A Fine Madness

by Alan Judd

  He shrugged. ‘No idea.’

  ‘There’s Skeres, of course. He’s an Essex man, isn’t he?’

  ‘Likes to think he is. I wouldn’t get too near Essex if I was him.’

  Was his indifference natural or just a little too studied? He was so accustomed to dissembling that the act had become the man, the habit so ingrained that he concealed by habit even when there was nothing to hide. ‘So how did it happen?’

  ‘How did what happen?’

  ‘Marlowe. The fight, the killing. How did it start?’

  He looked, or affected to look, as if he were struggling to recall something from the distant past. ‘Oh that, that business. Well, they were arguing, they’d been bickering all morning, rubbing each other up the wrong way. Never got on, those two, despite taking Walsingham’s bread and living under his roof.’

  ‘Yet Frizer had invited Marlowe to the meeting.’

  ‘For his Dutch contacts, not to listen to all his guff about alchemy. I’d just come from Holland, I knew the possibilities. And then there was an argument about who paid what to Widow Bull. Marlowe didn’t want to pay his full whack for the room and all because it was already set up without him. He just wanted to pay his share of the victuals. As he well should’ve, he’d drunk enough for all of us. He had a point, but him and Frizer were as mean as each other and this was just one more thing. Frizer called him a tight-arse and next thing we knew he had Frizer’s dagger from his belt and was knocking him about the head with the pommel.’

  ‘What about his own dagger?’

  ‘He’d taken his sword and buckle off when we sat and put them in the corner with his belt. He was lying down, you see, on the bench at the side.’

  ‘And Frizer’s blade got pushed into Marlowe’s eye?’

  ‘So he says, Frizer. I didn’t see it until after it happened. It was all so quick. They both fell against me, almost knocked me off my chair. Then Marlowe went down, taking Frizer with him, nearly. He was cursing and holding his face and there was blood running down the backs of his hands.’

  ‘He died quick, then?’

  ‘Pretty quick.’

  He spoke more freely now, whether because he was describing something still vivid or because he was rehearsing an agreed account I couldn’t say. The three accounts matched, as the coroner had found, but you’d expect that, whether true or false. ‘Some say his death was planned,’ I ventured.

  His surprise looked genuine, although it would, of course, with Poley. ‘Who says? Who by and for what?’

  ‘Rumours, gossip, loose talk in taverns. Don’t credit it myself but it’s what people say.’

  Poley shook his head. ‘If anyone wanted Kit Marlowe dead there were easier ways of doing it than staging a fight you have to justify in court. A walk by the river after dark and a shove off the jetty would’ve done for him, the amount he’d drunk. Went for a piss and must have fell in, was all you’d need to say. I’ve known it done.’

  I didn’t doubt it.

  I rode out to Scadbury again a few weeks after I had talked to Frizer there, bearing another contrived message from Sir Robert. I had high hopes that Thomas Walsingham might be more forthcoming than the others because he appreciated drama and poetry and had evidently been fond of Christopher. He might have known him more personally rather than merely as a possible business partner. And Christopher must have admired and felt something for him because his long poem Hero and Leander, although not published until about five years after his death, was dedicated to Thomas Walsingham. It is a very great poem, I understand.

  He received me most cordially, entertaining me for the night as a great storm came on which would have made my journey home treacherous. After we had dined his wife retired and Thomas and I sat by the fire in the hall. Frizer, happily, was away in nearby Eltham on some business or other. I have heard he lives there still, a respectable family man, churchwarden and tax assessor. Other than myself, he is the only one still living who was involved in that business. Yet he, the man who killed Christopher, who felt his last breath and his blood hot on his hands, is not questioned about this matter. So why am I? Can you at least tell me that, sir?

  Ah, is that so? You have? His mind wanders. Thought you were the King, did he? And has no memory of Christopher? Or so he says. Well, it comes to us all if we live long enough.

  Back to Thomas Walsingham, yes. He wished he had known Christopher better, he said. Every day he wished that. Until Christopher was gone he did not realise how often he thought of him, how frequently his words came into his head, how much more he would have asked him. I told him I felt the same. As we spoke his brown eyes became soft and melancholy and his beard took on a reddish tinge in the firelight. ‘You are familiar with his verses?’

  ‘No, to my sorrow, I am not.’

  ‘You should be.’

  ‘How did Frizer kill him?’

  He sighed. ‘They argued, I understand, and Christopher attacked him. They were never friends, always sparks between them. Christopher was drunk, they told me. I can believe that. He was becoming too fond of his drink and he was prone to – to passions, drunk or sober. Did you find that? Did you know him in his passion?’

  ‘I knew him for a fighter when roused.’

  He looked at me as if expecting me to go on, then turned back to the fire. ‘I was more than sad when I heard. I had hoped that we – he and I – but I cannot blame Ingram. It was not his fault. And Christopher was fiery in his passions.’

  ‘There was nothing behind his death? No one who wanted him dead or quietened?’

  ‘Why should anyone want that? He was no threat to anyone.’ He continued staring into the fire, then added quietly, ‘There was some jealousy between them, I suppose. Him and Ingram.’

  ‘Jealousy of what?’

  ‘Personal, merely personal.’

  I never did discover what he meant. I asked about Ralegh and free-thinking and Christopher’s work for us, which Thomas knew all about, but neither of us could think of any plausible plot or motive for a conspiracy to kill him. I mentioned Essex, too, saying that Skeres had become a servant of Essex. Had Frizer?

  Thomas shook his head. ‘Ingram is not a political animal. He is a practical down-to-earth man. Any talk of Court affairs frightens him. It’s the only thing that does, I think.’

  ‘And Poley? He is a very political animal.’

  ‘And a very cautious one. That is how he survives. He serves Robert Cecil, does he not? He wouldn’t jump from that ship unless he knew it was sinking. Which it plainly isn’t, from what I see. Father and son have their hands on the tiller. The Queen heeds them, not Essex, not Ralegh, nor anyone else.’

  I mentioned tavern rumours to the effect that Christopher’s death might have been intended or willed by free-thinkers around Ralegh in order to protect themselves. He was as unpersuaded as I was.

  ‘It doesn’t make any sense. Ralegh is keeping his head down in Devon. If anyone worried about what Christopher might say they’d get him to flee abroad. As he could have done himself if he worried about anything. Instead, he was content – more than content, happy – to stay here writing his verse and reporting to the Council as required. Anyway, if you wanted to murder someone you wouldn’t do it like that, would you? Too complicated.’

  It is often thus, I find, with conspiracy theories: the more you probe them, the emptier they become. I have spent much of my life amid real conspiracies, as you know, sir, and as I have said already I know how complicated, expensive, hard to contrive and few they are. Men love to see them everywhere, overcoming all objections by widening the circle of conspiracy so that in time half the world is party to it and it is impossible we should not all know of it.

  The last person I spoke to was Eleanor Bull. I rode to her house in Deptford on my way back from Scadbury, following the route that Christopher would have taken on his last journey. The house was easily found, a fine building of three storeys on the Strand, set back from the street with a large garden to the rear. A ma
id wearing a clean white apron answered my knock and civilly bade me wait. She left the door ajar and I heard her tell her mistress there was a gentleman asking for her. She returned to say that Mrs Bull sent her respects but she was fully booked. I asked that she return to Mrs Bull and say that I came to see her in connection with the matter that had brought the coroner to her house earlier in the summer. After another muttered conversation within, I was bidden enter.

  Mrs Bull was a well-dressed lady of ample girth with a round, red, wrinkled face. She was stiff with me at first, perhaps suspecting that I was a court official with some question or complaint. But when I told her I was a friend of the late Christopher Marlowe and that I had been asked by his family to establish the circumstances of his death and burial, and to retrieve any goods or possessions he might have left behind, she began to relax.

  ‘He left nothing here apart from his belt with his sword and knife and they disappeared when his body was taken. Whether the coroner’s men had them or Mr Poley, I know not.’

  ‘It was Mr Poley who made the booking, I believe?’

  ‘One of my regular gentlemen, Mr Poley.’ She nodded and smiled. ‘Whenever he comes from abroad. Such a gentleman.’

  ‘And the others, were they regulars?’

  ‘Off and on, they come to meet and drink and talk. And sometimes other gentlemen. Mr Marlowe, poor soul, I’d not seen before, but he was very nice, very polite. He drank well. They all did, except Mr Poley. He is always moderate in his drinking.’

  ‘Was Mr Marlowe drunk that day?’

  Her cheeks wobbled as she shook her head. ‘That I couldn’t say, sir. He may have been. They had plenty to drink, as I said, but who had what I know not. After they had eaten I left them to themselves in their room and saw nothing of them until – until the rumpus.’

  ‘What occasioned it?’

  ‘An argument, they said. Mr Poley told me at the time it was about the reckoning and the coroner said so too, afterwards. We down here knew nothing of it until we heard raised voices – you could hear them from the kitchen – and then a stumbling about and thumping and banging and a shout and then silence. A long silence. And then Mr Poley came out and called downstairs for cloths and bandages, and to come quick.’

  She obligingly showed me the room. It was on the first floor at the back, overlooking the garden and beyond it the river. A fine room with fresh panelling and a bay window with a window seat stretching the width of it. There was a table across the width of the bay with four chairs. Mrs Bull understood that Christopher had been lying on the window seat, with Frizer on the chair with his back to him and the other two on chairs at the ends of the table. Neither Christopher nor Frizer could have got out into the room without moving the table, or the others moving their chairs.

  ‘They were playing at cards,’ she said. ‘There was money involved in that too. Maybe they argued about the winnings as well as my reckoning. The cards were all a mess on the table when I came in and Mr Frizer’s chair was overturned and the table pushed out at an angle. Mr Marlowe was lying here’ – she pointed to the floor between the table and the window seat – ‘with his mouth open and a horrid gash in his eye, or near as made no difference, God bless his soul. There was blood on the floor and some on the table and one of the other gentlemen, Mr Frizer it was, was standing there with blood pouring from the top of his head, all down his face. And the cards were all messed up, as I said.’

  I stared at the spot where he died as if to read something in it. But silence is all we learn from death. He was buried two days after, she told me, in St Nicholas’s church, in a grave just beyond the north wall of the tower. The graveyard was almost full and soon would be if the plague reached them from London, God forbid. The only mourner apart from herself was Sir Thomas Walsingham. He paid for the burial, she said. There was talk of a memorial stone.

  ‘Such a kind man, Sir Thomas. A real gentleman. He is acquainted with the Lord Burghley to whom I am distantly related. I have been at Court, sir, when Mr Bull was alive.’

  ‘So I have heard.’

  She swelled with pride. ‘I keep my house for gentlemen, only for gentlemen. I worried that what had happened to Mr Marlowe would bring us ill repute, as if I kept a bawdy house, but Sir Thomas was kind enough to return with me here for refreshment so that all could see we are respectable.’

  ‘Did he say anything about Mr Marlowe?’

  ‘He shed a tear or two and said a great voice was silenced. I hadn’t known Mr Marlowe was a poet. He came from Canterbury, Sir Thomas said, and still has family there. I don’t know who told them what happened.’

  I called at the church afterwards. There were four fresh graves outside the north wall, none marked. Three were very fresh, days old. Perhaps the plague had already reached Deptford. The fourth must have been his, the ground already slightly sunken. I stood by it and said a prayer for he who would have scorned such intercession. I suspect my prayer was as much for my own failing faith as to save him.

  I thought of Christopher’s family as I rode back to London that day, prompted by Mrs Bull’s remark. He had never mentioned them, except to say his origins were humble. How many were there, how would news have reached Canterbury, who would have told them? And how long after? Was it possible that even now they did not know? I could have journeyed to see them but it would have been a melancholy business and I had had enough of melancholy. Also, I had tasks to perform, money to earn. Lives are like raindrops, a moment in the light and they are gone, but life itself goes on.

  ‘Was he a lost soul?’ I had asked Sir Thomas as I sat in the saddle that morning.

  ‘A bright star doomed by his own will,’ he said. ‘I pray he repents and is spared Hell.’

  I now know that Christopher wrote about Hell but I do not believe he feared it. Or believed in it. What troubled him, troubled and fascinated him, was the prospect of nothingness, nothingness everlasting, absence eternal. He infected me with it and it troubles me still, even in this cell where I would rather live and feel the cold and damp than die and feel nothing.

  And yet, and yet. There was an honesty about Christopher, about his contempt for pretence and his thirst for truth even where no truth is to be found. Thinking of him gives me – not hope, exactly – but a sense that if there is anything beyond us, we must endure its absence before we find it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Before you go, sir, may I beg a favour? May I beg that in submitting these my humble recollections you remind His Majesty of my pension of 100 guineas a year, given me by Queen Elizabeth but taken away to pay off my debts to the Crown after she died? I sorely miss it and if His Majesty should see fit to restore it in return for my help in this matter and for any other help His Majesty requires, I should be eternally grateful.

  I confess I misappropriated Crown funds and am grossly indebted. I do not deny it. Unlike matters of state I had to do with, I managed my own affairs unwisely. I was both too careless with money and too grasping of it. I suffered Queen Elizabeth’s tempestuous displeasure and, with Mr Secretary no longer at Court to speak for me, became all too familiar with the Marshalsea and Fleet gaols, later with the Gatehouse and even the Tower itself. I have endured a quarter of a century of intermittent incarcerations and now you find me still here, in the King’s Bench prison. I am told the law should not permit my close confinement any longer yet here I am, giving you this account for His Majesty. When not so employed I am still asked to decipher, despite failing sight, lack of my records and an uncertain mind. Were it not for my good wife Mary obtaining some relief from the late Sir Robert Cecil, and keeping up my correspondence, and seeing to our properties, and furthering our Dutch scheme for turning iron into steel, I do believe I should have starved or wasted with disease like so many of the wretches around me. If it should please His Majesty to release me, I should be truly, humbly grateful.

  True, sir, true, I have been released before and each time eventually returned. As I have mentioned, I was released to help with the i
nvestigation into the men who plotted to murder all His Majesty’s government in parliament. They prepared a great explosion with barrels of powder beneath the chamber. The records will show that I was most useful to William Waad in his interrogations. Yet even after that I was returned to the Tower for corresponding with an acquaintance abroad I had known for many years who was familiar with the plot and from whom I derived good intelligence about it. That was the sole purpose of my correspondence but I was treated as a traitor.

  Even now I might be of more help to His Majesty if only I could know why His Majesty wants to know about Christopher Marlowe. I could shape my account to his desires instead of telling you much you may not need to know.

  Is it for his plays? I know little of them and suspect they are not often performed now.

  Is it for the work he did for Mr Secretary, for his part in bringing the King’s mother to trial?

  Is it for his verses? I understand the King has a fondness for verses.

  Is it for his free-thinking, then, his association with Sir Walter Ralegh? I confess that is what I have all along thought it must be. I know Ralegh was no favourite of the King’s and is anyway now long parted from his head.

  Or is it that tavern talk that Christopher was victim of a conspiracy, that he was murdered, has reached the King at last? I did not believe it at the time and do not now. Even when the events were fresh none could say why or by whom his death was desired, and certainly none has since. I counsel His Majesty not to heed such talk. Why anyway should he be interested? I have told you all I know, or think I know, but if you could please tell me why, just one word, I could perhaps tell more.

  A sodomite? Was Christopher a sodomite? Is that all, sir? His Majesty wants to know whether Christopher Marlowe was killed for being a sodomite?

  Well, truly, I never knew him for one. I never thought of it. I told you what Thomas Kyd, when racked, said about Christopher and tobacco and boys. But that is the kind of thing Christopher would say. He liked to provoke. I never knew him go with a boy or a man. Or a woman, come to that.