Taking Wing

An Actor Born

The drum thunders through every market town they enter. Isabel capers along behind Ned Scrivener as he beats it, with Kit piping a tune at his side. Weeks of walking have given her blistered heels and a belly that gurgles louder than the drum. But the players’ tricks have become second nature to her. She cartwheels and clowns like Sam Tilly and Toby Fettle, wheeling about as though she had springs in her shoes. Occasionally she showers the crowd with wilting rose petals, though their supply is running low.

Master Pink, too dignified for tumbling, strides around swirling his scarlet-lined cloak and turning smoldering smiles on every wife and daughter who might be persuaded to attend the show. Once an admiring flock of followers has gathered in the market square, Master Pink counts off under his breath. Then the whole troupe breaks into a round called “My Poor Bird,” their voices joining one after another until they ring out like peals of bells.

The crowd claps and cries for more. But the players mean only to whet appetites, not satisfy them. Isabel calls out sauciously that anyone who enjoyed the tune should come find them at the Angel at two of the clock, where they will enchant their audience and drive away dull cares. Having thoroughly advertised themselves to the townsfolk, the troupe makes its way back to the inn to prepare for the afternoon’s performance.

Back at the inn, Isabel and Kit check over the properties. Meanwhile, Ned and the others lay boards across the back of Delilah’s cart to build a makeshift stage. The innkeeper’s daughter brings out bread and ale for their midday meal. Her small brother toddles out after her, trips, and sprawls onto the cobbles. Isabel scoops him up without thinking, and Ned teases that she will make some man a fine wife one day. She recovers quickly, retorting that any boy raised alongside little brothers and sisters would do the same for an injured child, and asking whether Master Scrivener never once comforted his own. Sam pretends to be horrified, praying that Ned’s siblings were never subjected to the injury of looking at his ugly mug. The joke passes, and Isabel sets the boy gently back on his feet, but privately she is shaken.

Isabel has not realized what a strain it would be to play a boy every hour of every day. Until now, she has covered every slip. The touch of that soft baby cheek has very nearly undone it all, since it reminded her so painfully of Hope.

She wonders miserably whether Joan is right. What if the angels come to carry her baby sister away while Isabel is off roaming the countryside, putting on plays in taverns? What if she never sees Hope again in this world?

Master Pink, oblivious, is already helping himself hungrily to the landlord’s food, urging Robert to fill his belly, too, since this may be their last good meal before Banbury. Isabel mumbles some excuse about needing to catch up a hem Toby tore on Philomena’s gown while dancing the pavane in the wedding scene. She uses her sewing as a ploy to hide the tears that have unexpectedly filled her eyes.

A few days later, disaster strikes. A half-hour before the performance, Toby turns white as chalk and sprints for the jakes. Dreadful groans soon carry through the door. Kit reports cheerfully that Toby has been sick as a dog and now claims the flux. Master Pink, unmoved, mutters that he had warned the fool about those herrings.

With Toby out and Kit too sturdy to fit into Princess Philomena’s gown despite knowing all her speeches, Master Pink flings the dainty gown at the wall in disgust, demanding to know what has made Kit grow so stout. Ned grins and asks why Robert cannot do it instead, since he is such a sweet, girlish sort of fellow. Isabel answers with a fist aimed at Ned. Then she insists she can manage the part if the others will help her.

The whole troupe swarms Isabel at once, thrusting Philomena’s wig and gown into her arms and offering eager advice on walking and talking like a girl. She finds it secretly ridiculous, since she is, in truth, a girl playing a boy who is about to play a girl. Backstage, Kit lines her eyes with black paint, warning her not to blink or he will poke her in the eye. Then he tells her she will be saving their bacon before sending her out.

Isabel trembles through her first lines as Philomena. But Master Pink, playing Saint George, fixes her with such an entranced expression every time she speaks that she begins to believe he has truly fallen in love with her. Her fright melts into confidence.

The play is going better than Isabel dared hope when a wild-haired drunk bursts into the tavern yard, haranguing the crowd at the top of his voice. He insists these ruffians have stolen his pig, a fine beast, a prince among pigs. When he went to the sty after the players passed through town, the animal was gone. He clambers onto the stage and seizes Master Pink by the ear, demanding his pig back.

Master Pink, well accustomed to this sort of misunderstanding, draws Saint George’s sword without missing a beat and improvises grandly. He informs the man that he has undertaken to rescue a fair maiden from a fearsome dragon and can delay for no one. But he promises to help hunt down the pig thief once his knightly duty is done.

The crowd roars with laughter. A woman shouts at everyone to ignore the drunken fool. A witty youth hollers that the pig prince he saw was no more than a piglet. Someone else suggests the man felt peckish and ate the beast himself. Seeing the crowd is on the players’ side, the landlord firmly walks the troublemaker away. The play finishes in a storm of applause.

Afterward, Ned delightedly tells everyone that the lad actually blushed when Jasper kissed him at the wedding. Kit, grinning, declares Isabel an actor born.

Isabel plays the princess again and again in the days that follow. Excitement bubbles up in her every time she steps onstage. But the life of a traveling player is not the idyll she once imagined. The troupe tramps from place to place in every kind of weather, sleeping rough in woods and fields. They are often damp, cold, and hungry.

Country folk are quick to blame the players whenever livestock or a ring goes missing, convinced that traveling players must be thieves and ruffians. Some believe playacting itself is a sin that corrupts everyone who comes to watch. With rumors of a fresh outbreak of plague spreading out of London, other villagers grow frightened enough of contagion to turn openly hostile. In one town, angry residents threaten to burn the players’ cart, forcing the whole troupe to flee in the middle of the night. Isabel admits to herself that it is an adventure. But life with the players is not for her. She only wishes she knew what was.

By the time they finish their performance in Northampton, only a few miles remain to the estate of Aunt de Vere. From there, the troupe travels on to a tavern in Pease Magna, where Isabel will say goodbye to the little band of players. Master Pink does not think it wise for Kit to accompany her all the way to her aunt’s, reasoning that the lady might not welcome her long-lost relative arriving in the company of crude outlaws. Isabel does not protest.

Isabel is not ashamed of her friends. But she feels strangely ashamed at having to tell men who have befriended her so generously that she is not really Robert Campion after all, but Isabel.

Isabel spends her last night with the players in a hayloft belonging to an inn called the Green Giant. She has grown used to dropping off to sleep wherever she lays her head. But that night she tosses and turns for hours, listening to her companions’ snores and the squeak of field mice inside the walls, with no idea what awaits her at her aunt’s the next day.

For weeks Isabel has been pretending to herself that she does not miss her family, even persuading herself that none of them care much for her, either. But lying there in the dark, she is suddenly overwhelmed with such longing to see them again that she can scarcely breathe. Not wanting to be heard, she turns her face into the cloak that serves as her pillow. For the first time since leaving home, she sobs until she thinks her heart will break.