Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, the twin of Judith, died in the summer of 1596 at the age of eleven, possibly while Shakespeare was on tour with his company. There is no record of what caused the boy’s death, but it may have been the plague. Although he left behind no record of any personal grief for his only son, we have testimony of his feelings in the plays, notably King John, written around this time, where a mother is driven to distraction by the memory of her dead son, imagining him talking to her and filling out his ‘vacant garments’ as though still alive. In Her Last Assassin, I stop just short of Hamnet’s death, leaving my fictional Shakespeare perpetually suspended at a time when his son was still alive and all things were possible.
Christopher Marlowe: playwright and spy
Christopher Marlowe was probably the most noted Elizabethan playwright of his generation after Shakespeare, who was born in the same year. It is likely, from what little we know of his life and movements just before his death, that he worked as a spy for the English. But he may also have been a ‘double agent’, trading information with the Spanish in return for money or favours. The truth of his loyalties may never be known, nor the circumstances behind his sudden death, but I feel it unlikely that he would have betrayed his country. For a start, his patron was cousin to Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s spymaster and probably the man who first recruited him to spy for England. And though Marlowe was arrested for blasphemy and heresy – possibly on a charge of atheism – just prior to his death, he was questioned by the Privy Council, which seems extreme, and no record was kept of those proceedings. That Marlowe was in fact giving them a secret report, following his recent activities abroad, is more likely.
Shortly after this Privy Council summoning, however, Christopher Marlowe – or Kit as he was known in theatrical circles – was murdered. He was stabbed to death on 30 May 1593, in a quarrel that apparently blew up out of nowhere in a private house in Deptford, where he was drinking with a number of underworld acquaintances in an upper room. His self-confessed killer, Ingram Frizer, a well-known ‘fixer’ and confidence trickster, was later pardoned on the grounds of self-defence. My account of Marlowe’s murder is loosely based on the legal testimony given by those witnesses present, most of whom appear to have had connections to espionage, a situation highly suggestive of a pre-arranged ‘hit’. Precisely why this talented young playwright was murdered is an Elizabethan puzzle that many have tried to solve since. But whatever information Christopher Marlowe held that was so important, he took it with him to his grave.
Select Bibliography
Among these books, I am particularly indebted to Lytton Strachey’s entertaining old volume on Elizabeth and Essex, from which I took much of my inspiration for the uncovering of the ‘Lopez Plot’.
Ackroyd, Peter, Shakespeare, Vintage, 2005
Borman, Tracy, Elizabeth’s Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen, Jonathan Cape, 2009
Cook, Judith, Roaring Boys: Playwrights and Players in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, Sutton Publishing, 2004
Cooper, John, The Queen’s Agent: Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I, Faber, 2011
Clark, John and Ross, Cathy (eds), London: The Illustrated History, Penguin, 2011
Glasheen, Joan, The Secret People of the Palaces: The Royal Household from the Plantagenets to Queen Victoria, BT Batsford, 1998
Gristwood, Sarah, Elizabeth and Leicester, Bantam Press, 2007
Haynes, Alan, Sex in Elizabethan England, The History Press, 2010
Hutchinson, Robert, Elizabeth’s Spy Master, Orion, 2007
Knutson, Roslyn Lander, Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare’s Time, Cambridge University Press, 2001
Sim, Alison, Pleasures & Pastimes in Tudor England, The History Press, 2009
Southworth, John, Shakespeare the Player, Sutton Publishing, 2000
Strachey, Lytton, Elizabeth and Essex, Chatto & Windus, 1928
Trow, M. J., and Trow, Taliesin, Who Killed Kit Marlow? A Contract to Murder in Elizabethan England, The History Press, 2001
Now is the Month of Maying was written by Thomas Morley, 1557/8–1602. A popular composer of Tudor secular music, this is one of his better-known pieces, still performed today.
Acknowledgements
My grateful thanks must go first to my agent Luigi Bonomi, as always, and his wife Alison, who are beside me every step of the way. The writing of historical fiction can be a laborious process, undertaken alone or in the hushed surroundings of academic libraries, and the pleasure of an occasional working lunch with one’s agent cannot be overstated.
My thanks are also due to the marvellous and professional team at Transworld, especially my editor Emma Buckley, whose thoughtful insights and patience have made this a far better book, and to Lynsey Dalladay for being such a brilliant publicist.
Nearer to home, I am eternally grateful to my husband Steve, to whom this novel is dedicated, for having made endless cups of tea and ferried children about while I sat struggling with Elizabethan plotters. I was only very haphazardly a writer when he married me, so he did not sign up for being Mr Lamb. Yet there he still is, happy to take on the often problematic mantle of novelist’s spouse. Equally, my long-suffering children have learned to tiptoe about in the evenings and fetch snacks to keep me at my desk: my thanks to Kate, Becki, Dylan, Morris and Indigo for being indispensable members of the team.
Thanks, finally, to all those librarians, writers and researchers who have helped along the way, and to my friends and readers online, whose daily encouragement continues to nudge me towards exciting new writing projects.
About the Author
While studying Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights at Oxford University, Victoria Lamb had a desire to write a series of novels about Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’. Now a busy mother of five, she has finally achieved that ambition. Along the way, she has published five books of poetry under the name Jane Holland and edited the arts journal Horizon Review. She is also the author of a series of Tudor novels for teens. Victoria lives in a three-hundred-year-old farmhouse on the fringe of Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, with her husband and young family. Her Last Assassin is her third novel featuring Lucy Morgan.
Also by Victoria Lamb
The Queen’s Secret
His Dark Lady
For young adults:
Witchstruck
Witchfall
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First published in Great Britain
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Table of Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One
Chapter
One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Two
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part Three
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Four
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Victoria Lamb
Copyright
Her Last Assassin Page 37