In the rehearsal Guy capered and tumbled, Simon simpered as a love-lorn maiden, and Christopher Haigh (who played the young lover parts) postured as a noble shepherd who was really a long-lost prince. There were a great many jeers at King Philip and his admiral Santa Cruz and some clumsy double entendres concerning burning ships. Burbage stopped the players from time to time in order to rearrange them on the stage or change some of the words. A young boy, who was playing one of the minor women’s parts, was told off for striding about the stage like a man and looked as though he would burst into tears. Afterwards, I saw Simon take him aside and show him how to walk, taking small steps and keeping his hands clasped in front of his, so that he would not be tempted to let his arms swing loosely at his sides.
‘It will be easier once you are in costume,’ Simon said. ‘In a farthingale and skirt you will find that your legs are so hampered you are forced to take small steps, just to avoid tripping up.’
I smiled to myself. I knew he was quite right. When I had first changed into boy’s attire at the age of twelve, I had discovered how much easier it was to move than when I had worn skirts, especially those for evening or festive wear, which were heavy and stiff with embroidery and pearls. I could not imagine ever abandoning my breeches for skirts again.
‘Kit!’ Simon had just noticed me, sitting in the lowest tier of seats and watching the rehearsal. He climbed up and sat down next to me.
‘You are a stranger here in the playhouse.’
There was a note of reproof in his voice, so I repeated my explanation to Guy of how busy I had been.
‘Though it is not so long since we met,’ I said. ‘You will recall an evening at Sir Walter Raleigh’s. You were there in company with your new friend – what was it he was called?’ I spoke with all the indifference I could muster.
‘Kit Marlowe,’ he said, looking uncomfortable. ‘He knows Raleigh. He knows many great men.’
‘Indeed?’
‘And he thought I would be interested to accompany him.’
‘Oh? Was that it? I thought perhaps he wanted you there to witness how he vaunted himself before those same great men. To applaud his performance.’
‘He was abominably rude to you. I’m sorry.’ He was now looking even more shame-faced. ‘And I thought your explanation of the mathematics of celestial navigation most impressive.’
‘Not too much like a performing ape from the Indies? Or a blood-sucking Jew?’
‘It was unforgivable, what he said.’
‘You said nothing to chide him at the time. Nothing in my defence.’
‘I was taken aback. And before I could think of anything to say, he had hustled me away.’
‘Hmph.’ I was not quite ready to forgive him, but before we could say more we were summoned to join the others for supper at Burbage’s lodgings in Holywell Lane, which it seemed was his practice on the evening before the first performance of a new play. I was invited to eat with them. I did so readily, something I would never have dreamt of before last year.
It was a good evening. Burbage’s wife Ellen sat down to eat with us, though she retired early. The players were in high spirits, for they were sure the comic piece would do well for the next few weeks. Full houses in the playhouse meant full bellies for players. Burbage’s landlady was an excellent cook and served up a substantial meal of fish in a sauce of capers, followed by roast beef and roast mutton, dressed with leeks and carrots, then a lemon syllabub garnished with candied peel. Afterwards we cracked nuts and Guy performed a ridiculous parody of a sentimental song with new words which would have been unrepeatable in polite company.
It was growing dark as I walked home, but I was accustomed to that after my many late sessions working with Phelippes. Simon and Guy walked with me as far as their lodgings in Three Needle Street, and we parted on amiable terms. I walked the rest of the way in a happier frame of mind than I had known since that encounter with Marlowe.
Although my own life had taken a turn for the better, there was disquieting news from the Low Countries. By the beginning of August the English garrison of the port of Sluys, an important strategic foothold on the coast, had been under siege for nearly two months. The Duke of Parma, King Philip’s brilliant military commander in the Spanish Netherlands, had kept them in a stranglehold, starving and worn down by constant bombardment. On the fourth of August they could hold out no longer and surrendered. News reached London a few days later. After the jubilation of Drake’s raid on Cadiz, it was dismaying news indeed.
Initially Sluys had been defended by local men, but when Parma surrounded it, they had sent out an appeal to England and four companies of foot soldiers had courageously fought their way through the Spanish lines to their relief. It was clear that Parma was no longer directing his attention merely to suppressing the Dutch Protestants. He was aiming to seize ports which could be used as bases to attack England. Elizabeth sent Leicester with a large body of troops and ships to relieve Sluys but, characteristically, he failed to act. Despite enormous courage on the part of the garrison and the appeals to Leicester by their commander, Sir Roger Williams, no help came. A thousand men died. The garrison ran out of food and gunpowder, until in the end they were forced to surrender. The few remaining men were almost all wounded or maimed and Sir Roger himself left destitute.
‘You see how the Spaniard’s plans advance,’ Phelippes said to me, after recounting the sorry fate of Sluys. ‘With Sluys and Dunkerque Parma now has access to deep water harbours, eminently suitable for launching an attack on England. He will try to seize Flushing next – or Vlissingen, as the Hollanders call it.’
‘I was thinking more of the men who died there,’ I said sharply. ‘And of the few who survived. Dr Stephens says we will see many of them in the hospital when they reach London, if they do not perish on the way.’
‘Well, you must do your best to patch them up,’ he said, ‘for we shall need every able-bodied soldier we can scrape together to fight on board the ships of our navy.’
‘I thought we had no navy. Or little enough to match the Spanish.’
Sir Francis must have overheard my last remark, for he came through the door as I was speaking.
‘Our royal navy is small, Kit, but the ships of the privateers are armed and well crewed, and we are busy requisitioning every merchant ship that can be adapted for fighting.’
‘I don’t suppose the merchants will be glad of it,’ I said, thinking of Dr Nuñez, whose ship had brought us from Portugal and who had recently lost another to Drake’s festival of fire.
‘No, they will not be glad of it and they will lose trade for all the time that the ships are in our hands, but a far worse future awaits them if we cannot assemble a navy of some sort. Our cannon foundries are working all day and all night, and gunsmiths, bowyers and fletchers are all at full stretch.’
I remembered the ironworks I had seen last year in the Weald, where the men, stripped to the waist, had laboured beside hellish fires directing the molten metal into the moulds for cannon. In the heat of this August I wondered they did not die of the work. Perhaps they did. My own work, sitting in Phelippes’s office, quietly transcribing despatches, seemed feeble by comparison.
Dr Stephens’s prediction about the wounded soldiers was soon proved right. It was said that there were around seven hundred survivors of the siege of Sluys, but some died before they could reach home. Most of the others ended up in St Bartholomew’s or across the river in Southwark at the hospital of St Thomas. They had been brought back to England in some of Leicester’s ships which had lingered offshore while he was too cowardly to go to their rescue during the siege. It was common knowledge that Leicester had men and weaponry enough to have lifted the siege, if he had acted. The soldiers, filthy, emaciated, bloody and in rags, were carried or limped up from the river steps to the hospital where we awaited them, shocked at their numbers and condition. There were so many that we had to put most of them on pallets on the floor until more beds could be brought in. Beds and pallets alike were crowded so close together in the wards that it was almost impossible to step between them.