Sleep of Death

by Philip Gooden

  And before I know it I am out again as the ambassador from England, come with the news that Hamlet’s old schoolfriends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. But, as I’d said to Nell, this doesn’t go for much when rather more significant characters have bitten the dust. This time I am upstaged by Hamlet’s one genuine friend, Horatio, who informs the newcomer Fortinbras that he alone has the truth to tell. And now Fortinbras, who writes finis to the play, takes charge of everything, including the throne of Denmark. His first and last royal act is to order a military funeral for Hamlet. Then, like in most plays, we end with a little dance so that everyone goes off happy to their next diversion. The sun is shining behind the tower and tiring-house which throw their shadows across the groundlings and the lower seats. Hats bob, tobacco smoke weaves its way upwards, limbs are flexed in time with us as we jig on stage. The spectators make their dispositions.

  Nell stirred and rolled away from me slightly. I took advantage of this to get up for a piss in the jerry in the corner of the room. Sometimes after I’d been with Nell I washed my equipment in wine – there was no insult to her in it, she’d told me herself of this method of prophylaxis. Once I’d tried vinegar, but once only. Hard pissing being also recommended as a defence against the perils of venery – and in the absence of a jug of white wine – I pushed the stream out with all the force I could muster. Then, bare-assed as Adam, I went to stand by the window.

  My room was on the third floor of Mistress Ransom’s. She was a pale, crabbed woman and kept a filthy establishment whose only merit was its cheapness. By contrast the brothel where Nell toiled was quite spick and span. Mistress Ransom claimed to be scandalised by the proximity of the whore-houses, playhouses and taverns, and went round with a how-I’ve-come-down-in-the-world air. She kept her nose canted up. This enabled her to overlook the filth underfoot and also indicated that she was somehow gazing at a higher social shelf from which she’d been dislodged by a brutish world. When she discovered I was a parson’s son, she could hardly wait to offer me a room. She was a little disappointed when I added that I was a player. In atonement, I made the mistake of hinting that my father’d left me a little fortune (said in such a way as to suggest that little was large) and that I was only toying with the stage. I wanted to ingratiate myself; I needed a cheap room. The fortune my father had left me was little indeed and now almost exhausted.

  Mistress Ransom overcame her objections to players, however, within a day or two of my arrival. She loosed her daughter on me. Where old Ransom was pale, young Ransom was on fire. Young Ransom had perhaps twenty nine years to her debit. Her flaming red hair was matched by her flaring face. The bumps and lumps on it flickered like embers. The husband of Mistress Ransom was dead, I was given to understand, though I suspected he had merely decamped. Dead or fled, he must have had a fiery trade, as cook, baker or smith, and stamped its impress on his daughter. Little Ransom, who was twice her mother’s size, came to my room on various pretences:

  i) to see if I needed anything;

  ii) to know if I would take supper with her and her mother that night (an invitation, she was careful to tell me, not extended to any old lodger);

  iii) to find out whether I’d recovered from the runs after said supper;

  iv) to tell me the house was haunted (it was – by her);

  v) to request a light (for her candle had blown out on the stairs and she was left darkling);

  vi) to ask me to investigate the curious noise in the corner of her chamber.

  On each successive visit she revealed a little more of herself by a careless disarray of day- or nightwear, beginning with scarlet shoulders and proceeding by way of ruddy breasts to hints of the fiery pit down below. I knew that it was her mother who had set her on, because the daughter kept me in conversation at my door as her eyes swung about, waiting for the ordeal to be over. Give him five minutes trying to catch sight of your nipples, Mistress Ransom had said, and see if he doesn’t succumb to those ripening blackberries. She was too genteel or too unpoetic to express it like that, but there would be an understanding between mother and daughter as the former artfully rearranged the latter’s stays, ties and laces before sending her up the stairs. Alas, the goods that she was displaying had lain much too long in the sun. I pitied Little Ransom, saw her as a sacrificial cow to her mother’s matrimonial plans, but a cow nonetheless.

  The crisis came when I went to her chamber to investigate that curious sound in the corner. Before I could even get near the dark (and silent) corner, she launched herself on me, hugely afire, and I went down before the smoke, flame and stench of her cannon. But, like Falstaff at the battle of Shrewsbury in our author’s play of Henry IV, I considered that discretion was the better part of valour. I played dead, or asphyxiated. I lay limp. Poor little Ransom lay on top of me like an army that has overrun its adversary, only to find that the enemy has disappeared. She needed some trophy to take back to her mother to prove that she had indeed occupied my position. A consummation devoutly to be wished. A promise of marriage made in hot breath and blood. But all her rummaging and groping couldn’t produce a spark, and at length she was forced to retire, whole and unwounded. We avoided each other’s eyes. I was still sorry for her, and angry at the mother who I knew had set her on. I made one or two references to Madam Ransom, and stews and houses of ill-repute, in her hearing. She got the point. The daughter’s attentions ceased. But I earned the mother’s undying hostility, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that she needed the couple of shillings rent a week she would have booted me into the street.

  And now I gazed down into Ship Street, suddenly melancholy. Post coitu omne animale triste est . . . as the poet says. The evening sun rested on the roofs opposite, and caused me to squint. If I had craned out I would have been able to see the river, but I was Adam-naked and anyway saw the river frequently enough. Down below I could just glimpse my landlady taking the evening air, with her nose tilted up, as if she were too good for this world, possibly too good for any world. Lounging in the street opposite was Nat the Animal Man, so called because he made a tiny living from dropping into taverns and imitating a horse’s whinny, a cat’s purrs. For a penny he would do you a tormented bear surrounded by the yapping dogs in the pit, the climax to the whole battle proceeding from one man’s mouth. I have even heard him mimic the strange cry of the camel which one pays to see in that house on London Bridge.

  I stepped back from the window and felt Nell’s hand on my shoulder and her breasts in the small of my back. She rubbed herself against me, then squatted down to pee in the jordan. What our author might have termed the Old Adam I felt rise at what I saw, and no doubt at the aroma too of our mingled wastes. And when Nell saw what I felt, my hoisted sail, a pleased expression tugged at her full lips. The object of many men’s lust, and of the affection of a few, she reserved her love for me or so I thought. I put this down partly to my natural attractiveness but also to the fact that she came from the same part of the country as I. We were country lad and lass in London, both engaged in diverting the citizenry with our arts. I returned to my bed, a little small to accommodate the both of us but so much the better for any purpose apart from sleep. Too late I saw what Nell was about to do.

  ‘No!’

  ‘What’s wrong? No one can see.’

  It was true that she was standing near the window without a stitch on. The lower part of her body was shadowed. The declining sun set her fair hair ablaze. Probably she could have been seen from the houses over the way. I wasn’t bothered about that. Her left arm was extended over the edge of the window. She was holding the jordan, delicately tipping its contents into the street. Sleepiness or the mistaken belief that no one was down below had caused her not to check or shout the customary warning. I heard the dribble of the emptying pot, I saw the golden liquid catch the evening light. I heard the noise of my landlady. The shriek as she felt the wet descent, the scream as she realised what it was. I shut my eyes. I heard a donkey’s bray, and realised after a moment th
at it was Nat the Animal Man, taking pleasure in Mistress Ransom’s discomfiture, and most probably in mine as well, after his own fashion.

  A City Pleasure, which was composed by one Master Edgar Boscombe (a name not previously known to me as one of the literary adornments of our stage), is a simple business. You know the story, or one similar to it. A young man from the provinces comes to London with his sister, looking for pleasure and edification. They are duped and gulled, but retain a curious integrity. The pleasure of the city is to ride them until they drop. They return home, sadder, wiser and poorer – only to discover that they never were brother and sister. They may marry; and they will marry. That was as much as I gathered from my eighty-five-line acquaintance with the drama. Unlike Hamlet I had never seen A City Pleasure through as a spectator. I played John Southwold, a citizen with ambitions to become an alderman and therefore I had to talk pompously and unplainly. There was no love lost between the players’ companies and the City authorities, who were as much our enemies as the Puritans, and would have closed us down if their writ ran on this side of the river. So we seized any opportunity to take the piss, and I played the would-be alderman with satisfied self-importance.

  The congregation in the afternoon was large, though not as large as for Master WS’s Hamlet the previous day. I was preoccupied. My excitement at becoming one of the Chamberlain’s Men, even if only temporarily, was overshadowed by the pressing need to find fresh accommodation. After Nell had emptied our piss over Mistress Ransom last fine evening, the landlady appeared at my door, still dripping and distinctly out of sorts. Nell was hiding under the bedcovers. Gallantly, I took the blame, along with my notice to quit. So it was goodbye to my pale landlady and her fiery daughter. For that relief, much thanks.

  I could hardly put up with Nell at her place of work (videlicet a brothel), although she offered this, slightly reluctantly and in a spirit of contrition. There were, she said, holes and corners in Holland’s Leaguer where I might shelter for a few days. But I did not, in truth, like to enquire too closely into the manner in which Nell earned her keep, and to be near her daily busy self would turn me into the hungry innkeeper forced always to see his meat eaten by others.

  The problem of where I was to lay my head was solved, however, and most strangely, in the following way.

  I made three appearances in A City Pleasure, two of them early on, and it was after the second of these that I was approached in the tiring-house by a member of our Company, Master Robert Mink.

  ‘Master Revill? Are you on again soon?’

  I shook my head. I wasn’t due on for the better part of an hour, to judge from the rudiments of my part I’d gleaned in that morning’s rehearsal. In fact, I thought the gaps between my appearances unduly protracted, yet at all times I was mindful of what Seneca the tragedian said: ‘It is with life as it is with a play – it matters not how long the action is spun out, but how good the acting is.’ Master Mink’s chins nodded at my head-shake. He was a fat man, yet surprisingly nimble. I had seen him moments before on the stage show the young couple who were not brother and sister how to cut a London caper. Now he pushed in my direction a piece of paper which was pincered between forefinger and thumb.

  ‘Good. I have to enter again in a moment. Would you do me a favour, Nick?’

  As a temporary member of the Company I wasn’t in a position to refuse. I looked helpful.

  ‘There’s a lady in one of the boxes I wish to communicate with, but not to speak to. I wonder whether you’d be so kind as to convey this note to her. It’s the seventh box along on the right. She will be the only lady there.’

  Costumed as I was, I made my way up the stairs to the galleries, wondering about the contents of the sealed note. Yet not really wondering at all. Despite what Nell had said about the restraint and the marital constancy of the Chamberlain’s Men, there are always a few in any company who liked to spread their favours freely, and Master Mink had the air of one who basked in the assurance that women liked him. That is, he was fat and courtly.

  The passage round the back of the gallery was empty. The doors to the boxes were shut. The quality resided here. From behind the first one came a clink of glasses and a giggle. Obviously there were other pleasures in the city than that provided by the drama unfolding down below on stage. I was taking care to count my doors, not wanting to enter in on the wrong woman, or man, when from the fourth or fifth door along two figures suddenly burst out. A fellow in a leather jerkin and loose breeches collided with the opposite wall of the narrow little passage and then cannoned into me. Being barged into was becoming a regular occurrence, and I had my dignity as a player to consider. I stuck my foot out and he fell sprawling. Behind him was another man in a short black cloak, and wearing a tall black hat.

  ‘Get him! Hold him!’ he hissed.

  Obligingly I knelt in the small of the big fellow’s back. He groaned but made no effort to get away. Black Cloak knelt down beside me and ran his hands over the fallen man’s jerkin.

  ‘Ah, I thought so.’

  He held up a necklace that, to my inexperienced eye, looked valuable.

  ‘Ungrateful bastard, Jacob,’ he said slowly and deliberately to the man who was face down on the floor. ‘And after the kindness of Sir Thomas and his lady towards you.’

  The other made a gurgling sound but still said nothing. Black Cloak looked at me and my evident costume. He had a long nose which was as sharp as a razor.

  ‘You’re a player?’

  ‘I have a message to deliver.’ I was still holding Master Mink’s billet doux.

  ‘Never mind that. Sir Thomas will want to thank you in person for stopping this fellow from getting away.’

  He urged the man to his feet, tugging at his arm. I took the other and, like a couple of constables, we escorted him back along the passage. He was a lumbering individual, with a scrawny beard, almost a head taller than I. As we neared the door of the box from which these two had so abruptly exited, Black Cloak reached up and cuffed him about the head. This seemed unnecessary since he was as docile and cowed as a whipped bear. We crowded through the entrance to the box. Two men were sitting watching the stage. Beside them sat an attractive woman with an oval face and golden hair that reminded me a little of my whore Nell’s. The dress of these individuals showed their wealth: the woman, for example, was wearing a jewel-encrusted farthingale and a low decolletage that uncovered a fine cleavage, a mode that was usually the sign of an unmarried woman. Seeing them watching the play down below, I was reminded that I was part of A City Pleasure, and no part at all of whatever was occurring among these spectators. I must return to the tiring-room within a few minutes. I cursed Master Mink for sending me to deliver the note now stuffed into a pocket. The older of the two men in the box glanced in our direction but he appeared little concerned with whatever had taken place in the box or outside in the corridor.

  ‘Now, Sir Thomas, he is here,’ said Black Cloak to the older of the seated men, pushing forward the bear-like fellow into the centre of the little room. At the same time he flourished the necklace in a way that I can only describe as theatrical. The woman’s hand went slowly, almost in a caress, up to her throat.

  ‘I saw Jacob slip this from my lady’s white neck’ – he waved the pearl necklace so that it looked like a stream of milk – ‘oh so closely while all of you were attending to the play. He’s a cunning one. He possesses subtle pickers and stealers for all his size. I saw it all from where I was standing behind you. How did he think that he would get away with it?’

  In demonstration, Black Cloak seized the right hand of the larger man in his left and held it up to display to the others. I had the impression that, if he could, he would have detached each of the large man’s blunt fingers and passed them around in proof of what he was saying. Yet I could see nothing delicate in these fingers that were supposed to have stolen. I stood, uneasily, at the rear of the box, puzzled because the large man made no attempt to wrest his hand away from the other’s gra
sp. Nor did he speak. He merely hung, crestfallen, in the centre of this little group.

  ‘He saw that I had witnessed all of it,’ continued the man in the black cloak. ‘My eyes are everywhere, you know, in your service, Sir Thomas. He tried to get away. I followed him out and, by good fortune, this gentleman was coming along the passage. Our friend Jacob bumped into him and fell. I overcame him and recovered the necklace.’

  Again he flourished the milky chain. The whole report was delivered in a clipped, dry style as if Black Cloak were recounting some military skirmish in which he had been modestly victorious.

  ‘This gentleman is one of the players,’ he added.

  I bowed slightly, and gave my name. Whatever the circumstances, I saw no reason why these good folk should not be acquainted with Master Nick Revill.

  None of the three occupants of the box had yet spoken. Now the one who had been addressed as Sir Thomas stood up and came forward. I was aware of the play proceeding below, the buzz of voices, the answering laughter and noises of approval from the groundlings. These boxes were designed for privacy and whatever drama was taking place here would not touch on the absorbed attention of the rest of the audience.

  ‘This is a sorry state of affairs, Jacob,’ said Sir Thomas, ‘and after I had kept you in my household.’

  He was, like Black Cloak, shorter than Jacob and had to look up into the thief’s face. But he had an air of authority and spoke with easy assurance. I wasn’t able to judge the expression on Jacob’s face but I saw the shake of his head.