by M. J. Trow
‘He’ll have to go,’ the Warwickshire man muttered to Marlowe. ‘Jumped-up stage hand! What does he know about the Muse?’
‘The Muse, Will?’ Marlowe chuckled. ‘Young Sledd has been making the Muse dance and sigh since I was singing at the High Altar at Canterbury and you were creeping unwillingly to school. Trust him. If he says the gun is safe, the gun is safe.’
‘I care not,’ the Governor of Babylon was bellowing from the ramparts below the heavens’ canopy, ‘nor the town will never yield As long as any life is in my breast.’
‘Oh, shit, that’s me!’ Shakespeare stumbled out into the limelight, colliding with Techelles and his guard before straightening and getting into his role.
‘Thou desperate governor of Babylon,’ he cried out, cradling the arquebus in his arms. ‘To save thy life, and us a little labour …’ He paused for Techelles to chuckle in reaction, but the dolt missed his cue and Shakespeare stormed on, ‘Yield speedily the city to our hands. Or else be sure thou shalt be forc’d with pains More exquisite than ever traitor felt.’
Kit Marlowe peered through the slats and sought out the face of Sir Francis Walsingham. He knew more about the pains meted out to traitors than anyone in the Rose that day but the face was as immobile and unreadable as ever.
The orchestra shattered the air and there were mixed cheers and boos as Ned Alleyn came on, drawn by half the cast in chains, their jaws strapped with leather and hauling the chariot Philip Henslowe had mortgaged Master Sackerson’s Bear Garden to buy. The action went on and Marlowe could see what the audience could not. Thomas Sledd and his number two had slipped iron bracelets over the wrists of the Governor of Babylon and hauled him upwards so that he hung from his own walls. The pain in his wrists, arms and legs was appalling and he growled in agony.
‘That’s good,’ Marlowe muttered to cast members nearby. ‘Did he do that in rehearsals?’
‘Your feet!’ Thomas Sledd hissed through the canvas and wood flat. ‘Put your feet on the ledge, you stupid bastard!’
With gratitude, the Governor found the ledge and the feeling flowed back into his wrists and hands.
‘See now, my lord.’ Amyras was Tamburlaine’s son, although John Meres was actually a year older than Ned Alleyn. ‘How brave the captain hangs.’
Alleyn gave another of his cruel, cynical laughs. ‘’Tis brave indeed, my boy: well done!’ He turned to Shakespeare, already fumbling with his wheel-lock. ‘Shoot first, my lord,’ Alleyn ordered, ‘and then the rest shall follow.’ Six guns came up to the carry as the cast became a firing squad.
‘Then have at him,’ the Warwickshire man shouted, ‘to begin withal.’ And he levelled the arquebus, before bringing it up to point at the Governor’s chest. There was a flash and a puff of black smoke. Shakespeare stumbled backwards with the thud of the explosion, momentarily blinded and with an appalling pain in his right shoulder. There was a scream and Eleanor Merchant fell back in the gallery, a gaping hole in her throat.
On his wall, the Governor jumped, jarring his wrists anew and he all but slipped off his perch. That wasn’t supposed to happen. ‘You save my life,’ he said, trying to keep things going, even though the groundlings were screaming and shouting, swaying now towards Eleanor Merchant’s box, now away from it, ‘and let this wound appease the natural fury of great Tamburlaine!’
Great Tamburlaine was striding across the stage. Shakespeare was standing in shock, the murder weapon still in his hand, the harmless wick still smoking. Thomas Sledd was there seconds later, easing the gun out of the actor’s cold hands while Philip Henslowe, as bewildered as everyone else, ran on to the stage and begged for order.
‘A doctor here!’ someone shouted. ‘For the love of God!’
And the screaming started again.
FOUR
The wind whipped along Bankside that night, driving people to their beds and the stinging rain to the west. A handful of men, cloaked against the weather, splashed their way to the entrance of the Rose, dark and silent now that the crowds had gone and the place had ceased to resemble Bedlam.
A single church candle burned in the centre of the stage and the cast of Tamburlaine sat disconsolately around it, their faces flickering in the flame. They’d talked themselves hoarse over the bizarre events of the afternoon and Philip Henslowe had gone into a nervous decline. He had had to give some people their money back and he had never actually done that before. He was still feeling a bit queasy.
The doors crashed back and the group of men arrived, torches guttering in their faces, throwing lurid shadows around the empty galleries. Their pattens clattered on the boards and thudded on the groundlings’ mud, churned by the rain and panic of the afternoon. The man at their head stood alone for a moment, half-resting on a cane, then raised his torch higher. ‘I am Hugh Thynne,’ he told the company, ‘High Constable of London. Who’s in charge here?’
Four men were on their feet: Philip Henslowe, Ned Alleyn, Thomas Sledd and Kit Marlowe.
‘That’s all I need,’ Thynne grunted. ‘A committee.’ He turned to his constables of the Watch. ‘Find the doors. Nobody leaves. Which of you is Henslowe?’
‘I am,’ the impresario said. He had never met Hugh Thynne before but he knew his reputation; he’d be lucky to have a theatre at all by midnight.
‘Do I assume, Master Henslowe,’ Thynne said as he climbed the steps to the stage, ‘that these people are your company?’
‘They are, sir,’ Henslowe said. A fine-tuner of conversation was Philip Henslowe. If a man was your social inferior you called him sirrah and metaphorically shat all over him. If a man was the High Constable of London you grovelled for England.
Thynne looked him up and down. ‘You own this place?’ he sneered, wiping a finger along the edge of the stage.
‘I do, sir,’ Henslowe told him.
‘Who are you?’ Thynne half-turned to the next man.
‘Christopher Marlowe.’ There was no ‘sir’ this time.
‘What do you do here?’ Thynne asked.
‘Here?’ Marlowe looked around. ‘I watch my plays being enacted.’
‘Oh, a playwright.’ Thynne was dismissive. ‘I’ve met people like you before. Watson, was it? Nashe, I believe. There aren’t many people I don’t know.’
Marlowe chuckled. ‘You must have misheard me, Constable. I said I was a playwright.’
Such bonhomie as Thynne showed in his face vanished in an instant and he closed in on Marlowe so that their noses almost touched. ‘I didn’t mishear you and that’s High Constable, by the way.’
‘High Constable indeed, Master Thynne.’ Ned Alleyn felt that only his lofty intervention could defuse the moment. ‘You know me, of course.’
Thynne dragged his eyes away from Marlowe, committing every feature to memory, for the next time. And there would be a next time, he just knew it. He focussed on Alleyn. ‘No,’ he said flatly.
‘Edmund Alleyn.’ The actor bowed with an extravagant flourish, though it looked less dignified than it might have done because he was still wearing Tamburlaine’s half-armour, unbuckled and curiously unbecoming in Thynne’s torch light. The High Constable ignored him. ‘Let’s have more light in here!’ he shouted to no one in particular and Thomas Sledd obliged, clapping his hands and sending his stage hands skipping to find and light candles.
‘Careful, Thomas,’ Henslowe hissed. ‘Naked flame. Straw. Timber. I don’t have to paint you a picture.’ And he stared at the constables’ torches with undisguised panic.
‘Er … yes.’ Alleyn couldn’t let it go at that. ‘I am currently on loan to Master Henslowe, as it were, from the Lord Admiral’s Men. The Lord Admiral—’
‘I know who the Lord Admiral is,’ Thynne stopped him short. ‘One of too many rich gentlemen with troupes of actors as toys. Well, let me tell you – all of you – while I’ve got you here, you and your triple-damned theatres give me and my lads more grief than all the other low-life of London put together. You!’ He pointed his cane at Sledd, now
back in the seated circle. ‘You’re the factotum here?’
‘Master Sledd is my Stage Manager,’ Henslowe volunteered.
‘Mute, is he?’ Thynne asked.
‘No, I ain’t!’ Sledd stood up to his full height and barely reached Hugh Thynne’s nose.
The High Constable smiled. ‘Then you’re the one I want to see. Where’s the gun?’
‘Backstage,’ Sledd told him.
‘And the body?’
‘The Tiring Room.’
‘Right. One thing more. Where was the victim when she was shot?’
‘Over there.’ Sledd pointed to a gallery to the left of the stage, half-hidden in darkness now.
Thynne took it in, turned and walked to the stage’s edge. Then he turned back. ‘Who fired the fatal shot?’
There was a silence in which eyes flicked from right to left and back again. After what seemed an eternity, a balding actor got to his feet. ‘I did,’ he said, looking Thynne squarely in the face.
‘Name?’ the High Constable asked.
‘Shakespeare … er … Shaxsper.’
Thynne walked slowly towards the man. ‘Well, which is it?’ he asked.
The Warwickshire man stood his ground. ‘Shakespeare,’ he said.
Thynne tucked the cane under his arm, reached out and took the actor’s right hand. He held it close to his eyes and proceeded to sniff his fingers, until Shakespeare pulled it away.
‘Powder,’ Thynne said. ‘You’ve fired a gun all right, and recently. Just checking you aren’t covering for another of your number. You know what they say … thick as thieves.’
‘That’s outrageous,’ Alleyn began, but Thynne was probably the only man in London capable of stopping the greatest actor since the time of Jesus from holding forth and it worked, with one flick of his hand.
‘Shakespeare. Sledd. You will come with me.’ And he marched towards the Arras at the back of the stage, the pair trooping behind him. Marlowe joined him. So did Henslowe and Alleyn. ‘Not you,’ Thynne growled. ‘Nor you. Nor you.’
‘These men were working under my auspices, Master Thynne,’ Marlowe said in level tones. ‘I owe them my support.’
‘Support?’ Thynne chuckled. ‘They’re going to need more than that.’ He paused for a moment, then relented. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But just you, Marlowe. And the rest of you,’ he yelled to the still sitting cast. ‘My men are at every door, every gate and there are others outside. If anyone attempts to leave … well, don’t attempt to leave.’
Sledd led the way behind the Arras, making sure Thynne’s flames didn’t catch the sparkling velvet and he led them down a small flight of stairs to the Tiring Room. Props lay everywhere here, wigs, dresses, shackles and all the panoply of ancient Persia, all of it made a few weeks ago by the sweated labour of Spitalfields. What had looked like gold and costly vestments to the groundlings was shown here in its true tawdriness as paint, plaster and a sprinkling of glamour, which was all lost in the harsh light of the Constable’s torch.
On a table in the centre lay the body of Eleanor Merchant. Her cap and cowl had gone and her bodice had been ripped open in a frantic attempt to save her life. Somebody had closed her eyes, but her mouth was still open with the shock and impact of the musket ball that had hit her in the throat and blown her backwards off her seat.
‘Anybody know who she was?’ Thynne asked, peering at the gaping wound, almost black now with congealed blood.
‘Eleanor Merchant,’ Marlowe said.
‘My landlady.’ Shakespeare’s voice was almost inaudible.
Thynne’s head came up slowly. ‘Indeed?’ he murmured. ‘So you knew her well?’
‘Tolerably.’ Shakespeare shrugged.
‘Intimately?’ Thynne was watching the man closely.
‘I said “tolerably”,’ Shakespeare repeated, louder this time.
‘Yes.’ Thynne smiled coldly. ‘I heard what you said. Where’s the gun, Factotum?’
Thomas Sledd crossed the room and handed the arquebus to Thynne, who swapped it for his torch. He sniffed the lock, cocked it, reversed it in his hand and looked down the bore. ‘It was supposed to have been empty,’ Sledd said. ‘They all were.’
‘Who set the charge?’ Thynne asked.
‘I did,’ the stage manager told him.
‘When?’
Sledd was on his best behaviour, so he kept his voice level in the face of the endless questions rapped out by the High Constable. He owed it to Philip Henslowe not to annoy this man who could ruin him in the bat of an eye. ‘Half an hour, perhaps more … Before the play began, I know that. I don’t have time later.’
‘And when – in whatever play this was – did Master Shakespeare here kill this woman?’
Shakespeare raised a hand to protest, to have it knocked down again by Marlowe.
‘Act Five, Scene One,’ Marlowe explained.
‘In the real world.’ Thynne tried to be patient. ‘How long elapsed between the loading of the gun and the shooting?’
‘An hour and a half, perhaps a little more.’
‘Thank you. Now, that wasn’t too difficult, was it?’ The High Constable weighted the arquebus and brought the butt to the floor with a thud. ‘And who handled it in that hour and a half or a little more?’
‘Anyone could have,’ Marlowe said.
‘That’s right!’ Sledd clicked his fingers as he realized, his face oddly pale under the torch’s guttering light.
‘And did that “anyone” include you, Master Shakespeare?’ the High Constable asked.
‘Yes,’ the actor said.
‘Good enough. You will come with me. Consider yourself under arrest.’
‘On what charge?’ Marlowe asked.
Thynne frowned at him before taking his torch back from Sledd. He tucked the gun under his free arm. ‘I thought you told me you were a playwright,’ he said. ‘You work it out.’ He saw Shakespeare hesitating. ‘Now, you are going to come quietly, aren’t you, Master Shakespeare? I know my hands are full at the moment, but it’s surprising what a mess a flaming brand can make of a face. And like most of you vain bastards, I expect your face is your fortune, isn’t it?’ He peered closer at the pasty cheeks, the receding hair, the slightly petulant mouth. ‘Although possibly not so much in your particular case.’
‘I’ll come quietly,’ Shakespeare said sulkily. ‘I didn’t do anything. You can’t keep me locked up if I didn’t do anything.’
At least two men in that Tiring Room knew that wasn’t true, but neither of them was going to debate it. In High Constable Thynne’s world, habeas corpus was merely a serving suggestion.
‘Of course not,’ Thynne said, his voice flat. ‘We’ll let your friends know where you are when we have found a little corner for you somewhere.’ And he shepherded the actor in front of him with little prods of the gun barrel and passed through the Arras, leaving Marlowe and Sledd behind in the gloom.
After a moment or two, Thomas Sledd spoke. ‘Old Will, eh? That was a surprise.’
‘Yes,’ Marlowe said. ‘To Master Shakespeare as well as to you, Tom, I think. We have work to do, but we’ll let the dust settle a bit, first. All may yet be well.’ Although for the life of him, he couldn’t see how.
The sun filtering through the grimy window was weak, but even so it seemed to have a knack for lingering on every cobweb, every worn seat, every burn and ring on the oak table in the centre of the room. The chairs gathered around it were a motley bunch, some from great houses that had seen better days, others from alehouses where the owner was still trying to work out how the drinkers managed to steal things even when they were nailed down. The room seemed to be holding its breath. Despite overlooking Rose Alley the cries from below and the rumbling of wheels seemed muffled by atmosphere and the only sound that was noticeable to the man who sat slumped in the best chair in the house at the head of the table was the soft chink of coins in the round pot he rolled from hand to hand over the ridged wood in front of him. Occasionally
he added a sigh to the mix, but generally the room just waited for the next Act.
Eventually, voices were heard below and then feet on the stairs. The door crashed back and suddenly the room seemed full of people, milling about, jostling to get the most comfortable chairs, of which there were precious few.
‘Good morning, Master Henslowe,’ said a large man, florid in the face and with his hair combed forward in careful curls, making every strand count. ‘Sad news that brings us here.’ He eyed the pots on the table and weighed one in his hand. ‘No refunds, then?’ He smiled round at the others, shuffling into position around the board. Some chuckled. Others looked mildly shocked. Only one face did not alter its expression: Nicholas Faunt had not risen to be Spymaster Walsingham’s right-hand man by wearing his heart on his cheek.
Henslowe waited, his chin supported on one weary hand. He had learned over the few years of his theatrical career that adopting a world-weary pose from the outset was always the best plan. There was no need to be too enthusiastic; the best of plays could let you down, he knew that better than anyone, and if the Master of the Revels woke up dyspeptic some morning, he could close you down just for the fun of it. Then again, the Plague could come calling and business could come to a dead stop. So he kept his thoughts to himself. Finally, all the shuffling and muted greetings from the men around the table subsided and he cleared his throat to speak.
‘As you must know, gentlemen, a very sad and shocking occurrence took place at the play yesterday afternoon. A member of the audience was shot and killed during the execution scene and a member of the cast has been taken by the High Constable to the Clink.’
