Mask of Night by Philip Gooden

you can detect that straightaway sometimes. The Ferns had no children, I discovered later, but a clutch of dogs had the run of the place and were made much of by their mistress.
    We were made very welcome, the Doctor shaking each of us by the hand and complimenting us on our reputation, with his wife adding further kind words. I couldn’t help contrasting this with the frosty reception we’ve had at one or two great houses. Then, since it was shortly after breakfast time, ale was brought in for our refreshment. We started to examine the hall where we stood, for it was here that our private
Romeo and Juliet
would be presented. Although the house was quite new, the hall was rather in the old style, with linen-fold panelling and a fireplace large enough to accommodate half the household. There was a gallery at one end, and this was highly convenient since we could use it for those parts of the action where a balcony or a different level was required.
    Thomas Pope instructed us to test out our voices with a few lines so as to get accustomed to the echoes and resonances. It would be a little different when the hall was full of people but still it gave a good idea what we, or rather what the room, was capable of. I observed that Doctor Fern and his wife, together with the younger man and woman, watched all this activity with interest.
    Thomas Pope himself busied around in the part of Juliet’s nurse and, inside a second or two, had brought that garrulous figure to life. Dick Burbage spoke to an imagined Juliet in the gallery – he was too old for the young lover but you forgot that fact within a few lines. Shakespeare delivered a handful of lines as Friar Laurence although I didn’t know whether he intended to take the part for himself on this occasion. When it came to my turn, I did a bit of Mercutio. Abel Glaze, who was due to play the apothecary among other roles, had already mastered his brief scene and gave a good impression of that unfortunate tradesman, driven by poverty to sell a deadly poison to Romeo.
    Everything seemed set fair for the actual production of
Romeo and Juliet
, which would take place in about a week’s time in the presence of the Constants and Sadlers. Two mornings would be put aside for rehearsals in the house on Headington Hill. But before we performed privately for the benefit of the two families – whose enmity, by the way, seemed essentially a matter of history – we were to present the same play in the yard of the Golden Cross Inn. Any rough edges could be planed away. The number of public performances in town would depend on the popularity of the piece.
    Well, as I’ve said, we weren’t due to practise on this fine spring morning (our schedule was less pressing than at the Globe) and so were free to dispose of ourselves in the few hours before the two o’clock performance of
The World’s Diseas’d
at the Golden Cross. The Company split up into separate groups, with William Shakespeare and one or two others remaining at the Doctor’s house. I had the scroll of my part as Mercutio with me and was planning to return to the town and, if the sun lasted, find a secluded spot down by the river to continue memorizing my lines.
    Abel Glaze and I spent a bit of time admiring the view from the Ferns’ garden. Before us was a panorama of pinnacles and towers, gleaming in the bright air. From this distance the stone took on the appearance of lacework. Then we walked down the Doctor’s drive and turned out of his gate on to the slope which led towards the town.
    All at once there was a clattering and loud shouting behind us. Looking round I saw, some fifty yards further up the hill, a woman lying face-down in the road, together with a horse and cart slewed towards the opposite side. The driver had almost toppled off his perch. The woman wasn’t moving and for an instant I thought she was dead until she shouted something, but still without moving. I couldn’t make out the words or even whether she