“Or only a little ship, just a bark,” said another student.
“Maybe a cock-boat,” said a third.
“Who is the boy that played Cressida?” asked a fourth student, a solid fellow. I detected a level of interest here, it was more than a casual query. “What is his name, Troilus? You must know him, know him well. Tell me his name now.”
My head was muzzy from the heat and drink and that odd combination of excitement and tiredness which comes after a play. I had to struggle for a moment to think of a name for Peter Pearce.
“One of our apprentices. Let me see, what is his name, my head is thick . . . his name is . . . Matthew Goodpiece.”
“Named for his mother? He has a feminine cast.”
“Boys make better women than women,” I said.
“It depends on the end you have in view,” said Jute, whose carroty hair had taken on a flaming quality in the artificial light of the hall.
“On the stage, I mean.”
“Women for duty, boys for pleasure,” said the stocky student, licking his lips in a manner that reminded me of Samuel Benwell.
“Your Goodpiece had a fetching eye, though I preferred the one who was Helen,” said Michael Pye.
“Then you have the worse taste,” I said. “Cressida is young and fresh, not used goods.”
“You may be right,” said Pye, cocking up his large nose. “As for Helen, she was a king’s wife and the mistress to a prince – but she was still a whore.”
“What do you know about whores, Michael?” said the Benwell-like student.
Yes, I thought, what do you know about whores? Answer now. Are you familiar with one by the name of Nell?
“I know the breed, which is more than you will ever know, Master Miller.”
“Oh, the Miller grinds on, careless of who comes to bring him their corn, boy or girl,” said the one called by that name. He lurched in my direction. “Let me take your flour, Troilus.”
I smiled, slipped out of reach and slopped my drink on the floor.
“Just make sure you don’t get caught between his upper and nether stones, Master Revill,” said someone else, Jute, I think.
So the evening wore on with this unrelenting kind of raillery, and with drinking and more drinking still. Was the chat of these educated young lawyers – their pleasure in suggestion and bawdy – so different from what the lewd apprentices enjoyed? Not really.
At some later point a band of us, students and the younger players, shifted to the nearby Devil Tavern, there to go on drinking and singing and swapping bawdy talk, with occasional intervals to go outside for a spew or a piss (or both at once). I couldn’t help remembering the last time I’d been here with Peter Agate. His murder seemed distant but not distant enough. If I drank a little more I could make it more distant still. I craved oblivion. In our play of Troilus the Greek Ulysses tells of how time stuffs the deeds of the past – good deeds and bad deeds, heroic ones and mean ones – into the wallet which he carries on his back. Everything is destined for oblivion. Alms for oblivion. Just give it all to time. Well, I hadn’t got the time at the moment so, in the interim, drink would do the job well enough.
The stocky boy-loving student who went by the name of Miller snugged up to me on the bench, and insisted on buying me another drink or three. He wasn’t interested in me or only interested insofar as I might be a conduit to younger, fresher flesh. He pressed me for details about young Matthew Goodpiece. Given fluency by the ale, I invented a few facts, just as I had already invented another name for Peter Pearce. I felt protective of my Cressida, and didn’t want this fellow going in pursuit of her or him Besides, our boy-players – with one or two exceptions – lead clean lives, often lodging with our seniors, the best of them being brought on to inherit the dramatic mantle which their elders will one day pass over. Often, they are quite well born and their parents have entrusted them to the care of the Company.
At an even later point during that evening the interior of the Devil Tavern started to spin and swirl. The faces of my companions danced in front of my own. I began seeing things. I was sure that in one corner of the place I spotted Tom Gally in conversation with the old player Chesser, the one who had seen the extra devil on stage during Faustus. Well, he’s in the right place, I thought. There are plenty more devils, young and old, in the Devil . . .
I could no longer distinguish between what was real and what wasn’t. I knew this because Lucy Milford’s face and body floated before me and the words coming out of her mouth asked me if I would like her to tear her clothing and bare her breast, like a true Cassandra. I knew this wasn’t happening, since I had earlier left her and her husband with the Venners in the banqueting-hall. I also knew it wasn’t happening because she would never have uttered those words. So I said yes. But she must have been teasing me for she shook her head and said that she couldn’t do it and when I asked her why, she repeated, as if it was reason enough, “There was a man murdered.” I nodded, since this did seem a good reason.
And then I decided that the floor would be a more comfortable place on which to spend the next few hours, or years, and accordingly I slid off my bench and took up my position among the dust and dregs. From lying down it was a short step to sleeping or stupor.
I dreamed that I’d died and gone to the underworld. It was a mazy place of alleys and arches. Although this underworld was nearly deserted, I did recognize one of the passers-by. It was the headless figure who had knocked me to the ground in Middle Temple. He too was out and about and striding through the streets, regardless of anyone who stood in his way and exuding that strange, feral smell. Then I was being ferried across the river Styx by Charon, the boatman who is at everybody’s service, like it or not. I recognized him. That thin shape taking on definition through the yellow-grey gloom. I heard the grinding of the oar against the side of the boat . . . I knew that steady, undeviating approach.
Then there were hands helping me into his boat and even a body sitting in the stern next to me, and I was filled with gratitude that I had at least one friend prepared to accompany me on this last ride. We reached the far side and my friend – from his voice it sounded like Jack Wilson – had Jack died as well then? – helped me up some stairs and through some more mazy streets. I tried to tell Jack about the headless figure as he helped me up yet more stairs to my room in the underworld, but I don’t think that my friend was listening. Instead he clapped me reassuringly on the shoulder and told me to sleep sound. There is kindness in the afterlife after all, I thought. Then I sank into a true oblivion.
“Wake up, Nick!”
I’d only been asleep for five minutes, it seemed. Yet here was a little daylight squeezing itself through my pinched window, and here was my friend Jack Wilson come again, this time not to clap me reassuringly on the shoulder but to give me an urgent shaking up. Had he stayed in my room all night?
“Wake up!”
“I am awake. What do you want?”
My voice sounded queerly disembodied. My mouth tasted like the bottom of the bear-pit.
I made to sit up. The bed swayed slightly. I was a stranger to myself. My head felt as though it was balanced precariously on my body, like a heavy ball of stone on a crumbling pillar. I lay down again. The bed lurched. I closed my eyes, and hoped that Jack would go away.
“Nick, you must listen.”
“Why?”
“Richard Milford is dead.”
Now I opened my eyes and sat up. The next instant I’d stumbled out of bed and, clinging to the wall, was attempting to stand upright.
“What?”
“He has been foully murdered. We must go.”
Jack was standing in the doorway.
“But I saw him yesterday at the play,” I said.
“We all saw him yesterday at the play, Nick,” said Jack. “Now you must come to the playhouse. Dick Burbage has summoned all of us.”
“Who murdered Richard Milford?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows. Come
on.”
“The murderer knows,” I said.
“Eh? Hurry up, Nick.”
I remembered Lucy Milford’s words, There was a man murdered.
“Lucy Milford is not harmed, is she?”
“She found him.”
“She knew too,” I said.
My sight was fuddled but, even so, I was aware of Jack looking at me oddly.
“She is a delicate lady,” he said.
I was fumbling to take off the shirt I’d fallen asleep in. I was ashamed to see that it was heavily stained with last night’s revel. I couldn’t go to work like this. Even my blunted sense of smell informed against me. I scrabbled in my chest for my spare shirt, hauled it on and, hastily flinging on some outer garments, clattered downstairs after Jack and out into the street.
The morning was dank and foggy, as usual. When would these blindfold days be over?
I was still half-numbed from last night’s drinking. The surprise and horror of Richard Milford’s murder had yet to sink in.
As we paced quickly through the streets towards the Globe, Jack told me what was known of Richard’s death. It wasn’t much. The Milfords had recently moved to lodgings on the north side of the river, in Thames Street. Though not a grand thoroughfare it was more respectable than most of the places on our side of the water. Obviously Richard and his wife were on their way up in the world. At the end of the previous evening they’d left Middle Temple in company with their patrons, Lord Robert Venner and his sister. These noble siblings had in turn left the Milfords at the door of their lodgings in order to return to their town-house which, Jack believed, lay somewhere in Whitefriars.
It wasn’t clear precisely what had happened after that. Either Lucy Milford had gone to their part of the house alone while her husband remained in the lobby for some reason, or both had retired to their chambers until Richard was summoned back to the lobby by a knocking at the front door. In any event, Richard Milford had opened the door and been violently attacked, probably with a knife. His wife was drawn out by the sounds of struggle and by shouting and discovered her husband dying in a pool of his own blood. The door to the street was open. No weapon was to be seen. The headborough, a more capable man than Doggett of Southwark, was alerted and had rapidly established the bare bones of the story, even down to the hour. The murder had taken place some time after after one o’clock, as called by the watchman on his rounds.
I thought of the watchman’s refrain.
Past one o’clock and almost two,
My masters all, good day to you.
For Richard Milford it had been the bellman’s fatal goodnight.
Then I thought of Lucy Milford.
Look how he dies! Look how his wounds do bleed at many vents!
She had surely foreseen her husband’s death, just as Cassandra glanced into the future and there witnessed the ruin of Hector. I said nothing of this to Jack Wilson of course. The merest suspicion brushed past me that, if Lucy had foreseen Richard’s death, then she might also have caused it. But she was meek and gentle, she did not look like a murderer. What did a murderer look like? Not like her, for sure . . . or like me either.
Another aspect of this dreadful business was, in its way, to my benefit, since it dispelled some of the suspicion which hung over me for Peter Agate’s death. I wasn’t so heartless or cold as to think of this while Jack and I were hastening towards the Globe playhouse for Burbage’s meeting (of which I shall say something in a moment). But these ideas occurred later, when I came to mull them over, sitting by myself in the Goat & Monkey ale-house. It was the evening of the same day. I wanted no one’s company. I was still experiencing the effects of the previous night. Someone in the Company who prided himself on being able to hold his liquor told me that the best cure for crapulousness was to take yet more ale. This remedy he called ‘the hair of the same wolf’. It didn’t seem to be working with me since I was still queasy and out of sorts, although that might have as much to do with the events of the last few days as it did with the drink. Anyway I might as well feel sick in a tavern as sitting solitary in my room. So, sipping slowly at Master Bly’s ale, I considered the unsatisfactory state of my life and my connection with the sudden deaths of two men.
The circumstances of Richard Milford’s death were similar to Peter Agate’s. Both men had apparently been taken by surprise in the lobby of their lodgings, both had been stabbed. The assailant had fled under cover of night or fog, leaving no weapon behind. In neither case was there an easily discernible motive for these men’s deaths. Peter was newly arrived in London, a would-be player and – in my judgement – an offence to no one. Richard Milford was a rising playwright and generally popular, although he had the knack of rubbing people (like me) up the wrong way sometimes. However, it was hard to maintain dislike for him for long. There was something open about his vanity and self-concern. And there was no doubting that as a budding poet and playwright he had promise. Had had promise . . .
Here I paused in sipping my ale, and came over cold as I thought of Richard’s death. And Peter’s. I wiped at a moistened eye, uncertain who this little water was in aid of, and then tried to bring my thoughts to order once more.
What had linked these two men? Nothing as far as I could see, apart from the fact that they’d had connections to the Chamberlain’s and also that I’d been a friend to each of them. However, the details of this second violent death in Thames Street so paralleled the first in Dead Man’s Place as to suggest that a single individual might have been responsible for both Must, surely, have been responsible for both. Now, the finger of suspicion was pointing at me for Peter’s murder. But it would have to point elsewhere for Richard’s. If he’d been killed around one o’clock in the morning or shortly afterwards then I could prove that I was elsewhere at the time. Exactly where I couldn’t have said, being drunk and incapable at the time. But I was somewhere in transit between the Devil Tavern and Master Benwell’s lodgings, supported by my good friend Jack Wilson. Jack could testify to my helpless condition. Or – if I had arrived back home (home, ha!) before that time – then I was safely wrapped up in a drunken stupor. Any number of people would be able to vouch for my perplexed state during that evening. I couldn’t have lifted a pint pot in the latter part of it, let alone a knife.
I prepared my defence in these terms, just in case I was questioned by Alan Talbot or another coroner, you understand. And naturally my thoughts turned to the question of who had actually done the killings and whether it was indeed one individual or whether the murders were unconnected. One thing was indisputable. The two deaths had cast a pall over our Company.
The mood at the meeting in the Globe tire-house that morning was sombre and subdued. Dick Burbage looked unusually grave. He was famous for his tragic parts and was good at looking grave, but this was no act. At least, I don’t think it was. He expressed our collective grief over the death of Richard Milford, talking of the tragedy of a promising life so brutally terminated. Burbage addressed us standing on the platform from where he oversaw the chamber practices. Standing beside him was Thomas Pope, another of the shareholders. Our thoughts, said Burbage, were with Richard’s widow, Lucy. (Mine certainly were, from time to time.) He went on to say that some of us might be examined by the authorities in the matter of Richard’s death. This was because the playwright had been, in a manner, one of the Chamberlain’s Men. We’d been among the last people he’d talked with. Then Burbage paused, and I sensed that whatever he was about to say was the real reason we’d been called together.
“Gentlemen, I have heard it whispered that there was bad feeling between Richard Milford and the shareholders. The story has got about that we turned down his last play, that we rejected him. The truth is that we had not yet decided whether to stage this piece. And he knew it. Richard knew also that, even if we chose not to stage this particular play at this particular time, then we would still look with favour on his work. Why, almost everybody here remembers his Venetian Whore comedy. More i
n that vein would have been very welcome.”
There was something constrained, almost defensive, about Dick’s words. I didn’t quite believe him or the confirmatory nods which Thomas Pope was making on the platform next to him. I was almost certain that Richard had been turned down over The World’s Diseas’d. Burbage’s comments about A Venetian Whore were pretty good evidence of the kind of thing the shareholders would have liked from Richard Milford, light pieces which worked by suggestion rather than sensation. But why was Dick bothering to justify himself and the other shareholders over the choice of plays, anyway? It wasn’t, strictly speaking, the business of the rank-and-file players. We had opinions, sometimes very strong opinions, but were content to leave the selection to our seniors, trusting in their judgement and experience.
“These are difficult times, gentlemen,” Burbage continued. “Our patron Lord Hunsdon is . . . not well. [Another series of nods from Thomas Pope.] We face competition from the Paul’s Children. We face the usual enemies of bad weather and creeping plague, and the displeasure of the Council if we overstep the mark. All of these things we can deal with singly. But – as William has observed of sorrows – when troubles come, they come not single spies but in battalions.”
Burbage paused. There was a murmur of subdued recognition at his using Shakespeare’s expression. WS was nowhere in sight on this dank morning but the closeness between the principal player and the principal writer of our Company was familiar to us.
“But you are aware of this,” he said carelessly. “I won’t weary your ears with more. I wish only to warn you against a certain individual named Gally, Thomas Gally. Some of you have already encountered him. He is a kind of playhouse moth, drawn to us by our light and warmth. I know that he and Richard Milford had been . . . seen together. This Gally claims to be an agent for Philip Henslowe of the Admiral’s. It may be true that he works for our rival in some capacity, I don’t know. But his real business is to interfere in matters that are none of his business.
Alms for Oblivion Page 13
