London - Edward Rutherfurd [353]
“Can you double up?” Edmund begged them, as he searched his memory frantically to see how this could be done. After several minutes poring over the script he managed, with a couple of small cuts, to cover for Pope and Crowley; but unless Sly turned up: “We can’t do it,” he concluded. “It’s impossible.” He gazed around them, at a loss. His play, all that he had worked for, casually destroyed at this last minute. The audience would have to be given their money back. He could not believe it. The actors, embarrassed, looked at each other in silence. Until Jane’s little brother spoke up. “Could you not play a part yourself?”
The actors looked at Edmund curiously.
“I?” He stared blankly. “On the stage?” He was a gentleman, not an actor.
“Seems the best idea,” Fleming agreed. They were still watching him.
“But I’ve never acted,” he protested in confusion.
“You know the play,” the boy said. “Anyway, there’s no one else.” And after a long, agonized pause, Edmund realized he was right.
“Oh my God,” he breathed.
“I’ll get you a costume,” said Jane.
They hit him like an engulfing wave as soon as he came on stage, taking him entirely by surprise. He could see them all in the daylight from the big circle of the open roof above: eight hundred pairs of eyes staring at him from the pit below his feet and from the galleries on every side. If he moved to the side of the stage, some in the galleries could almost reach out and touch him. They were all looking at him expectantly.
Not that they would do so for long. Elizabethan actors had to earn the attention of the audience every minute. Bore them, and they would not just become restless in their seats – the folk in the pit and many in the galleries were standing anyway. They would begin to talk. Irritate them and they would hiss. Annoy them, and a hail of nuts, apple cores, pears, cheese rinds or anything else to hand, might land on the stage or on your head. No wonder the prologues to plays often appealed to them, hopefully, as “Gentles All”.
But he was not afraid. In his left hand, in a little scroll wrapped around a stick, were his lines, which Fleming had discreetly slipped him as he went through the stage door. It was not uncommon for actors in a new play to bring such prompts with them, and it was hardly visible, but the gesture had seemed absurd to him. He was hardly likely to forget the lines he had written himself. As he waited his turn he glanced around. He spotted Rose and Sterne and noticed their surprise at seeing him on stage. He would have to make up some good reason for this afterwards. He watched the actor playing the Moor. He was speaking tolerably well and Edmund saw with satisfaction that, so far at least, the audience’s eyes were riveted on the strange, black figure he had created. His idea had been good, then. But the time for his own speech had almost come now. He smiled, took a step forward, took a breath.
And nothing happened. His mind was a complete blank. He glanced at the actor playing the Moor for a cue. None came. He felt himself go pale, heard Fleming’s voice call out something from the stage door, and, shaking with embarrassment, glanced hastily down at the scroll.
So, Sirrah, how does my lady now? How could he have forgotten? It was so simple. A hint of restiveness seemed momentarily to afflict the audience after this fumble. No hissing, just something in the air. But fortunately it seemed to disappear.
The rest of the first scene, which was not long, passed without incident. By discreetly unrolling the scroll in his left hand, and glancing down at it for reassurance, he found that he did not fluff his lines again. The play was settling down.
The strange murmur began in the last minute of the scene. The Moor was making his first major speech, centrestage. It