Fools and Mortals. Bernard Cornwell

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      IT WAS TWO weeks later that Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain and our patron, came to the Theatre himself. He did not come to watch a performance, indeed he had never seen a play in the Theatre, but instead arrived unexpectedly during a morning rehearsal. The first we knew of it was when four of his retainers, all wearing dark grey livery with the Carey badge of the white rose bright on their shoulders, strode into the yard. They wore swords, they came confidently, and those of us onstage went very still. The four men were followed by an older man, limping slightly, with a harsh, life-battered face, and a cropped grey beard. He was stocky, with a broad chest, and wore simple clothes, undecorated, but dyed a deep black, betraying their expense. He had a gold chain about his neck and a golden badge on his black velvet cap. If it had not been for the gold and the expensively dyed clothes, a man might have mistaken him for a tradesman, one who had spent his working life wrestling with timber or stone, a hard, strong man, and certainly not a man to cross lightly. ‘Master Shakespeare,’ he addressed my brother, ‘I received your message.’

      ‘My lord,’ my brother snatched off his hat and went down onto one knee. We all did the same. No one needed to tell us who the hard-faced older man was. The badge on his retainers’ shoulders told us all we needed to know. A fifth retainer, a slim man also in the dark grey livery that displayed the Carey badge, had followed the older man and now stood respectfully a few paces behind his lordship with a satchel in his hands.

      ‘No need to kneel, no need to kneel,’ Lord Hunsdon said. ‘I have business in Hampstead, and thought I might as well look at the place you fellows lurk.’ He turned to stare at the Theatre’s high galleries. ‘It reminds me of an inn yard.’

      ‘Very like, my lord,’ my brother agreed.

      ‘So this is a playhouse, eh?’ His lordship looked around with evident interest, gazing from the galleries to the stage’s high canopy supported by its twin pillars. ‘You think they’ll last?’

      ‘Last, my lord?’

      ‘There were no such things when I was a young man. Not one! Now there’s what? Three of them? Four?’

      ‘I think they’ll last, my lord. They’re popular.’

      ‘But not with the Puritans, eh? They’d have us all singing psalms instead of watching plays. Like those bloody Percies.’

      My brother stiffened at the mention of the Pursuivants. ‘We managed to avoid blooding them, my lord.’

      ‘A pity,’ Lord Hunsdon said with a grin. Simon Willoughby, wearing a skirt over his hose, had fetched a chair from the tiring house and jumped off the stage to offer it, but the courtesy only provoked a scowl from Lord Hunsdon. ‘I’m not a bloody cripple, boy.’ He looked back to my brother. ‘There’s a disgusting man called Price. George Price. He’s the chief Pursuivant, and a pig in human form. Heard of him?’

      ‘I have heard of him, my lord, yes. But I don’t know him.’ My brother was doing all the talking for the company. Even Will Kemp, who was usually so voluble, was stunned into silence by the Lord Chamberlain’s arrival.

      ‘He’s an eager little bugger, our Piggy Price,’ Lord Hunsdon said. ‘He’s a Puritan, of course, which makes him tiresome. I don’t mind the bloody man finding Jesuits, but I’ll be damned if he’ll interfere with my retainers. Which you are.’

      ‘We have that honour, my lord.’

      ‘You’re unpaid retainers too, the best sort!’ Lord Hunsdon gave a bark of laughter. ‘I told the bloody man to leave you alone.’