Death of Kings

by Philip Gooden

  Someone coughed behind me and I near shed my skin in fright. But it was only one of the sisters, curled up in a corner. I couldn’t tell whether she was awake or not but I bade her goodnight anyway and tottered up the rickety stairs to bed.

  The morning after my midnight encounter with Captain Nemo was as shadowed as my mind. Dirty clouds were draped low across the town. Everything felt enclosed, as if the streets, even the wide river, were roofed over. Here we stood at that moment in winter when you think warm days will never come again; it was the very antipodes of summer, not winter’s midpoint by the calendar, perhaps, but by that inward almanac which men keep in their minds.

  It was the Strand which I was making my way along. Now this is the thoroughfare which has some claim to be the grandest and most important in our capital for it links Whitehall to Temple Bar, and might be said to be the axis on which the metropolis turns. Lining this route are some of the finest houses – or at least their roofs and chimneys – you could ever hope to glimpse over high garden walls. Yet the road here was full of water-filled holes and pitfalls, in urgent need of repair, while rubbish lay piled amply against walls and in corners. It was hardly surprising that discerning or hurried travellers preferred the river to the streets.

  Yet neither the weather nor the parlous state of the London highways occupied my mind. I was on my way to one of the greatest of the Strand mansions at the request of one of the greatest – no, the very greatest – authors of our age. For Master William Shakespeare, no less, had entrusted me with a message, which, to be truthful, I did not completely understand (did not in fact understand at all), to be delivered to a certain gentleman who was temporarily residing there. Usually I would be pleased enough to run an errand for our playwright for, quite apart from my natural regard for him, I considered that I owed my position with the Chamberlain’s Men to his and Burbage’s influence. Nevertheless this was no common errand, such as visiting a printer or passing a word to a lady. There was an element of danger in it.

  ‘I have many enemies in Orsino’s court.’ Ever alert to the similitudes between art and life, I could not but think of the part I played in Master WS’s Twelfth Night, that of Sebastian’s loving saviour, Antonio. When Sebastian Qack Horner) sets off for the capital of Illyria, he bids farewell to the sea-captain (Nick Revill) who has rescued him from the ocean, thinking that he will never encounter him again. Antonio would like to accompany his friend but Sebastian prefers solitude, claiming that he doesn’t want his bad luck to affect Antonio too. Nevertheless, Antonio is so drawn by love that he resolves to tread in his departing friend’s footsteps. I could not say that I was drawn by love, exactly, to do WS’s bidding. Respect, yes; gratitude, yes; and that hope of standing well in the eyes of men whom we like. Still, whatever urged me on, here I was, walking into a nest of malcontents. Little wonder that Antonio’s words circled round in my head – ‘I have many enemies in Orsino’s court’. Despite that danger, despite the enemies, Antonio goes there to protect a friend. Was this what I was doing? Or was I helping to damn him?

  And who was I working for?

  I had hardly entered into this affair, yet already I felt myself to be in a labyrinth. Still thinking of the two scenes of the previous night, the rehearsal in the Revels Office and then the boat-bound encounter with Nemo, I was wrapped up in uncertainty, so wrapped up that I almost fell headlong into an extensive water-filled cavity in the middle of the Strand. I was only saved from a soaking and, no doubt, stinking arrival at my destination by the shout of a carter whose plodding nag was about to butt me in the back. Nimbly sidestepping the stem-and-stern hazards of pond and cart – to the evident disappointment of a clutch of loiterers and loungers who seemed gathered at this spot in the hope of seeing their betters take a tumble – I looked around with more attention and realised that I had indeed reached my goal.

  The mansion of the Earl of Essex is grand enough to be styled, simply, Essex House. It draws back from the street some way behind its high walls, and its ample upper storey looks down on us common folk in the common thoroughfare. The main gates were tight shut but there was a postern to one side. About this little entrance clustered another knot of loiterers and I realised that the presence of so many idlers in this part of the Strand was not solely in the hope of seeing passengers fall down into holes. Rather, they were drawn like flies to decaying meat, or carrion to a battlefield. No one knew what was going to happen; but something was surely going to happen, some stir and disturbance perhaps involving more than the few cracked heads and snapped limbs of your usual street broil. No one knew when it was going to happen either; but there was in the air the same charged anticipation that presages a thunderstorm. It was, if I may compare great things with small, like the ripple of expectation that traverses our audience just before we begin proceedings at the Globe. Except that here was no innocent playing of the pulling down of old kings and the elevation of new ones. Here was, perhaps, the thing itself. The idea was enough to make my heart beat painfully loud in my ears.

  Dry-mouthed and short-breathed, I moved towards the little gateway. I have to say that I was tempted to turn about and make again for my lodgings. But a combination of the trust which WS had reposed in me and the veiled threats and persuasion applied by Nemo, and his master Sir Robert Cecil, were just adequate to propel my unwilling limbs towards my lord of Essex’s domain.

  The little band of men near the door parted slowly and in an aggrieved fashion, reluctant to let by a newcomer who, from his costume, could not be anybody of great significance. One roused himself to spit near my feet. Far from being mere idlers, they plainly regarded themselves as custodians of the doorway. Nevertheless I reached and crossed the threshold, beyond which was a large court. To one side was the doorkeeper’s hutch. Now, these fellows are often surly, and as reluctant to admit anyone as St Peter. They are bred for the purpose, thick-set and short-tempered. They look for reasons to turn visitors away.

  But the Essex House doorkeeper was different.

  He was finely dressed, by contrast with the majority of those occupying this post, who affect a costume that suggests they are newly returned from the wars. But my friend here, lounging against the door-jamb of his lodging, was a picture.

  His dark hair was worn in love-locks, hanging down like curtains on either side of his face and coming to rest in a curl on each shoulder. It is a fashion I have briefly considered (and rejected) for myself, my hair not being fine or abundant enough for the task. He had a little pencil beard but a luxuriant moustache which stuck out cockily. His eyes were hard and his nose exact. His doublet was richly embroidered, with a lace-edged ruffle peeping out; and all the rest of him was cut from the same fine cloth. I would have set him down as harmless enough and only describe him at a little length here to show how one may be misled by appearances.

  He looked a query at me but did not deign to open his small mouth.

  “My name is Revill. I come with a message for a gentleman who, I believe, is staying here.”

  He said nothing.

  “I have to convey the message in person,” I said. “I cannot give it to any third party.”

  He still said nothing, but continued to regard me through his sceptical optics.

  “Come, sir, will you admit me?”

  No response, but a slight pout of the lips showed what he thought of me and my message.

  I made to go past him, in search of some more receptive individual. But before I had moved a couple of paces I was seized by the upper left arm while a hand darted over my right shoulder. I felt a sharp jab under the chin.

  “Do not move. Or I push zis daga sotto vostra lingua. Tongee – capisce?”

  His voice, I noted in my distraction, was surprisingly deep. As he threatened, I could feel it resonate against my backbone. And I wondered why he was using a foreign tongue. His hot breath puffed at my ear and his moustache tickled the back of my head. He smelled foreign and garlicky.

  “Be easy,” I said. He surely would not d
o me damage here, in broad daylight, in the open court of Essex House. Why, the yard was crowded with gallants and others wandering about, though they did not seem much troubled by the to-do at the gate. Perhaps it was customary to greet unrecognised visitors in this way.

  For answer he jabbed harder under my chin, and I felt myself rising involuntarily on tiptoe to accommodate his point.

  “I am not, ‘ow you say, eezy,” he said. “You are not eezy neither until you tell me your buzz – your bizz – gli affari.”

  “I – tell you – I—”

  It was hard to get the words out through an overstretched throat. Fear was drying me up too. I had a sudden vision of my gorge, naked to his naked steel. He must have realised that I was hardly able to speak because his grip on my upper arm relaxed slightly while the pressure of the dagger point was eased.

  “I am only a messenger,” I swallowed. “I have a message.”

  “La parola. Give me la parola.”

  “I – I do not know—”

  “Parola. You say watchword, be a good boy,” he hissed hotly to my ear. “I give you ‘ow it start, and you have to finish. It start: ‘God save – ‘.”

  Utter those words to any Englishman and by instinct he will add ‘the Queen’. I just stopped myself from adding them, aware that I was in a place where men did not hold the Queen in high regard.

  “—the King. God save the King, I say,” I said.

  I had no doubt that, if this foreigner was representative of the strange band gathered together in Essex House, then they intended to displace our divinely appointed sovereign with one of their own creation, viz, the Scottish James, or even my lord of Essex himself. So much had Secretary Cecil hinted to me. So much, indeed, was the whispered gossip of the town. Therefore I considered that saying ‘the King’ was the least dangerous thing in a perilous situation. It might be enough to indicate that I was of their party. Pray God it might be. Pray God he understood me.

  (Yet even in this extremity I had given a Jesuitical, tergiversating answer – one which might not satisfy any inquisitors if I were put to the question but which nevertheless satisfied me in the depths of my conscience. I had heard that our Elizabeth often referred to herself as ‘King’, perhaps in tribute to her long-dead father, perhaps in the desire to arrogate masculine qualities to herself. Therefore, to avoid the sacrilege of wishing another set up in her place, I brought her image to my mind’s eye even as I uttered the words, ‘God save the King’.)

  This answer, whether it was the watchword or no, appeared partly to satisfy my assailant too. His grip relaxed further and the steel point was altogether withdrawn from under my chin. I sensed it still hovering however. At the edge of my vision I discerned a little nose-gay of gallants making their indolent progress towards us.

  “Ze King, yes. Now you be good boy again and say why you ’ere.”

  But, though I might have saved myself by complying with his command, I was more afraid that the simple phrases which Master WS had requested me to transmit would serve as further provocation to this violent man.

  “I have a message – words – but they are for Mr HW alone, the words that I have.”

  Reluctant to name the individual, I took refuge in the flimsy shelter of his initials.

  “HW? Who izz HW? I do not know HW. Give me ze words.”

  “They are for one man alone. I have been strictly instructed.”

  This, by the by, was true. Master WS had been most insistent that his words were intended for one pair of ears only.

  But it was my own ears that now received the hot, smelly, ticklish and breathy attention of the well-dressed door-keeper, as he once more tightened his hold on my upper arm and brought his dagger into play around the throat region.

  “Your words or I kill you.”

  His voice resonated down my spine.

  “Only to Mr HW.”

  I was perhaps encouraged to refuse him by the arrival of the group of gentlemen whose bright costumes now flared in the corner of my eye. The presence of these others would surely deter my assailant from further violence. But I was deluded, for the man at my back jabbed at the underside of my chin hard enough – as I discovered an instant later – to draw blood. He would certainly have gone on to do worse if one of the bystanders had not spoken out, quietly but authoritatively.

  “What has this person done?”

  “ ’E as words, words to say.”

  “Do you mean to cut them out of him?”

  There was a ripple of laughter from the knot of gents.

  “ ’E far la spia,” said my assailant. “ ’E spy.” I could feel wetness trickling down my upturned throat and soaking into my ruff (for I had dressed up to enter such a grand house, even a house so full of knaves).

  “What is your name?” said the man who appeared to be the leader of the gallants. To be asked one’s name is a step on the road of civility, even if the other’s voice betrayed no great friendliness towards me.

  “Nicholas Revill.”

  “Are you a spy, Master Revill?”

  Well, the uncomfortable truth was that I was, in some manner, a spy. In addition to the blood running down my throat, I felt my armpits and sides spouting sweat.

  “I am a player, sir.”

  “Spies may be players too, I suppose.”

  There was another little ripple of laughter from his group at this sally. Nevertheless, he signalled with his eyes to the man holding me and I was released. Instinctively, my hand sprang to the cut in my throat.

  “With the Chamberlain’s, I am with the Chamberlain’s Company,” I said, following up this advantage.

  I sensed an alteration, a more attentive spirit, in the group when I thus placed myself.

  “And I have a message for a gentleman who is staying here.”

  “I will take you to him,” said the speaker in the group. “But first Signor Noti there will give you something so that you may staunch the wound he has inflicted – which, by the by, does not appear to be very grave. I suggest that you surrender one of your fine handkerchiefs, Signor Noti. Vostro fazzolo, Signor Noti, per favore.”

  There was no question who was in command here. I realised that the speaker was not only exerting his authority but also making some kind of amends for the hostile reception which I had received. While the well-dressed ‘door-keeper’ pretended to search his person for a handkerchief, I studied my rescuer.

  Like the others, he wore his dark hair long but in his case it was arranged in a tress on one side. The rest was brushed back, uncovering a high forehead which gave him a pensive appearance. His face, regarding me with mild curiosity, seemed too refined for any desperate action. A fine pair of gauntlets dangled languidly in one hand. He waited until the ‘doorkeeper’ Noti finally pushed into my hand a small square of embroidered silk, fine material which I had pleasure in spoiling with some of the blood from the nick his knife had caused.

  “With me, please, Master Revill. You will doubtless need privacy.”

  He turned about as if there was no question that I’d follow him. It occurred to me that he had not asked for whom my message was intended. Presumably he’d overheard those cryptic initials, HW. The other gentlemen, almost as polished as their leader, formed a loose circle about us as we made our way across the flagged courtyard and towards the entrance to the house itself.

  For the first time I had leisure to look about me. And to consider more than ever the pertinency of that line of mine (and Master WS’s), ‘I have many enemies in Orsino’s court’. This was a great town-house but it had, at the moment, something of the air of an armed camp. Mingled incongruously among the gents and gallants, there were grizzled captains and superannuated ensigns. My lord of Essex’s campaign in Ireland had concluded over a year earlier but these veterans looked, as it were, fresh in their weariness. As if they had stepped straight from foreign bog to boat to homeland again, without an interval to change clothes or even to wipe their begrimed faces, let alone lay down their weapons. T
hey moved about the courtyard purposefully, and not with the resentful expressions with which unemployed soldiers customarily equip themselves on the public streets. They clotted together or strode briskly between groups, clapping each other on the shoulders, admiring each other’s swords and the girdles and hangers which supported them, all the while laughing or talking loudly. Either these hardened soldiers did not care who saw and heard them or they presumed that each person here was of like mind. This was indeed a dangerous place for he who was not an Essexite.

  If I had earlier thought that the charged air was similar to that in the playhouse before a performance, now it seemed more like the heady, blood-seeking mood of the crowd in the bear-pit. Everywhere, there was a happy, brawny buzz which betokened action – and action soon. It was plain that they expected trouble. It was equally plain that they were looking forward to trouble.

  The man who had directed me to accompany him kept a little ahead but did not look round or address any more words to me. We entered through the grand central portal of the house. Inside, there was an even greater press and ferment than outside. In a large, tiled entrance hall men were crowded shoulder to jostled shoulder. After the chill of the February morning it was warm and stuffy with breath and tobacco smoke. The obscurity was dimly alleviated by the winter morning coming through the mullioned lights in the north wall above the entrance. What I could see suggested that the crowd was the same mixture of gallants and military veterans as in the open air, but with a sprinkling of more ruffianly types. I was surprised, however, to see one or two individuals in Puritan garb. I should not have been, I suppose. Malcontents will wear any costume.