Death of Kings

by Philip Gooden

  I tucked the note about my person and waited for the opportunity to pass it privily to Mistress Isabella. I was confident she would return to the playhouse; had in fact already learned that that was her intention in the same dialogue in which I had ascertained her skill at letters. Sure enough, she did pay us a return visit in a day or two. And when she repaired to the tiring-house after the performance I slipped her my little epistle, the product of my own little pen. I think she was half expecting such a move. Certainly there was no flinch of surprise when I thrust the folded-up square of paper into her hand. Instead, I noted that it closed round the paper, and round my own hand, with a most promising alacrity.

  What was on the paper? Well. . . a poem, and a subscribed suggestion that we should find a mutually convenient time to continue the dialogue which had begun so agreeably at the Bankside bear-pit. I wrote a poem because . . . dare I say it? . . . I was emulating the probable approach of my high-browed fellow, WS. For sure, he wooed whole audiences with words, and ladies in particular would be sure to tumble to his honey tongue. Not that I knew any of this for fact but I presupposed it, clinging to that little fragment of evidence of seeing WS and Isabella Horner emerging together from the house in Long Southwark.

  As I say, she clutched at my own little poetic offering. Here was a lady who did not waste time. Her actions spoke not just louder, but instead of, words. As I chatted with my co-players, I noticed her surreptitiously reading my message. When I next glanced in her direction she’d gone. This was disappointing. For a moment I wondered whether I’d offended her.

  But not so. For, as I was walking in my street costume down the narrow passage that led away from the tiring-house and out of the Globe, I felt a tug at my sleeve, almost as if it had snagged on a handle. I was in the rearward of a small group, including Jack Horner, as it happened. We were on our way to an ale-house, The Goat & Monkey or The Knight of the Carpet, most likely. I looked round and there, through the crack of a door slightly ajar, shone the dark eyes of Mistress Horner. I hardly had time to take in the sight of her face before the door closed. I made my mumbled excuses to the company – forgotten something – scroll for next day’s performance, ring that must’ve dropped on tiring-house floor, word that had to be exchanged with the Tire-man about my costume – made my excuses, catch up with you later, dropped back, counted twenty, rapped soft on door – and was admitted, in every sense.

  It was dark. This was one of those tiny interior rooms, and one which I hadn’t come across before, more like a press or a closet, probably used for storage. I realised afterwards that Mistress Horner must know the Playhouse well, either that or she had found this corner by chance. There was something material on the floor to take off its hardness, but not by much. Mistress Horner and I, we tussled in the dark and I was soon underneath and she on top, where she impaled herself most gladly. She was as lithe and slippery as a weasel and it was soon finished.

  So it began.

  A closet may be a good enough place to commence an amour but it is not necessarily appropriate for its continuance. I have to admit also that I was unhappy about taking my pleasure at my place of work. I suppose there may have been an element of guilt or shame in this. I did not like the idea of the Globe playhouse, the seat of so much that was admirable and refined, becoming the cistern of our lust. I was also a little uneasy at the prospect of being seen with Isabella by Master WS (and to a lesser extent by Jack Horner). For though I was perhaps emulating our playwright in my pursuit of this dark lady, I did not care to let him see this.

  On one of our early occasions together I said, “You have been careful with that note I sent you?”

  I really wanted her to comment on the poem I had penned. The accompanying note, about continuing a ‘dialogue’, did not give much away. But the poem, with its talk of flashing orbs, coral lips and dark locks, was much more revealing. I considered it one of my best effusions. Not that I’d ever claim to be a poet.

  “Note?”

  “Before our first . . . you know.”

  “I have it somewhere about the place. You are not the first to send me notes.”

  “Or poems?”

  “Or poems.”

  My heart beat a little quicker because, you see, I had not yet dared to approach the subject of her connection to WS. I was most eager to discover whether I was indeed following the playwright’s trail. Indeed, I wondered whether it was not in some sense because I believed that he had been in this position with Isabella – viz. bed – that I wasn’t here too, now. That, and her brisk and avid seduction of me conjoined, had put me where I was.

  “Does Jack send you poems?”

  “A husband does not send his wife poems,” she said. “Besides, does he look like a poet?”

  “What does a poet look like?” I said, hoping that she would make some affectionate and flattering reply. Instead, she looked thoughtful as though my question was a real one.

  “It is more what he looks at, or how he looks, that makes him a poet,” she said somewhat cryptically.

  She was similarly unforthcoming on my attempts to find out where she came from. There was something unEnglish, unstolid, about Isabella. I wondered if there was some gypsy in her; that, or a strain of something hot and southern. She had decided strong appetites that needed satisfying and brooked no obstacles.

  We required somewhere to meet and she did not consider my Coven-quarters adequate, once I’d given her a brief description of them. She encouraged me on a handful of occasions to come to the place she shared with Jack, claiming that her husband was often out in the evenings. These lodgings were indeed a part of the house in Long Southwark where I’d first glimpsed her. I fell in with this proposal somewhat unwillingly but always supposing her to have more to lose by the arrangement than I, if things went wrong.

  Mistress Isabella generally knew if Master Jack was going to be absent on a particular evening – where he went I never enquired, nor did she seem inclined to volunteer the information (if she ever knew in the first place) – and she contrived an ingenious way of signalling to me whether she expected to be ‘unoccupied’ for a few hours.

  She was in the habit of bringing to the playhouse some little gift of comestibles for the players – or at least for those, like Martin Hancock and now myself, who were close to her husband. This was the avowed reason she had come to the tiring-house on the first occasion we’d met. She was a good cook, producing excellent comfits and sweetmeats and other confectionery. Now our secret signal was this: if her little cakes contained raisins, then the coast was clear for that night, the gates unguarded and her portals open. If, on the other hand, the cakes contained no raisins then it signified that she expected her husband to be at home that evening.

  You may imagine with what appetite I bit each time into one of her sweeetmeats, sometimes proferred direct by her if she was attending a performance but more often conveyed to the playhouse by husband Jack. Little did he suspect that, as he was passing around this tasty evidence of his wife’s skill at grinding, mixing and baking, he was actually sending a stealthy love-message. About all this I felt a curious exultation, but one admixed with some guilt and discomfiture. In the end, the guilt and discomfiture gained the upper hand. For might it not have been said as I eagerly looked out for those cakes containing raisins, that I was actually looking out to ‘raise sin’ with Mistress Horner. (Forgive the pun, which I consider to be bad enough for Master William Shakespeare himself.) But the joke masks a serious face. I am sufficiently my parson-father’s son to know what a sin is. Oddly, the times I spent with Nell had a kind of openness and harmlessness to them, compared with the dark weasel-y hours in Mistress Horner’s company.

  On another of our bed-encounters together I asked her, “Do you know Master Shakespeare?”

  “Master Shakespeare?”

  “Our playwright and shareholder in the Chamberlain’s.”

  “Oh, you know that I know some of you.”

  “Like this?”

 
“There are too many lovers of boys in the playhouses for much of this.”

  “Not in the Chamberlain’s,” I said indignantly.

  She rolled her cat-eyes.

  “Your question is an impertinent one in any case.”

  “Then it is as well you haven’t answered it.”

  I was obviously going to discover very little about her. Not the least of the mysteries surrounding her was how she’d inveigled Jack into marriage – for some reason, this was how I put it to myself. Jack was open and guileless while she was dark and secretive, and passionate.

  However, I did not feel happy or at ease with her. There was an itch scratched, an urge blunted, but nothing more. I felt somehow to one side of Isabella, not central as I was with my Nell. And this was perhaps not unfair, since my own interest in Mistress Horner had first been provoked by seeing her in the playwright’s company.

  Accordingly, after only a few exchanges – and I promise those of you who worry about my behaviour, it was only a few exchanges – well, not that many – in her (and Jack’s) bed, I steeled myself to declare that I no longer wished to enjoy her company in this fashion.

  “Why is this?” she said, turning on me. We were not yet lying down and, if I had my unwicked way with her, we never would be again. For I had determined on this little scene and speech before we descended bedwards, considering that my virtuous edge would be blunted by any other course.

  “I am Jack’s friend,” I said, “and I cannot continue to be his and your friend – in this fashion.”

  I gestured at the bed which lay between us.

  “Admit that this is nothing to do with friendship, this is because I do not satisfy your curiosity, your endless questions about Master Shakespeare – and others.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said (though I did).

  “I will not be left,” she said, advancing round the bed to stand near me.

  “I’m sure there are many – I mean, there must be—”

  She slapped me across the face. Water started to my eyes.

  “You shall not leave me. Me.”

  I backed away as she advanced with both hands raised and fingers crooked, ready to rake my cheeks. My brimming eyes made her image wobble.

  I thought I heard her hiss but it was probably imagination.

  “This began at the pit,” I said, my breath coming short, “but it is not necessary that it should end with a fight too.

  I ducked as she swung a hooked arm across my head.

  “We may still be friends – in other ways,” I said, absurdly in the circumstances. “Please.”

  The other arm raked at me from the opposite direction.

  I almost vaulted across the bed and with it once again between us secured a breathing-space. I am no expert in close combat. I was, in truth, afraid of her. I might grab her round the middle but unless I could control her flailing claws I feared that my face would be marked.

  “Look,” I said, “I have an idea – which I will tell – as long as you keep your distance.”

  “And I tell you I will not be left, Master Revill,” she said.

  “But I tell you that you may leave me” I said, having an inkling of what this was about. “I tell you that you should leave me.”

  “Why?”

  Her hands dropped to her side. She gazed at me across the field of battle and pleasure, the deferred field, its surface slightly dented by my vault.

  “Because – because – I am no real lover of women.”

  “Say you so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your body seemed to say otherwise.”

  “Then my body belies my heart. My true taste is for others of my own sex. I am guilty of that sin which the ancient Greeks approved of.”

  I regretted these words almost as soon as they were out of my mouth. They were hostages to fortune. To confess to what I was confessing to, even perhaps to a friend, was to take a risk. To confess it to a possible enemy was foolhardy. I saw suddenly that a lie can be as dangerous as the truth.

  “You are a filthy pederast.”

  I bridled at this, almost as if I were genuinely what I was claiming to be and yet wanted to distinguish myself from the worst of the caste.

  “No, no, I have no ingles.”

  “Ingles?”

  “No catamites, no attendant boys . . . those I am not interested in, but grown men only.”

  “Like my husband?”

  “Well, I . . .”

  “You said you could not be friends with him and me.”

  Now that she asked this, I was forced to consider an answer, and my hesitation perhaps testified to a momentary doubt in my own mind – hadn’t I been drawn towards Jack Horner pretty well ever since joining the Chamberlain’s? Were I so inclined, he might well be my bent. On the other hand, my hesitation could be ascribed to tact, a natural unwillingness to confess to the wife a shared partiality for the husband.

  “Yes, so I said . . .”

  I hung my head down in mock-acknowledgement of what she’d suggested. She stood, still on the far side of the bed, gazing at me with an expression that I read as being somewhere between amusement and amazement. At least her claws were sheathed.

  “You’re joking, Master Revill.”

  “No joke.”

  “I do not believe you.”

  “Whether you do or not, it is so.”

  “So, you are determined that we shall not encounter each other here again?”

  “Yes,” I said, mustering firmness. “Since I am travelling on a different route, Mistress Horner.”

  “What did I say about players? You’re all the same.”

  “We are not,” I began, then remembered that it would be better to agree with her. “Well, obviously some of us are . . .

  “But you think you can travel on two roads at once, do you, Master Revill?”

  “This has been a deflection from my true course,” I said, glancing down at the unrumpled bed and then across at her. “A pleasant deflection, naturally,” I added quickly, seeing her eyes narrow.

  “Unnaturally, you had rather say,” she said.

  I shrugged rather than be drawn further down the road of metaphor. She, however, had more to deliver in this vein.

  “You will not be reformed?”

  “If anyone could have reformed me, it would have been you, Mistress Isabella.”

  For the first time it occurred to me that she had, in her litheness and hardness, something of the boy.

  “Then if you still wish to be reformed, you will accept something which can put you on the correct path and take you away from those filthy by-ways that you tread.”

  “Very well,” I said, not having the least idea what she was proposing.

  She bent down and rummaged in a little box that sat on the floor. From it she withdrew a small green glass bottle.

  “There. Go on, take it. It has no teeth. It is a potion to put your heart in order – if you wish.”

  For the sake of quietness, I accepted the proffered phial.

  “You have tasted my cakes and raisins. You know that I am an expert maker and blender. Now, when you tire of treading your boys’ by-paths, you should drink from my little bottle, and you will find yourself restored to the highway of women.”

  “Why didn’t you give it to me straight without saying anything?” I asked. “If it is so potent.”

  “I had no idea of your leanings before. And now our skirmish is over, Master Revill. Come back when you have tasted my potion.”

  I almost feared her calmness as much as her fury; certainly I trusted it less. However, I promised to keep the bottle safe and sound, and to drink it if I felt the wind changing direction and my weathercock swinging accordingly. Of course, the first thing I did when I got back to my lodgings was to put the green bottle in a safe place. I was about as likely to drink my own piss as taste the contents of Mistress Horner’s potion. More likely, actually.

  Middle

  Wednesday 4 February �
�� Sunday 8 February 1601

  Just after midnight I made my way to the corner of Hart Street, as instructed by Nat the Animal Man. The February night was again crisp, clear, cold. The close-set houses clustered about me, all dark and inquisitive. My heart thudding, I waited to be surprised, as on the earlier evening – and learned, incidentally, that waiting to be surprised is more troubling to one’s well-being and tranquillity of mind than simply being surprised. Would I be taken off, blindfolded, to be addressed by Robert Cecil once more? Would I have to hop and dance through the dark streets again?

  I have to say that I already felt dizzy and benighted. So many people seemed to be making demands of me, and insinuating that on my compliance hinged the welfare of the state. So much was obscure and likely to remain so. One demand clashed with another. Loyalty to my sovereign lady the Queen was one thing, loyalty to the Chamberlain’s Company was another, and it did not seem as though the two loyalties were destined to meet and shake hands. Apart from this, there was my respect and, dare I say it?, affection for Messrs Burbage, Shakespeare, Phillips, etc. which was a thing almost apart from my allegiance to the Company. Yet there could be no doubt from what what Sir Robert had told me – and from what I had overheard for myself in the Bookkeeper’s office during the morning – that some very grave matter was at hand.

  I remembered once again that rumble of thunder heard by a child walking on a country track.

  “Master Revill?”

  This time the figure seemed to rise up in front of me like a column of dirty smoke. The voice, soft, pervasive, was that of my conductor of the other evening. He was a darker figure against a dark night. And now he owned a name. Nemo: nobody.

  “Follow me, sir.”

  I heard his footsteps clacking on the cobbles. No supporter emerged to usher me by the arms. I was trusted to follow. But I was certain that if I failed to follow him voluntarily I would be compelled to do so. We were heading down towards the black, glittering river. A shivering draught blew off the water as if a door had been left open to a cold world that lay even beyond the night.