by Alan Judd
As for Christopher, I give you this detail so that you may know the context of his dealings with us and understand what his role was and was not. For all his fame as a play-maker, he was never a principal player in our great drama. Yet, as you shall hear, it was through his association with us that he met his end.
While Mr Secretary and I worked on the letter, Anthony Babington gave a great supper for his friends at the Castle tavern in Cornhill. At the same time and at a separate dinner Nicholas Berden, who had come from Paris, was hoping to be introduced to Ballard, the moving spirit of the conspiracy. We had both events covered but Ballard did not turn up – he was in Sussex, it transpired – and anyway Babington had not yet received the incriminating letter, still less had time to act upon it. Time was pressing – delivery of the letter could not be long delayed – but Mr Secretary was determined that we should not move until the trap was set for springing.
He ordered me to his house at Barn Elms two days hence with Robert Poley, Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres and Christopher, if he was still in London. Thus, unknown to any of us, we assembled the full cast of Christopher’s death a few years later. I did not know Skeres except by name as someone who worked with Poley and Frizer and, though I had met Frizer since Christopher’s unfortunate introduction to him at Lyford Grange, I could not claim to know him. Poley I knew as well as anyone could know a man who was at all times all things to all men. As well as getting himself recruited by Thomas Morgan he had become the bosom friend of young Babington, nurturing him like the fondest of wet-nurses. They shared lodgings, Poley presenting himself as a trusted intermediary to Mr Secretary. Babington, you see, never knew what he really wanted – he veered between plotting to murder the Queen, desiring to negotiate with her via Mr Secretary for the safety of Catholics in England, or himself fleeing abroad. I suspect he would most have liked the second of these, had it been practical, but the third would have been better for him. Intelligencing is like war, in that anyone lacking sureness of aim pays a price, as Anthony Babington did.
When the letter was finished and delivered I was instructed to find Christopher if he was still in London. If he wasn’t, there was no time to get him back from Cambridge. Mr Secretary had not told me why he was required; he had hitherto been kept as a man apart, not mixed with others in our business apart from Gilbert Gifford. But those were busy times. We had watchers and spies everywhere – in and around the French and Spanish embassies, following Babington and his friends, in and around Chartley and watching for Ballard, as well as messengers and couriers speeding throughout the kingdom. Anything of interest had to be reported to Mr Secretary or Francis Mylles or me, then assessed and acted upon. There were watchers too at the Channel ports, spies in Paris, Rome, Madrid and the Low Countries. Every strand of this great web stretching over all Europe was drawn into the mind of Mr Secretary, the only place where all was known.
Deciphering and translating are silent, sedentary, solitary tasks demanding time and concentration. Our successes created a flood of letters and documents. Journeying to Staffordshire and even downriver to Greenwich were interruptions whose disruptive effect spread well beyond the time they took, since whenever I returned to deciphering I had to rebuild my concentration. Also, I had for that year been made a member of parliament for the port of Hastings in order to vote for government business and therefore had to attend some sessions, though I never went to Hastings. But when I sat at my own desk with a cipher before me I had to empty my mind of all other thoughts and preoccupations. Anything else – from daily bread to worry about my father’s business, to what might be happening at Chartley, to where I might find Christopher, even daily prayer – was a distraction. But once I was grappling with a cipher, when I was properly in it and my mathematical imagination engaged, I felt I was in a purer realm. It was as if God had lifted me out of time, purged me of earthly considerations and granted me a glimpse of that truth and beauty of which Plato writes. I do truly believe that the secrets of all the heavens must be mathematical.
I was not pleased, therefore, to begin the day after Greenwich by being bustled and jostled in the streets on my way to find Christopher in the Liberty of Norton Folgate. He lodged there when in London with Thomas Watson, the famous poet. Watson was a friend of Mr Secretary’s and another sometime helper of ours who lived near the theatre called the Curtain, where I believe Christopher’s first plays were performed. His house was not easy to find, partly because it was not easy to find a full-witted person who knew anything of his or her own streets and lanes. A woman carrying a capon fled when I stopped her. A young man trembled and stammered and I could get no sense out of him. Others shook their heads or asserted there was no such person in Norton Folgate. None wanted to speak, perhaps because I was wearing Mr Secretary’s livery. Eventually I spotted a tall man whose chain of office proclaimed him beadle. He directed me to the house of Widow Turner.
This was a substantial new dwelling with a yard and garden. My knock was answered by a fresh-faced young woman in a plain black dress. No, Mr Watson was not at home, nor Mr Marlowe who shared his room. Both gentlemen had been at home but Mr Watson was out she knew not where and Mr Marlowe had left early this morning, perhaps to return to Cambridge where he mostly lived. But it might be worth asking after him at the theatre which was not far and was where he spent his time when in London. He would be there if not journeying to Cambridge. They both wrote poetry, she added with a smile, and spent as much on candles and ink and paper as most folks on food.
She spoke confidently with a broad West Country burr like Sir Walter Ralegh’s, he being a Devon man whom I had heard speak with Mr Secretary several times. She had auburn hair escaping from beneath her cap, large grey-green eyes, pretty regular features and a nice, clear pale skin, marked by freckles but not by the small pox, unlike my own. She also had all her teeth.
Liking her, I encouraged her to talk about the lodgers, reassuring her that I worked for Sir Francis Walsingham, who was a good friend of Mr Watson’s. I allowed her to assume it was he I sought. ‘But Mr Marlowe is also a lively man,’ she added. ‘The house is full of gaiety when he is here. They laugh together, so. We all do.’
She sounded as if she had a fondness for Christopher, whose jollier side I had not seen except in his occasional teasing. ‘Your mistress also appreciates the company, perhaps,’ I said.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘My mistress, sir? I thank you but I am sufficient mistress of myself, I hope.’
She was, of course, the Widow Turner. She had maids – two, I discovered, and a cook – but had answered the door herself because she had set them to scrub the floorboards.
In one of his plays or poems – I cannot remember which – Christopher asks, whoever loved that loved not at first sight? I am not sure that that is a universal truth but it was true of me in those few minutes. I wanted to talk further but could think of nothing to say after apologising for mistaking her for her own maid. When I was away from her I conceived all manner of clever remarks to make her laugh or think well of me, but the more I beheld her the more my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth and my mind faltered. I felt no better than the half-wits from whom I had sought directions. All I could do was repeat my apologies, thank her and be on my way. I did not think to leave a message nor even to ask where I could find the Curtain theatre.
But I found it soon enough, the largest building apart from the church. Despite the early hour the place was busy with people, carpenters hammering, sawing and singing, actors shouting and declaiming in their rehearsals. As you know, sir, I had no interest in plays, having no time for them and little liking for the rogues and layabouts they attracted. Not to mention their great danger in plague times. Throughout my childhood the preacher at our church had preached hard against them and I was still not sure that theatres were places for Christians, though it had surprised me to find that Mr Secretary enjoyed the drama. He enjoyed music and painting too, despite being a forward Salvationist opposed to religious compromise. Indee
d, as I think I told you, he had helped create one of the acting companies, the Queen’s Men. He was also a good friend to Richard Tarlton, the clown. It is possible, of course, that in forming the Queen’s Men, who were famous for their plays about our history, he saw them as advancing policy. Mr Secretary was ever mindful of policy.
The man I asked claimed never to have heard of Christopher but a boy nearby asked if I meant Kit Morley. I was accustomed to various versions of his surname but was unaware that among players he was known as Kit. The boy led me to him. He was seated on a bench at the back of the stage behind some scenery on which a hunting scene was half-painted. He was talking to another man of about his own age who had large light-brown eyes and a soft brown beard.
He was surprised to see me, of course, and stood as if for someone important. ‘Thomas, greetings, I had not expected you.’ He looked slightly awkward but recovered quickly. ‘What brings you from Cambridge?’
I had told him not to mix our two worlds but to pretend in public I was a neighbour from Canterbury or knew him at Cambridge. ‘Not your play, I fear. Family business of my own. But I come to warn you that there is grumbling among the master and fellows about absences by scholars and yours has been particularly noticed. You must have an explanation when you return.’ My invention was unconsciously prophetic, of course.
The other man stood. Christopher made no attempt to introduce him. ‘I must go,’ the man said. ‘The king’s speeches, then.’ He had an accent I couldn’t place.
Christopher laid his hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Good luck with that. And I’ll look at the other bits.’ He watched the man leave, which he did with a nod of acknowledgement to me, then gestured that we should sit.
‘You are required,’ I told him. ‘Mr Secretary holds a council of war tomorrow at Barn Elms. I shall take a boat from Whitehall Palace. You can share it.’
‘Why? What for?’
‘We are closing the net on them. This end as well as at Chartley.’
‘Who else will be there?’
I told him, adding, ‘I don’t think you’ll find your old friend Frizer a problem. He will do as he’s told.’
‘Who is Skeres? A coney-catcher like the others?’
‘I’ve not met him but Mr Secretary calls on him now and again for small jobs.’
‘Like me?’
‘I doubt he’s like you. And nor would I call Poley a coney-catcher. He’s a cut or two above. He wouldn’t bother with petty frauds on naive men innocent of London, though he may have started like that. He plays for higher stakes, political matters, Court affairs. But you don’t know him either, do you?’
‘I met Master Poley in Paris.’
‘You never told me.’
‘You never asked. He was in high humour, having got himself taken on by Thomas Morgan, as you must know.’
‘He told you that?’ We tried to avoid our spies knowing each other as spies, unless it was necessary for them to work together. The more they knew the more they could tell if caught and racked. But I had long suspected – and Mr Secretary, I believe, simply assumed – that they discovered and gossiped with each other more than we knew. ‘What did you think of Poley?’
Christopher lifted his gaze to the outsized hunting scenery. When in thought his features softened into a vacancy, an abstraction. ‘Had he been better born he would have been a courtier, a good one, proud, bold, ready, resolute, who would on occasion stab.’
‘You dislike him?’
‘Not him, exactly. More myself. I don’t much like that of myself I see in him.’
‘You see yourself as a courtier, then? One who would stab?’
‘Half and half, no more. But that’s enough, don’t you think? It will serve, it will suffice? I think he sees something of himself in me, too, and is not sure whether to like it. He doesn’t trust me.’
‘Nor should you him. What is it you think he dislikes in you?’
‘Cynicism, Machiavellism, unbelief. I articulate what he embodies, though he knows it not. But he senses it and it makes him uneasy.’
‘And you would stab?’
‘Of course. Wouldn’t you? Isn’t that your business? Our business?’
I am somewhat literal-minded and it was not always easy for me to know whether Christopher meant what he said or was teasing for a response. I think I answered that I would not stab unless in fear of my life, always preferring that others did that sort of work for me. If it had to be done.
‘Which is as bad as doing it yourself. But such honesty does you credit. I shall speak up for you on Judgement Day. Assuming I am permitted a voice.’
The journey upriver to Barn Elms the following morning took longer than expected because the tide was against us, but our boatman was strong and, what was more, quiet. Christopher and I spoke nothing of our business, of course, but listened to the slap of oars and watched the sun glinting on ripples. We talked a little about plays. He predicted there would be more theatres and more work for play-makers and I recall that he and Watson burned candles in their lodgings at a great rate. Their landlady willingly supplied them, but at a cost.
‘I spoke to her,’ I said. ‘A pleasant woman, a pleasing manner.’
‘Mary Turner, a good woman. A widow of two years now.’
‘And children?’
‘No. Her husband was a printer. He left her comfortable. Comely, too, don’t you think?’
I felt awkward about discussing her. Not because I didn’t want to – I wanted to talk about her all the time, would happily have accosted strangers with descriptions of her, her very name filled my head with images quite unlike the churchly or saintly reflections it should have engendered. No, my awkwardness was because I recalled the softness of her tone when she mentioned Christopher and I could not believe that he was not at least as attracted to her as I was. And, of course, he could see her daily, or nightly.
Christopher had an aggressive sensitivity which missed little and withheld from little. He saw my awkwardness. ‘Stricken by Eros’s arrow, are you, Thomas?’
I protested that I had merely remarked her pleasantness and thought she must make a good landlady.
He laughed at that. ‘Snared by a wench’s glance, eh? A liquid eye and a soft word does it for you? You are a slave to love now. Eros’s arrow is barbed, I warn you. There’s no plucking it out without pain.’
My protests did not avail. In fact, they provoked further teasing which, to his credit, he ended when he saw I was baffled as to how to respond. ‘No, but it is time you took a wife,’ he added, sounding more serious. ‘You’ve said it yourself before. Marriage would suit you. You are of the uxorious tribe.’
‘And you are not?’ I had asked him before, of course, but got no clear answer.
He looked across the rippling water. ‘Too much to do. Francis Bacon often says that a man who hath wife and children taken hath hostages to fortune given.’
It was a great relief to me that he had no designs on Mary Turner. If his mind were set on something he would have been a formidable rival.
Mr Secretary’s house at Barn Elms was a pleasing spot looking onto a meadow running down to the river. I arranged that our boatman should wait and be refreshed in the kitchen. Mr Secretary did not at first join us, being busy with correspondence. We found the other three already seated at a table in the small orchard and supplied with ale.
His Majesty will not of course have known these gentlemen, though he may have known of Robert Poley. Poley and Skeres must be long dead now. Ingram Frizer is still alive, last I heard. How or where the others died, I do not know, though Skeres probably died in prison. You shall find, sir – if God spares you, as I pray He shall – that age brings not the prosperity and security you hoped but a continuation of youth’s troubles and vexations while depriving you of the vigour and means to contest them. Age is unfair.
And if your luck is like mine, sir, you may find you are punished for living into a new reign. Consider that I was once you, as close to the great
events of the kingdom as you are now. I was known to great men of the realm such as Sir Francis, Lord Burghley, Lord Leicester, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Ralegh and various ambassadors and men of state. My name was known even to the Queen, who once expressed pleasure at my service and rewarded me with a pension. I was privy to secrets and affairs of state that even now would cause men to draw breath.
Yet here I am in the King’s Bench prison, ignored, forgotten, discarded like an old shift too often worn. If I am remembered at all it is because some vengeful money-hound pursues me through the courts or because the state harries me for ancient debts to the Crown incurred through youth and inexperience in the last reign. I rot here at the mercy of my enemies, denied work to relieve my debts or to support my beloved Mary who depends upon me. Yet still the state remembers enough of me to demand my old deciphering skills when it suits. If I am still so useful and so trusted with secret matters, may I not at least work from my own house?
And now you, sir, come calling, imploring me to sieve what is left of my memories of a man who died some thirty years ago. You say you may give no reason other than that the King requires it, for why I cannot tell. But His Majesty himself is ailing, you tell me, so I must tell all this day. I pray God relieve His Majesty’s suffering and grant him long life. Please assure him of my fealty and say I beg forgiveness for being the only man living to have had a hand in the execution of his mother, which was lawfully done under pressure of circumstances few now comprehend. And tell him I freely confess mis-spent customs dues, buying property with Crown money which I still owe and would repay if I could earn again. And remind him too that Christopher Marlowe was also a man of the old reign, though he at least had the good fortune to die young and quick. He did not live to find himself unknown at Court, recalled only to be used and punished, as if survival is a sin.
Very well, sir, I shall get on, I shall. That day when we all met at Barn Elms was a prefiguring, as I have said, of Christopher’s death a few years later. The three present at that fateful occasion were the three whom he and I joined that bright morning in the orchard, including, of course, the man who killed him. I shall describe them for you as best I can.
