Black Death

by M. J. Trow

  ‘That’s what I wasn’t ready for,’ Marlowe smiled at him. ‘A second arsehole in the night. I must be getting old. And you,’ he looked the man up and down, ‘you’re not as old as you look, are you?’ He reached out to squeeze the man’s bicep. ‘Still wiry. Strong. And as handy with a club as your friend here. You swung it pretty well from behind. Let’s see how you do from the front.’

  Marlowe crouched in a duellist’s pose, the dagger blade flashing in his hand. He threw it in quick succession from one hand to the other and the proctor lost his nerve, stumbling backwards until he collided with the scholars, who pushed and jostled him, revelling in their chance.

  ‘Now, lads,’ Marlowe shook a disapproving finger at them, ‘I’m sure the proctor here has your best interests at heart.’ And he was drowned out with guffaws. Marlowe lunged forward, the dagger sheathed now and he kicked the proctor into the street. It was more bad luck that the man landed in a freshly deposited cowpat and this gave rise to more applause and laughter from the scholars.

  ‘What is all this noise?’ A voice from behind them brought quiet.

  Marlowe turned and bowed. Not, this time, as a Convictus Secundus to a Master, but as a London gentleman who could have this man for breakfast. ‘Ah, Doctor Andrewes,’ he said, unsmiling. ‘This, I believe, belongs to you.’ He threw the woven badge at the man.

  ‘What’s this?’ Andrewes frowned, catching it cleanly.

  ‘Don’t you recognize the coat of arms of your own college, sir?’ Marlowe asked. ‘Specifically, it comes from the robe of this oaf at my feet. He didn’t wear it the other night when he met me on Parker’s Piece and attempted to knock my head off. Now,’ he closed to the man as the scholars watched in silence, their eyes wide, ‘answer me one question. Whose idea was it to send these two? Harvey’s or yours?’

  For a moment, Andrewes toyed with brazening it out. His proctors were out of it, one barely conscious, the other out on the road covered in shit. He knew all too well that the scholars of his own college hated his guts, so he’d get no support there. ‘I don’t know what—’ he began, but he got no further.

  Marlowe had him fast by his Puritan collar and hissed into his face, ‘Out of respect for your learning, Master,’ he said, ‘and your position in this university, I will not subject you to the punishment you deserve. I will be in Cambridge for a day or two longer. And if, in that time, I see you again, I will cut off your membrum virile, as scholars of your status say.’

  For a moment, there was silence. Then Andrewes tore himself free of Marlowe and stumbled backwards, running towards his lodgings as though the fiends of Hell were after him. And in a sense, they were, because the scholars were racing him to the door. And they all got there first.

  Lancelot Andrewes slammed the door of his private chambers shut. The college bell was tolling the scholars to their classes, so one of the proctors at least must have been back on his feet. He heard the clamour die down as the scholars drifted away. This was a day to remember.

  ‘One thing more.’

  Andrewes spun round, clutching his gown against his throat. Kit Marlowe stood there, looking for all the world as if he had just walked through the wall.

  ‘How …?’ but the Master of Pembroke Hall was lost for words.

  ‘Gabriel Harvey,’ Marlowe said. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Gone,’ Andrewes gasped. ‘Back to London. Urgent business, he said.’

  Marlowe smiled. ‘I’m sure he did.’

  There was little chance that Edmund Tilney would see fifty-seven again. His piggy little eyes were flashing fire that morning as he passed the Queen’s guards patrolling Whitehall. His brain, his tongue, his self-importance were as active as ever; it was just his knees that were letting him down. There had been a time when he would have bounded up Burghley’s stairs with the speed and grace of a hart. Now, he stopped and grumbled on every riser. Finally, he reached the inner sanctum, which he swore got higher every time he went there – typical Burghley, the weasel.

  ‘Is this true?’ he screamed, waving a piece of parchment in the face of Her Majesty’s Secretary of State.

  Burghley looked up at him and quietly put down his quill. ‘Good morning, Master Tilney,’ he said. ‘Is what true? I can read many languages. I can read things upside down. Cyphers I can either read or have a man who can. But things waving about are beyond even my skills.’ His acid smile could have etched glass.

  ‘This …’ Tilney was almost speechless with indignation, ‘this decree. It’s all over London, pinned to any wall and tree your vandals can find.’

  ‘It’s how we spread the news,’ Burghley told him, spreading his arms as if to demonstrate.

  ‘But … but you’ve closed the theatres!’

  ‘Of course I have,’ the Queen’s Secretary said, folding his arms. ‘And if I could, I’d close every alehouse, church and bawdy house, too. I have the Lord Mayor’s backing.’

  ‘Bugger the Lord Mayor!’ Tilney snapped. ‘What you and he decide to do with the rest of London is up to you, but the theatre is my domain. I am Master of the Revels.’

  ‘Indeed you are,’ Burghley sighed, ‘and as such, it is your responsibility to provide entertainment for Her Majesty and to censor such dramatic material as might give offence. The actual opening and closing of theatres is a civic issue beyond your jurisdiction.’

  ‘But, why?’ Tilney ripped off his feathered cap and stood there like a petulant schoolboy.

  Burghley frowned, looking up at the man. ‘It may or may not have reached your delicate ears, Edmund, but the Pestilence is abroad in London. I have consulted with Dr Dee and with Simon Forman. All right, they don’t agree on the cause of said disease – that would be too much to hope for – but they do concur that theatres are the most dangerous means of spreading the damned thing. Let’s confine it as best we can.’

  Tilney frowned. ‘Do you know what Alleyn’s going to say? Burbage? And don’t get me started on Philip Henslowe.’

  ‘He’s done what?’ Philip Henslowe had turned a rather nasty shade of purple.

  ‘Closed the theatres.’ Will Shaxsper wasn’t the Prince of Condé this morning. He was just a glover’s son from Stratford who was beginning to think that the forest of Arden suddenly had a strange lure. He tentatively passed what ironically looked like a playbill to the theatre manager, afraid that Henslowe might snatch his hand off at the wrist.

  ‘Pestilence, my arse!’ Henslowe growled. ‘We’ve had the Pestilence in London all my life. And if it’s not that, it’s the sweating sickness. In my old grandame’s day, you hung a dead bloody rat around your neck and got on with it.’ He glared at Shaxsper, who opened his mouth to speak, but Henslowe hadn’t finished. ‘The trouble with Lord Kiss My Backside Burghley is that he doesn’t have to work for a living.’ Henslowe strode around the Rose’s stage, kicking Tom Sledd’s flats and slapping a practising hautboy player around the back of the head. ‘And stop that bloody racket!’

  He spun around and marched back to Shaxsper. ‘Kit’s going to go spare, Will,’ he muttered, his mind racing with the complexity of the problem. ‘No stage manager. No playwright. And now, no bloody play.’ He whirled away, hands on hips, fingers tapping on his Venetians. Then he was back to the Warwickshire man. ‘How are you at organizing petitions?’

  ‘Petitions?’ Shaxsper repeated. He didn’t like the sound of this. He had a feeling, tucked away at the back of his head where he kept all his kneejerk fight-or-flight reactions, that a man wandering the streets with a page full of signatures was going to attract the attention of Richard Topcliffe or one of his minions at the very least. The Tower was full of nasty contraptions just waiting for men who signed petitions.

  ‘Yes, you know. Thousands of useful idiots complaining about something. In this case, depriving honest Londoners of their culture. We need names, signatures, crosses, I don’t care. And,’ the impresario was creating a plot every bit as mighty as one of Marlowe’s, ‘we’ll take it to the Queen. March on Whitehall. Or
Placentia. Or Nonsuch. Wherever the rancid old bat is living at the moment. You … Frizer, isn’t it?’

  It was. The walking gentleman had seen the posters too and was just contemplating a return to his old day-job of fleecing strangers in town. Though … his mind was whirring, they might be few and far between right now, what with the Pestilence and all …

  ‘Master Henslowe.’ Frizer touched his cap.

  ‘Who’s this?’ The theatre manager noticed a taller man next to him.

  ‘Nicholas Skeres, Master Henslowe,’ Skeres said, a little hurt. He had been at the Rose exactly as long as Ingram Frizer. ‘I was Alexander the Great in Faustus …’

  ‘Yes, yes, marvellous. Marvellous. How are you boys at raising a few likely lads? River types, you know. Boatmen, hauliers, sailors. Lads who don’t mind mixing it and won’t ask too many questions.’

  Frizer and Skeres looked at each other. ‘It’s not the company we usually keep, of course, Master Henslowe,’ Frizer said, ‘but I think we could manage that, for the usual considerations, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Henslowe grinned, clapping an arm around each of them. ‘Of course. Get me fifty. No … better make it a hundred. Tell them there’s free tickets for a play in it.’ He caught the expression on the walking gentlemen’s faces. ‘Oh, all right. Three groats a head. If,’ he insisted, ‘they bring their own clubs.’ He looked up. ‘You still here, Shaxsper?’

  The place was like a mortuary. Even Master Sackerson, in his pit, lay like a dead thing, the mist of October lying like a pall over his tree stump and the half-eaten vegetables somebody had thrown him. There was no flag over the tower, no stagehands drinking smoke outside the gate. The doors were locked and barred, and what was left of an official notice hung forlornly from a single nail.

  ‘Kit! Thank God!’ The playwright turned at the mention of his name to see a distraught-looking Philip Henslowe hurrying towards him, his ruff knocked askew, his gown flapping. ‘Where in Hell have you been?’

  ‘Reliving old times,’ Marlowe said, smiling, ‘one way and another.’

  ‘Riddles!’ Henslowe threw his arm towards the leaden sky. ‘The man gives me riddles!’

  ‘What’s the matter, Henslowe?’ Marlowe asked. He tapped the heavy padlock. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘This,’ Henslowe hit the man with his fist and instantly regretted it. ‘This is Tilney, the overpaid pocky. Not content with squeezing the life out of great literature with Puritan blinkers, he’s now closed the bloody theatres. All of them. Burbage is furious. Alleyn’s demanded his head.’

  ‘The plague?’

  Henslowe nodded. ‘Spreading from Dowgate like a spilled inkwell. Even so, Marlowe, it’s nonsense. The disease is passed by jakes seats, that’s well known. And we don’t have a jakes at the Rose, as you know; not for the public, anyway. I think the Curtain has got one, but that’s the Lord Chamberlain’s Men for you.’

  ‘No Massacre at Paris?’

  ‘No Massacre at Paris. No proceeds. No profits. No pay. Does Tilney offer any compensation? Does he, my arse!’

  ‘It’s not Tilney,’ Marlowe said, ‘it’s Burghley.’

  ‘Really?’ Henslowe hadn’t considered that. ‘Well, if you ask me, it’s a bloody conspiracy. They’re all in on it.’ The theatre manager became confidential. ‘Look, Kit, you’ve got friends in high places. Muse’s Darling and all that; all air and fire. You know people; people in Whitehall, I mean.’

  ‘Do I?’ Marlowe gave Henslowe his wide-eyed look.

  ‘Don’t come the innocent with me, Kit Marlowe. There’s talk you worked for Walsingham.’

  ‘Walsingham’s dead,’ Marlowe reminded him.

  ‘As we’ll all be, of bloody starvation, unless the theatres reopen. Pull some strings, Kit. Have a word.’ Henslowe was nudging Marlowe in the ribs, the ones that still ached from his visit to Cambridge, and he moved away.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, turning back down Maiden Lane, where the Winchester Geese wandered, wondering where their next mark was going to come from. ‘No promises, now.’

  Henslowe watched him go, hope and dejection flitting across his face in turn, like light and shade through sunlit leaves. ‘And see if you can find Tom while you’re at it,’ he said. He would have died rather than admit it, but he was getting a little worried about his stage manager. He pretended to be angry, but had Sledd walked towards him now, he would have greeted him like a long-lost son.

  Marlowe turned as Henslowe spoke, but didn’t catch what he said. Henslowe had that habit and it drove everyone wild; just as you got out of earshot, he added a vital piece to the conversation. But this time, Marlowe was not playing that particular game and just waved a hand and walked on.

  ‘Look, I feel for you, Marlowe, I really do.’ Edmund Tilney had known this day would come. It was not a happy lot, being Master of the Revels. On the one hand, the Queen and her Court had to be entertained. On the other, said Queen didn’t like spending money, so plays were cheaper than masques. On yet another hand, the Puritans believed that plays were an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. And before he knew it, the Master of the Revels had run out of hands. For the past two days, he had been bombarded by actors, playgoers, musicians and set-builders. Everyone, it seemed, with an interest in the drama wanted a word with Edmund Tilney. Richard Burbage had stamped on his foot. Ned Alleyn had threatened to tie his testicles to the cart’s tail. Even the clown, Will Kemp, had hit him with a pig’s bladder. No one could ever accuse Kemp of being subtle. Tempers were short.

  But no one, until today, had actually produced a weapon. Kit Marlowe slowly drew the dagger from the small of his back and proceeded to shred Tilney’s cloak with it; not angrily, but carefully and delicately. Luckily for Tilney, it was hanging behind the door at the time, but it nicely demonstrated Marlowe’s skill with a blade.

  ‘It’s not me!’ Tilney all but screamed, watching the velvet reduced to rags. ‘It’s Lord Burghley. I am merely a cypher.’

  ‘Knew you were,’ Marlowe winked at him and turned to go. ‘Oh,’ he flicked the ruins of the man’s cloak at him, ‘send His Lordship the bill for this, would you?’

  Philip Henslowe had been under the impression that Johanna Sledd was a dear little thing who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. This was partly because he hardly ever took any notice of anything not happening on his stage or in his coffers, and partly because she always dipped a little curtsy and lowered her lashes whenever he went by; she knew on which side her bread was buttered and who did the buttering. So her arrival like a whirlwind in a temper was somewhat of a surprise.

  ‘Where is he?’ she snarled, nose to nose with Henslowe, who had his back to the wall. Literally, the wall of Paris, made of canvas, wood and spit, but it held out against the onslaught, just.

  ‘Who?’ As his lips parted to say the word, Henslowe knew this was a mistake.

  Her eyes narrowed and her teeth bared. ‘Who?’ she hissed. ‘Who? My husband, your stage manager. The man who does everything for everybody. Thomas Sledd, that’s who.’ She backed away, her arms cartwheeling to encompass the entire Rose. ‘None of this would happen without him. No scenery. No rehearsals. No audience.’ She poked Henslowe in the chest. ‘No money.’

  Henslowe reeled as if she had slapped him. Money wasn’t coming in at the moment and that was worrying enough. But really no money, no more money ever. He might have to return to the grocery business. That actually made him feel a little sick. He took a deep breath. ‘Mistress Sledd,’ he began. He never could remember the dratted woman’s name. ‘Please believe me, he isn’t here.’ If he had meant to be comforting, he realized at once he had misspoken.

  ‘Not here?’ She looked frantically from left to right. ‘Not here? But he’s always here!’

  ‘We thought he was at home,’ Henslowe hedged. After his first annoyance at Tom’s absence, he had hardly given it a thought, what with the closure and everything. ‘Or …’

  ‘Or?’ The woman’s eyes were steel.
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  ‘No or. Come on …’ What in the name of Hell was the woman’s name? ‘Come on, my dear woman, you know that Tom is either here or at home. There is nowhere else he would be.’

  ‘But …’ the tears sprang to her eyes. ‘But … where is he?’

  Henslowe risked a punch by gathering her into his arms. He wasn’t a demonstrative man, but, in his own way, he loved Tom Sledd too and he needed comfort as much as she did. ‘We’ll find him for you, never fear.’

  She wiped her nose copiously on his already dishevelled ruff. ‘Where’s Master Marlowe?’ she muttered. ‘He’ll find Tom.’

  ‘Um … I don’t know where he is either,’ Henslowe had to admit. ‘He went to see if he could sort out this little misunderstanding about closing the theatres and who knows where that will take him. And of course, with the theatres closed, he has no need to be here, no rehearsal, no rewrites … not that he does rewrites anyway … where was I?’

  ‘Where were you?’ Johanna Sledd was beginning to gather speed again. ‘You’re here, you useless lump of dung. Where is Tom? Where is Kit? They are the only people I want. And you’ve lost them.’ She wriggled out of Henslowe’s embrace. ‘And let me go, you … you … you creature, you!’

  Then, she punched him. It was a long time coming and he almost welcomed it as he sank to the floor, winded. If there was one thing Philip Henslowe couldn’t bear, it was hanging about waiting for the worst to happen. It was always something of a relief when it did. And today he was finding that when sorrows come, they come not singly, but in battalions.

  ‘He can’t see you,’ the secretary said, trying to reach the door to the inner sanctum before Marlowe did.

  The playwright clicked his fingers. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have worn my cloak of invisibility today.’

  ‘What? No, I mean …’

  But it was all too late. Marlowe was already in the inner chamber, looking down at the diminutive Spymaster hunched at his desk.