Sleep of Death

by Philip Gooden

  ‘Not him, you fool,’ said Nell fondly. ‘Not that old Nick.’

  ‘Nor young Nick neither,’ I said.

  ‘Nor you neither, you fool.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘Old Nick off Paul’s Walk,’ she said.

  ‘That one. Oh.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Never heard of him. Who is he?’

  And here my Nell came over coy and simpering so I guessed that this man was someone she had to do with in the way of business, the business of giving pleasure in her case.

  ‘He is . . . he does . . . mixtures . . . preparations . . . compounds . . . in his shop . . . under the counter . . . They say that he . . .’

  At this point my Nell whispered in my ear a secret concerning this individual, old Nick, and our glorious (but ageing) Queen. What she said is too dangerous to commit to paper but, if it were true, it might shake the foundations of our state, like all gossip.

  ‘Can you introduce me?’ I said. ‘To your old Nick, not the Queen.’

  Cartographers are accustomed to make Jerusalem the centre of this earthly world. But if they considered more carefully they would put our capital in the place of the holy city, for my money. And of all the places in London the very navel is Paul’s and, to be more precise, Paul’s Walk. Here is all of Britain in little, the gulls and the gallants, the captains and the clowns, the cut-throat, the knight and the apple-squire. Here the lawyer parades in front of the idiot, the money-lender walks with the bankrout, and the scholar accompanies the beggar (often one and the same in our poor fallen world). Here will you see the ruffian, the cheater, the Puritan, and all the rest of the crew. Why, you may even glimpse the odd honest citizen. Paul’s Walk is a babel. One would think men had newly discovered their tongues, and each one of them different from any other. To my country eyes it appeared still a little shocking that such a worldly buzz, such a trade in flesh and metal, filled what was meant to be a sanctified place, the nave of a great church. I said as much to Nell.

  ‘Religion is good for business, Nick. Devotion makes men randy.’

  I remembered the noises of my parents on a Sunday night after my father had given what he considered to be a specially fine performance in the pulpit. Perhaps she was right.

  Now, late in the afternoon after the play, we made our way through streaming Paul’s Walk, avoiding the peacocking clusters of the gallants, the reefs of the ne’er-do-wells. The men, I noticed, appraised my Nell, slyly or brazenly. Some of them might even know her. Some of them undoubtedly did know her. I did not like the idea of this.

  We made our way across the churchyard and to a shop squeezed into a corner. It was the dingiest apothecary’s I’d ever seen.

  ‘This is the place?’

  Nell didn’t reply but pushed open the door. The light outside was strong and it took some moments for my vision to adjust to the gloom indoors. I hadn’t had much to do with apothecaries since my arrival in London Perhaps I bought with me something of the countryman’s distrust of new-fangled city remedies, as well as a suspicion that coney-catchers were to be found not only on the exterior in Paul’s Walk.

  Old Nick’s place didn’t hold out much promise. The shop had a squinting slit rather than a window, and little light was allowed in. Wooden boxes and earthenware pots were strewn on lop-sided shelves and the smoky walls were hung with sacs and bladders of animal and vegetable origin. Overhead a stuffed alligator swayed slightly in the draught from the door. I say that it was stuffed, but I believe that at two or three moments during what followed I caught it twitching its tail out of the corner of my eye. On a clear space of the wall behind the counter had been chalked various cabbalistic signs together with pointed stars and overlapping circles and, imperfectly rubbed out, a detailed drawing of a lady sporting a great dildo. There was a smell in the shop, not a completely agreeable one.

  ‘Hello,’ Nell called, and then after a pause, ‘Nick?’

  Silence. The alligator’s eye gleamed in the gloom. I noticed that other impedimenta hung from the ceiling: a couple of large tortoises, a shaft of bone with a saw-like edge, a scaly tail (doubtless a mermaid’s), a kind of tusk (a unicorn’s for certain).

  ‘This is a waste of time,’ I said. I wasn’t sure what we were doing here anyway. The place made me uneasy.

  ‘Wait,’ said Nell. ‘He will come when you call him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said a voice from the corner.

  I looked towards the sound. I could have have sworn that the corner was empty when I first surveyed the grimy room. A figure seemed to come together out of the gloom, to assemble itself from patches of light and dark.

  ‘I always come when my Nell calls.’

  The man who shuffled forward was very old. He looked like a plant root or stem that has been hung up in some dusty corner and forgotten. Despite his age his voice had a sweet, almost youthful quality, but it set the hairs on my arms bristling.

  ‘This is also Nick,’ said Nell to the apothecary. ‘Master Revill, that is.’

  ‘Call me Old Nick,’ said the old man. ‘That is how I am known.’

  I made a very slight bow.

  ‘He wanted to meet you,’ said Nell.

  ‘But now he is not so sure.’

  I, by the by, had said nothing.

  ‘Did you recover your ring?’ said the apothecary.

  ‘It was as you had said,’ said Nell. She turned to me, eager to convince. ‘I lost that ring – you know the one I mean. I came to Old Nick and he was able to tell me where my ring was. He reads his secret book and shuts himself away all in the dark and then he tells me that my ring is in the corner of Jenny’s room, hidden in the dust.’

  Probably because he’d put it there himself, I thought.

  ‘Master Revill is thinking that if I knew where your ring was, then it was because I had placed it there.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said too quickly. ‘I am lost in admiration at the skill of your friend, Nell.’

  ‘Master Revill needs convincing,’ said Old Nick.

  He spoke slowly and his words spread in soft, sticky pools.

  ‘And you tried the remedy?’ he said to Nell. He was obviously establishing his credentials with me, through her. ‘Plantain, knot grass, comfrey—’

  ‘ – and powdered unicorn’s horn, I suppose,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing so fabulous,’ said the old apothecary. ‘There is no magic here, merely a newt’s liver and sliced snakeskin. But it worked, Nell, it worked?’

  ‘Oh, I am a new woman, sir,’ said my mistress.

  I felt angry and jealous. What was this? I knew nothing of Nell’s dealings with this man – and if anyone was in a position to make a new woman of her . . .

  ‘But Master Revill still needs convincing?’

  ‘Why should you trouble to do that, sir?’ I said. I’d made a mistake coming here. Why had Nell brought me to this dingy shop? ‘I am only a player, a poor jobbing player, no gentleman, not worth the trouble of convincing.’

  ‘How is Master Wilson’s mother?’ said Old Nick.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You are standing in Master Wilson’s shoes, I believe, while he is away attending to his mother, who lies sick. For as long as he is absent and in Norfolk you will work with the Chamberlain’s Men.’

  This time the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. But then I considered: Nell and this old man were . . . acquaintances (I wondered what payment she’d given him for revealing the whereabouts of her ring). What more likely than that she’d told him something about me?

  ‘You didn’t tell me that, Nick,’ said Nell to me, reproachfully. And this, I now remembered, was true. Nell had the notion that I had been taken on by the Chamberlain’s more or less for good. I had not made clear the true state of affairs, for I wanted to impress. So she couldn’t have told her friend Old Nick what she didn’t know . . . therefore the apothecary must, surely, have other sources of information.

  ‘How long do you wish Master Wilson to remain in No
rfolk?’

  ‘As long as possible,’ I said without thinking.

  ‘I can bring that about,’ said this withered man. ‘An accident when his horse shies on his return or an attack by some wild rogues on the highway. Or, if you prefer, a sudden illness that will despatch him to keep his mother company.’

  I was tempted – for an instant. To reinforce his point the apothecary added in tones of drawling sweetness: ‘All of these things I can procure. Accidental death, bloody gashes, a mortal sickness.’

  If you had asked me then for my dearest wish it would have been to remain with the Chamberlain’s Men at the Globe theatre, part of the finest company of players in London and, hence, in the world. As long as Jack Wilson was kept at a distance I was safe. But when he returned to take up his – my! – post I would again be reduced to a workless, wandering player, scrabbling for a foothold in another company. So I was tempted, tempted by the vision of Jack Wilson thrown from his horse or bloodied after a bandit attack, or stretched on a bier. But as these images flashed through my mind there came with them also shame and a thrusting-away of any such underhandedness.

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I do not know Master Wilson but he is a fellow player, and I wish him no harm.’

  ‘Then you are unusual in your profession,’ said Old Nick.

  I saw then how clever the apothecary had been. For the first few minutes in his shop I had been a disbeliever. But the instant he dangled before me the vision of my unseen rival, dead or disabled, I took him at his word. Even if only for a moment, I believed that Old Nick could do what he claimed, bring harm over a distance, hurt with magic. I felt also unclean, somehow reduced to his level. More than ever, I wished that I had not agreed to accompany Nell to his workshop.

  ‘Are you convinced, Master Revill?’

  In the half-light on his crinkled face I could see nothing, not even a small smile. His words were drawn out, smoothly spread . . . Maasster Reveell. I inclined my head a little, and the alligator swayed in the corner of my eye.

  ‘We need your help, sir,’ said Nell. I noticed her tone of respect, and that irritated me too.

  ‘This is no business of Nell’s,’ I said, ‘but mine only. Hearing from her that you are a man of science, I have brought you this for your – examination.’

  As Peter had tentatively given me Francis’s shirt so I now passed it across to Old Nick, feeling rather foolish. It was, after all, only a shirt.

  The apothecary reached across the green glass alembics and phials on the counter, and grasped the bundle of clothing. He turned it over in his hands, which were misshapen and yet nimble. He stroked the material. He seemed in the gloom to shudder slightly but this could have been my imagination or, more likely, the merest theatrics on his part. Old Nick raised the shirt, all that remained of Francis’s earthly estate, to his nose. He sniffed, then snorted gently.

  ‘I smell river.’

  Well, that took no magic powers of divination. I stayed silent, half hoping that the quack would trip over his own cleverness.

  ‘I smell death.’

  ‘Because the man who wore this is dead.’ I was giving nothing away.

  Suddenly the man behind the counter stiffened.

  ‘Francis,’ he hissed.

  Nell gasped, and my scalp crawled.

  ‘Oh, Francis.’ Old Nick’s voice had changed from the drawling honey note. Now there was something robust and commanding in it.

  ‘Oh, Francis. Come back. I mean you no harm and never did.’

  But there was a world of harm in that voice. Couldn’t Francis have heard that, even as I was hearing it now?

  ‘Oh, Francis. Come back.’

  Yes, of course Francis had heard the harm in that voice. But he hadn’t moved, he hadn’t escaped. Why not?

  ‘Oh, Francis. Come back.’

  Old Nick was pawing and sniffing at the shirt like a dog, pausing to turn his head up and utter these repeated phrases in a voice not his. I grew very afraid that Francis the servant might, by the force and command of these very words and urged by his habit of obedience, be brought back to life, might return to us all smeared with river slime, might at this very moment have entered into the dim apothecary’s behind our backs.

  ‘Stop!’ Nell cried out.

  Old Nick looked at her. He shuddered again, then looked at the shirt which he still held. When he spoke it was in his normal, drawling tone.

  ‘It was night on the river. With me – and with him.’

  ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Francis?’

  ‘I have no names,’ said Old Nick. ‘One of them was frightened for his life.’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘I told you that it was night. I could not see clearly.’

  I remembered Peter’s words: ‘The river is treacherous enough – but not as dark as a man’s heart.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ I said, struggling to recall the original reason why we had brought the dead man’s shirt to the apothecary, ‘nevertheless . . .’

  ‘There is no nevertheless, Master Revill. You described me as a man of science, and what I accomplish I accomplish without magic. I have a power, but it will not be commanded. I cannot tell you anything else at this moment.’

  ‘Yes, I have it again,’ I said, suddenly remembering that it was not Francis’s decease that we were here to discuss, but the demise of old Sir William in his spring garden. ‘That shirt that you are holding, it was once, not long ago, smeared against a dead man’s face, to wipe something away . . . by the sleeve . . .’

  Old Nick examined each sleeve in turn. Once again he put the garment to his nostrils and snuffed. I was relieved when he took it away from his face without falling into the trance state.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There is something amiss here too.’

  Yesss . . . amisss.

  I waited.

  ‘But, oh so faint, like the scent of apple blossom,’ said Old Nick. He again sniffed at a cuff of the shirt. ‘And this from a different time, another occasion.’

  ‘Can you tell what is on the sleeve? Does any of it remain?’

  ‘Not here, not now, I cannot say. There are mixtures, preparations, methods. I may be able to . . . why does this signify?’

  ‘Two men have died,’ I said. ‘One was the poor possessor of that shirt, as you know. He told me hours before he died that it had been stolen from him.’

  ‘And the other?’

  I found myself curiously reluctant to say. ‘Someone I never met. But I think that his death may be tied with whatever substance remains on the sleeve.’

  ‘So I should use my science to discover this?’ said Old Nick.

  ‘Or magic. I care not. But I will pay.’

  ‘You shall pay, Master Revill. But that is not the point. I am not interested in your money.’

  ‘Then you are unusual in your profession,’ I said, in a feeble attempt to draw level to him.

  The apothecary ignored me. Instead he said to Nell: ‘The same arrangement with you, mistress Nell?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Her deference to him and, more, her provoking ‘arrangement’ with this man angered me. Now, jealousy is foolish in a man that loves a common harlot, one who must open her quiver to any man that has coin. And when was jealousy ever argued away?

  ‘Good,’ said apothecary Nick. ‘Come to me in two days and you will have an answer. Not you, my Nell, but you, Master Revill, shall visit me.’

  I held my tongue until we were outside in Paul’s again. Even as I spoke I knew that I should feign unconcern. What did it matter to me whether my Nell had an ‘arrangement’ with the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord High Admiral or Old Nick himself (the real Old Nick, that is)?

  ‘What arrangement, my Nell?’

  ‘I’m everybody’s Nell today, Nick. Your Nell, his Nell . . .’

  ‘No evasions, Nell.’

  ‘Evasions? You must speak in plainer English if you want me to understand.’

  ‘The arrangement, Nell. The “arrangement�
�� which your friend in there mentioned. What do you do for him?’

  ‘Look over there,’ she said suddenly. ‘See that fine piece of coney-catching.’

  A few yards off, stood a young man – obviously fresh up from the country by his dress and his general air of wonderment at our capital city – gazing about him. He was being greeted by a friendly, open-faced fellow, greeted by name. Master Russet or Master Windfall, or some such. The name, needless to say, would be wrong. Then our open-faced friend would make a stab at getting the country-dweller’s county. Worcester, Gloucester? There too he was in error. Then he would essay a couple of the rustic’s fellow-countrymen. ‘Why, sir, do you not have Sir Tarton Barton as your neighbour?’ or ‘Doesn’t Farmer Harmer live yonder over Pillycock hill, three mile from your place?’ These names mean nothing to our fresh bumpkin, which is hardly surprising as the open-faced fellow has probably made them up on the spot. In exchange for these questions the rustic gives the following information: his name, his county and the names of a handful of his neighbours. He would have volunteered more, probably down to the name of his mother’s aunt’s cat, had not the friendly fellow apologised, thanked him and departed into the crush of people in Paul’s.

  Nell and I knew that in about five minutes our innocent rustic, or coney, or rabbit, would be greeted by another affable man. This second friend would, of course, know the name of the stranger, together with his county – why he would even be familiar with the gentleman’s neighbours! ‘Goodman Windfall, have you forgotten me? I am such a man’s kinsman, your neighbour not far off.’ My, the bumpkin would think to himself – reflecting on how he had been warned before he started off for Lon’n town that the citizens were cold and aloof, how they cared nothing for their country cousins, how they were even prepared to trick simple countryfolk – my, this is a regular turnabout. Here am I in this great city, the world’s heart. And here I have been hailed twice in the space of five minutes by men who think they know me!

  The sequel to this? The bumpkin’s new-found friend proposes stepping into some nearby tavern, and drinking a toast to their shared county and joint neighbours. Inside the alehouse, a game of cards happens to be in progress. After a jar or two, bumpkin and friend are invited to join in. Bumpkin’s pleasure at so speedily finding companions in Lon’n town is increased by the delightful way in which he seems to be winning more at the hands of cards than he is losing. But he is careful. He knows that luck has a habit of turning. Just as he is on the point of drinking up and leaving and finding somewhere secure to deposit his modest winnings, his friend, by now his fast and eternal friend, says ‘A fresh pint and then away. One more pint and another hand of cards . . . a last hand for friendship’s sake . . .’