‘Aye, ever the prudent. Well, there is another word for prudent and you know it well. A plague on all cowards. Why should I not speak aloud my joy in being restored to the one true holy bosom? Is not the Queen’s self of the blessed company? I tell you, the day is at hand when we may take the holy body in sunlight before the eyes of all men, not skulking in a dark hole. Hallelujah.’
‘You know the danger, fool,’ Will said, sweating. ‘There was an expectation of tolerance, but it is not fulfilled. The bishops will see it is not. Let us be out of here.’
‘With this blessed red wine unfinished? With this blood of the grape crimson as the blood of.’
‘I am going.’ Will drained the sour stuff and turned down his cup with a clank.
‘Well, well, very well, I have told my story. Now, thanks be to God, my true story doth begin.’ Ben drank straight from the jug, beastlily, emerging spluttering. He wiped his mouth with the dirty back of his hand and nodded in a friendly manner at the company. ‘Give you good day, all. And God’s blessing be ever on your comings and goings and eke your staying where you are.’
‘Come, idiot.’
They left. Ben said, ‘Aye, aye, we will see how the spirit works. Is anyone following?’
‘None. None yet. Do you wish someone to follow?’
‘I say no more of it now, Ben Jonson his conversion. Except that you may speak of it to your friends and colleagues and all you will. I care not. I dare all for the lord Jesus. I owe him a death.’
‘That is mine. I wrote that.’
‘You did? It is all one. There is a tale they tell of you, do you know that?’
‘What tale? Where?’
‘Jack Marston told me. It is of Master Shakespeare dead and ascending to heaven’s gate and demanding admittance. St Peter says: We have too many landlords here, we need poets to sweeten long eternity. Well, says Master Shakespeare, I am well known to be a poet. Prove it, says St Peter. I am of poor memory, says Master S, and can remember no line I wrote. Well then, says heaven’s warder, extemporize somewhat. At that moment within the gates and all visible from the threshold little bow-legged Tom Kyd goes by, a poetic martyr, with his fingers cruelly broke by the late Queen’s Commissioners. A bow-legged one, says the saint. Extemporize on him. Whereupon, firequick, Master S comes out with:
‘How now, what manner of man is this
That beareth his balls in parenthesis?’
‘Whereupon St Peter sighs and says: We have no room for landlords.’
‘Not funny,’ Will said. And then: ‘So they talk of me as dead already, do they?’
‘Not dead. Shall we say retired. Your sun setteth. Westward Ho is your cry.’ Ben looked behind him to see two daggered ruffians following. He said in some small excitement: ‘Leave me here. Take your leave, aye. I think there are two coming who will show me where I may hear mass Sundays and saint-days. The blessing of Mother Church on you, Will.’
‘No, no, I want no such blessing.’
It was some week or so later that Ben Jonson sat at dinner with new friends, the room being an upper one in Eastcheap. There was Bob Catesby at the head of the table, very fierce and sober, and a swarthy one that had been in that low tavern that time they called Guy though his true name was Guido, somewhat drunk on Spanish wine, and there were Rob Winter, little big-eyed Bates, Kit Wright, Tom Winter brother of Rob, and also Frank Tresham who kept wetting a dry lip and looking shifty. Catesby said to Ben:
‘You are wide open, Master Jonson. Your days are numbered.’
‘By whom?’ Ben said. ‘If you mean that I blab of the brotherhood, by God you are mistaken.’
‘You have not done that, no, you have been prudent enough there. If you had not been so, Guy here – a soldier, remember, who will cut off ten heads before his breakfast – Guy, I say, would have had you, by God. No, I mean imprudent in that you talk too much of the Godless King and the runagate Queen, who will show her bosom and legs to all and go to mass hiccuping with the drink. I mean treasonable talk. I believe you are destined for a martyr’s crown.’
‘No,’ Ben said. ‘I want not that. I will not force apart the jaws of heaven for my precocious entering. Heaven may open in its own good time without my prompting. There is wine for the drinking yet and wenches for the fondling. Nay, no martyrdom.’
‘Speak out the scheme, Rob,’ Catesby said to Tom Winter’s brother. ‘You are he that must hold it in his memory. You are our living parchment.’
‘Well, then,’ Rob Winter said, looking at Ben, ‘it is this. It is to do with the new session of the parliament. All will be there – King, Queen, Prince Henry, nobles, judges, knights, esquires and all, all for the forging of new acts and laws to put down the true faith. They will be blown up.’
‘They will be –?’ Ben asked carefully.
‘Blown up. We are to place twenty barrels of gunpowder in the cellar beneath with faggots on top. Set but flame to the faggots and there will be a greater blowing up than has ever before been seen in the long tale of tyranny and human suppression.’
‘Blown up,’ Catesby said after a pause, as to make sure Ben properly understood.
‘The Queen,’ Ben said, ‘is of the true faith. Is it right she too should be blown up?’
‘You are always ready to talk of her Godlessness,’ Catesby said. ‘Well, she will be punished. Alternatively, she will be a martyr. Destiny puts forth a choice.’
‘However you gloss it,’ Ben said, ‘she will be blown up.’
‘Everybody will be blown up,’ Tom Winter said, pausing in the picking of his teeth. They had eaten of a roast ham, each mouthful full of teeth-hugging fibres. ‘Everybody.’
‘And then there will be a new era of love for the true faith?’ Ben asked.
‘We will think of that after the blowing up,’ Catesby said. ‘Certainly there will be a many problems, but sufficient to the day as the Gospel saith. First the blowing up.’
‘And the choice of the one to whom shall be given the glory of setting flame to the faggots for the blowing up,’ Kit Wright said. They all now looked at Ben.
‘He too will be blown up?’ Ben asked.
‘There is every likelihood that he will be blown up,’ Catesby said. ‘But he will at once be endued with a crown of martyrdom. You, Master Jonson, are wide open.’ They all continued to look at Ben. Ben said:
‘How first are you to convey the barrels to the cellar?’
‘It is a wine cellar,’ Rob Winter said. ‘The barrels will be brought on a vintner’s dray. What have you there, the guards will ask. Wine, will come the answer. Wine, as hath been ordered. It is all very simple.’
‘And the faggots?’
‘The faggots will be in another barrel, dry and ready for the laying on. And he that is to do the brave deed will go as guard in a borrowed livery. Bearing a torch.’
‘In broad daylight?’ Ben asked.
‘He will say he has orders to search the cellar for possible treasonous men lurking. It is all very simple.’
Francis Tresham now spoke. ‘I am against it,’ he said. ‘It is a plot of some cruelty. Also of some injustice. The Queen, true, is a foreigner and doth not matter. But there are enow good Catholic Englishmen in hiding among those of the parliament. We are blowing up our own.’
‘Martyrs’ crowns,’ Ben said. ‘Think not of it.’
‘You will do the deed?’ Catesby said, leaning closer to Ben and, indeed, discharging a blast of hammy garlic onto him.
‘I will think on it,’ Ben said. ‘Your reasons are of a fairly persuadent order. I will go home now and start to think on it.’
‘Guy here will go home with you,’ Catesby said, ‘and help you think on it.’
‘No, he will not,’ Ben said. ‘I want none breathing on me while I think. I go into this in full libero arbitrio. I cannot be made to do it.’
‘That is true,’ Catesby said. ‘Except by the promptings of your own destiny, Master Jonson. I see the martyr’s crown hovering above you.’ He looked
somewhat fiercely at Tresham. ‘Frank,’ he said, ‘you waver. It is strange you waver when you were loudest once in saying perdition to the betrayer of the faith of his own royal mother. There are measures may be taken to discourage waverers.’ He looked at dark Guido and then back at pale Tresham.
‘I am no waverer. I ask only that we right our souls on this matter of the killing of Catholics along with Protestants. It is a matter of theology I would ask that we concern ourselves withal.’
‘Theology,’ little Bates now said. ‘There is enow of theology at the Godless court, holy Jamie and his atheistical bishops. Out on theology. Let us have the true faith back and God’s enemies blown up. I drink to you,’ he said, ‘Master Jonson,’ and drank.
‘I too drink to me,’ Ben said, and drank likewise. He wiped his loose lips and wrung his beard and said, looking at the company severally, ‘Now I go home. To pray. For blessing and eke for guidance.’
‘Guido will go with you for guidance through the perilous streets,’ Catesby said.
‘I go alone. I am in no peril.’
‘Guy will be your guide.’
Ben, with Guido Fawkes at his flank, was some way advanced through the warren of stinks and drunkenness and stinking drunken bravoes that led to his lodgings when, to keep up his courage, he began to sing:
‘Here will we sit upon the rocks
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.’
At the song Fawkes clicked his fingers and said:
‘Spy.’
‘I cry your mercy, what was that?’
‘Spy, I said. I think you to be a manner of spy.’
Ben ceased walking or rolling and looked at him fair and straight beneath the moon. ‘You are drunk, man. You know not what you say.’
‘Spy. I asked myself long who it was you put me in mind of, and he too was a poet and spy. He cried his sodomitical atheism to the streets, and none did him harm. I conclude he was under protection. His name was Kit Marlowe. That was a song of his you were singing but now. Spy.’
‘Marlowe,’ Ben said soberly. ‘He was all our fathers, though he was slain young, God help him. You flatter me more than you know. But I am no spy.’ They heard as it were antiphonal singing, though more drunk than sober, approach.
‘Sit we amid the ewes and tegs
Where pastors custodise their gregs
And cantant avians do vie
With fluminous sonority.’
‘O Jesus,’ Ben prayed. ‘Jack Marston.’
It was Marston, true, drunk, true, but able to see, mainly from the bulk, who stood in his path. ‘Jonson, cheat, rogue, liar, ingrate, thief too. I am out now, see, and have learned all. Graaagh.’ The sound was of blood rising in the throat.
‘You speak too plain to be true Marston. Where be your inkhorn nonsensicalities? Thief, you say. No man says thief to Jonson. Any more,’ he added to Fawkes, ‘than he says spy.’
‘Thief I say again. You said that you would pay me when Henslowe paid you, that Henslowe had not paid you, therefore you could not pay me. But Henslowe has paid you, has, thief. I was with him this night, I saw his account book. Draw, thief.’ He drew himself, though staggering.
‘If it is but six shilling and threepence you want, let us have no talk of drawing. Come to my lodgings and you shall have a little on account. I will not have that thief, Jack. I am a man of probity and of religion.’
‘Of that we hear too,’ Marston cried. ‘The lactifluous nipples of the Christine genetrix and the viniform sanguinity of the eucharistic abomination. Draw.’
‘Very well.’ Ben sighed and unsheathed his short dagger. ‘I have killed, Jack,’ he said, ‘and my adversary was sober. I killed Gab Spencer, remember, and he too said thief.’ Ben now saw the reflection of flames in a bottle-paned window. Torches lurching round the corner of Cow Lane. Four men with swords and cudgels, the watch. With relief he lunged towards Marston. Lunging, he saw Fawkes flee. Wanted no trouble, right too, right for his filthy cause. Marston thrust, tottered, fell. Ben sheathed his dagger and leapt onto Marston’s back, took his ears like ewer handles and began to crack his nose into the dirt of the cobbles. Then the watch was on him.
It was four of the morning when Will received the message to go at once to the Marshalsea. A boy hammered at the door below and Will went to his window, Mountjoy in his nightshirt also appearing, a minute later, at his.
‘Mester Shakepaw?’
‘Approximately. What, boy?’
‘Mester Jonson in the jail do want ye naow vis minik.’
‘He wants money?’
‘I fink not sao. E gyve me manny, a ole groat, see ere.’
‘Go away, garsoon,’ Mountjoy cried harshly, ‘discommoding the voisinage so. We desire no parlying of prisons in this quartier. It is a quartier respectable.’
‘I’ll come,’ Will sighed. ‘I’ll come now.’
Few were sleeping in the Marshalsea. There was a kind of growling merriness, with drink, cursing, fumbling at plackets, gaming, a richer though darker version of the dayworld of the free. There was even a one-eyed man selling hot possets. Will listened, sipping, to Ben’s story. ‘The names,’ Ben said, ‘take down the names.’
‘I can remember well enough of the names.’
‘You cannot. You are poor at remembering. You cannot remember even your own lines. Take your tablet, take down the names. And then to Cecil.’
‘Now?’
‘Now, yes. Easy enough for you. You’re a groom of the bedchamber, a sort of royal officer.’
‘This is no jape?’
‘This is by no manner of means a jape, God help us. Go. I am, thank God, safe enough here. Cecil will understand all that, why I wish to be shut away. I am safe enough here till he has them.’
‘I will write them down, then.’
‘Do, quick. Then go.’
‘So,’ Will said. ‘Kit is truly your master. Though look where his spying got him. A reckoning in a little room. Keep off it, Ben. Playwork is duller and pays less well. But it is safer.’
‘Go now. He will be up. He does a day’s work before breakfast.’
Will sat, in groom’s livery, too long in the anteroom. He had spoken of his business to secretaries of progressively ascending status, and none would come alive to the urgency of it. One had even said: ‘If you would speak of plots for new plays, then must you go to the Lord Chamberlain. Here be grave matters in hand.’
‘You will be at no graver work than the scotching of this that I tell you of.’ Weary, three hours gone by, Will took to sketching of a drinking song he had been asked for by Beaumont, something for a comedy to be called Have at You Now Pretty Rogue or some such nonsense:
Red wine it is the soldier’s blood
And if it be both old and good
So take a rouse
And let’s carouse
And
Strange, he had been infected by Ben’s feigned unreformed eucharisticism. No, it was tother way around. Blood turned to wine, not wine to. His head was spinning with lack of sleep, he needed much sleep these days, past his best, looking westward. He began to calculate his fortune in real estate, but that led him to things needful to be done in Stratford. The load of stone still encumbering the grounds of New Place and neither paid for yet by the Council nor taken away. His brother Gilbert had written of some odd useful acres he might – He was shaken to here and now by the top secretary, who said:
‘You are to come in. And quickly, rouse. My lord speaks of urgency.’
‘He was not very urgent in speaking of it.’
‘Come your ways.’
Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, big-headed and dwarf-bodied, stood with his hunchback turned to the great seacoal fire. Papers, papers everywhere. He said:
‘I am glad, albeit it be brief, to make acquaintance of the man. The plays I know. Your Amblet was fine comedy. What is this story?’
Will told
him. ‘And Master Jonson fears for his life now. He deserves, if I may say this, my lord, very well of you.’
Cecil picked up a letter from his desk. ‘This has but now come to me. You know of a certain Francis Tresham Esquire?’
‘His name is, I think, on the list I gave.’
‘He has a brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle. Lord Monteagle has sent me a letter from this Tresham, and it saith nought but this: “They shall receive a terrible blow this parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them. The danger is past as soon as you have burnt this letter.” As you see, it was not burnt, nor will it be. I am conveying it at once to His Majesty. So what you bring from Master Jonson conjoined with this does but confirm what the King will say he knew all along, that he hath enemies.’ Cecil smiled very thinly. ‘Moreover, it would seem that his dreams are often charged with what may be termed a memoria familiaris. Blowing up comes much into them. His father, the Lord Darnley, was, as you will know, blown skyhigh at Kirk-o-Fields in Scotland while his royal mother was dancing at some rout or other. So, I thank you for this your loyal work –’
‘A tragedy, good my lord.’
‘It might well have been so.’
‘No, no, my play, which some call Hamlet.’
‘Was it so? I remember laughing. Now I will remember the intention was tragic. And remember too to have Master Jonson out of the jail where he languisheth as soon as the conspirators be apprehended.’ Cecil gave his hand, very crusty with rings, to Will. Will was not sure whether he was meant to kiss it. But he shook it sturdily and left.
When Ben Jonson was let out of jail he went straight to William Shakespeare’s lodgings in Silver Street and said:
‘Let us drink.’
‘Ben,’ Will said, ‘if you mean we are to go again to this low papist tavern full of vomit –’
‘Nay, show sense, man, that was but show. That was part of the part I played and played well. I am as good a son of the English Church as any that was fried under Bloody Mary, and I will prove it Sunday by drinking the whole chalice off before all the world. I say let us drink. I say also let us eat, it being near noon. I have good King’s gold here.’ He made jangle the little purse at his waist or no-waist. Clink clank. ‘We will eat roach pie and flawns at the Mermaid.’
The Complete Enderby Page 58
