Death of Kings

by Philip Gooden

  Then there was my double engagement with Isabella Horner and with Nell. Though not contracted to either woman – one being already another man’s wife, and the other any man’s for the taking (and the money) – I nevertheless regarded myself as a double man for carrying on with the one while persisting in visiting the other. Double in the sense of insincere, pretending. And to escape Mistress Horner’s company had required a further pretence: to wit, that I preferred male bed-company.

  Then there were bodies in the case, to the number of two. Both deaths occurred in the Coven. Nat the animal man’s in my garret room and May’s in the downstairs sty. The first I’d assumed was an ‘accidental’ poisoning, but my conversation with Isabella showed plain enough that she had no homicidal intent towards me and only intended to lure me back to her sheets with her potion. Therefore Nat died natural. The second death looked like an accident, with May drowning in a broth of her own making. But the disappearance of the fragment of play manuscript from my chest together with the fact that, at our last encounter, May had intimated she had something to tell me, caused me to wonder whether her death was as straightforward as it seemed.

  And now I come to another example of this strange doubling of events. Early on in this story I recounted how I eavesdropped on a conversation that took place next door to the book-room. And how I was almost discovered, hiding behind the manuscript trunk, by Sir Gelli Merrick. It was only the intervention of Augustine Phillips which diverted Merrick from searching further for the sounds that alerted him. And now I came to think of it, it was most convenient – that word again! – convenient for me at any rate that Master Phillips had been on hand to distract Merrick with his talk of cats and rats.

  Once again, I defer speculation on this question to describe what happened next.

  We were three or four days away from our presentation of Twelfth Night at Whitehall. That we remained in good odour with the Queen and her court was evidenced by the fact that there was no interruption in our rehearsals at Clerkenwell, no hint that we of the Chamberlain’s might suddenly find ourselves performing before an angrily vacated throne on Shrove Tuesday evening. Our seniors, like Master Phillips and the Burbages, must have played sufficiently well before the Council to ensure that we still sunned ourselves in the royal favour.

  (The plight of the Earl of Essex was not so rosy. We knew – all of London knew – that he lay in the Tower under that sentence of death which it was in the Queen’s power alone to remit. Myself, I wondered at the fate of Wriothesley.)

  Now, we’d already performed at the Globe playhouse that day and were in the process of shifting to the Office of the Revels for a final – yes, final! – rehearsal of Twelfth Night. The piece we’d just performed had been a reprise of A Merry Old World, My Masters, the very play I’d been appearing in when I was introduced to Isabella Horner. After all the madcap action of that comedy, a slightly subdued mood settled over the company as we made shift to go to the Clerkenwell Priory. (And I’ve noticed before how a tragedy will give the players new heart while a comedy will leave them quiet and thoughtful.)

  The crowd, not anyway a very large one, which had attended A Merry Old World was off home or on to their next diversion. Most of my fellows had already departed to cross the bridge or to take ferries to the north shore. Dusk was fast encroaching. Master Allison the Bookman called across to me.

  “Oh Nicholas, could you do me a favour?”

  He was holding bundles of schedules, presumably connected with the royal performance.

  “If I can.”

  “I have left the plot in the book-room. The Twelfth Night plot. It is hanging up next to the trunk. I would go myself but . . .”

  He gestured with his full arms.

  “Of course,” I said, with a modified willingness.

  “. . . and bring it across with you to the Priory. I must be on my way.”

  “Whatever you say, Geoffrey,” I said.

  I had grown a little wary over the last few weeks of undertaking ‘missions’, tasks and favours. Not only did a display of eagerness mark one out as a tiro – and by now I was feeling myself past the apprenticeship stage with the Chamberlain’s – but the plain fact was that every recent little errand had landed me in trouble.

  Nevertheless I did as I was bidden and made my way along the dark passage that ran past the playhouse offices. Here was the tiny room, scarcely more than a cupboard, where Mistress Horner and I had briefly consecrated our amour. And here was Burbage’s room, where Phillips and Merrick had discussed the price of staging a play. And therefore next door to it was the book-room.

  I went in, shut the door and cast my eyes about in the dimness for the plot. This is a significant item intended to hang on a backstage wall. Its real importance is not so much that it tells the story of the play in summary but that it contains details of properties and noises and the like. It was surprising, therefore, that Geoffrey Allison had forgotten such a vital scroll of paper or that he hadn’t taken the precaution of having another copy over in Clerkenwell.

  I was beginning to think that he must be mistaken in his belief that he’d left the Twelfth Night plot in his room. It wasn’t hanging up near the open trunk. Other paper items were pinned to the wall, however, and by the time I’d found the plot amongst them the final remains of a grey daylight were altogether extinguished. I had no candle with me and, as on that earlier afternoon, a feeling of loneliness, almost of desolation, descended on me. By now the playhouse would be well and truly empty.

  I listened, clutching the plot in my hand. Nothing or as good as nothing; just the random creaks of a newly emptied building and the thin pipe of the wind outside. I’d better hurry, otherwise I would find myself locked in overnight. It was the responsibility of one of our gatherers to secure the Globe at the end of each day’s performance, and even now he must be working his way round the building, fastening the entrances and exits.

  Yet I was curiously reluctant to stir from the dark of the book-room.

  Then I heard the gatherer in the distance, at the far end of the passage. I opened the door of the book-room. And closed it fast again. For, whoever was coming along the passage was not Sam the money-collector. The steps that I was hearing now were steady ones, even ones. Sam, on the other hand (or foot), had a general lop-sidedness and, specifically, an unevenness in his gait which gave him a walking rhythm like a string of Master Shakespeare’s poetic feet – the short-long sound of di-daa, di-daa, di-daa – as he came down slightly heavier on the leg which was the shorter, whether left or right I couldn’t remember. This was the reason why he liked his job of sitting at an entrance on a little stool and receiving the pennies of the audience, preferring to move about the playhouse only after everyone had left.

  It wasn’t only the evenness of the footsteps which told me that this was not the sound of Sam doing his rounds. There was a combination of stealth and assurance in the tread – if such a combination be possible – which told me that the individual heading in my direction was not a regular member of the Chamberlain’s. I think I’d have recognised my fellows, or most of them, from the sound of their approach. And this individual was not one of us. A late leaver from the audience? Someone who’d lost his way as he exited the theatre? But when you’re not sure where you’re going, your steps echo your mind, and this advancing tread sounded certain of itself.

  Maybe it was the near-darkness in the book-room, maybe it was the sensation that I was indeed alone in the playhouse, maybe it was no more than the accumulated fears and terrors of the last few weeks, but I became convinced that the man approaching along the passage, with a pace at once stealthy and confident, was coming in search of me!

  It took only a second to visualise the scene: an outsider asks to see me – such requests for players were sometimes made at the end of performances – and Master Allison responds by saying that he’s sent me on an errand to the book-room. It’s down that passage there, fourth on the left, you can’t miss it.

  But it
was dark now. Would he send someone off to look for me in the dark?

  My heart beat yet louder. The conviction struck as quick as lightning that I was not merely being looked for but hunted. There was no reason for this, I told myself; but there was every reason for this, I told myself. How many enemies had I made in the last few weeks, as if I’d gone round on purpose to gather them up!

  This sequence flashed through my head in a tenth of the time it takes to read, and all the while the tread came on, steady and soft. Once again, the play-trunk looked to be my only recourse. An instant later and there I was tucked between trunk and plaster wall, tears of anger and frustration pricking at my eyes. Anger at myself for being so womanish as to fear a step in a passage, frustration at the ignominy of being compelled to play hide-and-seek for the second time in Master Allison’s room.

  And yet I was glad I did so. We should trust our instincts.

  No sooner was I crouched in my nest than I heard the door opening and someone advancing into the room. On the previous occasion when I’d been forced into this position, Augustine Phillips had been on hand to usher out the suspicious Merrick. But this time there was no one to shield me from the enemy. And I was sure that it was an enemy who had entered the book-room.

  He was carrying a dark lantern. There was a scraping sound as the shutter was slid back and what had been a mere gleam widened to a glow which illuminated the low ceiling. I was crouched down most awkwardly on all fours, but with my head turned sideways I could see from the corner of an eye his shadow swelling and swaying on the dirty white ceiling. He was standing in the middle of the room, casting his gaze about and holding his light aloft. The shadow of the play-trunk rose and fell at my side as the lantern swung slightly.

  I prayed to the God of my father – and, believe me, at such moments He was my God as well – that the man with the lantern would not take it into his head to move a few feet to one side and peer into the gap between trunk and wall. My clothes were dark-hued, it is true, but he could hardly have failed to glimpse my white nape, my clenched fists. From close to he might smell my fear. Surely he could hear my heart banging?

  Minutes seemed to pass. The light swayed across the ceiling. There was a short sigh. Then a single word, which sounded like “Bastard”, but uttered without venom or any particular expression, followed by another sigh. The light was lowered and dimmed as the lantern shutter scraped once more and the intruder moved towards the door.

  I waited while his footsteps passed down the passage with the same even, assured tread. I remembered playing hide-and-seek as a child in my father’s parish of Miching. How, when you were being hunted, you would crouch, tense, almost quivering with the desire to be found. Because then the agony of waiting would be over. I remembered how I and my fellows would sometimes creep past a potential hiding-place – an abandoned hovel on the edge of a field, a hollowed-out space among the willows at the stream’s edge – loudly declaring that we’d no idea where Tom or Dick had hid themselves. Only to go and hide our own selves behind a neighbouring wall or a sheltering tree, there to wait for Tom or Dick to emerge. Then we’d spring up and shriek out loud and chase and catch and pummel him, and all return home tired and happy at the end of a summer’s evening.

  I thought of that now, not the summer’s evening and the innocence of boyish pursuits, but of the trick of waiting until the hider is comfortable that the searchers have gone off, and then the leaping up to surprise him as he comes out.

  There was no sound of footsteps now. Had the stranger gone to another quarter of the Globe in quest of me? Or was I altogether wrong and fearful, and it was not me that he was looking for at all? Perhaps he really was an individual who had missed his way in the playhouse or someone who, for unknown reasons, wanted to scrutinise the interior of the book-room. I pondered these possibilties, reassured by none of them. Instinct told me that it was Nick Revill that was being sought. I was the ‘bastard’, though why anyone should refer to me in that way was baffling. Couched in the dark, I grew indignant. What had I done? It was more a question of what had been done against me.

  I stayed in a half-crouch behind the trunk, delaying the moment when I’d have to exit the book-room. Eventually I judged it safe to shift. I straightened up and walked soft across the floor, my eyes accustomed to the dark. Only now did I suddenly remember that I was due at the Revels Office in Clerkenwell for our final rehearsal of Twelfth Night. I’d been clutching the plot tight in my right hand ever since plucking it from its hanging place and it was when I went to open the book-room door that I recalled the original purpose of Master Allison’s errand. I transferred the plot to my left hand and eased open the door, which gave a tell-tale creak.

  Wait. Count up to ten before moving out. . . no, twenty. Listen out for sounds. None. He’d gone for sure. Count another twenty for safety’s sake, and all the while wonder why I am being forced to skulk and dodge about my own place of work. A faint light came through a casement at the far end of the passage. Since the playhouse would almost certainly be shut up by now, Sam the gatherer having made his limping departure, I decided that I’d have to make my own exit by the window. There was about an eight foot drop down into Brend’s Rents, the alley that – if my sense of my whereabouts was correct – ran beside this stretch of the playhouse. I couldn’t close the window after climbing through it but, with any luck, would be able to fasten it the next morning before anyone noticed.

  My anxiety to escape the Globe was stronger at this point than any fear of the unknown intruder. By now my fellows in the Chamberlain’s would have arrived at the Clerkenwell Priory – with its fire-warmed hall, its blazing sconces on the oak-panelled walls, with the familiar air of bustle and expectation – while I was trapped in a cold, dark, empty playhouse. An abrupt desire for their company seized my heart. I wanted to share their jokes and raillery, their good humour and disciplined excitement. Besides, there was a more practical reason for my attendance at Clerkenwell. Antonio doesn’t appear for the first half-hour or more of Twelfth Night so I had a bit of leeway, but Burbage didn’t look kindly on players who were late for rehearsal. I remembered his warning on the first occasion we’d met: a tardy arrival incurred a fine of one shilling, a day’s pay.

  So I turned in the direction of the window-glimmer at the end of the passage. And stopped – for, with eyesight now well worn to the shapes of darkness, I saw something shift under the sill of the window. And realised that, just as the boy searchers will sometimes wait for the hider, my opponent was waiting for me. Perhaps he’d worked out that the casement window was likely to be my means of egress from the building, and was ready to catch me by the legs as I tried to climb out.

  I didn’t stop to think what his intentions were. I didn’t stop to consider anything. I spun in the opposite direction and made off towards the tiring-house, running so clumsily in this narrow, curving passage that I collided with the walls several times. It may be that my speed surprised the gentleman crouched underneath the window. It was a couple of seconds before I became aware of noises of pursuit behind me. That is, there was first a gasp and then some incomprehensible oath and then a stumbling and a crashing as he started to chase me.

  I had the advantage of quite a few yards, and the advantage of knowing the playhouse better than he did (or so I assumed). I reached the tiring-house, slipped through the door, closed it behind me, and ran to one of the stage entrances. I knew where I was going to conceal myself but required a few moments’ grace to reach it.

  The stage was bare. The few properties from A Merry Old World, My Masters had been cleared straight after that afternoon’s performance. In front of me yawned the groundlings’ pit while the more expensive galleries were ranged in judgement above and to either side. It was very early evening but dark, especially under the overhang of the stage. If I’d had the leisure to glance up I would have seen the stars and figures of the heavens, depicted on the underside of the canopy. But it was down on the ground, or the bare boards, that my gaze was fa
stened.

  There! Set more or less centrally in the stage was a trapdoor, wide enough for two men to enter at once. This was the counterpart of the ‘heavens’ up above, a universal hole to be used when a grave was required or a hiding place for treasure or an entry into Hell or Purgatory. It also gave access to the large area beneath the stage where some of the properties were stored and where, as in Master WS’s Hamlet, a ghost may stalk and talk. The trap swung back easily and silently on its greased hinges. A little ladder led into the deeper darkness below. I half jumped, half slipped down the rungs, pulling the trap to behind me by the leathern strap nailed to its underside.

  It was absolute night underneath the stage, appropriately enough since I had now descended into Purgatory – or worse. This was one Purgatory, however, which I hoped to make my salvation. It was possible that the individual who was close on my heels would come rummaging about down here. Whether he opened up the trap-door depended on how well he knew the geography of the playhouse. (And I could not at this time determine whether he was a real stranger to the premises or not.) He had the benefit of a lantern. Therefore I required a further hiding-place within my hiding-place.

  Not long after I’d arrived at the Globe, Jack Horner had been generous enough to guide me round the holes and corners of the place. It is strange how you can think you know a building and then discover that you don’t know the half of it. One room he failed to show me – perhaps because even he wasn’t aware of it – was the tiny cupboard-like space into which Isabella Horner had enticed me (there to introduce me to her holes and corners). But one area Jack’d proudly taken me into was the underworld below the stage. He particularly wished to show off the largest of the properties stored down there.

  “There. What do you think of that?” said Jack.

  It was the middle of the day. Light spilled through the open trap and, in addition, Jack was carrying a lantern. Even so, all I could see was a black hole next to the ladder leading down from the stage.