by Peter Tonkin
‘So,’ said Kate. ‘They had lost the witness set to swear Will bought the Hemlock on the night of Spenser’s death.’
‘Indeed. Therefore they came up with the plan - simple and effective, dealing with both their concerns. Write a poem in Will’s style whose content and references border on treason, and leave it where it will most certainly be discovered and point to Will as murderer once more.’
‘On Hal’s breast in Spenser’s grave,’ concluded Ugo.
‘Dear God in Heaven here’s a coil,’ said Will, shaken to the core.
‘But why?’ demanded Rosalind, her strident words riding over his.
‘To blame me for the murder,’ supplied her lover.
‘But why?’
‘To take suspicion away from the real murderer,’ answered Will.
‘I see that well enough. But why you? God’s truth we saw poets enough yesterday to choke the muses and I personally could draw me up a list of more than a dozen I would see destroyed before you...’
‘Only a dozen?’ asked Kate. ‘I could name a score...’
‘So, the question stands,’ said Rosalind. ‘Of all the poets in London they could have blamed, why did they choose Will Shakespeare? Who do you threaten, Will? Whose jealousy do you bestir? What have you done that makes you deserve this in someone’s eyes?’
‘Someone,’ Tom pointed out, ‘who wanted Spenser dead in the first place. Have you offended any powerful Irishmen?’ Will shook his head and continued to do so as Tom fired question after question at him. ‘Someone likely to profit from his death - to take his lands, perhaps? Someone wanting his death to prick the Queen into action and send Essex to Ireland at once? Someone insulted by the reprinting of Mother Hubberd’s Tale?’
‘Stop!’ begged Will. ‘You have suggested half of London and many in Dublin, Cork and Tyrone as well. How will we ever make sense of it?’
‘We need a clear head who knows this game and has contacts in every camp,’ said Rosalind. ‘A Master of more than Logic...’
‘Well,’ said Tom, ‘I can do my best...’
‘Not you, you gudgeon! Think! If we asked the Queen for help, as her favourite poet is the murdered corpse in question, who would she turn to?’
‘Secretary Cecil,’ he answered.
‘Good. And if we asked Walter Raleigh - for his School of Night may be caught up in this through Chapman and Forman if through no-one else...’
‘He would turn to Cecil too.’
‘And who would Cecil turn to?’
‘The Chief Intelligencer.’
‘Good. And say we took another tack and asked Essex, who we know is already entangled in whatever this is?’
‘He is Earl Marshal and would turn to the Knight Marshal.’
‘And the Knight Marshal would turn to...’
‘The Pursuivant Marshal.’
‘So we, therefore, might best turn to those worthies first. The Chief Intelligencer and the Pursuivant Marshal. Also known as...’
‘Robert Poley,’ breathed Tom. ‘Are you seriously saying we should take this witches’ brew of poetry, poison, falsehood, magic and murder to Robert Poley?’
Chapter 9: The Master of Deceit
i
Rosalind insisted on coming with Tom to see Poley. He was happy enough to take her because she and her parents who had run an inn on the main road between London and Edinburgh via Cambridge, had worked as spies for him and had been trained by him; Rosalind still being, as Tom calculated, more Poley’s creature than Shakespeare’s lover. In many ways this was especially true as the inn had been destroyed by Gelly Meyrick and her father beaten to death by others of Essex’ men when they kidnapped her for interrogation by Sir Francis Bacon on Essex’ orders. If anyone stood against her enemies - in spite of his current position - Poley did.
As his beautiful lover went with one man to meet another, the ever-trusting Will was happy enough to be left alone in his new lodging overlooking the Globe as Richard Burbage, Peter Street and his carpenters slowly erected it. Will was fiercely focused on his play of Henry now, with Caesar and Hamlet in the background. Though, as far as Tom could see, the playwright was currently trying to pen the rousing speech Mark Antony would have given to the English army had he been in command at the siege of Harfleur.
Tom and Rosalind were seated by the table in Poley’s room at the top of the Yeomans’ house on Hog Lane where he lodged. Tracking him had been surprisingly easy in the end. Tom reasoned that it would take time for him to revert to the ill-shaven, filthy state in which he did his undercover work at the Marshalsea. Until he did so he would be fulfilling other duties - either as Chief Intelligencer or as Pursuivant Marshal, though both often required him either to travel to distant places or to disguise himself as a prisoner in one of London’s many jails. Most recently - previous to his brief sojurn in the Marshalsea a few days ago - he had been on a longer assignment in the same jail just over a year back when he had spied on the imprisoned Ben Jonson to establish whether he had any seriously treasonous leanings after the debacle arising from the play of The Isle of Dogs which Ben had written with Tom Nash - a work almost as dangerous as Spenser’s Mother Hubberd’s Tale seemed to have become, thought Tom. But in the end they had found Poley in the first place they looked - at home.
Looking across the table now, Tom found himself considering Poley, his background and his work as one of the most successful spies in the country. He saw a gaunt hawk-faced man in his mid-to-late forties. Lean but whip-strong. Thick, wavy brown hair swept back from a high forehead. Deep-set, fiercely intelligent eyes, startlingly blue beneath overhanging brows; beak of a nose, thin-lipped mouth, usually down-turned with uncompromising lines astride a square-chin, grey with ill-shaven stubble now - so he planned on more undercover work, for he was usually punctilious in such matters. Brutally powerful hands that were surprisingly large, rivaling even those of Rackmaster Topcliffe, lay on the table-top like somnolent animals.
*
Poley’s origins were as obscure as most of his doings, but by sixteen he had been a sizar at Clare College, Cambridge, twenty years before Armada year, working his way through his studies by acting as a servant to the richer students - just as the young Edmund Spenser was doing at neighboring Pembroke College. Soon after graduation, he had managed to make contact with young Sir Thomas Walsingham and, through his good offices, started working for Sir Thomas’ relative Sir Francis Walsingham, the head of the queen’s spy service. Sir Francis, nicknamed her ‘Moor’ by Elizabeth because his colouring was so dark, shared Poley with the Earl of Leicester, her ‘Sweet Robin’ who also ran an intelligence unit. Both Walsinghams were instrumental in placing him in Sir Philip Sidney’s household when the dashing soldier-poet married Sir Francis’ daughter Frances Walsingham - who was later to marry the Earl of Essex after being widowed by Sidney’s death at the battle of Zutphen. Whose funeral was in many ways the paradigm of Spenser’s, which was apt enough in turn because Spenser had added immeasurably to Sidney’s memory and standing by writing his great elegiac poem Astrophel.
Released from Sidney’s service, Poley was rapidly promoted into being the Council’s most trusted domestic courier, carrying secret messages to Mary Queen of Scots, becoming a trusted agent of her Catholic coterie - which in turn allowed him to warn the Earl of Leicester of a plot to murder him; something that enhanced his already burgeoning reputation and fastened him to Leicester’ side for some time. Tom had first met him at Leicester’s shoulder during the Battle of Nigmegen, part of Leicester’s campaign against Philip of Spain’s catholic armies in the Low Countries.
But the backbone of Poley’s work was completed at home. He was the double agent at the heart of the Babington plot to put the Queen of Scots on her cousin Elizabeth’s throne. Some said he had become Sir Antony Babington’s lover in order to seduce information out of him. A suspicion echoing the gossip that Will Shakespeare had been catamite to Henry Wriothesley the Earl of Southampton and written some of his loveliest sonnets t
o him. As for Poley and Babington, it was certainly well attested - if not absolutely true - that Babington’s last words were, ‘Do not hurt my sweet Robert…’
However he gained the knowledge, Poley betrayed Babington and his co-conspirators to Walsingham and was present when they were hanged, drawn and quartered, and later at Fotheringay Castle when Mary lost her head for her part in the plot. As a consequence, he became the Council’s most trusted international courier - into Europe as well as up to Edinburgh - while also establishing himself as their best undercover man - in Newgate and the Marshalsea.
It was this combination which put him at the centre of the plot to kill Kit Marlowe, following him abroad and ghosting him and his friends from one jail, secret meeting and clipping house to another, and finally to a cramped room in Mistress Bull’s residence in Deptford with Ingram Frizer and Nick Skeres. After Marlowe’s successful execution, Poley had simply gone from strength to strength. So that now, if temporarily, he was right-hand man to all of the most powerful, mutually mistrustful masterminds in Elizabeth’s fragmented intelligence service.
ii
‘So,’ said Poley as he stirred the bundle of papers Tom had rescued from Spenser’s grave, ‘you attest that in amongst all this scribbled drivel there is proof of a plot to murder Spenser as well as strong suggestions as to who might have been responsible if murder was in fact done. Someone other than poetry-lovers who found his writings almost impossibly boring and utterly endless; especially, Heaven help us, that infinity of antique excrement the Fairy Queen…’
‘If murder was done,’ echoed Tom. ‘Surely you must know that murder was done. Spenser’s body was taken and presumably examined by Simon Forman under instruction from the Knight Marshal - himself under instruction from the Earl Marshal as passed on by Gelly Meyrick and the Bacon brothers.’
‘Taken, and prepared for burial, certainly…’ Poley’s tone was unusually hesitant, but perhaps only someone who knew him well would notice.
‘They haven’t discussed this with you, have they?’ said Tom softly. Then he answered his own question. ‘But of course they haven’t. There is the matter of trust after all. You might be called the Pursuivant Marshal but the Earl Marshal and the Knight Marshal are all too well aware that you are also the Chief Intelligencer to the Council…’
‘Put in place to spy on them,’ added Rosalind. ‘Or at least to keep close watch on them.’
‘Because the Council - and Secretary Cecil above all - fears that Essex has ulterior motives for planning to invade Ireland,’ added Tom.
‘Especially as he is doing his utmost to recruit the best trained and equipped soldiers he can,’ added Rosalind. ‘Men whose first allegiance is to him.’
‘Like the thirteenth legion who crossed the Rubicon with Julius Caesar,’ added Tom. ‘Or, indeed, the army who crossed into Wales with Her Majesty’s grandfather Henry Tudor to stand against King Richard III at Bosworth Field.’
‘My Will Shakespeare would probably be happy to explain about Caesar as he’s studying Sir Thomas North’s Plutarch even now,’ said Rosalind.
‘The same Thomas North as is training Essex’ Irish Army,’ observed Poley.
‘The other reason they probably don’t want you too closely involved and studying these poems in any detail,’ said Tom, ‘is that many of them seem to suggest that Spenser’s satire Mother Hubberd’s Tale might have been seen as seditious when it was first released but changing times and circumstances have made its re-issue dangerously treasonous now. Particularly against the men you normally work for as Chief Intelligencer.’
‘The Fox and the Ape,’ added Rosalind helpfully.
Poley’s finger stopped its dismissive shuffling of the poems on the table in front of him. That piercing blue gaze rested briefly on Rosalind then switched to Tom. ‘The Fox and the Ape…’ he mused.
‘Men who might well find in the poem itself a motive for murder,’ said Tom. ‘And we bring it all to your attention in the full knowledge that if the Fox and the Ape did indeed want the upstart poet slaughtered for publishing such treasonous satires, then you are the man they would come to, as they did in the case of Kit Marlowe.’
*
Bess the serving woman tapped on the door some uncounted time later and Poley called, ‘Come!’
Bess entered carrying a tray of food and drink but was forced to stand helplessly looking down at the littered table while Tom and Poley tried to move the piles of poems out of her way without getting them all mixed up again. But the necessity to do this seemed to focus their minds further so that when Bess had deposited the tray and left the room, the three of them were able to have a pointed and insightful discussion that moved beyond the facts and speculations they had shared so far as they consumed mutton pie, manchet loaves with minted butter and small beer.
‘So,’ said Rosalind round a most unladylike mouthful, ‘this first pile of poesy, with Chapman’s first elegy on the top has no relevance to the problem.’
‘No apparent relevance,’ nodded Poley.
‘None that we can see so far,’ concluded Tom.
‘The poems there, like Chapman’s first one, are general work-a-day elegies that could have been written by almost anyone for any purpose. Certainly, Chapman’s first, with its talk of Ruth’s tears and hissing adders apparently has no direct reference to Spenser himself at all. Even the mention of the fox seems to be a part of a night time description symbolizing sadness. It is very different from the much more calculated epitaph from the grave-side which goes with so many of the others in the poetry-writing community.’
‘If such a community can be said to actually exist,’ said Poley.
‘So this second pile, with Chapman’s second elegy on top, has half a dozen poems that refer to Mother Hubberd’s Tale being satire as possible treason, also to Ireland, the loss of Spenser’s castle, lands and fortunes, and hint at something we know to be true but which we supposed only a limited number of people were aware of…’
‘To wit, the fact that he was murdered,’ concluded Tom.
‘Which in many ways does suggest a community of poets,’ said Rosalind. ‘For I can envisage poets in twos or threes writing elbow to elbow and cheek by jowl in one tavern after another, but surely the similarity of the points raised in so many poems by so many poets must speak of a wider group, all sharing the same thoughts and fears.’
‘None of them seems to be an admission of guilt, however,’ said Poley.
‘But that third pile, with Will’s sonnet on the top, seems to contain mute and subtle accusations as to who is guilty of the murder, again from a wide range of poets.’
‘Guilt apparently assigned to your friend Shakespeare,’ said Poley.
‘Who we know in any case,’ said Rosalind quickly, ‘was already the subject of false accusations.’
‘Possibly false accusations,’ said Poley.
‘Definitely false, Master Poley,’ said Rosalind so forcefully that Tom raised an eyebrow. ‘For I was with him at the time he was supposed to be making his purchases of poison from Master Gerard’s apprentice. And I will stand up and say so if I need to.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Poley. ‘Let us not hasten down that road too quickly, mistress. For it may well lead to the Tower and the rack.’
‘And Rackmaster Topcliffe’s pleasure,’ added Tom with calculated tactlessness as he wondered was Rosalind telling the truth?
iii
‘Leaving aside Sir Richard, Master Will and their various pleasures for the moment,’ said Poley, ‘the poems act as keys that open various doors of speculation. First that there are men amongst the poets themselves who would have wished to see Spenser dead and their own poetry therefore preferred in place of his.’
‘Men at the edges of the court circle with ambitions to move inwards and upwards. Such men might well also wish Will out of the way likewise, for his plays are preferred at Christmas and Twelfth Night - and other festivities into the bargain. Thus they strike down two rivals at once.’
Rosalind suggested.
‘For reputation - whatever that is worth,’ said Tom. ‘Because it must be admitted that neither Spenser nor Shakespeare has made their fortune by publishing their verse or playing to the Queen. Though Spenser has received a grant from the royal purse.’
‘I can envisage men jealous of Spenser’s reputation,’ said Poley, ‘for he is or was “the modern Virgil; the English Ariosto” was he not? But Shakespeare? Who could be jealous of Southampton’s catamite, Shakespeare?’
‘Was not Julius Caesar himself said to have played the woman’s part with King Nichomedes of Bithnya?’ enquired Rosalind. ‘So Plutarch records in the volume Englished by Sir Thomas North that Will has at home - which I read while he writes. Which is often and at length.’ She sighed.
‘Even so,’ said Poley. ‘We make no allowanced for Roman perversities here. So I ask again, who would be jealous of the upstart crow? Though it is Spenser who’s covered with borrowed feathers now.’
‘Kit Marlowe might have been, were he still alive,’ suggested Tom, which closed down that particular avenue of speculation.
‘So,’ said Poley after a moment of silence. ‘Jealous poets. Who else?’
‘Anyone with designs on Spenser’s Irish land holdings,’ said Tom. ‘Currently worth little, I grant you. But, should the Earl of Essex prove successful in his Irish crusade…’
‘A long shot,’ said Poley dismissively. ‘Anyone aiming their arrow in that direction is likely to find it blown off course or falling short of the target.’
‘We might suspect the Earl is unlikely to succeed in that particular endeavour,’ said Rosalind. ‘But we are a tiny number with special knowledge. The rest of the country sees only a military hero riding to certain victory. Sir Francis Drake on horseback; Henry Vth reborn. Such a belief might well underpin a certainty that Spenser’s Irish lands will soon be worth a fortune.’
‘So, we have jealous poets and acquisitive if sadly ignorant land speculators. What more?’
‘The Irish themselves, though they have no place in the poems that I can see as yet,’ said Tom. ‘However, Hugh O’Neil, the Earl of Tyrone and England’s principal foe, is not above sending spies to London. Such men or women would find it a hard matter to reach Essex himself, or Raleigh, or most of the others who pose a threat to Irish independence. But Spenser? All they’d have to do was tip-toe up some stairs…’