by Peter Tonkin
Sir Francis's mind remained trapped in his useless body, wide awake and helpless while Robert Poley, his master intelligencer, came in and looked through his papers. Where would Poley go, now that he no longer had Sir Francis's protection? The old man wondered. To Essex, so hungry for power? To the quiet Robert Cecil who would make such good use of those papers? To his own impatient son Tom down at Scadbury? They would all give a man like Poley much employment.
Poley was replaced by another with free access to St Mary's Papey - Thomas Phellippes, Sir Francis's cypher and code expert and sometime right-hand man. Phellippes, as ever, came in with the brutal Richard Baines - the man they used if a throat needed cutting or an arm or two breaking. They found that his papers were all gone and looked coldly down on him. Then they left. Like Poley, they would be heading for the Court and new employment, under some other lord's livery.
Of course Sir Francis's son, Tom, was summoned up from his great house at Scadbury. But the old man was dead by the time Tom arrived. And that was perhaps as well; for had it not been Tom who sent the poison up in the hands of his vital young friend?
They told the Queen the man she called her 'Moor' had died of a seizure. And they never found his papers, which named every spy and suspect from the Queen's side to the kennel, in all the broad land and as far afield as Reims and Rome itself.
April 1594
Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, Earl of Derby, sat in his private room in Lathom House, reading a letter which had been sent to him by two of his men. Lord Strange's Men they called themselves, and wore his livery badges, enjoying his patronage. But he had not expected that they should write to him in this fashion. This was the sort of information that should go to the Council or to Mr Secretary Cecil, if it were true. If it were true.
Had it come from another source, he might have consigned it to the fire that burned just beyond the irons at his feet. But he knew the writing - it was Will Shakespeare's sure enough. And the information seemed to have come from the new man, Julius Morton. And he had impressed Ferdinando as a man with wit and contacts. And, of course, the information was to do with Essex and the crew he had gathered around him. Yes, even if Morton's suspicions were ill founded, they would make useful ammunition to one of the Walter Raleigh, 'School of the Night', faction. Useful bargaining counters to a man already in trouble with the Council and the Court for being used as a Catholic figurehead now that Phellippes and Poley's exposure of the Babbington Plot had rid the country of a nest of conspirators and their Queen of Scots as well.
But Morton and anyone else who shared this information had better take care, thought Lord Strange darkly. For such accusations could be almost unimaginably dangerous. Especially if there was even the tiniest tincture of truth about them.
A servant tapped at the door. 'Enter,' called Lord Strange.
It was a bowl of strawberries, from his own estate, grown under glass against a south facing wall in the new Italian fashion. The first of the season. As he read on, Lord Strange began to eat them, his mind so consumed by the content of the letter that he did not notice their unusually tart flavour.
The first hint he got that he had been poisoned was when his stomach suddenly spasmed. A great wave of yellow bile washed, scalding, up his throat and out over Will Shakespeare's careful writing. The paper, horribly weighted, slopped down into his lap, and Lord Strange's clear, trapped mind, watched with distant horror as the writing and then the paper itself began to dissolve.
When they found him, some hours later, the well-spattered fire irons had begun to dissolve as well.
Chapter Five - The Deadly Blade
London, June 1594
Tom Musgrave stood at the curtain behind the stage-left entrance on to the thrust of the Rose Theatre's stage, marvelling at the manner in which Will Kempe, the greatest clown of the age, could turn an audience from thunders of laughter to whispers of fear.
'I bite my thumb, sir...' called the suddenly dangerous clown, in the words Will Shakespeare had chosen from the bag-full of Italian insults Tom had brought back with him from his years at school in Siena. The fencing master knew what the next sounds must be - the serpentine hisses of rapiers as Kempe and his companions on the stage drew their long, dangerous, still-strange swords against their Montague and Capulet enemies. So the first-ever performance of the new play of Romeo and Juliet got fully under way.
Tom was not so certain of what the audience's reaction would be to the wild rapier play. After all the rehearsals at both acting and fencing in the new Italian style with the new Italian weapons, this was the first time the deadly foreign sword-style had been seen on the stage, outside private performances. Rapier play was still whispered as a black art here, like lock-picking, gun-smithing and witchcraft.
Tom swung back, his mouth dry and his throat tight with the tension they were all feeling. The theatres had just reopened after two years of the Plague - this was their one chance to repair their fortunes - a chance made infinitely more important by the recent death of their patron Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange. The last few golden angels from his bounty would keep them going until his affairs were wound up and the actors truly became masterless men, vagrants, beggars.
In the shadows by the tiring house, he could see Assistant Sword-Master Ugo Stell, going through Tybalt's deadly passado with his lead-coated blade, as Will Shakespeare himself rehearsed his tragic, unexpected death as Mercutio.
During the last few busy weeks, the new star of Lord Strange's Men, Julius Morton, had learned Mercutio's part - but he was nowhere to be found this afternoon, so Will Shakespeare himself was planning to double as Escalus the Prince of Verona and his witty, half-mad, ill-fated nephew Mercutio.
But halfway through the action, Mercutio was doomed to die, centre-stage, first victim of the black art of rapier play. Under Ugo's watchful eye, therefore, the lethal Italian pass went home again, thrusting the yardlong skewer of the rapier apparently through the playwright's breast. Will, seemingly slaughtered, clutched at the little bag of red vinegar beneath his shirt - but not hard enough to burst it into life's-blood yet.
Abruptly, a wave of sound broke in over the fencing master, causing him to spin on his heel and reach for his weapon. His eyes raked the Rose Theatre's backstage area as though it had been a Holland battlefield or a Siena stews. The bookkeeper, doubling as prompt, was gesturing wildly, shouting silently through the bear-baiting bellow of the crowd. There was something seriously amiss.
Two of the company, costumed as the Lords Montague and Capulet, hurled themselves out on to the stage and the others pushed nearer, with Tom at the vanguard and Ugo by his side. Round the edge of the curtain, Tom could see pandemonium on the stage, and the simple unbelieving awe of the audience beyond. A full battle was in progress, swords dazzling and spitting, blade against blade, pikes and partisans waving. This was a far greater riot than any they'd rehearsed. The short hairs on Tom's neck pricked.
In through the far curtain, the late Julius Morton came sliding in a flurry of rushes, bursting back from the stage itself. He was breathless and his face was pale. 'They are all at war out there,' he snapped, his voice carrying through an ebb in the bellowing. 'Two or three braggarts on the stage stools have snatched out their weapons and joined in our civil strife. Tom, Will, we must bring this to conclusion soon or there will be more than vinegar shed.'
Will Shakespeare brushed past Tom's shoulder. He had changed into his costume and was drawing himself up to represent the Prince of Verona. The fencing master swung in behind him. He used the last freedom before the heaving press of bodies to slither out his blade, all too well aware that his alone of all the company was not blunted with a coating of dull lead.
The afternoon was sultry and overcast, an imminent threat of thunder making the whole high heaven reflect their little turmoil here. The seven sides of the Rose's galleries rose up against the roiling clouds, threatening the thrust of the stage and the milling men upon it. Even after his increasingly close associatio
n with Will and all the rest, Tom found it disorientating to be under so many eyes. In the hectic months since his return, he had given exhibition bouts in plenty of the new Italian style taught him by Capo Ferro - but never before a house as large or as thrilling as this one. And never on a stage as full of fighting men.
All among the actors, adding deadly reality to their carefully rehearsed pretence, a dozen rich gallants who had paid extra to sit up on the stage itself, had joined in the apparent riot. Bodies hurled this way and that, blades whipped in fans of light and lightning thrusts. Tom's eyes narrowed, trying to discriminate the deadly silver flash of the unguarded point from the dullness of the leaden ones. Pikestaffs, partisans, staves were flourished. There was no room for grand movements - and had he not been drawn already, he would have been helpless. In a press like this it was easy enough to see how Kit Marlowe must have died little more than a year since, fighting to get out his long blade in the little back room of Mistress Bull's house at Deptford while Ingram Frizer's dagger went in through his eye.
Will Shakespeare strode forward, filling his princely robes and role, preparing to claim the stage and Tom went with him, close behind. All around was a babel of sound, no word clear amid the grunts and gasps.
No word clear save one, suddenly: 'Mercutio!'
Hearing the name, Will Shakespeare, caught between one role and the next, swung back. Tom felt a jarring push and a sliding tug at his arm. Will froze, then stepped back and turned away once more.
The press of bodies around Tom eased immediately as the citizens of Verona with their pikestaffs seemed to reclaim the peace. Will strode to the front of the stage and raised his hands. 'Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,' he bellowed in the prince's voice.
And order was restored.
Tom met Julius Morton in the stultifying gloom immediately backstage the instant after his exit. The new man had on Mercutio's gaudy jerkin now, and was ready to accompany Dick Burbage who was playing Romeo onstage in a few moments' time. Will followed Tom off and strode over to the tiring room to pull off the prince's robes. No sooner had he begun to do so than he called, his voice low but urgent, 'Tom!'
Tom hurried across to his friend and found him standing with the royal cloth of gold on his left shoulder and his hand upon his ribs. 'I've been hit,' he said. Tom went forward at once and pulled Will's shirt up. Across the outer curve of his ribs, a little below his left breast, stood a ragged welt, sluggishly weeping blood.
'This was a close matter,' said Tom grimly. 'You are lucky the blade did not strike true or things would have gone badly for you, Will.'
'And from the look of things, I have you to thank for turning the point,' said the actor, gesturing. Tom looked down and remembered the sudden numb tugging through his flesh. The outer swell of his left arm was in like case a finger's breadth above the elbow; his sleeve bright with blood.
'I had not thought yours a dangerous profession,' said Tom. 'Until now.'
'There have been those that found it so,' said Will.
'Kit Marlowe, from your tales of him,' said Tom.
'But it was not this, among all his other interests, which got him killed.'
'And I doubt this thrust was much to do with acting either. Or with playmaking, unless your Puritan critics have armed them selves with something mightier than pen or pamphlet. Are you still a Master of Cyphers, Will?'
'Of letters only, these days.' There was less easy affability than Tom was used to hearing in Will's voice as he replied.
'And no fathers or husbands jealous of wives or daughters seduced away?'
'None of recent note.' The voice was icy now. A stranger's voice.
'Then it is accident and nothing more, Will,' concluded Tom. 'But from the look of these scratches I would say that we should look about ourselves. For out there on the stage there is a blade the equal of mine. From Ferrara or Toledo it has come to London and to Bankside and the Rose. Such blades are drawn to drink heart's blood, Will. You, who have written such a play as this must know that better than most. Look about you and pray that heart's blood may not be yours or mine.'
The two men's eyes met, each pair, friendly enough on the surface but guarded in their depths. Had either man been able to see into the future even a little way, a word or two might have been spoken now and a wilderness of sorrow saved. But both were blind to the future and so they guarded their tongues an instant longer.
A roar of laughter called them back to the business on the stage where Kempe once again reigned supreme. Had either been ready to say more, the chance was gone, for all the company was suddenly a-bustle with preparations for the Capulets' ill-starred banquet.
Chapter Six - The Murder of Mercutio
The murder of Mercutio was the turning point of the drama's action. Its manner was so much a part of the grim message of the play that the relentless approach of this first public execution of the lethal rapier passado began to gain an unbearable weight and moment. Tom, who had used the teachings of Maestro Capo Ferro to devise the deadly duel, felt a keenness of suspense he thought he had left on the battlefields of his youth. Will Shakespeare, who had seen the dangers of the new weaponry and written it all down in his play, was hardly heartier. Both had lost a deal of blood, however, and would later blame the lowering of their spirits on that fact. Ugo Stell and Dick Burbage, who had practised for hours, were hang-dog in the tiring house and only Dick's genius as an actor made him seem to shine with happiness onstage when he acted the love-struck Romeo. All the rehearsals, the warnings and the care, seemed, of a sudden, so petty in the face of the danger. Among the cunningly contrived stage deaths of past actors - even to the excesses of Kit Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Barabbas - the calculated, casual realism of this one was new and shocking to them all.
Because of this, as the lines that brought the dreadful moment closer were spoken, so those who had limited occupation on stage began to gather hard behind the entrance curtains, looking warily out at the relentlessly unfolding drama on the Rose's stage. Something of the impending gloom communicated itself even to the audience, for as the sultry, thunderous afternoon wore on, not even Kempe in the Nurse's costume could keep their laughter loud. Not even Burbage could lighten their unease. Not even the great Ned Alleyn, dressed as the holy Friar Lawrence, could raise their drooping spirits. In fact the only man there seemingly unaware of the gathering gloom was Mercutio himself - or Julius Morton, who was playing him as a pale shadow of the dead mercurial genius Kit Marlowe, whose character had informed the part, ghost-like, in the first place.
Morton was full of frenetic spark and sport. It was his fantastic duels of wit with Romeo, his ribald sallies at the Nurse, which raised the loudest guffaws. His flights of fantasy held the whole theatre entranced, and had both the bookkeeper, Tom Pope, and Will himself scrabbling among the prompt books to discover whether he spoke the true lines as written or not.
At last there were only Morton and the boy playing Benvolio on the straw-strewn boards, between the rows of fashionable gentlemen who had paid their extra sixpence for a stool in the public eye up on the stage itself. Morton was sometimes speaking Mercutio's lines and sometimes extemporising, talking of the heat, the Capulets, the dangers of mad blood and swordplay. Will was seated by the bookkeeper. As Tom gave up his examination of the seated gallants and his quest to identify which of them might possess the deadly sword, he glanced across the cavernous backstage and caught the playwright's eye. Will had a tight smile - a flash of teeth, thought Tom, like the grin of an angry dog.
Sly, who played the sneering Capulet swordsman Tybalt, the King of Cats with such a lethal scratch, thrust past Tom with an arrogant rudeness that would have earned a challenge anywhere else, and swaggered out on to the stage, already deep in character. His movement left the curtain caught back and round it, Tom could see more clearly right across the stage. Once again the solid thrust of wood was filling with brightly costumed men - for Tybalt did not arrive alone. Face to face in the centre of a gathering crowd,
Sly and Morton confronted each other as Tybalt and Mercutio, their characters in the play. Tom could see well beyond them now, to the wide-eyed gaping of the groundlings who could once again scent deadly violence in the heavy wind. Over by Will and the prompt, Dick Burbage pushed through the stage-right curtain and out on to the boards. A gasp went round the galleries as Tybalt's wrathful, rolling eye fell upon Romeo, the object of his deadly rage. Insult and counter-insult flew. Tybalt advanced. But Romeo began to fall back; refusing to fight; refusing to say why, and accepting jibe after deadly jibe meekly. Until Mercutio himself, enraged beyond control by his friend's abject grovelling cowardice, ripped out his rapier and threw himself into the attack.
The duel exploded at once. No mere street-brawl this, but an exhibition bout, as carefully choreographed as any galliard danced at the Queen's bright Court across the river. The glittering clash of the swords ran counterpoint to the snarling of the duellists, and, running fleet-foot, through the sharp steel heart of it, Romeo himself desperately trying to beat the blades down with his very hands. The company onstage fell back into a horseshoe of bodies, its end open wide to the audience, giving the three men room to move. No sooner did they do so than the sixpenny gallants were up off their stools again, suddenly the only people in the packed house unable to see the action. Real, fashionable finery pushed between the lordly cast-offs that the actors wore. Tension simmered, after the explosion into violence of the earlier battle scenes. The self-important gentlemen jostled increasingly roughly for a better view. The actors, sticking grimly to their marks with the deadly dazzle of rapier blades scant inches from their noses, pushed back. The three wild characters with their two clashing, shimmering foils whirled around the barrier of their companions' broad breasts.