Alms for Oblivion

by Philip Gooden

  And if Troilus and Cressida fitted that dying season, it also fitted the tastes of our audience at Middle Temple, as I quickly realized at an early rehearsal. Although we weren’t due to perform for a week or so, word of this witty and scabrous piece had got abroad among the law students, and they started clustering around us players in the banqueting hall until Dick Burbage or one of the other seniors shooed them away because a practice was starting. When I arrived at the next rehearsal I saw Peter Agate, who’d decided not to abandon the Chamberlain’s for the moment, happily passing the time with some of my friends and with a couple of the law students. There was a gust of laughter from the little assembly of players and young lawyers.

  “Helen of Troy is only a piece of property after all,” said one of the law students. I could identify him as such by his gown and the plainness of his clothes. The Inn lawyers were not permitted to wear finery.

  “Hotly contested property,” said the other student, also gowned and plainly garbed.

  “Property? Where are your hearts and souls?” said Michael Donegrace. “Helen is the non-pareil of beauty. I would have played her once.”

  Michael had been one of our boy-players, specializing in women’s parts. But over the past few months his voice had gone down while his height had gone up, and he was no longer fitted for women’s parts. Now he was acting the young Greek warrior, Patroclus.

  “Lawyers don’t have souls. And about their hearts there is some doubt,” said the first student, but in such a way that I wasn’t entirely sure whether he was joking. He had a beaky face.

  “Helen of Troy could be as ugly as sin,” said the second student. “Her beauty is not in question. Nor is it the question.”

  “The question is one of possession, prior possession,” said the first student.

  “The question is rather that of spolia opima – and also one of damaged goods,” said the second student. This young lawyer was round in the face, with carroty hair.

  “Ah, a debate,” said Jack Wilson, rubbing his hands. “It could be good, if we knew exactly what they were talking about.”

  I watched Peter Agate as he looked intently from speaker to speaker. His expression was absorbed, intent. My fellow Chamberlain’s men, Jack Wilson and Michael Donegrace, also looked as though they relished the chance of seeing fledgling lawyers debate, for nothing.

  The two young men acknowledged my presence – it struck me that they were waiting for a larger audience before they opened their ‘debate’ – and Jack took the hint to introduce me. One was called Michael Pye, he of the beaky countenance, and the other, the carroty one, was called Edmund Jute. When it was clear that we were all ears, Pye and Jute opened their gobs to begin the debate, just as they’d been trained to do in this very hall, but Jack Wilson got in first.

  “One word,” said Jack, “if we’re to follow you gentlemen you’ll have to talk in good, honest English. We’re not in a court of law now.”

  “Very well,” said Master Pye, with a slight sigh, “to put it plain. The Trojan prince Paris has seized Helen from her husband Menelaus, the King of Sparta. Now Menelaus and the other Greek kings want her back. And the law of nature and the law of nations speak aloud to have her returned.”

  “No,” said Master Jute. “The beautiful Helen is a prize of war, seized by the sword and retained by the sword. The spoils of war go to the victor. We are talking of heroes here. And this lady’s not for returning.”

  “The age of heroes is dead,” I said and the others looked at me in surprise.

  No, I don’t know why I’d said it either (although it had been in my mind earlier in the day). In order to cover my confusion I added a lighter remark, “But I agree the lady’s not for returning. Spoils of war or not, she is a little spoiled.”

  Now Master Pye glanced disdainfully at me as if I had blundered into a complicated game and shown complete ignorance of the rules. But Master Jute looked pleased.

  “Exactly so, Master . . . Revill, is it? Helen is the prize of war but she’s also spoiled goods, damaged ones.”

  “Only a little handled, a little fondled,” said Michael Donegrace, the ex-boy-player. “She retains her beauty still.”

  “But we don’t return a half-eaten sweetmeat to the cook, do we?” said Jute. “We don’t return soiled goods to the shopkeeper. So how can Helen be returned with any honour?”

  “She’s only been nibbled at,” said young Donegrace.

  “A rare piece of goods,” said Jack Wilson.

  I could see that the high-minded debate about rights and wrongs, about the spoils of war and spoiled goods, was breaking down into excited contemplation of Helen of Troy. What exactly did the woman have about her person that caused a ten-year war – that launched a thousand ships, in Kit Marlowe’s words?

  “Helen’s a hot morsel,” said Michael Pye.

  “The Trojans’ strumpet,” said Edmund Jute. “Or their trumpet, you may say, for all the Trojans blow at her, or on her, or down her, or want to blow at, on or down her.”

  “A quaedam,” said Pye. “A certain woman.”

  “A quicumque vult,” said Jute, not to be outdone in Latin wit.

  It was perhaps rather a relief to see these two fledgling lawyers being young men too, enjoying their cracks (of a learned kind) about women, and being prepared to snigger along with the rest of us.

  At this point our jollity was cut short by Dick Burbage who announced that he wanted to get on with the business of playing in a few minutes. The scattered law students started to drift reluctantly towards the door. Pye and Jute, however, showed no inclination to move. It’s odd how eager the laity – if I can use that term to describe non-players – are to hang about on the margins of the theatre world. They even seem to enjoy attending rehearsals.

  I’d noticed, of course, that Master Pye had used the expression quaedam to describe Helen of Troy. It was a term more usually applied to a strumpet (or trumpet) than to the wife of a king. I remembered that Nell had taken pleasure in telling me that she had been so described – as a quaedam, as a bona roba – without seeming to be aware of the sneering strain in such descriptions. I remembered also that her fresh lover and protector was a gentleman from one of the Inns of Court across the water. So naturally I couldn’t help wondering whether, in the person of Middle Temple’s Michael Pye, he of the beaky face, I had stumbled across the new occupant of my old friend’s bed. My rival.

  And with the certainty of intuition I was at once sure that I had identified my rival. Master Pye, with his prominent nose and cocky manner. Who did he remind me of now?

  And, of course, if I had (perhaps) identified him wasn’t it possible that he had recognized me, although we’d never met? Nell would have mentioned me, wouldn’t she? Revill’s a young player with the Chamberlain’s, she’d have said – a pleasant, witty fellow, she might have said, even if we were no longer on such good terms. Or maybe I was deluding myself? Perhaps she never bothered to mention me at all.

  They say that the purpose of art is to hold the mirror up to nature but it often seems to me to be the other way about. Life has a way of imitating art. Take this Troilus and Cressida play. I act a young lover who grows to suspect and then to hate a rival in the Greek camp, one Diomedes. Troilus suffers the violent anguish of betrayal when his Cressida switches her allegiance. Now, believing I had a real-life rival in my gaze, I wasn’t certain what I felt. No grand heroic response for sure. But then it is hard to strike heroic poses over a whore.

  “Let me show you something before I leave, Master Revill.”

  I felt a touch on my arm. It was Edmund Jute, the redheaded law student.

  “I would not like you to think that we lawyers are without hearts and souls, not completely without, whatever my friend Pye says.”

  “I took that for a jest. I know you are not really dry fellows, but lusty and full of juice.”

  This was perhaps a rather fuller commendation of lawyers than Master Jute had been looking for but he beckoned me to follo
w him down the banqueting hall, saying it would only take a moment. Out of curiosity I went after him.

  At the raised end of the hall, the opposite end to where we were about to rehearse, was a great table set beneath a mighty bank of portraits. The table was made out of a single oak tree from Windsor Forest, Master Jute told me, the gift of the Queen. She had once dined at Middle Temple. It wasn’t this, however, which the student wanted to show me but another table below it, a smaller one and rather battered-looking.

  “If this wood could talk,” said Edmund Jute, rapping the top.

  Seeing that he needed to be humoured, I simply nodded and looked attentive.

  “It has circumnavigated the globe, this piece of wood, travelled further than we ever shall. It comes from Drake’s boat – I believe it is a hatch-cover.”

  “Sir Francis Drake?”

  “The very same. Drake of The Golden Hind that is now laid up at Deptford. He dined here many years ago after he had sailed round the world. Now his hatch-cover is used for ceremony, for signing the roll of members and so on.”

  I ran my hand over the surface of the table.

  “There was a hero for you, Master Revill, if you are searching for heroes now . . . ”

  “I wasn’t, particularly. The remark I made earlier came from nowhere.”

  “He was from your part of the world if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Who?”

  “Drake. From the West Country. You still carry a trace of it in your voice.”

  Once I’d have been irritated to think that my roots still showed, however faintly. Now it didn’t bother me so much.

  “And Master Agate also, I’d say,” said Edmund Jute. “From his voice.”

  “We come from the same village,” I said. “Not Sir Francis Drake, but Peter and I.”

  “A small world,” said Jute musingly.

  “If that hatch-cover spoke now, Master Jute, it would tell us that your small world was rather a great globe. Doubtless.”

  Jute gave a small, snorting laugh. Then he said, “And if we’re talking of the Globe now – the Globe playhouse, that is – Master Agate tells me that he is here to play too. Your village must breed players.”

  “I am glad that Master Agate is so resolved. A little while ago he was all for quitting London and making for home there and then.”

  “London is a fine place for a young man, full of opportunities.”

  Jute was obviously referring to himself, but it was a curiously middle-aged thing to say. Not having exhausted the subject of the city, he went on, “Some of those who come to London expect to find the highways made of gold. They never recover from their disappointment. Perhaps Master Agate is of that company?”

  “Do you count yourself in that company, Master Jute?” I said, unwilling to say more about my friend.

  “Oh, I have long since recovered, Master Revill.”

  “You sound old beyond your years.”

  “You could not pay a greater compliment to a lawyer,” he said, smiling.

  At that instant there was a second, urgent summons from Dick Burbage. Even Edmund Jute could see that he had to leave the hall. I thanked him for showing me Francis Drake’s table. He told me that he was looking forward to seeing Troilus and Cressida. We shook hands and parted. I walked to the other end of the hall, the screen end. The prologue was beginning.

  In Troy there lies the scene. From isles of Greece

  The princes orgulous, their high blood chafed,

  Have to the port of Athens sent their ships,

  Fraught with the ministers and instruments

  Of cruel war . . .

  Then it was my turn, since it is the love-sick Troilus who fires the first shot in this campaign.

  At the end of the rehearsal I was briefly detained by Shakespeare. With his usual consideration he wished to tell me that, since Thomas Pope was returning on the following day from his visit to Hertfordshire and the Chamberlain’s patron, Lord Hunsdon, there would be no more lines for Peter to read in rehearsal. Pope would resume the role of scurrilous Thersites. Perhaps I could pass that message on to my friend?

  “I’d be pleased to,” I said, not entirely displeased that Peter was no longer required.

  “Though Dick Burbage won’t mind if he remains on hand for the time being. He might be useful. He has found some friends in the Company, I think.”

  “He has an easy, open nature,” I said.

  “He will make a player one day, Nick, if that’s what he wants. Does he?”

  “I’m not sure. Part of him does.”

  “If that part persists he will make a player. Tell Master Agate that also.”

  “Thank you, William. He’ll be – reassured. How is our patron?”

  “Either at the point of death or out riding twenty miles every day. Rumour sleeps in the sick-bed. So we are waiting for a first-hand account.”

  I would have liked to press for more information – or rather I wanted to know what the Chamberlain’s were going to do if Lord Hunsdon died suddenly and left us without a protector – but it wasn’t the kind of question I could easily put to WS. So, after a few aimless remarks about Windsor tables and Drake’s hatches (both of which WS already knew about), I made my way into the foggy evening.

  The next few days passed in a blur of rehearsals (for Troilus and Cressida) and occasional performances (of other things) at the Globe, although the weather tended to thin our audiences. It was a relief to get inside the Middle Temple banqueting hall, away from the unhealthy damps and the cold. I looked forward to the performance, knowing that if those young lawyers, Edmund Jute and Michael Pye, were typical of our audience then we were assured of a warm but not uncritical reception. Perhaps our future, or part of it, lay in these privileged indoor performances. Thomas Pope, the senior and shareholder, came back from Hertfordshire and reported that Lord Hunsdon probably had a year or two more left in him but that he would no longer be a vigorous protector or promoter of our interests. This was an unsatisfactory conclusion.

  My friend Peter was still quartered in my room, paying his penny-and-a-half a night direct to Master Benwell. I didn’t object to this. He continued to consort with members of our Company, hanging around at rehearsals, drinking with us, listening to our talk, sometimes adding to it. I couldn’t have said what his plans were. Probably he couldn’t have either. Perhaps his London half and his country half were fighting out a civil war inside him. There was no opening with the Chamberlain’s at present, even had the seniors been inclined to employ him, but he did go and enquire one day of the Admiral’s Men, Henslowe’s crowd. If he returned to visit Nell at the brothel known as Holland’s Leaguer, he didn’t tell me of it.

  Then one afternoon, about a week after his arrival in London, Peter was killed.

  I can be precise enough as to the time of his death. It must have occurred as I was turning down Clink Street, perhaps five minutes away from my front door. I can’t remember what I was thinking of just beforehand, because everything was wiped from my mind when I reached the entrance to my lodgings. The door was unlocked and slightly open. I don’t even know whether this struck me as odd. It should have done since Master Benwell believed in that tight-lipped householder’s proverb, ‘fast bind fast find’.

  I tried to push open the door to the small lobby but it moved only a little way before jarring against something. Impatiently, I shoved harder. Again it seemed to stick. I peered round the partly open door to discover what the impediment was. The light was very poor but I could make out a huddled human shape half propped against the inside of the door, with its legs stretched out across the floor.

  I think I knew that it was Peter Agate. For an instant I must have assumed – or hoped – that my friend was drunk. Coming in befuddled from the Devil or the Goat, leaning against the entrance, sliding down stupefied to end up on the floor. I said his name several times, loudly at first then softer. His doublet was unfastened. I leaned over and grazed my fingertips across his shirt front, which w
as sopping wet. I knelt down. The floor was wet too. For sure the fool had spilled drink all down himself or had puked up his guts after a few pints too many. Only there was no stink of drink, but another smell. The wetness on his front was dark and pooling and slightly sticky and of course I knew. Knew also from the way his head lolled haplessly in my direction, as if to impart a confidence.

  Then there was a human noise behind me, somewhere between a cough and a snort. A smoky light swelled to fill the little hallway. But it did not take the illumination from one of Master Benwell’s cheap tallow candles to tell me that my childhood friend was dead. On Peter’s forehead I saw the mark, now nearly healed, where he had struck the lintel to my room. I wanted to touch it and reached out my hand to do so but faltered at the last instant. Vita brevis, I thought. He would never be a player now. I wished that he had waited to die until that little wound on his forehead was all healed.

  Post Mortem

  “Did you kill him?”

  “I did not.”

  “Do you know who did?”

  “No.”

  “So all you know is that you did not kill him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you mean to kill him?”

  I started to say something then realized that any response to that question was dangerous. So I merely shook my head

  “Did you want to kill him?”

  “He was my friend. He was an inoffensive fellow. Without enemies.”

  “That is not the answer to what I asked, Master Revill.”

  “Even so, it is the only answer I can give, Master Talbot.”

  Master Alan Talbot was questioning me about Peter Agate’s death and it was evident that he considered me not so much as a witness but as a potential murderer. Perhaps the Middlesex coroner saw most of his witnesses in that light. He had cold, ungiving eyes, like the corpse’s which he examined in the way of business. He was a dangerous man too, from my point of view, since he had the authority to lay an indictment and to order an arrest – the arrest of N. Revill, for example. Talbot had indicated that this was a preliminary examination but had hinted, more by looks than actual words, that an unsatisfactory answer would land me in trouble. But, in my opinion, the only satisfactory answer as far as he was concerned would have been a straight confession.