The Reckoning

by M. J. Trow

  He turned his back on Shaxsper and turned to Marlowe, who was, when all was said and done, his bread and butter. ‘Master Marlowe,’ this time his voice was low and honeyed, ‘I can only apologize for any damage this oaf has done you. The rest of the play shall be as written, word for word. I give you my solemn promise.’

  ‘Are you insane?’ Shaxsper snapped. ‘Apart from anything else, everyone thinks that the king and Gaveston are just boon companions at best so if they start spooning and kissing like a couple of girls, don’t you think the audience might be a bit confused, to say the least.’

  ‘Audiences don’t notice what’s in front of them,’ Alleyn said, shortly. ‘Don’t you remember that time when we had to replace Dido halfway through and the new actor was six foot if he was an inch and the previous one was only up to his elbow. Nobody noticed a thing.’

  Marlowe stepped in. Time was wasting and they needed to work out what to do to rescue what they could. ‘Hate to say it though I do,’ he said, ‘Shaxsper is right. We can’t change this particular horse in midstream. Just go on as you would have done and we’ll take the consequences.’

  Alleyn blinked. He had not expected that. He smiled and extended a hand. ‘No hard feelings, Kit?’ he said.

  Marlowe looked at his hand as if it was smeared with the filthiest mire and then met his eyes. ‘Hard feelings, Ned? No, no hard feelings. Just blind hatred and a promise from me – that if I live to be a hundred, you will never, while I live, act on any stage in this whole world again.’ He spun on his heel and walked out, into the murmuration that could only be an audience resuming its seats, full of wine and sweetmeats.

  There was silence for a moment or two as everyone digested what had happened. Inevitably, it was Skeres who spoke first. ‘That went well,’ he said.

  Outside, the shawms struck up and the cast of The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, king of England lined up, ready for the second half.

  Thomas Walsingham had given the brown parlour over to the Privy Council for the duration of their stay at Scadbury. They would not be here for long, and Whitehall was only ten miles away. Even in that time, however, horsemen arrived throughout the night, bringing messages for one or all of them. The government of Queen Elizabeth never slept.

  ‘Well,’ Howard was the first to break silence and Padraig raised his head from the straw floor as if to catch his every word, ‘I have to say I don’t really know what all the fuss was about. I thought the play was rather good.’

  ‘They changed it,’ Burghley was pouring himself another claret from Walsingham’s bottomless cellar. ‘Cleaned it up.’

  ‘Well, good,’ Howard nodded. ‘Common sense at last.’

  ‘With respect, my lord,’ Cecil said, sitting across from the Admiral, ‘you’re missing the point.’

  ‘Really?’ Howard had never liked Burghley’s little boy and daily, as he grew ever more powerful and more bumptious, he liked him even less. ‘In what way?’

  Cecil sighed. How his father had put up with such idiots in council for all these years he couldn’t imagine. ‘The written version we saw talked of sodomy, unnatural love. However, that’s by the way and no theatre crowd would stand for it. What’s more important – and what is still there in what we’ve just seen – is the attack on us.’

  ‘Us?’ Hunsdon frowned.

  ‘Specifically,’ Burghley weighed in, ‘my son and I.’

  ‘The Regnum Cecilianum,’ Hunsdon nodded.

  ‘Call it what you will,’ Burghley snapped, ‘that is precisely the kind of propaganda rubbish that men like Marlowe peddle.’

  Howard looked confused and Cecil came to his rescue. ‘For Edward II read Her Majesty,’ he said. ‘Consider what happens in the play. Edward is infatuated with Gaveston and heaps on him titles and power.’

  ‘The Regnum Cecilianum,’ Hunsdon said again, understanding exactly what was going on.

  ‘It’s wider than that,’ Cecil said. ‘We all of us in this room have had power thrust upon us, by the grace of Her Majesty. Parliament – in the play, the various earls and churchmen offended by Edward and Gaveston – has been ignored.’

  ‘How often,’ Burghley said, ‘has Her Majesty given Parliament her “answers answerless”. She has ignored their requests, granted favours to her favourites.’

  ‘Leicester,’ Howard remembered. ‘Essex. Ralegh.’

  ‘You, my lord,’ Cecil reminded him. ‘My Lord Hunsdon, my father and myself.’

  ‘And she let my sailors rot after the Armada,’ Howard remembered too, ‘dying of gangrene in the ships at Plymouth.’

  ‘I gave them money,’ Burghley insisted. ‘Food. Medicine.’

  Howard leaned forward to look Burghley in the eye. ‘You did, Burghley,’ he said. ‘Not the Queen.’

  ‘Consider the play again,’ Cecil said. ‘What do the discontented Lords do? They overthrow Gaveston, striking off his head on some accursed hill. And the king? The king is murdered at Berkeley castle.’

  ‘I was hoping for a poker up his arse,’ Howard grinned, but if that was an attempt at levity, it didn’t work.

  Cecil ignored him. ‘What Marlowe is saying is this,’ he said. ‘The Queen and her government are corrupt. It is the duty of parliament to overthrow both. I cannot conceive of a clearer example of treason.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said Hunsdon.

  ‘So Marlowe must die?’ Howard wanted confirmation.

  ‘He must be brought to book,’ Burghley said. ‘In what way, exactly, we must decide. Faunt is here watching him; our man is tidying up the loose ends. But we have to meet this over-reacher Marlowe face to face. His mouth must be stopped.’

  He got up and crossed to the door. ‘Ho!’ he called along the passageway. One of his guards clicked to attention. ‘Find Master Marlowe,’ Burghley said, ‘and bring him here. Now.’

  No one rose when Marlowe walked in. Still fuming over the wreckage that Alleyn and Shaxsper had caused to his play, he had not undressed but had spent the last hour pacing his room. Faunt, on his way to the stables, had heard the odd book hit the oak panelling and resigned himself to the fact that for somebody, it was going to be a noisy night; nothing he could say would calm the playwright down.

  ‘You sent for me, my Lords?’ Marlowe had not expected, any more than Skeres and Frizer had, all four of the inner sanctum of the Privy Council, yet here they were, looking at him, grim-faced.

  ‘The play, Marlowe,’ Burghley, as usual, opened proceedings.

  Marlowe waited. Perhaps this was his chance to use the line that was gnawing at his brain, ‘The play’s the thing,’ he said, ‘wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.’

  ‘You’ll catch a great deal more than that, sir,’ Burghley snapped. ‘It’s sedition, pure and simple. Treason against the state.’

  ‘Is it, my Lord?’ Marlowe played the ingenue, ‘but it all happened over two hundred years ago.’

  ‘Don’t trifle with me, sir.’ The Lord Treasurer was on his feet. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday. You knew exactly what you were doing writing this … abortion. Your aim was to stir up the populace to revolution.’

  ‘Forgive me, my Lord,’ Marlowe said. ‘I watched the audience during the performance as I always do. I saw no seething resentment, or flaming brands, no one vowing to tear down the establishment. If revolution was my aim, I failed abysmally.’

  ‘That’s because Scadbury isn’t London,’ Hunsdon said. ‘A London mob are more unruly. If they see it enacted on stage, they’ll try and act it out themselves – that’s how stupid they are.’

  ‘May I remind you, my Lord,’ Marlowe said, ‘that Scadbury was your idea as much as it was mine. The men you saw performing tonight are your men, sir; the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.’

  ‘I hope you don’t blame me, Marlowe,’ Hunsdon thundered. ‘As far as I knew you were going with Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy.’

  ‘Unworkable, my Lord,’ Marlowe shrugged, ‘as it turned out.’

  ‘We have your orig
inal words, Marlowe,’ Burghley said. ‘The draft of the play as you wrote it. If you or your players toned it down, that doesn’t change the original concept – or the purpose behind it.’

  ‘Where did you get the original?’ Marlowe asked. There was no ‘my Lord’ now.

  ‘That’s no concern of yours,’ Burghley told him.

  ‘It is very much a concern of mine,’ Marlowe said, ‘because the man who probably copied it out is dead.’

  ‘What?’ Howard blinked. ‘Who was that?’

  ‘A copyist named Roger Dalston,’ the playwright told him. ‘He was found murdered eight nights ago, here at Scadbury, wearing the costume of the Lord of Misrule.’

  The Privy Council looked at each other. ‘These things happen,’ Burghley said with a shrug, as though discussing the weather. ‘It is of no consequence.’

  Marlowe closed to the man and the other three were out of their seats, even little Robert who barely reached Marlowe’s shoulder. ‘It was of consequence to his brother,’ the playwright growled, ‘as it must be to all his family and friends.’

  There was a silence and the four stood in a row, their backs to the fire, their faces immobile.

  ‘Marlowe,’ Burghley said, ‘let this be one final warning to you. Her Majesty’s government will not tolerate opposition. What you have done is tantamount to treason. And we hang traitors. This travesty of a play will never be performed again. My men have orders to destroy every copy of it and since it has not been lodged with the Master of the Revels, it will, in fact, cease to exist. We will of course keep our copies to ensure your good behaviour. And be assured, Marlowe, that it is the good service in various matters that you have done Her Majesty that has saved you from the noose. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Perfectly, my Lord.’ Marlowe was calm again.

  ‘One more thing,’ Cecil stopped the man in mid-bow. ‘Your contract with me is hereby terminated. Rogue agents I can do without. I hope the theatre offers a living wage, Marlowe, because you won’t receive another penny from Her Majesty’s government.’

  ‘Pieces of silver, Sir Robert,’ Marlowe said and he saw himself out.

  It had been a long time since Charles Howard had been in a church as simple and unadorned as St Nicholas in Chislehurst. It was late by the time he arrived, leaving his rapier at the door and following the glow of the candlelight from the altar.

  A young priest sat there, staring wistfully it seemed to Effingham at the royal arms over the side door.

  ‘Long to reign over us,’ the Admiral said.

  Henry Parkin leapt to his feet. His encounter with Baines, followed by his encounter with Audrey Walsingham, had shredded his nerves. He had not been to see Marlowe’s play and he had no idea who this man with the high ruff and elegant grey beard was.

  ‘Sorry if I startled you, vicar,’ the man said. ‘Couldn’t help noticing you noticing the Queen’s arms up there. Thank God for her, eh?’

  ‘Indeed, sir,’ Parkin bowed, aware that he was in the presence of greatness.

  ‘Howard,’ the man held out his hand, ‘of Effingham. Lord Admiral.’

  ‘My Lord.’ Parkin almost bent himself double again, lower this time.

  ‘Look,’ Effingham placed an avuncular arm around the lad’s bony shoulders. ‘I know you chaps don’t hear confession as such any more, but can I talk to you … boy to man, as it were?’

  ‘My Lord,’ Parkin stumbled. ‘I must tell you that I am not the priest-in-charge. The Reverend Baines …’

  ‘Baines?’ Effingham frowned. ‘I know that name.’ He was still frowning and nothing was helping his memory, least of all the lad who stood like a rabbit in the sights of a fowling piece.

  ‘Er … I am Henry Parkin, my Lord,’ he said at last. ‘The curate.’

  ‘You’ve taken Holy Orders, though?’ Effingham checked.

  ‘Oh, yes, my Lord.’

  ‘Well, that’s by the way, really. Do you know Christopher Marlowe, the playwright?’

  ‘I have recently met him, my Lord, yes. He is staying … oh, but you must know that.’

  Effingham patted the pew next to where he sat. This was the second time in twenty-four hours that someone had done that. Parkin had been afraid to sit next to Audrey Walsingham too, but he screwed his courage to the sticking place and sat down.

  ‘You’ll forgive me for this, my boy,’ Effingham said, ‘but, well, things are happening at the moment that … the world is turning upside down. Do you follow?’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘You saw Marlowe’s play last night?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Parkin said. ‘My calling doesn’t allow me to take in the theatre, I’m afraid. Invention of the devil.’

  Effingham laughed. ‘Yes, so’s gunpowder, but what would we do without it, eh? Be crossing ourselves like Papists and speaking Spanish by now, I have no doubt.’ He was suddenly serious. ‘We … that is, my colleagues and I … have been pretty beastly to Marlowe, threatening him with … well, I think we went too far. Can I tell you about it? Get it off my chest, so to speak. And, young as you are, I’d welcome your views.’

  The sun was still struggling over the horizon when the carriages from the stables pulled up outside the great front of Scadbury that Sunday morning, the last of the year. The outriders sat patiently waiting for their betters, their cloaks wrapped around them to try and keep in such warmth as rose from their mounts. All was still; not even a winter robin’s song broke the silence and when a horse stamped a hoof or whinnied it sounded like the trump of doom to the men waiting in double rank.

  Suddenly, from behind them, there was a clatter that set all the horses jinking, their metal-shod hoofs throwing sparks from the rough gravel in front of the house.

  ‘What in the name of God was that?’ the captain of the guard said and all the men were off their horses in a twinkling, facing the source of the noise, swords and daggers in their hands. One, nearest the door, rushed to bar the way; no one must come in or out until the danger was past.

  Tom Sledd and Amyntas Finch came around the corner, a beam on one shoulder, another under the other arm. They looked like some strange automaton, joined by the wood but almost a foot apart in height. Because of the difference in the length of their stride, the beam had just crashed to the ground and the tiles in the vine house that stretched the length of the south side of the house would never be quite the same again.

  Sledd, leading the way, stopped in his tracks and was nearly bowled over by Finch’s continued velocity. The stage manager looked at the row of weapons in front of him and then up to the faces. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, when he regained the power of speech.

  ‘Who are you and where are you from?’ the captain asked.

  ‘I am Thomas Sledd, of London. This is Amyntas, sometime George, Finch, also of London, I suppose. I never asked. Why do you want to know? All we’re doing is taking the stage apart. Master Walsingham is very hospitable, but we don’t want to take advantage.’

  ‘We heard a shot,’ one of the men said, accusingly.

  ‘No,’ Sledd looked puzzled. ‘Look, do you mind if we put these down? It’s all right for Finch back there, but they’re about at the limit of what I can carry.’

  The men looked at each other and took a step back. Their officer nodded.

  ‘Right, Amyntas,’ Sledd said, over his free shoulder. ‘This one first,’ he bounced the beam under his arm as best he could, ‘then the other, on my count of three. Three.’

  The beams crashed to the ground and both men leapt free, to save themselves from a certain broken ankle.

  The men sheathed their swords and their daggers. That had definitely been the sound, as near as made no difference.

  ‘Who are you, again?’ The officer waved to the man at the door and he stepped back.

  ‘I told you.’ Sledd was getting testy. It was cold and he had a stage to remove. ‘Sledd and Finch. London.’

  ‘Well … about your business, then,’ the officer said. ‘But wait until my gentlemen
have driven away. Wait there and don’t move.’

  The guards got back on their horses and waited patiently again. With rattling of latches, the great door swung open and Burghley swept out, followed by his son. They climbed into their carriage, which was waiting just outside the porch. It moved off and the next one took its place. Effingham swept out and stepped up onto the step, held steady by a lackey. Hunsdon followed, shivering in the cold and wrapped his cloak more tightly. He looked around him, with some contempt; he would be glad to shake the dust of Scadbury from his boots. The bed had been damp and Effingham’s snores, through the wall, were enough to wake the dead. He nodded to the lackey and then saw the two men standing away to the right on a couple of beams. They looked like rather inept acrobats. ‘Morning,’ he said, with a dip of the head then he sprang into the carriage and it moved off with a crack of the whip.

  Tom Sledd turned to Finch as the outriders disappeared around a bend in the avenue. ‘That’s breeding, that is,’ he said. ‘He’s only met me once, Baron Hunsdon has, at the theatre. But he still takes the time to say good morning.’

  Finch shrugged. It was all one to him. Real breeding would have been offering to give a hand with the bloody beams.

  ELEVEN

  Henry Parkin was sitting in the front pew when the congregation arrived that morning. There were more people than usual; as it was the last Sunday of the year, the infrequent attenders thought it would be ideal to turn up so they could honestly say, if asked, that of course they had attended church in 1592. Recusancy cost money.

  A few of the regulars had noticed that the curate was acting a little oddly that morning. The verger had said ‘Hello’ as was his wont and the organist had nodded to him. They didn’t get so much as a nod back. It didn’t help that Richard Baines was late. He had been locked away in his little chapel for most of the previous day, wrestling with his conscience. He had been busy scribbling notes, at which he was very good, to the sixty loyal followers who would, as soon as news of the Queen’s death came from Placentia or Nonsuch or wherever God should decree she die, reached them, leap to seize her throne. The kingdom of saints would come into its own then. He had been smiling all day at the thought of it.