A Fine Madness

by Alan Judd

  Maybe Christopher did speak in that way with his friends. He never did with me. Whether it was from gentleness, sensing that my faith was fragile, or whether he thought I might report him, I know not. He would tease, certainly, but I never knew him mocking or cruel as others said he could be. Yet he did more to bring me to my current state than any amount of mockery, jibing or abuse could have done. He never sought to persuade me, he only ever questioned. And his questions remain.

  Where did he get these ideas? The Ancients, perhaps, maybe even the Book of Job, but mostly I suspect from within himself. He was well versed in scripture, better than many clergy. He studied deeply, but other men have studied without being led to doubt. May God forgive him, wherever he be now, though I truly believe that what led him into doubt was honesty, honesty of the mind. Not malice or vanity or ignorance or passion. He said to me once that we have a duty to Reason because we have a duty to be honest.

  We were near his lodging when we had the exchange I have just related. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘It is warm enough to sit in the garden and talk of lighter things. If Widow Turner favours you she may bring us cider.’ He smiled. ‘That may be a sign.’

  We did drink cider in the garden that morning and Mary Turner was most welcoming. She sent a girl to attend to us and then joined us for a while, albeit mostly addressing Christopher. However, when she stood to leave us, saying we must have theatre business to discuss, she smiled at me. This encouraged me to linger briefly after Christopher left for the playhouse. She asked me about the theatre, assuming I was as much involved as her two lodgers, and it turned out she had never seen a play, fearing they were rough and unruly events. I offered to escort her one day but had then to confess that I was not a player or poet or play-maker myself. I told her I did write but in a private capacity for Sir Francis Walsingham and other gentlemen of the Court. I hoped that would impress her and returned to Whitehall with pleasing anticipation. It did something to distract me from the executions.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  At about this time Thomas Walsingham, Mr Secretary’s cousin, increasingly featured in our work. A trusted man who had done well in Paris, he now moved into Mr Secretary’s house in Seething Lane to be of more intimate assistance, especially when Mr Secretary was struck down by the stone. This was happening ever more frequently. There were periods when Sir Francis kept to his room for weeks at a time in pain and sickness, unable to attend Court. His secretary Francis Mylles kept him informed and he continued to give general directions but could not attend to the detail he loved.

  Thomas, like Mr Secretary himself, was a generous patron of poetry and the arts and I cannot now say whether it was through that that he and Christopher came to know each other well or whether through working for us. Most likely the former, since Christopher did little for us after the Babington business apart from occasional courier work, though I suspect he saw more of Poley, Skeres and Frizer than I knew. At some point Thomas took Frizer into his household at Scadbury Park in Chislehurst, Kent. It was not far from London and must have meant that Christopher and Frizer saw more of each other. Whatever their differences, they then shared an interest in pleasing their mutual patron. It was to prove a fateful alliance.

  My own work was almost all-consuming. It was the time of our war with Spain and of the great Armada sent to invade us which, thanks to weather, Sir Francis Drake and God’s grace, was prevented. Little known then, and not at all now, we had other means of prevention at work. We intercepted their letters, deciphered their codes, divined their intentions and sabotaged many of their fleet’s water and powder barrels before it had even embarked. I would spend whole nights deciphering and still work through the day after.

  I said ‘almost’ all-consuming. In the few intervals between sleep and work I courted Mary Turner, visiting her house whenever I could with gifts and favours. She proved amenable. We walked gently together, our minds hand-in-hand as it were, to our eventual marriage, for which great blessing I am ever grateful. My visits to her meant that I saw a little of Christopher there, though not on our business. He was becoming a great figure by then, no longer the humble student – not that he was ever really humble, merely unknown – I had first met. His plays had great success and his poems were sought after in the bookshop by St Paul’s where writers and printers gathered. I never saw any of his plays while he lived. That was my lack and is still my regret. I have seen one or two since and found in them much to question him about.

  There was no hiding my courtship from him, of course. He teased me about it. He would greet me with a smile and say, ‘Ah, Thomas, what brings you here? Is it the air, the prospect, are there letters to copy? Or are you in search of rhymes to please our landlady? In which case, Watson and I will furnish you with plenty to further your cause.’ And to Mary he would say in my presence, ‘Goodwife Turner, I must warn you against this fellow, he is a ruffian and a great deceiver, a thief of women’s hearts. I must lend you my sword.’

  But then he would leave us to ourselves. I discovered later that he spoke kindly of me to Mary, saying I was an honest thief who, having once stolen a heart, would keep it safe and be true to it. It was that sword of his, though, that led me into further official dealings with him.

  I did not witness the affray. It was really nothing to do with Christopher except by mischance. It happened one fine September morning when I was at Mary’s house with apples for her that Mr Secretary had had delivered from Barn Elms to be distributed among us who worked for him. I had been up all night finishing a great hunk of work and had awarded myself a morning of rest before embarking on the next. Both the poet Watson and Christopher were there and the four of us shared a cheerful breakfast, the two of them causing much merriment with demonstrations of smoking tobacco in pipes, a habit then coming into fashion. It seemed difficult to get these engines going and when they did there was so much smoke that the engineers spent more time coughing and spluttering than enjoying it. Mary said that her washing, which was drying by the fire, smelled for days afterwards of tobacco smoke. Later, when he was being racked, Thomas Kyd claimed that Christopher would say that all who did not enjoy tobacco and boys were fools. Perhaps he did but from the few times I saw him with pipe and tobacco I would not say he enjoyed it; he had to work too hard at it for pleasure. As for boys, I never knew him for a sodomite, nor did he ever mention it in my hearing, though in his play King Edward II he had the king buggered with a red-hot poker. Do you know that play, sir? Well, I doubt the King would like it. Kings do not like to see the deaths of kings, especially deaths such as that. But, as I have said, Christopher was ever gentle with me and there might have been many things he did not mention. Certainly, he was not always so gentle with others.

  He left the house first that morning to see his collaborator, the other play-maker I had briefly met. As he went he buckled on a sword he had bought, although so far as I know he had not then achieved the status of gentleman that entitled him to bear one in public. No matter, perhaps, because companies of players often had swords for their stage fights. Watson left the house shortly after – he always wore a sword when in the streets, being entitled to it – and Mary and I were left to converse in peace, that free intercourse by which we establish the compatibility of minds which is the bedrock of good marriage. We were interrupted by a great hammering on the door. Mary bade both servants answer before showing herself.

  It was two neighbours, both women. Bidden enter, they breathlessly described a great fight at the end of the street in Hog Lane involving Mary’s lodgers and a man who was killed. So confused were their accounts, delivered simultaneously, that it sounded at first as if the fight had been between Watson and Christopher and that one of them was dead. Then, when we had calmed them enough, we learned that although one was wounded – they were confused as to which – he did not look like to die. But another man whom no one knew was dead.

  We hurried down to Hog Lane and there found a crowd gathered over the body of a young man by the ditch. He
was on his back with a sword wound to his chest an inch or more wide. There was not much blood but he was without doubt dead. His eyes were wide, staring skywards as if in surprise. Beside him stood Tom Watson, his sword sheathed. He was stooping and holding a rag to a bleeding wound in his thigh. Christopher stood a few feet off, his sword also sheathed. Of all there he alone looked calm and untroubled. He held up his hand when he saw us. ‘It’s all right. No need for worry. Thomas’s wound is slight.’ He nodded at the body. ‘And the dog is dead.’

  Someone had summoned the parish constable, a tailor called Wylde. He was not a robust fellow and approached the two men fearfully, as if they might go for him. But Watson reassured him, saying, ‘We will make statements, we have nothing to hide. I killed the man in self-defence as my friend Mr Marlowe can vouch. So too can some here who witnessed it.’ The constable bade them accompany him to the justice, Sir Owen Hopton, Lieutenant of the Tower. As they went Christopher turned to me and said in an undertone, ‘It is true, we are both innocent. But can you help if need be?’

  It took time for the full story to emerge. I give it here in short form because it was later put about that Christopher had killed the man in a brawl. He was not brawling and he killed no one. It was the dead man, William Bradley, son of a Holborn innkeeper, who was the brawler, and known for one. He had a grievance against Tom Watson over a debt that he, Bradley, owed the brother of Edward Alleyn, the leading actor of those days who took the great parts in Christopher’s plays. Alleyn’s brother had hired Watson’s brother-in-law, an attorney, to take Bradley to court. Bradley had threatened the attorney with violence, upon which the attorney, Alleyn’s brother and Watson himself had threatened him. Blaming Watson for this, Bradley waited for him in Hog Lane that day, presumably to give him a beating.

  Instead it was Christopher who came first from Mary’s house and turned the corner into Hog Lane where he was accosted by Bradley, who knew him for an intimate of Watson’s. They had words and Christopher – never one to back down from a fight – gave as good as he got. Swords were drawn and they were having at each other, though with no blood yet drawn, when Watson appeared. Bradley saw him and cried, ‘Art thou now come? Then I will have a bout with thee.’ He turned upon Watson and Christopher stood aside. There was no doubt, Christopher said, that Bradley by then meant to kill. He wielded his sword in his right hand and his dagger in his left, the latter for parrying close thrusts, and the fury of his assault drove Watson back to the edge of the ditch where he had no choice but to stand his ground and fight. He parried one of Bradley’s thrusts and counter-attacked, straightening his arm quickly enough to evade Bradley’s knife-parry. Bradley’s momentum carried him forward onto Watson’s blade, which sank six inches into his chest. He stumbled, coughed and cried out as Watson withdrew his blade. Then he dropped his weapons, sank to his knees, made a noise between a sigh and a gurgle, and rolled onto his back where he lay, one leg hooked beneath the other, staring heavenwards.

  What struck Christopher was how it was over on an instant. One moment there was a man, a life, a voice, a vivid moving presence, a whole world in that man’s head. Another moment and there was merely a carcass, food for rats and worms, that whole world, everything that man knew and would have said or done, gone in an instant. And immediately everything else, the rest of the teeming world, was as if he had never been. ‘Nothing happens when you die,’ I remember him saying. ‘It is not even an event, just a ceasing. Why fear it?’

  ‘We fear God’s judgement and punishment for our sins.’ I said such things with confidence then.

  ‘We fear nothingness more. Extinction, total, eternal, everlasting. That is what we really fear. We would prefer Hell.’

  ‘Easily said when you’re not in it.’

  ‘Hell keeps hope alive, Thomas. There’s always the possibility of the alternative. But think on nothingness, think hard on nothing. See how long you can bear it.’

  That was typical of him, of how he spoke and thought.

  The law took its usual leisurely course. They were sent to Newgate gaol on suspicion of murder and the inquest next day decided that Thomas Watson slew William Bradley in self-defence, not by felony, and that Christopher had no part in it. But they could not be released without the Queen’s official pardon, which would take months, and so they were returned to Newgate. I had by then reported to Mr Secretary, who always wanted to know the doings of our agents or anyone associated with us. He told me to arrange bail for Christopher. I engaged a lawyer from Clifford’s Inn whom we often called upon and a prosperous tradesman we knew, a horner from Smithfield. In return for favours past and to come they stood bail for twenty pounds apiece. Christopher was freed and bound over to appear at the next Newgate sessions in a couple of months, but Watson had to remain in that stinking hole.

  This took precious days during which the flood of work nearly overwhelmed me. Mr Secretary demanded the same quick results with no allowance made for other tasks he imposed, and when I protested, mildly enough, he replied that those privileged to perform the Lord’s work should not complain of the yoke. In fairness, he was as exacting of himself as of others, but that did not make for an easy life.

  I collected Christopher from Newgate. He was heartily glad to be freed but worried for Watson since many there died of fever, it being such an ill-favoured place with airs to make you retch and a stench that lingered about you for days after. He and Watson were thrown into the common cell for their first night, an evil dark place called Stone Hold. It was underground and overcrowded, with some prisoners chained to the dripping walls. There was one candle set in the middle but the rats took it and thereafter ran freely across men’s legs in the dark, nibbling their clothes. One poor shivering wretch had no clothes at all, having been there, he said, nine years.

  But Christopher and Watson had access to money and next morning, after words with their gaoler, they were moved to their own upper-floor cell with a window. They had doubtless been thrown into Stone Hold in order to encourage a better bribe. My experience here in King’s Bench gaol persuades me it is the same in all gaols. Conditions here improved greatly as soon as it was known that you, sir, were taking an interest in me on behalf of the Court. I am treated almost as a guest, for which I thank you heartily. I am most anxious to be of use to His Majesty but still I do not understand what of Christopher Marlowe he wants to hear from me. It would help my memory and my interpretation if you could afford me some hint of the direction of the King’s interest.

  Very well, I shall continue with everything. Tom Watson was duly pardoned at the next sessions, at the same time as Christopher’s bail was discharged. They appeared before Sir Roger Manwood, the Kent judge who had been patron for Christopher’s scholarship. He despatched the matter swiftly. I suspect Mr Secretary, also a Kent man, might have spoken to him, since when he asked me the date of the session he asked also that I should find out who was due to sit. Although Christopher was discharged immediately and Watson’s pardon recommended, it was some months more before his pardon came and he was released. He died, poor man, not many years later of a sickness of the chest caught in Newgate. So William Bradley had his revenge from beyond the grave.

  Watson was acknowledged a great poet, especially of the Latin, though I do not know that he is much read now. He asked Christopher to see his last work published with a dedication to his patroness, the Lady Sidney, whom you will recall was Mr Secretary’s beloved only daughter and widow to the great Sir Philip Sidney. All this Christopher performed dutifully.

  It was not the only epitaph he composed. He wrote most generously in Latin of his patron, Sir Roger, who may of course have helped him in sundry other ways of which I knew nothing. I never knew Christopher to be short of money – at least, he never complained of it – and I suspect he received generous patronage in his youth. Later, of course, his plays and verses made him famous and he must have earned well though he was always careful with money, perhaps even tight. But when we were paying him he never asked for
more, as many did. In fact, Mr Secretary always paid well: ‘Knowledge is never too dear,’ he would say, as I may have told you already. He knew very well how costly our business can be because he often had to pay for it himself. Queen Elizabeth always preferred her subjects to spend on her behalf.

  You ask about fights. I have already mentioned his readiness and the Bradley business was not his only affray in those years. He was brought before Sir Owen Hopton a second time for threatening the constables in Holywell Street and was bound over to keep the peace on promise of payment of twenty pounds, to be raised if necessary from the sale of any goods and property he might acquire. Then in Canterbury he fought a duel with one William Corkine, a musician of the cathedral. I do not know what about but neither was injured. Corkine started legal proceedings afterwards but dropped them. Around the time of Christopher’s death Thomas Kyd and Richard Baines wrote that he was wont to cause ‘sudden privy injuries to men’. It was true he would not hold back in argument and he was certainly prepared to settle matters with his fists, as I have said, but I never knew him start the argument.

  You ask whether his arguments were personal, whether he had personal relations with those he fought, whether the fights were about those relations. I cannot help. I never heard that they were, or were not. You see, there were long periods when we saw nothing of each other, our daily lives being so different. But I do recall taxing him once over his temper. We were in Mary’s house, seated at table. Mary was there but not Watson, so it may have been just after Christopher was released from Newgate. He was telling us how he had learned about counterfeiting coins from another prisoner, John Poole, incarcerated for that crime. He laughed that Newgate had given him ‘as good a right to coin as the Queen of England’ and that if he found a cunning stamp-maker he would coin French crowns and English shillings. I took him more seriously than perhaps he meant – at the time, anyway – and reminded him that this was a capital offence that could have him boiled in oil. Even jesting about it was dangerous.