Tamburlaine Must Die

by Louise Welsh

  ‘Do you know why you have been brought here?’

  My back ached from the long ride. I concentrated on standing upright, throwing my shoulders back like one of the Queen’s livery, though the effort took all my will.

  ‘I thought perhaps the Queen requires my service.’

  The old man sighed.

  ‘The Queen requires your loyalty.’

  We live in desperate times, where loyalty is all. The Queen grows old. Her allies and her enemies grow restless. Some dread the old religion while others pray for its return. The State is uneasy. It glimpses plots at every turn and fear makes it ruthless. I steeled my voice and met the old man’s even stare.

  ‘Loyalty is the duty of every subject.’

  He lifted a page from a bundle before him, raising his eyebrows as if something he saw there interested him.

  ‘Loyalty, like love, does not always answer to duty.’ He dropped the page and stared into my eyes, lowering his voice the better to emphasise his speech. ‘Yours is in question.’

  My eyes were drawn to the lace that trimmed the hem of my sleeve. I seemed to see it more clearly than I ever had before. All its wonderful simplicity revealed in a moment. I forced my gaze back to the officials.

  ‘Sir, if there is a question about my loyalty or my love for the Queen, might I be permitted to answer it?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ The man’s voice was close to a whisper now and all the method that might be employed in the asking was in his smile.

  I too know the actor’s art. I forced my fear into anger, forging metal into my voice and fixed his eye with a passion that was dangerous in its insolence.

  ‘My loyalty remains steadfast.’

  He made an amused fanning gesture like someone trying to banish a bad smell or a small insect.

  ‘We may test you on that promise.’

  At the far end of the table a small, squat man took up the questioning. His round, creased face put me in mind of a loaf of bread which, failing to rise, had collapsed back on itself.

  ‘Tell us what you know about the playwright, Thomas Kyd.’

  I turned to face the new speaker, keeping the rest of the Council at the edge of my vision.

  ‘We once shared a patron, Lord Strange, who issued us a common set of rooms. We knew each other, though not well.’

  ‘Master Kyd claims you were once firm friends.’

  ‘Perhaps Master Kyd has fewer friends than I.’ I hesitated, but hearing no cock-crow went on. ‘I count him an acquaintance. Since I quit the service of our mutual patron we’ve seen each other only when our paths crossed by chance.’

  ‘Did you ever have him copy work for you?’

  ‘He is a scrivener, son of a scrivener, and makes fine copies by dint of practice. It would not be strange if I had asked him to scribe for me, but I can recollect no occasion when I did so.’

  At the far end of the room the tapestry wavered, but whether it was the movement of some concealed listener, or merely in response to a draught as somewhere a door closed, I could not tell.

  The man’s voice became dangerously intimate.

  ‘So you would deny that a piece of heresy copied in Kyd’s hand was initiated by you?’

  ‘I do deny it. I’m accountable for my own writing and blameless of other men’s heresies.’

  The questioning was taken up from the other side of the table.

  ‘But you are responsible for your own heresies?’

  My voice wavered with the effort of freeing contradiction from insult.

  ‘I make no heresies, your Lordships.’

  ‘But there are some who accuse you of being an atheist and attempting to recruit others to the cause.’

  ‘Then they are liars spreading slander.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ the new speaker’s voice was smooth with a polite disinterest, which belied the sting in his words. ‘But your play Tamburlaine is known as an atheist tract. It seems strange for a man who is no heretic to write sacrilege.’

  ‘Sir, you know that there are those who dispute our right to have plays at all. Tamburlaine was submitted to your Lordships’ scrutiny and found to be in accord. Whoever describes it thus casts a slur not just on me but on Her Majesty’s Privy Council.’

  He ignored my speech and raised a ragged handbill.

  ‘Can you account for this?’

  The bill was tattered and torn, it had been roughly pasted somewhere before it was ripped down and delivered to the Council. Traces of the paste used to stick it in place still curled its edges, but the words were clear enough.

  You strangers that do inhabit in this land,

  Note this same writing, do it understand.

  Conceive it well, for safeguard your lives,

  Your goods, your children, & your dearest

  wives …

  Your Machiavellian Merchant spoils the

  state,

  Your usury doth leave us all for dead,

  Your artifex & craftsman works our fate

  And like the Jews you eat us up as bread.

  Since words nor threats nor any other thing

  Can make you to avoid this certain ill,

  We’ll cut your throats, in your temples praying,

  No Paris massacre so much blood did spill.

  ——Signed, Tamburlaine

  ‘This bill refers to your plays Tamburlaine and Massacre of Paris, does it not?’

  The Privy Council stared at me unblinking, like an audience absorbed in the final act of a thrilling play.

  ‘Sirs, anyone who thinks this my handiwork insults me not simply because of its abhorrent sentiments but because of the ill-formed nature of the verse. If I were to write a libel I would not make it so illiterate. I can only think that this has been contrived with my slander in mind, or by someone who, liking my poetry, has made some misguided attempt to imitate it. It does not reflect my views or my ability. Ask any poet you care to, even one who hates me, and he will tell you the same.’

  ‘We asked Thomas Kyd. He seemed to think it the kind of libel you would relish.’

  Even though the knowledge had been with me from the first mention of his name, confirmation of Kyd’s betrayal made me flinch. I gathered myself and cast my eyes around the assembly, hoping to impress my innocence on them.

  ‘It is not, but even if it were, I have been away from London this last month.’

  ‘Not so far you couldn’t return.’

  ‘Aye sir, but I didn’t.’

  It occurred to me I could cite Walsingham as witness to my unbroken stay at Scadbury, but I kept silent. Friends do not thank you for Council summons and I realised I was unsure my patron would provide an alibi. My uncertainty came as a revelation and I wondered if Walsingham was as surprised by my sudden recall as he had seemed.

  The old man at the centre of the table smiled his slow smile. His voice took on the monotone of one reciting by rote.

  ‘The Council will be conducting its own investigations. We recognise three charges against you. First that you did request Thomas Kyd copy an heretical tract on your behalf. Second that you are an avowed atheist who has caused others to convert to your beliefs. Third that you did write and paste this libel to the door of the Dutch church, threatening those to whom Her Majesty has offered protection.’

  I bowed my head awaiting the instruction to take me to gaol.

  ‘Meanwhile, you are free to go but will report to the Privy Council before noon every day until such time as you are given notice to quit or other measures are put in force.’ Here he favoured me with the fond glance of a farmer surveying crops on the eve of harvest. ‘You are not under arrest, but failure to report to the Council will result in your arrest. Is that clear?’

  I nodded, not trusting my voice.

  The official smiled his slow smile again. His lips were unnaturally red, pumped full of blood behind the white beard. His eyes met mine for an instant. Then he nodded my dismissal and returned to the papers in front of him.

  *

 
Kyd and Kit. The goat and the cat, someone had once called us. But the names didn’t stick. They were so plainly the wrong way round. If anyone were the goat then it was I, with my Machiavellian cast and goatee beard. Kyd, on the other hand, had a feline quality. It suddenly struck me that all grace would be racked from him now. The realisation brought tears to my eyes. The world swam and for a while I forgot I was a haunted man. Poor Kyd was a good companion and a fine playwright whose friendship I’d just disowned. I knew he’d understand my denial as I forgave his betrayal, but the weight of bad faith rested heavy in my belly. I wanted to know what had happened to Kyd, needed to know what he had said about me. One place would hold the answers, the destination I most dreaded.

  *

  Death makes the world a brighter place. I’ve seen the shape danger gives to things, an edge so sharp that if you like your head atop your shoulders and your entrails tucked safe in your belly it’s best not to stop and admire the view. Yet the prospect of death renders everything lovely. Colours shine stronger. Strangers’ faces fascinate and your sex calls you to business you must not attend.

  We’ve all seen men swing. Some go pious, strangely eager to meet the Maker who has treated them equal to his bastard son. Others disgrace themselves, shivering, shitting, pleading for a mercy they should know is long fled. Their shame forces me to turn towards the faces of the crowd. Wild-eyed masks, red-faced and spittle spattering, some with appetites so awakened they stuff themselves with pies, meat juices glossing their chins, pastry cramming their mouths, even as they call for the coward to be cut down and quartered. Sometimes though, the condemned have an extra grace. The hangman slips the rope around their necks like a father bestowing pearls on a daughter of whose virginity he is certain. I have watched the wonder on such men’s faces and known them to be entranced by the world from which they are about to drop.

  From his gallows eyrie, the soon-to-be-dead sees everything. The cheats and pickpockets, the ghouls hoping for a scrap of his clothing, or better still a lock of his hair or a slice of the rope. The condemned hear the clamouring for death. They feel the anticipation of the crowd, as eager as any first-night audience. And who’s to say they never want to please the mob? Because, viewed from the gallows, everything is beautiful. The veins on the noses of piss heads glow a blood red shade never witnessed before. And whores whose early corruption has decided the hardened cast of their faces, melt into blameless girls.

  Such cursed men surpass Christ. They take a last look at this world and step, still mesmerised by its beauty, into the nothing beyond. They might scream through the ritual of their disembowelling, who wouldn’t? But more often these are the men who expire before the knife touches their belly, as if by recognising danger’s charms they have found the secret of how to die.

  It is death that gives a shape to life. Children are conceived in the shade of the gallows tree, new life springing round the roots of assassination. And I too have found myself leaving executions with my prick as hard as a hanging man’s. Danger is an intoxicant to trounce tobacco and wine. I should know. I have side-stepped death’s scythe more than once. The question is can I do it again?

  As always at such times I felt myself to be two men. There was Kit walking through Shoreditch market, young Kit, tall and strong, creator of Tamburlaine and Faustus. Kit the atheistic brawler who’d defied a murder charge, who put constables in fear of their life. Kit for whom the crowds part recognising my authority, if not my person. Then there is silent Christopher, watching my progress, calculating how best to hold onto life. Even as I admired myself, a tall young man, chestnut hair swept back from a high brow, pale skin made paler by my fine flame-slashed black doublet, I cursed my misfortune. After the sobriety of the Privy Council it was a relief to plunge into the anonymity of the crowd. But I kept my eyes alert and my sword-hand free. A dagger can find its way into a belly or a back before the victim spies it. I thought I felt the prickle of surveillance on my shoulders. And though I knew it was most likely the effect of my own blood running faster in my veins, I made my way from the crush of people, trying to keep note of who was around me, checking if any faces lingered in the thinning crowd.

  *

  The turnkey and I were old allies from my time in gaol. I waited by Newgate and got lucky, spying him within the hour. He’d winked to show he’d seen me, then walked on, sure I would follow, leading me silent down a brackish alley. We hunched together in a piss perfumed doorway under the cynical stare of a child who knew the worth of her witness. I moved my hand to my sword as I tipped her a coin, hastening her departure.

  The gaoler was old, broad-shouldered and tiny. His stoop concealed his face. When he looked at me he had to move his whole head sideways. He didn’t look at me often, offering instead the skelfy view of his bald pate. Pain and profit were the only colour in the old man’s life. He dressed in dungeon dweller’s rags and lived within the walls of the gaol. Lack of sunlight had drained his skin of warmth, leaving his flesh with the transparent gleam of a white slug. I had entrusted many commissions to his care when I was in clink. It was an easy matter now to purchase news of Kyd’s ordeal. The old man’s hand trembled with the weight of my angels, he favoured me with an ecstatic glance and began his tale.

  ‘They brought your friend at the usual time. In the dark hours between night and morning when a man is at his lowest ebb and resistance weakest. He held firm until they reached the door of the torture chamber, then spilled all he knew and perhaps a little more.’ The gaoler’s voice held a relish at Kyd’s humiliation. ‘They made him sing until he hit the high notes, then they chorused your name and he picked up the refrain.’

  I felt sick. Instead of my senses growing accustomed to it, the stench of the alley seemed to grow worse, weaving down into my bowels.

  I coughed against the taste of it and asked, ‘What was his song?’

  ‘A simple tune. Kyd admitted to copying some seditious claptrap on your behalf. The papers were yours, he said, though they were found in his rooms. He supposed them shuffled with his as a consequence of your living so close for two years.’ He chuckled softly at my downcast look. ‘Don’t take it hard. He would have sworn the pages belonged to the Lord Jesus Christ himself if it would end the agony.’

  ‘Would that he had.’ The irony of the hours Kyd had spent honing his plots struck me and I laughed. ‘When I knew him he sometimes had trouble with his verse. Perhaps I should have threatened him with violence. He seems able to create dazzling fictions when confronted with the rack.’

  ‘Men have no trouble recounting tragedy when it is broken out of them.’

  I concentrated on keeping calm.

  ‘How long did it take?’

  ‘Most of the night. He stuck to the story that the papers were yours.’

  The anger was in my voice now.

  ‘You spent a whole night on him? Surely you have more interesting subjects in line.’

  ‘Superior playwrights like yourself?’ The gaoler laughed. ‘The interrogator’s art benefits from detail as much as any play. Kyd revealed the plain tale with little encouragement, but any story needs embellishment. How popular would your Faustus be if you left out the detail? A magician conjures a devil who then does for him? Facts are fine, but it’s detail that makes the plot. As we got to know each other better your friend added intricacies that were worth the wait.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  The old man shook his head.

  ‘I’ve not time to tell you all.’ He glanced up at me. I understood and smoothed his hand with another angel. The gaoler nodded convulsively whispering, ‘That’s good, that’s good …’ like a man close to climax, his hand fluttered about his face then he regained his composure and resumed the tale.

  ‘Kyd talked a lot. Some of it was raving, the usual rubbish men shout on the rack.’ He shook his head. ‘Some cry for their mothers.’

  ‘Just give me the substance of his words.’

  ‘You were at their centre. An unbeliever who lies wit
h whores of both sexes and accuses Christ, the apostles and John the Baptist of sharing your vice.’ He gave me a lascivious nod. ‘Tales of your debauching were our bedtime stories.’

  ‘If it were me they wanted, why not come direct?’

  The gaoler’s voice held contempt for a question he couldn’t answer.

  ‘If there’s a reason, you’re more like to know it than me.’ He shrugged and resumed the tale. ‘As the night grew darker our friend Kyd seemed sure you had hidden the papers in his room yourself. He said you would do anything for money and thought it likely you were even now enjoying the fruits of his arrest. He called you a double-dealer.’

  ‘I loved him like a brother.’

  The old man heard the misery in my voice and looked towards me. The movement twisted his body and for a moment it seemed like he was beginning a gleeful dance.

  ‘He seemed to think you jealous of his writings, a wicked man who would hand his friends to the authorities for gain.’

  I put my head in my hands and laughed, though it felt like crying. The old man took me by the arm, his harsh whisper echoed against the silence of the alley.

  ‘Quiet, the very stones are spies.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘As if I would so lightly cross a man who spends his days writing of revenge.’

  His clawed hand dug deep into my flesh.

  ‘I doubt he’ll write much now. Kyd said he thought you bound for Scotland. It might be well for you if he were right.’

  ‘I’ll know when it’s time to flee.’

  The gaoler shook his head.

  ‘You’ve been in this life long enough to fathom how it works. You’re safe as long as they can use you. After that …’ He hung his head limply to one side, drawing up an imaginary rope, letting his tongue loll from his mouth like a scaffold dancer. ‘If you want to stay alive, think on what you can gift them. A man like you can always think of something,’ he smiled, ‘or someone. There’s a particular friend of yours who stands close to the rope. Put his head in it and save your own.’

  ‘Free counsel?’

  The old man lifted his head and stared up at me, examining my features as if storing them for future meetings. His face creased into a girn of a grin, crimped lips gummed at the corners with yellowed saliva.