by M. J. Trow
A small handful of the great and good of Hampshire had risked the water and had hired coaches on this side of the Solent. They all knew that George Carey had the ear of the Queen and the Masque had been written by the great Christopher Marlowe, he of the mighty line, the Muse’s darling. The Earl of Southampton had had to send his apologies – there was a war on – and now Cecily Meux would never find out what it was he had whispered to Bet Carey that time during a dance at the court of Queen Elizabeth. Bet Carey looked even more dazzling than ever, the pearls in her hair shining in the torchlight and her eyes bright.
‘Lady Carey.’ A gentleman in blue velvet doffed his cap and bowed low. ‘May I say what a pleasure it is to meet you again.’
Across the stage, half hidden by the flats, Tom Sledd turned to Kit Marlowe. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that …?’
‘Nicholas Faunt.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘Yes, it is.’
‘What’s he doing here?’ the stage manager wondered aloud.
‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ the playwright said. ‘Coming for a nibble, Tom?’
‘Nah,’ Sledd said. ‘I’ve got to check things out here. That bloody donkey’s been giving me the evils all day. Now it’s dark I don’t trust him further than I can throw him.’
It was hot in George Carey’s great hall. The governor was wearing a magnificent new doublet, laced with gold and faceted buttons and peacock plumes nodded in his hat. The wine was flowing freely and everybody was tucking into the sweetmeats and morsels of pastry encasing expensive and rare fruits and spices as if they had never eaten before. The cook, peering round a door, shook his head as larks’ tongues were gobbled down as if they were dumplings, raisins soaked in the finest Malmsey were being guzzled as if they were hedgerow fruit.
‘Master Faunt.’ The governor took the projectioner by the arm. ‘May I introduce the author of tonight’s little extravaganza – Master Christopher Marlowe.’
‘Master Marlowe.’ Faunt bowed stiffly. ‘I have heard so much about you.’
‘Really?’ Marlowe returned the salute with a deeper flourish. ‘I’m afraid I’ve never heard of you.’
There was an awkward silence filled by a sudden guffaw from George Carey. ‘Master Faunt is here on behalf of Sir Francis Walsingham,’ he said, ‘who was to have come in the place of the Queen. But, sadly, you know how it is … affairs of state.’
‘Indeed.’ Marlowe smiled and the little knot broke up to mingle, as good guests and hosts should at times like these.
‘Thank you for the ringing vote of confidence,’ Faunt said out of the corner of his mouth when he and Marlowe at last found themselves in a quiet alcove. ‘Never heard of me, indeed.’
‘Sorry, Nicholas.’ Marlowe smiled and raised his glass to Ann Oglander as she glided past. ‘I was not exactly expecting you tonight.’
‘Oh, surely.’ Faunt sipped his wine. ‘A Masque by the great Kit Marlowe. I would not have missed it for the world.’
‘Liar.’ Marlowe bowed to Cecily Meux, who curtsied so deeply he could see just a hint of rouge on the nipples only half-hidden under the gauze of her gown. ‘Why are you really here?’
‘First, to tell George Carey that the Armada is, as of our latest Intelligence, making its way windward to the Lizard. It can only be a matter of time now. I would estimate we have two days, perhaps only one.’
‘And second?’ Marlowe’s glance alighted on Bet Carey, who paused, still on her husband’s arm, and smiled at him. Faunt noticed it but said nothing.
‘Second,’ he said, ‘your cryptic message. In the Holinshed book.’
‘Ah.’ Marlowe was all ears. ‘Phelippes cracked them?’
‘Phelippes didn’t see them,’ Faunt said. ‘Sir Francis understood at once.’
‘Well, out with it, man,’ Marlowe hissed. ‘You can’t keep me dangling. The safety of the Island may depend on it.’
‘Indeed it may,’ Faunt agreed. ‘But it must remain, I fear, a closed book.’
Marlowe looked at the man, wondering how he could get his dagger point under Faunt’s chin without anyone noticing.
‘Let’s just say …’ Faunt may have read the man’s mind because he spoke quickly. ‘They were black propaganda directed against the Queen. Written by a traitor, would be my guess.’
‘So we’re no further forward,’ Marlowe said. He was suddenly aware of little Ester, in her crisp new apron, standing at his elbow with a tray of gingerbread. She was looking up at him, open-mouthed. ‘Thank you, no,’ the poet said.
‘Tut, tut, Master Marlowe,’ Faunt chided. ‘And you so fond of gingerbread.’ And he helped himself to a piece before Avis Carey swept through the room like a sou’wester and whisked the girl away with her. ‘You’ve been here, for God’s sake,’ Faunt hissed when the coast was clear. ‘How much time do you need? Because, believe me, time is running out.’
Matilda Dillington curtsied to Marlowe as she rustled past in her carefully darned finery, covering her face with her fan and making eyes at him.
‘Do you know all the Island ladies?’ Faunt asked, rather irritated at last by this cattle market.
‘Only some,’ Marlowe said. ‘Did you notice anything about them?’
‘Well, apart from the last one, all rather young and lovely.’
‘And alone.’
‘Eh?’
‘Only Bet Carey is with her husband. The others are unescorted.’
‘So?’
‘So.’ Marlowe turned his back to the crowd so that Faunt could see over his shoulder and his words did not carry too far. ‘See that knot of gentlemen in the corner, by the fireplace?’
‘Yes.’ Nicholas Faunt was a master of seeing while appearing to be stone-blind.
‘That’s Henry Meux, Robert Dillington, Henry Oglander. The two on each side of the group are Richard Turney and James Norris. The one with the pie in his face is Edmund Burley.’
‘What of them?’
‘They are the principal gentlemen of the Wight,’ Marlowe said, ‘and the low-life in their midst is John Vaughan.’
‘The pirate Vaughan,’ Faunt said.
‘Don’t tell me you know him.’ Marlowe was amazed.
‘I know of him. So, ironically, does Philip of Spain.’
Marlowe’s eyes widened.
‘He was mentioned in the letters we intercepted between Philip and the Spanish ambassador, when we still had a Spanish ambassador, that is.’
‘There’s something amiss here, Nicholas; I don’t like it.’
‘You gave me the impression that George Carey had no friends.’
‘I did,’ Marlowe said, ‘but there’s having no friends and having no friends. Are you armed?’
Faunt raised an eyebrow. ‘Is Medina Sidonia Captain-General of the Ocean Sea?’ He glanced down to his boot where a dagger-hilt nestled, hidden from the world.
‘You might need that later.’
He caught sight of Tom Sledd, hurrying across the floor, bowing and doffing as he passed more nobs than he’d scraped up shovelsful of pig shit. He bowed low to George Carey who smiled and clapped his hands. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ he called. He waited until the hubbub had died down. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it is time. Pray take your seats for …’ And he paused like the old Queen of the May he was. ‘The Carisbrooke Masque!’ There was a thunderous applause and everyone trooped out to yet more applause and more ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the groundlings.
The audience were settling into their seats, with much less shuffling, cat calling and vegetable hurling than Tom Sledd had ever seen in his life. They were holding playbills that George Carey had had printed down in the town. If his own name was bigger than anyone else’s, it was possibly a typographical error. He would speak to the printer in the morning. Other delights on the programme included a Lovers’ Idyll with music and a song, with no performer’s name against it. Ariel’s Song. What could that be? With a few more shuffles, the audience turned their heads to the great lit house with the stage set up before
its doors and waited.
Tom had decided against the donkey entering from the hall of the mansion as all the other performers would do; Avis Carey was in a very buoyant mood but he didn’t feel that it could possibly survive a pile of donkey shit in the middle of her polished floor. Beside all other considerations, it would present a hazard to her beloved Georgie and that would never do. The animal would be brought in from Stage Right. The other performers were ranged in order of appearance, carefully separated from each other so that there would be no confusing additions. During rehearsals, the Comic Gravediggers had had an upsetting habit of entering with the lovers and Benjamin’s temper was uncertain enough without that additional problem. He had not taken well to the wig and had been found, still in his dress, beating Hell out of the bootboy, who he had heard laughing during his love scene with Tom, accompanied by the braying of Old Adam and the antiphonal braying of Master Bedgberry the castrato.
Tom Sledd was pleased with his own appearance and had decided to let Avis Carey have her head when it came to arranging his costume. He had never worn such splendid clothes and the only question on the mind of the audience would be why someone as handsome and well dressed as him would be in love with a girl in a dress made from an old sheet, with hair like straw and feet that looked like skillets. But, as he surreptitiously stroked his velvet breeches, he hardly cared. As another bonus, the horrible petal-strewer seemed to be quiet, so all was well in his little world of backstage.
He moved to the front of the small assembly and held up his arms for quiet and, by the magic of theatre, everyone obeyed and turned trusting faces towards him. He spoke quietly but clearly. ‘The audience is in, lady and gentlemen. I must ask for quiet now and just be guided by …’ He leaned over to the boot boy who was his runner for the evening. ‘Jeffrye here who will tell you when to come forward through the doors. I wish you all the very best of luck, thank you for all your hard work; you have …’ He threw his arms out in mute affection. ‘Thank you.’
Avis gave him an indulgent look and mouthed the words of her song to herself, under her breath. Benjamin scratched under his wig and hitched up his apple-enhanced breasts. There was a tap at the door and the Masque was on.
Sledd broke every rule in his own book and dodged to one side where he had left a curtain partly open so he could watch the progress of the show. He had a sudden thought and his stage manager’s bowels turned to water. Where was that dratted child? He hadn’t made sure she was tucked away in her place at the back of the audience. She could be anywhere. But where? His eyes swivelled madly and then his attention was caught by an ‘Aaah’ from the gathered people sitting outside in the torchlit dark. He looked and breathed again.
The child was walking like an angel through the audience, strewing petals as though to the manner born. Holding the basket for her, matching his stride to hers, was Kit Marlowe. Before they had set off, he had let her throw some petals over his head and one or two had caught in his curls and some lay artlessly on his shoulders. Only he and Tom Sledd knew how many tries it had taken to make sure they lay so artlessly. The stage manager offered up a prayer to Saint Vitus – no one could hear inside his head and a little Papist superstition now and then wouldn’t harm.
At the lip of the stage, Marlowe hoisted the child up on his shoulder and extended his other arm to embrace the audience. The child, miraculously picking up on the mood, extended her arms too and then, to Tom’s amazement, blew them all a kiss. He closed his eyes – this saint business really worked. The orchestra came in, on the note, all together and Sledd uncrossed his fingers. Who would have thought that things could go so well?
But there was still Sir George to come.
If pauses could be pregnant, this one almost gave birth. At last, Sir George Carey emerged from his own front door and stood centre stage, one hand on his hip, the other across his breast. Marlowe, watching from the wings, saw everybody cheering and clapping. Everybody, that is, except the gentlemen of the Wight. They had ranged themselves to one side of the gallery, their respective ladies on the other. There was no applause here, just silent, grim-faced men with something on their mind.
When all was quiet and the groundlings had stopped shuffling and coughing, the Captain of the Wight held forth, spouting Marlowe’s mighty line: ‘“And here, the Isle doth dance and shine, So far beyond this wit of mine, Encased …”’
But he was hardly past the second line before a shout went up and all eyes turned to the gallery. All the gentlemen of the Wight were on their feet and Henry Meux shouted: ‘We have raised a Bill against you, Carey,’ he bellowed. ‘We demand that piracy be abolished.’
No sooner had he finished but Robert Dillington was adding to his words. ‘That robbery and such like, tending to the utter discredit of the County and the displeasure of Almighty God, be abolished.’
‘That the prize recently taken from the fleet of Spain be turned over to Her Majesty, according to the laws and customs of the sea.’ That was Henry Oglander, glowering at the man across the flickering flames.
John Vaughan forced his way into the centre and leaped up on to the stage. ‘We, the men of the Wight,’ he said levelly to an astonished governor, ‘demand that you lay down your staff and chain of office, that you surrender your goods and chattels and vacate these premises forthwith.’
‘Traitor!’ Carey spat at him.
‘The pot,’ Vaughan shrieked, ‘calling the kettle black.’
‘Guards!’ Carey roared and suddenly the Masque was over. Old Adam brayed hysterically, lashing out with his hind hooves as pikemen and billmen barged their way into the auditorium. Torches were overturned and sparks flew. Men loyal to Carey clashed weapons with men who were not. On the stage, the governor brought his knee up sharply into John Vaughan’s groin and batted him aside. Women and children were screaming.
‘Not the flats!’ Tom Sledd yelled. ‘Not the flats!’ His stage manager’s soul could not bear to see good scenery go to waste.
But a battle was breaking out in front of George Carey’s mansion and this was not in the programme. The groundlings had immediately taken sides and were joining in with a will. This was certainly a whole lot more entertaining than watching a lot of nobs making idiots of themselves in funny clothes, although of course that would have been amusing enough.
‘Look! Look! There!’ It was a guard still on the ramparts who halted the mayhem. ‘The beacon! The beacon!’
They swarmed over Sledd’s stage and Sledd’s seating, dragging half of it down with them. Half of them made for the gatehouse, the rest for the ramparts and the keep. And there it was, out to the west, not one fire but two and a third beyond that, pinpricks of light along the backbone of the Island. Men who had been at each other’s throats a moment ago stood, sweating and panting in disbelief.
The Great Armada had come.
The castle seemed as quiet as death when all the shouting had stopped, when the last carriage had rattled away bearing wives and children back to their homes in the fastnesses of the Wight. They had gone to bolt their doors, to bring in their cattle, to do all the things a woman must do when the men are away, fighting the don. The castle guards had stayed and were shoving enormous planks through even bigger staples in the doors to the gatehouse. The guests from the mainland would be guests a while longer. Bet had persuaded her friends to stay too; Cecily and Ann and, because she hadn’t had the heart to make an exception, Matilda. Their husbands’ behaviour should not be laid at the women’s door. Not now, at least. The castle was always ready for a siege. And now it was here.
Bet Carey sat slumped on a bench at the back of the raked seats still standing in the courtyard. Her men had gone; literally, every one. She wasn’t good with women, but she feared she may have to get used to it, if only for a while. The torches were beginning to gutter now and soon would go out. Would the Spaniards attack in the dark? Would they wait for light? Would they take the castle by main force or would they tap politely on the door? They had guns, she had heard, t
hat could punch holes in the curtain walls as if they were paper. She smiled to herself in the teeth of the end of her world as she remembered Bernardino de Mendoza, the ambassador at Elizabeth’s court, before he was thrown out, lucky to keep his head. She had quite liked the man and he would always call ‘Hola!’ as he walked by or entered a room. Would the Spanish cry ‘Hola!’ at her door? She felt a little trickle of fear run up her back, turning her arms to gooseflesh and making her shiver. Then, from the dark of the stage came a voice, singing so sweetly in a minor key, not loudly but using the acoustic of the wall of the courtyard to give it power.
‘Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell …’
The song faded into antiphony with its own echo and Bet shifted slightly on her seat, aware that she had been holding her breath.
Then the singer, with a stifled sob, sang just two more lines: ‘Ding-dong. Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.’ Ariel’s song died away and there was silence. Then, a door closed softly and Bet knew that Avis, when she saw her again, would be her old, efficient self. They would never be friends, but at least she felt that now they were sisters under the skin.
George Carey had ordered the Carisbrooke beacon to be lit, roaring into flame in its iron brazier. Then he had ordered the Essex Militia out of their canvas and into their armour. Men had tumbled down the hill from the castle in the short summer night, buckling on swords, swinging bandoliers over their shoulders, checking their calivers for fuses and powder; there had been the shouts of the sergeants and the thud of iron-shod boots, a frantic leave-taking as the ladies clung briefly to their men. Then George Carey was riding to the sea.
‘What’s he going to do?’ Martin Carey asked Marlowe, scurrying along to keep up with the man’s stride.
‘He’s your kinsman,’ the poet said, ‘so by rights I should be asking you. But my guess is he’s going to take on the Armada. The question is, will he be single-handed?’
