Crimson Rose Read Online Free Page B

shoulder.
    Marlowe walked across the stage, then turned at the edge, his face dark and his eyes cold. ‘“Vile tyrant! Barbarous bloody Tamburlaine!”’ he rapped out.
    ‘“Take them away. Th …” Oh, bugger!’ Alleyn groped for his line.
    Marlowe laughed. ‘As I said,’ he called as he crossed the groundling’s space of the Rose. ‘You have a rehearsal to finish.’
    As he left the dark of the theatre and paused on the steps outside, he saw Philip Henslowe, bent towards a man he thought he knew but whose name he couldn’t bring to mind. He took a step towards them but then, seeing the expression on Henslowe’s face, thought better of it and, raising a hand in greeting, hurried off.
    For the first time in his life, Kit Marlowe, the son of a Canterbury shoemaker, had a manservant. If you’d put the playwright into one of those iron boot contraptions they used on suspected traitors in the Tower, Marlowe couldn’t exactly tell you how he’d come to hire Jack Windlass. There were times when it seemed rather the other way round, as if Jack Windlass had plucked the name ‘Marlowe’ from the crossrow.
    From what he knew of him, Windlass was a good man, but he had his foibles. Every Thursday, come Hell or the Flood, Jack Windlass served up a mighty shin of beef for supper. And woe betide the master who missed a meal like that.
    And so Marlowe missed Philip Henslowe at his most patronizing.
    ‘I know it’s you, Burbage,’ Henslowe was saying, following the other man across the landing.
    ‘You mistake me,’ the man said, keeping his back to the light and his shoulder turned but Henslowe was persistent and hauled him round so he could have a proper look.
    ‘No, I don’t. You are Richard Burbage, joiner.’
    The joiner stood up to become half a head taller and tore off his false nose and moustache, revealing a large nose and fledgling moustache beneath. ‘Allow me to correct you, sir,’ he said. ‘I am Richard Burbage, Actor.’
    ‘Whatever you say.’ Henslowe dismissed it with a wave of his hand, his mind already back with the calculating of whether he had enough timber. Then he stopped and turned back. ‘So what
are
you doing here?’
    ‘Looking for Cuthbert.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘My brother,’ Burbage explained as though to an idiot. ‘You know, the actor.’
    ‘Oh, God,’ Henslowe moaned. ‘Another one?’
    ‘I was wondering if you’d cast Tamburlaine yet?’
    Henslowe stood there with his mouth open. ‘Cast Tamburlaine?’ he repeated. ‘Man, we open tomorrow. If you want to make any kind of living in this business, I think you should try and keep your ear closer to the ground.’ He turned away, chuckling to himself at the arrogance of actors, when Burbage grabbed his sleeve in his turn.
    ‘It’s Alleyn, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Ned Alleyn’s got the part.’
    ‘So I’ve heard from several ladies.’ Henslowe nodded.
    ‘He’s wrong,’ Burbage said solemnly. ‘I don’t see him in the part. He’s … such a boy!’
    Henslowe looked closely into the actor-joiner’s face. He was an ugly looking thing, with a great nose and a tight little mouth over a heavy chin, but he had a bloom on his cheek that could only be that of youth. ‘Talking of boys, Burbage, how old are you?’
    ‘I was twenty last January,’ Burbage told him.
    ‘Well, there you are, then.’ Henslowe chuckled. ‘Why not see if there’s a Children’s Troupe in need of an old hand. I hear the Boys of St Paul’s are usually desperate.’
    ‘Alleyn’s not much older than I.’ Burbage stood his ground.
    ‘Alleyn is a world older than you, boy,’ he said. ‘Come back to me when you can grow a beard.’
    ‘You haven’t heard the last of this!’ Burbage called after him, ever the master of the cliché. ‘I have my ways. You’ll see!’
    Will Shakespeare, once Shaxsper, of Stratford-on-Avon, now of London, paced his tiny attic room, mouthing silent words and gesticulating wildly. He had already caught himself