The Playmakers

by Graeme Johnstone

  “It’s not fair,” said Shakespeare suddenly. “The Plague! I did not know that it was still with us.”

  “Sir Thomas said that it comes, it goes,” said Budsby.

  “That’s what his lunatic doctor said, too.”

  “There are always isolated pockets of it suddenly appearing,” said Budsby. “You will remember the terrible time in 1593 when thousands were dying?”

  “I remember,” said Shakespeare sorrowfully. “We were trying to get plays on stage, written by Chris…”

  “Written by you.”

  “Written by … me … and the theatres were closed down to stop the sickness spreading among the audiences.”

  “Yes, well, the Plague never entirely goes away. It’s insidious. It takes a handful of unfortunate souls here and there, and then it disappears for a while. And no doubt in our time, unless there is some great leap forward in the thought processes by those pompous fools that call themselves healing physicians, there will be another massive outbreak of it again one day, and many more will die.”

  There was silence as the two battle-hardened warriors of entertainment looked at each other.

  “William, I…”

  “Yes?” said Shakespeare, eyeing him carefully. He knew the old man well, and could see that something was worrying him, something more than the personal tragedy of his adopted son.

  “There is something you should know,” said Budsby gravely.

  “What?”

  “Our position is still not entirely in the clear.”

  “What do you mean, not in the clear? We answered the Queen’s challenge, did we not?”

  “Indeed we did. We certainly did. The echo of the applause is still ringing through the rafters at The Globe. It was a cruel irony that this dreadful personal tragedy should strike at your moment of triumph when you have handled Elizabeth’s fourteen-day dare with such ease, thus stamping yourself forever as the consummate writer of these times.”

  “Yes, but,” said Shakespeare, waving his hand dismissively, “it wasn’t me that wrote it, you know that. It was all Christopher’s work.”

  “And therein lies the rub. Christopher, he, ah, that is …”

  “He’s what?” said Shakespeare, his tone, for the first time in the conversation, lifting from melancholy into anxiety. “Christopher is all right, isn’t he? There is nothing wrong?”

  “No, no, he is fine. He couldn’t be better, he’s writing well. In fact, that is the problem, he is writing too well.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, you will remember, around about the time of Christopher’s, um, death - and I use that word advisedly - we published those two love poems.”

  “Venus and Adonis, and The Rape of Lucrece? You call them love poems? Dirty poems is the phrase I would use. Dirty poems.”

  “Well, William, I am an old man from the old school. I use the word love because I find it hard to use words such as f… f... f…”

  “Fornication?”

  “Filth was the word I was searching for,” said Budsby with a wry smile.

  “But they went on and on about people having intercourse,” said Shakespeare. “And I do not mean of the verbal kind. I felt so embarrassed to have them published in my name. Even the title of one of them, with the word ‘Rape’ in it, made me feel awful.”

  “We had no choice!” said Budsby gravely. “Lord Burghley has been trying to curry favour with the young Earl of Southampton and his family for ages, and got Marlowe to write the damn things and dedicate them to the little upstart. You know Burghley, he’s always up to something.”

  “Yes, and usually no good. I was staggered when the pages came back from Christopher and were published. Anytime someone says to me, ‘I love your two poems, Mr Shakespeare,’ and gives me that knowing, leering wink, as if to say, ‘Lot of activity between the sheets!’ I don’t know which way to turn.”

  “Well, there’s more.”

  “More! More poems?”

  “No, no. The sonnets.”

  “The sonnets? I thought they were going along the same line as the poems.”

  “Yes, well,” said Budsby, running his chin with a big chubby hand. “Sort of.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, again, Burghley has gotten Chris to write them …”

  “In my name.”

  “In your name. Yes, William, in your name. And again, they are directed toward the young Earl.”

  “He’s only a boy.”

  “Not even twenty,” said Budsby. “But Burghley has some sort of marriage idea in mind, and is trying to encourage it with these words. I believe he sees a joining of the Southampton family with his own, via a union in marriage to some niece or other.”

  “And?”

  “And, thus, they are of a very romantic nature, too.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, er, Christopher has chosen to bury suggestions in the verses.”

  “Suggestions? Such as what?”

  “It could be interpreted that the, er, writer is in love with the recipient.”

  William stared blankly at Budsby as the concept sunk in.

  “You mean, it could be deduced that I, as the writer, am the lover of the receiver of the poem, the Earl of Southampton?”

  “That is one interpretation,” said Budsby evenly. “But there are many others. It is difficult to pin down sometimes whether the writer and the lover are male or female, and who is loving who. And who is doing what to who. At other times it seems more straightforward.”

  “Well, I hope people see the straightforward parts.”

  “The story-line is made more complicated in the latest verses that have just arrived. The ones that Samuel brought with him, along with the news about Soho.” The big man began to shake visibly.

  William began to feel weak. God, he thought, can this situation get any worse? He started to breathe deeply - huge gulps of air, as the big fellow steadied himself with his ever-present Blackwood walking stick.

  “Burghley,” said Budsby slowly, “Burghley and Sir Thomas have already read them, of course. Samuel went straight to them first. In these stanzas we now have the appearance of a third character - a mysterious person simply called the Dark Lady.”

  William looked straight in the eyes of his mentor.

  “Dark Lady?” he said slowly. “There would be no mystery about a Dark Lady. That it is obviously Rasa. Surely, he has based that character on Rasa, his African girl friend and would-be Queen of Nubia. She is a dark lady, so she must be the Dark Lady.”

  “I wouldn’t argue with that, my friend,” said Budsby evenly. “But only a handful of us know that.”

  “So?”

  “The man in the street will read them with the eyes of the casual observer. You and I look at them with a certain insight. But Sir Thomas and Lord Burghley have been reading them with the eye of the spy, and believe that in those sonnets our young Christopher is telling the story of his fake death!”

  “What?”

  “There are hidden message in the words outlining the whole conspiracy.”

  “You are joking!”

  “I am not. Read them, my friend. He’s buried messages in layers of words. He talks of arrest, and bail, and a stabbing. It’s all there. It’s jumbled up, but if you read it, it tells the story. The whole story of deceit, lies and cover-ups.”

  There was a long silence as William tried to take all this in.

  “So, he is trying to give the game away?”

  “No, no,” said Budsby, and for the first time the big bassoon laugh started to emerge. “Not at all. He knows that the ordinary person will not tumble to this. All he is doing is letting people in the know - people like Burghley and Walsingham and you and me - that he is still around, that he is a force to be dealt with, and that no matter what happens, he is still …”

  “Yes?”

  “The writer.”

  William looked blankly out the window.

  “So, what
do we do?”

  “We have to ride above this, William. You have to ignore any innuendo or suggestion about you and the Earl.”

  “Ignore? Ignore! You read it one way and it says I am having an affair with him, and I am supposed to ignore it! Easy for you to say.”

  “You can do it. You are in the best position of any person to do so - you are William Shakespeare, the writer, the premiere author of these times, the literary colossus of England, the man who stands above and beyond the rest of us. You are so big, so famous, you can ride above it, leaving the gossipers and their malicious tongues babbling harmlessly in your wake.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Yes, well maybe … we’ll see.”

  Shakespeare looked at his aging mentor. Just as he had earlier noticed for the first time that the small feet were no longer as dainty as they used to be, he now noticed that the old man’s once beetroot-coloured skin was getting greyer, losing its life.

  Shakespeare looked down at the bed again, and the tears began to well.

  “At least Christopher has his lover with him – alive. And he wines, and he dines, and he gets plenty of money.”

  “Indeed, he does. Sir Thomas ensures that he receives his just desserts for his efforts. In fact, it is interesting to watch the ebb and flow of his work. You can see the pattern - when his finances have been almost exhausted, he is inspired into action to redress the state of his empty purse.”

  “Not only that, he has entry to the best possible places for research for the plays.”

  “That is also true,” continued Budsby. “The collections of books of kings and queens. The libraries of the monasteries. As the private secretary to Her Majesty, the Queen of Nubia, he is being allowed access to books of such historic profundity. Books about wars, and kings, and dukes and heroes. And about villains, and powerful families, all written by a steady hand with a sharpened quill hundreds of years before the latter-day printing inventions of Herr Gutenberg and our own Mr Caxton.”

  “And the cities he gets to. You and I are recognised in our careers as being experienced travellers. But our concept of an exotic port-of-call is thrilling places such as Taunton, Sheffield, and, dare I say it, Norwich.”

  The big fellow winced at the mention of the east England town that had come in and out of their lives and brought them so much distress.

  “Whereas,” continued Shakespeare, “Christopher visits Verona, Venice, Padua.”

  “And puts those visits to great effect,” added Budsby quickly. “Look at the incisive detail that goes into his plays - he knows the streets, the canals, the statues. He knows the people in these cities, the cut of their clothes, the tenor of their accent.”

  “Exactly. It is working for us, Mr Budsby. Sir Thomas’ plan is succeeding beautifully. So, why is Christopher putting cryptic messages in these sonnets and risking the rack for all of us if the plot comes undone?”

  “Consider his position, William,” said Budsby gravely. “As far as the rest of the world is concerned, he is dead and buried in a desolate Deptford cemetery. Can you imagine what that means to him?”

  “Well, I guess there would be moments of frustration.”

  “Moments of frustration. Oh, my boy, sometimes your rural naivety leaves me breathless. Frustration is hardly the word for it. As far as he is concerned, he is alive and well. He still has his hands, his arms, his head, his heart, his ability to write.”

  “And he is continuing to do that.”

  “Yes, but not in his name, William, not in his name! He is creating - creating material as good as ever - but the words appear in your name. That is a different thing. Writers have an ego, an ego that needs to be preened.”

  “We send him messages about the success his plays are having!”

  “I’m sure that gladdens his heart. But for a playwright, there is no substitute for standing at the rear of the theatre and watching as his work unfolds up on stage.”

  “Yes. I see.”

  “He needs to listen to the crowd and see how they will respond with applause, or laughter, or tears.”

  “I remember when he used to do that.”

  “The lines go through his head, and he waits in anticipation. There is a joke coming up. Will they laugh? There is a moment of tragedy looming. Will they draw their breath in? There is a resolution of a conundrum on the horizon. Will they nudge each other and say, ‘I told you so’? And when they do, when any or all of these things happen on cue, an astonishing feeling goes through the writer’s body. A feeling that you and I will never experience in our lives. A warm, exhilarating feeling of triumph that is indescribable.”

  “But he is living in splendid luxury in Europe. He is staying at the castles of princes and kings. They welcome him and Rasa with open arms, and feed him the best of wine and food.”

  “Splendid as his treatment may be, that does not replace the comfortable feeling of being at home, in his own surroundings, being fêted by his own people, savouring his success.”

  “Success? He gets paid handsomely. More than I do. And half my money will now go back to Stratford!”

  “Where your wife … er, that is, your real wife … will no doubt begin investing it wisely, so Walsingham tells me. I gather that on the basis of his canny nose for a bargain, he is already surreptitiously directing her to purchase a property called the New Place - in your name, of course.”

  “She will put it in my name only because the law says she has to put it in the name of her legal husband. If she could put it in her own name she would.”

  “Nevertheless, it is intriguing that it should be called New Place, suggesting a new beginning sometime. Who knows what might happen and how you may benefit from that in the future?”

  William was too tired to reply. But, he thought, if half my proceeds are going there, it is surely not worth discounting …

  “Well, yes, we shall see,” concluded Budsby eventually. “Meanwhile, we must concentrate on events here in London.”

  “In what way?”

  “We carry on, dear William,” said Budsby. “Despite the tragedy, and the innuendo, and even Christopher’s secret messages, we carry on like the old troopers we are, maintaining the image that is required, and striving for the result that must be achieved. The show must go on. And, indeed …”

  “Yes?”

  “Of all our great productions, William, this is the show that must truly go on forever …”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Do you remember that time when the square of St Mark’s flooded?”

  “How could I forget?” replied Rasa. “You tipped your hat upside down, dropped it in the water like a little gondola, and watched it float away with glee, clapping your hands like a child.”

  “I was still a child in those days in Venice, and I am still a child now.” Marlowe leaned forward and kissed her.

  There was a silence as the two lovers stared deeply into each other eyes.

  “But Christopher, you are thirty-nine,” said Rasa, brushing the tip of his nose gently with her forefinger. “It is time you grew up.”

  They each fell back on the long grass on which they were sitting, lay looking at the dank sky, and laughed. They laughed the hearty laugh that had kept them together through the highs and lows of their ten-year European odyssey.

  “Is it really that long?” she said eventually.

  “Madam, I am shocked at your inquisitiveness,” he replied in mock horror, raising his head and peering quizzically down at where the beautifully cut but now increasingly tatty blue trousers covered his groin. “But if you really must know, yes, it is that long. Although, people in the know tell me it is getting a bit shorter as the years go by.”

  “Not that, silly,” she said, punching him on the arm. “You men and your manhood. You think of nothing else. I mean, is it really ten years since we left England?”

  “Almost to the day, my love. Let me see now, I died … oh, how I hate using that word ... I died, as far as the rest o
f the world is concerned, on May 30, 1593. And, as it is now April 4, 1603, then it is not quite ten years of sheer, unadulterated drudgery being stuck with you for every moment.”

  “You, you!” said Rasa, punching him again, and laughing.

  “I am only joking, my love. It has been a wonderful experience. A grand, exotic, wild journey. A journey almost beyond belief. But a journey I could only have completed with you by my side, and no one else.”

  “Then, this is it, we are completing it? There is to be no more?”

  There was silence as the lovers stared at the sky. The leaden clouds only added to the sombreness of the moment.

  “No more,” said Christopher quietly. “Our time has come.”

  For most of the time on the road, the pair had carried off their roles as the monarch of Nubia and her loyal, albeit quirky, private secretary, with flair and diligence, milking it for all it was worth. They had been housed as guests in the most fashionable of places, given access to books, documents, libraries and tales of the court, which provided Christopher with the story-lines to write his plays.

  Gossip and information about the tangled political and religious links, amalgamations, and plots that stretched across Europe, had been gathered and sent back to the master-spy, Walsingham, in London.

  In turn, each play produced a handsome royalty, organised by Sir Thomas, and the regular arrival of a bag of gold coins was looked upon by the itinerant duo with great enthusiasm. It paid the mammoth bills of keeping such an entourage on the road in between the city-states. The transport costs, feeding people, buying new costumes.

  Then there were the times when no official invitation could be seen on the horizon, and they had to lodge for weeks on end in an inn until a local baronet or some other status-seeking aristocrat could be targeted and lured into hosting the exotic monarch.

  Not to mention Christopher’s love of the good life, when he would slip away to a tavern in some seedy part of town, and end up buying drinks for all, gambling on card games, and putting his fantastic historical and general knowledge to the test of anyone who dared challenge him.

  Rasa did not mind these moments of foolishness. She knew her brilliant, life-loving lover needed a break from the stuffy constraints of the court.