A Fine Madness

by Alan Judd

  Which is what I am trying to do now, sir, at the risk of being long-winded and tedious. I know His Majesty has little love for me for my part in the death of his mother, but I hope he will appreciate that I am doing my best to fulfil his commandment? I hope, too, that he will appreciate that although Christopher Marlowe had a part in that business he never saw the full picture, at least not until the end. If that is the reason for His Majesty’s interest, I can assure him now of that.

  And of course it was precisely that, the entrapment of the Queen of Scots, that was keeping us so busy in London at that time. Her secret aspirations and the machinations of her supporters, which led her to the executioner’s block and them to their eviscerations, must be well known to His Majesty. But I hope he will forgive me for describing a couple of episodes from those hectic months as they involved Christopher. His role was peripheral but significant, perhaps as much to his own life and death as to the Queen’s.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Like much that followed, Christopher’s further role began with Mr Secretary’s recruitment of Gilbert Gifford, the courier we arrested at Rye. Gilbert, as I came to know him during the close association we formed, was naturally fearful when taken to London under escort, expecting gaol and torture. He was therefore surprised and relieved to be taken to Mr Secretary’s house in Seething Lane, treated as a welcome guest, given food and wine and a room of his own. He was guarded, of course, but with such discretion that I doubt he was aware that every exit from the house was watched and his every movement within it observed. He was permitted to rest for most of a day and all night without any questions put to him, having been told only that Mr Secretary would be pleased to speak to him when he recovered from his exhausting journey.

  That interview took place the next morning in the larger study, the one with the globe and other furnishings indicating Mr Secretary’s knowledge, learning and wide interests. I was summoned to take notes, Francis Mylles, the private secretary, being otherwise engaged. Gilbert was shown in by one of the blue-liveried servants while another served us all with plum brandy and cake. Mr Secretary rose from his desk and greeted Gilbert almost as an old friend, asking after his journey, hoping he had slept well and suggesting we all sat at the table to the side. He introduced me as his assistant, adding, ‘It is with Thomas that you will deal, provided we can all agree on how to further this matter.’ Then, while we ate and drank, he spoke no more of business but questioned Gilbert about the prices of goods in Paris, the state of the streets and the mood of the people. By the time we came to business, answering further questions must have felt to Gilbert like a natural continuation of the discussion. There was no hint, let alone threat, of the rack. But it was a silent presence above, behind and beneath the conversation. Gilbert did not need reminding of that.

  Mr Secretary’s manner was polite and serious, his questions precise. Whenever Gilbert hesitated Mr Secretary did not, like most interrogators, repeat the question in different ways, as if nervous of no response or fearing the prisoner did not understand. He simply waited, saying nothing, his hands folded before him. His questions were single aimed shots, clear, direct, factual, impossible not to understand. He never raised his voice but his careful enunciation compelled attention. During those pauses his dark eyes would stare unblinking at the man before him, the silence heavy with unspoken threat.

  With Gilbert, I am happy to say, there were few such silences. He was a loyal and patriotic Catholic, truly horrified when shown evidence that Morgan and his friends were plotting to murder our lawful queen and impose foreign rule. He had agreed to become Morgan’s clandestine courier and had learned the art of secret writing in order, he believed, to keep the flame of Catholicism alight for the day when England should return gratefully to the old faith. But he was no assassin. Also, he was a young man of gentle upbringing still reeling from the shock of arrest, despite his kind treatment. The promise of freedom in return for doing exactly what Morgan had sent him to do, with the sole addition that he should share knowledge of it with us, weighed heavily with him. Yet he hesitated. He sympathised, he said, but was finding it difficult to agree. It was a big step.

  With many agents the offer of money would have shortened the step and I expected Mr Secretary to broach this delicate but usually welcome subject. ‘Is it a problem of conscience, Mr Gifford?’ he asked.

  Gilbert looked from one to the other of us. ‘It is, sir, but not because I disagree with your moral reasoning.’

  There was another silence. Then Mr Secretary, speaking quietly, said, ‘Your father, perhaps?’

  Gilbert’s fresh face opened with relief. ‘Yes, sir, my father as you must know suffers for his Catholic beliefs. He suffers in his person, too.’

  ‘Aye, and in his purse.’ Mr Secretary nodded. ‘He has been fined and gaoled for propagating the Pope’s cause. And he languishes in prison now, unwell, I hear.’

  ‘He is indeed very sick, sir. I wanted to visit him only Thomas Morgan forbade me because it would draw attention to my presence here.’

  I expected Mr Secretary to offer to arrange a discreet visit but he went farther. ‘Such filial concern speaks well of you, sir. Would you like me to enquire whether the Privy Council might order his release so that he could take the waters for his health and even perhaps return to his house in Staffordshire? On condition, of course, that he worships only in private and neither practises nor propagates the Pope’s cause in public?’

  Gilbert nodded vigorously. ‘I would, sir, and I should be most grateful.’

  ‘It shall be done. Thomas, take note. Now let us discuss the arrangements Thomas Morgan made with you.’

  And so it was that Thomas Morgan’s most secret courier of messages between himself and the Queen of Scots became our man before a single message was passed. Morgan had instructed Gilbert to call on the French ambassador in London and collect the earlier messages to the Queen he was safeguarding there until there was a secure way to deliver them. Gilbert himself was then to find a way to get them to her in Chartley, Staffordshire, where she was held. Then he was to secretly convey her replies to the ambassador in London. We knew from other sources that although some letters had got through the ambassador was sitting on a great many and was waiting for someone to make contact.

  ‘Morgan gave me no idea how to get them to the Queen,’ Gilbert told Mr Secretary. ‘I have to find a way myself, which will not be easy.’

  ‘Chartley is in Staffordshire. If your father returns to his Staffordshire house you will have reason to visit the county. Getting messages in and out of the house at Chartley without anyone knowing is something we shall devise together. Meanwhile, it is important that you are known to be a free man. Morgan will have spies in Rye, as in other ports, and may already know of your arrest. Searchers at ports are easily bought, alas. I shall arrange it so that he hears that you were taken to London and briefly confined, along with other travellers recently arrested, because we suspected that priests were being smuggled in. But you convinced us of your innocence and you were released, along with others. Under no circumstances – ever – should Morgan or anyone else know that you have met me.’

  And so it was done. Morgan heard of Gilbert’s release from that other loyal and useful Catholic gentleman, Robert Poley. When in Paris Poley moved in émigré circles and had contrived an introduction to Morgan. Typically, he so endeared himself that Morgan recruited him. Except that Poley’s role was not to convey messages like Gilbert but to help coordinate a group of Catholic gentlemen in England who planned to put Mary on the throne. That group was, of course, young Master Babington and his friends, led by Father Ballard. But that was not the only way the ever-helpful Poley made himself useful to Morgan. He had good contacts in Scotland and knew discreet ways to them. Morgan planned to call on Scottish aid against the English in the event of civil war. Thus were we kept informed of Morgan’s Scottish plans and contacts. But His Majesty must surely know all this?

  Well, sir, that was not all. Morgan had
a spy in the household of Sir Philip Sidney, then the most admired and influential soldier and courtier, husband of Mr Secretary’s beloved only daughter, Lady Frances. We did not know about this spy until Morgan told Poley about him because he wanted the spy to introduce Poley into the household. His plan was that Poley would report what the well-informed Sir Philip would say privately about Privy Council matters. With the blessing of Sir Philip and Lady Frances, the spy was allowed to remain in place until he had introduced Poley. What Poley then reported back to Morgan was, of course, only what Mr Secretary wanted Morgan to believe.

  And so by God’s grace, by luck and by our own calculation, we had in Nicholas Berden, Gilbert Gifford and Robert Poley three men who not only knew our enemy’s intimate thoughts but could influence and guide them. Also, here at home we had the services of Maliverey Catilyn, an agreeable gentleman welcome in every important Catholic household in England. He was even more welcome in Seething Lane for the descriptions, observations and names which he reported during his weekly nocturnal visits.

  The next few months were the busiest in all my time serving the security of the state. Work grew before my eyes, with every day more letters, more facts to be sifted and recorded and more cipher work, the latter greatly increased thanks to Nicholas Berden. So trusted was Nicholas by the scheming émigrés in Paris that they gave him the alphabets, as we call them, the keys to their ciphers. This meant that I could find ways in that would otherwise have taken months of trial and error. It meant too that I wasted no time on nulls, meaningless symbols and figures placed to delay and confuse. And since success breeds success I could therefore decipher ever more, so creating for myself yet more to read and do. I remember particularly that winter evening when Gilbert Gifford was shown into the little private room in Whitehall Palace bearing twenty-one packets handed to him by the French ambassador for Queen Mary. They were the accumulated secret correspondence of many months which the ambassador had no way of communicating until Gilbert arrived. Naturally, they had all to be secretly opened, copied and resealed before being sent on their way, leaving me to labour at decryption. I worked days and nights on those packets.

  I tell you all this, sir – sparing you much detail – so that you may understand how small a part Christopher Marlowe played in my life at that time. And I in his. I neither went to the playhouses nor sought the latest poems at the printer’s by St Paul’s. Others did – including Sir Francis – and I acknowledge now that my understanding might have been deepened by it. Indeed, Christopher himself urged me that it would enrich my soul to heed the music of words and feel the impress of other men’s minds. But work at that time consumed me entirely and though I loved to hear him speak of such matters, and of the dramas that became his life, I never sought to broaden myself as he, I now see, sought to broaden me.

  Why he bothered with me I cannot say, being unable to see myself as I was then, from outside. I was fond of him, as I think he was of me, and during times together when business was not pressing he was curious to probe my mind, asking questions I had never asked myself. Despite his proclivity for violence in word or deed when he felt truth or justice were challenged – to be plain, his readiness for a fight – there was a gentleness in Christopher, a quiet and surprising perceptiveness that showed he sometimes saw through other men’s eyes more than they saw themselves.

  Once, when he arrived in Whitehall Palace with letters from Holland and I procured ale and bread and we sat talking on a bench, he asked me about my own background – my mother and sisters, my father, my time at Cambridge, our business in the custom house, how I came to work for Mr Secretary. I was explaining when he put his hand on my arm. ‘Have you always been afraid, Thomas?’

  I was nonplussed. ‘Afraid? Afraid of what?’

  ‘Of life, of everything. Of letting go of God’s hand?’

  I protested I didn’t understand what he meant. I was as fearful of God as any Christian should be, but I loved Him and was faithful to Him and trusted in His mercy to be united with Him in the life to come. But even as I protested I sensed Christopher was right: I had always been afraid. I had called it Duty.

  Christopher shook his head as I spoke. ‘You always speak as if you feel you were born into debt, born owing. Have you never thought that there is no need to be forever owing to your father, to Mr Secretary, to God? Do you not think that perhaps God would like you to let go of His hand, to take steps on your own and find your own way, like a mother with her toddler? There is a world beyond your duties, Thomas. A life.’

  Yet he continued participating in my world, the world of duties, whenever asked. I think it interested him, not only in itself and because of its influence on affairs of state – and because of the cause – but because he liked to test himself against it. There was something unresolved in Christopher, a bundle of contradictions which I think he sought to unpick in his work for us and – judging by how he used to speak of them – in his plays. My reaction to anything I feared was to avoid it, but he rushed at it and embraced it. Or so it seemed.

  His greatest fears? I cannot say, sir. He never spoke of them to me in those terms but he did once say that in his plays he confronted what in himself he could not. He said something similar about his work for us: ‘In my work for you I am an actor. I speak your lines and thereby learn what it is like to be such a man.’ Indeed, he made a small but significant contribution to the business I was describing, the plot by young Babington and his friends to murder Queen Elizabeth and put the Queen of Scots on the throne. Although he was on the periphery of this great matter, he did play small parts, twice and briefly.

  The first occasion followed from the delivery to Queen Mary of Gilbert’s twenty-one packets. Gilbert, posing at our suggestion as an apothecary, journeyed to Chartley and was received by Queen Mary’s private secretary for English affairs, a man called Curll. Gilbert told the guards at the moat that he was an apothecary authorised by the Court in London to provide the Queen with a list of herbs attainable in England to treat the various ailments she suffered. He was instructed, he said, to show the list first to Sir Amias Paulet, under whose charge she was. The guards sent a message to Sir Amias, who – discreetly primed by us – acknowledged that he was expecting this, said he was busy and ordered Curll to see to Gilbert.

  Sir Amias was, of course, well primed for his part in this theatre. He was privy to all our machinations because we had to circumvent the very measures he put in place to guard the Queen and monitor all she did. But Curll knew nothing of it, of course. Gilbert was received by him, showed him the enciphered messages he had from Morgan which vouched for him as messenger, and passed him the packets of letters. He also gave him the list of herbs that was cover for his visit, saying he must be sure to show it to Sir Amias. Thus were Gilbert’s bona fides accepted and regular communications established.

  But since it would be implausible for Gilbert to appear too often at Chartley under his apothecary’s cover, we had to find intermediaries who could be sent as messengers from him. So far as Curll was concerned, they did not know what they were delivering along with their herbs. Indeed, when we first did this the messenger genuinely did not know. He was one Barnes, cousin to Gilbert and a known and trusted Catholic, but he proved unreliable and disappeared back to France. Perhaps he suspected he was being used in ways he could not fathom.

  We therefore sought people who knew what they were doing and whom we could trust. I suggested Christopher because he had some experience, was always anxious to earn more money and could be summoned from Cambridge at short notice.

  He and I rode together to Burton-upon-Trent, near Chartley, where we were to stay at the inn and I was to introduce him to Gilbert. I remember little of the journey and almost nothing of what we talked about, though we must have talked much. There was probably something of Cambridge and of his play and poetry-making and inevitably something of Ovid. I could not for obvious reasons talk much of my own work, apart from the role he was to perform. I must have said something
of myself, though, because I remember him turning in his saddle with a smile and saying, ‘Why do you want to marry? Because it is ordained? Or for purposes of increase?’

  I said I would like a wife to be my companion and keep house for me and keep me warm at night.

  ‘You could hire a woman for that. You don’t need to marry. There are plenty who would keep you warm at night without benefit of clergy.’

  It was true that many lived in such manner but I wanted to do it properly, to be blessed by the state of holy matrimony. I did not want my children to be bastards.

  ‘They’re often the interesting ones,’ he said.

  ‘And you? You too will surely marry when you can support a wife and children?’

  He looked away. ‘Matrimony may be a state ordained and blessed by the good Lord but we are not compelled to it, are we? Jesus did not marry. Nor John.’

  ‘Do you not wish for companionship and the comforts of family? Children to support you in your old age?’

  ‘I have never desired increase.’

  I remember no more of that conversation but I suspect he spoke truthfully. It is hard to imagine Christopher encumbered with wife and children. He was a solitary flame who burned brightly.

  He had twice set eyes upon Gilbert, of course, in Paris and at Rye, but they had not met. When they did they got on well, even, by the end of dinner, teasing each other as if they were college friends. Gilbert had studied at universities in France and Italy and had an enthusiasm for ancient literature as well as philosophy. I had never seen Christopher so animated and understood now why he was popular with his fellow scholars, as I had heard. I felt like a fond father struggling, at times, to keep up. Except when it came to our business, when I had to take charge.