Shakespeare's Spy by Gary Blackwood Page A

wig as though wishing they were his own. Sam, dressed in a gown borrowed from the
As You Like It
trunk, stood next to me at the stage-right curtain, whistling a tune under his breath and practicing a little jig step Mr. Phillips had taught him.
    I took a deep breath—or as deep as I could manage, considering how tightly my ribs were bound by the bodice of my dress—and tried to compose a line to replace the censored one.
Where shall we meet? Ta tumpty-tumpty turn. Behind the abbey wall?
No.
Some nonreligious place?
When I glanced again at Sal Pavy, who played my romantic adversary, Julia, a clever though totally unsuitable possibility entered my head:
Let’s meet in Julia’s room, where I intend to strangle her with her wig
.
    “What are you sniggering about?” Sam asked softly.
    “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of strangling Julia.”
    Sam nodded, as though this were a perfectly reasonable proposal. “May I help?” This set me laughing again, so violently that I had to cover my mouth to avoid being heard on the other side of the curtain. “Careful,” Sam said. “You’ll burst your bodice.” When I had gotten my mirth under control, he said, “I hear you’ve lost a costume, too.”
    “Aye. Between that and the fine for missing scriming practice, I’m afraid I’ll ha’ no money to help you out.”
    “No matter. Mr. Heminges has promised to withhold only a shilling each week.”
    “We’ll still receive two shillings, then? That’s good. That’s more than you imagined.” Something about those words struck me as odd, or perhaps familiar. I had to mull it over for a moment before I realized where I had heard them before. “Sam!” I whispered. “The cunning woman’s prediction!”
    “What about it?”
    “She said, ‘You will receive more money than you imagine.’”
    He stared at me. “No. That can’t be what she meant. Can it?”
    Out on the stage, Will Sly, our Proteus, delivered the last line of the scene: “I fear my Julia would not deign my lines, receiving them from such a worthless post.”
    Sal Pavy appeared beside us. “That’s our cue!” he told Sam.
    But Sam seemed not to hear. He was shaking his head in disbelief. “That can’t be what she meant,” he repeated. I had to plant my foot on his nether end and propel him onto the stage.
    Though Mr. Shakespeare was disturbed at having members of the Privy Council in the audience, I much preferred their presence to Judith’s. I was distracted enough just thinking about her in the abstract; to have her there in the flesh would certainly have undone me completely.
    Just in case I should happen to forget my infatuation with her for a second or so, the play seemed specially designed to make certain I would not, from Sal Pavy’s first speech—”But say, Lucetta, now we are alone, wouldst thou then counsel me to fall in love?”—to the end, when Mr. Shakespeare spoke the line with which Sam had teased me earlier in the day: “I think the boy hath grace in him; he blushes.”
    The one thing I did manage to forget was the need to think up a new line, until the very scene was upon me. When Mr. Armin, as Eglamour, asked, “Where shall we meet?” I froze. Seeing that I was speechless, he did as any good player would—he prompted me. “Shall we meet at Friar—” he began.
    “No!” I interrupted frantically, my voice cracking. “Let’s not! Let’s meet … somewhere else! In the forest!”
    Mr. Armin was too seasoned an actor to let this throw him. “An excellent idea, your ladyship,” he said. When we met behind the stage later, he gave me a look of mock disparagement. “In the
forest?
”
    “It was all I could think of,” I protested. “At least I said
no
rather than
nay
.”
    “Why did you say it at all? I was about to cover for you.”
    “Mr. Shakespeare told me to cut the line about Friar Patrick. ‘A says there’s a wight from the Privy Council out there.”
    “A pox on the Privy Council!” muttered Mr. Armin.