Alms for Oblivion

by Philip Gooden

  I can’t speak for the spirit in which Coroner Talbot quit the village of Miching but I was heartily glad to see the back of my birthplace, and hoped never to have to return to it. Two people had died there, violently and within minutes of each other. I had escaped murder by a hair’s-breadth. It was as if that old rascal death, angry that the occupants of Quint House had been spared the pestilence, was determined that they should nonetheless suffer extensively. In this case, though, you could not say that the son and mother should have been spared. If anyone ever deserved to die . . .

  My feelings – and, I think, Alan Talbot’s – were chiefly for the three Agate sisters, Anne, Margaret and Katie. They had witnessed their mother’s and father’s deaths within little more than a year, and lost a loved brother. Now those murderous intruders into the family, Gertrude and Edmund Jute, had perished on their doorstep. They couldn’t be expected to feel grief for the pair but they did feel the shock, the horror of what had occurred.

  It took several days to deal with the aftermath of the event. Talbot’s authority did not, of course, extend to the wilds of Somerset but he still carried weight – both in his office and his person – with the local coroner (who had to come from Wells, some miles distant). The two men were closeted together for a long time. No doubt Talbot described his investigations into the murder of Peter Agate, as well as his suspicions about the death of Anthony Agate and Gertrude Jute’s first husbands. I was called on to add my twopenny-worth. Talbot had already questioned me about what had happened and we had agreed a version of events. I couldn’t help reflecting that this was the third occasion on which he’d interrogated me about a violent death. This time, however, as I’ve said, he was determined to exonerate me of any blame.

  Mother and son were buried without much ceremony on the north side of Miching churchyard. The parson Ralph Verney, good Christian that he was, prayed for the repose of their immortal souls. I don’t think he knew – or perhaps he didn’t choose to know – the full wickedness of the pair.

  The full extent of it was kept from the Agate sisters too. They were consoled by me, to a degree, but much more by Ralph Verney. Mrs Hobbs, clucking, maternal Mrs Hobbs, suggested that the young sisters should move into the parsonage for a time – “Chill look a’ter the poor volk, poor parentless volk” – but Anne Agate, who was now the head of the family, said that none of them were going to shift out of the house where they’d been born. Even so they were without a protector, and there was an estate to superintend.

  The parson was a constant visitor at Quint House. He was a true Christian in his devotion to all his parishioners, prosperous and poor. Although he and Anne Agate were soon betrothed, I don’t believe that he planned this at the outset. But a parson needs a wife. Anne was guileless too, I think, and did not aim to ensnare Ralph Verney. But it’s also the case that a young, single parson in a parish is like a mark for all the young ladies (and often their mothers) to aim at.

  This happened some time afterwards of course – but not too long afterwards. Ralph wrote to me with news of the betrothal, and I was glad to know that some good had come out of the terrible events which had unfolded at Quint House.

  My return to the Chamberlain’s and the Globe was oddly like my return to Dead Man’s Place. It was as if I’d never been away.

  Dick Burbage said, “Out of prison, Nicholas?”

  “It was all a mistake,” I said. “Someone else committed all those murders.”

  “We knew that,” he said. “You’re not the first person to be locked up for something you haven’t done.”

  “Not just locked up,” I said, feeling that he wasn’t taking this seriously enough.

  “What then?”

  “I might have hanged.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first innocent on the gallows either.”

  This was a bit more robust than I cared for.

  We were standing in the tire-room. A performance was in the offing, although not (alas) as far as I was concerned. Fortunately at this point WS came up and greeted me more warmly than Burbage had done. I remembered that he had also sent me greetings, via Jack Wilson, when I was in the Counter prison.

  “What news?” I said.

  “Our patron is no better and the Queen is no worse,” said WS.

  “I meant in our fortunes.”

  “People need diversion in these gloomy times,” said WS. “We’ve had a good few weeks, in your absence.”

  “But not on account of my absence, I hope,” I said.

  “We have a new man,” said Burbage.

  And my heart sank. You keep your place in a company of players by keeping your place. If you falter or give way, then everyone behind you sweeps past, trampling you underfoot in the process. All the good deeds you’ve done in the past don’t count for much. They are alms for oblivion (as WS says in Troilus and Cressida).

  “A new man,” pursued Burbage. “I would say that he is very dextrous, wouldn’t you, William? Very able . . . ”

  A grin passed between Burbage and Shakespeare, and I felt more uncomfortable still. One man more meant one space less. I was unwilling to broach the subject of my future directly, though, for fear I might be told that my services were no longer required.

  “Seeing that he was a friend of yours, Nick, you’ll be pleased to know that we have decided to put on Richard Milford’s last thing,” said WS now.

  “The World’s Diseas’d?”

  “It is our tribute to a dead author,” said WS.

  “More to the point,” said Burbage, “the tragic violence of Milford’s death has aroused a certain, ahm, interest in our congregation.”

  ‘Congregation’ was Burbage’s individual way of referring to our audiences at the Globe.

  “Good for business,” said WS.

  “I believe,” said Burbage, “that we’d have full houses for a week if we presented Milford’s laundry lists. And it was very important to keep The World’s Diseas’d out of the hands of the Admiral’s. They were interested in it, you know. Henslowe never misses a trick, Henslowe and his creature Gally. But we have an obligation to Richard Milford, he was our man.”

  I thought Burbage and Shakespeare were explaining themselves too much. They were ever so slightly shamefaced and I remembered the shareholders’ humming and ha-ing beforehand over The World’s Diseas’d. Well, if Richard Milford was looking down on us from the great tire-house in the sky – that place where we shall all go to put on new costumes – then he would have been gratified to see two rival theatre companies fighting to present his last work.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, “there’s something you should know in relation to The World’s Diseas’d.”

  The two shareholders looked politely attentive.

  “It contains much violence – and incest.”

  “Oh Nicholas, we know,” said Burbage. “Is this meat too strong for your stomach?”

  “I could tell you a darker tale and a true one too,” I said. “But that’s not what I wanted to say. You may know that Richard Milford picked up a couple of patrons recently. A brother and a sister. Rustic but nobs, you might say. Or you might say, nobs but rustic. The trouble is that they could have served as models for the incestuous brother and sister in the play.”

  WS and Burbage again exchanged glances.

  “You mean Lord Venner and his sister?” said WS.

  I nodded.

  “In fact, I think they have already recognized themselves and taken drastic steps to ensure that the play would never see the light of day.”

  I’d hoped that Burbage and WS wouldn’t press me to give details. I knew now, of course, that Robert and Vinnie Venner were not guilty of Milford’s murder. Nevertheless, they might have been sufficiently incensed by their ‘portraits’ in The World’s Diseas’d to have set fire to Nicholson’s bookshop. I didn’t want them throwing a bucket of coals on to the playhouse thatch.

  The seniors looked baffled and in the end I had to explain matters, to reveal my suspicions to t
hem. To tell how I’d witnessed the literary conflagration in Paul’s Yard, and come to the conclusion that it had been started deliberately. (I said nothing about the runaway cart which had almost killed me on the quayside, having come to the conclusion that it was indeed an accident. One can be too suspicious, seeking out plots everywhere.)

  “Oh no,” said WS, trying hard to keep a smile off his face.

  “No?”

  I was glad – in an irritated sort of way – that he was finding everything so amusing.

  “That fire wasn’t deliberate. I have dealings with Nicholson. I know him quite well. He is a man of infinite amiability. But very careless, over debts and so on. And very careless with his pipe too. He’s inclined to put it down all smouldering, on the nearest item to hand. He told me that that was how the fire started, with him laying his pipe down on a pile of paper.”

  “Well,” I said, slightly deflated. “But it doesn’t affect my main point, about The World’s Diseas’d. That the brother and sister may think that they have been slanderously traduced in it.”

  “We were aware of that and I have already taken it into account,” said WS with an odd formality.

  Now it was my turn to wait for an explanation.

  “What William means,” said Dick Burbage, “is that one of the reasons we hesitated over The World’s Diseas’d was precisely because of the way Richard Milford might – only might, I say – have represented his patrons in a less than flattering light.”

  So much for my belief that I’d been the only one to detect this!

  “But now of course there is this tremendous demand for Richard’s work, and it is our duty to meet that demand.”

  “So I have made some small changes in The World’s Diseas’d,” said William Shakespeare. “Turned the incestuous brother and sister into mother and son, for example. Small changes, mere nothings. Now no one can think that Richard ever intended to slander his patrons.”

  “But the play was also being printed,” I said. “By Master Nicholson.”

  “Alas, the whole printed stock was destroyed in the fire,” said WS. “All that remained for me to work from was the foul paper copy.”

  Well, if Richard Milford was still listening to our conversation from the great tiring-house in the sky, he mightn’t be so gratified now. To have his words tampered with by Master Shakespeare, of whom he had no very high opinion. Anyway, gratified or not, he was out of it now. The World’s Diseas’d would be performed posthumously, and the public would flock to see it because of the violent circumstances in which its author had died. In fact, the manner of Richard’s death wouldn’t have been out of place in one of his own plays. Perhaps he should have stuck to comedy.

  “What?” I said.

  Lost in my own reflections, I hadn’t heard what WS was saying.

  “I was saying,” said WS, “that we’d like you to take the part of Vindice, the revenger.”

  “In The World’s Diseas’d?”

  “Well yes. If the violence and incest aren’t too much for your delicate spirit, Nicholas.”

  “I am a player, gentlemen,” I said. “I will speak the lines as they are written, speak them to the best of my ability.”

  WS clapped me on the shoulder, and my heart overflowed to know that I still had a place, that I was restored to the Chamberlain’s and scheduled to play a leading part in a piece by my late friend Richard Milford. Any doubts I’d had about The World’s Diseas’d disappeared. It was unquestionably the author’s posthumous masterpiece.

  My heart lifted further to hear what Dick Burbage said when he called over to someone who’d just come into the tire-house.

  “Hey, new man, come and met one of our old stagers.”

  Revill: the old stager!

  And then my heart – or guts – did a little dip to see who it was coming towards us.

  “We termed him dextrous,” said WS, “dextrous and able. Well, able by nature, Abel by name.”

  There in front of me stood the individual whom I’d encountered on the road west. The counterfeit crank who’d tumbled down with an attack of the falling-sickness. The man who’d proudly informed me that he’d once made a great deal of money near Reading. I recognized the tapering nose and lofty forehead underneath his face paint. He was no longer smeared with bloody marks or stuffing his mouth with soap, but was about to go on stage dressed as a clown or zany. That fitted, I suppose.

  Abel Glaze started slightly to see me. Then, collecting himself, he did that queer, half-ironic little bow which I remembered from the road. Dick Burbage introduced us, once again referring to me as an old stager (which was naturally very pleasing).

  I noticed WS looking at us curiously.

  “You’ve already met, you gentlemen?”

  Very quickly, before I could think of an answer, Glaze said, “Master Revill reminds me strongly of a friend I once had.”

  “Oh yes?” I said, wondering if he was going to give me away. If he did I might just hint at one or two things I knew about him.

  “William Topcourt by name. You’re as alike as two pictures. Do you know him?”

  “The name’s familiar,” I said. “Well, every man has his double, they say. How did you come to join our Company?”

  “I met a man on the road, Master Revill. He told me that the Chamberlain’s Company was the finest company in the land. So I determined to come to London and join them.”

  “He spoke no more than the truth, that man on the road,” I said.

  “I owe him something,” said Glaze.

  “No more than twopence,” I said to the bafflement of Burbage and Shakespeare.

  Mention of William Topcourt reminded me that I hadn’t returned his coat to him. I was aware that he was no longer confined in the Counter. The imposture whereby I’d been released from gaol in ‘error’ for the much-married man had become known to Coroner Talbot. He’d mentioned it to me on the journey up from Somerset. Mentioned it by-the-by. To my surprise he had not been angry at the prison exchange even though his authority had been flouted, since by the time he discovered it he’d almost concluded that I was not responsible for the Southwark murders. I was relieved too. If my sleep was disturbed by many things, at least it was not disturbed by the appalling thought that an innocent man had gone to the gallows in my stead.

  I eventually tracked Topcourt down to lodgings in a winding lane near St George’s church. My friend Jack Wilson had befriended Topcourt and knew where he lived, although he was under strict instructions not to reveal that gentleman’s whereabouts to his several wives. I was admitted by a slatternly landlady, who visibly brightened when I said who I was looking for. Topcourt’s room was inferior even to mine in Dead Man’s Place, but he had to lodge somewhere and – as he pointed out – he could no longer afford what it cost to stay in the prison. It was cheaper to live in freedom.

  He was grateful for the coat, although it was no more than he was entitled to. I had done my best to clean it, for it had been extensively bloodied after my fatal tussle with Edmund Jute, to say nothing of all the marks and stains of travel. Topcourt didn’t hold it against me that he had exchanged places in prison with a supposed murderer rather than a debtor. Indeed, I’m not sure that he ever discovered precisely what I was alleged to have done. I enquired after Topcourt’s marital status, thinking to hear that he was still living in fear of his three wives. He was still in fear of them, he told me, and then he announced, with a shake of his long head, that he was due to marry again soon. The prospect didn’t seem to cheer him. But temptation was everywhere and his demon was hard at work. When I enquired who the lucky woman was, he gestured in a downstairs direction and said that it was his landlady.

  “She think I’m a good match,” he said gloomily. “She doesn’t know the half of it.”

  Well, at least he got his coat back.

  Of course I also visited Lucy Milford, Richard’s widow. She was still living in Thames Street in the apartment she’d shared with her husband. With the Chamberlain’
s presentation of The World’s Diseas’d in prospect, his posthumous fame seemed likely to be larger and more profitable than his living reputation.

  “So you are playing Vindice?” she said.

  She had by now overcome her shyness with me and was able to look me in the face, and more besides. She was wearing mourning, which became her.

  “Yes. They have given me Vindice.”

  “The avenger.”

  “A strong part. I murder my mother, for example.”

  This was one of the changes which Shakespeare had introduced into the play, diverting the stream of incest so that it flowed in a different direction. Now the character of Virginia was mother to Vindice while Sostituta became his . . . oh, who cares? It would be tedious to recount all the little alterations which WS had introduced into the plot of The World’s Diseas’d, tedious and pointless because I doubt you’ll ever hear of this play again. But Shakespeare’s changes had improved the play, in my opinion. Even so, The World’s Diseas’d would go down to posterity – in the unlikely event that it went down at all – as the work of Richard Milford, and perhaps WS was happier that way.

  I didn’t have to point out to Lucy Milford how uncomfortably close art had come to life, as a result of these little changes in the play. For what had Edmund Jute done after all but poison his mother and then stand coldly by to watch her in her death throes. Whether Edmund Jute and Gertrude had also been amorously – and unnaturally – atttracted to each other, I didn’t know and didn’t want to find out. The advantage was that mother and son were both dead and, unlike the living Venners, were in no position to find fault with the play.

  I outlined what had happened in Miching and at Quint House to Lucy Milford, since she was more than entitled to know the identity of her husband’s murderer and to be assured that justice, of a sort, had been done. I didn’t go into too much detail. She was a sensitive woman, readily given to seeing horror in her mind’s eye.