‘Where now, sir?’ asked Dodd, sweating almost as hard as Shakespeare while Carey paced briskly westwards.
‘St Paul’s Walk.’
‘Och, no, sir.’
‘Why not? Most interesting place in London, best place for gossip, best for scandal and we’re going to meet Barnabus there.’
‘Och.’
‘Don’t worry. So long as you don’t let anybody inveigle you into any little alleys, nobody is going to coney-catch you.’
‘I dinna like the place, sir. It gives me the willies. And what about bailiffs?’
‘There shouldn’t be too much trouble with them, now Mr Bullard’s been paid.’
‘Why are ye watching out for yerself so carefully then?’
‘Some of them may not have heard yet. Anyway, I’m looking for that clever bugger Marlowe.’
‘Find him at St Paul’s, will ye, sir? Praying, I expect.’
Carey looked amused. ‘No, wandering up and down quoting Juvenal.’
St Paul’s was as noisy and crowded as it had been last time, though there was no sign of Barnabus by the serving men’s pillar. Carey glanced at the throngs, tutted to himself, bought an apple off a woman with enormous breasts, and slipped into the lurid parade in the aisle. Shakespeare stood still, hands tucked behind him again, staring hard. Dodd leaned against a pillar with his thumbs hitched on his swordbelt and watched, narrow-eyed in the shafts of sun striking down through the holes in the temporary roof. A pigeon strutted past, pecking at discarded piecrusts and trying to overawe its reflection in a brass set in another pillar. The resemblance to the young men at their posing was uncanny, you might even say poetical.
Carey was talking and laughing to people who seemed very anxious to fawn on him. None of them seemed able to help him and Dodd himself could see no sign of Marlowe nor any of his cronies. Carey swaggered all the way to the door by Duke Humphrey’s tomb and then turned and swaggered all the way back trailing an eager group of hangers-on.
Just as he turned again to pace pointlessly back the way he had come, there was a stir and a swirl amongst the fashion-afflicted. Two men in buff-coats and green livery came in through the door, followed by a tall and languid exquisite in peach damask, festooned with pearls, and with a lovelock hanging over one shoulder.
The exquisite paused impressively at the first pillar and squinted down the aisle. His face lit up.
‘By God, it’s Carey!’ he sang out. ‘What the devil are you doing here, made Berwick too hot for you already?’
Carey stopped in one of the most mannered poses Dodd had ever seen in his life and flourished off a bow.
‘My lord Earl,’ he responded. ‘What a wonderful surprise; my heart is overflowing with delight.’
Dodd stole a glance at Shakespeare to see if the player was as close to puking as he was. Carey was striding down the aisle, such happiness on his face you might think the peach-damask creature was a woman. God, surely he wasn’t…No, whatever else he might be, Carey was not a pervert. And there was Shakespeare, face intent, hurrying to catch up with him.
Sighing, Dodd stood upright and followed.
Peach-damask was giving Carey a nice warm hug and Carey was returning it. Some of the other fashionable young men were staring at his back with faces twisted with envy. Shakespeare hesitated as they came close, but Carey clapped his back jovially.
‘Now this is someone you should talk to, my lord,’ he said. ‘May I present Mr William Shakespeare, late of the Rose?’
Shakespeare’s bow was a tidy model of deference.
Peach-damask put an elegantly gloved hand to his breast. ‘Not Mr Shakespeare who wrote Henry VI?’
The player bowed again, more deeply. ‘I am more honoured than you can guess, my lord, that you should have remembered my name.’
Peach-damask seemed to like being flattered. ‘Of course I do, best plays I’ve seen in years. Oh, woman’s heart, wrapped in a tiger’s hide. Eh? Eh? Wonderful stuff, Sir Robert, you remember?’
‘Oh, indeed, my lord,’ said Carey and Shakespeare murmured modestly.
Please don’t introduce me to this prinked-up fancy-boy, Dodd was praying silently, I dinna want tae have to do any more bowing and scraping.
Peach-damask was absolutely full of good humour, you’d think he was drunk. He quoted more nonsensical lines that seemed to be from this wonderful play of Shakespeare’s, then asked the player where on earth he got his ideas and how long it took him to write a play and then, while Carey and Shakespeare both laid on the flattery with a trowel, insisted that they all come back to Southampton House with him, since he was planning a little card-party for that evening. Carey accepted instantly, and as peach-damask took the time for a quick parade down the aisle and back again so everyone could admire his pretty suit, Dodd muttered desperately.
‘I’d best be getting back to ma lodgings, sir, make sure Barnabus is…er…’ not coming down with plague, he nearly said, then stopped himself.
Carey didn’t notice his hesitation. ‘No, no,’ he said at once. ‘I’m sorry, Dodd, you’ve got to come with me. The earl will put us up.’
‘Will ye no’ be wantin’ to be private wi’ yer friend?’ asked Dodd heavily and Carey drew a breath, stared for a moment, and then laughed.
‘By God, you don’t know me very well, do you?’ he said. ‘What the hell do you think you’re talking about, private with my friend? Don’t come it the Puritan preacher with me, Dodd, I don’t like it. That’s the Earl of Southampton, my lord of Essex’s best friend, and if you think I’m snubbing him to keep your good opinion of me, you’re sadly mistaken.’
‘I ken I’m no’ in my right company, sir,’ said Dodd. ‘I dinna care what ye do, but I’m no’ a courtier, me, and I…’
‘Oh, give it a rest, Dodd. Nobody’s asking you to take up buggery for a living. Just come along quietly, and give me a bit of back-up, that’s all I ask.’
‘What about the alchemist and finding Marlowe or yer brother?’
‘Marlowe’s been paying court to Southampton for months now, he might well be at this supper party. As for the alchemist and my brother, they can wait.’
Arm in arm with the Earl, Carry led the way out of St Paul’s to the churchyard where the Earl’s horses were waiting, held by yet more men in livery. Carey was given a horse to ride, Dodd and Shakespeare left to walk with the other attendants. They made their own small procession around some fine lady’s damask-curtained litter that joined the party at Ludgate. The Earl was on horseback, riding a magnificent chestnut animal that had Dodd sighing with envy, leaning back to chat to Carey occasionally. He wasn’t a bad rider, if you liked that showy court-style of horsemanship, with one hand on the reins and one hand on the hip.
Southampton House stood in gardens surrounded by a moat in the fields to the north of Holborn at the top of Drury Lane. As they passed over the little bridge to the north of the house and rode round to the door, Shakespeare stopped in his tracks and went white.
Mistress Bassano was being handed down from her litter with immense ceremony by no less than the Earl himself. Her eyes skidded slightly as Carey made his bow to her, his face printed with naughty comprehension. To do the lady justice, she only checked for a second when she saw him, before curtseying almost as low to him as she had to the Earl.
As they followed the company indoors, Dodd distinctly heard Shakespeare moan softly to himself.
***
Supper at Southampton House involved more mysterious meats in pungent sauces, leaves doused in oil and vinegar decorated with orange nasturtium flowers, decorated pies, astonishingly smooth-tasting wines. It all gave Dodd a bellyache just looking at it being laid out on the sideboard by the servants who carried it in, and of course every bite of it was cold after the palaver of serving it up and displaying to the Earl and then passing it around. It seemed courtiers showed their importance by making even the simplest things pointlessly complicated. Did they have three servants to wipe their arse, Dodd wondered, once the
wine had started to work on his empty stomach.
Shakespeare seemed to have latched onto him again and was sitting next to him at the second table in the parlour, continuing to explain something about how playing was in the way you moved and spoke, not just in gestures and rhetoric. For instance, if you were playing a learned man, it wasn’t enough to wear spectacles, you had to look abstracted as well. Dodd nodded politely to all this unwanted information and tried not to yawn.
The Earl was laughing at something Mistress Bassano was telling him.
‘Mr Shakespeare,’ he called to them across the room. ‘A fair lady has just made a serious complaint against you. What have you to say?’
Shakespeare paused in mid-analysis of the contribution clothes made to a play-part, swallowed what he had in his mouth whole, and stood up.
‘What was her complaint, my lord Earl?’ His voice had changed. It was clearer, less flat, less dull.
‘She alleges that you used the fair muse of poetry to tell lies. I had heard better of you. Can it be true?’
Shakespeare paused, looking narrowly at Mistress Bassano who had a cruel expression on her face, rather like a cat torturing a mouse, and then at the Earl who was half laughing at him. Now that was an interesting sight to see, Dodd thought, because something inside the man shifted, you might almost say hardened. It was as if he came to some decision.
‘My lord Earl,’ said Shakespeare judiciously, his flat vowels filling the parlour full of overdressed people quite easily. ‘I’m sorry to say that it is true, if she means the poor sonnets I sent her the other day.’
‘So you admit the crime of corrupting the muse?’
‘I do, my lord. The bill is foul. The sonnets I made to her praise should never have been sent.’
Mistress Bassano, who had clearly been expecting a pleasant few minutes of poet-baiting, now looked puzzled.
‘Then you apologise to the lady?’ pursued the Earl.
‘I do, my lord. Unreservedly. I should never have said that her hair outrivalled the dawn nor that her voice put the birds to shame.’
‘And what will you do for your penance, Mr Shakespeare?’
‘Why, with the lady’s permission, I’ll read another of my poems.’
Perhaps because he was sitting right next to the man, only Dodd saw the tension in Shakespeare.
‘Compounding your crime, Mr Shakespeare?’ sneered the Earl.
Shakespeare smiled quite sweetly. ‘No, my lord. Telling the truth.’
‘A truthful poet. An oxymoron, to be sure?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Mistress Bassano? As Queen of the company, do you allow this?’
Creamy shoulders shrugged expressively. ‘He may embarrass himself again, if he wishes,’ she said.
The Earl waved a negligent hand to Shakespeare, who fumbled in the front of his doublet for his notebook, brought it out and opened it. The adenoidal voice filled the room.
’My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.’
Carey began by staring in shock, but then he smiled. The Earl laughed. Shakespeare let the titters pass round the room and continued.
’I have seen roses damask’d, red and white.
But no such roses see I in her cheeks:
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.’
The whole room was laughing, except for Mistress Bassano who had locked her stare on Shakespeare. The player ignored her.
’I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go,—
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.’
You had to admire what the player was doing. He paused for long enough to let the laughter die down again. And then for the first time he looked Mistress Bassano full in the face, like a man taking aim with a loaded caliver, and gave the last two lines.
’And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied by false compare.’
Even Dodd applauded with the rest of them. Shakespeare shut his notebook with a snap, sat down and finished his wine, studiously ignoring the way Mistress Bassano was staring at him. You could see she was angry but also that she knew better than to show it.
When the supper was done they walked in the moated garden amongst lavender and thyme and blossoming roses while pageboys of remarkable beauty scuttled between them with silver trays of jellied sweetmeats and wild strawberries dusted with pepper. Shakespeare was beckoned to the Earl’s side, and walked respectfully amongst the box hedges talking to him, nodding his head in agreement, occasionally making him laugh.
‘Enjoying yourself, Dodd?’ Carey asked, his voice a little slurred with drink, interrupting Dodd’s thoughts as he stood beneath a well-pruned tree and stared into the magnificent copper sunset.
‘Nay, sir,’ said Dodd. ‘Why, are ye?’
Truth was a weapon it seemed these courtiers had no armour against. Carey blinked and his superior little smile slipped slightly, but he didn’t answer, just strode off amongst the rose bushes, his left hand leaning on his sword hilt to tilt it away from catching on the flowers. Dodd folded his arms and leaned against the tree trunk. Away across the fields you could see the women folding up the linens that had been laid out on the grass and hedges to dry, before the dew came down to wet them again, and those gloriously fat London cows gathering at their gates ready to be brought in for milking. An old church poked its battered tower out of a small wood to the west.
‘Whatever have you done to Will Shakespeare, Sergeant Dodd?’ asked a throaty voice beside him and Dodd looked because he couldn’t help it, to be rendered instantly dry-mouthed again at the soft bulge of woman-flesh against red velvet stays.
‘What?’ he asked, coughed and took a deep breath. ‘I beg pardon, mistress, I dinnae understand ye.’
‘Will says you gave him the best advice he ever had.’
Dodd wrinkled his brow and then shook his head. ‘I cannae remember it. Might have been the other night when we were drunk.’
‘Of course.’
He couldn’t help it, he had to ask. ‘Are ye no’ angry with him, for his new sonnet?’
A maddening smile curved between Mistress Bassano’s lightly powdered cheeks and her dark eyes sparkled. ‘Oh, I am,’ she purred. ‘Enraged, infuriated.’
God, who could make head or tail of women? Dodd had no idea what to say.
‘I wanted to speak to Robin again,’ she continued. ‘But I think he has gone to play primero with my lord Earl.’
‘Ay, nae doot.’
‘You can tell him for me. You can tell him not to trust Will, for he has been taking money from Mr Marlowe and providing information on my Lord Hunsdon in return.’
Dodd stared at her, trying to work out whether she was telling the truth or just trying to make trouble for the player. Both, perhaps? Mistress Bassano smiled again, rather complacently, and met his eyes without a tremor.
‘Like many other poets, he has turned to spying to make money. He has a great desire for money, you know, Sergeant, great ambition, great passion. Even in bed he over-reaches himself, exhausts himself. And he is very jealous, consumed by it, I’m afraid. He hates my Lord Hunsdon, who is, of course, my lover, and he hates your master too. You should be very careful of him.’
Dodd felt his jaw drop. ‘Ah thocht…’ he gargled. ‘I hadnae thought he was that kind of man.’
Mistress Bassano only smiled again and glided off into the garden. Dodd discovered he was one of the last remaining guests still out in the dusk and hurried back to the house. On the way he thought he glimpsed Mistress Bassano, locked in an embrace with somebody whose balding forehead gleamed in the last light of the west.
Car
ey was playing primero with the Earl and the other overdressed men of his affinity, cold and bright as a polished silver plate, calling his usual point-score of ‘eighty-four’ amid sarcastic groans. Dodd stood just inside the door and watched for a little while, trying not to think about what Shakespeare was getting up to in the shrubbery, nor what Mistress Bassano had said about him, nor the likelihood of Carey losing hundreds of pounds in this kind of company and in the mood he was in.
Christ, what do I care? Dodd demanded of himself; I’m not his mam.
‘Are you joining us, Sergeant?’ Carey called over to him, to Dodd’s surprise, pulling in quite a respectable pot of gold coin.
‘Och God, no,’ Dodd said. ‘Ye’re all too good for me. Ye’d have the shirt off ma back, for what guid it would dae ye.’
‘You disappoint me, Sergeant Dodd,’ said the Earl, as hectic-eyed as Carey and even more drunk. ‘I’d heard the men of Cumberland never turn down a challenge.’
‘Nor we dinna,’ said Dodd, thoroughly tired of being needled. ‘Name yer place and yer weapons and I’m yer man.’
There was a moment of silence in the overcrowded, candle-heated room and Carey leaned sideways to whisper in the Earl’s ear. The overdressed southern catamite smiled widely.
‘Why, Sergeant, I think you misunderstood me. I only meant to challenge you to a card game.’
‘Ay,’ said Dodd, privately quite amused at this climbdown. ‘Well, my lord, in that case there’s nae shame in admitting ye’d have the mastery over me in any card game ye care tae mention. I’ve no’ the experience nor the resources to meet ye on that field, eh, my lord?’ He swallowed down a yawn. ‘Ah’m nobbut a country farmer, me. An’ wi’ yer permission, my lord, Ah’ll gang tae ma rest.’
After translation from Carey, the Earl waved negligently at one of the servants. ‘Of course, Sergeant. Goodnight, pleasant dreams.’
‘Ay, the same to ye, my lord.’
Dodd followed the servant through the carved and marbled rooms, feeling that if Carey didn’t see some sense soon, he’d head north by himself.
***
Obviously, the Southampton household thought he must be Carey’s henchman because the servant led him to a truckle bed in a very magnificent bedroom, painted with pictures that made you think you were looking at the sky filled with angels and fat cherubs and the bed hung around with tapestry curtains. Dodd took one look at it and decided he preferred the truckle bed anyway: how could you sleep with no air at all reaching you? He left the watchlight burning and slowly and carefully negotiated his way through the multiplicity of buttons and laces involved in dressing as befitted his station in London.
4 A Plague of Angels Page 19