Black Death

by M. J. Trow

  His examination finished, Forman turned to his apprentices and gestured for them to form their usual line, as they waited for instructions.

  ‘As you all know,’ he began, ‘the theatres are closed and people are staying indoors as much as they can. This means, of course, that the spread of the Pestilence is slowing …’

  Gerard raised an arm and cried, ‘Huzzah!’

  ‘… which is not, of course, unalloyed joy for us, welcome though the news must be to the populace at large.’

  Gerard lowered his arm as slowly as possible, wishing that his cheer was not still ringing in the rafters.

  ‘We are welcome in many houses, of course, with our healing and comforting words, but my request to you today is that you all pack a bag – a modest bag, because the universe will provide, as you all know – and go into the highways and byways, bringing succour and comfort where you may. Today is …’ he looked up vaguely. He knew perfectly well what day it was, but it was better to be the vague magus than the whip-smart man of business, especially when sending his boys out on a wild-goose chase.

  ‘Wednesday, Master,’ three voices chorused.

  ‘Thank you.’ He beamed at them and rubbed his hands together. ‘Don’t let me keep you. I would like to see you back here at noon on Tuesday next.’

  ‘But … where shall we go, Master?’ Matthias liked his home comforts. Sleeping under a hedge wasn’t really his style.

  Forman waved an airy hand. ‘Where’er you will,’ he said. ‘Let the air and spirits of the air guide you. Take a horse each from the usual livery – tell the ostler to put it on the account.’ He beamed at them again and then grew serious. ‘But if I find any of you have beetled off home to mother, auntie, be they who they may, it will go worse with you, I promise.’ He clapped his hands and a newt fell gratefully to the floor and scuttled off. ‘Now – off you go. Until Tuesday next.’

  They made for the door, grabbing their bags from the hooks on the wall.

  ‘At noon.’

  And they were gone.

  Marlowe and the girl swung into step with each other; to anyone passing, they would have looked like old friends. She kept her hands demurely at her waist and her eyes downcast. He waited patiently for her to begin her tale.

  They were almost out of the abyss where she lived and into some streets with light, air and life before she spoke. ‘He wasn’t so bad, you know, Master Marlowe.’

  ‘Dominus Greene?’ Marlowe just needed to be sure she wasn’t talking about her oaf of a brother.

  ‘Who else?’ she chuckled. ‘I will never be heard to say that Billy is not so bad. Billy is about as bad as a person can be, but he didn’t kill Robyn, that I know. Mrs Isam would never let Billy through the door. He scared the other gentlemen and none of the girls would let him near them. So …’ She shrugged a grubby shoulder and then pulled modestly at her slipping bodice. All very well to allow everything to pop out pertly for money, but she didn’t flaunt her wares for free.

  ‘So, you are one of Mrs Isam’s girls?’ Marlowe needed to be sure.

  ‘Was. Was one of her girls. She threw me out when Robyn died. Bad luck, she said.’

  ‘Bad luck for Dominus Greene, to be sure.’ Marlowe spoke mildly, but she was immediately up in arms.

  ‘I never hurt him,’ she said. ‘I … I won’t say I loved Robyn – he wasn’t easy to love, poor man. But he was never cruel to me and, to be honest, he didn’t bother me much in that way, if you understand me.’

  Marlowe did.

  ‘He said he liked to have me near him, to stop Death from talking to him. And he taught me some things. Some Latin, like I done before. And he was teaching me to read. But his books were hard, so … I can read a bit, though.’

  Marlowe thought to himself how like Greene that was. Take a girl from the street, not use her for what she was made and then make her unsuited for her profession. But he could also see something in the girl – some spark, some deep, secret place – and that made him understand, just a little. ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Though I expect you keep that to yourself, do you?’

  She laughed. ‘You are very wise, Master Marlowe.’

  ‘Tell me about Mistress Isam’s house.’

  ‘There is but little to tell,’ the girl said. ‘We are usually five or six girls, usually with regular visitors. Mrs Isam deals with anyone with …’ she looked up under her lashes, ‘… special tastes. She feeds us well. We have some brandy wine at bedtime, though when that is can be anybody’s guess, sometimes. That’s why being Robyn’s special girl was so nice. He kept very regular hours, bed with the sun, and wanted me to sleep beside him every night. So, you can imagine, Master Marlowe, it’s hard to be back on the street again. I would never have harmed him. It would be like harming myself.’

  Marlowe mulled it over. Mrs Isam was notorious, of course, but he would be interested to know who her special visitors were, nonetheless. He could get that list later. For now, he needed to know more about Greene’s milieu before he died. ‘I assume, therefore,’ he said, ‘that if you were otherwise busy, Dominus Greene did not avail himself of …’

  She turned around, hands on hips, careless now of her slipping bodice, to the joy of passing apprentices. ‘Robyn wasn’t like that, I told you. He just wanted company. Yes, I was sometimes otherwise busy, as you put it. A girl has to live and he wasn’t rich. But then, someone else from the house would sit with him. Mrs Isam, sometimes. Or her nephew, if he was there. She has a sister as well, a comfortable body and I would be willing to bet that had she been willing, Robyn would have preferred her company to mine. He was still in love with his wife, you know, Doll, though she treated him like dirt.’ She looked pensive. ‘Robyn rather liked being treated badly. Mrs Isam offered to treat him really badly, once, but he threw her down the stairs for her trouble. She almost broke her neck.’

  Marlowe looked at the girl and smiled. Sometimes, he wondered what was the more extraordinary, fact or fiction. If he put that scene in one of his plays, it would be laughed off the stage as unrealistic.

  ‘So, I think, Master Marlowe, that, miss the strange creature though I do, there is nothing to be gained in digging up Robyn’s past.’

  Marlowe’s heart skipped a beat then steadied – her innocent words were close enough to the truth, in all conscience.

  ‘Leave him to lie in peace. To rot, as he always said he would, and be food for the worms.’ She looked up at him and, to the playwright’s surprise, her eyes were bright with unshed tears. ‘And please, just once, for me, call him Robyn. There is so much hatred in everyone’s voice when they call him Dominus Greene. It’s hard to hate someone called Robyn, don’t you think?’

  Marlowe smiled down at her and brushed a tear from her cheek with a gentle thumb. ‘For you, Mistress Jackman,’ he said, ‘for you and you alone, I will let Robyn rest in peace.’

  ‘Ress kwi ass ket in par chay.’

  ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ he said, and pressed a coin into her hand. ‘Thank you for your company.’ And he turned and was gone.

  The three sorcerer’s apprentices found themselves out on the street in a state of some confusion. They knew that times had become a little harder with real Pestilence stalking the land, but they didn’t think they would be sent out into the land in question in quite so peremptory a fashion. Forman had always made it clear that he was training them for the day when they could go and spread his words among those not fortunate enough to live in London. They just didn’t know that day would be today.

  ‘So, where are you planning to go?’ Timothy asked the others. ‘Don’t forget, we are not to go to family or friends.’

  Matthias snorted. ‘I don’t see how he would know. I’m planning to go home for a day or two, perhaps talk one of my mother’s friends into writing me a testimonial of some kind, then go back.’ He looked at the other two. ‘You?’

  Gerard was shocked. ‘He will know, Matthias. He will see you in the glass.’

  Matthias rai
sed an eyebrow. What an innocent country boy Gerard was. ‘I don’t think the glass is real, Gerard, do you?’ he said, condescendingly. ‘How can a piece of crystal tell him anything?’ He gave a derisive snort.

  ‘I think you should take all this more seriously, Matthias, I really do.’ Gerard was getting quite upset. ‘You know the master knows things that ordinary mortals can’t know. He can speak to spirits, you know he can. We’ve all seen him do it.’

  ‘I’ve seen him talking to himself, yes.’ Timothy noted with an inward smile that, although Matthias was keen to show his disdain, he was still making sure that his voice was low and they were moving away from the door. ‘It doesn’t prove there were spirits though, does it? And what about all those poor creatures he puts up his sleeves every morning?’

  ‘I asked him that,’ Gerard said. ‘I don’t think that a sleeve is a healthy place for any of God’s creatures. He said that he put them there in case someone unworthy expected a miracle. Then, he would use one of the animals. In case … in case a believer was nearby and …’ Gerard was running out of excuses. They had sounded so convincing in Forman’s mouth.

  ‘Yes, well, if you say so,’ Matthias said, clapping the lad on the back in friendly fashion. As a man with family money, a scholar of a University, he didn’t really need Forman’s apprenticeship. But for now, it suited his purpose. It was really a matter of waiting until he had the secret of the massage and he would be out of there, like a rat up a pipe. ‘You, Tim? Where are you off to?’

  Timothy looked thoughtful. ‘I am going into the world, as the master asked. It will be a challenge I shall enjoy, I think. What I will be seeking is somewhere that the Pestilence has not yet reached. I will teach them about herbs, how to stop the sickness in its tracks. I will go from house to house; I think that gathering folk together is not a good idea. That’s why they have closed the theatres and I won’t go against that. I am not sure which way I will ride. I will let the horse decide.’

  Matthias laughed. He had hired horses from Forman’s livery before. ‘In that case, you will be spending the week in a stall in a stable. None of those horses has the strength to go far or fast and they have even less will.’

  ‘I don’t think I will ride,’ Gerard said. ‘I just intend to walk until I find a meadow and a stream. There, I will put up a tent and wait for folk to come to me for healing.’

  ‘That happens, does it?’ Timothy didn’t speak unkindly. He just wanted to know.

  ‘I have never seen it done,’ Gerard said, seriously. ‘But if I saw a tent pitched in a meadow by a stream, I think I would want to know who was in it. And if I was sick … or knew someone who was sick … I might …’ The light of enthusiasm died in his eyes. ‘But in any case,’ he said, giving himself a shake, ‘if I don’t try, I’ll never know.’

  ‘And anyway,’ Matthias chimed in, ‘the master might be watching.’

  Gerard looked at him sternly. ‘Will be watching, Matthias,’ he said. ‘Will be watching!’

  They had arrived at the livery stable, perhaps not the best in town, but certainly the cheapest. And it did have commanding views of the abbey. Matthias stuck his head round the door and called for the stable boy, who shambled out, carrying a tangle of harness over his arm. He looked at them unenthusiastically. He had been told not to give Forman or his boys any more credit, but if he didn’t send a few horses out soon, they would be out of hay. He would rather the beasts dropped with starvation on someone else’s watch, not his.

  ‘Three, no, two horses, lad, and make it quick,’ Matthias said.

  ‘Oh, sir,’ the stable boy said, ‘I can’t let two of you gentlemen share a horse. T’ain’t natural. It’s like them Templars of olden days. Two on a horse, t’ain’t—’

  ‘No, I do know,’ Matthias said, looming over the lad. ‘My friend here is on foot. He has just walked with us to be friendly.’

  ‘Oh. Ar. Two it is, then, sir. I got a nice grey here, if you’d like it. And a roan.’

  ‘Is that the same grey I had last time?’ Timothy asked. ‘The one with one leg shorter than the others?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say shorter …’ the lad looked shifty.

  ‘What would you say, then?’ Timothy had taken a nasty tumble and wasn’t keen to repeat the experience.

  ‘More … later. That’s it, later.’

  ‘I see,’ Matthias said. ‘One leg is slower than the others. Is that it?’

  The stable boy smiled. ‘Yes, that’s it, sir. Easily fixed if you just give him a bit of time. Patient, that’s what you’ve got to be with horses.’

  ‘No.’ Timothy was adamant. ‘I don’t want the grey. What else have you got?’

  ‘Umm …’ the lad didn’t want to give them anything decent, not with the thick bundle of unpaid notes in the tack room. ‘I’ve got a nice black. White blaze on the nose. Handsome beast.’

  ‘Temper like the Devil,’ Matthias said. ‘What else?’

  ‘This chestnut’s a nice well-tempered mare. In foal, so a bit slow, but you will fit her nicely, sir,’ the lad said to Timothy. ‘You’re nice and light. She’ll give you no trouble.’

  The mare looked huge. It would be like riding a barrel. ‘When is she due to foal?’ Gerard, the country boy, couldn’t help but be concerned.

  ‘When are you due back?’

  ‘Next Tuesday.’

  ‘Make it Monday and all will be well,’ the stable boy assured them. ‘I would imagine. Anyway, gents, I can’t stand here all day. The roan and the chestnut?’

  Matthias and Timothy shrugged and nodded. It was pointless standing here arguing when there was obviously nothing better on offer. The lad tacked the horses up and soon the three apprentices were off on their travels, to who knew where.

  ‘So … what we gonna do, then?’ Hal Dignam was wiping the grease from his fingers all over the curtain at the Curtain.

  ‘You mean now,’ Will Kemp asked him, ‘or for the rest of our lives?’

  ‘See, that’s your trouble, Will,’ Dignam prodded the man in the shoulder. ‘For a comedian, you’re the gloomiest bastard I know. Always looking on the dark side.’ He nudged the man hard. ‘It might never happen, you know.’

  ‘It has,’ Kemp all but shouted at him. ‘They’ve closed the bloody theatres.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Dignam reached for his goatskin wine sack and took a swig, ‘but that’s just one of life’s little ups and downs. Tilney will see sense shortly and it’ll all be on again. You’ll see.’

  ‘Sense and Master of the Revels don’t belong in the same sentence, Hal. I know; I’ve talked to him.’

  ‘So, what we gonna do, then?’

  Kemp sighed. He slipped a groat out of his purse. ‘Call it,’ he said, tossing the coin into the air.

  ‘Heads,’ Dignam said, as his partner in rhyme caught the coin.

  ‘It’s tails,’ Kemp said. It was the story of both their lives.

  ‘So, what are we gonna do, then?’

  ‘Bedlam.’ Kemp got up and tugged his jerkin down. ‘Poke some lunatics.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Dignam got up too and slung the sack over his shoulder. ‘What would it have been if it had been heads?’

  Kemp looked at him, stone-faced. ‘We’d have gone to the Tower and asked that nice Master Topcliffe to pull our teeth out one by one.’

  EIGHT

  Matthias had an easy journey, in part because he knew where he was going and also because he was a reasonable horseman. His roan was unremarkable, except for being a bit short in wind but, with a journey of only just over twenty miles, she would suffice. Matthias’s father had an ample stable, should the mood come upon his son for a ride. But Matthias’s plan for the coming week was to eat decent food, sleep in a bed on his own – or not, as the fancy took him – and not get up until noon. He stretched in the saddle, just thinking about it. He let his mother’s friends wander past his mind’s eye. He wanted to give something in exchange for the testimonial but he wasn’t about to waste what natural talents he had
on any woman who was not deserving. And in Matthias’s mind, deserving meant having a body which still had a bit of bounce in it and a face that didn’t need to be covered by a pillow. With those criteria always in mind, there were a fair few to choose from. He had not yet managed to be present when his master’s special massage was being performed, but from the garbled mutterings from Timothy when dreaming, he had a few inklings of how to proceed.

  Matthias and his nag had different welcomes. The man’s mother cried, hugged, yelled for the cook to make Master Mattie’s favourite pudding. The groom took the horse and tethered it to a tree in the furthest paddock. But in their way, they both enjoyed their greetings. Matthias put up with the primping and kissing with good grace and the horse had grass instead of musty hay. It was going to be a good week, the last pampering before the Fall gave way to winter, some fattening up for the cold months ahead for both of them.

  ‘You went to see the Lord Admiral?’ Philip Henslowe couldn’t believe his ears.

  ‘I did.’ Will Shaxsper was proud of himself.

  ‘Hero of the Armada, one of the greatest men in England?’ Henslowe was peering into the actor’s face, trying to read signs of madness there.

  ‘So he’d have us believe,’ Shaxsper nodded.

  ‘When I asked you to get signatures, Will,’ Henslowe explained, ‘I was rather thinking somebody below the rank of God.’

  Shaxsper looked at the man, hunched in his attic room at the Rose, the coffers nearly empty, the hourglass run out. ‘I thought you were serious about this petition thing,’ he said.

  ‘I am,’ Henslowe assured him. ‘I am.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then. The Lord Admiral has his own troupe of actors, doesn’t he? What are they called, now? Oh, yes, the clue’s in the title, isn’t it? The Lord Admiral’s Men.’

  ‘Don’t be flippant with me, Shaxsper!’ Henslowe snapped. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’