Black Death

by M. J. Trow

‘I just thought he’d be the perfect figurehead to take the petition to the Queen. He’s her cousin or some-such; he’s rich; he’s famous; and he’s got a theatrical bent. Who better?’

  ‘What did he say?’

  Shaxsper hesitated. ‘Told me to bugger off. Said he’d heard about me and if I crossed his path again, he’d have to bring up that nonsense about the deer in Charlecote.’

  Henslowe frowned. ‘What nonsense about the deer in Charlecote?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Shaxsper said, a little too quickly perhaps. ‘Long story cut short, he wasn’t interested.’

  ‘Right.’ Henslowe was chewing his lip, thinking on his feet. ‘How many signatures have you got?’

  Shaxsper pulled the rolls of parchment out of his satchel. They looked ominously blank. ‘Er … twenty-three,’ he counted, ‘although I’m not sure “Doxy” and “Sidebollocks” are going to count.’

  Henslowe nodded. ‘As I thought,’ he murmured. ‘So it’ll have to be the fallback plan.’

  ‘The what?’

  Henslowe looked the Warwickshire man up and down. ‘How are you at carrying a flaming torch, Will?’

  Gerard, horseless, wandered aimlessly along, his pack on his back, his trusty stick in his hand. He had spent most of his life in the countryside, and pavements still hurt his feet, whether they were smooth or cobbled. He had not lost his old skills and he navigated by the sun, not easy on this hazy, October day. Even so, he soon found himself on grass not stone, and could smell water which had not already passed through many bodies. He lifted his nose and sniffed – hopefully, the stand of willows ahead would mark a curve in the stream; where there was a curve, there was often a patch of dry shingle, where he could make his camp. A nice trout to add to his carefully stowed bread and apples and he would be a happy man. He was also looking for somewhere sheltered from Forman’s all-seeing eye.

  He walked through the damp grass, looking out for likely kindling for the fire he would light later. He was looking forward to curling up in his tent, without the mad dreams of Timothy or the basso-profundo snoring of Matthias to keep him awake. All he would smell would be the clean scent of crushed grass and the crisp tang of fresh water. His belly would be full of grilled trout and there would be no belching or farting to put him off his food. And if no one came, sick or well, he would have tried his best. And surely, even for Simon Forman, that would be good enough.

  ‘Master Sleford.’ Will Kemp bowed with a flourish only a professional clown could manage. ‘It’s been a while.’

  Roland Sleford had been the Keeper at Bedlam for nearly half Kemp’s lifetime. A clothier by trade, he made a pretty penny on the side from casual visitors like these two, unemployed actors or not. ‘It has, Master Kemp, it has. I trust that Mistress Kemp and all the little Kemps are well?’

  ‘As well as can be expected, Master Sleford, under the circumstances.’

  ‘Quite, quite,’ Sleford nodded sympathetically. ‘Times are hard all round.’ He held out his hand. ‘That’ll be a groat, please. Each.’

  The men paid up.

  ‘Anything good at the moment?’ Dignam asked. ‘New blood, I mean.’

  ‘I’ve got a poet come out of nowhere,’ Sleford pocketed the cash, ‘who’s quite interesting. There’s some bloke who says he’s a theatre stage manager.’

  Kemp guffawed. ‘Well, they don’t come much madder than that, do they?’

  ‘I’ll have to search you gentlemen,’ Sleford apologized. ‘No weapons, pictures, anything that might inflame the senses.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Kemp said and both men extended their arms while Nat and Jack patted their clothes.

  ‘Right, gentlemen.’ Sleford himself slid back the heavy iron grille at the gate. ‘You know the way. No bowling today, I’m afraid. One of my sweet souls brained another with a ball the other day. You can’t be too careful.’

  The visitors were ready for the stench because somebody, in their wisdom, had built Bedlam between two sewers, both of which lay open to the chill October air.

  ‘Which of you wants me first?’ an old crone enquired, demurely slipping off her sackcloth and prancing in the straw. Kemp and Dignam pointed to each other and went the other way. A man was rolling on the uneven flagstones, groaning, his eyes wild. He was tearing his hair and, when he saw Kemp, stopped dead and began counting his fingers, just to assure himself he still had them all.

  ‘See any method in this madness, Hal?’ Kemp asked. He was prodding a reclining girl to see if she reacted.

  ‘Buggered if I do,’ Dignam shrugged. ‘I should be careful, Will; you’ll catch things from her.’

  ‘Will!’ A voice brought them to a halt. ‘Will Kemp. Thank God!’

  They turned to see a face they knew. Tom Sledd was making his way towards them, stepping over the rolling madman and the sleeping girl. He had to fight off the old crone first but he reached them eventually.

  ‘Do I know you, fellow?’ Kemp asked haughtily, in the best tradition he had seen from Ned Alleyn.

  ‘Of course you do, you old bastard!’ Sledd nudged the man in the ribs. ‘And you, Hal. How’ve you been? Get me out of here, will you? You’re a celebrity.’

  ‘Is this lunatic bothering you, gentlemen?’ Jack asked, seeing the scene unfold before him.

  ‘A little,’ Kemp said. That was enough for Jack. His whip snaked and hissed through the air, lashing Sledd round the throat, and he shrank backwards, blood seeping into his crumpled collar.

  ‘Don’t hurt him, though.’ Kemp stayed the gaoler’s hand. ‘He meant no harm.’

  ‘That’s what they all say,’ Jack grunted. ‘But whipping’s all they understand. We have that from the highest medical authorities. That and darkness. If they can’t see anything, they’re not likely to eat it, or worse.’

  ‘Will! Hal! It’s me, Tom. Tom Sledd. From the Rose. Over here!’

  Jack raised the whip again and Sledd shrank into the shadows. ‘If you come this way, gentlemen,’ Nat took over the role of guide, ‘I’ll show you a woman thinks she’s the Queen of Sheba. Got an arse on her the size of Surrey.’

  That sounded promising, and they followed the man down a dark, twisting passageway. ‘What we gonna do about Tom, then, Will?’ Dignam whispered in the echoing chamber.

  ‘Nothing,’ Kemp shrugged. ‘Christ knows how he got himself in here but we’re not going to be the ones who get him out. Knowing Sledd, he’ll have himself branded as an Abram man and make more begging for the rest of his life than you and I have had laughs from audiences.’

  ‘But even so, Will. We should tell someone, perhaps …’ Dignam was cruel, but never as cruel as Kemp; no one does cruelty quite like a clown.

  Kemp wrinkled his monkey face. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘We’ll see. We’ll see.’ Then, raising his voice, ‘Where’s this arse then, gaoler?’

  Timothy’s groins told him very quickly that riding a horse due to foal in less than a week when you were only five and a half feet tall would never be a good idea. He shuffled in the saddle, trying to get comfortable, but that only gave him cramp, so he released one stirrup at a time so he could ease his poor, stretched ligaments. This whole process was a complete waste of time. It was clear that Forman had sent them into the world to save him having to feed them for a week. If they managed to make any money out of it, it would be a bonus, but the saving alone would make it worthwhile. Timothy had noticed little cheeseparing economies in the last week or so and if literal cheeseparing had not yet happened, it could only be a matter of time.

  Timothy came somewhere between Matthias and Gerard when it came to Forman’s skills at scrying. That it could be done, he had no doubt. He had seen the great Dr Dee contact the dead on two occasions and each time had been chilled to the marrow. Dee had done it with no frills, no sparkle and glitter. He had simply sat at a table, a mercury mirror in front of him, and spirits of the long and recently dead had flocked around him, twittering like sparrows. When Forman raised the spirits or spied on distant lands or people far
from home, there was gunpowder, there were explosions, the room rocked with eldritch cries. And yet, no spirits were seen, their messages made no sense, though Forman’s audience went away happier than had Dee’s. Sometimes, Timothy thought, he had chosen too hastily in becoming Forman’s apprentice, but when all was said and done, a roof over your head and quiet in which to work was not easily got in London and it was well known that Dee was old and crotchety and didn’t mix with the great and good much any more. No, Timothy decided, just in case the magus could see all, he would do his best to find a wealthy patron, preferably a widow whose weeds would blind her eyes to his obvious imperfections. He smiled to himself as he imagined the look on Forman’s face when he poured the golden coins onto the table next Tuesday. He clicked his tongue at the mare who ignored him. Easing a groin, he settled down for a long, slow but hopefully ultimately successful ride.

  Eunice Brown sat in the window seat catching the last rays of the October sun. Out of the wind and damp, there was still some heat in it and she stretched her hands out to greet the golden warmth as it crept through the leaded panes. She felt the joints unknot and, as long as she didn’t look down, she could imagine her fingers long, slender, girlish again, not gnarled, dry and painful. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. Hers had been a busy life, compared with many. Happy, compared with most. She had never known a man, so had never had the pains of childbirth. She had never known love and loss, except the love of God, which no one could ever lose. And now, as the end of her life was approaching on soft feet down the passageway of years, she could sit in the sun and bask like a cat, all because a great man had a great heart. She sighed and smiled. Life was good; it didn’t get much better than this.

  For the rest of his life, Philip Henslowe would rue the decision he made on Friday 13 October in the year of his Lord 1592. With no petition worthy of the name and no one of note to act as his spokesman, he met his followers at the appointed time at the Vintry, where the great cranes swung and creaked in the night air.

  They were as ragged an army as any ever seen in London and they carried flaming brands, clubs and pikes. Frizer and Skeres had done their work well and every disaffected apprentice and out-of-work riverman who could be bought with Henslowe’s coin shouldered along the river’s edge, the lights of the palace of Whitehall bobbing ahead. Whitehall Stair was empty. There was no royal barge fluttering with flags and bright with the Queen’s heraldry. There were no guards in their crimson livery and no one was looking up at the walls where Robert Cecil’s men lay in wait.

  The little man was wearing his usual Puritan black, his face pale against the roofs of the buildings behind him. He glanced to his left and to his right, turning briefly to scan the rabbit warren of lanes behind him. Whitehall was not a palace; it was a village, crammed with all the great offices of state and, tonight at least, bristling with pikes, halberds and guns. At his side, a long cloak over his armour, stood Sir Wentworth Astley, commander of the massed Trained Bands and he had been praying for this moment nearly all his life.

  An ill-assorted rabble was making its way along the lapping waters, armed to the teeth and growing more mutinous with every step. Astley could hear them now, growling their discontent, spitting their venom. He could almost smell them. They carried no banners, nothing to say who they were. But Astley knew who led them. And he knew because Robert Cecil knew. Robert Cecil made it his business to know everything. He also made it his business to drip the odd falsehood where it would do most harm. Everybody knew that the Queen didn’t keep court at Whitehall until 17 November when the Accession Day Tilts were held, dashing young courtiers clashing with each other in ever more outrageous fancy dress. But this year, Cecil had leaked the information, the Queen would be in her Presence Chamber from 8 October onwards.

  Cecil watched the army advance, coping as best they could with the rising river, stumbling over the anchor chains that held fast the Queen’s ships and the galleys from the Levant. The watchers on these decks didn’t move. They had extinguished their lights and all was blackness.

  Philip Henslowe was yards now from Whitehall Stair. He had studied the plans carefully and had a good grasp of the tilt yard, the cockpit, courtyards, gardens and orchards. He knew where the Queen’s chapel was and knew that he would find her in the Presence Chamber, playing her virginals most evenings if reports were true. He had no idea that those reports came direct from Robert Cecil, the Spymaster.

  He was just about to give his orders for his men to split, one group to each side of the water gate, when a solitary figure strode out onto the planking alongside the Stair, his buskins ringing on the timbers. He stood with his hands on his hips and a rapier at his side. Then he folded his arms and waited.

  Henslowe raised both arms to bring his rabble to a halt. There was an eerie silence now. Most of the men at Henslowe’s back had expected trouble long before this. They had watched for the pikes and helmets of the Trained Bands, looked for the steady tread of the Watch. And they had seen nothing. Nothing at all. Surely, this one man was not going to deny them entry to the Queen?

  ‘Kit,’ Henslowe hissed, creeping forward. ‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’

  ‘I might ask you the same,’ Marlowe said, a little louder. He used no name because he knew that Whitehall’s walls had ears.

  ‘We’ve come to see the Queen!’ a voice behind Henslowe bellowed. So much for secrecy. Marlowe walked forward, stepping down from the decking into the grey ooze of the Thames mud.

  ‘Her Majesty is not at home,’ he said.

  There was a murmur in the ranks and a jostling broke out.

  ‘You said she’d be here!’ another voice called. ‘Henslowe, you’ve shafted us.’ So much for anonymity.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Marlowe called out and waited for silence. ‘Beyond these walls are two hundred matchlocks of the London Trained Bands. Beyond them are a further two hundred pikes and bills. Oh, and I should have mentioned, there is a demi-culverin pointing at the head of your column.’ He stepped closer, standing almost alongside Henslowe and staring at the leading man behind him. ‘Ever seen what a demi-culverin can do to flesh and bone?’ he asked. ‘The gulls will be feeding off you lads for weeks.’

  There were murmurs and mutterings, followed by shouts and buffetings. Some men swung their clubs towards the wall, ready for an attack. Others stumbled into the water. Suddenly, the portholes of a dozen ships flew upwards with a rattle of chains and a thud of timbers and there were guns on both sides of Henslowe’s army, their muzzles black as night, their hungry mouths open.

  ‘Believe me,’ Marlowe said, quietly, ‘you don’t want to hear the voices of the guns.’

  ‘We only want …’ Henslowe began, but Marlowe hushed him with a raised hand. For a moment, nobody moved.

  ‘We only want,’ another voice said, taking up the theatre manager’s sentence, ‘this popinjay on the end of a meat hook.’

  He lunged for Marlowe, but the poet was quicker. His sword snaked out through the London night, the blade tip ripping through the man’s throat as he fell backwards, choking in the slime at his feet.

  ‘Go home,’ Marlowe said, ‘or that will be the fate of you all.’

  It was Henslowe who blinked first. He spun on his heel and yelled at the mob, ‘You’ll get your money, lads,’ he promised. ‘You have my word. But you’ve done enough for tonight.’ Slowly, they shifted, grumbling still and mutinous. Some spat at the ships, others bashed the palace walls with their clubs. But the fight, if there had ever been any, had gone out of them and they drifted away along the river bank like the flotsam they were. Philip Henslowe was the last to go.

  ‘What price this, Kit?’ he asked. ‘Did you know about this?’

  Marlowe sheathed his sword. ‘Not until earlier today,’ he said, ‘when it was too late to warn you. Go back to the Rose, Henslowe and stay there. I’ll do what I can to sort this madness out.’

  He heard the rattle of bolts behind him and Henslowe was running through th
e mud, for the sake of his reputation if not his life. Wentworth Astley was at Marlowe’s back, his sword-arm extended. ‘Turn, Hell-hound, turn,’ he grated. ‘Who are you, sir, to interfere with the Queen’s business?’

  Marlowe turned as requested. ‘That’s a good line, sir,’ he smiled. ‘I am Christopher Marlowe, the playwright. Should I decide to use the line, I shall of course credit you with it, Master …?’

  ‘Marlowe.’ Robert Cecil had reached the landing stage now. ‘This is Sir Wentworth Astley of the London Trained Bands.’

  Marlowe bowed low.

  ‘Do you know this man, Robert?’ Astley growled, not at all happy with the way the evening had gone.

  ‘After a fashion,’ the little man said. He barely reached Astley’s baldric, but he carried a gravitas all his own. ‘What brought you here, Marlowe?’

  ‘A little bird told me there’d be trouble,’ he said, ‘and you know, Sir Robert, that I can’t abide trouble.’

  ‘I’ll have you in chains for this, sir,’ Astley said. He had not sheathed his sword yet.

  ‘For saving the lives of countless men?’ Marlowe queried. ‘I seriously doubt that, Sir Wentworth.’

  The commander of the Trained Bands had turned purple under his helmet rim but Cecil patted his arm reassuringly. ‘Let it go, Wentworth,’ his murmured. ‘Leave Marlowe to me.’

  Astley slammed his sword home and thundered over the timbers, barking orders to his men.

  ‘Who was their leader?’ Cecil asked Marlowe softly.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Marlowe shrugged. ‘Never seen him before.’

  ‘Not Philip Henslowe, proprietor of the Rose, then?’

  ‘Henslowe?’ Marlowe looked horrified. ‘Good Lord, no. I’ve never seen Master Henslowe get his hands dirty. If he is indeed behind this – and we don’t know that he is – he will have sent somebody else, trust me.’

  Cecil looked his man in the face. He would trust Kit Marlowe when Hell froze over, but for now, that would have to do.

  Eunice always stayed awake late to see in the first few moments of the Lord’s Day. She had never had the good fortune to be able to devote her life entirely to God, as the blessed sisters in France could do, but she tried her best to keep the services, if only in her head. She had heard the great clock in the hall strike the quarter before twelve and since then she had counted the seconds and minutes, so that at midnight she could be composed and ready to greet her Lord, who she knew, one day, would come for her in triumph. She lay on her back, her feet pointing to the footboard, her hands softly crossed on her breast. If tonight was the night she was to be called, she would give the layers-out no trouble. She said her version of a rosary, to count the seconds. She smiled softly to think that if her benefactor could hear her thoughts, perhaps he would not be so good to her. So, she didn’t make a sound as the minute before midnight wound to a close. Sometimes, when the night was still, she could hear the clock beneath her chamber click its cogs before its mighty twelvefold strike, but tonight was windy and she could hear nothing but the sighing in the eaves and the tap of a branch at the window.