The Scar-Crow Men

CHAPTER FIVE




On his knees, Nathaniel forced his way among the feet of the heaving audience. Boots cracked against his head, his back, his hips, stamped on his fingers. Just when he thought he would have the life crushed from him, he scrambled out and lurched up against the plaster at the rear of the upper gallery, sucking in a huge gulp of breath. Struggling bodies hurled him back and forth, as if he was caught in the wash of a stormy sea.

Clawing his way to the stairs, the young assistant was struck by the roar of mayhem rising up from the lower levels. What could terrify them so? With plague, impending war, famine among the poor and bodies piling high in the streets, he would not be surprised if the devil really did walk the streets of London.

Nathaniel threw himself down the timber steps two at a time. Bodies slammed him against the walls, spun him round, crushed him so that he could not draw air into his lungs. Panic gripped him, but Will had given him a job to do. At the foot of the stairs a dense mass of people were crushed around the door, their cries ringing so loudly it made his ears ache. Against the wall, three women and a man slumped like rag dolls, eyes shut, but still the press continued.

How was he supposed to open the doors when he couldn’t get near them? His master seemed to take perverse delight in giving him impossible tasks.

Nathaniel yelled for calm until his throat was raw, but the shouts and curses drowned his voice. Red-faced men sputtered or roared, eyes swelling with fear, the women caught up with the furious flow. Pressed against the wall near him, one woman in a corn-coloured dress grew white, her eyes fluttering shut.

A youth with a tuft of brown hair, one of Henslowe’s stagehands, juddered to a halt behind Nathaniel.

‘Help me!’ Nathaniel urged, throwing himself into the press of bodies. Dragging one man back, he shouldered two others to the side, ignoring their furious protests. Battered and buffeted, Will Swyfte’s assistant fought until there was space for the stagehand to join him. They each grasped an arm of the unconscious woman and hauled her along the wall and out on to the stairs.

Once he had seen the woman still breathed, Nat shouted, ‘We must open the doors or there will be deaths aplenty.’

‘I have the key, but there is no room to use it,’ the stagehand yelled in reply, glancing back towards the crush.

Nat gripped his shoulders and demanded, ‘There are more ways out of here? A stage door?’

‘Beyond that.’ The youth waved a hand at the heaving crowd.

Nathaniel grew anxious at the pounding of feet above his head. The audience in the upper galleries was surging towards the crush. An idea struck him. ‘The windows?’

‘You will break your neck if you attempt to climb from that height.’ The stagehand hunched over the prostrate woman, fanning her with his hands.

‘Nothing valuable, then.’ Nat snatched the key from the youth and drove himself back up the stairs, squeezing past the first trickle of what would soon become a deluge.

Dragging himself into the corridor that circled the perimeter of the first gallery, Nathaniel put his head down and kept close to the wall. Small, diamond-pane windows glittered along the Rose’s fourteen sides, the only source of natural light in the theatre’s gloomy interior beyond the central well above the stage and yard. Pressing his face against the glass, he peered out across the darkening landscape. It was a drop of about thirty feet to the chalk and stone path that circled the theatre. Horses grazed on the surrounding grassy common land, and beyond the remnants of the old rose garden that gave the theatre its name was a small orchard sprawling towards the grey, slow-moving river. The young assistant saw he was on the wrong side of the building to where he needed to be.

Fighting his way around the first-floor gallery, he found the going became easier as the flow of audience members slowed. At the third window, he glimpsed the silhouettes of the stews, inns and rough houses of Bankside. Candles were being lit in the windows. Near to the theatre was an old, thatched, timber-framed cottage that Henslowe had established as a brothel for his players and guests.

Nathaniel wondered if he could leap the gulf to the roof, decided it was madness, and continued to the front of the theatre where he found the window above the entrance. He threw it open. The cool late spring air swept in, laced with woodsmoke from the house fires and the stink of rotting refuse.

Below was a small thatched porch over the entrance, flimsy and easy to miss. The spiralling cries of distress carved through his doubts. He climbed into the window space. With a whispered prayer, he allowed himself one glance down to mark his course, then he gripped the window frame and dropped.

The small porch shattered, showering straw and shards of wood around the theatre’s entrance. Nathaniel slammed into the chalk and stone walkway. Winded and seeing stars, he shook the fog from his head. No broken bones. The porch had slowed his descent just enough.

An unfamiliar woman loomed over him. Her hair was flame-red and she wore a bodice and skirt of black taffeta and gold. When he looked into her green eyes, Nathaniel felt he was a mouse before a cat, but she was sophisticated, definitely not one of the Bankside whores.

‘Let me help,’ she said with a hint of an Irish accent. She offered her hand.

As Nathaniel limped to his feet, he was enveloped by the sweet scent of her perfume. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘A friend.’ The Irish woman took the key from his hand.

‘I am always wary of friends who announce themselves as such.’ The clamour on the other side of the door almost drowned Nathaniel’s words.

‘You are right to be cautious, for terrible deeds are planned this night.’ The stranger’s green eyes flashed towards him as she slipped the key into the hole.

‘What do you know?’ Nat asked, concerned.

‘That before this night is out, the Rose Theatre will be the scene of a murder.’ The woman turned the key. ‘And that the victim will be England’s greatest spy, Will Swyfte.’