Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu

by Jonathan Green

  It was a war which had begun fifteen years before, in 1577, with the discovery of a doll in the shape of the Queen, a single pin of gold driven through its breast, in the fields of Lincoln’s Inn. Dee had been a different man then, with different priorities. Then, his greatest worry had been his studies. Now his fears had grown to encompass a nation, as befitted the man some called the Queen’s Conjurer. Dee much preferred the title his friend, Sir Francis Walsingham, had bestowed upon him — the Royal Occultist.

  Dee turned back to his examination. “Look here, William. See these lesions.... What do they look like to you?”

  “Plague,” Sly said, holding a scented handkerchief up to his face. “Are you sure you should be touching it?”

  “I daresay that this particular ailment is not contagious,” Dee said. “At least not as we understand such things.” He felt certain of that, at least. While the curious disorder some called the Chattering Plague was spreading with alarming rapidity, it did not appear to be catching. At least not in the normal way. No one could say how or why those afflicted had come to be so, only that it appeared to be confined to Shoreditch, for the time being.

  “What do they look like to you then, Master?” Sly asked, humbly.

  “Words. Phrases,” Dee said, absently. “It is as if this sickness has made a book of him, and stamped its story on his flesh. You see?” He traced a lesion. “These curves here, the whorl there, the way they twist in upon themselves and back again. It is writing of some sort, if my eyes do not deceive me.”

  It was the first time he’d been able to get a close look at one of the Afflicted, and he gave a silent prayer of thanks to the unknown knifeman. Usually, they twisted and moaned so abominably that it was all one could do to get close. And then you had to deal with their teeth.

  “I must confess, Master, I do not see it,” Sly said.

  “No. I expect you do not, at that,” Dee said, curtly. “But it is the same for all of them.”

  Those who contracted the Chattering Plague wandered through the streets, spewing gibberish while those who heard them sometimes complained of feeling ill. Some suffered from nightmares. One poor woman had drowned herself in the Thames after a night spent attempting to care for her husband. And every day, more of them. The devil alone knew where they were all coming from. But Dee intended to find out.

  “I knew a certain scribe in Angoulême, who tattooed himself with verses drawn from the Bible. Perhaps this is something similar...”

  Sly made a sound. Dee looked over as his apprentice sank to his haunches opposite him. “What is it?” he asked, wondering what Sly had seen that he had not.

  “I know this face.”

  Dee frowned. “One of Walsingham’s?” he asked, softly. Sly had been one of Sir Francis’s hounds for a time, and knew many of the others by sight.

  Sly shook his head. “No. He was an actor — more a hanger-on, really. One of Lord Strange’s Men, I think. Or he dearly wished to be so.” He said the last hesitantly, and Dee peered at him, curious. It was the first time he’d ever heard Sly sound almost... wistful.

  “And why would you know such a man?”

  Sly shrugged. “A man like myself may know many men, and of all sorts, Master.” He made a face. “For a time, I fancied I might strut the boards, before Sir Francis convinced me that my talents were put to better use in his service.” He smiled. “I once...”

  “Yes?” Dee said.

  “Nothing, Master.” Sly looked at him and then back down at the body. “I confess I cannot recall his name. Perhaps they will tell us – the lesions, I mean – if they are indeed words.”

  “They are. And if I but had my library, I feel I would have the answer,” Dee said, scowling. He rose to his feet with a groan. Though he was still sound in body and mind, age had its claws in his joints. Things made noise that ought not to, when he moved. “But Mortlake is scattered to the winds, and the tools of my art with it.”

  Upon his return from Germany not three years before, he’d found his home – his sanctum sanctorum – ransacked. Stripped of all of its furniture and reading equipment, down to the upholstery. And what good was a magician without his tools?

  “We shall just have to make do on our own strengths, Master. Perhaps we should visit another alehouse, eh? A spot of lubrication for the delicate cogs and whirligigs of your mind might not go amiss,” Sly said, as he stood.

  “There is no time for such foolishness. The Queen has charged us to find the cause of this ungodly plague, and so we shall. If he is a player, as you say, we must needs visit a playhouse.” Dee drew his robes to him and left the body for the watch to deal with. They would burn it, most likely, or toss it into a plague pit, there to be forgotten. Sly followed him, still wheedling.

  “It has been hours since we last filled our bellies or wet our lips, Master,” he said, as they stepped past the two watchmen set to prevent anyone from interfering with their investigations. Dee signalled that their services were no longer required. The two men looked at one another in relief and began to board up the alehouse.

  “And it will be hours yet, if you continue to complain. The body is but a cage for the spirit, William... would you strengthen the bars?”

  “Feed the body, feed the soul,” Sly shot back, almost desperately.

  “And did you make that up as well?”

  Sly shrugged. “If not, I’ll gladly claim credit.”

  Dee shook his head, annoyed. Sly had proven himself useful, at times, but he lacked a proper appreciation for the unseen world. Dee’s first apprentice, Edward Kelley, had been far more appreciative — too much so, in fact. Dee frowned, and thrust the thought aside. Kelley had made his choice, and on his own head be it. It was not for Dee to hinder a man set on self-destruction. He had worries of his own, and plenty besides.

  Walsingham had understood. But Walsingham was dead, and Dee was alive and that was that. Dee glanced at Sly, striding along at his side, whistling tunelessly. Sly had been Sir Francis’s last gift to him – a rough rogue, red-handed and silver-tongued. One of Walsingham’s own, forged in the black fires of the most secret of conflicts. Sly could speak three languages as well as a native, and write in two more. He was a practised swordsman, a capable garrotter and a less than enthusiastic horseman. But was he capable of being anything more?

  The thought of a successor had begun to weigh on Dee since his return to England. Despite the necessities of his art, Dee did not see himself as a conjurer. Rather, he was the castellan of Her Majesty’s aetheric provinces. And a castellan must have an heir. He had responsibilities. When Walsingham had died at the eleventh hour, no one had been capable of taking the reins, though both Lord Burghley and the Earl of Essex even now sought to fill his position. Dee was determined that such a fate not befall the office of Royal Occultist.

  That grim thought rattling about his skull, Dee said, “Where did you last see him?” Sly looked at him blankly, and Dee snapped his fingers in irritation. “The dead man, William. You do not know his name, but you have seen him of late? Yes? Then where?”

  “The Theatre,” Sly said.

  “Which theatre?”

  “The Theatre, Master. Here in Shoreditch, and nearby, not a half-mile past Bishopsgate. Owned by a friend of mine,” Sly said, gracefully side-stepping a woman with a yoke of water-casks across her shoulders as she hurried past.

  Dee frowned. Painful experience had taught him that when Sly said “friend”, he meant any number of things. But it was a thread in need of tugging. “Let us go there at once. I like not the foul humours of this place, and would be shed of it as soon as possible.”

  “Shoreditch isn’t so bad, Master. A bit lively,” Sly said, hurrying after Dee. Shoreditch was just outside the jurisdiction of the city fathers, making it attractive to the unlawful and disorderly alike. It harboured the dissolute in all their varied guises and was notorious for its brothels and gaming houses.

  “To die in Shoreditch would be to ensure a miserable afterlife, William,�
�� Dee said. He cast about darkly. There were people everywhere, all going about their business at once, and in a great hurry. Somewhere, a bear roared in pain, and an unseen crowd set up a hue and cry.

  Dee flinched back as a drunken man collapsed in the street, emptying the contents of his stomach. Shoreditch and its environs were a sour brown patch on London’s vibrant peel. Even at its most cheerful, it echoed with foul emanations — the worst of man, cast into the air and woven into every breath. For Dee, who had trained his mind and soul to see and feel beyond the harsh realm of the waking world, it was akin to striding hip-deep through a sewer.

  It was even worse now, with the plague. Both of them. Boarded up windows glared blindly from either side of the narrow street, and watchmen stood guard. Dee could hear weeping and cursing from those sealed apertures, and he flinched away from the emanations of grief and madness. There were things growing in those places, dark seeds soon to flower. But they were not his problem, not yet. And perhaps not at all. He glanced at Sly, again wondering whether his apprentice would be able to shoulder the burden.

  “Master – look out!” Sly barked. He caught hold of Dee’s arm and jerked him close. Dee was about to berate his apprentice when he saw the woman staggering past, muttering to herself. Her lesions were no less pronounced than those of the dead man, and her murmurings, though nonsensical, had the air of repetition. She pawed at herself as she stumbled away, scattering people to either side of the street. Urchins threw gobbets of mud and dung at her, but lost in her madness as she was, she paid them no heed.

  She was not alone. Other Afflicted crouched in doorways or alleys, rocking back and forth and mumbling. Dee hesitated, listening, trying to discern some meaning in the noise. There was something familiar about it, about the words which were not words, at least not in any language he recognized. And yet still, he had heard it before. He tugged on his earlobe. “So many of them,” he said.

  “Shoreditch has never suffered a lack of the witless and the mad, but this is something else again,” Sly said. “It sounds almost like they’re...singing.” The voices of the Afflicted rose and fell arhythmically, and they weighed heavily and strange upon the air.

  “No. Not singing. Chanting,” Dee said. And not just a chant. It was as if it was layered over another sound altogether. Like a rumble of distant thunder. Or the growl of some unseen beast. He looked up at the sky, and considered the clouds. Afternoon was waning into early evening, and the sky was growing dark.

  Sly’s hand fell to his sword. “Chanting what?”

  “I do not know. But it is all different... As if they are reciting from different pages,” Dee said, shaking his head. He looked at Sly. “Hearing it now, all at once... There is a strange sort regularity to it. A commonality. Why are they all clustered here?”

  “Perhaps the answer lies in there,” Sly said. Dee turned. “The Theatre,” Sly continued, with a gesture. “I fear it has seen better days.”

  The Theatre was a rough-shaped timber building, with a tile roof. It had been an inn once, Dee thought, as Sly led him into the seemingly deserted playhouse. It was midday, and he’d expected at least a few faces. But there were none to be seen.

  “Should it be so empty?” Dee asked.

  “No,” Sly said. “I noticed a bill of closure on the postern as we came in.”

  “You are observant, William,” Dee said, silently chiding himself for having missed it.

  “As you have taught me to be, Master,” Sly said. As they entered, Dee saw three galleries surrounded the open yard. From one side extended a thrust stage, and the yard was cobbled. Dee thought it resembled a layman’s attempt to replicate one of the great Roman amphitheatres of old. “And there he is,” Sly said. “The man himself.”

  Dee saw a short, stocky man sitting on the stage, a drinking jack in one hand and a pipe in the other. The man took a forlorn pull from the jack, and then an equally desolate puff on the pipe. He didn’t seem to enjoy either.

  “There’s my old friend Burbage,” Sly called, as he strode forward, arms wide. “Where are your players, Master Cuthbert? Has the Widow Brayne driven you out of business at last? Or has competition from The Curtain grown too great?”

  “William Sly, as I live and breathe,” Burbage said, barely stirring.

  “And this is Master Dee — Dr. John Dee, late of Mortlake,” Sly said. Burbage gave no sign that he recognized Dee’s name. Something neither unusual nor entirely unwelcome, from Dee’s perspective. Especially in these uncertain times. It was a short walk from court magician to heretical witch, and one he had no intention of taking.

  “Why are you here, William? I have no need of a Porrex for the Seven Deadly Sins this season, or any other I fear,” Burbage began. Sly gestured frantically. Dee restrained a smile. It seemed that his apprentice had not entirely given up on walking the boards, whatever his assertions to the contrary.

  “Where are your patrons, Cuthbert? Where are the actors, the hired men?” Sly said.

  “Gone, gone, and gone,” Burbage said, taking another pull from his pipe. “Plague, William. Didn’t you see them all, out there?”

  “Who? The Afflicted?”

  “My patrons,” Burbage said, spreading his arms. Ale sloshed onto the boards. “The watch closed me down yester eve, citing unsanitary conditions, the bastards. Chased everyone who could walk away. And all because a few loons decided to gibber in the wrong ears.” He peered at Dee in suspicion. “Sly called you doctor. Are you a physician, then? Come to board me up in this waste of money?”

  “That would be of little help, in this instance,” Dee said. The pestilence spread like wildfire in cramped conditions — tenements, the holds of ships and playhouses all made for fertile ground. But this was no normal epidemic. It struck suddenly and without warning. And until now, they’d had no inkling as to the cause. He looked at Burbage. “Then they were overcome during a performance?”

  “Not really a performance, as such. A reading,” Burbage said. “They’ve done a fair few readings, these past weeks. Not just here. At The Curtain too.” He said the name as if it were a curse. “And at The Lion and Crow.”

  Dee looked at Sly, who said, “A reading is a way of testing out material before a full performance. And a way to wet the punters’ appetites for the full meal. A penny buys a scene.”

  “What was this material?” Dee asked.

  “A few pages from a play they’ll be performing tonight I believe — though not here, more’s the pity.” Burbage gestured over his shoulder with his pipe. “They left a few of them behind, I think, if you’d like to look at them.”

  “Oh yes, I would indeed,” Dee said. Burbage heaved himself to his feet and ambled offstage. Dee turned to Sly. “I believe I have the shape of it at last, William. Though not the reason.”

  “A play?”

  “The written word has ever been both blessing and curse to mankind. It is a door by which man may unlock knowledge and passion both, or find his deepest secrets laid bare.” Dee turned. One of the Afflicted had wandered into the yard. “There are certain forces which regard mortal flesh as nothing more than clay, or, in this case, parchment. They burn themselves into the mind and body as easily as you or I might make a note in a ledger,” he continued, watching the afflicted man stumble around the edges of the yard. “But they must first be read or spoken aloud to kindle that all-consuming fire.”

  “But in a play?”

  “Where better? A play is but a story, and a story is most combustible – it can inflame men, and consume them utterly, if they are not wary. This plague has its origin in the playhouses, I’m certain of it. Grab him, please.”

  Sly turned. “What?”

  “Grab him.” Dee was pointing at the wretch. “If I am to prove my theory, I will need a comparison.”

  Sly hesitated, but moved to obey. He snatched up a coil of curtain rope as he trotted towards his prey. Dee turned back to the stage, as Burbage reappeared, a sheaf of papers in hand.

  The theatre-ow
ner squinted. “What’s William up to? And who’s that he’s scuffling with?”

  “One of your patrons come to complain. Is that it?”

  Burbage handed the papers over, still watching Sly. “They left in a hurry. Should you help him?” Dee heard a cry, but didn’t turn around. Sly was many things, but milk-blooded he was not.

  “No. And who were they?” Dee asked, as he scanned the cramped scrawl that filled the pages. It was indeed a play. The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York and the Death of Good King Henry the Sixth. It was a good one, he suspected, though he was no judge of such things. Words and phrases had been crossed out and replaced with others. His flesh prickled as he read these revisions, and his stomach lurched. To anyone else they would seem nothing more than gibberish, but Dee recognized the pattern, if not the meaning.

  “Lord Strange’s Men.”

  Dee looked up. Sly had mentioned them earlier, but the meaning of the name had only just now penetrated. “By which you mean Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange?” Stanley was a well-known supporter of the arts.

  “The very same. He’s their patron. And a motley crew they are...Kempe, Pope, Bryan… even my own brother, Richard. And that debauch’d scribbler, Shakespeare,” Burbage said. “This is his latest. He owes me coin, the bastard.”

  “Will owes everyone coin, though he never spends any,” Sly said. He had the Afflicted tied hand and foot, and a swelling bruise decorated the unconscious fellow’s face. He caught Dee’s look and shrugged.

  “I had to play harshly with him.”

  “So long as you brought him, I care not,” Dee said. He sank down beside the unconscious man. He looked back and forth between man and paper. “Ha! See. Look here, William. You see this — no! Do not read it. Merely look,” Dee said.

  “Words,” Sly said, in a hushed voice. “Those strange words on the page. How is that possible?” He looked at the paper more closely. “This is Will’s scrawl, or I’m a fool.” He shook his head. “What have you done now, Will? What are those words? Not French or Latin. Moorish?”