Free The True Prince by J.B. Cheaney Page B

gently but preferred avoiding us altogether; they had dressed and cleared out as soon as possible, leaving us alone.
    “That swelling on your cheek,” Kit said abruptly. Ilooked up, directly into the small hand mirror he was holding out to me. My face, a white-powdered blob, wove in and out of the mirror, while his held steady behind it. When painting ourselves for the stage, we imitated the ladies at court, who in turn followed the Queen's example of an almost dead-white purity of skin. We looked familiar yet strange, as though something had sucked the blood of our essential selves. “You can make swellings less with a tincture of lead,” he went on. “Do you know how to do that?”
    I shook my head, and he dug among his effects for a lead spoon. Giving me the glass to hold, he showed me how to draw the back of the spoon down the swollen side of my face, creating the palest of shadows. “Don't do it often, or your skin will rough up like a pig's hide.”
    “Thank you,” I said, mightily confused as to where I stood with him. It occurred to me to ask: Do I threaten you? Did our fight settle anything? Is there any way we could be friends? But a silence stood between us, like a wall of glass I dared not break for fear of getting myself cut.
    As for Davy, he hooked onto me as I climbed upon the stage and hung close all morning, but spoke no word about the fight. I thought he might have shown some gratitude; did he know what it was about?
    “He knows,” Gregory told me as we waited for an entrance together later that afternoon. “Robin let it slip when he was trying to feel out the little weasel. The boy all but laughed inhis face. Depend on it; you're the only friend he will have soon.”
    “Why do you say that? Has the Company turned against him?”
    “No, but they haven't warmed to him.” Gregory's mouth twisted. “There's something about him that's not right.”
    “In that case, he's more an object for pity than—”
    “Do as you please,” he said abruptly. “Only if I were you, I would drop him like a hot iron.”
    That evening the entire Company adjourned to the Mermaid Tavern for the casting of Master Will's latest play. I had heard some of the chief players discussing the work with happy anticipation, though the meat of it did not sound promising to me: a history of the troubled reign of Henry IV. This king had usurped the throne from his cousin but never sat easily on it; his reign, from what I could remember, was plagued with rebellion and unrest. Master Will could coax life from it if anyone could, but I expected a rather solemn evening when I squeezed onto a bench at one end of the table, with Robin on one side and Davy on the other.
    On casting nights the proprietor of the Mermaid reserved the long board in the loft for the Company to discuss their work in private. By the time we broke up to go home, we'd be cured like hams in the close, smoky air, but one advantage was that the tavern servers were always bringing us more ale andmeat. They liked to eavesdrop on the new plays and be great men amongst their friends when they shared their knowledge the next day.
    “Before I begin,” Master Will announced, “you should know that I have found so much matter for this subject that it can't all be packed into one performance. Therefore the reign of King Henry IV must be presented in two parts: the first for the spring and the second, God willing, next fall.”
    Will Kempe laughed. “By all the saints, what treasures did you mine out of old Holinshed to fill a double dose of theater?” He was referring to Holinshed's
Chronicles
, our author's main source of information for the history plays. I had read some of it in school and felt as doubtful as Master Kempe. But Shakespeare surprised me, once he plunged into his reading of all the parts.
    As the play begins, King Henry is sick and sad and longs to ease his troubled conscience with a crusade to Jerusalem. But he must first deal with ill winds in his