‘I’ve heard the fellow was employed by Walsingham to spy on Babington,’ said Christopher. ‘He certainly used to work for Leicester. I’ve seen him with the Earl, God rest his soul. And later with Walsingham’s cousin Thomas.’

‘And wasn’t he in Sidney’s household, when he and his lady lived in Walsingham’s house in Seething Lane?’ Richard Burbage turned to me.

The players all knew that I had worked in the past as a code-breaker for Sir Francis Walsingham. Such a thing was impossible to keep from them, for players are as eager for gossip as bees for nectar. They were not aware of my other activities within Sir Francis’s secret service. Simon knew or guessed a little, but nothing dangerous. Any time now Richard and the others would be probing me for what I knew of Poley. This was not the place to speak of it, this public drinking house, where the very ale jacks have ears. And the man Arthur had already caught their eyes fixed speculatively on me.

At that moment the door was flung open and a blast of snow and icy air blew James Burbage in and across the room to us. The fire swooped and flung a cloud of smoke into the room. Men cursed. Someone kicked the door shut.

‘Snow!’ Someone else exclaimed.

‘Just managed your performance in time,’ Christopher said to Simon. ‘With this snow starting up there’ll be nothing more doing in the playhouses now till spring.’

Burbage was roaring at the potboy to bring more beer for everyone, and a dish of collops and onions. He swept his arms over us all, including the doorkeeper.

‘Fill your bellies, lads!’ He was wearing a magnificent cloak usually reserved for stage kings. He must have borrowed it from the costume baskets.

‘Good news, then?’ Guy asked. The lines of worry I had noticed round his eyes had vanished.

The potboy arrived, ladling out mugs of beer as if he were dealing cards. One of the maids came with a copper pan from which a stomach-teasing steam rose, another maid brought a stack of pewter plates.

Burbage was still on his feet, flourishing his beer like a trumpet.

‘I give you, gentlemen, the Lord Strange’s Men, signed, sealed and delivered. To continue to perform at the Theatre. And,’ he paused for effect, ‘to perform at Lord Strange’s house in the Strand, this day sennight.’

They raised a cheer. It meant a secure future for them. In their joy at this auspicious news, they had had forgotten that other news, of little account to them, that Robert Poley was free again to walk the world and work his devious, self-serving schemes.

But I had not forgotten.

Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, was heir to the Earl of Derby, but on his mother’s side he ranked even more highly, very highly indeed, for he was descended from King Henry’s sister Mary, who was grandmother of Lord Strange’s mother. In his last will, setting out the future for England, King Henry had named Lord Strange’s mother – his great-niece – as next in line to the throne, should all his three children die childless, of whom our present Queen Elizabeth was the last. As this now seemed more and more likely, given the Queen’s age and unmarried state, it meant that Lord Strange was second in line to the throne. In securing him as patron, James Burbage was biting his thumb at the Queen’s Men, who, in the past, had stolen a number of the best players from Leicester’s Men, including Richard Tarlton. This had all occurred before ever I had come to know the players, but I was well aware that it still rankled.

It seemed that Lord Strange already had a company called Lord Strange’s Men, but they were nothing but acrobats and jugglers, simple performers for after-dinner amusement, possessing their own skills, certainly, but more fit for Bartholomew’s Fair and a far cry from the sort of plays Burbage’s company had begun to perform. When I asked a tentative question about this, the next time I saw the players, Guy answered with enthusiasm.

‘Ah, but you see, Kit, my lord is a great lover of poetry and a patron of poets. He has been wanting his own company of dramatic players, so was eager to welcome Burbage’s proposal.’

‘And that is why you are rehearsing here?’ For despite the bitter December weather, and half an inch of snow on the very boards of the stage, the company had gathered at the Theatre. They were muffled to the eyebrows in cloaks and scarves, but were determined to rehearse where there was space enough to move and declaim.

‘Aye. We are to perform The Spanish Tragedy at my lord’s house on Thursday. There is no time to prepare anything new, but we shall give of our best.’

‘Who is to play Bel Imperia?’ It was a woman’s role Simon had played in the past with great gusto, but no longer.

Guy shrugged. ‘It will have to be Edward Titheridge. He has not Simon’s fire in the great female parts, but he will do well enough.’

I remembered Simon training young Edward in how to walk like a woman and suppressed a smile.

‘Have you brought the pastilles?’ Guy said.

‘Aye. And a honey tincture as well.’ Some of the players were suffering from sore throats and feared for their voices before this all-important performance. ‘You were better not rehearsing in this cold air.’

‘We are nearly done.’

Indeed they made an end soon after, for the snow had begun to fall once more and even the most dedicated player could not perform in such conditions. We parted hastily, the players home to their lodgings and I back through Bishopsgate and across the city. By the time I reached Newgate, the snowfall had become a regular blizzard and the hot chestnut seller who had his place there was packing away his gear, for there were but a handful of people left on the streets. I bought my usual farthing’s worth, with another for the Newgate prisoners crowded behind the grill, where they were allowed to beg for food from the passersby. There seemed to be fewer faces than usual in the dark chamber sunk below ground level behind the grill. It must be bitterly cold beside the open grill and they could not hope for many people on the streets, fewer still inclined to be charitable. On second thoughts I thrust my own paper cone of chestnuts through after the first. There would be a meal waiting for me at home, while these poor creatures had little to hope for, unless they had money to send out for food. They must live on whatever scraps might be given them. I pulled the hood of my cloak over the woollen cap I was wearing instead of my physician’s bonnet and hurried on to Duck Lane, through snow that danced like dervishes, blurring the lines of streets and buildings until all seemed the insubstantial landscape of a dream.

It proved the onset of a bad winter. After all the rejoicing of the summer and autumn, following our defeat of Spain’s Armada, a kind of lethargy seemed to have settled on England. All the desperate frenetic energy which had driven our resistance to the enemy had sapped our strength and we were exhausted. In the aftermath of the war, far more men had died of disease than the hundred or so killed in battle, as typhus and the bloody flux had swept through the ranks of soldiers and sailors. Those who had survived and managed to struggle home, begging their way, were paid late and grudgingly. It was not a situation to lift the spirits of the nation. Added to this, the Spanish attack and the subsequent outbreaks of disease had occurred at harvest time, so that labour was scarce in the countryside and the crops gathered in fell short of what was needed to feed the people, especially in a great city like London, which could not feed itself.

The inevitable outcome was that our wards at St Bartholomew’s Hospital were overflowing, not only with the usual winter ailments but with the destitute poor, lingering just this side of starvation. My code-breaking services were not needed, it seemed, by Thomas Phelippes in his office at Walsingham’s house in Seething Lane, for which I was mostly grateful, but it meant that I knew no more than any other citizen about affairs of state. In my more honest moments, I admitted to myself that I missed being part of that knowledgeable coterie, aware of all the beating secrets at the heart of the nation. Besides, I needed to know what Poley was up to.