Sleep of Death

by Philip Gooden

  ‘These rich women never do anything for themselves.’

  ‘He had locked himself inside his orchard. It was where he used to go for privacy in the afternoon. Nobody else could get in. The servant had to climb over the wall. He found Sir William’s body.’

  ‘And then the widow married the brother?’

  ‘Very soon afterwards.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before somewhere. The death in the orchard then the marriage to the brother. Something you were saying . . .’

  “ ‘The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.’ ”

  ‘Not that. I have it! I always remember what you say. Something about a play.’

  ‘Yes, I know the play,’ I said, wearying of our encounter.

  I made my way back over the river by the Bridge. A walk would clear my head after the afternoon’s performance in the Globe and the subsequent performance in Nell’s crib. It was the early evening. There were few people on the Bridge compared to the middle of the day, and most of them were probably returning, like myself, from their pleasures in the southern quarters of our great town.

  I am a player. I am used to being watched, and like most players aware of others’ eyes without seeming to be. I was about halfway across the river when the nape of my neck prickled. This has long been an infallible sign that someone is gazing hard at me from behind. I stopped by the building that was once a chapel (it is now a warehouse) and pretended to fiddle with my points. In truth, I had fastened them negligently as I was leaving Nell and they needed tightening. While I was doing this, and feigning irritation with the errant laces, I cast covert glances down between the houses that lined the bridge. A shopkeeper closing up for the day. A beggar swinging on his crutches. A fat, respectable-looking citizen who had most probably been about unrespectable business on the other side of the water. In addition, a knot of gallants was making its noisy way after me; one of them shouted an obscenity at a matron walking in the opposite direction. She pretended not to hear. I started walking again.

  Within a few dozen yards I received the same sensation in the back of my neck. I felt angry. Convinced that I was being followed, my natural instinct was to face about and confront the man. But I could not turn round or even stop again without alerting whoever was behind me, and since the only advantage I possessed was that he didn’t know that I knew he was there, I schooled myself against this. I suspected the beggar. As a class, hardly one of them is what he seems. As for his crutches, even if genuinely required, they were no bar to rapid movement. I have seen those fellows swing through the air when occasion called, their legs and sticks a whirring blur. At the far end of the Bridge I turned left into Thames Street, without changing my speed, and giving the impression of one who has a destination at the end of the working day but is in no especial hurry to arrive there. The south side of Thames Street is pierced by several alleys and crooked passages that run down towards the river. I listened hard for tell-tale footsteps after me, or more precisely for the rhythmic thud of crutches, but the street, though largely empty, still contained passers-by and the occasional grating handcart and I was unable to detect anything. I did not glance round.

  After I’d walked the better part of a quarter of a mile – the prickling sensation remaining with me and my neck all this while, though slightly diminished – I turned down the wide slope that leads to Paul’s Wharf. Once round the corner I checked to make sure that nobody was hard on my heels, then ran direct for the river. I covered the distance in a few seconds. The principal pier here is an imposing structure, the biggest landing place on this stretch, with stairs in one corner running down into the water at low tide. To the west side are the remains of an earlier erection that evidently proved inadequate to growing city trade, and has lain unused for many years. The wooden stanchions and cross-pieces of this pier are fractured. The planking where barrels and bales were once piled up is rotten and holed or altogether missing. It was low tide and I jumped from the street end of the main jetty onto the shingle. A couple of individuals were standing at the end of the pier but I do not believe they even turned round as I landed on the slippery pebbles. Crouching slightly, I made my way at a rapid walk to the shelter of the old pier, and slipped among the forest of posts that supported it.

  The whole thing, from turning down towards Paul’s Wharf to my concealment under the old pier, had taken less than half a minute. From my point of vantage I was able to see the top of the sloping way to Thames Street and, beyond that, the stone base of Paul’s on which the great steeple had once stood. I waited. I drew back a little into the shadows and surveyed my hiding-place. There was a stench of river, to which, country-born and bred, I am not yet hardened. Pockets of light admitted themselves through the gaps in the planks over my head. Dead fish glinted at the bottom of the slimy piles, human turds had been left marooned by the departing tide, as had cartwheels and baskets, clothing and bed-hangings, fragments of rope and bottles, a portion of all the detritus of our great city. There was even a chest with a shiny clasp. But it was open and empty. Some of this truck would be gathered up as the tide rose but, when it fell again, more and fresh rubbish would be left. So it goes.

  I turned back to the scene beyond my hiding-place. There was nobody on the new pier, apart from the men at the far end who were still gazing across the river. No sign of the beggar with his crutches. Perhaps I’d been mistaken when I had thought I was being followed. But then I saw that the two men at the pier’s end were in fact three, and that the third who was now thanking them and walking away was the fat, respectable-looking citizen that I had glimpsed on London Bridge. He had been questioning them, evidently. ‘Did you see a young man come down this way, black-haired, in blue and russet? Bright blue? You couldn’t have missed him?’ ‘No sir, we’ve been watching the river, we’ve seen no one.’

  But I am inventing this exchange. I have no idea whether the respectable citizen said this or anything like it to the two loiterers by the water. What I do know is that my cit strolled back on the side of the new pier nearest to where I was crouched under the old one, and that on his smooth face was a mixture of bafflement and irritation. The sort of expression that would fasten itself on your face if you too had been pursuing someone and they had given you the slip. He paused and looked about, seeming to interrogate the air. Was that where I had gone? Into thin air? His eyes swept the underside of the old pier and I could almost see him admit, entertain and then dismiss – in the space of an instant – the idea that I had gone to ground underneath that filthy structure. He walked on, paused once more and looked back, then vanished up the slope into Thames Street.

  I waited. I wasn’t sure whether he might not have seen me and be waiting for me to re-emerge so that he could pick up the trail once more. I wasn’t even sure that it was the same individual that I had glimpsed on London Bridge. If not, then he was an innocent man about his business on an autumn evening, and my imagination was away on business of its own. Nevertheless I waited until the two loiterers had themselves abandoned their station at the end of the pier. Now I was alone on the scene. A chill wind ruffled the water. The houses on the other side of the river and on the Bridge downstream were turning into dark shapes, pierced here and there by a tiny glimmer of light.

  I shivered. There is no moment so lonely as the first breath of evening, when business is done and pleasure’s distractions not yet started. Under my hand I felt a slimy wooden post. Unless the old jetty was pulled down it would collapse soon of its own accord. On the stone base of St Paul’s not far from me there once stood a great steeple shooting hundreds of feet into the air. Many years before, in the early days of our great Queen’s reign, lightning had destroyed in a moment what men had laboured so long to build. Now the stone stump of the steeple stands as a monument to the temporality of all human things. Monuments, too, have their span. In time, the church would go, perhaps to be replaced by something else. The old pier which was sheltering me must crumble, and that in short time too. Even th
e great Globe Playhouse, our shining white building on the far bank, will fall one day to unremembered ruin.

  The tavern named Ram, the plain and simple Ram – not The Tupping Rams, nor The Beast with Two Backs neither – was, as Master Mink had told me, at the south end of Moor Street in Clerkenwell. A light, miserable rain was falling. I made my way warily over the slimy cobbles. Not only for fear of slipping, but because this area of London, for all that it is the home of the Red Bull playhouse as well as the Revels Office, is on the northern fringe of the city. Like all border-lands, it has attracted more than its fair share of lawless resolutes, ready to deprive a man of anything about him that is detachable. But the only lurkers in tonight’s shadows were a few stray dogs and cats; the human variety would no doubt be found, entertaining each other, inside the pick-hatch nearby in Goswell Road. Houses of sale, like playhouses, thrive on city fringes.

  I wondered why Master Robert Mink had suggested a meeting here, away from the Southwark haunts. Within, The Ram was not crammed. Smoke and whispering and little barks of laughter emerged from a group knotted in one corner. Despite the paucity of lamps overhead, I easily spotted my co-player at a table on the opposite side of the room.

  ‘Sit down, Nick.’

  He shouted to a young, feeble-looking drawer for another pint-pot for himself and an additional one for me, and, when the lad was slow to move, shouted again, ‘Quickly, before my friend dies of thirst. I have already passed on, and believe I must be in Purgatory now.’

  There was a single, sickly candle on the elmwood table at which we sat. By its smoky flicker, I watched the quiver of Master Mink’s chins.

  ‘You’re doubtless asking yourself why I come to this hole when there are so many other holes south of the river, and close to our great Globe too, where I could be equally badly served.’

  I said that something of the kind had occurred to me while I slithered over the cobbles outside.

  ‘I like sometimes to put a distance between the place where I earn my bread and the place where I eat it – or drink it. I also have an affection for this part of town. I once had a connection with the Red Bull. Boy, where is that drink!’

  Out of the shadows, as if on cue, hobbled the puny drawer, no more than a boy, I saw now. One foot dragged slightly behind him, as if struggling to keep up. His mouth wrestled with some simple phrase – probably that cry of drawers everywhere, ‘Anon, anon sir’ – but it was plain that he had even less command over his words than he did over his movements. His outstretched hands shook so that the two tankards which he was carrying slopped over onto the filthy flooring. He tried to place them in front of us but kept missing the expanse of the table-top. At each attempt, another ale-spurt leaped up and over the rims. Master Mink seemed split between deep irritation and high amusement at the boy’s efforts, but finally he half rose, seized the tankards and put them on the table himself.

  The boy stared.

  ‘Avaunt thee, Gilbert,’ said Master Mink. ‘Avaunt, I say. In plain English, go. Shog off.’

  When the boy had turned and shambled away, a process that took some time, Master Mink said, ‘There goes a by-blow of the landlady’s. Mistress Goodride is her name and that is her nature too. Well, the fruit of her loins shows all too clearly the mark of her sin. She bore him, and now Gilbert Goodride bears his mother’s sin, I say.’

  ‘You sound like my father,’ I said.

  ‘Was he a player?’

  ‘A parson.’

  Though many men might not have been, Robert Mink seemed pleased by this comparison to a pulpit-pounder.

  ‘Is her name really Mistress Goodride, Master Mink?’ I said, thinking that, like The Beast with Two Backs, this tavern-keeper’s name might be another witty invention by my colleague.

  ‘Robert you may call me. After all, we share a profession and a workplace, and have a licence to be familiar. As for the name of Goodride, it will do as well as any other.’

  I wondered how much to believe. I decided to revert to what we had been talking of before the arrival of the unfortunate Gilbert.

  ‘You played the Red Bull?’

  ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘That is the only playhouse I have not visited.’

  ‘I have played every one of them.’

  ‘But the Globe is the finest?’

  ‘Yes, how can it be otherwise, with the Brothers Cabbage and Master Shakeshift and all, telling us that it is so.’

  I was a little shocked at the irreverence, and my face must have given me away.

  ‘You have not been long at this game, have you, Nicholas?’

  ‘Two years almost,’ I said.

  ‘And you are from the west?’

  I remembered how tartly I had answered Master Burbage over the matter of my origins, so this time I rested content with a nod.

  ‘And now you are here, drawn by this siren?’

  For an instant I thought that he was referring to Nell or some other trull or doxy.

  ‘I mean London,’ said Master Mink. ‘I mean, to speak more precisely, the itch of playing. That is your siren.’

  ‘And so, if playing is my siren, I will not be pleased until I have dashed myself on the rocks?’ I said, wanting (as I had with Master WS), to impress this strange man with my learning.

  ‘None of us is pleased until he has dashed himself on the rocks,’ said Master Mink gloomily. ‘Do you think Odysseus could ever sleep happy again once he had heard the song of the sirens?’

  ‘Do you remember Robert Greene?’ I said, partly because I wanted to shift his mood and partly because I was genuinely interested in those giants, the playwrights and versifiers of the eighties and early nineties. ‘Though I know that your opinion of authors is not great.’

  ‘Oh yes, Greene I remember . . . and George Peele . . . Kit Marlowe . . . and Tom Nashe, Tom Lodge. Thomas Watson, too. Thomas is a good name for an author, is it not? That’s what they were all called. Thomas. Thomas Kyd, him as well.’

  ‘Kyd of the Spanish Tragedy?’

  ‘The very same.’

  Now this was like hearing that my interlocutor had walked with Elijah or spoken with John the Baptist. Men such as Kyd, with their blood-and-thunder tales of revenge, were the harbingers to our latter-day, refined masters like Master WS.

  ‘Oh, Thomas is a good journeyman name, a good no-nonsense name,’ Robert Mink continued. ‘Boy, boy Gilbert, another drink for my friend and me!’

  Mink’s reminiscent, almost womanish, mood was replaced with a stentorian bellow as he called for more refreshment. So loud and abrupt was his shout that it not only caused me to jump, spilling some of what remained in my pot (Master Robert was drinking more rapidly than I could manage), but it provoked a stir in the quietly buzzing, gently smoking huddle in the opposite corner. One or two pale faces were even turned in our direction through the gloom.

  ‘Where are they now?’

  I said nothing; I can recognise a rhetorical question when I hear one.

  ‘Dead and gone, in disgrace or in obscurity,’ said Master Mink. ‘Kit Marlowe stabbed in Deptford, Greene dying with nothing, so that his wife could not even afford a winding-sheet. Kyd tortured in the Tower and now gone too. You hear what I say about dashing oneself on the rocks? Do you think it was the sirens’ song that Odysseus really wanted – or the rocks? Then there was that Thomas Nashe looking for sanctuary in, let me see, in . . . where was it?’

  Out of the smoky darkness I could see Gilbert Goodride, the hapless drawer, commencing his progress towards us, clutching two more tankards which, brimming in the beginning, would lose much of their freight before the end of their journey.

  ‘I have it!’ said Master Mink.

  ‘What?’ I said, my mind and eyes on the hobbling little figure.

  ‘Yarmouth! Nashe sought sanctuary in Yarmouth after he ran into trouble with the Council over The Isle of Dogs.’

  ‘What trouble?’ I said, trying to distract Master Mink from Gilbert’s advance. I had a nasty feeling tha
t this was not going to turn out well.

  ‘Lewd matters. Veiled attacks on someone in authority. Something that got up the Council’s nose. Or most probably Mr Secretary Burghley’s. WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, YOU HALTING HALF-WIT!’

  A combination of shaking hands and uneven gait notwithstanding, the boy had reached us with the slopping tankards. At the last moment, though, a spasm jerked the remaining contents of one of the pots over Master Mink. Now, my companion was, I had already observed, particular in the manner of his dress (unlike some players, who, appearing as kings, queens and princes during their afternoons in the playhouse, are content to pass for mechanics and handicrafts-men in their private hours). Even by the fitful, smoky light of the tavern corner, anyone might see that Robert Mink was well turned out; his doublet alone, Dutch-fashion and long-pointed, would have cost me two weeks’ wages. Now his ample frontage was soaked in ale. Some of the liquid spattered his smooth cheeks and folded chins.

  Gilbert Goodride, poor potboy, stood before us, shaking slightly, though whether from his natural condition or from fear of what he expected might happen, I do not know. This time, it was I who leant forward and relieved Gilbert of the tankards, placing them softly on the table.

  ‘Now, now,’ said Master Mink, standing up and wiping his face with a fine cambric handkerchief. This ‘Now, now’ may be delivered in several ways between the peremptory and the consoling. I was glad to hear from the other’s tone that he seemed to condole with the unfortunate Gilbert. ‘No harm done, after all,’ he continued. ‘No offence.’

  So saying, he held out his hand, fleshy palm ajar, to the boy, as one offers one’s fingers to be sniffed at by a harmless dog. The ‘now, now’ had changed to a whispered ‘there, there’. Master Mink might have been a good mother dealing with a child troubled with dreams. Gilbert was trying to mouth apologies but nothing coherent emerged. He seemed slightly reassured by Mink’s soothing manner. So was I. But I was deceived. The plump, open gesture and the mild phrases lulled Gilbert Goodride as well. Suddenly, Mink’s splayed fingers closed around the awkward right hand of the potboy. Why do we suppose that fat men are necessarily slow and clumsy? I should have remembered how nimbly my co-player could caper on the stage. Using only his fingers, he squeezed the boy’s hand, tightening his grip like a vice, until the faces of both man and boy were contorted, Mink with the effort, Gilbert with the pain. Then, still holding on with the one hand, he forced open the boy’s fingers with the other. He spread them, palm-side-down, over the guttering candle which sat, fatly, in the middle of the table. The boy gave a small scream, more from surprise than hurt, I think, although he must have felt that too.