by Alan Judd
CHAPTER NINE
Lord Burghley conducted the examination of Christopher and Gifford Gilbert in his chambers in Whitehall Palace. They were large enough for Privy Council meetings to be held there when not with the Queen and he had his own mahogany desk from Italy, inlaid and magnificent. There was also a long oak table with carved high-backed chairs. The windows gave onto the river and its traffic.
Our meeting was twice postponed because the Queen was at Hampton Court or Windsor and Lord Burghley with her. There was rarely a day when he did not see her and, despite their occasional troubles – as when he and Mr Secretary were banned from Court after the execution of the Queen of Scots – there was trust and even fondness between them. He had served her when she was a vulnerable young princess in danger of the executioner’s block herself and she had learned to trust him then. Later, when he lay dying, she visited his death-bed. I never heard that she did that for any other commoner.
Lord Burghley was as formidable and forbidding as Mr Secretary, though short and broad where Mr Secretary was tall and angular. He had a calm, comfortable face and a fine well-trimmed beard. His voice was quiet but he spoke very directly with no words wasted. His gaze, like his son’s, was unsettling. It was not hostile or challenging but it was assessing and impersonal, as if you were a piece of furniture he might choose either to buy, or simply to pass by. You felt under judgement and that judgement, for good or ill, would be final.
When I entered his chamber that morning there was him Thomas Walsingham, Ingram Frizer and William Davison, Lord Burghley’s secretary. Lord Burghley acknowledged my bow with a nod while talking to Thomas, who smiled a greeting. Frizer stood on the fringe of the group. I was surprised to see him although I knew by then that Thomas had taken him into his household. We nodded, each probably as surprised as the other. William Davison, busy with pens and papers from a previous meeting, gave a brief conspiratorial glance. He and I were on friendly terms, sharing a common understanding of what it was to serve great men, in his case women – or a woman – too. He had been the Queen’s junior secretary when she signed the warrant for the execution of the Queen of Scots, some five years before. He had quite properly delivered the warrant forthwith to the Privy Council who had immediately sent it to Fotheringay, where Queen Mary was held and where the deed was promptly done. Her little dog, I heard, licked the blood that spouted from her neck when her head rolled onto the floor.
Queen Elizabeth was furious when she learned that her cousin was so promptly executed. She blamed anyone but herself and banned his Lordship and Mr Secretary from Court. Poor unfortunate William Davison was punished for his promptitude by immediate imprisonment, the Queen demanding he be hanged. He was spared by the silent intercession of Lord Burghley and Mr Secretary, who sent me to Newgate with letters for his release. I then delivered him to Barn Elms where he remained until Lord Burghley and Mr Secretary resumed their positions at Court, after which Lord Burghley made him one of his servants, taking care that he never appeared within sight of the Queen again. Her Majesty chose not to enquire whether he had been hanged.
I stood at a respectful distance from the group but after a while Lord Burghley beckoned me closer. ‘Mr Phelippes, you like Sir Thomas here are acquainted with one of the prisoners, I understand?’
‘With Mr Marlowe, please, your Lordship.’
‘He associates with players. You follow the players?’
‘Little, your Lordship, but I know of his work. He has loyally helped us with our own work—’
‘I know what he has done for the Queen. But he sails close to the wind in the playhouses. Do you think he sees one as giving him licence for the other?’
The thought had not occurred to me. ‘I have never heard him express such—’
‘Do you believe him guilty or innocent in the matter before us?’
‘Neither, my Lord.’ It was an unconsidered response but happily apt, as it turned out. Lord Burghley’s eyes levelled upon mine, awaiting elaboration. ‘I do not believe he intended to be a coiner but can believe he might have thought counterfeiting foreign coin a harmless game to play at.’
‘And you consider him loyal? You do not suspect him of planning to desert us for Rome?’
‘He is loyal to the Queen and has no Catholic beliefs, my Lord, I am certain of that.’ Nor any other, I might have added, but that would have caused trouble of a different order.
Lord Burghley turned to William Davison. ‘Fetch the prisoners.’
He seated himself at the head of the long table, signifying to Thomas Walsingham to join him. The two whispered together. Frizer and I were not invited to sit and remained standing to one side. William returned with three soldiers wearing swords and carrying cudgels, leading Christopher and the man Gifford Gilbert on a rope. The prisoners’ hands were tied before them and they were tied to each other. The soldier holding the rope led them through the door and then jerked them to a halt at the far end of the table, causing them to stumble against each other. Gifford, a small, older man with a grey beard and little hair, wore dirty grey worsted and looked like a man pulled from a shipwreck. Christopher wore a black tunic of good quality but it was torn and stained, his stockings were holed and one of his shoes was losing its sole, slapping on the floorboards as he walked. His hair was matted and untidy, his beard unkempt. He looked tired, resentful, defiant.
William Davison had returned with more papers than before and now hurried to Lord Burghley’s side, whispering in his ear. These new papers evidently did not concern the prisoners because there was a protracted pause while he and Lord Burghley shuffled through them, William taking instructions. Recalling Robert Cecil’s urging me to ensure that Christopher spoke respectfully, I walked over to him. I half expected the soldiers to obstruct me but they stepped aside. His brown eyes met mine as I approached and he smiled, sardonically I thought. He had lost a tooth since we last met. Both men stank of gaol.
‘Thomas, I am honoured. How is Mrs Phelippes?’
‘She is well, I thank you. I have a—’
‘I am heartily glad to hear it.’ There was something aggressive in his tone, as if he were trying to keep me at bay. ‘But truly I am, And you too, I trust,’ he added, more softly.
‘I have a message from Sir Robert.’ All the others were listening but there was nothing for it but to go on. ‘His Lordship is inclined to be understanding, provided you are contrite.’
The man Gifford, who was staring pleadingly at me, nodded with unexpected vigour. ‘We are, sir, we are. Truly.’ His voice was hoarsened to a croak.
‘Contrition?’ Christopher’s sardonic smile returned. ‘That is the coin of our payment?’
‘That or your lives.’
‘So?’ His glance was challenging. ‘Or, as God wills, as you might put it?’
At that moment we were joined by Thomas Walsingham and Frizer. ‘Speak sweetly and all shall be well,’ Thomas whispered to Christopher.
‘Humble pie, Kit,’ said Frizer. ‘Time you learned the taste of it.’ He spoke in a joshing manner, grinning.
Christopher looked as if he were about to respond in some other way but swallowed it and turned to Thomas. ‘Is Baines here?’
‘He is. His Lordship will hear him first.’
William Davison collected his papers and, at a nod from Lord Burghley, marched down beside the table past us and towards the door. ‘About to start,’ he whispered.
The prisoners and soldiers remained where they were, Thomas resumed his seat and Frizer and I stood to the side. While we waited Lord Burghley conversed quietly again with Thomas until the door opened and William reappeared with Richard Baines.
I had not seen him before but I knew much about him. He was a plump man with a fair beard, well dressed and well fed by that stage of his life, though he had not always been. He was quick in speech and wrote as copiously and fluently in Latin as in English. My work had made me more familiar with his hand than he could have guessed. Like Christopher, he was another Cambrid
ge man once suspected by the authorities there of having gone to Rheims to become a priest in order to return England and further the Catholic cause. Unlike Christopher, who had been working for us, he really had gone to Rheims and really had become a priest. But while there he had secretly resolved to work against the Pope and the English Catholic exiles. He raised discontent among other young recruits and even plotted to poison their water, like the Jew in Christopher’s play. He wrote descriptions of his fellows and their plans which he contrived by indirect means to have delivered into the hands of Mr Secretary, who sent him money for them. He thus became, in his own opinion, one of our agents.
But he never was, in Mr Secretary’s eyes. We had a number of such volunteers, freelancers of the intelligence world who offered their services. Some were useful but often they were not, being men who in their own estimation played a great part in affairs of which they knew less than they thought. In particular, they did not know who else might be fishing in their pool, more discreetly than they.
Having become a priest, Baines was about to return to England in order, so far as his masters in Rheims were concerned, to work secretly against us. But really, he claimed, to work secretly for us against them. However, he was arrested before he could leave Rheims and after some little torture wrote a fulsome confession which was published, securing him his pardon and permission to return to England.
He and Christopher must have taken against each other soon after meeting for not only did he denounce Christopher and Gilbert to the governor of Flushing but at the time of Christopher’s death he wrote the infamous note I told you of. You will remember that this denounced Christopher for, among other crimes, ‘his damnable judgement of religion and his scorn of God’s word’. Later, I discovered it was Baines, not Thomas Kyd, who first said that Christopher persuaded men to atheism. It was also he who denounced the innocent Kyd for the Dutch Church libel. This worthy man of God did it for money and the terms of his denunciations are so like the terms of his own confession that I conclude he had a sheath of phrases, all feathered and sharpened, to be shot from his bow at anyone he took against, or from whom money was to be made. After he converted to our own church he was rewarded with a comfortable living in Lincolnshire.
But the malice of Baines’s writings was not evident in his person that morning. He was modest and respectful, answering Lord Burghley’s questions with frequent Your Lordships, Your Honours, By Your Honour’s Leaves and If Please Your Honours. None of which entertained or impressed Lord Burghley. Having got Baines to confirm the report of the governor of Flushing – viz. that Christopher had provoked Gilbert into making and uttering the forged Dutch shilling, with the intention of making many more before fleeing to the seminary at Rheims – Lord Burghley then said with quiet precision, ‘But the two accused contradict you. Gilbert the goldsmith says you and Marlowe urged him to forge the shilling equally and Marlowe says it was you who planned to utter more coins and flee to Rheims, your former home.’ He turned to Christopher and Gilbert. ‘Is that not so?’
He made it sound as if he had already taken statements from the accused. There was surprise on Gilbert’s face as well as fear and for a moment he merely gazed, his toothless mouth open. Then he nodded. ‘It is so, my Lord, it is so.’
I feared at first that Christopher wouldn’t reply. For a second or two he returned Lord Burghley’s uncompromising gaze, then he turned to face Baines. ‘It is so, my Lord,’ he said clearly.
Baines was about to protest but Lord Burghley cut him short. ‘Two against one. What have you to say to that?’
‘It is not so, my Lord, I—’
‘And only one Dutch shilling uttered. No coin of this realm. And no more were made. Do you agree?’
‘My Lord, their – his, Marlowe’s – intention was—’
‘What you say it was. Or not. And yours was what he says it was. Or not.’
‘But the port and town of Flushing are English. Therefore the utterance of counterfeit coin—’
‘Of a foreign coin is rightly a matter for the governor to deal with as he thinks fit. He has the necessary powers. It is not for us to consider here. There need be no trial.’ He turned to William. ‘You will write to the governor and tell him that I want no more such minor vexations referred to me. We deal daily in weightier matters.’ He turned back to Baines. ‘I do not wish to see you here again without better purpose. If I do your stay may be prolonged.’ He turned again to William. ‘See that the prisoners are released. Now begone, all of you.’
And so we and the case were dismissed. Thomas Walsingham, Frizer and I left the palace with Christopher. Gilbert disappeared. Whether he lived in London or Flushing or elsewhere I know not. Most of us are like fishes in the lives of others, a silvery flank glimpsed once and never seen again. As we shuffled out it was clear that Baines did not want to leave with us but at the same time feared to irritate his Lordship by lingering. He compromised by following ten feet behind. Christopher paid him no attention at all but Frizer twice turned and grinned, which made him pause until we drew ahead.
‘Mangy dog,’ Frizer said. ‘Chuck a stone and he’d yelp. Bark at him, Kit, see him run.’
But Christopher ignored him. We stood talking in the street outside Whitehall Palace until Thomas and Frizer left for Thomas’s manor in Chislehurst. Christopher said he would return to the lodging he had taken after leaving Mary’s.
‘If I still have it. I have been away longer than promised and someone else may have taken it.’
‘Come to my house. You can wash and borrow clean clothes.’
He nodded. We watched Baines hurry across the road towards the Abbey. ‘Good riddance,’ I said. ‘He has it in for you.’
‘He has it in for everyone, chiefly himself. He cannot accept the failure he senses he is and cannot bear that others should be better.’
‘Why did you do it, coining that shilling?’
‘Boredom, curiosity. And maybe future gain, who knows? If it had worked it would be comforting to know that in time of need one could make money, actually make it.’
‘So you were prepared to do it, to go coining?’
‘Prepared, but not doing it. Prepared to do anything, Thomas, as you know. Or nothing.’
‘You do not care what you do?’
‘I should like to know the limits, the limits of what I am capable of. It’s those that define what we are.’
‘We know what we are, surely?’
‘But not what we may be.’ By this time we were walking back towards the Strand and he was looking down as if reading a script in the dirt. ‘We all feel we are at the centre of our circle, the circle that is us. But it’s our boundaries that make us what we are. It’s the line, the boundary, that makes the circle. Draw it differently and the centre is moved and we are different. Take away that line, that boundary, and what is left? A being capable of becoming anything, depending on where the line is drawn. And if you are unsure where your own line, your own boundary, is – if you can’t feel it or sense it – does that mean you are capable of anything? Could we all be saints? Or Tamburlaine? Or anything?’
‘Well, and so what?’
He stopped in the street and clapped me on the shoulder, pulling me round to face him. ‘Thomas, that is precisely it. So what? So nothing. And if nothing, what matters? Why does anything matter?’
We had discussed this before, of course, and it always left me discomforted. It seemed to me that many things mattered, if not to us, then to God. But he would not accept that. Whatever I said he would respond with – why? Why does that matter? Why? Show me. Show how it matters whether we exist or not. He perhaps sensed my thinking because he continued for me.
‘We think things matter because they matter to God. But if there is no God, then there is nothing to make anything matter beyond what we choose to say matters. But how can saying something matters make it so? We could just as easily say something else – anything else – matters. This not that, apples not pears, with no better a
nd no worse reason.’
‘I hope you do not write such heresy in your plays.’
‘Of course not. Not obviously, anyway. Or I should not be alive to shock you with it now.’
‘So being alive matters?’
We were walking on by then but he stopped again. ‘Touché. We all feel that being alive matters. Yet when I am dead it cannot matter to me that I am dead, and when those who mourn me are dead – those blessed few – it can matter to no one. It matters to me only because I am alive and want to go on living, just like any horse or dog or rat. But what, apart from that, makes anything matter? Why be good? Why be moral? Why be anything? Because God wills, you would say. But if there is no God—’
‘Keep your voice down or you will have us both burned.’ The Strand was as busy as always, with boats unloading, men shouting and dogs everywhere. We were bumped and jostled. ‘Where do you find such ideas? Where have you read them?’
‘Nowhere, no one dare write them. They come from talk.’
‘Talk with Ralegh and his friends? Your name has been mentioned with free-thinkers. You should be careful what you say.’
‘Well informed as ever, Thomas. Everything comes to you eventually.’
‘Ralegh has powerful enemies at Court. Lord Essex and he are at daggers drawn, you know that? And Robert Cecil is wary of him, so he has no ally there. He has spoken in parliament against the government on the matter of immigrants and seems likely to rouse the common people. You should choose your friends more carefully.’