by M. J. Trow
‘Ah, I’ve a problem there, Hugh,’ Danby said, slitting the wax seal with his knife. He read Burghley’s missive quickly. ‘Er … I’ll let you know. Can you see yourself out?’ He waved the letter. ‘Affairs of State. You understand.’
Three days had passed since William Shakespeare had been unceremoniously frogmarched to the grim, low granite of the Clink in the Liberty of the See of Winchester and there they threw away the key. It was not until the next day that Kit Marlowe jumped the puddles of Bankside in another London downpour. Windlass had argued he should go with him, but Marlowe had hired, he reminded him, a manservant, not a nursemaid. Windlass was to stay put – hadn’t he got some pewter to polish? Marlowe tapped with his rapier hilt on the solid oak door. A grille slid sideways and a face peered out, one or two brown teeth still clinging desperately to their gums. ‘Yes?’
‘I wish to see a prisoner, newly brought.’
‘Name?’
‘William Shakespeare.’
‘Who wants him?’ the face beyond the grille asked.
‘I do,’ Marlowe told him.
‘You’ll need a pass,’ the gaoler grunted, narrow-eyed.
Marlowe slid the sword away into its hanger and flashed a silver groat. The gaoler smiled. ‘The very one,’ he said and the grille slammed shut. There was a growl of locks and a rattle of chains and a wicket door creaked open. Marlowe stepped inside. He was standing in a yard surrounded on all sides by ramshackle buildings that had once been inns. Prisoners wandered everywhere, some ignoring each other, others in whispered conversations out of the corners of their mouths. On a hay mound in the far corner, a large man was lying on top of a trollop, jerking up and down. Her legs were spread wide but other than that she appeared to be totally unmoved by the whole experience and was in fact carrying on a desultory conversation with a woman who sat on the ground alongside, suckling a child.
‘The pass?’ The gaoler held Marlowe’s sleeve. He flipped the coin to him.
‘Where will I find Master Shakespeare?’
‘What’s he in for?’ the gaoler asked.
‘He’s accused of murder,’ Marlowe told him.
‘Oh.’ The gaoler’s face lit up. ‘That Master Shakespeare. You’d better leave that sword here, sir. There’s people in this building would kill you for that.’
‘They can always try,’ Marlowe told him, his hand on the weapon’s hilt.
‘Suit yourself.’ The gaoler slid back the wicket bolts before lighting a lantern and trudging across the yard. ‘We don’t have many murderers here, as it happens. Harlots, fornicators, pretty boys, night-wanderers. Oh … and over there –’ he pointed to the corner with the copulating couple – ‘recusants. Go on, my son,’ he bellowed to the thrusting man. ‘Give her one from me.’ He leaned closer to Marlowe, his dreadful teeth bared in a grin. ‘Not that I’d go nearer than a bargeman’s pole to her,’ he assured him. ‘Your Master Shakespeare has a whole room to himself; Master Side’s what we call it here.’ He fumbled with a huge key in another lock and then stopped short. ‘’Ere.’ He looked hard at Marlowe and his weapons, having noted that the man was also carrying a dagger at his back. ‘You ’aven’t come to kill him, have you? Only, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.’
‘No.’ Marlowe smiled. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’
‘Oh,’ the gaoler sneered. ‘Pretty boy, eh? Well, it takes all sorts. Just remember –’ he pressed his face close again – ‘there are laws against that sort of thing, you know.’ He kicked open what had once been an inn door and held up the lantern so that Marlowe could see his way in the room’s grim interior. A whole family of rats had made their home in the crumbled wainscoting and the floor was slippery with urine-soaked straw. A pale, balding man was crouched on a rough stool in one corner. He peered at him as the light from the outside hurt his eyes.
‘Thank you, gaoler,’ Marlowe said. ‘Leave the lantern, will you?’
‘I’ll have to lock you in,’ the man grunted. ‘Bang on the door when you’re ready.’ And he trudged off, turning the key behind him.
Marlowe squatted in front of the actor, placing the lantern carefully on the floor. There was no possible chance that the straw would catch fire, wet as it was, but he wanted to keep the glare from the man’s eyes. He leaned forward. ‘Will?’ he said, gently. ‘How are you?’
‘Kit?’ Shakespeare got up suddenly, nearly bowling the playwright over. ‘Kit. I thought everyone had forgotten me.’
‘It’s been three days, that’s all. I got here as soon as I could.’
‘They’ve had the inquest, then?’
‘They have, yes.’
‘What was the verdict?’ Shakespeare looked anxiously into Marlowe’s face. ‘What was the verdict? Was it murder?’
Marlowe looked at the man. He may not be the greatest poet in the business, nor the greatest playwright, but he had not taken him to be as stupid as all that. ‘Of course it was murder, Master Shakespeare,’ he said, formality returning now he was reassured that the man was still alive and kicking. ‘Eleanor Merchant was killed by a ball through the throat. There are not many ways of having that happen other than murder.’ Marlowe had sent Windlass to the Coroner’s court where Sir William Danby and his sixteen men and true had decided on the course of events and the value of the arquebus’s deodand.
‘Accident!’ Shakespeare shouted. ‘Accident, that was what it was.’
‘Are you saying you shot her, then?’ Marlowe asked. ‘Be careful how you answer that question, especially if anyone else asks it.’
Shakespeare turned away and punched the wall. In any other room he would have hurt his hand. Here, it just made a dent in the rotting wattle and daub. ‘I don’t see how I can have done. I wasn’t directly facing her or anything close. But …’ He leant his head on the plaster and put his hands flat on the wall on either side. His voice was low and muffled. ‘But … how could it be otherwise?’
‘I saw the gun kick in your hand, so I know it was loaded. But I was watching you, not the others, so I don’t know if they had shot in their guns too,’ Marlowe said. ‘But I have to tell you, Will, that I don’t see that there would have been time for anyone to load all of the arquebuses without being seen.’
Shakespeare didn’t answer for a while and when he did it was just to murmur, ‘I know. It had to have been me.’
‘Did you give Eleanor Merchant a ticket?’
‘Yes,’ Shakespeare said, turning round and facing Marlowe and drawing a shuddering sigh. ‘Yes. Her and her sister.’
‘I’ve heard a little about her sister,’ Marlowe told him.
‘Constance? Have you? Who from? No, don’t tell me. Ned Alleyn.’
‘Yes. Have you seen him around the house?’
‘No, but I have heard of his … interest.’
‘Is she a pretty girl, Will?’
‘Beautiful, I’d say.’ Shakespeare looked rather serious. ‘Eleanor was a handsome enough woman too, I suppose.’ He gave the ghost of a smile. ‘Most men in London are lodging with uglier women, I would venture.’
Marlowe was quiet, thinking. ‘So … you and Eleanor were …?’
‘No!’ Shakespeare drew himself up. ‘I am a married man, Master Marlowe. There was no such behaviour going on …’
Marlowe heard the pause and read it. ‘But she would have liked there to be, perhaps?’
‘She did make overtures, from time to time. The last time on the day before she … before she …’
Marlowe clapped a friendly hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Don’t upset yourself. You weren’t to know. But perhaps we should keep this between ourselves.’
The actor nodded. ‘Mmm.’
Marlowe couldn’t read this silence so well. ‘If there is more, Will, would you like to tell me?’
The man from Stratford drew a huge sigh and let everything out in a rush. ‘There was something going on in the house, that’s certain. There would be comings and goings, whispering at night. Sometimes there would be a knock,
a strange knock, a code if you know what I mean?’ Marlowe nodded. He knew all about strange knocks and codes in the dead of night. ‘Eleanor would always go down to answer it, not Constance.’
‘How do you know?’
A flush crept up Shakespeare’s parchment cheek.
‘Don’t tell me you spied on them?’ Marlowe said, and then, when the answer was a shake of the head, he added, ‘You know because … you were in bed with Eleanor when the knock came.’ A shake of the head. ‘Constance! You were in bed with Constance! Does Alleyn know?’
‘No. Constance has kept Master Alleyn at arm’s length. She … well, she says she loves me.’ Even Shakespeare found this unlikely, Marlowe could tell.
‘I thought you were a married man,’ Marlowe reminded him.
‘I am. I am a married man. But … well, my wife and I … we don’t get on. And … Constance was here and so was I and … she surprised me one night as I was washing myself and … well …’ Shakespeare was now so fiery red that Marlowe could almost feel the heat.
‘One thing led to another. I see.’ Marlowe tapped his chin with his fingertips.
Shakespeare nodded. ‘Yes. Not one thing, so much as …’
‘Two things?’
‘I haven’t kept count. Many things, let’s say.’
Marlowe looked at him solemnly. ‘Did Eleanor know?’
‘No. No, she thinks – thought – that Constance was still a maid. She often teased her about it, but I don’t think she would like to think she was not.’
‘And if she found out?’
‘She would have thrown me out, for certain. And probably Constance, as well. Although perhaps not that, because the house belongs to them both. Their father was quite wealthy, I gather, and left them properties all over London. Master Merchant had a go at speculation, or so I understand, but was no good at it and now they only have the house in Water Lane. I suppose she could have gone somewhere else to live …’
‘I am trying to find a motive for your killing Eleanor Merchant,’ Marlowe reminded him, ‘and you have given me one, though weak. Is there anything else I should know?’
‘No. Except to say that there were shady doings in that house.’
‘Did she keep a bawdy house, perhaps?’
‘I don’t think so. She only had just the one maid and herself.’
‘And Constance … but of course, you can account for Constance. May I ask … was she …? Did she seem to know what she was doing?’
‘She was quite … worldly,’ Shakespeare had to concede.
‘Perhaps that’s it, then. Although why she would let Constance cease her duties seems a little strange … Did she think she was with child, perhaps?’
Shakespeare looked fit to explode.
‘Will! Surely not?’
The poet shrugged. ‘I am very potent, Master Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Ask my wife. Ask … not anyone, but sundry persons, yes.’
‘Another motive, then,’ Marlowe sighed. ‘Thynne will now say that you hit Eleanor when aiming at Constance.’
‘But Constance was not near Eleanor. I could see her in the gallery. She was on the other side.’
‘That is a relief at least. But the fact that you could see your landlady in the crowd, that is a strike against you. It would have been better if you hadn’t known where she was.’ Marlowe looked at Shakespeare solemnly. ‘I must say this, Master Shaxsper,’ he said, ‘I have had to rethink my view of you this day and no mistake. Stay here.’
Shakespeare couldn’t help himself. ‘I have little option, Master Marlowe,’ he pointed out.
Marlowe shrugged. ‘I will go and see the gaoler. A groat got me in. Let’s see how much it will take to get you out.’ He banged on the door and as it opened, he slid through it, already addressing the gaoler in wheedling tones.
The crowds had gone home again the next day and Philip Henslowe was sitting in his counting house, running the coins through his fingers like a man who had died and gone to Heaven. That wasn’t Kit Marlowe’s concern, not directly, anyway. What concerned him was that Eleanor Merchant had really died. Had she gone to Heaven? Who knew? Not Kit Marlowe, who had created the atheist Tamburlaine and was standing alone on the dimly lit stage as another damp spring day gave way to evening. The arc of a rainbow lay briefly over Southwark before the clouds eclipsed it, but the poet missed it. He had watched from the gods today, especially Act Five, Scene One, and noted in his mind where everybody had been standing. The Governor had been hauled up by his wrists on to his precarious perch on the far flat that doubled as Babylon’s gate, courtesy of Thomas Sledd’s brushwork and carpentry. The stage had been quite full. Ned Alleyn stood centre stage, a position Marlowe noticed the man hardly ever left, with his son Amyras to his left. Spear-bearers had just lashed Orcanes, King of Natolia and the King of Jerusalem to Tamburlaine’s chariot. Theridamus had come on stage right, behind Amyras, Shakespeare’s part being played since his arrest by an eternally grateful Walter Hodgett, who had only ever had one line in his life before this. Hodgett had stood where Marlowe stood now, lining up an invisible arquebus, to shoot the dangling Governor. There was no more risk-taking with shot and charges, for all most of today’s crowd had turned up to see it. They may have hoped to see the Governor riddled with shot and jerking like a marionette at the end of his chains but all they got was a rattle of a thunder board and they had to imagine the rest.
Marlowe cursed and shook his head. He couldn’t work out a damned thing without props. And the prop in question, the gun that had killed Eleanor Merchant, was now officially deemed the deodand, part of the estate of her murderer and no one except Sir William Danby was ever likely to see that again. Still, any gun would do and Marlowe went in search of one.
‘Kit?’ Thomas Sledd was in the Tiring Room, his mouth full of twine as he patched Zenocrate’s gown.
‘Thomas.’ Marlowe had assumed he was alone. ‘Got a gun?’
‘Yes,’ the stage manager said slowly. He and Kit Marlowe went back a while, and he knew this man. He was Machiavel; he was quicksilver – for all he knew, he was the Devil himself. What was he up to now?
‘Come with me.’ The two of them, the arquebus in Marlowe’s hand, strode back out on to the stage. ‘Get your ladder up there,’ Marlowe told him and Sledd obliged. ‘Up you go.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Sledd asked, hesitating on the first rung.
‘Keep Will Shakespeare out of gaol. He didn’t like the decor very much. Show me where the ledge is, the one where the Governor puts his feet. I can’t see it from down here.’
‘That’s the general idea,’ Sledd told him. ‘Tamburlaine’s not much of a scourge of God, is he, if he lets his enemies have a little rest before he has them shot?’
‘Clever, Thomas,’ Marlowe said. ‘I knew there had to be a reason Henslowe kept you on.’
‘Oh, ha.’ Sledd was halfway up the ladder now. ‘Ow. Shit.’
‘Problem?’ Marlowe called.
‘Splinter.’ Sledd winced. ‘Right down the quick of my nail.’ He sucked at his thumb. ‘Never mind, all in a day’s work. Now what?’
‘Your feet are at the level of the ledge are they?’
‘Yes.’
‘Stop there, then.’ Marlowe brought the arquebus up to the level, the ornate butt hard against his shoulder and his eyes narrowing along the barrel to the sight. ‘I’ve never fired one of these. What happens, to the shot, I mean?’
‘All depends,’ Sledd said. ‘They’re all different, of course. Some dip, others rise. Still others skew right or left.’
‘Don’t any of them actually hit their target?’
Sledd laughed. ‘That’s where the skill of the shooter comes in,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to make allowances, see. Even note the wind if you’re shooting in the open, as you usually would be. One thing’s certain, though, they’ve all got a kick like a bloody ass. No wonder Will’s shot went wide.’
‘But did it, Thomas?’ Marlowe was half talking to himself. ‘Did
it?’ He lowered the gun. ‘Run your fingers over the wall. There, about shoulder height. No, to the right.’
Sledd did as he was told, wondering what the point was in … ‘Hello?’
‘Something?’ Marlowe crossed to the ladder. He saw Sledd rubbing the flat with his fingers, then reach for his knife and start attacking the woodwork.
‘Bugger me!’ Sledd said. ‘It’s a lead ball.’
‘Show me.’ Marlowe caught it as Sledd let go and he held it up to the little light he had. ‘Dented to one side,’ he murmured.
‘Where it hit the frame,’ Sledd said, slapping the timber to show its sturdy construction.
‘Where it came from Shaxsper’s gun,’ Marlowe said.
‘What?’ Sledd did the old stage manager’s trick and slid down the ladder’s uprights as though the rungs weren’t there. He took the lead ball. ‘But it can’t be, Kit.’ He frowned. ‘Will’s shot hit Eleanor Merchant.’
‘See that ledge up there?’ Marlowe waved his hand in the air.
‘Yes,’ Sledd said.
Marlowe turned to face him. ‘Can you, Thomas? Can you really see it? Or do you know it’s there because you put it there?’
‘Er …’
‘It’s all part of the illusion, Thomas,’ Marlowe said softly to the boy. ‘You said so yourself. “That’s the general idea”, you said. It’s all part of the smoke and mirrors of the theatre. Will Shaxsper fires a gun and somebody dies. Igitur … Will Shaxsper killed that somebody. Actually, he didn’t. Oh, he could have killed the Governor of Babylon, but the shot went wild and the man lives to this day, to take his bow with the great Ned Alleyn.’
‘Then how?’
‘Get us two candles, Thomas.’ Marlowe looked up to the lowering night sky that frowned on the groundlings’ yard. ‘And I’ll show you how this particular trick was pulled off.’
He looked behind him. He looked again to the box where Eleanor Merchant had sat. He crouched and dropped to one knee, taking Tom Sledd’s proffered candle.
‘Back there,’ he said, after a moment. ‘The shot came from there. Everybody in the theatre had their eyes on Will Shakespeare at that moment. Would he pull the trigger or wouldn’t he? One or two might have anticipated that he would and they would have been watching the Governor for his reaction. But nobody, nobody would have been looking in that direction.’
