by Peter Tonkin
Back in the cell, in his familiar corner, wearing his familiar leg iron, Will tried to cudgel his wits into placing the new information - the new accusation - into the whole pattern of Spenser’s death. No-one had mentioned money as a motive before; land holdings and rents, yes, but not coin of the realm. The fact that Poley and Parrot had done so now needed to be treated carefully. Was it likely that the Queen would grant Spenser such a large sum? Yes! For she admired him above all other poets, knowing as she did that she herself was The Fairy Queen. Knowing, and flattered by the fact above almost every other tribute laid down before her. But, granted that, was the Council - or their financial arm the Exchequer - likely simply to put fifty golden pounds into a purse and hand it to him? It frankly seemed unlikely in these impecunious and sometimes desperately debt-ridden times. And even granted those two possibilities, how would someone learn of the bequest and act upon it so swiftly that the man was dead and the purse vanished in a matter of days?
*
Will settled back into a less uncomfortable position and fell to thinking more deeply than he had done so far - and for once he was not thinking about King Henry. Instead he picked up his earlier train of thought and followed it. Something in Poley’s manner had changed. Something more was going on now than had been going on when he was brought in here; something beyond the sudden revelation about the money. He began to go through the conversation he had just suffered with the Pursuivant Marshal and his lousy accomplice. They were clearly concerned about something and their focus on reassigning the blame possibly suggested more than they meant it to or, indeed, thought it would. Even those ephemeral pounds seemed to place an idea somewhere that completed a pattern. An idea he could not quite grasp yet; a pattern he could not quite comprehend.
Whoever had bought the poison - from whatever source - clearly wanted to put the blame on him for the murder and - now - for the theft. It seemed that Poley and Parrot believed them. But what of that? They had not used him badly beyond their relentless questioning. They and pursuivant Gauge had passed on the food and water Rosalind brought daily, had indeed allowed him to proceed with his work, which, he had to admit, fared better in here than it did out in bustling Bankside. Those facts alone spoke of something strange afoot.
Will extended, broadened, that original thought. Why should it only apply to him? he wondered. Perhaps Poley was testing the idea on one unimportant playwright - to wit Will himself - when his real focus was on someone much more powerful and important. Whoever had caused Spenser’s death - rather than the mere executioner who had carried it out and paid themselves fifty golden pounds for the act. Someone who had believed they were sufficiently elevated to be able to have a life snuffed out with no personal consequences. Who now discovered that they had made a miscalculation. Like the Dauphin in the play of Henry who never thought his insulting jest of sending the young king Henry tennis balls would ever lead to the Siege of Harfleur, the Battle of Agincourt, his own ignoble death and the conquest of his country.
A powerful person who now somehow found themselves cornered and looking at some dire consequences, who now, in consequence was looking for someone else to blame: possibly someone with an equivalent level of power. How satisfactory it would be to pass the culpability for your unexpectedly catastrophic action onto your nearest rival or most dangerous enemy.
Had Tom thought of this? Will wondered.
And had Tom got even the slightest idea of what had caused everything to change in the way it seemed to have done?
iii
‘Yes I have visited Simon Forman. What of it? You may own my heart, Tom, but the rest of me has other masters, you know that.’ Kate leaned back into her chair, thoughtlessly smoothing her hands over a green velvet skirt Tom had never seen before. Her mind clearly elsewhere, she repeated the gesture, stroking the thighs of questionable mastership.
Tom, in the opposite chair on the far side of the fire in his day room, leaned forward. ‘But what purpose could you or your masters have in your visits to Billingsgate?’ he asked.
‘None that I may readily share with you,’ Kate shrugged. The fire-light gleamed off her red tresses as they stirred on her shoulder, arm and bosom. An emerald gleamed there, perfectly matching the new dress - and, now Tom thought of it - her eyes. ‘There is sufficient danger in this for me, and I am protected as you know. I will not pass the danger on to you.’
‘I cannot see what dangers lie in Billingsgate and Forman’s house. Dangers to your person, I mean, unless you were to fall down the stairs perhaps. However, I can see dangers aplenty to your reputation and your chastity.’
‘Ignorance is no sort of armour my love. And remember, when it comes to my chastity you are my lover not my father or my confessor.’
‘And these secret things were what you and Forman were discussing with Poley and Francis Bacon at The Rose? Here, take a draught of wine.’ Tom leaned further forward and filled two glasses from the bottle on the fireside table.
‘Thanks kind sir!’ Kate took the proffered glass and sipped. The wine gleamed like pale amber in the firelight. ‘It is very good wine too,’ she continued dreamily. ‘To answer your question with another: if such knowledge was so dangerous would I ever reveal who I discuss it with, why or where? It seems to me that even that knowledge would be dangerous.’
‘Perhaps and perhaps not. It is a matter of trust. No, more than trust - faith.’
‘You mean that I have no faith in you to keep such matters secret? To weigh them judiciously and act on them wisely.’ She cradled the glass in her cupped hands and looked into its depths, then raised her eyes to his. ‘That I have no faith in you to survive the dangers such knowledge brings?’ She raised the glass and all-but emptied it at one draught.
‘Are you indeed like an anxious mother watching over me and keeping me from danger?’ Tom asked, frowning.
‘What I feel for you, Tom Musgrave - more wine, sirrah! - is nothing like a mother should feel. Unless she is Jocasta, perhaps, mother and lover to the doomed Oedipus of legend.’
Tom leaned forward and filled her glass again. ‘Shall we put that assertion to the test?’
‘God’s bones, yes! I am of a sudden so hot…’
*
As Tom followed Kate through to the bedroom, he carried the two glasses - one untasted - and the bottle. When her back was to him, he allowed his face to fall into a deeper frown. He was angry with himself, deeply disappointed that he had chosen to go down this route. It was a massive betrayal of Kate’s confidence and love. How easy is it, he sneered at himself, to betray those who love us most, for they would never dream we were capable of such perfidy.
When she found out what he had done - and there was no ‘if’ for him to shelter behind - the repercussions would be dire. He was tempted to blame her intransigence for forcing him into such underhanded action but he was far too clear-sighted to do that. He knew himself far too well for prevarication or equivocation. He was simply too impatient to wait while he wheedled it out of her. This method was swift, if it worked, but almost certainly fatal to his love affair as soon as Kate discovered what the wine contained. Whatever resulted, he knew he would deserve every bitter drop of it.
‘Use this very sparingly,’ John Gerard had said. ‘It is a variant of the potion Forman seems to use as described by Rosalind, in its effects at least. The decoction of Fly Agaric will break down the natural reserve of anyone taking it faster and more efficiently than mere alcohol - in vino veritas as you observed. Then the concentrate of saffron will disguise and distract by arousing lust. A person consumed with desire is unlikely to question their increasing lack of reserve in other areas.’
‘Quickly Tom! Oh Tom be quick! I must have you!’ called Kate breathlessly. ‘Help me unloose these strings or I shall be forced to tear them asunder! Help me quickly or I shall expire!’
As he placed the glasses and the drugged bottle on the bedside table, Tom salved his conscience with the knowledge that his tempestuous mistress had used
words like these often enough in the past, usually - as would be the case in a moment or two more - while he was relieving her of her farthingale and untying the cords of her corset. He had been forced to learn how to do the latter blindly for she was always too impatient to turn her back on him and wait, so he was forced to reach round her and untie the knots while her eager hands were at his belt-buckle, galligaskins and codpiece, his boat-bellied doublet having come off with her kirtle and partlet.
At last he pushed her willing body back across the bed, thrusting his hands beneath her damp, fragrant shift as she slid hers beneath his shirt. She arched against him more wantonly than usual but he lay down beside her rather than easing himself on top of her - ready but not yet willing to proceed. He ran his nails up the inside of her thigh from stocking-top to hip, teasingly along the outer edge of the neat red forest part-way between one and the other. God, he thought; yes indeed she was hot.
She gasped as she felt his fingertips move. Her wide green eyes looked strange but enticing, their pupils huge and fathomless. Almost as though she was trying to see inside herself, he thought, for, as she often did at such moments she seemed to vanish away from him. But not from what they were doing. She pushed his hand back down to where she was hottest, thrust herself into his palm and the fingers tightened almost by reflex. ‘Foreman and Poley,’ he said as though he was whispering endearments. ‘Tell me.’
‘A mistake,’ she whispered, her voice strange. ‘A fearful miscalculation worthy of the whelp Devereux.’
Tom paused for a moment, lost in thought. Perhaps Kate had indeed somehow vanished within herself. These seemed to be words she had overheard - not that she was saying herself. Foreman’s parrot sprang to mind. ‘What miscalculation?’
‘…so consumed with Mother Hubberd that the Fairy Queen was forgotten altogether.’
‘Who forgot? Poley? Forman? What has The Fairy Queen got to do with it?’
‘Changed everything! Of course it did! And that bloody boy! With his funeral. So public. So soon. So magnificent - almost as though he wanted to catch her eye! Which of course he did!’ She took a juddering breath and continued, sounding a lot like Abdias Assheton. ‘Does He not see the fall of a sparrow? Does she not see any less? And now she wants to know how and why this sparrow fell!’ She stopped speaking, took a shuddering breath, then, it seemed, returned to the present and the current situation. ‘Take me, Tom. Take me now!’
Preoccupied with her words, who she might have overheard speaking them and trying to fathom their full meaning, he did as she asked at last, thrusting into her with thoughtless urgency.
She gasped. ‘OH! Do not hurt me Tom.’ Her voice sank to a murmur as she continued, ‘Do not hurt me any more than I deserve…’
iv
‘Did they hurt you?’ Rosalind asked Will. It was the first thing she said to him after he suddenly appeared at their lodgings on Maiden Lane early the next morning just as she was preparing to go to church. The bells of St Mary Overie chimed in the background but for Matins, not for Common Prayer with Eucharist. Attendance today was not mandatory.
‘No. they treated me well enough,’ he said, avoiding her attempt to hug and kiss him, putting the cloak he had carried carefully over one arm, wrapped round a bundle of papers in spite of the icy clarity of the mid-winter morning.
‘Why was that? What did you tell them?’ asked Tom at once. He had been visiting Rosalind to discuss what he thought he had learned from Kate after she had slept like the dead, awoken refreshed, dressed and departed cheerily enough to change for Matins which Sir Thomas and his household customarily attended at St Olaves on Seething Lane when he was in town. She was apparently none the wiser about what he had done to her. Remembering almost nothing about what she had told him as they prepared to make love - if love was the correct term now after such a betrayal. Tom himself felt an urgent need of prayer and wished that he could avail himself of the catholic confessional.
The plan Tom and Rosalind were debating just before Will appeared was that, after attending church if they chose to, Tom would return to Gerard’s and talk further with the flighty Elizabeth while Rosalind would return to Simon Forman’s, this time well armed with enough saffron water to counteract whatever he might plan on feeding to her. Still angry at his own behaviour, Tom was over-eager to see suspiciousness in much of what went on around him. And was at once made more suspicious by Will’s strange behaviour.
‘No,’ answered Will innocently. ‘I told them nothing. They told me a good amount, however.’
‘Why would they do that?’ wondered Tom, as Rosalind stood back, nonplussed.
‘I don’t think they meant to reveal as much as they did,’ shrugged Will. ‘Tom, where is the nearest bath? I feel soiled to my very soul by the Marshalsea and all within it. Stay away from me a little longer, my darling, or I fear I will pass on an infestation of lice and fleas as powerful as one of the plagues of Egypt. We will have my linen laundered but in spite of any risk of disease I must bathe or remain a walking feast for the six-legged denizens of the prison house that have battened onto me. I cannot attend matins in this state. Evensong will have to suffice if we wish to attend services.’
‘This is Poley we are talking of,’ said Tom. ‘He never says or does anything by accident. Whatever he revealed, he let slip on purpose. At the very least to set hares running -to see what we would do with the information. Likely as not in the hope that we will either discover more of the matter than he can do or, just as good, incriminate ourselves.’
‘Or reveal the criminality in others he suspects but cannot touch in person,’ said Rosalind, ‘just as I cannot touch my Will for the moment without some sort of strong protection.’
‘The Rose has a good bath house,’ said Tom after a moment. ‘And with any luck it will be quiet at this time on a Sabbath if it’s open at all. They have a laundry there too. Most convenient to those that need their clothes cleaned while they wash their bodies.’
Will put down the cloak and unwrapped the bundle of papers he had carried back from the Marshalsea. ‘Henry Fifth,’ he explained. ‘Nearly finished at last thank the Lord. As to the bath house, good enough,’ he added. ‘We will ask them to launder and dry my clothes into the bargain and we can discuss matters while I wash and wait for my clothes to dry. I believe the cloak is clear of infestation, but would be glad if someone else carried it until such times as I need it again.’
So Tom’s and Rosalind’s plans were put to rest for the moment. The three of them trooped out of Maiden Lane and through to The Rose, Will bare-headed, Tom and Rosalind cloaked and hooded with Rosalind carrying Will’s cloak for the return journey rather than risking infesting it now.
*
The bath in The Rose was half a Brentford tun, lined with sheets. It stood so high that bathers needed to use a stool to climb into it and often had difficulty climbing out again. This early on a Sunday morning it had only been half filled but the water was hot - augmented on a regular basis by huge bowls carried still scalding from the fire. Soap was made from the fat of the animals cooked on the spit and the ash from the fires that cooked them. Famously, it was scented with petals from the roses the tavern was named for. Will stripped unselfconsciously in front of the laundry girl who took all of his clothes - the linen undergarments and the woollen outer layers, without turning a hair at their stench or their swarming visitors. ‘I will boil them in lye,’ she said.
‘Do so,’ said Will as he placed his boots as near to the fire as he dared, hoping to roast any visitors still scuttling around within them. ‘I shall have to replace anything that does not survive.’ Then he climbed into the bath which was fortunately otherwise untenanted, took a deep breath and sank beneath the water. After a few moments the insects he had been harbouring began to float to the surface. Tom and Rosalind leaned in, scooping as many as they could away and throwing them into the rushes lining the floor on the far side of the bath room. When he resurfaced, Rosalind passed him a handful of soft, rose-scent
ed lye soap and he scrubbed himself with the stuff from head to foot, then washed his hair and belly again for good measure.
Tom looked down into the seething water as the playwright pulled his lean frame out of the bath. ‘God help the next man in,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Unless all those creatures have had good time to drown, they’ll just be passing from one feast to the next.’
‘Their Easter will come early,’ said Will. ‘That’s a moveable feast as well.’
Rosalind helped her lover get dry by rubbing him vigorously with linen cloths, her eyes busy seeking any remaining guests - her nails quick to dispatch them, bursting them like tiny lead-covered grapes. Then they all sat by the bath-house fire and, while they waited for those of his clothes that survived being boiled in lye to be returned, they broke their fast with manchet loaves, cheese, butter flavoured with winter sage and fresh milk still steaming from the udder while they held the discussion as they had planned.
‘Poley talks of Spenser’s pension,’ Will started. ‘Her Majesty granted him £50 at Christmastide. According to Poley, the Council directed the Exchequer to pay it in full at once - unlikely as that sounds - so there was somewhere about poor Spenser a purse with fifty gold pounds in it. Which purse has vanished or so they say. Poley supposes it has vanished into my hands for he knows that I am low on funds until the Globe is up, Henry finished, cast, rehearsed and on the stage, generating an income for all of us. And he knows how desperate things could become unless all these things happen soon - we cannot live on our payment from our last performance at court of The Dream over Christmas. Especially as Her Majesty preferred to dance on Twelfth Night and robbed us of an entire performance which we had hoped for.’