He smiles a little. This is the point of being a teacher. A glimmer of hope where you thought it didn’t exist. ‘You almost sound like you were there.’
‘I was,’ I say.
‘What, sir?’
I smile this time. It is tantalising, to be this close to revealing your own truth, like holding a bird you are about to set free.
‘I knew Shakespeare.’
And then he laughs like heknowsI am joking.
‘All right, yeah, Mr Hazard.’
‘See you tomorrow.’ Tomorrow. I have always hated that word. And yet, somehow, it doesn’t grate too much. ‘Tomorrow. Yeah.’
London, 1599
I sat in the gallery high above the stage next to an old, snooty, cadaverous man named Christopher, who played the virginal. I say ‘old’. He was probably no more than fifty, but he was the oldest of any man working for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. We were visible to much of the audience, should they have cared to look up in our direction, but we were in shadow, and I felt safely anonymous. Christopher rarely said a word to me, either before or after the performance.
I remember one conversation with him.
‘You are not from London, are you?’ he asked me with disdain.
It was a peculiar disdain, really. Then, as now, much of London was from elsewhere. That was the whole point of London. And, given that there were far more deaths about than births, it was the only way London kept going, and growing.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I am from France. My mother sought refuge here. From the king’s forces.’
‘The Catholics?’
‘Yes.’
‘And where is your mother now?’
‘She passed.’
Not a flicker of sympathy. Or curiosity. Just a long studious look. ‘You play like a Frenchman. You have foreign fingers.’
I stared at my hands. ‘Do I?’
‘Yes. You stroke the strings rather than pluck them. It makes a strange noise.’
‘Well, it is a strange noise that Mr Shakespeare likes.’
‘You play well for your age, I suppose. It is a novelty. But you shan’t stay young for ever. No one does. Except that boy out east.’
And there it was.
The moment I realised, even in a place as large as London, I still had to be on my guard.
‘They killed his mother. She was a witch.’
My heart started beating uncontrollably. It took every ounce of effort to fake a semblance of calm.
‘Well, if she drowned, that proved her innocence.’
He looked with suspicion. ‘I never saiddrowned.’
‘I assumed it was the ducking stool, if it was for witchcraft.’
