A Verse to Murder

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘Bribe the apprentice Hal to make sure the medicines were extra-strong and to swear that Shakespeare bought the hemlock,’ added the more practical Rosalind. ‘It is a pity we cannot question young Hal.’

  *

  ‘Aye,’ said Poley. ‘If what you have told me of the matter is accurate, it would have been interesting to find out what form of bribery was used and by whom. The best guess at the moment to my mind arises from the apparent place and nature of his death. I agree that it seems he had gone to Forman’s house seeking Elizabeth Gerard’s birth chart and such predictions as it might contain. But what if he also had plans involving Forman’s wares? If Mistress Elizabeth was purchasing love potions and amulets to win Master Donne by magic, why should not young Hal be seeking the same things to win the heart of Elizabeth in the first place? Forman’s part in this is by no means clear, whether or not he kept the boy’s corpse in his privy and prepared the distillation of hemlock poured in Spenser’s ear by person or persons as yet unknown. No. I wish we could have questioned young Hal I do indeed.’

  ‘But his sudden and unexplained absence is now likely to cause some consternation,’ said Rosalind. ‘Has he risen from Spenser’s grave? Has someone else resurrected him and taken the poems too? Where has he gone and why? There is black magic involved in this as well as alchemy and apothecaries - is there any of it strong enough to unlock death’s door? There will be fearful heads shaken amongst the men who put him there in the first place and find him missing now. Much fluttering and confusion.’

  ‘Like a cat among pigeons,’ emphasized Tom. ‘But only among the lesser suspects.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Poley. ‘Now we come to more dangerous waters. Well, let the good ship Speculation sail on regardless.’

  ‘Like Odysseus facing Scylla and Charybdis, we plough straight ahead as you suggest into the deadly seas of Mother Hubberd’s Tale. We proceed between the Fox, do we not, and the Ape as we have discussed. No matter who was to be interpreted as the Fox when the poem was originally published, the Fox is Walter Raleigh now,’ said Tom. ‘Lean, acquisitive, ruthless and red-haired.’

  ‘And he is also closely associated with Ireland,’ said Rosalind. ‘He has holdings there, and history…’

  ‘He was with Lord Grey at the siege of Smerwick, as you know Master Poley. He and Macworth were captains in the force that defeated the Spanish and Italian troops sent by Philip of Spain to support the Irish and trapped them there by the coast. Whether Lord Grey gave his word that all who surrendered would be spared or not remains a subject of debate. But there is no doubt that as soon as they did surrender, Raleigh and Macworth beheaded them all. Famously made a pile of their heads - six hundred of them - only sparing the officers in hope of ransom, and when that was not forthcoming they shattered the bones in their arms and legs with hammers and left them crying and crawling for a night before they strung them up the next day and left them flapping and choking. Certainly there are men and women in Ireland, Spain and Italy who would move heaven and earth to see The Fox hunted to his lair and hounded to death.’

  ‘Spenser amongst them?’

  ‘His lands are close enough to Smerwick. It was his castle razed and his children murdered, none of Raleigh’s touched - for Raleigh of course has his principal residence, wife and children safely at Sherborne in nice peaceful Dorset. It is a situation which might generate sufficient jealousy in a frustrated and heartbroken father to make Spenser keen on republishing his most stinging satire.’

  ‘And tempt Raleigh to reply in kind?’ wondered Rosalind.

  ‘Who knows?’ shrugged Poley. ‘There’s no doubt he’s capable of it, six hundred heads at Smerwick Bay stand mute witness to the fact. But does he have the power? Or the influence?’

  iv

  ‘Of one thing I am certain,’ said Tom, ‘Raleigh would never go running to Forman demanding hemlock in person. Nor would he pretend to be Will Shakespeare, disguised or not - though his reputation as a poet does suffer in comparison with Will’s. And there is not a jot of possibility that it was Raleigh who tip-toed up the stair to pour the stuff in Spenser’s ear. That’s not his style at all.’

  ‘But he is surrounded by men who would do all these things if he ordered them to,’ said Rosalind. ‘Soldiers and sailors alike.’

  ‘True. But is this work for a soldier or a sailor? I think not…’ he looked at Poley unflinchingly.

  ‘You’re in the right,’ said Poley after a moment. ‘It is work for a spy. A clandestine assassin.’

  ‘Which brings us to the Ape,’ said Tom. ‘When Mother Hubberd’s Tale was first published, the Ape was generally taken to be Lord Burghley but in the mean-time the target has become his son, Secretary Cecil. And the passage of years has made the satire more biting still. For William Cecil, Lord Burghley may have been the Queen’s creature, performing her every wish in his desire to make himself more powerful but he was a strong and upstanding man of considerable physical beauty. His son, however, is her Ape. Ape by name as well as by nature - in every regard that his father was but with the added burden of his physical appearance. She calls him her Ape because he looks like an ape with his twisted spine, hunched back and small stature. He hides his bitterness well, but he is the result of his father’s constant disappointment that he never grew strong or straight. Of the endless hours in the hands of doctors who tried everything including racks worthy of Topcliffe himself in the endeavour to make him fit his father’s wishes. His elder half-brother is as tall as their father and has inherited the titles as Earl of Exeter and Lord Burleigh as well as his sporting prowess and physical beauty. His cousins are the Bacon brothers, Francis and Anthony. Anthony at least is bed-bound which must be some relief. His years at St John’s College, Cambridge were such a trial to him that he contrived to leave the place early and finished his education at the Sorbonne in Paris hard by Notre Dame where his hunched back was apparently less remarkable. But there is no doubt that he has inherited his father’s political genius and understanding of the way power works, be it in the most magnificent court or in the filthiest gutter. And of course, as master Poley knows better than anyone alive, Cecil is surrounded by spies and assassins who would avenge the insult against him by some upstart poet without a second thought.’

  ‘And have the knowledge, skills and motivation to cover their tracks,’ said Rosalind. Then a thought struck her. She turned to Tom almost accusingly, ‘And Secretary Cecil is well aware of your habit of seeking out murderers as well as your friendship with Will. What if he has ordered Will to be made a part of this - not because of his poetry or his standing as a writer of plays, but as a way of distracting you from seeking out the truth!’

  *

  Poley did not laugh outright but it was clear that he was fighting to keep a straight face as he said, ‘Mistress Rosalind, I fear you may have overestimated master Musgrave’s ability and standing, particularly in the eyes of the most powerful man in the country.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘Then again, perhaps not. I’ll allow you know Secretary Cecil better than we do, but you’ll also allow that Tom has been of direct and personal service both to you and to him recently. The kind of service that is likely to place Tom in Master Secretary’s memory for some time. And place him there to the good.’

  ‘Very well, mistress, I’ll allow that,’ nodded Poley. ‘And I’ll also allow that there may be ulterior motives in causing Master Shakespeare to stand accused of involvement through the witness of the apprentice Hal - at one time articulate and now mute. An apparently devious stratagem which you, with a little help from the Fates and a precipitous staircase, have thwarted twice. I wonder, however, if you have quite thought through all the ramifications resulting from your actions.’

  ‘Meaning?’ asked Rosalind.

  ‘Meaning,’ answered Tom before Poley could speak, ‘that we may be jumping to conclusions about how and why Hal died. And also that in the absence of any immediate chance of removing Will to the Tower or the Marshalsea, whoever
arranged all this might well decide it is time to remove him to the graveyard alongside the two that lie dead so far.’

  ‘Surely that would entail some risk,’ said Rosalind. ‘To have one poet die in mysterious circumstances might well be unremarkable enough. To have two dying so close together must surely rouse suspicion.’

  ‘Not to mention a great deal of relief, perhaps even joy, amongst genuine poetry-lovers,’ said Poley.

  ‘Only if his death were in itself suspicious,’ interjected Tom. ‘And only, indeed, if Spenser’s death is recognized as being out of the ordinary.’

  ‘All you would need is sudden flaring of tempers over reputation slighted, such as arose between Ben Jonson and Gabriel Spenser, for instance, and there you have it,’ added Poley, still considering how poets died. ‘Or you do after a little rapier-play, though I understand in Gabriel Spenser’s case the fatal wound was given by one large body - unusually large for a poet and playwright, though not for an ex-bricklayer like Jonson - jumping onto the belly of the other when he was down and bleeding from a wound in his side. One dead poet and one claiming benefit of clergy. It could happen daily without arousing suspicion.’

  Rosalind frowned. ‘Your levity, Master Poley, only serves to make one thing clear.’

  ‘My unimpeachable taste in verse and drama?’

  ‘The fact that my Will may be in immediate and mortal danger.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Poley, a little more seriously.

  ‘Some men whom the neighbors thought to be pursuivants were looking for him in St Helen’s soon after we moved to Maiden Lane,’ said Rosalind.

  ‘If they were pursuivants, I did not send them,’ said Poley.

  ‘Might Sir Thomas Gerard have done so?’ she wondered.

  ‘The Knight Marshal has yet to share any confidences with me,’ admitted Poley. ‘Nor, in truth, is he likely to do so; any more than the Earl Marshal.’

  ‘You may be presented as Pursuivant Marshal,’ nodded Rosalind. ‘But you are still Chief Intelligencer to the Council.’

  ‘Achilles disguised as a woman is still Achilles,’ nodded Tom.

  Poley looked at him in silence, his eyebrows raised in surprise that Tom should pay him a compliment instead of a bantering insult - their usual way of talking to each-other. ‘If you confuse the Marshalsea with the mythic island of Skyros,’ he allowed. ‘And If I am Achilles disguised as a woman to gain entry there, then who are you?’

  ‘Odysseus his companion,’ answered Tom without a second thought. ‘The cunning one.’

  v

  Tom and Rosalind discussed what they had learned as they made their way south through the city. Poley had lent Tom a leather bag big enough to hold the poems which were still carefully organized. Tom was quiet; not because he was mulling over their conversation with Poley, but rather because he was still wondering about the oh-so-convenient death of his predecessor as Pursuivant Marshal up at Houghton Hall, for something about the name of the place nagged at his memory.

  They paused in Old Swan Lane to purchase a couple of soused herring and a loaf of barley bread for Will’s supper. ‘He won’t have thought to get anything for himself,’ said Rosalind. ‘He’ll have spent the day so far scribbling away at his play of Henry, glad of my absence and enjoying the peace and quiet, as like as not.’ There was a tone in her voice that showed a conflict between love and frustration, thought Tom with an inward smile. Well, the pair of them would either settle together comfortably or they would not. Only time would tell.

  Tom and Rosalind ran down Old Swan Stairs to the tiny landing place, then Rosalind looked around wide-eyed while Tom gestured to the nearest wherry. He was not surprised either at Rosalind’s wonder or her silence. There was still something of the country-girl about her. She was by no means used to London, its sights, sounds and smells. Old Swan Stairs provided all three in abundance. The landing on which they were standing was the closest of all to London Bridge. The Bridge itself towered on their left, stepping out across the river, reaching half way to the clouds. Its starlings, pointed like the bows of ships, tore the river to pieces, especially now that the tide was falling fast. There was a cliff of water beneath the bridge, Tom knew, that was taller than a man. The fearsome noise of the nearest waterfalls between the starlings was compounded by the rumbling roar of the water-wheels between the nearest ones and the creaking thunder of cart-wheels, hooves, trotters and feet in their hundreds passing along above. The shouted conversations of the river of humanity flowing this way and that were only occasionally audible above the cacophony of Nature meeting the work of Man. The wind backed, bringing the stomach-churning stench from the communal privies that were merely planks with holes in them overhanging the thundering flood.

  The wherry Tom had signaled pulled up beside the landing. ‘You and the pretty lady looking to shoot the bridge, Master?’ bellowed the wherryman. ‘It’s just the right time for it. A mortal exciting ride.’

  ‘No thank you. Bank End Stairs if you please,’ bellowed Tom in return.

  ‘Should we not shoot the bridge?’ asked Rosalind as she settled onto her seat beside Tom. ‘I hear it is a fearful ride and deadly dangerous too. I could do with some excitement!’

  ‘Get Will to take you,’ suggested Tom. ‘He’s bound to be planning a play with a storm, a shipwreck or a drowning in it soon.’

  The wherryman obviously overheard them, thought Tom an instant later, for he took them as close to the Bridge as it was possible to come without getting sucked down by the fearsome current. Rosalind clutched his arm and resolutely refused to scream, her face spotted with spray, her hair gleaming with it, her eyes wide and her lips apart as she panted. Will had better not be hoping to get much more writing done today, thought Tom. Or any sleep tonight.

  *

  The door to Will and Rosalind’s new lodgings was on the latch as usual. Rosalind opened it and Tom followed her into the spacious hall, then up the stairs. The door into their rooms stood slightly ajar but Rosalind saw nothing strange in this, pushing it wider, and calling to her preoccupied lover, ‘Will! We’re home and have supper for you.’

  She bustled through the shadowy bedroom and into the brighter room at the front. Then she stopped, surprised and confused. The room was empty. The table still bore the remains of a sketchy lunch snatched at random. The wardrobe door stood open. The travelling trunk beneath the window was piled with sheets of paper that were in the process of becoming The Chronicle History of Henry the fifth With his battle fought at Agin Court France together with Ancient Pistol as it now said on the title page. The ink well and a pile of quills lay tidily beside them. Other than that, the room was utterly empty.

  Tom crossed to the wardrobe and pulled the door a little wider. ‘His cloak’s gone,’ he said. ‘Likely he’s been called down to the Globe over some matter of Burbage’s.’

  Rosalind put the packages of fish and bread on the table. ‘Let’s go and find out,’ she said.

  They left the room and the lodging house side by side, crossed Maiden Lane shoulder to shoulder and strode across Sir Nicholas Brend’s field. The Globe was almost walled now - certainly they needed to enter through the door. ‘That’ll be a penny-piece each, groundlings,’ called Burbage cheerfully. ‘Though you’ll have to wait a while to see the play.’ He jumped down off the undressed boards that would become the stage to land in front of them. ‘What’s amiss?’

  ‘Have you seen Will?’ asked Rosalind.

  ‘No. Is he not hard at work on his play of Henry Fifth? The roof goes on as soon as the thatcher can manage it and we will need something to show our public. Will promised...’

  ‘No,’ said Tom. ‘Will is gone.’

  ‘His play is there right enough,’ confirmed Rosalind. ‘But Will is gone.’

  *

  Poley looked at the pursuivant without much liking. He was a square man of early middle years, dressed in a black tunic and black breeches. His stockings were black and his black shoes set off with silver-coloured pewter buckles
. But this was not the rich, expensive, velvety black favored by Tom Musgrave. This was cheap, cloudy black over shoddy and fustian favored by those of Puritan bent. His face was square and shiny, his eyes and mouth small and disapproving. His hair was cropped as though his wife had put a basin upside-down over his head and cut round the rim. It hung one lank inch below the line of his wide-brimmed hat - which he kept in place even when faced by his betters. Though of course, he would not admit to having betters outside his congregation, for he was God’s man doing God’s work in this wicked world and anyone opposing him was bound straight for Hell. His name was Humiliation Gouge and he was, for the moment, under Poley’s command.

  ‘Is it done?’ asked Poley quietly.

  Humiliation Gouge stopped looking with marked disapproval round Poley’s comfortable lodgings and allowed his gaze to return to his commander’s face. ‘Done as ordered, Marshal. I took half a dozen men but he came quiet enough in the end.’

  ‘And he’s safe?’

  ‘His body lies secure in the Marshalsea, safe enough. His immortal soul is likely well on the path to everlasting hellfire if there is truth in what we hear spoken of him. A writer of plays. A poet. A fornicator and a sodomite…’

  Humiliation’s tone was equally disapproving of poets and sodomites, noted Poley. ‘Well, brother Humiliation,’ he said, ‘you have done good work and may return to your duties. I will come to the Marshalsea tomorrow. Master Shakespeare and I have much to discuss…’

  Humiliation Gouge turned on his heel and began to march towards the door where Bess, who had shown him up, stood wide-eyed. ‘Oh, and Gouge,’ called Poley.