Death of Kings

by Philip Gooden

  “Time in which her subjects may be born and grow up and grow old and die. To gain time for them to do that. Have I not done that for my countrymen these many years, done that handsomely?”

  I bowed my head, partly because I could think of nothing to say.

  When I looked up again, I saw that her eyes semed to have sunk deep into her head. Her hands writhed constantly.

  “Yet not all are grateful. Especially those who have most reason to be grateful. I have discovered that ingratitude grows most abundant in the richest soil, in the best tilled earth.”

  She paused, then continued almost to herself.

  “Wild and whirling himself, the ingrate seeks to infect all men with his dizzy condition.”

  I half nodded. I didn’t know – but could guess – to whom she was referring.

  “What is tomorrow?” she said with sudden fierceness.

  “I – I—”

  “Remind me of the morrow!”

  Her hands opened and closed rapidly. Her encrusted, bejewelled fingers looked like chicken’s feet. Fear entered my tones.

  “W-W-W-Wed – no, A-A-A-Ash Wednesday, your majesty.”

  “Good,” she almost barked, then in an insinuating tone, “Ash Wednesday will be a good day to finish all of this, will it not.”

  I grew frightened of this old woman or, to be precise, my previous fear of her returned two or three times over. I wished to escape her tight, hot chamber. I wished to rejoin my fellows and be nothing more than a small player for the rest of my life. Perhaps she sensed my fear and took pity on it or, what was much more likely, perhaps she had said all that she wanted to say.

  “You may go, Master Revill.”

  I waited for a moment uncertainly, then half rose from the edge of my seat.

  “Well, go, what are you waiting for?”

  Head down, in a servile crouch, I proceeded backwards towards the door.

  Then: “Master Revill?”

  “Your m-m-m-majesty?” I half looked up.

  “Secretary Cecil tells me that we owe you thanks, for helping to stem the giddy infection.”

  I made some deprecating movement of arms and shoulders and began to assemble in my mind the components for an answer, involving terms like duty and allegiance. But I don’t think I would have got the words out. For some reason, any composure I’d had earlier now completely deserted me, and shivers and tremors ran through me like an aspen.

  “And, Master Revill . . . ?”

  “Y-y-y-yehyehyeh . . .”

  My tongue was enormous and unwieldy. I shut my mouth to silence it. Fortunately the Queen didn’t seem to notice; or if she noticed, she didn’t care. Then she said, almost softly: “A handsome young man like you should have a fine future with the players. Now go and leave me alone.”

  I fumbled for the handle of the door, forgetting that it opened inward, and all the while kept an eye cocked on the fierce, upright woman in her chair near the fire. One of the Yeomen on the other side must have assisted in opening the door, an operation which appeared almost beyond my strength or wit at that point, and I edged around it and then out into the ante-room. The same guard, a tall heavily bearded individual, reached forward, shut the Queen in again and resumed his position.

  The four guards stood stiff in pairs on each side of the entrance. They didn’t look at me or say anything, for which I was grateful. Secretary Cecil had gone from his post by the fire. Discounting the guards, I was alone in the room.

  After a time, deciding I’d get no help from the Yeomen, I wandered out through the main door and in the direction from which I’d first arrived with Sir Roger Nunn. Like Theseus in the labyrinth, I needed a thread to help find my way out of the deserted, ill-lit passages and lobbies which opened off one another. I had turned a few corners and paused at a handful of crossroads when the fearful nature of the interview which I had just endured with the Queen overcame me. This, together with some despair that I’d ever find my way out of her Palace, caused my legs to lose their desire to take me further. I sank to the floor and huddled there with my knees drawn up to my chin and my back resting against the panelled wall.

  But I didn’t merely sit.

  I sat and I thought. And waited.

  After a time, I spied the merry figure of Sir Roger Nunn approaching me along the corridor, his bonnet all a-flip and a-flop.

  “Why, Revill,” he greeted me like an old friend, seeming to have forgotten my rudeness towards him in the tiring-house. “I observe that your palatial peregrinations have brought you to the very borne of fatigue.”

  I grinned feebly, and stood up, using the wall for support.

  “I wasn’t sure of the way out.”

  “Then you must permit me the indulgence of acting as your cicerone and superintending your egress from this great edifice.”

  “If you’re offering to guide me out of this place,” I said, “then I gratefully accept.”

  He strode off down the passage and I moved to follow him. The gold and silver threads in his fine clothes were picked out by the intermittent candles that burned along the walls in sconces.

  We turned a couple of corners. And a couple more. Climbed some short flights of stairs. Descended others. Ascended again. Resumed our long march down an interminable-looking corridor.

  I chose my moment carefully.

  “Dove vai?” I said.

  Sir Roger affected not to hear me. The plumage on his bonnet crested and waggled, making him look like a species of exotic bird stalking the passages of power. Then suddenly he stopped and flung open a door to his right. I felt the breath of a cold night.

  “We have achieved our terminus. This is the point at which you may consummate your quittance.”

  He ushered me ahead of him. I had half been expecting a lobby, a hallway, an exit – but only half. In fact, we were still quite high up in the palace. So high up that I found I was standing on a flat roof space. All about me were chimney stacks and roof pinnacles and tiled slopes. In between several of these I could see the black sheen of the river while above arced the burning stars. It was a clear, bitter night, like most of the nights during that Essex winter.

  Sir Roger Nunn came through the door after me, turned about and shut it leisurely behind him.

  “Che cosa avete?” he said, before striking me violently on the side of the face. I fell to the ground. Once I was lying there, he kicked me twice or thrice in the belly so that I near retched. Then he proceeded to walk round and round me in tight little circles, all the the while talking – though not in the polite and circumlocutory style he had adopted before.

  “Puttana! You know what you are, Revill. Puttana! Whore! All players are whores but you are a whore in special. You sell yourselves, you show yourselves, you exhibit your bodies for the common delectation.”

  “I don’t think – the Queen – would agree – she told me – she liked – the play,” I gasped, and he gave me another kicking for my pains.

  “Non solamente puttana mai puttana e putto – insieme! You understand, little fellow. You are a whore and a little lad together.”

  “Have it your way,” I said, trying not to provoke him further.

  He got down on his haunches and pushed his bare face into mine. His breath emerged in cloudlets.

  “A little fellow playing out of his depth.”

  “As you say,” I said.

  “Now tell me how you knew.”

  “Let me up first. Or let me sit. I will not run.”

  “No, you will not. I am stronger and faster than you!”

  “I remember your grip at Essex House,” I said. “When you had me round the neck.”

  I levered myself into a sitting position and rested against the wall next to the door from which we’d emerged. I felt the chill of the brick through my clothes. The Whitehall Palace roof stretched away in every direction that I could see, as wide as a village but, with its strange peaks and slopes and pinnacles, a village built by a different tribe than any that lived at
ground level. My face throbbed from his blow. My guts ached but I no longer felt sick. Sir Roger Nunn, alias Signor Noti, stood over me and slightly to one side. I’d no doubt that if I tried to make a break for it he’d be on me like a cat on a mouse. And I knew that he was as strong and quick as he boasted.

  “It was something that the Queen said to me,” I said, reckoning that now I’d reached this pass there was nothing to be lost by making the most of my royal connections.

  “She will not save you. She has other things in her head than the fate of a little player fellow.”

  “Like the end of Essex?” I said.

  “These are great affairs of state into which you have blundered.”

  “Was invited to blunder.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  I was gratified to see that I’d pricked his curiosity.

  “My knowledge of the Italian tongue is not like hers – or yours,” I said, inclining my head towards him. “In fact it is hardly there at all. But, as you’ve so generously pointed out, I am a player and have a good head for words. Sometimes I can commit them to memory without knowing precisely what they mean. She said to me ‘Per molto variare la natura e bella’ — or something to that effect.”

  “To that effect exactly. Your ear is good, Revill.”

  “She, the Queen I mean, told me that it was one of her favourite sayings. Something to do with variety in life and nature. And it came to me that I’d heard those very words a few days ago. On the river. While a certain Italian gentleman and I were being rowed to the safety of the south bank after my lord of Essex’s rebellion started to split at the seams.”

  “Your memory is good too, Revill.” There was a threatening undertone to his words. I hastened to resume my speech.

  “The boatman had said something about Essex taking on all sorts, and then you added your groatsworth, ‘Per molto variare’ etc. I remember thinking at the time that it was odd you should seem to be following the conversation because you hadn’t shown any signs of being able to up to that point. That was before you allowed me to tumble into the water.”

  “Your observation is good as well, Revill.”

  “I am not yet finished. While I was sitting down in the passage from where you recovered me just now, I asked myself why one of Queen Elizabeth’s favourite sayings should be known to an Essexite – not even an English Essexite, but a self-proclaimed foreigner. Wasn’t it more likely, I asked myself, that the Queen’s private expressions would be best known to her courtiers? Rather than to a foreigner, particularly one in the enemy camp. And then I thought that I’d seen you somewhere before and that it wasn’t in the audience for tonight’s play after all – but somewhere else.”

  “You must concede that I played the foreign part well, player,” said Nunn-Noti.

  “You played very well,” I said, sensing that he sought approval if not flattery. “Even down to the disguise. Like a true player you used false whiskers. Noti’s pencil beard and his ample moustache.”

  “A nice touch,” said vain Nunn, stroking his naked chin.

  “I was convinced.”

  “Say, fooled.”

  “Fooled then. Why did you choose to act the Italian?”

  “You have heard of Niccolo Machiavelli the Florentine?”

  “Of course. Any player – or politician – worth their salt knows the reputation of Signor Machiavelli. Some people’d say that he sported horns and cloven feet.”

  “That’s a fable,” said Nunn.

  “And that his spirit still possesses the race from which he sprang.”

  “Well then. I choose the Italian.”

  I saw Nunn shrug his shoulders under the stars, as if no more explanation was required. Indeed, it wasn’t. To be a Machiavel is to be crafty and cunning – and also clever, devilishly clever. I could see that, to a certain cast of mind, the Florentine’s mantle would be a highly desirable garment.

  “Go on,” said Nunn. “I will decide when I have heard enough.”

  “So after that business of the Queen’s sayings, I began to bring together the two names of Nunn and Noti in my mind, and to see that the one might be construed as the other. Because Nunn is None, that is nobody or nothing, and Noti is Not-I.”

  “Not quite construed,” said Sir Roger Nunn, once again getting down on his haunches and putting his face close to mine. In his hand, I suddenly saw, was a dagger, perhaps the same one with which he’d threatened me at the gateway of Essex House.

  “No not quite,” I said as calmly as I could. “For Nunn is really closer to Nemo – or Nobody.”

  “Neatly done, Revill. I wondered how long it was going to take you.”

  “Now turn and turn-about. It is you who should answer some questions.”

  “Watch your tongue, Revill, or I will cut it out.”

  “I will be as respectful as you please, provided you answer me, Sir Roger Nunn – or Signor Noti – or Captain Nemo. How do you prefer to be called? Which of your four-lettered names do I choose?”

  You will understand that I was talking to prevent his using the dagger which I could sense rather than see. He was resting easily on his hams, his hands dangling down, the tapered fingers of one clutching the dagger whose point grazed against the lead of the roof.

  “As you please,” said this strange individual. “But in truth I am Nunn.”

  Behind his hunched shoulders, I saw a meteor track across the heavens. Perhaps it was the clarity of the skies that February but there really did seem to be an inordinate number of them winging their ill-omened path.

  “Whoever you might be, I thought you were surely a familiar at court.”

  I saw his shoulders slacken slightly in the shadows. He was pleased.

  ‘Go on.’

  “To my first question. Why? What is your reason?”

  “A more powerful reason than kings or princes. The god that we all worship, though some do it in secret. The god with an extra letter.”

  He ran the dagger point across his open palm.

  “Gold?”

  I felt, obscurely, disappointed. All this stir for – that? Also, I forbore to remind Nunn how disparagingly he’d spoken of the player’s willingness to exhibit himself for money.

  “Whose gold?” (Though I knew as soon as I spoke the words.)

  “I was amused, Revill, when we were in that boat together and you denied that I was Spanish in front of our ignorant countryman. Amused too when he began talking about Spanish gold and the A-zores.”

  “But you are English!”

  I was surprised at the indignation in my voice.

  “Gold speaks in all tongues,” said Nunn simply.

  “So Essex and the rest were right. There really is a plot to put the Spanish Infanta on the throne.”

  “No such thing.”

  “What then?”

  “Do you think Spain is happy to see a proud realm to the north of her? Do you think that she wouldn’t prefer a confused, disheartened state? With a dying monarch, and a carcase eaten away by inward troubles? As in Master Shakespeare’s dramas.”

  “You did this for lucre.”

  I was shocked to the core. All the stir and protest of an Essex seemed trivial compared to the cold-hearted treason of this individual.

  “Can you think of a better reason?” said Nunn. “Gold – and the game. The parts I played. In this camp and that camp. I am to be paid for making mischief.”

  “And Master Secretary . . . Is he . . . ?”

  My voice trembled.

  “Oh he has his own game. It is called Save-the-Queen. In his camp he practises surgery. An infected limb must be cut off before it poisons the whole body. To do that, a crisis may have to be induced. Matters provoked. Men must sometimes be whipped like tops to make them spin a little faster.”

  “So . . . if you wanted mischief. . . Master . . . [Something restrained me from saying Cecil’s name] . . . he wanted trouble . . . he wanted Richard performed . . . wanted Essex to march . . . why, that S
unday morning summons to Essex to go before the Council was probably meant to elicit just the response it did . . .”

  I was speaking more to myself than to Nunn. Faintly, like the glimmer of starlight overhead, I started to see several other things. Why, for example, the inquiry into the role of the Chamberlain’s by the Council had been so half-hearted. For sure, the seniors of the Company and the Council had some tacit agreement together. I understood why it seemed that everything that happened was known to the authorities in advance. Essex, who now appeared a comparative innocent, was acting to a schedule penned by another’s hand. I thought of that upstairs chamber where I’d first glimpsed Cecil, his hand ceaselessly weaving and unweaving a pathway across the strewn sheets of paper. And since, once you begin to discern conspiracy, you see its traces peeping out everywhere I applied conspiracy to small matters. I saw why I had been asked to be in the book-room on the afternoon when Phillips and Merrick met. To clear one side with the other: to be able to report back to Nemo, the slippery agent, that the Chamberlain’s were fulfilling their part of the bargain.

  But what were they – we of the Chamberlain’s – getting out of it?

  “Another question? Your last in all likelihood.”

  Sir Roger Nunn, traitor for the sake of Spanish gold, scraped the impatient dagger along the roof-lead. I drew a deep breath and sent out a white plume into the night. I wasn’t as confident of my conclusions as I hoped I sounded.

  “Why did you have to kill Nat the Animal Man – and May? They were harmless. What had they done to you?”

  “Nothing,” said Nunn-Noti-Nemo. “Nothing at all. Like the wise fox in the fable, I was merely covering my tracks. Nat Whatd’youcallhim took messages on my behalf to you, and to others. He had outlived his usefulness, never very great in any case. And as for the other person—”

  “May was her name.”

  “She saw me slip into your quarters. She may even have seen me jerk this dagger into Nat’s ribs up in your room. She had to go.”

  “I thought they died natural. As natural as a man falling in the water and drowning. An accident as he is disembarking from a ferry-boat.”

  “I took advantage of the moment there. If that boatman hadn’t been on your side, you would have gone under. Looked at in the right way, all deaths are natural. When a hawk kills a vole or a shrew, is that not natural? These small people, Nat and the woman, they wandered into the arena where mighty opposites were engaged. They don’t matter. I except you, Revill. You are worth a little more than the rest. You have been quick – for a player.”