Sleep of Death

by Philip Gooden

  There were two or three possibilities, as I saw it.

  One was that Lady Alice had plotted to kill her husband – for the usual reasons, a jaded appetite and the wish for change. What I had seen of the couple from my vantage-point in the pear tree showed how she despised her first husband and was at one with her second. Some things would have been beyond a woman’s strength, I judged, and she would have needed help, but when did a beautiful and dangerous woman ever lack a man’s hands? She could have hired assistance, or been in league with Sir Thomas. An objection to this was the appearance of Adrian on the scene. Would he have been taken on, in this vicious capacity, by the woman or the man who had so recently discharged him from their service? Unless this was all a ploy. I went round in circles.

  Another, stranger possibility was that son William had killed father William. He had hidden up the tree, he had scampered towards the old man’s supine form, he had poured the deadly preparation in the porches of the paternal ear. There is no reason for thinking this, apart from the whisper in my innermost head that says that sons wish for dead fathers, and all so that they may have their mothers to themselves alone. If I examine the matter honestly, it was sometimes so with me.

  A third possibility: the murderer of Sir William Eliot is none other than Master WS himself. I do not see our gentle, vanishing author wielding the knife or passing out the poisoned glass, but these feats of open or concealed violence he has done again and again in his mind’s eye, for his pieces are full of death and villains and destruction. I could not help remembering those initials carved into the trunk of the tree in the Eliots’ garden, or what the gate-keeper had said about the identity of the visitor who called at the house on the day of Sir Thomas’s death. I could not but think of the odd comments made by Master WS, of the looks he has cast in my direction. Perhaps within him some barrier has broken down, and he no longer knows what is art and what is life. He writes a murder, he enacts one. Or he does it first, then he tells us of it. It is no longer enough that he imagine himself a homicide, he must play the part in truth and see where it takes him.

  But I have to prove my case.

  As Master WS may have taken a leaf out of his own book, as it were, so too will I. In our author’s play, Prince Hamlet tests the King’s guilt by showing him to his teeth and face the image or pattern of his crime. When the travelling players arrive at Elsinore castle they are requested, even commanded, by the Prince to stage a play which, in words and dumb-show, exposes the uncle’s supposed deed. If he changes colour, if he squirms on his throne, if he hangs his head in shame, Hamlet will know him for what he is. He watches his uncle-father watching the play. Not trusting the testimony of his own eyes, he tells his good and faithful friend Horatio to watch the King too. But, in the end, there is no need because the entire audience sees what Hamlet sees.

  Claudius runs from the play when it’s hardly got going. As the poisoner (me, Lucianus) appears to work his wicked will on the sleeping king, mouthing threats and making damnable faces, the real King calls out for lights. Daunted by a play he is. Frighted with false fire he is. In front of his court he flees. He is the man.

  I planned something similar.

  When I got down from the cart on the Southwark side of the Bridge that morning I first made my way to Nell’s. Her reaction was like Master Burbage’s.

  ‘My God, you look terrible, Nick.’

  She had a little looking-glass and carried it to me. My face was a mass of bumps, bruises and scratches, from the beating I’d received and from my headlong flight through the forest. There was blood there too, and on my hands and clothing. Adrian’s as well as mine. My limbs ached and my wrists were badly chafed from the effort of freeing them from the ropes. I considered making some reference to our last meeting, in the Goat & Monkey with William, and to the way in which I had snubbed her because she was pursuing her trade with young Eliot. But I did not want to reopen old wounds – I had enough fresh ones.

  Nell brought some water in a pewter bowl and a cloth and gently wiped away the mess around my face. I winced and drew my breath in sharp. She applied salves and ointments, of which she always kept a plentiful stock. Is there a mother in every woman?

  Unlike a mother, though, Nell did not question me, at least not then. Perhaps because she deals so much with men, and with our strange and shameful needs, she is content to let things go unexplained. Instead, she chattered on about the remedies she was applying and how this one was compounded of rue and sanicula, and that one was made of strawberry leaves and fennel and mercury mortified with aqua vitae, you understand . . . What I understood was that my Nell was a country girl at heart and knew the remedies of the fields and forests. I also understood that she’d spent plenty of time in Old Nick’s company. She was using expressions that were not natural to her. Her patter and expertise must have come, in part, from him. I wondered whether to tell her of the old apothecary’s fate, trussed up and dead in the place where his alligator had hung. I wasn’t certain of the nature of the relationship between Nell and the old man, whether their ‘arrangement’ was for business or pleasure. With a whore, of course, the one may be the other. On the whole I thought the news of Old Nick’s demise could wait. Sooner rather than later there would be a full accounting, after which she would know all.

  I was grateful to be lovingly tended and, as I lay on the bed that we sometimes shared, I felt myself slipping into an exhausted sleep even as she talked away. But I couldn’t allow myself rest – the play had not yet run its course.

  ‘Nell . . . ow—’

  ‘Don’t talk, Nick. Let me finish.’

  ‘This is important. It’s – oof – to do with what happened.’

  ‘I’m not asking any questions, Nick. Keep still.’

  ‘I will tell you everything later. But there is something – ah – I want you to do.’

  ‘It’s a bit early in the day—’

  ‘It’s – ouch—’

  ‘ – and you’re in no condition for that.’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I want you to go to the playhouse.’

  ‘To ply my trade?’

  Nell picked up some of her customers at the theatre, although I had asked her to keep away from the Globe, at least for as long as I was working there.

  ‘No, to watch.’

  ‘Are you in a play?’

  ‘Yes. I am Lucianus, nephew to the king – and a poisoner.’

  ‘Oh, that play.’

  ‘That play. But I don’t want you to watch that play. The play’s not the thing. I want you to watch someone watching it.’

  ‘This is deep, Nick. Perhaps you have a touch of fever and are not altogether sure of your words.’

  ‘I am altogether sane. (Although I am by no means sure that I was at this point.) Listen. I wish you to observe someone and to see how they respond to what is happening on stage.’

  ‘But you could do this.’

  ‘I will be watching someone else. Besides, Nell, two pairs of eyes are better than one. I do not trust my senses. I am stumbling in the dark.’

  ‘You are not well, Nick.’

  I was moved by her words and, more, by the way that she uttered them.

  ‘Scratches and bruises only. My mind is clear. Nell, do you ever think of leaving London?’

  ‘Whatever for? How would I do for a living?’

  ‘There are men and towns everywhere, if you are determined to persist in your course of life.’

  ‘Why, you know London has more men – and more of them rich ones – than any other town. And you know what they say. Fair wenches cannot want favours while the world is so full of amorous fools. Where could I find such a good place again?’

  ‘Good, Nell? Good for trade perhaps, but is it for your good?’

  ‘How solemn you sound, Nicholas. What has happened to you that you’ve turned moraliser?’

  I thought of the deeds of the night before. I saw the body in the wood, but
kept silent.

  ‘I’ve been thinking that I may not be welcome here much longer. I might return to the country.’

  ‘Not with me for company, my dear. Or not until I’m too dried up and raddled for the sacking law.’

  ‘Sacking law?’

  ‘Whoredom. Were you going to ask me to go with you?’

  ‘No . . . well, not exactly. I just wondered . . . Look, to come to the business in hand. That play. There is a performance this afternoon.’

  ‘Which I should go to but which I shouldn’t watch.’

  ‘You are often at the playhouse but not for the action on stage, I think.’

  ‘True,’ she said. ‘But you want me to watch a watcher, not catch him for profit.’

  ‘Watch a watcher and give me your opinion.’

  ‘A whore’s opinion. What did you say to me the other day, “My trade is rather more respectable than yours, I think”?’

  I saw now that it was not always to my advantage that Nell recalled my words. I felt priggish, particularly as she uttered this in a fluting voice which suggested the puritan. That wasn’t how I’d sounded, surely?

  ‘I would value your opinion,’ I said, as Robert Mink had said to me in the matter of his verses.

  She did not reply.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘I am sorry for my thoughtless words to you as you were going about your business. In the Goat & Monkey.’

  ‘Those I have forgotten. Very well. I will do this for you – but you must promise me one thing, Nick. Not to try and reform me.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying,’ I said. ‘I merely asked if you ever wanted to leave London.’

  ‘It comes to the same. Do not become like the Puritans and the moralisers who believe that women like me must have sin beaten out of them by the beadle. Or, with you, it would be the softer kind – the ones who believe we must all be unhappy at our work and will leap at the chance to turn honest . . .’

  ‘I never . . .’

  ‘. . . as if we could earn a quarter as much in any other trade. If you men would have us reform you must stop visiting us first – yes, and paying for the pleasure too.’

  ‘I’m sorry I ever mentioned it,’ I said. And I was too.

  ‘Now tell me what you want of me this afternoon,’ she said.

  So I did.

  The next step was easier than I’d expected. From Nell’s I crossed the river to the Eliots’ house. William was curious as to where I’d been the previous night and even more curious about my battered state. I palmed him off with some story about an argument, a fight, typical behaviour among the raffish players, didn’t he know.

  ‘I will be leaving soon,’ I said. ‘My contract with the Globe is coming to an end because Jack Wilson is returning.’

  This, by the by, was more than I knew, although I did know that my days must be numbered. They certainly would be by the end of the afternoon.

  ‘I will be leaving London too,’ I said.

  I was surprised to hear myself saying this.

  ‘I am sorry for that,’ said William. ‘I have enjoyed your company.’

  ‘Thank you. And I yours.’

  ‘You have learned nothing in my uncle’s house?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Perhaps I can tell you later, after this afternoon’s performance. You will be at the Globe?’

  ‘I could not miss the Prince of Denmark,’ said William, ‘though I must have seen him live and die a half dozen times.’

  ‘And my Lady Alice?’

  ‘My mother doesn’t like the play, as you know. Too many words and too many memories stirred up. Probably the very reasons that I like it.’

  ‘Could you persuade her to attend? It will most likely be my last performance. And I have other reasons . . .’

  ‘I will try.’

  ‘Sir Thomas?’

  ‘My uncle is away on business.’

  ‘Is he in Dover?’

  ‘He has business there, yes, I believe.’

  So all was arranged.

  And now I stood waiting to make my entrance in the dumb-show.

  ‘How are you, Nicholas?’

  I turned round and there was Master Robert Mink, looking as affable as ever.

  ‘My, I wouldn’t like to have been your opponent,’ he said casting his eyes over my visage.

  Despite my best efforts at face-painting it was, I suppose, still obvious from close to that I had disgraced myself in some apprentice-style brawl. In a way this suited the villainous role which I had to play, but I still grinned sheepishly at Master Mink.

  ‘No questions,’ he said. ‘You young men! Sudden and quick in quarrel, as our friend says.’ He nodded in the general direction of the stage, meaning Master WS.

  He was costumed as the Player King, a part that was well fitted both to his bodily size and his good-natured authority. In the dumb-show, and then in the play-within-the-play, he must suggest a weary wisdom. When his Queen announces that she will never marry after his death, he knows that she protests too much. She will do what she says she will not. A royal widow does not sit long with an empty throne for company. Thinking of which, I cast my eyes in the direction of the box occupied by Lady Alice Eliot and William. I could not see them and had to hope that they were visible from the vantage point on the other side where I had secured a seat for Nell.

  ‘Well,’ said Master Mink, ‘and you are enjoying your time with the Chamberlain’s Men?’

  ‘I fear that my time is almost over.’

  ‘Jack Wilson is coming back?’

  ‘He is sure to be, soon. His mother must either be dead or have decided to live a little longer.’

  ‘I am glad that he is to return. He is a good player, although I am not sure that you don’t have – ah – darker looks than Jack and so are more apt for darker parts.’

  ‘Master Shakespeare was kind enough to say something of the same sort when we first met,’ I said.

  ‘Did he now? Well, he is the best judge of these things, I suppose. Anyway we shall be sorry to lose you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, reflecting that this was a fine day for compliments.

  ‘Before you leave you must visit my lodgings. You have not yet heard my Lover’s Triumph.’

  ‘No, I have not.’

  ‘My lodgings would be better than the Beast with Two Backs. We would not have to depend on the stumbling service of Gilbert the potboy. I have a fine red wine that I’d like your opinion of.’

  ‘I would be honoured.’

  ‘And now I must take a few moments to myself. I always do this before I go on stage.’

  He removed himself into a corner. Meantime I fumbled in the sleeve of my costume for a speech I’d penned earlier. This is the very same device which Hamlet uses, a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines planted in the play to expose Claudius. Well, I did not pretend to be Master WS and would not dare to hold up my poor candle to his blazing sun, but I congratulated myself that I’d managed to add a few lines in the style of what Lucianus delivers when he is about to pour poison into the ear of the Player-King (Master Robert Mink). These lines would hint at the real-life mystery and murder of Sir Thomas Eliot.

  My plan, as should be evident, was to confront those whom I considered might be responsible for this foul deed.

  To wit: Lady Alice Eliot, spied on by Nell in the audience.

  To wit: Master WS, spied on by myself from the stage.

  (It was a pity that Sir Thomas was absent in ‘Dover’ but I believed that, if he were guilty, he shared that guilt with his wife, and that therefore, if she were exposed, so too would he be.)

  All this might seem to strain belief. Why should a man or woman spill their secrets because they see them played out on a stage? But I had authority for what I was doing, the authority of the Prince of Denmark himself, for:

  I have heard

  That guilty creatures sitting at a play

  Have by the very cunning of the scene

  Been struck so to the soul, that presently
/>   They have proclaimed their malefactions;

  For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

  With most miraculous organ.

  Adding lines to plays is common enough. The broader clowns in the other companies did it all the time, even if the professionalism of the Chamberlain’s Men kept Robert Armin, our company clown, within bounds. Nevertheless, what might be tolerated in an older player would not be allowed in a snipper-snapper like myself. Even if nothing untoward occurred as a result of my own little lines-within-a-play-within-a-play, I would be cast out of the Chamberlain’s for impudence, for incompetence. I would never work with such a company again. Most likely, I would never act again.

  I would go back to the West Country and, like the prodigal son, turn into a keeper of swine.

  I would go back to my own land and follow my father into the church. Without his certainty and his charity, I would become a sexton and dig graves.

  But the play had not yet run its course. I had to expose a murderer.

  I wasn’t relying on my feeble words alone. I slipped on the cloak and hat that belonged to Adrian, the false steward. They were his badge or emblem, the mark by which he was most surely recognised. Like the cuts and bruises on my face, they sorted with the part I played. That I was wearing a costume not issued by the tireman would also be held against me, I thought, as I rapidly adjusted Adrian’s mantle. There was dried blood around the collar.

  And now I must be on. I slept-walked through the dumb-show. I went through the wordless motions of pouring poison into kingly ears, and pouring another kind of poison into the ears of the widowed but receptive queen. All this time I was in a frenzy of impatience to reach the main action so that I might speak the lines I had composed. It would most probably be the last thing I said on a public stage. I was conscious of banks of faces in the boxes and galleries, of shifting bodies in the pit. The day, which had promised so fair early in the morning, had grown dull. Sullen clouds hung over us and I felt the odd drop of rain.

  As I came off after the dumb-show I saw Master WS looking at me most strangely. He had no part in the play-within-the-play or in the court scene in which it unfolds, but he was due on very shortly afterwards, a visitor in Gertrude’s bedchamber where the Ghost appears – though only to Hamlet’s eyes – for the last time. Master WS had removed the armour worn in the opening scenes on the castle battlements and was garbed in a night-gown. Now he is to become a wistfully reproachful Ghost, dressed as he might have been in life had he visited his wife’s chamber. He stretches his arms across the divide between the living and the dead but the Queen does not see him.