‘I am sorry to trouble you,’ I said, reckoning it was best to conciliate him, ‘but is Simon Hetherington here today?’

‘Aye. Friend of his, are you?’ He looked me up and down and – presumably deciding I presented no threat and would not steal the costumes or the takings – nodded toward the stage. ‘Go through at the back there. He should be about.’

I climbed the steps he indicated and found myself on the stage. It was a strange sensation, facing in the opposite direction, as it were, and seeing the tiers of seats rising up on three sides of me. They were empty now, but how intimidating it must feel to step out in front of hundreds of faces, peering up from the ground below your feet or leaning over the railings above you, everyone listening to your every word. What if you were to forget your lines? Or trip over your feet? Or otherwise make a fool of yourself? Yet Simon did this nearly every day. Surely I could act a part for three weeks, before a much smaller audience.

At the back of the stage were two doorways, covered with curtains, through which the actors made their entrances and exits. Between them was the inner stage, a small area reserved for special, more intimate scenes. I was not sure whether there was a way into the back regions of the theatre from there, so I chose the left-hand doorway, pushed aside the curtain and ducked through.

Almost at once I fell over something. My eyes had not yet adjusted to the dim light and it was crowded here. And chaotic. I had fallen over a throne-like chair, carved and painted to look like gold, though some of the cheap paint came off in flakes on the hand I put out to save myself from falling. There were boxes and chests everywhere, and bits of scenery – a tree, a low table, a ‘rock’ which rolled away when a tall man in an extravagant cloak barely brushed against it. It hit a stack of Roman spears which fell over.

‘God-a-mercy!’ He cried. ‘Who left those there? What if I’d knocked them down on my last entrance?’

He seemed to be addressing no one in particular. Certainly no one replied. I stooped to help him gather them up.

‘My thanks, young gentleman.’ He swept me a extravagant bow that would have done credit to any courtier. ‘You are my deus ex machina, my saviour, my knightly rescuer come from mighty Avalon!’ Then is a normal tone of voice, with the merest touch of Kent about it, ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I’m looking for Simon Hetherington.’

‘Over there.’ He pointed to a dim corner furthest away from the stage. ‘He will be shedding his curls and his farthingale, his dainty cap and mittens, and resuming his manly state.’

He peered at me. ‘Not looking for work, are you? We’re short of boys this season.’

‘No, no.’ I grinned at him. ‘I’m a doctor at Barts. I’m just a friend of Simon’s.’

‘Pity. We could make a fair damsel of you.’

This conversation was getting a little dangerous.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I see Simon now.’

With a quick bow, I slipped away, and found Simon in his normal clothes, but wiping his face with a damp cloth to remove the rosy paint from his cheeks.

‘So,’ he said, ‘and why were you in earnest conversation with James Burbage?’

‘Was that who it was? I didn’t realise. He knocked over some spears and I helped him pick them up.’

‘Did he try to recruit you?’

‘How did you guess?’

‘He’s really worried about how few boys we have to play the women’s parts. I told you we could make an actor of you.’

I laughed. ‘Not for me, I fear. I have come to offer you a meal, in exchange for the one you stood me, that time you pawned the gold earring.’

I was suddenly seized with the realisation that I was trespassing on Simon’s professional ground, and was embarrassed. ‘Unless, of course, you were planning to eat supper with your fellow actors.’

‘Not at all. No actor ever refuses a meal!’ He tossed away the cloth. ‘Am I fit to be seen in the streets?’

‘Nearly.’ I picked up the cloth and wiped a smear of rouge from his left cheek. ‘Now I won’t be ashamed to be seen with you.’

‘Come, then. Where shall we go?’ He hooked his arm through mine and led me back on to the stage.

‘I can’t imagine how you can stand up here and play your parts,’ I said, tilting back my head to look up to the highest ranks of seats, where I could see the doorman pushing a broom and stopping now and then to pick something up.

‘It’s easy,’ Simon said. ‘You just imagine yourself into the skin of the person you are playing. Think as he – or she – would think. Forget who you really are. Once you have truly become that person, it’s no longer pretence. It’s reality.’

‘I wonder.’

‘Good night, Master Burbage,’ Simon called. The director of the company of players was examining something in the inner stage and waved a hand to us as we left the theatre by the door I had come in.

‘Shall we go to that ordinary where we had a meal before?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m in the chinks this time.’ From the weight of the purse Sir Francis had handed me as I left, I reckoned I could stand Simon a better meal than that. ‘Let’s go to the Dolphin.’

He raised his eyebrows and whistled. ‘You are indeed feeling extravagant, Dr Alvarez.’

I laughed, but I was a little confused too, not wanting him to think I was trying to outdo his own treat.

Although we entered the great inn with some trepidation, the servitors did not seem to think we were out of place and seated us at once at a small table in a corner. We supped well on a fine cut of beef roasted in a salt crust to keep in the juices, which meant that it was the most tender meat I had eaten since leaving my home in Portugal. Before the beef we shared a plate of Thames oysters, though I sniffed each one carefully, mindful of Poley’s food poisoning. The beef was served with carrots glazed with butter and honey, and roasted onions. Afterwards we ate a syllabub flavoured with lemon and washed it all down with a very good ale. The meal cost me two shillings, the most expensive I had ever paid for myself, but it gave me pleasure to watch how much Simon enjoyed it, wiping up every last drop of gravy with good bread and chasing the scrapings of syllabub around his dish.

Perhaps it was the ale, or perhaps the sense of a stomach full of good food in the clean and elegant surroundings of the famous inn, but I found myself telling Simon something of my interview with Walsingham that afternoon. He grew pale and shook his head when I repeated what Sir Francis had told me of events in Paris fourteen years before.

‘I’ve heard people grumble about the Huguenots living in Petty France,’ he said, ‘and I knew they had been driven out, but I never knew how terrible it was.’

I nodded. ‘Sir Francis told me because he wanted to make me understand just how bad it will be here, if the French or the Spanish overrun us.’

‘You really think there is a danger of that?’

‘Oh, yes. I cannot tell you the details of what I do, it is secret, but I suppose it is no secret that anyone who works for Walsingham is engaged in trying to protect England and the Queen from what these traitors and hostile nations would try to do.’

Simon poured us each another glass of the ale, emptying the flagon.

‘I knew you were working as a code-breaker, you told me that before. I didn’t realise that your work was so important.’

‘I’m only a small part of it.’ I drank deeply of the ale. It was growing hot as more people crowded in to the dining room of the inn and I was thirsty. It must have been the ale that started me telling Simon about what Walsingham wanted me to do next. With one part of my brain I thought I ought to curb my tongue, but I was so anxious about the task that confronted me that I needed to talk to someone. I did at least have the sense not to mention hunting for and copying letters, only saying that my post as tutor was to be a cover for spying on this suspected Catholic family.