The Playmakers

by Graeme Johnstone

  She also knew he would be faithful.

  Besides, if it did look like his witty mouth was heading him toward a physical altercation with the in-house bully, or his sublime handsomeness was unwittingly sending come-on signals to the resident seductress, big Samuel and little Soho would step in, diplomatically defuse the situation, and bring him home to sleep it off.

  Thus, in the early days, it had been easy. The novelty of a black African queen arriving at the main gate, surrounded by a colourful assortment of characters, performers and animals, was too good an opportunity for any autocrat worth his salt to resist.

  But over the years it had become a struggle, as animals died and were difficult to replace, carriages wore out, Soho tragically passed away before their eyes, Samuel returned to London, and personnel either ran off or amicably departed for greener pastures. One had fallen into the amorous arms of an Austrian duke.

  Slowly but surely, as they zigzagged through France and Italy, before heading northward through Germany and beyond, the invitations began to dry up. As the entourage slowly fragmented, the couple risked becoming a parody of themselves. As time wore on, the once-exciting message ringing through a town that an exotic Queen was on the brow of the adjacent hill became dismissed with a wave of the hand and a sniffed “Oh, that old couple.”

  As they grew older, they lost their physical allure, a situation exacerbated by the continuing problem of Rasa’s left cheek. It had been scratched by a playful court cat as they were leaving Padua for the last time, and at first appeared to be only a slight wound. But it would not go away, and over the months got worse. Despite the best ministrations of doctors, it never properly healed. The festering sore led to a permanently drooping, weeping left eye, vandalising the once peerless facade of beauty, and forcing people to look away in repulsion instead of looking on in envy or lust. She found herself constantly staring down at her feet, rather than holding her head high, and her haughty presence, once the keystone to their success, gradually had lost its impact.

  “If I was back in Africa, I could have this fixed,” she would say angrily when another treatment by a physician had failed. “My father would rub the golden sands of my home-land on it, and it would be healed.”

  By the time they had reached the land of the Danes, where Christopher expressed his gathering disillusionment by throwing himself into writing an angst-ridden play about a moody prince he called Hamlet, there was just the two of them left.

  Now, here they were in Scotland, lying on their backs in a secluded wood, penniless, disillusioned and tired with it all, contemplating the Final Act.

  They had considered the obvious option.

  “You could continue writing, under yet another name,” Rasa had suggested when they had boarded the tiny fishing vessel that had taken them across from Denmark to Scotland.

  “That is a great idea, my love,” Christopher had replied, “but it will not work. To begin with, who am I, a stranger, to walk into the office of a producer and throw a play down on his desk and ask to get it produced, when everyone knows that the only scripts worth putting on these days are those from the pen of the mighty William Shakespeare?

  “And even then, I am stuck whichever way you look at it. If I write it in a different style to that which comes out under William’s name, then I know in my heart it will be not worth producing. And if I write it to my usual excellent standard and style, any right-minded producer will say …” - and here Marlowe had put on the voice sounding like any one of the dozens of London theatre hustlers he had worked with in the early days - ‘Oi, you’re not trying to copy the great Master Shakespeare are you? Where’d you get this? Get out of here, you plagiarist, you.’” He let out a little laugh. “Oh, Rasa,” he had said slowly, “the irony of it all. I am the prisoner of my own brilliance.”

  Now, the final body blow had been struck.

  “What else is there to do now that Elizabeth is dead?” added Christopher, still staring at the sky.

  They knew that this development, the death of the Queen of England a few weeks earlier on March 24, 1603, after more than forty years on the throne, had brought them to a decisive moment.

  “The Golden Age is finished,” Christopher continued. “Elizabeth loved the theatre, she loved my work - well, at least, what she knows as Will’s work. But King James, who will soon leave Scotland to take up as her successor, is not so keen on the theatre. The couriers tell me that there are serious economic matters he’ll have to grapple with - the poor harvests of late have all but ruined England, not to mention the ongoing war with the Irish. There will be no fourteen-day challenges to write a play from him.”

  Rasa leaned across, took his hand, held it to her face, and gently kissed it. She looked into his eyes, and noticed that, for one of the rare times they had been on the road, he was weeping.

  This was not her Christopher. Her buoyant, brilliant, brave Christopher. The Christopher that had strode his way across Europe, carrying the charade to perfection, laughing all the way.

  That was it. The laugh.

  He had laughed that day in Venice when St Mark’s square - as it does - flooded.

  The Venetians, who had built the floating city-state out of expediency to thwart the horse-bound rampaging barbarians from the north, took things like this with elements of annoyance and concern.

  But Christopher had stood on the steps of the magnificent church and had laughed and laughed. Especially when his hat was picked up by a small current, and was last seen heading toward the Bridge of Sighs, the melancholy archway crossed by thousands of prisoners taken from the nearby court to the dungeon.

  He had laughed at the pompous power of Venice, overseen by the regularly elected potentate, the Doge. He had laughed at its pursuit of maritime power. He had laughed at its grasp for merchant success, and had put that down on paper in a play that was a triumph. He had laughed in Verona, too, when he came across a great opportunity - a story written several years earlier by Luigi da Porto about two young people whose love, opposed by their warring families, ended in tragedy.

  “This will make a great play,” he had told Rasa with enthusiasm. “One of my finest! I want to call it Chris and Rasa, but we will settle on Romeo and Juliet.”

  He had laughed at the sternness of the Germans and the aloofness of the Danes. Why, he had even laughed when they reached Scotland.

  “You have to laugh. It’s so bloody cold,” he had told Rasa.

  But the internal bitterness was beginning to show up in his work, and the gloominess of the resultant play set in Scotland, which he titled Macbeth, had shocked even Rasa.

  Sustaining the furious pace, he had written three more works and had forwarded them on to William, but now was resigned to his fate.

  “From what I can gather, William has got a drawer full of my plays,” he said. “Stuff I have written and sent to him ages ago is still yet to see light of day. And the last message said it might be years before some of it gets on stage. So, it’s pointless doing anything any more.” He picked up a muddy clod of earth that lay nearby and hurled it angrily into the distance. “And I don’t feel like doing any more, anyway. I’m tired of all this travelling. I’m tired of writing. I’m tired of being a person who does not exist. There is no other job that I want to do or am capable of doing.

  “So … it is time for the Final Act, in the true sense of the phrase.”

  His anger slowly subsided and he looked at the face of his once beautiful queen. “Tell me how it goes again?” he said softly, as the leaden clouds drifted slowly by.

  “It was once the great tradition in my country, hundreds of years ago,” Rasa said evenly. “My father told me about it, many times. A long, deep pit would be dug, and those that had been selected would climb in and lie down.”

  “On a feather mattress?”

  “Silly. No. They would lie on the earth, but it was very important that they faced the same way, and were curled up in the same position.”

  “Tell me about th
e gold again.”

  “They would take with them all their best jewellery. Rings, necklaces, bangles. There would be gold figurines beside them, figures of the gods.”

  “Seems a great waste.”

  “It is important for the journey, very important. It is the final journey.”

  “And then?”

  “And then … people would stand above and throw the soil on them … and fill the trench and bury them alive.”

  “Ooo-eerrr. Didn’t anyone get up and run away, screaming?”

  “My people are noble and loyal,” she said. “It was the wish of the priests and the gods. Besides, my father used to say that the sacrificed ones were always given something to drink, some sort of potion, which made them feel good, and confident in themselves that they were doing the right thing.”

  “Just like consuming seven pints of fine ale at the tavern.”

  “Yes, Christopher. But in that case you never wanted to lie down after it. You wanted to jump around the bed all night.”

  “And a fine time we used to have, too,” he replied.

  He laughed again.

  “It has indeed been a fine time, Christopher,” Rasa added slowly. “And now, as you want, is the time to end it.”

  “And do you want to, too?”

  “I only want to be with you. Wherever you are.”

  Christopher nodded, and began the final preparations.

  His years of working as a spy had taught him well, and he had conceived the perfect plan.

  They had ridden off the main road leading from the north-east of Scotland south to Edinburgh and had gone miles into the forest to a secluded spot, before letting the horses go. Then they had dug a shallow grave. “Our own version of the Nubian pit,” said Chris.

  And now it was time to settle in it.

  They stood up from where they had been lying on the grass, and despite the grey skies and chill wind, began to undress each other.

  “No,” she said, when he placed his finger under her chin, and gently lifted her head to get a full view of her face. “My eye, it is awful to look at.”

  “When I see my Rasa, I see only beauty,” Christopher replied.

  He pulled the final remnants of her clothes off, and stood back for a moment to admire the beautiful ebony body for the last time. Yes, she had aged. But she had not lost the sculptured curves, the glorious shape.

  “It is getting cold,” she finally said, and began to shiver.

  “We agreed that as we came together as lovers, we will part as lovers in arms.”

  He helped her lay down in the shallow pit first, never taking his eyes off the face, the face that had once been the cornerstone of their success, but which had dogged them and undermined them for three years now.

  Then he hopped across, crouched down and lay beside her.

  They looked at each other longingly.

  “There have been two constants in my life,” he said eventually.

  “What are they?” she whispered.

  “My love for you, and …”

  He opened his left palm and held a small object only a few inches from Rasa’s face.

  “ … this,” he said, with a wan smile.

  It was a small silver phial about two inches long, with a filigree top.

  “Sir Thomas gave it to me while I was still studying at Cambridge, and it has never left me since,” said Christopher. “He said there was enough poison in it to kill twenty men. Of course, it was meant for only one. And that was me, in case I got into trouble while working for him. ‘You must do the honourable thing, Christopher,’ he would say. ‘Rather than go to the rack and wreck England with a confession.’”

  “So if it can kill twenty,” said Rasa, “there should be enough in there to kill two.”

  “Easily,” said Christopher. “Are you ready?”

  “I am ready,” she said.

  “I love you, Rasa.”

  “And I love you, Christopher.”

  They snuggled closer together.

  He unscrewed the top of the phial.

  They kissed.

  And as their lips parted he trickled some of the black liquid into her mouth, and then swallowed the remainder himself.

  As the potent poison took its rapid effect, they embraced, and locked themselves in each other’s arms.

  And over the years, the wild Scots wind and rain and mud and leaves did their duty, and the great writer and his beautiful lover were swallowed up by the earth and lost to the world forever.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Is it him?”

  “Of course it’s him,” said Polly, “I would know that scrawny figure anywhere. In fact, I saw more of it in London a few years ago than most people, perhaps including you!”

  Anne Shakespeare turned and looked at her life-long friend and glowered.

  “Accidental-like, of course, Anne,” continued Polly quickly. “You remember. I told you, I interrupted him and his …”

  “Girl-friend.”

  “Er, yes, that floozy of his, and he was naked, with just a silk ruff hiding his wots-it.”

  A tiny smile came to Anne’s lips. That was her Polly. Straight up. Loud. Telling it like it is.

  And like the loyal friend she was, Polly had informed her well of William’s situation in London, after that time all those years ago she had visited him to pass the news on about his son Hamnet’s illness which, sadly, led to the boy’s death shortly after, at the tender age of eleven.

  Anne hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry when she heard how Polly had found him in his love-nest above a tavern in south London. The image of him delicately holding a flimsy fragment of garment in front of his otherwise naked himself made her laugh. But the thought that he was with another woman only made her feel melancholy.

  That was the funny thing. She never felt anger when William’s name was mentioned, or if gossip was passed on about him, or when she heard of the success of another one of his plays.

  She felt sadness more than anything.

  Yes, their marriage had got off to the rockiest of starts.

  Yes, he had been a rather ordinary father.

  Yes, he had stormed out of her life, leaving her with three tiny children.

  But there had been moments of passion, moments of tenderness, moments when she had really loved him.

  A little corner of her heart occasionally told her that all was not entirely lost.

  Besides, there was the money.

  Money that had forged a new and inescapable bond between them.

  Apart from causing considerable mirth, Polly’s visit to London had sparked a remarkable change in Anne’s financial situation. Suddenly, a monthly stipend from William had begun turning up. Cash, brought with unerring regularity to Stratford by a nice chap named Mr Mullins. He had mentioned one day that this was not his normal job, that he was really a maintenance man. But he had added that he also did any work as directed by a chap named Budsby and one of the Walsinghams - although not Francis Walsingham, the queen’s advisor, rather a cousin.

  “Besides, ma’am,” Mr Mullins had concluded, “I enjoy the opportunity to get out of London with its foul smells, pimps and crooks.”

  The money began to accumulate, so much so, Anne had begun to invest it in property, her only misgiving that she could not put the purchases in her own name.

  “That will have to go in William’s name,” had come the stern reply from the keeper of the Stratford records office when the deal for the New Place had all but gone through.

  “But it’s me that is buying it!” Anne had retorted.

  “True,” the fat, bloated bureaucrat replied, his bursting coat and bulbous red nose indicating a distinct love of a dinner wine. “You’ve got a bargain here ma’am. Very canny buying, I must say. Whoever your advisor is, he knows the game. But you know as well I do, Mrs Shakespeare, women are not allowed to hold property in their own name. And you do have a husband.”

  “In name only.”

  “In n
ame enough, Mrs Shakespeare, in name enough …”

  And now, here she stood, twenty-six years on since William had marched defiantly out, watching as the well-dressed figure alighted from the carriage and began to cross the muddy High Street and head toward them.

  He looked tired.

  Not just tired from the bumpy, grinding journey in the carriage. Rather, he looked tired of life, tired of London, tired of whatever it was it had taken to bring him so much glory. Not that he ever seemed capable of achieving such success, as far as Anne was concerned.

  “Behold the great writer,” she mumbled to herself. “Yet, when he left Stratford, he could barely scrawl his signature …”

  And William was feeling tired.

  Tired of many things.

  Tired of the years of deception, tired of the constant battles of getting a play staged, tired of being used and abused by others.

  Certainly, he thought on the bumpy journey to Stratford, there had been benefits.

  He had achieved notoriety as a playwright and was now officially a Gentleman.

  Despite Walsingham’s insistence that he send half of his royalties to Stratford every month, he had accumulated a modest amount of money and purchased a few parcels of property around London. But at what cost?

  My life has never been my own, he reflected as the familiar poplar trees flashed past the open carriage window. I was never allowed to marry the woman of my choice. Not the first time, with Anne Whateley, nor the second time, with Sarah Fletcher. I lived a lie as a writer of plays I could barely read, was dragged into a conspiracy under threat of death by association, and held to ransom for years.

  In the end, I am glad I had him killed.

  Shakespeare always snapped his head back whenever that thought entered his mind.

  The thought, the memory, the overpowering realisation that he had been party to the murder of Sir Thomas Walsingham …

  For it was something that he certainly never said aloud, something that he kept buried deep in the darkest recesses of his mind, and something only him and three other people knew. The three now in the carriage with him - Budsby, Soho and Samuel Davidson.