The Actor, the Rebel and the Wrinkled Queen Read online

  THE

  ACTOR

  THE REBEL

  AND THE

  WRINKLED

  QUEEN

  THE ACTOR THE REBEL

  AND THE WRINKLED QUEEN

  Illustrated by Helen Flook

  A & C Black • London

  This book is dedicated to the memory of the victims of Queen Elizabeth’s torturers and executioners, whose only ‘crime’ was to follow the wrong religion – Terry Deary

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One The Dragon Queen

  Chapter Two The Red-haired Girl

  Chapter Three The Master of the Globe

  Chapter Four Muttering Men

  Chapter Five Terrible Treason

  Chapter Six The Cold, Grey Prison

  Chapter Seven The Willing Witness

  Afterword The Essex Rebellion

  Reprinted 2008, 2011

  First published 2003 by

  A & C Black Publishers Ltd

  36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY

  www.acblack.com

  Text copyright © 2003 Terry Deary

  Illustrations copyright © 2003 Helen Flook

  The rights of Terry Deary and Helen Flook to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  eISBN: 978-1-40811-623-4

  A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means – graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems – without the prior permission in writing of the publishers.

  This book is produced using paper that is made from wood grown in managed, sustainable forests. It is natural, renewable and recyclable.

  The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain

  by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading RG1 8EX.

  Chapter One

  The Dragon Queen

  Queen Elizabeth was a monster. A monster who had hands like claws; a red frizzy wig like a lion’s mane; a wrinkled white face, caked with a mask of makeup, like a corpse in a coffin; little black, rotting teeth and breath like a sick old dog.

  I met her just before she died and she was the most scary thing I’d ever seen in my life.

  Her dress was crusted with jewels and shone red, green, blue, orange and white, like a dragon’s scaly skin. Her short, fat fingers pinched my ear and she dragged me forward so my button nose was a hand’s breadth away from her hooked beak of a nose.

  That’s when I smelled her stinking breath and heard her creaking voice hiss to my face.

  “The worst is death, and death will have its day,” she breathed.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” I tried to say, but my mouth was dry and I just squeaked, “Yessum-ad-stee!”

  “‘Yessum-ad-stee’?” she mocked. “You are supposed to be an actor, boy. You are supposed to speak clearly, aren’t you?”

  “Yessum-ad-stee!”

  “Does Mr Shakespeare let you speak like that on stage?”

  “No-hum-ad-stee!”

  “Then do not speak like that to your queen!” she snarled.

  At last she let me go and I swayed, almost fainting. A small, round man with a white beard grasped my arm and held me up. He was Lord Cecil, the queen’s chief minister.

  She turned her little dark eyes on him. “Let the boy kneel … Dwarf.”

  Lord Cecil chewed his lip. I could tell he hated being called Dwarf.

  “Do you want to die?” the queen asked suddenly.

  “No!” I said and my voice was loud and clear this time. Lord Cecil gave me a small kick on the ankle.

  “No … Your Majesty,” I said more softly, and lowered my eyes to the cold stone floor.

  “Then you know what you must do?” Lord Cecil asked in a kindly voice.

  “Tell you the truth,” I nodded.

  “One lie and you go back to the prison cell,” Queen Elizabeth said. “Or we may take you along to the Tower of London to let you try out some of our torture machines. The rack, the red-hot pincers, the thumbscrews…”

  “I’ll tell the truth!” I moaned. “I will!”

  “Then let us begin,” the queen commanded, and she sat back on her throne to listen.

  I told my story…

  Chapter Two

  The Red-haired Girl

  My name is James Foxton and I come from a village near York in the north of England. When I was five years old, a troupe of actors came and put on a show.

  It was magical. For two hours I forgot the misery of my empty belly and the cold that bit at my bare feet.

  “I want to be an actor just like them,” I told my parents.

  My father laughed, but my mother said, “The boy can sing and dance well enough. Let him join a company of actors. He’ll be one less hungry mouth for us to feed. We haven’t enough food as it is. The lad will only starve to death if we keep him at home.”

  So, at the age of seven, I joined Mr William Shakespeare’s actors at The Globe theatre in London. At first I helped with the costumes and helped the actors to dress and made sure they had the right swords and crowns or wigs or wine bottles before they went on stage. Then I was given a small part as a fairy in Mr Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  Of course, all the parts were played by boys and men – girls and women were not allowed to act on the stage. That’s what started the argument with the blue-eyed, red-haired girl at The Black Bull inn. We often put on a play in the yard of some inn like The Black Bull.

  I was a fairy called Cobweb, and at the end the crowd cheered and clapped when I came on stage to take my bow.

  The red-haired girl just glared at me from the doorway into the bar-room. When I had changed out of my dress, I went into The Black Bull to eat. The girl served greasy mutton stew and spilled it onto my shoulder.

  “Oh dear, what a shame!” she smirked.

  I knew she had done it on purpose.

  She mopped at it with a dirty rag and I pushed her hand away.

  “Ooooh! Is the little fairy girl upset?” she asked.

  “Shut up,” I snapped.

  “Ooooh! Will the fairy girl change my head into a donkey’s head, like she did in the play?”

  My fists went tight and I jumped to my feet. I kept my temper. “I do not need to change your head into a donkey’s. It is ugly enough already.” I felt pleased with that.

  She raised one red-brown eyebrow. “I could act better than you,” she said. “In fact, there’s a cat in the back alley that could act better than you! You try to skip around like a girl,” she laughed, dancing around the room clumpily. “Dad’s chickens can dance better than you.”

  The landlord appeared in the doorway. “That’s enough, Miranda,” he said to her.

  “Yes, Father,” she sighed.

  She walked to the door, turned for one last look at me and poked out her tongue.

  The landlord cleared his throat and called, “His Lordship, the Earl of Essex is here to see Master Shakespeare!”

  There was a sudden silence in the room, then a great shuffling of chairs as the actors hurried to empty the room

  I stood there with my mouth open as the tall, handsome and richly dressed earl marched into the room, sword clattering at his side and long beard flowing – the old queen’s favourite and her most powerful lord.

  Some people whispered she wanted to marry him and make him her king! Some whispered she was
annoyed because he acted like a king already.

  Suddenly, I felt my arm pulled viciously. It was the Miranda girl. She dragged me to the doorway. “It’s a secret meeting, halfwit! Get out!”

  But I wondered what the secret was…

  Chapter Three

  The Master of the Globe

  The earl pulled the curtain across the door. The passage I stood in was dark. I stayed at the curtain and heard the Earl of Essex talk to my master.

  “William, my friend, how are you?” the earl boomed.

  Mr Shakespeare said, “This is an honour!”

  “It’s an honour for me,” the earl told him.

  “That’s what I meant – an honour for you!” Mr Shakespeare laughed and the earl joined the laughter.

  Suddenly the girl hissed in my ear, “Spy!”

  “It can’t be that secret, or they wouldn’t be talking so loudly,” I said.

  “Big ears,” she sneered at me.

  “Donkey ears,” I spat back in the dim light.

  Suddenly, we knew that the two men were talking quietly now.

  We both crept back to the curtain to listen. And what we heard was the thing that almost cost me my life.

  “Next Wednesday you are doing a play at The Globe theatre, aren’t you, William?” the earl was asking.

  “We are doing my play, The Merchant of Venice,” my master told him.

  “Hmm,” the Earl of Essex said, and we heard his feet pacing the floor of the room. The girl, Miranda, snatched the knife from my belt. I almost cried out.

  The footsteps stopped. Miranda used my knife to make a small slit in the curtain. She handed me back my knife, then put her eye to the hole she had made.

  I copied her.

  The tall earl was looking out of the window. “I want you to perform your play about King Richard the Second,” he said.

  Master Shakespeare shook his head slowly. “It’s a long time since we did that. Some of my actors have never done it. We need more than a week to get it ready,” he argued. “Next month, maybe.”

  The earl turned. “No it must be next Wednesday.” He walked back to the table where my master sat. “You can do it, William.”

  Master Shakespeare spread his hands. “But the queen hates that play. It is a play about rebels who kill their king. She is terrified that it will give people ideas. She is scared someone will see the play and try to kill her!”

  The earl took a purse from his belt and threw it on the table. “There has been a plague all summer. The theatres have been closed. They have just opened again and you are desperate for money, William.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “There are forty shillings in cash in that purse. Your actors can be paid again and eat and drink in a good tavern – not in a rat-hole like this place!”

  Miranda went suddenly stiff and I thought she was going to cry out.

  But at that moment, the earl marched towards the curtain and we stood up and tumbled down the dark corridor, out of sight, till the tall man left.

  Later that evening, Master Shakespeare called the actors together. “The good news is that you can be paid at last.”

  The men and boys all cheered.

  “The bad news is we must work night and day so we can perform Richard II next Wednesday.”

  So Master Shakespeare had taken the bribe. It was a huge and deadly mistake that would cost a man his head.

  Chapter Four

  Muttering Men

  The next week was madder than Prince Hamlet’s granny. Every morning we were up at dawn to practise Richard II and every afternoon we acted A Midsummer Night’s Dream – in the middle of winter!

  At night we had dinner at The Black Bull. On the Tuesday night, Miranda served my chicken broth without spilling it. She hissed in my ear, “You’re getting better, fairy!”

  “I have a bigger part in Richard II,” I told her.

  “I’ll have to come and see you tomorrow afternoon,” she said and smiled. I decided it would be the best performance of my life. I didn’t know it could have been the last performance of my life.

  The Globe theatre packed in two thousand people. The flag flew over the theatre to show the play was about to start.

  I was squinting through the curtains to see if I could see where Miranda was standing. But at the back of the theatre, in the shadow of the little rooms, men were gathering and talking.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off them: men in rich cloaks and swords – only a gentleman could wear a sword; men with hard faces, speaking from the corners of tight mouths.

  They all moved up to the Earl of Essex, had a few whispered words and then settled to watch the play. Somehow I knew I was watching a plot being hatched. A plot to put the Earl of Essex on the throne.

  A cannon fired and I jumped – it was only the signal for our play to begin.

  The play went well … but when our King Richard was murdered, the gentlemen in the shadows laughed and nodded happily.

  When we danced a jig at the end of the play, I leapt higher than anyone. Miranda cheered and clapped. I was happy.

  Next day, the rebellion came. One day that will go down as ‘history’. At the time it was a shock and a wonder … and I was there!

  Chapter Five

  Terrible Treason

  “Rebellion!” someone cried in the hallway of The Black Bull the next morning. We dragged on our clothes and stumbled to the door still half-asleep.

  Two hundred riders clattered down the road towards Westminster Hall. Gentlemen with glittering swords and fine horses; the same gentlemen who had met at the theatre the day before. At the head of the riders was the Earl of Essex.

  “Join me, my friends!” he cried to the people on the streets. “The queen is too old to rule! It is time she went off into some quiet country palace to spend her last days in peace! Let me rule England, my dear friends. Follow me to Richmond Palace. When the queen sees you all, she will know it is time to go!”

  An old man and his wife served in The Black Bull. They looked out at the earl.

  “What did he say?” the old woman said and her voice trembled.

  “He says he wants to be Queen!” the old man muttered.

  “He can’t do that!” his wife laughed. She stuck her head out into the street. “Here! Young man! You can’t be Queen! We’ve already got one!”

  Then she ducked back in before he could see who had shouted.

  The crowd laughed and shuffled their feet and began to drift away.

  The old woman became braver.

  “Go home to your mum!” she yelled. “And put that sword away before you cut yourself!” She ducked back inside.

  The earl was becoming desperate.

  “You have had years of plague and years of hunger. You people of England have had to feed your children on cats and dogs and even nettle roots!”

  “I’ll bet it tastes better than my wife’s cooking!” the old man called, joining in the fun. His wife smacked him around the head with a wet cloth.

  “People of England, I beg you … join me! Join me! Join me!” the earl roared.

  “Why do you need joining?” the old woman screamed, “Are you falling apart?”

  Furious horsemen raised their swords and looked towards The Black Bull.

  “You’ll get yourself chopped,” her husband warned her.

  “No, she won’t,” a voice behind him said. “It’s the Earl of Essex who’ll get himself chopped.” It was Master Shakespeare … and he was right.

  The queen’s troops arrived in an hour and they met the earl’s little band of rebels. The people of London refused to join his revolt. The two hundred gentlemen gave up after only a short struggle.

  But my struggles were just about to begin…

  Chapter Six

  The Cold, Grey Prison

  Once the Earl of Essex had been locked in the Tower of London, the queen sent her soldiers after all the people who may have helped the revolt. People like us.

  Master Shake
speare and our acting troupe were dragged from our beds that night and taken to the prison at Newgate.

  They gave us water. If we wanted a candle for light, wood for a fire, straw for a bed or food, then we had to pay.

  I had no money. I slept on the cold stone floor and wept. The next day Miranda bought me some bread and cheese. One of the thieves who shared my cell stole it.

  After three days, I was taken before Lord Cecil – the man the queen called her ‘Dwarf’. As I said, I was almost fainting with fear as I faced the monster queen.

  “When you acted out your play, Richard II, that was a signal for all the plotters to start the rebellion,” Lord Cecil said. “I know that now,” I nodded.

  “The question is, did Mr Shakespeare know that? Was he part of the plot?” Queen Elizabeth asked and her white make-up cracked around the eyes as she scowled at me.

  “Mr Shakespeare had no idea!” I said.

  She jabbed a claw finger at me. “Mr Shakespeare had a meeting with the Earl of Essex a week before the play was shown. A secret meeting.”

  “But the earl didn’t tell my master why he wanted to see that play!” I cried.

  The queen gave a sour smile. “How would you know?” she hissed. “It was a secret meeting.”

  “I was listening at the door,” I told her.

  Lord Cecil looked at me sharply. “Were you? By god’s nails, you are the only person who knows the truth then!”

  “I do!” I nodded.