London - Edward Rutherfurd [347]
“When they reach the bridge, they will have to stop to pay the toll. That’s when we strike,” he explained to his fellow aldermen. “No one can question our authority because they’ll be in the city. My men will take over the wagons and we’ll impound all the timber on the grounds of suspected theft of property.” He grinned. “When Giles Allen returns, the matter can go to court.”
“What if Meredith is right, and they win?” one of the aldermen asked.
“It doesn’t matter. The case could drag on for years,” Ducket pointed out. “Meanwhile,” he smiled, “no timber, no theatre. I expect they’ll be ruined.”
Now, on the last day of the year, he waited patiently by the bridge. It was mid-morning and the wagons were coming.
The procession of wagons approached Bishopsgate at a leisurely pace. Edmund sat in the first one. As he scanned the lane in front of him, he saw nothing suspicious. Even the old fortified gateway into the city looked unoccupied, inviting. From there the street would lead them easily towards the bridge. He smiled.
Just before the gate the first wagon unexpectedly turned left. A few moments later, it was following the lane that led round outside the city wall and ditch. The other wagons followed. Five minutes later, with the Tower some hundreds of yards away on their right, they were bumping along a frozen track that, crossing open ground, led towards the river.
From the entrance to London Bridge, the frozen Thames presented a cheerful sight. Just upstream, some enterprising traders had erected stalls on the ice to make a little fair. Already there were braziers roasting nuts and sweetmeats. Beyond that, opposite Bankside, a huge area had been cleared and parties of youths and children were skating or sliding about. Puritan though he was, Alderman Ducket had no objection to these harmless pastimes and he looked at them with approval.
But then he frowned. Where the devil were those carts? They should have been there by now. Had some fool at the gate held them up? He was tempted to walk up towards Bishopsgate to see; but checked himself. A few more minutes passed. And then he happened to glance downstream.
The ten wagons were all on the ice now; they were several hundred yards beyond the Tower, but even on that grey morning, he could make out every detail. He could even see Meredith sitting in the first cart. For a long moment he watched them, speechless. It occurred to him that, perhaps, the ice would give way. Meredith might even be drowned. But the wagons continued.
Shortly afterwards, they pulled up at John Dogget’s boat repair yard where Meredith had arranged for the timber to be stored. From the bridge, the alderman helplessly watched them unload.
1599
On 21 February 1599, in the city of London, a document was signed which, by good fortune, has been preserved. It was quite modest: a simple lease under which a certain Nicholas Brend, owner of a piece of ground on Bankside, granted the right to build and operate a playhouse thereon. It had one unusual feature: the lessee was not a single party but a group of people, and the lease carefully set out the legal share held by each of them. Half the lease was split between the two Burbage brothers; the other half divided equally between five members of the Chamberlain’s company. One of these was William Shakespeare. The new theatre was being owned and operated by a company. Since the term “shareholder” had not yet been coined, a more domestic word was employed. Shakespeare and his fellow investors were known as “the householders”. The jointly owned theatre was also to be given a new name. They decided to call it the Globe.
Cuthbert Carpenter knew what his grandmother thought, because he felt duty bound to visit her and his sister once a week. Bankside was Sodom and Gomorrah; the playhouse, the Temple of Moloch. But if, as his grandmother believed, God had already predestined him for hellfire, then there was nothing he could do about