Death of Kings

by Philip Gooden

  Essex had raised a head in order to save his own. Now he looked most certain to lose it. Southampton too perhaps, and I could not help but regret the likely execution of a man with whom I’d passed a few pleasant minutes. I wondered at Master WS’s reaction too. If I knew a little more about these things than the common man in the Strand it was because we in the Chamberlain’s were deeply interested in the uprising and its aftermath. Not only because of our minor role in mounting Richard on the Saturday afternoon. Now Master Augustine Phillips had been summoned before the Council to explain why we had gone ahead with such a dangerous production. Others in the Company might have to follow him and explain themselves as well.

  For my own part, I was glad that there was such a bulwark of older, more experienced men to bear the brunt of the world’s quizzing and disapproval, and possibly worse. It did not seem likely that the Council’s attention would be directed towards an insignificant young player. In any case, I told myself, I was working for the agents of that Council. Had I not enjoyed a midnight meeting with Secretary Cecil? Was I not a dutiful spy for the mysterious Nemo? These connections would provide protection – surely?

  Nevertheless I also took a small measure to safeguard myself. In my chest in my room at the Coven were the notes I’d made of the conversation between Sir Gelli and Augustine Phillips. Although Captain Nemo knew that I’d eavesdropped on the scene, having heard my account of it on his dark boat, no one but I knew of the existence of a written record. Hadn’t I seen in the case of Richard Milford how incriminating a few sheets of paper could be? The moment I got back to my lodgings after quitting the Essex boatman and being quit by the Essex Italian, I went anxiously to my chest.

  Now, in the way of such things, it may be that I expected to find it gone. After all, Nat had already tampered with my unlockable chest with fatal results. Were this a story, the papers would most certainly have disappeared, filched by persons unknown. But no, the dangerous document was still there, tucked up close to my Chamberlain’s contract. Be sure that I speedily set it alight and watched with satisfaction as the sheets containing Merrick’s and Phillips’ sentences curled and blackened. I ground the ashes thoroughly into my filthy, uneven floor. As a way of disposing of compromising words, it was preferable to eating them.

  End

  Friday 13 February – Tuesday 24 February 1601

  After all this excitement, I could now get back to worrying about minor domestic matters, such as the aftermath of my amour with the murderous Isabella Horner. And in order to describe what happened next I am going to introduce:

  Another Interlude

  Scene: The Goat & Monkey Tavern

  Time: One morning a few days after the events described on the preceding pages. In fact an ominous day, Friday the Thirteenth. Whatever its number, Friday is an unlucky day anyway, they say, particularly in matters of the heart.

  Characters: Jack Wilson, Jack Horner, Martin Hancock, myself and a handful of other men of the Company.

  Theme: There was only one theme to our conversation in those days: the uprising, and the role which we in the Chamberlain’s had played on the borders of Essex and his business; what was going to happen to the rebels; what might happen to us players.

  (Mind you, we kept our opinions pretty much to ourselves. We talked low in taverns; we spoke in asides in the tiring-house. On this occasion I was only half listening to the conversation that was flying to and fro between Wilson and Horner and the rest. Normally, I’d have been willing enough to throw in my groatsworth, though always mindful that I harboured great secrets of state. But I was distracted. For when we arrived at the Goat & Monkey who should be there but Mistress Isabella Horner, drinking hard on a bench and all the while looking displeased and dark. Strangely – considering that she’d tried to poison me – I felt a little stab of desire. Her husband greeted her without much surprise but with the abstracted air which I’d seen him use before, as if to say ‘What are you doing here?’ He was more interested in pursuing the debate about Richard II with his fellows. That left Mistress Horner to me, so the following talk ensued when I’d got a drink and positioned myself next to her. I suppose I intended to . . . have it out with her. Recklessly, I would accuse her of being a reckless homicide. We spoke in urgent but subdued tones. My heart beat hard in my chest. Here sat the wicked woman who was responsible for the death of a poor innocent, Nat the Animal Man. And almost responsible for the death of another poor innocent, Nick Revill, player.)

  Nick Revill: Well, Mistress Horner, you must be surprised to see me.

  Isabella Horner: Why?

  NR: (remembering that Isabella’s poison had been, as it were, dateless. If her plans had gone a-right, I would only have known the secret of the fatal bottle when I woke up to find myself dead): Er.

  IH: Let us turn the tables. You seem surprised to see me.

  NR: (behaving like a player who has lost his prompt): Um.

  IH: I suppose I may be here sometimes.

  NR: Alone?

  IH: I suppose I may drink alone, Master Revill.

  NR: To be sure. But a woman alone in a place like this might easily be mistaken . . .

  IH: Mistaken?

  NR: . . . for a whore.

  JH: That must be why so many of you playhouse fellows frequent a place like this. To mistake women. To mis-take women, whether we want it or no.

  NR: I cannot speak for the others.

  IH: And when you speak for yourself it is to tell me that your bent is in a different direction.

  NR: If you say so.

  IH: Come, Master Revill, it was you that told me so and told me most clear, the last time we met.

  NR: Perhaps I am cured or reformed by now.

  IH: I thought you liked travelling on your by-ways of vice.

  NR: Unnatural by-ways, according to you.

  IH: But ones that are in your nature. Tell me, can nature deviate from herself so quick?

  NR: What if I had taken some of the liquor that you prepared for me? You remember? The liquor in the little green bottle that was to restore me to the highway of women.

  IH: Have you?

  NR: Yes.

  IH: Good.

  NR: You sound – surprised.

  IH: And you seem to be detecting surprise everywhere today, Master Revill. You have swallowed some of my concoction and I say good. That is all.

  NR: And I ask you what my inclination should be now, after I’ve swallowed your concoction.

  IH: That is for you to tell me, surely.

  NR: Oh I will tell you what my inclination is – or what it should be. It should be a dead man’s inclination. I should be lying flat.

  IH: You mean . . . in a bed?

  NR: I mean in a grave.

  IH: I do not understand you.

  NR: Oh you do.

  IH: It is no good growing angry. Besides, you are attracting the attention of the others. Calm yourself. I say, I do not understand you.

  NR: Come, Mistress Isabella, enough evasion.

  IH: How can I evade something if I don’t know what it is I’m meant to be evading? This is about my concoction, is it?

  NR: Say poison rather.

  IH: Poison!

  NR: It was my word, lady.

  IH: I – I – still don’t understand . . .

  NR: Then let me put it plain. You gave me a preparation which you pretended would cure me of my preference for men. It would have cured me of more than my preference, it would have cured me of my life.

  IH: You say you tried it, and yet you are here.

  NR: I said that to lead you on.

  IH: Lead me on? And I suppose you said that you preferred men to women to lead me on too?

  NR (realising that this conversation was not going in the direction I’d planned): Not to lead you on, no . . . but rather to lead you off.

  IH: Master Revill, did you drink deep before you came to the tavern this morning? Very deep? You are making no sense.

  You have told me two stories and
now you are denying them.

  NR: What did you put in that concoction?

  IH: No more than a compound of a few simples and . . . and . . . something of my bodily self.

  NR: What thing?

  IH: That is my secret. But it was a kind of love potion – to win you back.

  NR: I thought we were finished

  IH: You finished it with your talk of men and unnatural vice.

  NR: I did not mean that. It was all pretence.

  IH: And what is all this about poison? Is that pretence too? Do you not mean that either?

  NR: Forgive me, Mistress Horner, I’m not sure what I do mean any longer. I think I may have made a terrible mistake.

  IH: As when you said I might be taken for a whore?

  NR: That was a joke.

  IH: Oh ha.

  NR (blushing as furiously as Richard Milford): I’m sorry.

  IH: But let me treat your nonsense seriously. How would I be taken for a whore? Instruct me.

  NR (hoping to divert the dialogue onto less dangerous territory): A piece of advice then, you need a brighter costume – something – something flame-coloured.

  IH: Like that woman over there?

  NR: Who? Where? Oh her. Oh Jesus.

  (Across the Goat & Monkey came my friend Nell. There wasn’t much doubt about the nature of her trade, considering the flame-coloured dress she wore and the fair bit of tit she was showing for all the coldness of the season. At any other time I’d have been quite pleased to see her but she was arriving at a most inopportune moment, just after I realised that I’d made a gross error in accusing my ex-mistress of being a poisoner.)

  NELL: Nick!

  NR: Nell.

  NELL: What are you doing here?

  NR: Finishing a drink. I think I must be getting back to the playhouse now. We are rehearsing for tomorrow afternoon.

  NELL: No, stay a moment. Who is your friend?

  NR: This is Mistress Horner. And that is her husband over there.

  NELL: Yes, I know him, Nicholas. I know most of you, you know.

  IH: And who is this lady, Master Revill?

  NR: This is a – Nell.

  IH: Oh, a Nell . . . one of the tribe of Nell.

  NELL: Shove up, Nicholas, there’s room for me between the two of you. And now tell me what was making you smile when I saw you from the other side of the room.

  IH: Well, Nell, Master Revill here has been instructing me in how to recognise a whore by certain signs and tokens.

  NELL: Nicholas is a good teacher, so listen to him. He knows much about the sacking law.

  IH: Sacking law?

  NELL: Whoredom.

  NR: I protest I know nothing about it, next to nothing. Truly, I don’t.

  IH: You protest too much, I think.

  NELL: What signs and tokens, Nicholas?

  NR: I . . . er . . .

  NELL: I will tell you. A red dress like this one I am wearing, and cut so as this one is cut, and an inviting look like this one I am giving you now, Nicholas. You see it? These are your signs and tokens.

  IH: Ah yes, Nell, I understand that I am a novice here.

  NELL: I am not coy about my trade, Mistress. Why should I be?

  IH: No reason at all. We are not the coy ones here. We are not engaged in a mysterious business. Leave that to the men. They will make up stories until your head spins. Master Revill has been talking in a most peculiar way.

  NR (making to rise): Look, my companions are going. I must return to the Globe. Important rehearsal.

  NELL: Go, Nicholas, if you must. Leave me to enjoy Mistress Horner’s company.

  IH: Yes, Master Revill. There is obviously much for me to learn from this lady . . .

  So I went off, uncomfortably, after my fellows. I noticed that Jack hardly acknowledged his wife Isabella, just as I’d noticed that she had never taken up Nell’s hint about knowing her husband. I wondered what the women were going to talk about behind my back and was afraid enough that their subject would be me. (At the same time, though, if I’d been told by a little bird that neither breathed a word about me after my departure, I’d have been disappointed.)

  But the main thought that whirled around in my head was: how could I have been so foolish as to brand Mistress Isabella Horner with the mark of Cain? A strange, dark and passionate woman she might have been, but that did not turn her into a murderess. It was not unlikely that she had harboured the odd homicidal prompting towards me – for certain, she was most indignant when I announced that I wished to terminate our amour – but which of us has not occasionally harboured such promptings?

  I had been misled by my alarm at Mistress Horner’s manner when we parted, her raging temper coupled with her gift of the bottled potion which would put my heart in order. Then came the discovery in the Coven garret of Nat’s body, with his hand clawed round the little green bottle, drained of its contents. What more natural than to assume that his demise was linked to Horner’s concoction? And that, in accomplishing his death, she had really intended to procure mine? In a peculiar way, it underlined my importance to her; that she would give me a poison to take in my own good time – rather say, in my bad time. How much more likely, though, that a woman would give me a love potion compounded of some few simples . . . and something of herself (naturally, I wondered from whereabouts that tantalising something had emanated). So in the same way that I had leaped to the premature conclusion that she was a murderess, now I jumped in the opposite direction and became convinced of her innocence. Far from meaning harm, she had genuinely intended reform. She really did wish to win me away from the by-ways of vice, and perhaps to usher me back towards her bed.

  Remained the question: what had Nat the Animal Man died of? That was not so hard to answer either, even if the cause of his death might never be known for sure. Hadn’t I thought to myself as I tucked his body into the leaf-strewn ditch beside the road that, if found, he’d be taken for one of the many vagabonds who died outdoors in the winter months through cold and hunger? The only difference was that Nat’d died indoors, my indoors. But his life was essentially no different from a vagrant’s. Whether he had anywhere regular to lay his withered poll was doubtful. What little money he earned from his stock of beastly sounds and from running little errands for individuals such as Nemo, he pissed away in ale. He must have been tough to defer death for so long. Perhaps he’d succumbed to a sudden apoplexy, a fatal fit (I remembered his stretched mouth, his raggedy teeth, his huddled posture on the floor). Perhaps in some final agony or confusion of mind, he’d ransacked my chest, found the bottle and swallowed its contents to the last drop. Perhaps, as I’d originally thought, he’d simply been rummaging through my sparse belongings in search of liquid refreshment as he awaited my return.

  Drank and died. Post hoc sed non propter hoc. After but not on account of. Nat died natural. So I settled it. So I thought.

  These weren’t easy days for us at the Chamberlain’s. The ordinary business of February persisted but it was thin enough fare at the Globe, practically lenten fare, and we were reduced to a couple of performances a week. Of course, we were still rehearsing for our presentation of Twelfth Night at Whitehall some days hence.

  The strange aspect to this was that, even while we were mouthing Master WS’s words for the twelfth time and having our costumes checked for the twentieth – and all so that we might shine bright in the presence of Her Majesty – we were apparently suspected of being enemies to her person and her realm. Although the Burbage brothers and Shakespeare and the other seniors continued to attend to their duties both in the playhouse and at the Clerkenwell Revels Office, they did so with the air of men who were distracted. This was understandable for we all knew that, from time to time during the days that followed on Essex’s failed rising, one or other of our shareholders was being hauled before some members of the Council or their agents to give an account of the Company’s participation in the rebellion.

  To wit: why had we agreed to stage Richard II, kn
owing the state of things, having regard to the pressures of time and place, being aware of the dangerous condition of London, indeed of England?

  Augustine Phillips, he was summoned on at least two or three occasions. This was perhaps not altogether surprising since, as I knew from my eavesdropping in the book-room, he had taken on the principal role in negotiating with Merrick the Essexite, a knight who now found himself incarcerated in the Tower. It’s a measure of the closeness of our Company that the report of what Phillips said in his – our – defence should have been so soon spread among the rest of us. According to Company talk, Master Phillips claimed that the play of King Richard was so old and so long out of use that the Chamberlain’s Company had small expectations of an audience. Why then did they play it? Persuaded by the inducement of forty shillings, was his answer.

  Now, if I’d been a member of the Council, this would not have convinced me. Why, had I not heard Master Phillips make the very same points to Merrick on their first meeting? That the play was fusty and dusty. Identical objections had been raised at the general meeting of the Company. That Richard was indeed an old piece. That we might fail to draw an audience. That this was a giddy moment to stage this particular play.

  All true. Except perhaps for the point about the audience; although, even in this respect, the congregation on that Saturday had been mostly made up of devout Essexites, renegades who would have watched the rain fall if their leader had instructed them to.

  So the mystery remained: why had we staged this play?

  And another mystery: why did the Council accept, or seem to accept, the reasons which Augustine Phillips and the other shareholders gave? Reasons? Excuses rather. I repeat: had I been a member of the Council, or one of their agents, I would have probed further. They had, after all, sufficient instruments for probing at their disposal.

  Don’t get me wrong.

  I was relieved, I was delighted, that they – we – escaped unscathed from this dangerous pass. And if we were ever in real disfavour, which I doubt, it was very short-lived. The proof of this? Well, we did indeed perform before Her Majesty on Shrove Tuesday, 24 February. You shall hear about that performance and its aftermath soon enough.