant faces.
Some of them murmured and pointed, wondering who the newcomer was supposed to be. “That’s not King Cambyses!” somebody called out. “Looks more like my sister Kate!” yelled another.
Will glanced to his left and saw Sir Thomas Lucy and his men force their way through the side curtain into the backstage area. Will’s father was in the midst of them, firmly held between two of the squire’s minions. None of them were looking at the stage.
“It’s as I told you,” Will could hear his father saying, “I came here alone to pay a visit to my old friend Henry Beeston. My boy’s been gone at least a day.”
Kemp the clown was as surprised as the audience to see Will emerge. He fiddled with the tassels on his patchwork costume as he recovered his composure then struck a confident pose and gestured towards Will, saying,
“Ah yes, you wonder, good people, who might this be, A mysterious maid, but she is known to me…”
He waved his hand vaguely, as if trying to conjure up more words out of the air.
“Though strangely changed by death she surely has been, I swear this is the spirit of the lately murdered queen.”
A great “Ooh!” went up from the crowd at this revelation and many of them made pitying noises over the queen’s awful fate.
Before Will could decide what to do, the curtain fluttered behind him and Beeston came barging past. A chorus of boos and jeers greeted the king as he staggered to the front of the stage. The fake sword was sticking out of his side and he clutched it tight with his right hand. Looking up to the heavens, he gave a deep groan that resonated throughout the hall.
“Out! Alas!” he moaned. “What shall I do? My life is finished! Wounded I am by sudden chance; my blood is minished.”
“Good riddance to you!” bawled a stout woman at the back of the hall, sparking an uproar of agreement.
“As I on horseback up did leap,” groaned King Cambyses, his voice hoarse with pain. “My sword from scabbard shot, and ran me thus into the side – as you right well may see.”
He displayed his bloody wound to the crowd who let out an enormous cheer, then he slumped to the floor and continued his dying speech. Kemp stood over him pulling faces, but warily, as if the king were a wounded beast that might still turn on him.
Some of Lucy’s men came out front and started pressing through the crowd, searching for their fugitive. Sir Thomas himself reappeared, John Shakespeare close behind. Will’s father was doing his best to distract the squire by talking about the bad winter, the price of bread and anything else he could think of.
Finally King Cambyses breathed his last and Kemp leaned over him with his hands on his hips. “Alas, good king!” he said sadly. “Alas, he is gone!” He allowed himself a long pause then added loudly, “The devil take me if for him I make any moan!”
The crowd roared their approval.
Will hoped fervently that the play was done, and that he could vanish behind the curtain once more. But Kemp was still speaking, and worse – Sir Thomas Lucy had turned to stare directly at the stage.
Will flinched, as if the squire’s eyes were a pair of musket balls about to be fired at him. He toyed with his wig, tugging the russet locks in front of his face.
Just as he was thinking of making a run for it, Kemp launched himself into a mad dance. He capered round the royal corpse like a prisoner set free of the gallows. He hopped this way and that, twirled left, then right, then leapt over the dead king to land precariously on the very edge of the stage. He tottered there, his arms windmilling frantically as he tried to keep balance.
The crowd roared and clapped, and Will saw that even Lousy Lucy was laughing and applauding the clown’s acrobatics. Kemp drew out his predicament a little longer then flung himself into a back somersault that carried him right over the dead king to land on his feet with a flourish.
The hall was rocked by whistles, guffaws and cheers. Three lords marched solemnly on to the stage and lifted the king up. As they carried him away, Kemp hooked his arm through Will’s and hauled him off through the curtains.
“Where the duck eggs did you churn up from?” he asked.
“I think you mean ‘turn up’,” said Will. He couldn’t help but smile. He felt as if the continuing applause was not only for the play, but his own narrow escape as well.
“If I meant to call you a turnip I would have said so,” the clown informed him haughtily as they reached the bottom of the steps.
The king had come back to furious life and stood fuming indignantly at the clown. “Kemp!” he said. “How many times have I told you to keep within the bounds of the script?”
“More times than I can count,” Kemp answered him. “But it’s hardly my fault if you see fit to introduce a ghost into the play, or whatever this new boy of yours is supposed to be.”
“Dad,” said Kit, tugging at Beeston’s sleeve, “your bows.”
“Well recollected, Kit,” said the king, his bad humour melting away. He bounded up the steps as quickly as a man half his age and presented himself on stage to wild applause.
“I must go take my bows also,” said Kemp to Will. “But I advise you to stay congealed back here, Mistress Spirit.”
“I’ll keep out of sight,” Will assured him. “I’ll be indivisible.”
The clown laughed to hear his own word plays turned about on him, then raced up on to the stage with the other actors to accept the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd.
The early morning air was so cold their breath hung in misty clouds before their faces. Lord Strange’s Men had risen with the dawn for, as Henry Beeston told Will, “We want to be long gone before that simple-minded squire notices that he might have been tricked.”
After a hasty breakfast they had loaded all their costumes, props and other baggage on to two horse drawn wagons and set out on the north-bound road towards Warwick. Will was reclining at the back of the lead wagon beside Kit Beeston.
Henry Beeston was seated beside the driver, his nose deep in a thick script. Also in the wagon were young Tom Craddock, who had played Cambyses’ queen, and Ralph, a burly fellow who had been one of the queen’s murderers.
“Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, is our patron,” Kit was explaining. “He lives many miles away in Derby, but his name stands as surety of our honesty and good behaviour.”
“But why should he lend you his name if he never even comes with you?” Will asked.
“Lord Strange’s Men were in origin entertainers to the Stanley family,” Kit replied, “and when we took our act out into the country at large, Lord Strange continued his patronage. Other nobles have their own companies, the Earl of Leicester for one – and he’s the Queen’s favourite. The Queen’s ministers have forbidden players to perform unless they have the patronage of some nobleman or other.”
All of a sudden the horses were reined in and the wagon stopped with a jolt that nearly threw Kit out the back.
“What’s this?” Kit wondered. “Surely there can’t be robbers this close to Stratford?”