The Fool's Girl Read online

  ‘You are not from hereabouts, are you?’ Tod said as they walked ahead of the struggling Feste.

  ‘No.’ Violetta laughed. ‘That we aren’t. We are from a little country swallowed by a larger one. We were forced to flee. First to Italy, then to here.’

  Tod nodded. It was a common enough tale. London was full of people who had come from somewhere else, either fled or been expelled. Each had a story to tell.

  ‘I’ve seen you, over by the church. Or I’ve seen him.’ He jerked a thumb at the sweating Feste. ‘I didn’t realize t’other one was you. Is that how you make your living?’

  ‘Aye. Tricks and tumbling.’

  Tod shrugged. It was odd for a girl to do it, but he was a player and that’s how they all survived. It didn’t matter where they were from – players helped each other if they could. It was a precarious business. Tomorrow it might be you handing round the hat and standing in need of a good turn.

  .

  5

  ‘There shall be no more cakes and ale’

  The Hollander had seen better times. It had once been a grand house with a moat, but now the buttresses struggled to prevent the bulging walls from collapsing altogether. Over the years, so many storeys had been added, one overhanging another, that the whole structure seemed ready to totter and fall. The moat was reduced to a mere ditch pooled with green stagnant water, hung over by houses of easement and clogged with debris from the nearby tanner’s yard. Tod’s nose twitched. The place gave off a powerful stench, even in a city full of stinks.

  Tod held Violetta’s arm and helped her over a runnel of filthy water. She stopped outside the door.

  ‘Thank you for walking back with us,’ she said, ‘but you can leave us here.’ She did not want to invite Tod inside. It shamed her to be staying in such a place.

  ‘Yes, on your way, master,’ Feste said with a jerk of his head. ‘Didn’t you have a message to deliver?’

  The clown heaved the box from his shoulder. It got heavier as the day lengthened. The box dropped with a bang and a rattle. It was the chains that added the weight, but escaping from bounds was a popular trick.

  ‘Oh yes. I had quite forgotten.’ Tod patted his pockets. The packet seemed to have migrated from one side of his breeches to the other. Feste winked at Violetta.

  ‘Off you go, then.’ Feste put an encouraging hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t let us keep you.’

  ‘Don’t mind Feste,’ Violetta smiled. ‘He was born without manners.’

  Tod took his leave and Violetta helped Feste get the box through the door. The entrance opened straight on to a long hall, ill lit with smoking tallow candles and tapers. It was cold, the stone walls sweating damp from the river. The fire was a mound of ash in the centre of a cavernous fireplace. Violetta never saw anyone clean the grate or reset it, so it choked on itself and gave off little heat. The rushes on the floor were worn and ragged, clotted into clumps, blackened with rancid fat and discarded food. They slid and squelched about underfoot and gave off a sweet, rotten smell which was sour at the same time with spilt beer and wine. Groups of men and some women sat clustered at the ends of the long tables. One man had clearly had enough; he lay face down in a puddle of beer. The girls were half dressed, the men poor and rough. They had eyed Violetta when she first arrived, calling out to her, but the leering and jeering had soon been extinguished by Feste’s glare.

  Nobody looked at them as they went up the rickety staircase. They carried the box between them, along the gallery to a second flight of narrow stairs. Violetta helped Feste manhandle it round the tight corner and then took the weight as he began to haul it up the stairs. They worked well together, with silent efficiency. She was back to being Feste’s assistant, the Fool’s Girl, and had to do her share.

  Feste stopped on the landing to take a breather. She joined him on the box.

  ‘You should not have let him go so easily,’ he said.

  ‘Who? Tod?’

  ‘No, not him!’ Feste shook his head. ‘You’ll have a job getting rid of that one. He’ll be howling outside like a dog every night. No. I meant t’other. Master Shakespeare. He’ll pack the story up in his trunk and be away. That’s what men like him do.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Violetta replied.

  Their meeting with him had been no accident. The man was a player. He lived hard by. Such men can never resist a performance, so they set up in his way. They had wanted a meeting and they had got it. That was good, but Violetta did not want to rush things. She was not ready to reveal their intention. Not yet.

  ‘It is not wise to be too eager.’ She went on. ‘A man like him needs to be played carefully.’ She was not at all worried. Intuition told her that he would follow the story. ‘He’s picked up the thread. He’ll be back.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Feste frowned, head hanging down. ‘Even if the poet does come back, your idea is madder than anything I could dream up. Just the thought of it is filling my belly with seeping black melancholy. It will never work.’

  ‘I thought your job was to keep hope alive and spirits up.’

  ‘Not me, madonna. I’m not that kind of fool. But just in case your intuition is wrong – which has happened before, no point in denying it –’ Feste looked up at her, smiling now – ‘I’ve thought of another way to bring him back to us.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Violetta stood up, ready to heave the box up to the next floor. Maria and Sir Toby lived right at the top of the building in one of the penthouses that jutted so far out that they seemed to float suspended over the street.

  ‘When your young man –’ Feste said as he picked up his end.

  ‘He’s not my young man!’ Violetta objected.

  ‘When your young man,’ Feste went on as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘can think with his head instead of his other parts, he will remember the business he was about, and when he does, Master Shakespeare will find that he is in want of a clown.’

  Maria was waiting for them. She must have heard them on the stairs. She held the door wide as they carried the box the last few yards and dropped it with a rattling thump.

  Their lodgings were tiny. One room divided into two by a thin partitioning wall. From the bedchamber, where Sir Toby lay, came muffled noises. He had no strength left for roaring and raving. What they heard was more like the querulous whimpering of a frightened child left lonely in the dark.

  They had come here a week ago, directed from the Elephant and Castle. Violetta had not known what to expect, but it wasn’t the Hollander. She had been shocked to find Sir Toby and Maria living in such a poor way. There was no covering on the floor, and the walls were crumbling, wood and plaster eaten away by decay. Maria had covered the worst of it with cloths, but these were patchy and discoloured, attacked by the rot beneath. There was no real furniture except for a little three-legged stool. The table was a rough board set upon four small barrels, the chairs upturned buckets or boxes covered in sacking. Maria had tried to make the best of things, but all the proper furnishings had long since been sold to pay Sir Toby’s debts.

  When they first arrived, Feste had looked round with a wry smile. He had not been surprised at all. Sir Toby had always been a wastrel and a tosspot. Such men do not change. He’d pissed away what little money there was when he was able, now it went on doctors. Maria confirmed as much, but not in those words.

  ‘You haven’t changed one bit.’ Maria’s eyes had filled with tears when she saw the clown. ‘I remember when you first came to the house, ’prentice to Old Feste. Even then you looked like a little old man!’

  Feste had not known what to reply to that. Instead he’d taken her into his arms and executed a little dance, as he might have done once upon a time with the girl with the nut-brown eyes who delighted in mischief and playing tricks on her betters. The eyes were the same, but the spark in them had long since died. The lines on her face showed that life with Sir Toby had not been easy. Time had thickened her at the waist and hips and the hair escaping her cap had more grey in
it than black. Maria no longer played tricks on anybody.

  ‘Who’s this with you?’ She’d looked past him, squinting as if short-sighted. ‘My lady? But that cannot be . . .’

  Her frown returned and her fingers hastily sketched the shape of a cross.

  ‘It is me, Maria.’ Violetta had stepped forward. ‘Violetta.’

  ‘Violetta?’ Maria’s look, almost of fear, had disappeared. She took the girl by the arms, the better to see her. ‘For a moment I thought you were your mother. How old are you now? Fifteen? Sixteen?’

  Violetta nodded.

  ‘When she came to us, she was not much older. You are the very spit of her. Where does the time go? When I left, you were a child. You are a woman now.’

  Violetta had always been told that Sir Toby was a great man in this land, that he lived in a castle, and she’d come in hope that he might be able to use his influence to help her. Any hope of that had fled as soon as she saw the Hollander, but they had stayed, having nowhere else to go. Besides, Maria had been kind to her when she was young and Toby was still the nearest thing she had left to a kinsman, if only by marriage.

  ‘How has he been?’ Violetta asked.

  ‘Bad today,’ Maria said with a shake of her head.

  The door to the room where Sir Toby lay was ajar, and a sweetish smell seeped out, the cloying stench of medicines and illness. Sir Toby was on his back in a lopsided bed that was near to collapse. A small truckle lay underneath, where Maria slept. He had always been an ample man, but the great spreading mound of his belly was distended by sickness, not good living. The rest of him was wasting away. His arms lay like sticks by his sides and his legs scarcely disturbed the coverlet.

  ‘He’s not how he was,’ Maria kept saying. ‘His mind is apt to wander. Don’t expect too much.’

  Since they had arrived, his decline had been sharp. Dr Forman came to see him and dosed him with poppy. That was all that could be done for him now.

  ‘Go into him, Feste,’ Maria said. ‘Your presence cheers him, brings him a little way out of his melancholy.’

  Feste bowed his head. He took his flute from his pack and his little drum and went in to see the old man, even though he was bone-tired. He did this every night, but such was the slippage of the Sir Toby’s mind that each time it was as if he had just arrived.

  ‘Peace be in this house,’ he began. ‘Domine. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, parce nobis, Domine. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, exaudi nos, Domine. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.’

  He stepped into the room, treading softly, intoning the words, his back slightly hunched, his eyes cast down and his hands folded at his chest as if he carried a Bible or prayer book. He did not need props or costume. The character was contained in the tone of his voice, the droop of his shoulders, the angle of his head.

  Sir Toby blinked awake. His blue eyes were faded and cloudy, the whites yellow, clotted and bloodshot. His face was wasted and ravaged. His formerly florid complexion had a greyish cast, the flesh of his cheeks hanging in sagging swags. His nose was bluish purple, pitted like a strawberry, swelled out of shape.

  ‘Who is that? Who is there?’ he whispered, and reached out to push back the bed’s canopy. His thin hand was a span of bone webbed with yellow skin, criss-crossed with a snaking tangle of thick, twisting veins.

  ‘It is I, Sir Topas,’ Feste murmured in the same sing-song voice. ‘Don’t you remember me? I’m come to visit you, my son.’

  ‘Sir Topas! Good Sir Topas!’ The sick man’s face cleared for a moment; his short, sighing laugh brought on a fit of coughing. ‘Here! Come here! Feste, lad? Can it be you?’ He blinked, confused again. ‘Am I dreaming? Or am I already in the other place?’

  ‘In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Aye, ’tis me.’

  ‘You old knave.’ Sir Toby reached up to hug and kiss the clown as he did every night. ‘To think I never thought to set eyes on you again! Dear me! It does me good just to see you. Better than any doctor’s jalap. Good jests we had, my boy, did we not? Merry times. Tell me, do you have your instruments? Pipe and tabor?’

  ‘I do, Sir Toby.’

  ‘I would have a tune, then. Something with life in it. And we’ll sing a song. An old one: “Three Merry Men”, or “The Baffled Knight”, or some such. A bawdy rhyme, eh? Something to make us laugh. Here, give me your arm, help me sit up. Maria! Bring me an egg beat up in some sack. I think I can manage that. God’s blood, I feel better already.’ He looked past the clown to the room beyond. ‘Do you bring someone with you? My eyes have grown dim of late, but my ears are sharp. I could have sworn I heard another voice, a woman’s . . .’

  ‘It’s only Maria,’ Feste said. ‘No one else.’

  He laid the old man back gently. Sir Toby’s moment of lucidity was over; he was back to muttering and plucking at the covers. Feste put the flute to his mouth and played a few plaintive notes. Then he began to sing a nonsense rhyme, as might be sung to a child. Sir Toby’s agitation began to subside. His ragged breathing steadied and his eyelids fluttered and closed.

  Violetta was careful to keep out of the way. Her presence upset him. When he first saw her he shrank back, whispering that he was, indeed, in Hell, and had fallen to raving, calling her ‘Devil’s spawn’, ordering her ‘Away! Away!’ and saying that she was there to torment him. He had thrashed about so wildly that Feste’d had to restrain him or he would have tumbled from the bed.

  Even Maria had been shocked by his reaction. ‘He’s likely confusing you with your mother. You do look just like her.’

  That did not explain his upset, but Maria could not guess at the reason, his mind being so distempered. She’d shepherded Violetta out of the room, leaving Feste with him. While the clown played and sang to the old man, Violetta had told Maria her story.

  ‘He’s been bad today,’ Maria said again. ‘Sir Andrew has been here.’ She spoke quietly, as if he was still there and could hear. ‘I didn’t mean to listen, but the walls are thin.’ She paused, pressing her hand to her mouth. ‘Some things it is better not to hear.’

  ‘Sir Andrew?’ Violetta asked. Maria had not mentioned him before. Until now, he had just been a name in a story.

  ‘He hasn’t been here for more than a year. You won’t remember him. He left Illyria before you were born. He was there to court Lady Olivia and was not best pleased when she married another. Not that he stood any chance, but Sir Toby encouraged him, while busy spending his fortune. He was a bit of a fool then, Sir Toby and Feste making merry at his expense.’ Maria gave a fleeting ghost of a smile as if recalling happier times, but then her face grew serious again.

  ‘The Sir Andrew I knew was a drunkard and a wastrel, but he’s grown sober and serious. You’d think him a puritan, but he’s just the opposite. He’s stayed faithful to the Catholic Church and his zeal has grown over the years. It’s dangerous to hold such beliefs here. Especially dangerous for priests or those who harbour them.’ Maria kept her voice low and looked about as if spies and informers were lurking just outside the room. ‘You can end up with your head on a pike, stuck up on London Bridge, set there to rot with a score of others. You can see them any day of the week, come wind, rain and sun, bristling like some monstrous pincushion, pecked about by ravens.’

  She paused for a moment, and when she began again there was a slight tremor in her voice as if she had become unstrung by her own image.

  ‘Anyway, Sir Toby has always stuck to the old religion. Too old to change his ways. Not that his faith is all that great. He judges all priests canting hypocrites, whatever their belief. He liked them better when he couldn’t understand their words, that’s what he says, and he’d rather pay the fines than go to church. That was as far as it went, until a few years ago when Sir Andrew turned up, keen to patch up the quarrel they’d had. I’ve never seen such a change in a man. He used to scoff at churchgoers, him and Toby both. Now he sees it as his mission to return England to the old religion. He came to Si
r Toby saying one of his nephews was a Jesuit, expected from France, and could Sir Toby hide him? I counselled against it, not on the grounds of faith, but on the grounds of madness. Sir Toby wouldn’t listen. Helping a friend, he said, although I daresay money changed hands. Sir Andrew never lacked a penny. Sir Toby’s come to the aid of a fair few nephews, hiding them in the cellars, helping with their passage by way of the smugglers’ tunnels that stretch down to the river.’

  ‘Is that what he wanted today? For Sir Toby to help him hide somebody?’

  ‘No,’ Maria shook her head. ‘Toby’s long past helping anybody. He wanted to know if we’d heard any news of you and Feste.’

  ‘What are we to him?’

  ‘I don’t know, but that’s not the only thing.’ Maria twisted her hands in her lap. ‘He brought greetings. From one Malvolio.’

  ‘Oh.’ Violetta’s heart gave an uncomfortable lurch.

  ‘My lady’s old steward. I hadn’t heard that name in a long while. Not until you came here. His fortunes have changed too, so you tell me. Why do the wicked prosper, while my poor Toby . . .’ Maria shook her head. ‘It’s a mystery to me. Sir Andrew got no sense out of him – you’ve seen how he is – but that just enraged him. He fell to threatening, refusing to find a priest to shrive him. Toby is this far from death –’ her fingers measured less than an inch – ‘and he wants a priest to hear his confession. In this town they are as rare as hen’s teeth. Sir Andrew is his only hope of finding one in time. He knows he holds power over us, and he enjoys it.’

  ‘He threatened you too?’ Violetta was stricken. Maria had troubles enough. She did not want to bring more to the poor woman’s door. ‘How does he know we are here?’

  ‘I don’t think he does for certain.’ Maria frowned. ‘Not from what he said, but how many Illyrians are there in London? And you are kin to Sir Toby. Sir Andrew was never known for his brains, but even he could reason that you are likely to fetch up here.’