by M. J. Trow
‘A member of the cast?’ The florid man was aghast. ‘Not Ned Alleyn, surely?’
Murmurs ran round the table again. None of the men present had any grounding in theatre, but they all knew box-office gold when they saw it posturing before them.
‘No, no, Master Alleyn is not implicated,’ Henslowe said hurriedly – adding, in his head, for once. ‘It was Master Shaxsper – Shakespeare he calls himself now – from Stratford.’
‘A local man, then?’ someone checked.
‘Er … local? No. Stratford-on-Avon. It is …’ Henslowe waved a vague hand above his head. Money was his talent, not geography.
‘It is near to Oxford, gentlemen,’ Faunt supplied. He knew every corner of the realm; madmen intent on harm didn’t just come from London and it paid to keep your eyes everywhere. He looked at Henslowe. ‘I understood Master Shaxsper to be a playwright, Master Henslowe, not a player.’
‘You are very knowledgeable, Master … er …’ Henslowe looked at Faunt with an eyebrow raised, waiting for his name, but nothing came. ‘It is true that Master Shaxsper does … dabble. But we have Master Marlowe as our playwright here, and need no other.’
Faunt smiled his secret, closed smile and said nothing.
Henslowe began to feel he was losing his momentum. He cleared his throat and continued. ‘Master Shaxsper’s role was not large, so he can be replaced, but I wonder whether we might perhaps do best to cancel the performances. At least for a while.’ The men around the table were all looking at him aghast. At least one of them had made very big plans for the money which would pour in and several had spent it already.
The florid man was a pork butcher by trade, and money ran in his veins, alongside the lard. ‘We can’t close down Master Marlowe’s Tamburlaine just because some jade is dead!’ he cried. There were protests this time from every side. He blustered a little and some of his curls began to unravel. ‘You say this woman was shot. That’s not what I heard. I heard she was … well, shall we say she took on more than she could manage and she died of it.’
‘I heard she was stabbed,’ said a man from the bottom of the board. He was dried up, desiccated, and could only be a lawyer.
‘No, I heard what Walter here said, that she took a client while she was watching the play and she …’
Henslowe rapped on the table with the money box, which split and rolled its pennies across the table. The sight of the money collected their wits together again and they were quiet. ‘Gentlemen, please! I don’t care what you heard. I saw it and I know she was shot.’ He looked down for a moment to collect himself. He had seen some sights, God knew, but the mess the woman had been in was something he never wanted to see again. He swallowed hard, to force the bile back down his throat. ‘She was shot and Master Shakespeare’s gun seems to have been the guilty weapon. It was a sad event, brought about, as I understand it, because of some lovers’ tiff. So from that respect alone, it won’t happen again. We are also replacing the blank firing mechanism in the arquebuses in the execution scene with … Apparently the orchestra are coming up with something. I doubt it will be so effective, but … well, there are obvious advantages.’ He tried a wry smile. ‘But even so, we will not be putting on this play for at least …’
The dried-up lawyer licked his lips and spoke. His voice was as dry as he was, but he spoke for almost every man around the table and so they all listened. ‘You are closing the play down? Are you mad?’
‘Pardon?’ Henslowe was as keen for a penny as the next man, but there was a limit and he had reached it.
‘We could never buy publicity like this,’ the lawyer said. ‘Have the family been in touch? The dead woman’s, I mean.’
‘No. I understand Master Alleyn knows the sister …’
There was coarse laughter from the pork butcher’s direction. ‘Ned Alleyn knows everyone’s sister,’ he said.
Henslowe waited a second more for the man’s bulk to stop shaking, then continued: ‘Knows the sister of the deceased. He hasn’t managed to speak to her yet; apparently she is prostrated with grief at present.’
‘Well off?’ the lawyer asked.
Henslowe raised his hands. ‘I really don’t know,’ he said. ‘I understand that Mistress Merchant was a widow in comfortable circumstances. I can’t speak for her sister.’
Faunt leaned forward. ‘Shall I try and find out for you, Master Henslowe? I think what our friend Master Spenlove is getting at is – correct me if I am wrong – that we need to know what kind of payment Mistress Merchant’s family may require.’
‘Payment?’ The voice came from right next to Henslowe’s right elbow and made him jump. The man had sat there since the beginning and had hardly uttered a word. In fact, he had been so still that Henslowe had begun to wonder if he had dropped off to sleep. ‘Payment? Whatever for?’
Faunt blinked and exchanged startled glances with Henslowe. ‘Well, the woman is dead …’
All eyes turned to the man on Henslowe’s right. He was well dressed but not flashy, and sported a little beard which was years too young for him. He had been part of Henslowe’s little coterie of investors since the theatre had been built, but no one had heard him speak before.
‘She paid her money to come in, didn’t she? Just like all the others? She knew the risks. Paying to come in implies that there is no blame to be attached to the theatre whatever happens. Surely?’ He looked round for others to agree with him. Slowly, the heads around the table began to nod.
The lawyer coughed gently. ‘I think, Master Bancroft, that buying a ticket to a play does not imply that you expect to be shot,’ he said. ‘Although it is true the law is silent on this issue. Theatres are, after all, new, and the law is old.’
‘Look here, Spenlove.’ The pork butcher pointed down the table with a meaty finger. ‘Master Bancroft has a good point. She knew there are guns in this play. She took the risk when she bought her ticket.’
‘There is a slight complication, gentlemen,’ Henslowe said quietly.
‘What, another?’ spat Bancroft.
‘Mistress Merchant and her sister did not pay to come in …’
‘Aha!’ The pork butcher’s finger was in the air now. ‘That’s done them in then, as far as money from us goes. They crept in without paying.’
A weaselly man opposite the butcher piped up. He was one who had already spent his dividend and he felt his heart descend from his throat for the first time since he had heard of the shooting. ‘Can’t we sue her in Chancery, then?’ he said.
‘She is dead,’ Faunt said, reasonably.
‘Her estate, then?’ the weasel said. ‘For … distress. Loss of income.’
The nods were even more enthusiastic now, but Henslowe felt it incumbent upon him to ruin their relief. He usually went through as many somersaults as were needed to keep his investors happy, but he was not in the business of robbing orphans, even so. ‘There are two things that make that a really bad idea,’ he told the money men. ‘The first is that her estate comprises a house and some money which she has left to her small children and her young sister. All very vulnerable and the children about to be made wards of the courts, so that is unlikely to work. We will have the full weight of the law against us, begging your pardon, of course, Master Spenlove. And secondly, I have to tell you that they didn’t pay because they were in the audience as guests of Master Shakespeare.’
The silence that met that piece of news was absolute and the dust swirling in the weak sunbeams was the only thing moving in the room. As always, the pork butcher was the first to break the silence.
‘Bugger.’
‘Bugger indeed, Master Preston,’ Spenlove said. ‘Perhaps we can put aside talk of money and this … tragedy for the moment and concentrate on how we should proceed with whether this play goes on or not.’ There was something about the pause around the word ‘tragedy’ that made it hard to tell whether he was talking about his fellow investors or the woman stiff and stark in a coroner’s court.
&nbs
p; The weaselly man swivelled his eyes to the counting pots on the table. ‘Do we know the total, Master Henslowe? For yesterday?’
Henslowe poked the pots and set them rolling. ‘As you see, Master Corkerdale,’ he said, ‘they have not been broken yet. I believe that we had a full house, though, so we have done well. We will count them into the chest later. I need to know what I should do about—’
Preston’s fist came down on the table and made the pots jump. ‘All those in favour of going on with the play, say Aye.’
The table roared back, ‘Aye.’
Preston turned a greasy eye in Henslowe’s direction. ‘All those against going ahead with the play and ruining us all, causing our wives and children to live out their lives in poverty and disgrace, say Nay.’
Henslowe set his mouth. The play was indeed the thing, but his conscience was troubling him all the same. A woman was dead. A man was in prison and likely to die there. There was something not quite right in his little world within the wooden O. He pushed himself back from the table.
‘As you wish, gentlemen. I will let Thomas Sledd know to tell the actors and stage men. Meanwhile, I think I’m going to have a little chat with my bear.’ He left the room with what dignity he could muster. What no one heard was his final sally as he clattered down the stairs. ‘At least you can get some sense out of Master Sackerson.’
Thaddeus Bancroft was picking his way carefully down Rose Lane when he became aware of a noise behind him. He knew who it was, so didn’t panic, but it struck him it was not a noise one would wish to hear coming from inside the linen press in a bedroom on a cold dark winter’s night. It sounded as though Master Sackerson, struck down with catarrh, was breathing down a trumpet whilst eating a very soggy pie. Bancroft was being chased by Preston, the pork butcher.
‘Master Preston,’ he said, without turning round.
‘Master Bancroft,’ the butcher wheezed. ‘I wonder, could we sit down? I find walking and talking together somewhat of a trial these days.’
Bancroft looked at him dispassionately and couldn’t help but wonder how long ‘these days’ were. That amount of lard around the middle didn’t happen overnight. And were the man’s eyes simply extraordinarily like the animals he cosseted then slaughtered, or were they ordinary eyes, but very deeply sunk in fat? He settled on a combination of the two.
Bancroft steered him to a low wall and the man lowered himself on to it, gratefully. The wall was very low and getting up would be a challenge, but it was better than walking, any day. Bancroft stayed standing, his eye straying down the street to where Henslowe leaned over the wall into Master Sackerson’s Pit, talking earnestly, throwing his arms around as excitably as any actor and, worryingly for anyone who had money invested in the man’s enterprise, apparently waiting now and then for a reply.
‘Did you chase after me for a reason, Master Preston, or is this a social call?’ Bancroft was a busy man. His business didn’t run itself. Unlike Preston he didn’t have a family of burly sons who could do the work three times as well and twice as fast.
Preston took offence. ‘I just thought I might have a word, Master Bancroft, that’s all. I wouldn’t trust that lawyer further than I could throw my prize pig and as for Corkerdale, he’d murder his mother for fivepence.’
‘What about the new man. Flaunt, was it? I didn’t catch his name properly. Is he a new investor?’
‘That was one thing I was going to ask you,’ the butcher wheezed, his lungs sounding like a bagpipe with moths. ‘Can we afford new investors? My dividend was very small last Lady Day.’
‘Marlowe’s plays will make us all rich men,’ Bancroft said. ‘I can’t remember the last time I went home with lines from a play ringing through my head.’
Preston was aghast. ‘You’ve been to one of his plays?’ He tried to get up by rocking back and forth, but gave it up as a bad job. ‘I didn’t have you down for an arty type, Bancroft. I had you down as a hard-nosed money man.’
Bancroft sighed. The man was, indeed, a pig. ‘I invest in the theatre because I love poetry and beauty,’ he said. ‘If occasionally we have to back plays about rude mechanicals hitting each other with bladders, then so be it. But even then, I attend. I think it only fair.’ He paused. ‘Why do you invest in the theatre?’
‘Why, to make money, of course!’ Preston was as amazed as he was disgusted. That he had been about to ask financial advice from some primping poetry-spouting prig … He was aghast. ‘I invest in all kinds of things. I’ve got money in …’ He raised one fat finger after another, listing his interests: ‘Pigs – well, that goes without saying. The pig will never go out of fashion. Hides. Candlemaking – the rendering side of things, of course. Er … I have some interests in a printer in Paternoster Row, but I think he’s gone a bit religious. Not reliable, so I may remove my patronage there. Er …’ He waggled his thumb as he tried to remember his other money-making ventures.
‘A very mixed lot of interests,’ Bancroft said. ‘I just invest in my business and the theatre. The two things keep me busy enough.’
The butcher leaned over and took a pinch of Bancroft’s doublet between his finger and thumb. Looking down, Bancroft could hardly believe how like a trotter it looked. ‘Nice bit of stuff, Master Bancroft. The wife is always on at me to smarten myself up. Who is your tailor?’
Bancroft conjured up a picture of the man who made his clothes, a gentle-eyed man with a soft voice and agile hands. Going to be fitted for a new shirt or doublet was a little piece of Eden in the middle of Pandemonium and he wouldn’t share his name with this porcine bully. ‘Er … my cousin’s wife arranges all that. I don’t know the man’s name. I am sorry, Master Preston.’
Preston started rocking again, holding his arms out to Bancroft for help. Bancroft looked down at him and smiled ruefully, then put his hands in the small of his back. ‘I’d love to help you, Master Preston,’ he said, ‘but my apothecary says I really mustn’t. I have to dash now. Give my regards to Mistress Preston and the boys.’ And he was gone, picking his way through the mud as though Preston didn’t exist.
As he turned the corner, he stopped an urchin who was running with almost everyone else in earshot to see what the noise was about. ‘If you help that fat man off that wall,’ he told him, ‘he will give you a penny.’
The child’s eyes lit up and he turned to go.
‘Make sure you get it up front,’ Bancroft advised, and went on his way, a smile playing on his thin lips above his fashionable beard.
On his way to commune with Master Sackerson, Henslowe had been waylaid by Richard Burbage again. He was leaning against the oak beams of the Rose, making small talk with a girl and when he saw Henslowe, he broke away and pounded over to the theatre owner.
‘Master Henslowe.’ He doffed his cap with a theatricality that might have rivalled the incomparable Alleyn, assuming Burbage could act at all. ‘I just heard of the tragedy.’
‘Just heard of it, Burbage? You were there, man. You heard it at the time. And saw it. Good day. I have a bear to see to.’
‘No, no.’ Burbage was insistent. ‘Not the woman. Oh, that was … dreadful, of course, quite dreadful. No, no, I mean Master Shakespeare. What a loss to the theatre.’
‘We’ll manage,’ Henslowe grunted.
‘I don’t see how,’ Burbage said, too loudly and too quickly. Then, more cajolingly, ‘I mean, you have a vacancy. Who could possibly play the King of Argier?’
Henslowe frowned. ‘Almost anybody,’ he said.
‘But I …’
‘You,’ Henslowe said, prodding the man’s chest, ‘are not even of my company. Or indeed, any company.’ He looked at the boy’s large nose and straw-stubbled chin. ‘Come back when you can grow a beard.’
From his point of view, the conversation was over, so he crossed to the low wall above the Bear Pit, smiling broadly. ‘How’s my little dumpling?’ he cooed to the four-hundredweight mass of fur, sinew and bone snoring gently on his rock.
FIVE
Because Eleanor Merchant had died in the Rose Theatre and because the Rose lay within the verge, within twelve miles of where Her Majesty lay at Placentia, it was Sir William Danby, the Coroner Royal, who presided over the proceedings.
He had every reason to be pleased with himself. After years of slogging it out at the Bar, from the Inns of Court to the heights of the Queen’s favour, he had become, at last, Coroner Royal and he sat that morning in his outer office in the great Palace of Whitehall, the glittering chain around his neck. There were some unkind souls who said he wore it in the bath.
Hugh Thynne was not one of those. As he waited to be shown into the presence, looking out of the window at the Queen’s guard marching and counter-marching in the mud of the tilt yard, he reflected on his lot in life. He would never see forty again, but the round of a skinner’s assistant had never really appealed and one day he had hung up his scraping knife forever and offered his services to the parish. However, he kept his yearly subscription to the Worshipful Company of Skinners just in case crime began to pall.
The door opened and a liveried flunkey ushered Thynne into the chamber.
‘Thynne.’ Danby was sitting cross-legged at his desk, its surface buried in scrolls. ‘I expected you at the inquest.’
‘Sir William?’
‘The dead man in the Thames.’
‘I thought it was time Constable Williams won his spurs, sir. How was he?’
‘Perfectly good.’ Danby rolled up a paper and slid it aside. ‘Perfectly good. I don’t suppose we know who he was, the dead man?’
‘We are still making our enquiries, Sir William,’ Thynne told him. ‘Now, to the other matter—’
There was a sharp rap at the door. ‘Begging your pardon, Sir William,’ said the flunkey standing there with a letter in his hand. ‘This came just now, sir. It carries the seal of Lord Burghley.’
Danby frowned. ‘Does it now? Er … later, Hugh …’
‘Are we still for supper on Wednesday night?’ Thynne asked. ‘My wife is so looking forward …’