The Play's the Thing (The Chronicles of Christoval Alvarez Book 7)

by Ann Swinfen

  I buckled the straps of my satchel. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Now there are at present only two great companies of players in London. Lord Strange’s Men, managed by Master Burbage, and the Admiral’s Men, managed by Master Henslowe. But we are not the only players. There are the boys’ companies. There are at least half a dozen other men’s companies, whose patrons are lesser nobles, men who are vying for positions at court and in the government. Not all of them sponsor players through love of the playhouse. They see it as a way to gain fame and popular support for themselves, to make their mark.’

  ‘Aye.’ I nodded. ‘I can see that.’ I could, though I had never before considered the ownership of a players’ company as a weapon in the fight for advancement.

  ‘Now the problem for these companies is this.’ Ned Alleyn was clearly enjoying himself lecturing me. ‘They do not have play makers. Oh, they may have some fellow who can cobble together an old story in broken rhyme and call it a play, but these are poor, sickly things. And they are losing their audiences. There is no money coming in. They cannot pay the rent for their playhouses or inn courtyards. Their players are penniless and starving. They need plays!’

  He had assumed the stirring tones he employed on stage. I looked at him dubiously.

  ‘Do you truly believe such people would steal plays? And kill for it?’

  He shrugged and laughed. ‘Perhaps I am making a Spanish tragedy out of pure coincidence and speculation. Nay, it is probably no such thing. And in any case, no one stole a play when Oliver Wandesford was killed, did they? I expect Master Henslowe will return with the satchel and Marlowe’s play, and the whole idea will prove to be moonshine.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I believe Master Holles is coming to himself.’

  Indeed the man on the couch was stirring. He groaned and reached a shaking hand toward the gash in his head.

  ‘Careful!’ I warned, catching hold of his hand to stop him. ‘You have received a nasty blow and I have had to stitch it. You must not touch it.’

  His eye lids flickered and opened, and he looked up at me in confusion.

  ‘I am a physician,’ I said. ‘You are in the tiring house at the Rose and quite safe. You were attacked in the street and struck on the head.’

  ‘Aye, Walter,’ Alleyn said. ‘All’s well now.’

  The man groaned and struggled to sit up, but I pushed him gently back.

  ‘Lie still for a little. Tell me, do you feel dizzy? Nauseous?’

  He started to shake his head, but thought the better of it. ‘Nay. But I have a headache to end all headaches.’

  ‘A good night’s sleep and it will not be so painful in the morning. Only small ale and light food tonight and tomorrow, else your stomach may not like it.’

  I turned to Alleyn. ‘See to that, will you? A blow to the head affects the whole body.’

  ‘Aye. I will keep my eye on him.’ He turned to the man, who was stirring restlessly and groping about him. ‘What ails you, Walter?’

  ‘My satchel! Where is my satchel? I remember me now, I was bringing Master Marlowe’s new play back to Master Henslowe. He sent me to fetch it. I was up most of the night, copying the parts.’

  ‘I’m afraid the thieves took it,’ Alleyn said, not quite able to hide the concern in his voice.

  ‘Oh, Lord!’ Holles gave a louder groan than ever and closed his eyes. ‘Henslowe will flay me alive. But it was he ordered me to take the play book home with me. I could have finished it today, working here, but nay, he must have me stay up all night.’ His voice took on an aggrieved note. ‘I was that tired, I forgot to bring it with me this morning, otherwise none of this would have happened.’

  ‘No one is blaming you, Walter.’

  Privately, I suspected Master Henslowe might well blame the hapless Walter.

  ‘I must away,’ I said, ‘for I’m to sup with Burbage’s men tonight. I will call tomorrow to look at that gash, Master Holles. Remember, keep it clean and do not touch it. And only light food.’

  ‘Aye, doctor,’ he said, ‘and I thank you. You’ve done me a kindness and I’ve done naught but moan.’

  ‘You’ve a right to moan, after a blow like that,’ I said, giving his shoulder a pat.

  As I took my leave of them, Master Henslowe arrived, the outcome of his visit to the parish constables writ large on his face.

  ‘Well?’ said Alleyn, raising his eyebrows.

  Henslowe shook his head. ‘Never a sign of the satchel. I fear it is lost.’

  Chapter Eight

  We were all somewhat subdued at supper that evening. We had returned to the Cross Keys, where the players had once held a winter season and were well known, so the innkeeper and his wife made us very welcome, but word of the attack on Walter Holles had started all kinds of speculation amongst the players.

  ‘He will recover,’ I said, reassuringly. ‘It was a nasty blow and almost certainly he will be left with a scar here.’ I indicated the area just above my right ear. ‘He recalls little about the attack, but from the position of the wound I would say that he was attacked from behind and struck with something heavy and hard.’

  ‘A sword?’ Master Burbage asked.

  I shook my head. ‘Nay, it was not a clean cut. I should say something more like a club, which split the scalp, rather than cutting it.’

  Christopher shuddered, and pushed away his plate. He was a fine mock swordsman on stage, but I think he would not have lasted long in a real sword fight.

  ‘And could the motive have been to steal the play?’ Master Burbage had also stopped eating and shot a sharp glance at me.

  I shrugged. ‘Who can say? Ned Alleyn argued to case for one of the nondescript companies of players stealing from the two great companies, but after he had expounded it, he agreed it was just as likely the rogues thought the satchel might contain money.’

  ‘You said “rogues”.’ Guy turned to me. ‘There was more than one?’

  ‘I meant nothing by it. Holles did not see his attackers. It might have been just one man.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ Geoffrey de Claine said, in the elderly judicial voice he used on stage for men of substance, ‘that the attack on Holles can have nothing to do with the killing of Master Wandesford. They were both copyists, but what does that signify? You might as well say, if a fishmonger is attacked by his apprentice one day in Billingsgate and a week later another falls in the Fleet and is drowned, that these matters must be connected because the two men were fishmongers. I do not believe it.’

  Having delivered himself of this, he sat back and drained the last of his beer.

  ‘Geoffrey is almost certainly in the right,’ Master Burbage said. ‘The attack on Holles is regrettable, but let us not confuse it with the murder of Oliver Wandesford, which remains as much of a mystery as ever. I begin to think that it will never be solved.’

  There was a general murmur of agreement, and our conversation turned to other things.

  Later I walked back to Southwark with Simon and Will (who had found yet another lodging, on our side of the river). The sun was setting in a spectacular blaze of orange and purple, behind the heaped clouds which seemed to have gained the solidity of mountains.

  ‘Ominous,’ Will said. ‘The ancient Romans would have seen that as forecasting disaster.’

  ‘Not only the Romans,’ Simon said. ‘There are any number of astrologers here in London who will say the same.’

  ‘And do you believe our fates are written, unchangeable, in the stars?’ Will cocked his head at Simon.

  Simon shrugged. ‘How can we know?’

  ‘Kit?’

  ‘I do not believe it,’ I said fiercely. ‘If we cannot choose how we will conduct our lives, how can we count ourselves human? No better than the beasts. Do you favour the Puritans, Will, with their belief in the Elect?’

  Will leaned down and rubbed Rikki in his favourite place behind his ears.

  ‘Nay, the Puritans would happily burn me and my licentious scribblings. S
o, without free will, to sin or no, we would be no better than the beasts, you say? No better than your faithful hound, do you mean? Who stays beside you, closer than a shadow?’

  I smiled. He had trapped me neatly.

  ‘Ah, well, Rikki is an exceptional beast. He saved my life at a time when we were scarcely acquainted. Nowadays, I think he understands me better than most men. Churchmen would condemn me for saying it, but I believe there is good and evil amongst animals too, probably more good and less evil than you will find amongst us two-legged creatures. So does Rikki choose his path through life? He certainly chose to attach himself to me. Was that his free will, or something fixed in the stars?’

  Arguing ourselves around the debate from every angle, we reached Southwark, where Simon and I parted company with Will.

  ‘What do you truly believe, Kit? Simon asked, as we climbed the stairs at our lodgings.

  ‘Whether our fate is dictated by our stars?’ I said.

  ‘Nay, about Wandesford and Holles.’

  ‘I cannot believe there is any connection. Ned Alleyn waxed very eloquent, but more as if he were giving a performance at the Rose than if he was persuaded by his own arguments. The cases are so very different. I expect that satchel will be found, with Marlowe’s play still in it, or else it has been tossed into the Thames and is even now subsiding into the mud.’

  ‘Let us hope not,’ Simon said seriously. ‘I know you do not care for Marlowe, but I would rather that play were stolen and performed by some rogue company of players than it should sink into oblivion.’

  I smiled wryly. ‘You have the right of it. Even I would not wish to see one of the great Master Marlowe’s plays lost for ever. Give you good night.’

  A few days later, as I was walking along Gracechurch Street, I met Thomas Phelippes, whom I had not seen since the death of Walsingham. He greeted me with surprising joviality and drew me in to an inn, where he insisted upon treating me to a meal and wine.

  Having in the past been Phelippes’s young assistant, I had not expected this eagerness to please me, although we had in time become close friends during my final years in Walsingham’s employ. Perhaps his manner had something to do with my apparel. The weather had taken a strange twist. Although thunderclouds still threatened from the west, a sudden wind had blown in from the north, bringing with it unseasonable cold, so that, as well as my physician’s gown and cap,. I wore a cloak lined with rabbit skin which I had purchased – secondhand but in good condition – with some of my earnings from my new patients. I suppose I must have seemed to Phelippes much changed from the young lad who had first been brought in to assist him five years before.

  ‘Now, Kit,’ he said, when we were well fed and sitting over the last of our wine, with our legs stretched out to the unaccustomed fire. I had shed my cloak and felt pleasantly entertained, with no fear that I would be unable to withstand any proposal he might make. He took off his spectacles and polished them on his sleeve. Without them his eyes looked vulnerable. Until that moment we had spoken of general matters, London gossip. I could tell from the change in his tone that we were coming to the reason for his treating me. I decided to take some control of the conversation.

  ‘And how are you yourself, Thomas?’ I asked, boldly. ‘Are you employed?’

  He smiled a little at my manner. Before, I would not have called him Thomas. He put his spectacles on again, and at once became the sharp-eyed code-breaker and merciless intelligencer.

  ‘Indeed, indeed, I am employed. Francis Bacon is drawing together many of us who used to work for Walsingham. When his brother Anthony returns from France he will have charge of the new service. Both brothers have long been friends of mine.’

  This was not quite what I had heard, that Phelippes was a clerk in the Customs House. Although I remembered that someone had spoken about the Bacon brothers.

  ‘Francis and Anthony Bacon?’

  I knew of them, certainly, but they held minor government appointments. They had neither the money nor the position to organise a service like Walsingham’s.

  ‘They are, of course,’ he said, ‘in the service of a greater man.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He leaned forward confidentially. ‘My Lord of Essex.’

  I felt myself recoil physically. This was unexpected. The brothers were Burghley’s nephews, first cousins to his son Sir Robert Cecil. How could they ally themselves with the Cecils’ greatest enemy, when Lord Burghley himself was setting up an intelligence network? Here was more of this dangerous rivalry, whose repercussions might bring about unforeseen trouble.

  ‘My Lord of Essex imagines himself the new Walsingham?’ I asked, heavy with sarcasm.

  He smiled enigmatically. ‘Perhaps not that. My Lord is, of course, the greatest nobleman in the kingdom, and of ancient lineage. Walsingham, though a dedicated servant of Her Majesty, was not.’

  So soon consigned to the midden of history, I thought. Phelippes did not speak of Walsingham in such terms as these in the past. Nor was Essex of ancient lineage. His father had been the first of his family to hold the title. A few generations back the Devereux were minor squires, or even yeomen, farming their acres in the rural wilderness of Herefordshire on the borders of even more benighted Wales.

  ‘I am glad,’ I said politely, ‘that you have found employment.’ I wondered whether it was he who had taken Walsingham’s secret papers and given them to Essex. But this I doubted. He had seemed as shocked as I had, when we discovered the theft in Walsingham’s office.

  ‘You say there are others from Walsingham’s service with you in Essex House?’

  ‘Nay, not Essex House. I have an office in the Customs House. It is convenient in many ways. Aye, some of our friends are there – Arthur Gregory, Standen, Rolston, others you may or may not know.’

  ‘Robert Poley?’ I asked cautiously. I had no wish to reveal what I had heard about Poley.

  ‘Poley is now employed by Sir Thomas Heneage, the Queen’s Vice-Chamberlain, but I believe that they work with Burghley.’

  Clearly Essex himself was working against Burghley, without question, I thought. So Poley and Phelippes were now in the employment of the rival factions. Each of them intent on setting up their own intelligence service. In such a contest, a wise man would put his money on the Cecils, for Lord Burghley had initiated the intelligence service many years ago, before handing it over to Walsingham. But Essex! What did Essex understand of the subtleties, the long drawn out projections of intelligence work? Vividly before my mind flashed the image of Essex leaping into the deep water at Peniche, causing the death of so many of his men. This contest over an intelligence service would land him in just such deep water. I wanted none of it. I gathered up my cloak and prepared to leave. Phelippes remained where he was, smiling benignly up at me.

  ‘It may be that I will be able to offer you employment, Kit, once Anthony Bacon has returned to London.’

  I flung my cloak round my shoulders and put on my square cap. Standing over him, I knew I looked what I aspired to be: a respectable physician of good standing, with wealthy clients who valued my skills. I shook my head.

  ‘Nay, I think not, Thomas. I am not a boy any longer. And I have earnings enough to satisfy me.’ This was an exaggeration, but despite my shortage of the chinks I would not work for Essex.

  ‘Caring for the filthy paupers at St Thomas’s?’ he said, with sudden and uncharacteristic venom.

  Did he know that I no longer worked there? I was not prepared to enlighten him.

  ‘They are all God’s creatures,’ I said piously. ‘I am glad to do what I can to care for them. My list of private patients might surprise you.’

  He shrugged. ‘We shall see. It would be a pity to waste your remarkable talent for deciphering and forgery. Good day to you, Kit.’

  ‘God speed, Thomas. I thank you for an excellent dinner.’

  As I walked up Gracechurch Street toward Bishopsgate, I realised that the encounter had shaken me. Despite his assumed a
ir of confidence, I could detect an underlying unease in Phelippes. That remark about the paupers of Southwark was quite unlike him. He was not a sentimental man, but he had always shown compassion toward the poor. I could not believe that he liked working for Essex any more than I would do. Why had the Cecils not recruited him immediately after Walsingham’s death? He was England’s most talented intelligencer, subtle, experienced, gifted with a remarkable flair both for code breaking and for understanding the methods of foreign agents.

  Walsingham’s stolen papers must lie behind this. Phelippes had stood beside me at Walsingham’s funeral. And it was during the funeral that the burglary at Seething Lane had taken place. The most likely culprit was Robert Poley, who would happily sell his own child (if he had any), should it prove to his advantage. Of course he would take them to the Cecils, Walsingham’s natural heirs, and would have sold them either for coin, or for employment, or both. By doing so, he would have cut Phelippes neatly out of the post which should have been his, in charge of the new organisation.

  As for Essex heading a rival organisation, it was laughable. He would want some spectacular victory quickly, or he would tire of it. Phelippes would find himself dragged down or tarnished with the brush of failure. Thoughtfully I tapped my satchel and heard the rustle of paper inside. I would certainly not pass Gregory’s report to Phelippes now.