A Dead Man in Deptford

by Anthony Burgess

  Also we do know that, by order of her Protestant Majesty, Fidei Defensor, Philips or Phelips breathed on his spectacles and polished them to forge a postscript that affirmed the Queen of Scots her complicity, for in it she is represented as enquiring of the names of the six gentlemen that were to release her and convey her to the throne. For it had never seemed to her Protestant Majesty, our late lady Elizabeth, Occidental Star, that the Act which condemned her innocent cousin for the guilt of others would prevail greatly in Europe. But here in Philippine good black ink was proof of conspiracy enough, and that would serve. Philips or Phelips, in forger's triumph, could not resist the sketching, in three broad lines, of a gallows on the outer cover of the letter. Perhaps, seeing this, Babington, who was no fool, began to have his doubts of the whole procedure. And the arrests began with the taking of Father Ballard, soon stripped of the swaggering Foscue disguise and reduced to a shivering priestling ripe for the rack of Mr Topcliffe.

  It was Robin Poley who reported this to Babington while the latter lay slugabed one morning after a night of little sleep. Then Poley betook himself to hide in Richmond where Mr Secretary had followed the court, granting Babington the benison of an address so that he might clinch the affair with a palpitant culpatory missive. And indeed Babington wrote, saying Est exilium inter malos vivere, it is truly exile to dwell among the wicked, and Farewell, sweet Robin, if, as I take thee, true to me. If not, Adieu, omnium bipedum nequissimus, of all that walk on two feet the wickedest (and that alternative was just and to be Poley's best epitaph). He then concluded: The furnace is prepared wherein our faith must be tried. Farewell till we meet, when God knows well. Thine, how far thou knowest, A.B.

  The date is well attested of the taking of Father John Ballard. It was on August 4, in the year of grace or something 1586. He strode aswagger, much the captain, into Poley's house, or rather the garden of the Garden, full of flowers dry in the heat, where he was to meet with Babington, and Mr Secretary's men were all about.

  - And where is good Robin?

  - If that means Mr Poley, he is already taken. This was Mr Secretary's man Francis Milles, who then ordered the arrest to be made by a Mr Casty that was a deputy alderman of Aldgate. It was not true that Poley had been taken, but there was to be a semblance of taking in good time, Poley in the Tower, having freely walked thither, there in his spidery script to write his long report and, ever piously mindful of the papist peril, to incriminate such as he found, priests starved and past dissembling and the like. It was said by the equivocator Southwell that Poley poisoned the Bishop of Armagh that is in Ireland who had been haled out of his diocese with a piece of cheese but this may not be true. Yet many-tongued rumour babbled over the years and the Catholics were at the last to know their enemy.

  Babington and others fled north to the wilderness of St John's Wood, where, unprotected by either the Precursor or the Beloved Disciple, they wandered, sought shelter, ate sour apples, wore rags and stained their faces with juice of nuts. Savage that was to have borne the knife lumbered south, a large man and slow. All were caught with but little trouble, and there were among the final criminal band names that mean nothing now, these being attached to helpers and shelterers, pitiers when not believers, ploughmen and woodcutters and farmers' wives.

  Kit said, truly in his cups after Tamburlaine Two but most plausibly and perhaps not weaving a play out of it, that, on Mr Secretary's order, he was made attend the trial on September 13, the Michaelmas term not yet begun, at Westminster before a commission of Over and Terminer, with Sir Christopher Hatton, the Queen's dancing man, as chief prosecutor. There could be no defence and so for the defence there was no counsel. The trial in the great hall under its high vaults, dusty sunlight shafting in, full of murmurers and growlers quietened by beadles and bailiffs, with howlers in the streets held back with pikes, was by way of being a play without plot or exercise in what the Senecans term stichomythia. Father John Ballard, with wrenched beard, torn hair and scarred cheeks, as well as a shoulder freshly deformed, was carried in in a chair.

  - Rise. To sit is insolence to the court.

  - I would rise if I could. My broken legs are somewhat of a hindrance.

  - Do you acknowledge yourself to be a foul traitor and villain?

  - If you seek villainy look elsewhere. Look to your chief torturer Mr Topcliffe, who while busy with the screws and stretchers did regale me with tales of feeling the breasts and belly of your lady the Queen under her kirtle. There is decorum in all things, even in the breaking of a man.

  - We will not have this.

  - It skills little what you will or not have. I am too weary and broken for your game. If you seek guilt you must probe among yourselves that threw away the true faith on a king's whim.

  - You then admit your treason?

  - To Christ our Lord never, to the true Church he founded never, to my sacred office that with all diligence I pursued never and again never.

  - So you acknowledge yourself to be a villain.

  - If in your tortured logic to be Christ's priest is to be a villain, then amen. Let me to my crucifixion and my reward.

  - You are also a blasphemer. You shall have your crucifixion and worse.

  - To that too amen. May this realm struggle out of its darkness towards the light.

  When Savage, ragged and wild of eye and not belying his name, was thrust into the court, he was called at once an assassin.

  - To assassinate is to kill. I have not killed. Ergo I am no assassin.

  - We speak of your avowed intention.

  - The intention was the fiction of one Gifford who is now proved a double-dealer and author of a plot that should entrap many, not least the Queen of Scots. I ever opposed it.

  - We have letters of proof.

  - Letters of forgery.

  - You attaint the Queen's counsellors with villainy?

  - The Queen's counsellors are doubtless best able to judge of the morality of their acts.

  - You are a foul villain and a treacherous assassin.

  - How long must this wheel turn?

  It was all a wearisome business, and by September 16 fourteen had been found guilty and condemned. Four days later came the first of the two bloody public shows, the weather continuing dry but not sunny, and Kit again much against his will was constrained to attend at St Giles's Fields the hanging and butchering of the chief conspirators, Ballard, Babington, Savage, others, including the Tilney that, in his scaffold speech, was challenged by a Dr White, that was learned in the reformed versions of theology, and to him replied that he came hither to die, not to argue.

  Kit had no special post of spectation. He noted that the chambers that Babington had used in Holborn, from whose casements something of a view was afforded, seemed to have been usurped by Philips or Phelips, Berdon or Beard, Faunt and, he did not wish to believe his eyes on this, Tom as a Walsingham presence. But he stood at the rear of the crowd of the ill-washed but staunchly protestant, children even on fathers' shoulders, gossiping matrons, even pie-sellers, taking in the stink as at least the stink of life. The show began with the trugging of the sleds through the streets, the crowd's groans and japes (they be given free passage and no labour of limbs), then the untrussing of the victims and the thrusting of them to the ladders. The hangman, masked but known to be Jack Flood from his gapped grin and the width of his shoulders, had two assistants, young boys already in blood well steeped, and it was they that did the thrusting up to the gallows with their knifepoints. Ballard was first and, at the ladder's foot, gave with such dignity as a broken man might his hope of England's seeing its folly and bathing at the last in truth's recovered light and much else. He signed the air crosswise, glad at least, he said, to be permitted at last to do this in the open, and voices called on him to repent. He smiled sadly, shaking his head, then was hauled up, firmly noosed, then kicked from the ladder. Here was skill shown. The single garment ripped down, the prick and ballocks exposed then sliced away, the first blood healthily flowing,
then the cross-cut along the belly so that the bowels gushed out and, here was the skill of it, the victim saw before his eyes turned up. Then was the whole body cut down and chopped by the hangman and his two (never eat flesh more, vomited a girl that pushed her way away from it), the hacking most vigorous so that sweat showed on the bare chests of the hackers. The quarters were heft up as at Smithfield and thrown into the boiling tub, there would be a fair stew soon, it lacked but carrots and onions and the coils of entrails pulled by the two lads as to unwind a rope for the hangman's skipping. All this Babington saw, he was next, and swooned to be revived with a slash across the chaps with Ballard's own bowels (unfair that his eyes be shut, he must see all, that is the rule of it), noosed as he screamed no no, kicked off, lost what were termed his privities, saw, saw, saw in disbelief the door of his belly widely opened and his inner self gush out. His heart was held up, but the hangman cursed, as one failed in his craft, that he who was now heartless was eke sightless, there was no justice in the manner raw nature did ever seek to foil arts hardly learned, and then it was the turn of Savage (he is a rogue of bulk, there will be a fairsized knockmedown upon him, thou wilt see else). But Savage in his heaviness broke the warped rope and fell unhanged (there will be questions on this, old rope is for tethering your jennyass), so that he saw in living awareness the slicing off of his manhood and the bloodgush (fairsized, did I not say) and the uncurtaining of his entrails. So here was one that observed somewhat of his anatomy, his beatless heart included, before yielding the ghost and turning to fresh butcher's meat.

  Of this Kit could stomach no more, so he shoved his way out (there is more to come, cully, you miss half the show), seeing himself in an overwhelming measure as the hangman by proxy, riding from Tom Walsingham's bed to sign that he had witnessed conspiracy and here were the names, he had taken bloody money before blood was spilt and converted it to bloodhued satin for his back. A kind arm upheld him as he tottered and a kind voice said it was all enough, let us breathe fresher air at the rear of St Giles's church. Kit looked up into the black eyes of he had forgot the name but soon he knew it, Skeres.

  - Nick Skeres. We are a long way from Dover where we took ship that time. All for the cause, the cause.

  They sat on a grassy tump behind the solid hulk that proclaimed God's protestant truth, and Skeres kindly watched while Kit voided his breakfast.

  - Let us come away from there, you have made your offering or oblation or whatever a man is to call it. You need drink now to settle the inner being.

  Kit retched and retched but stringy spittle only came up. He lurched on Skeres's arm to sit under the ancient oak. The sun had clouted away its cloudy obstruents and gushed heat like blood; here was shade. Skeres, Kit now saw, was in decent black as for mourning and was no more the dirty rogue of the feast of Dover fish. His nails were trimmed and a clean hand played with a clean dagger.

  - It is all over now, the crowd is departing, pleased at a fine spectacle and no money charged. See them go, pleased and chattering. It is filth, filth and again filth.

  - And we were both part of it.

  - I do not see myself as such. The bodyguard of Robin Poley and now his daily messenger while he is in the Tower. He is well provided for, with his wine and victuals brought in and his work of writing it all down and a mistress when he has done his day's work. A happy man, you would say. And happy that he was not there to witness the outcome of his dealings and double-dealings. Squeamish, you could call him. It is all Plato with him, ideas skirling in the empyrean.

  - You sound more scholarly than I would have thought should fit your office.

  - Oh, I am no scholar. A picker up only. I cite bonny Robin. Well, the labours are not quite done. There will be the matter of rousing the people with fears and tremors before the head of the second bloody Mary can be struck off. That is a great and grave matter and it will not be at Tyburn or in St Giles's Fields. This striking off of heads and loosing by the knife of what is best kept hidden is no more to my taste than to yours. A strike to the heart should be enough, one thrust and all over and little blood. My hands feel sticky with it, I feel it will flow crying to heaven all over the fields and end here at our feet.

  He feigned with his dagger to strike Kit to the heart, smiling rather than grinning.

  - I go my ways and you yours, he then said. Get some ale in, it will wash the blood away. And he rose and helped Kit up. His gait was swift, he seemed to vanish in the flowing crowd that enjoyed the sun as much if no more than all it had seen. A small boy clinging to his father's hand, an honest tradesman by his look, looked up at his father saying And and and, hand firmly locked. Kit, a little bloody money in his purse, made his way to the Unicorn on Bishopsgate. Here was the realm of the playhouse, where only pig's blood gushed from bladders hidden, where swords of lath struck and axes were of pulped paper moulded. It was safer, all was pretence. But the tavern was crammed with onlookers at the show now seeking refreshment, the tables filled and many standing about, swilling, calling for more. Alleyn's brother, presiding, did not seem to remember Kit. Nor did, who was it, yes, Bradley nor Orwell, yes that name, who both sat in the corner covertly comparing cutpurse gains at the hanging. Kit found room at a table of honest tradesmen who discussed, disagreed, compared points of the executioner's art - that right arm is grown slow, Gosport that is dead was better at it, they say it all goes to Greenwich to feed the Queen's hounds, nay there are some that hunger for man's flesh but it is unlawful. Kit called for a whole quart. True, it settled him, washed the blood away but, as a mischievous spirit, rose to his head and bade him curse.

  - Curse all who permit it, this butchery, and all for what?

  A man should follow what faith he will, God grins at all this, but mayhap there is no God, a true God would not stomach it, Christ in heaven if there is a heaven and if Christ be in it must look down and cry drag them all to hell if there be a hell.

  He cursed only to the table and the honest burghers about it. One said: Have a care, and the others looked for watchers, officers of the law, ragged informers. But at the neighbour table a bald man with a long grey beard, much lined, his habit decent and his drink but a small chalice of sherris, nodded and said:

  - Aye aye, it is the way all must feel that have a spoonful of the compassion that our Saviour taught. And even the Queen, that has most cause to be vehement against her enemies, even she feels it, for has she not decreed that tomorrow the agony shall be lessened? The hanged shall be properly hanged and dead before that the cutting up commences.

  - How, how? called some. Where did you hear this?

  - Flood himself told me. He is by way of being my grandson in law.

  Some would then touch the old man as if he were holy, one that was a link through the flesh of his granddaughter to a great one of the day. Kit called for a new quart, drank deep and belched on the yeasty froth, standing staggering to cry to the tavern so that all were stilled to listen:

  - If religion does this to men's bodies, then let us have no more religion. We shall all be happier without God and his black crows of ministers. I do not forget what was done under bloody Mary and know it will happen again if the Spanish take us over. It is all one, true reformed or true papish. It is religion itself that is our enemy. Who is there that needs it save those that relish the blood it lets or grow fat on benefices and advowsons and tithes and Peter's pence? Cast down God like a wooden puppet. He and his angels and saints are fit only for oaths. By the six ballocks of the Trinity and the cheese of the milk of the Magdalen and the hundred prepuces of circumcised Jesus I cry out on it.

  A black-bearded bravo came towards him with clutching hands to cry:

  - You shall be in the Clink for this, bastard. I will not hear God and his Church and she that is head of it put down.

  There were many growls of those that agreed.

  - Hypocrites all. You know nothing of God or anything. And Kit, who knew he had drunk enough, threw his nearquart into the black beard, clattered with his tankar
d on the head one who would bar his leaving and, staggering still, left. God's air, God's sun. No, they were not God's. Nature's, that framed us of four elements. He had now to head to Poley's Garden, defiled, defiled, to free Brown Peter, that he had left enstabled with ample oats, and then ride to Cambridge. He would not stay another hour in this befouled city, where the bells still rang jubilantly and death's celebrators staggered in drink and sang their dirty songs. Well, he too was a staggerer, and, as Brown Peter whinnied him a greeting, he found support against the warm flank, put his arms about the sturdy neck for comfort, sobbed a minute or so, then drew him out and clumsily mounted. He would travel back to a citadel of pure mind and essence in the company of a beast that was pure muscle and instinct. What did Brown Peter know of Aristotle? And yet to live and die in Aristotle's works seemed at the moment of steering out of crammed London the summit of all aspiration. It was the all too human passions between planes that, all too disjunct, were yet akin in sanity that were from now to be avoided.

  He had not thought to ride to Scadbury. To ride to Scadbury was to plunge to the heart of the human passions. Tom had said that he would be there and that Frizer would be in Basingstoke. He had London business (Kit now knew what) but would be back in early afternoon. Jove send me more such afternoons as this. No, not now if not no more ever. The genitals were for slicing off that blood not seed might gush. The passion of the butcher's knife was the passion of coupling. There was a foul amity between the acts of the bed and the acts of the scaffold. Let the brain ride aloof: these warm animal flanks supported the regrettable apparatus that supported it. A man could not get away from his body. He would eat no more meat, he would divorce from his munching of bread and sipping of wine the memory long ingrained of Christ taking these for his body and blood. He would prepare for the Michaelmas term in the conduct of a kind of Lent. Yet what was it that he was writing but a celebration of human passion? This was another matter, this was words, it was an Aristotelian purging of the real through the fanciful. The poet was chained to his passions, true, but only that he might discharge them in the splendour of language. The lips spoke and the shackles fell. So let it be.