by M. J. Trow
‘I know nothing …’
‘Quite probably, Gaoler. But in this case … What is it of the clock, Master Peach?’
The lout half-turned to check the candle guttering on the side table. ‘Nearly ten of the clock, sir,’ he told him.
‘Hmm, not fair to bother Master Topcliffe at this hour. No doubt he’s had a long and busy day.’
‘Master Topcliffe?’ Wheeler mouthed.
‘Yes,’ Harrison said, as though they were discussing the weather. ‘You do know what Master Topcliffe’s calling is, don’t you, Wheeler?’
‘Y … yes, sir.’ The gaoler’s lips were trembling, his eyes flicking from side to side.
‘Tell me,’ the Constable said with the affability of a kindly old schoolmaster testing one of his pupils.
‘He … he’s a rackmaster, sir.’ The gaoler swallowed with difficulty the bile that was rising in his throat.
Harrison frowned. ‘Not a rackmaster, Wheeler. The Rackmaster. The Queen’s, in fact. Why, he can do things with a length of rope that would make your eyes water.’ He leaned forward. ‘And I mean that.’ He leaned back. ‘But we can’t bother a busy man like that, not tonight. Besides, Master Topcliffe is used to more elegant customers than you – seditious noblemen, Papist priests. I doubt he’d want to dirty his equipment. So …’ A look of concern spread over the Constable’s face. ‘Such a glum face, Master Gaoler,’ he said. ‘We can’t have that. We can provide a useful service here without bothering the important gentlemen at the Tower. Master Peach.’
The lout grabbed both Wheeler’s arms and forced him to kneel upright with his arms pulled taut behind him and Peach’s boot in the small of his back. Harrison stood and slowly drew the silver dagger from the small of his back. He let the blade glint in the candlelight and looked at Wheeler’s face, the working lips, the tear-filled eyes, and shook his head. ‘No,’ the Constable said, ‘we need a smile. Perhaps –’ he pricked the man’s right cheek so that Wheeler gasped and drew back – ‘from there to –’ he jabbed the same point on his left cheek – ‘there.’
Wheeler screamed as he felt the blood trickle down both sides of his face.
‘Let me see,’ Harrison frowned and put his head on one side, as though working out how best to carve a joint of game, ‘if I can join those dots.’
‘He made me do it, sir. I had no choice.’
Harrison was ignoring him, still deciding how best to make the cut as Wheeler struggled against the vice-like grip of Master Peach. ‘Hmm?’ he asked casually. ‘Who made you do what?’
‘The man, sir.’ Wheeler was gabbling for his life now. ‘The popinjay who sprung Shakespeare. He threatened me, sir. My wife. My wife and dear children. Said he’d kill them if I didn’t let Shakespeare go. Kill ’em slow, he would, like …’
‘Like I am going to kill you?’ Harrison smiled, then a thought appeared to come to him. ‘Mr Peach,’ he said, ‘do you know Mrs Wheeler and all the little Wheelers, with their bright eyes and downy cheeks?’
Peach grunted and gave an extra tug on Wheeler’s arms, making him wince. ‘Who’d have him? Only a beast would make the beast with two backs with him.’
Harrison chuckled and leaned forward again to the helpless gaoler. ‘Well, Master Liar, it seems you and I have something in common after all, but apart from our single state, I can think of nothing else. You have one more chance to save yourself and one only. This popinjay, did he give you a name?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Wheeler gabbled and nodded. ‘Oh, yes, he did, sir. I insisted on it. Greene. Robert Greene. Said he was a playwright.’
Harrison looked at Peach and raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t know whether we know a Robert Greene, do we, Peach?’
‘I have heard the name, sir,’ Peach said. ‘I can’t place the face, though.’
‘Never mind for now. I’m sure a playwright is easily enough found.’ He turned back to Wheeler. ‘And how much did he pay you, this playwright?’
‘An angel, sir.’
‘An angel?’ Harrison’s eyebrows almost disappeared into his hairline. ‘An angel? Master Peach, take this man back to the Clink. He is to resume his duties there.’
‘Sir.’ Peach removed his foot from the small of the gaoler’s back and hauled the quivering wreck to his feet, dragging him by the sleeve towards the door.
‘Thank you, sir,’ babbled Wheeler. ‘Oh, thank you.’
‘Oh, Peach,’ Harrison said, ‘I will need to have this decision sealed by my superiors but I have no reason to suppose they will argue with it. My arithmetic may be at fault, but since Master Wheeler is in receipt of an angel and being aware, as I am, of his daily wage, the next payment he will receive will be in the year of our Lord 1618. Give or take.’
‘Give or take, sir,’ Peach agreed and dragged the man away.
It was late that night that Robert Greene found Gabriel Harvey. The man sat with his back to an oak-panelled wall and he had a quill in one hand and a parchment in the other. Candles shone all round him giving him the look of a plaster saint such as Greene remembered from his childhood, the sort men still knelt to in the capitals of Europe he had visited; the sort no man in England dared kneel to any more.
‘I just heard the news,’ the would-be playwright blurted out.
‘What news would that be, Greene?’ Harvey held a finger aloft while he drew a correcting line with his quill in the other hand.
‘The Rose. That actor … what’s his name? Shakespeare?’
‘Indeed.’ Harvey nodded. ‘An interesting diversion. At first I thought Marlowe had engineered it.’
‘Marlowe?’ Greene shook the rain from his hat and found a hook to hang his cloak. Harvey’s face fell. It looked as though the man was planning to stay. ‘I definitely heard Shakespeare.’
‘Shakespeare, Marlowe. Marlowe, Shakespeare. Two buttocks of the one arse, Greene.’
‘In terms of writing, you mean? I’d heard Shakespeare fancied himself as something of a scribbler.’
‘Not in terms of writing, man, in terms of their enormous arrogance. You saw how Marlowe preened when the Prologue announced him. Nauseating.’
‘Precisely.’ Greene looked with a certain envy at the bread, grapes and cheese on Harvey’s platter. ‘That’s why I left. They’ll be closing it down, of course.’
‘Will they?’ Harvey laid the quill down and poured himself some wine. There was no goblet for Greene.
‘Well, of course.’ Greene unhooked his rapier and smoothed down his doublet. He had run all the way from the Vintry and his feet, sodden in their doeskin boots, were letting him know it. It was hard to be a man of action and a slave to fashion, especially while it rained so relentlessly. ‘Stands to reason. Marlowe’s finished.’
‘You haven’t seen the queues, then?’
‘What queues?’ Greene watched intently as Harvey broke off a hunk of cheese and popped it in whole.
‘The queues around the Rose.’
‘Around the Rose?’ Greene knew what he had heard, but felt compelled to check.
‘Dominus Greene.’ Harvey thought it was about time he set out his stall and he carefully checked his scanty locks in a hand mirror on the table before he began. ‘I am a Professor of Cambridge University; noted literary critic; the founder of that select circle of literati called Areopagitica; friend and patron of Edmund Spenser … I could go on, but it would embarrass us both. If I say “around”, I mean around. Indeed, I am short-changing the word. The groundlings stretched along Maiden Lane and round the Bear Garden. The watermen have calluses from rowing them all across.’
‘You mean, since the incident?’
‘I do.’
Greene thought for a moment. ‘Well, then,’ he shrugged, ‘nothing to do with Marlowe. It’s just the prurience of the multitude. Bread and circuses. Henslowe hires out his rubbish tip for prize fights every other Wednesday, not to mention his bear-baiting on the side. Nothing to do with Marlowe.’
‘I can’t help thinking, Dominus Greene,’ Ha
rvey delighted in giving the man his old university title; it brought out the academic gap between them perfectly, ‘that you are missing the point. Whether it’s Marlowe or not, the mindless mob are fighting each other to get in to watch his play. And he and Henslowe are getting richer than God as a result.’
Greene had no answer to that and slumped into a chair, easing his wet feet. He would have dearly loved to take off his boots but they were so tight he needed help both to remove and replace them and he instinctively felt that asking Harvey for a hand with his buskins would not go well. ‘So what actually happened?’ He sighed. ‘At the Rose, I mean?’
It was Harvey’s turn to shrug as he took another swig of wine. ‘It was an accident as far as I could tell,’ he said. ‘Shakespeare’s gun got away from him. The man’s a glover or some such mechanical. What people like that are doing on the stage, I’ll never know.’
There was a silence.
‘Have you heard the other news?’ Greene asked.
‘Other news?’ Harvey selected a grape and peeled it carefully. ‘What other news?’
‘From Cambridge?’
Harvey yawned extravagantly and rocked his chair back on its rear legs, leaning against the wall. ‘Cambridge was so six months ago, Greene,’ he said. He was so patronizing that Greene could feel the metaphorical pat on the head.
‘That may be so,’ Greene said, nastily. He knew that this news would hit Harvey like Sisyphus’ rock right between the eyes and he mended his pace, to give the words their full impact. ‘But it’s more news on Marlowe. They’ve given him his Master’s Degree.’
Harvey’s chair crashed back to earth and the goblet hit the table so that the grapes bounced and the quill, balanced on the inkwell, jumped in the air, over the edge of the table and disappeared, mingled with the rushes on the floor. ‘The Devil you say,’ Harvey snarled. Then, collecting himself, he sneered, ‘That’ll be Copcott’s doing. He and Marlowe were always thick as thieves.’
‘Not this time,’ said Greene, whose university contact had never let him down. ‘This time it’s from the top. Lord Burghley himself.’
‘Burghley?’ Harvey repeated, frowning.
‘Wrote to Copcott, was how I heard it. Threatened them all with fire and brimstone if they didn’t give the degenerate his degree. They caved in.’
‘Of course they did,’ Harvey muttered. ‘Of course they did. Robyn –’ Greene didn’t like it these days when Harvey used his given name. The oiliness of the man’s voice repelled him. But even so – ‘tell me, when you heard that news, did it occur to you to ask yourself what the Queen’s Chief Secretary has to do with a common playwright … oh, saving your presence, of course.’
‘Well … yes, of course,’ Greene bluffed. It wasn’t true, but he sensed the old vituperative Gabriel Harvey was about to make a new entrance.
‘I think we’ve got to investigate this, Robyn,’ Harvey said. There was a look in his eyes that made Greene’s hair crawl. The man had murder in him. ‘What’s today?’
‘Er … Thursday.’
‘Right. Tomorrow morning, get yourself round to Paul’s Cross.’
Greene’s face fell. ‘I can’t stand all that Puritan ranting, Gabriel,’ he said.
‘You’re not going for the sermon, man. The crowd. Watch the crowd. St Paul’s is crawling with likely lads who’d cut their own gammer’s throat for a piece of silver. Find one – no, better – find two. I’d like them to do us a little favour in the case of Master Marlowe.’
Christopher Marlowe had never been much of a man for sleeping and yet again he had reason to be grateful that he didn’t need nine hours between the sheets. Like Nicholas Faunt, night became him; he could see as well as any cat and was as soft on his feet as one. He had left Constance Tyler’s house in a thoughtful mood and had walked along Goose Street to where he had left his horse in the care of an urchin. That the urchin and horse, complete with all the saddle accoutrements and bridle, were still there was a testimony to Marlowe’s personality. Usually, leaving a horse in Blackfriars was the best way of giving it away to the needy, as the horse thieves, the priggers of prancers, liked to think of themselves. He had given the child a coin which made his eyes water and had ambled away, thinking. The jug was an odd thing to find in a respectable household. And why did it come and go? Did Eleanor use it as some kind of ready money, to be taken to the moneylenders when times were hard? But that kind of moneylending was not legal and anyway, how did she get the money to get it back? It was a mystery that he knew he may never solve. But he knew a man who could tell him all there was to know about the jug, and that was where he turned his horse’s head.
Kit Marlowe had a map in his head of his life so far and his life yet to come. His life with his family, in cloistered Canterbury, enduring his father’s financial ups and downs with every tap of his shoemaker’s awl, was far away, over a hill and in the misty distance. His years in cobbled Cambridge were closer, in a dark, shadowy wood, with some parts in such deep shade that even he, who had lived it, could no longer tell what was where. The Devil merged with the Eagle and Child and the Brazen Head and the swirling, terrible waters of Paradise. Some parts of his life landscape were a welter of blood and he could smell it when he was upwind.
But one part was always lit by gentle candlelight and perfumed with amber and lavender. Under that gentle glow were two heads, the grey and the golden, John Dee and his beautiful wife, Helene, Nell, now dead and gone. But John Dee, the Queen’s Magus, was back in London, Marlowe had heard, in another house now that his magickal manor at Mortlake had burned down. He had heard he was at Whitehall; he had heard he was staying out in Richmond, in the country, where his explosions and fires could do no damage. If he wasn’t there, he could be anywhere on the globe, so Marlowe crossed his fingers and rode on, it being better to travel hopefully, possibly, than arrive.
He hardly knew why his spine kept thrilling and the skin on his arms kept springing into goose flesh, but ever since the lead ball had shattered Eleanor Merchant’s throat, he had been waiting for the other boot to fall. Nemesis was waiting round a corner, with a cosh in her hand, and it was Marlowe’s principle to always be ready for whatever Fate might have in store. When it came to reading the future, John Dee was your man; but for the far more useful insight that he could give you into the past, then he had no peer. So Marlowe rode down to Whitehall, with a lead ball in his purse and a silver jug on the pommel of his saddle, all ready to see old friends, or so he hoped. He would reach the Royal Palace by midnight. At any other house he would have the dogs set on him, but he knew that Sam Bowes, Dee’s general factotum and all-round moaner, would still be up. He kept his master’s hours, and they were clock-round.
The turrets of Whitehall stood square before him against the London sky. This was the finest palace in Europe, and the biggest. Marlowe had never been here before and he had no idea if the Queen’s Magus was at home. The rumour had it that the Queen did nothing without consulting the mercurial Dr Dee. And that Dee did nothing without gazing long and hard with those reflective eyes, like a viper’s, into that black scrying mirror of his.
The playwright reined in his horse at the gateway to the tiltyard and dismounted. A sergeant of the Queen’s Guard marched towards him, the light from the torch he carried flickering on helmet and breastplate, throwing off shards of light so that he almost seemed to be covered with St Elmo’s fire.
‘Your name and your business,’ he barked. There were men at his back, bristling with arms and ready to use them.
‘Christopher Marlowe. To see Dr Dee.’
‘Marlowe?’ The sergeant cocked an eyebrow under the helmet brim. The Muse’s Darling meant nothing to him. ‘What is your calling?’
‘Scholar,’ Marlowe said, hoping that was more of an entrée to the great magus than ‘playwright’.
The sergeant looked him up and down. The man was dressed like no scholar he had ever seen. Where was the academic robe? The string of books? The parchment and quill? He glanc
ed at the horse. Large. Expensive. Flemish, if he knew his horseflesh.
‘Kit?’ A voice rang across the parade ground, pale under a fitful moon. ‘Kit Marlowe!’
‘Dr Dee.’ Marlowe bowed low with a flourish and Dee hugged him.
‘Dolt!’ the old man muttered to the sergeant. ‘Since when do you stop my friends at my gate?’
The sergeant was about to point out that this was actually the Queen’s gate, as all twenty-three acres of the place were the Queen’s, but he checked himself. After all, John Dee had the ear of the Queen. After all, John Dee turned men to stone, to toads and to little piles of smoking sulphur. He slapped his sword hilt and stood to attention.
‘You men, there,’ Dee snapped at his lackeys. ‘Tend to this man’s horse. Have you eaten, Kit? Bowes has a capon coming to the boil somewhere. Man, it’s been months. Years, even. How have you been? I hear great things of your plays. I must come to see one, one of these days.’
Marlowe looked into those blank eyes and decided to risk it. ‘But surely, Doctor, I saw you one afternoon, at the Rose, sitting at the back. My first Tamburlaine, I think it was.’ He smiled. ‘A Tuesday, if memory serves. You should have asked me. I could have got you a much better seat.’
Dee patted his arm. ‘You were mistaken, Kit,’ he said. ‘But had I visited your play house, it would have been a Wednesday. Much more propitious. Come, come in and have some food. Sam will be so pleased to see you. Tell me what you have been doing with yourself.’
‘Don’t you know?’ Marlowe laughed. ‘I have often felt your scrying mirror shining on the back of my neck.’
‘I don’t spy on my friends, Kit,’ the old magician said, his long white beard wagging as the pair clattered along the Queen’s corridor. ‘But my spies tell me you are doing well. Quite the coming man these days. Smart rooms, a manservant, no less.’
‘Windlass is no more my servant than Bowes is yours,’ Marlowe told him. ‘Like Sam, he chooses to keep company with me, in exchange for a small stipend. I like him. He has no … side. When you are with actors a lot, you have to find reality where you can.’