Alms for Oblivion Read online

  PHILIP GOODEN is the author of Sleep of Death, Death of Kings and The Pale Companion, the first three novels in the Nick Revill series, each of which takes a Shakespeare play as a central theme for the story. A contributor to various short story anthologies, he also works as an editor, most recently on The Mammoth Book of Literary Anecdotes. He lives in Bath.

  Praise for The Nick Revill series

  ‘Welcome to Elizabethan England where . . . Gooden will give you a gratifying taste of the danger and excitement of that lusty place and time.’

  Publishers Weekly

  ‘Philip Gooden brilliantly immerses us in the half-lit world of late Elizabethan London, an atmosphere where, as in the stage-play world, things are not as they seem . . . Gooden’s grasp of the rhythms and diction of the period is accomplished.’

  Catholic Herald

  ‘As usual, Gooden devises a fiendishly intricate mystery in well-realized historical and literary setting.’

  Booklist

  Other titles by the same author

  Sleep of Death

  Death of Kings

  The Pale Companion

  Forthcoming

  Mask of Night

  An Honorable Murderer

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters

  162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Constable,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2003

  This paperback edition published by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2004

  Copyright © Philip Gooden 2003

  The right of Philip Gooden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

  Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN 1-84119-847-1 (pbk)

  ISBN 1-84119-382-8 (hbk)

  eISBN 978-1-47210-382-6

  Printed and bound in the EU

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back

  Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

  A great-sized monster of ingratitude.

  Troilus and Cressida, 3, iii

  Contents

  Vita Brevis

  Corpus Delicti

  Post Mortem

  Alibi

  Habeas Corpus

  Mea Culpa

  Incognito

  Exeunt

  Finis

  Vita Brevis

  My boyhood friend Peter Agate arrived in London on a foggy morning in the autumn of 1602. Within a few days he was dead and it was the general belief that I had killed him.

  There was a grim aptness to my address at the time: Dead Man’s Place. This Southwark street was closer to the Globe playhouse where I worked than some of my other London lodgings had been. That was in its favour. Against it was the street name and the character of my landlord, Samuel Benwell.

  I didn’t care about Dead Man’s Place, or not much anyway, but I struggled to show the same indifference towards my landlord as I did towards the name of his street. There was nothing absolutely wrong with Master Samuel Benwell except his prying interest in the private doings of my Company. He preferred his own sex, I knew, since he had once approached me in a very familiar fashion, with practised hands and averted eyes, and been rebuffed. He didn’t seem to mind, as long as I continued to answer questions about what we players got up to – or what he hoped we got up to. I might have taken offence at Benwell’s assumption that we spent most of our time pleasuring each other, but it would have been churlish. I owed him something for his easy acceptance of my rejection. Besides, it was true that the Chamberlain’s Men had three or four who were that way inclined, even if we were no different in this respect from other playhouse companies.

  Humouring Master Benwell was worth money to me. By some unspoken arrangement, we settled on a lowish rent in exchange for which I tantalized him with theatre gossip. In truth, Master Benwell provided most of the talking. Licking his lips and with a queer, glazed look coming into his eyes, he would ask me a long, complicated question that gave him more pleasure in the unravelling than any answer might provide. A question as to the lodging arrangements of our boy apprentices; or whether in our tire-house and elsewhere in the playhouse there were nooks and cupboards where conversations of an intimate nature might be conducted. Was it true, he asked, that young Martin Hancock, who had not so long ago played Viola in Twelfth Night, was a notorious catamite? Messrs Burbage and Shakespeare now, Dick and Will, were they privy bedfellows? This last item I indignantly denied but I assented to most of the rest, sometimes adding a flourish or two of my own while making it clear that my tastes were more orthodox.

  As he listened to my answers, Master Benwell’s mouth hung open and his tongue licked round his thin lips. His tooth-work and his lip-work were not sights to relish. This was tedious but – as I kept reminding myself – it was worth three whole pennies a week to me, the difference between the rent he’d initially proposed (one shilling and threepence) and the shilling we settled for. Benwell had no other tenants. His place was like his mind, pretty filthy. I don’t know what he did. Hanging about seemed to be his principal occupation.

  Hanging about was what he was doing on that mid-morning when I finally groped my way back to my lodgings. Fog had draped itself over Southwark like a greasy coat and I couldn’t see more than a few yards. I was returning to Dead Man’s Place because, in my hurried departure that morning, I’d forgotten the little bundle of scrolls containing my lines. I’d been about to enter the Globe when I realized this. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been word-perfect, but I wasn’t. Since this was our first rehearsal Richard Burbage would forgive me for not being word-perfect. What he wouldn’t forgive was my coming to the playhouse without my lines, a fact he was bound to discover the moment I started stumbling over them. If he was in a bad mood, I might even be fined. So, in the bustling delay which always seems to attend a rehearsal in its early stages, I reckoned I’d have enough time to slip back to Dead Man’s Place and pick up my lines.

  Forgetting my part was something I’d never have done in my early days with the Chamberlain’s. I suppose it was a sign of how much more easy I felt in the Company. Well, there’s such a thing as being too comfortable. Certainly, this was not a comfortable morning to be abroad in. The fog seemed to have grown thicker and danker as well as nastier-smelling since I’d quit my warm bed that morning. (Reluctance to get up until the last moment was the reason for my hasty, scroll-forgetting departure.) If I hadn’t been very familiar with the route between playhouse and lodging I might easily have taken the wrong turning.

  I reached Master Benwell’s front door by instinct and quickly opened and closed it, as if the fog could be excluded. A few wisps and tatters sneaked in all the same.

  “Master Nicholas.”

  I was used by now to my landlord’s silent presence. That is, you might think you were alone and turn round to see, oh yes, Master Benwell leaning against the wall or tucked into a corner. So I didn’t start in surprise when he uttered my name but was already shaping in my mind a brisk excuse that I didn’t have time to stop and talk – must get back to the playhouse – only returned for my part. No, not ‘part’ . . . Benwell would be quick to seize on th
e word and examine it for hidden filth . . . you had to watch your mouth around Benwell.

  “You have a friend, Nicholas.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “More than one on a good day.”

  “I mean a visitor and a friend,” said Benwell, standing in the dimness of the little hallway. “At least he claimed he was your friend.”

  “What was his name, Master Benwell?”

  “He didn’t want to give it.”

  “Did he seem honest?”

  “Do you have friends who aren’t?” countered my landlord.

  “Legions of them. Rogues and scoundrels all.”

  “You naughty players,” he said.

  “You know us,” I said, moving towards the stairs.

  “I showed him up,” said Benwell.

  I stopped in my tracks.

  “Why, was he at fault?”

  Oh, the sword-like flash of wit on a damp, foggy morning. At the same time, I puzzled over the real meaning of Benwell’s words or rather over the identity of the person waiting for me in my first-floor room.

  “What?” said Benwell. “Oh, I have you now . . . was he at fault? Ha. No, he said he was a friend. He seemed honest. I wouldn’t have ‘showed him up’ otherwise. Oh, you stage people.”

  While my landlord was rattling on in the gloom, I went rapidly through some possibilities. No man likes to be surprised in the room where he makes his bed. So my visitor wouldn’t give his name. Why not?

  A creditor?

  Well, yes, I had a couple of creditors. There was Martin Bly for example. But the few shillings which I owed to the landlord of the Goat & Monkey tavern for sack and ale – very little of it consumed by my abstemious self (I priggishly add) – would not justify a personal visit to my room. And then there was the more than few shillings for which I was in debt to Master Benjamin Nicholson, a bookseller in St Paul’s Yard. A few pounds in fact. But he wouldn’t bother to come calling for money owing to him.

  It’s a little sad if the only unexpected visitor you can expect is a creditor, so I speedily summoned up a more worthy alternative. A rival in love? But this didn’t seem to fit the case either.

  Who was my unknown visitor then?

  And suddenly I had it.

  It must be someone from another company of players, someone who’d come to offer me more money and bigger parts than the Chamberlain’s provided. Hence the anonymity, the touch of mystery. A delicate mission, you understand.

  Such is the odd way the human mind works – or the way mine works at any rate – that I’d no sooner got hold of this idea than I became convinced of its truth. Upstairs in my room was waiting an emissary from, say, Henslowe of the Admiral’s Men, a rival group of players. I’d once worked briefly for Henslowe, which added a bit of backbone to this belief. Also there was the fact that an apparent agent of Henslowe’s, a rather dislikeable man called Gally, had been hanging around the Chamberlain’s haunts recently, maybe in the hope of enticing some of us away. These were competitive times in the London playhouses. Now I thought that Henslowe must have heard of my new eminence with Chamberlain’s. Of course, I’d turn down any offer, however extravagant, however coaxing . . . but it is agreeable to be asked.

  All of this went through my head in about a twentieth of the time it takes to tell it and a smile must have been sneaking about my lips.

  “Pleasant thoughts of your gentleman friend upstairs?” said Benwell, whose eyes glimmered in the grey light of the lobby.

  “I must go and see who it is,” I said, but inwardly convinced of the situation I’ve just described. I bounded up the narrow flight of stairs two steps at a time, wishing to give to Master Henslowe’s man an impression of energy and purpose even on a miserable morning like this one. I’d altogether forgotten about my playscript, the original purpose in returning to my lodgings.

  I flung open the door of my room. The light was very poor – the window was pinched and dirty, and the fog seemed to have permeated my chamber too – but, after a moment’s hesitation, I recognized the stooping figure standing uneasily near my bed. There wasn’t much space to stand anywhere else and the lowness of the ceiling meant that anybody who was taller than average had to hunch up a bit. All the same this person was hunched up more than necessary. I knew that stance, that stoop.

  It wasn’t anybody from Philip Henslowe’s company.

  I wasn’t about to be offered a new job.

  There was nothing for me to turn down.

  “Hello, Peter,” I said.

  “Nick. I knew it was you. I heard your voice downstairs.”

  Peter Agate gestured awkwardly at my meagre furnishings as if it was his room and he was apologizing for the inadequacy of our surroundings. Like the stooping posture, this tentative gesture was typical of him.

  “You were the last person I expected,” I said.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you – if you were expecting someone else.”

  “Not at all. I wasn’t expecting anyone. I wouldn’t usually be here at this time of day.”

  The absurdity of my earlier speculation – that my visitor was from another acting company, come to tempt me to greater things – rushed back on me. I was glad of the dimness of the room, since Peter couldn’t witness the warmth that now spread across my face. It might have been embarrassment that caused me to repeat, “Not at all.”

  And I moved towards Peter Agate and wrapped him in my arms and he responded by wrapping his around me, with a sigh of relief, I think, at discovering that his old country friend Nick Revill was still his friend in the very different circumstances of the city.

  After we’d released each other we stood back. Like true Englishmen, we were a little uncomfortable at renewed friendship.

  “Your landlord was good enough to allow me to wait up here. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “My dear fellow,” I said in a magnanimous fashion and then, thinking better of this, modified it to, “Dear Peter . . . you’ve given him stuff to think on for weeks. He couldn’t wait to tell me that I had a visitor.”

  “He asked if I was a – a player,” said Peter. I thought I detected an odd catch in his voice and wondered whether he was insulted by my landlord’s speculation.

  “Oh, Master Benwell loves plays and players. He loves the backstage aspect of things. He will talk to you for hours about it. But you didn’t give anything away? Not even your name?”

  “Just being cautious, Nick.”

  I regarded the tall, shambling figure in front of me. He looked no different to my eyes, no different in outline anyway. I wondered whether I seemed different to him.

  “What were you going to do? Wait for me until I came back?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I might have been hours.”

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

  “Don’t say sorry,” I said.

  “Sorry,” he said again.

  “The same old Peter,” I said. “Another apology and I shall kill you.”

  This rough speech was a way of trying to reassure him that everything between us was as it had always been – although we hadn’t seen each other for, oh, more than three years.

  He laughed, mildly.

  “You’re probably wondering why I’m here?”

  “Not yet. Any question like that is swallowed up in the pleasure of seeing you once more.”

  True, I hadn’t yet started to wonder at his presence in London, in Southwark, in Dead Man’s Place, in my room – I was genuinely pleased to see my old Somerset friend again, no lie – but of course as soon as he mentioned it, I did start to wonder why he was here. There was a pause.

  “You have a London gloss, Nick. You have acquired manners. Address.”

  “You’ll find me the same country lad underneath,” I said.

  Another pause.

  I sensed that Peter had something to say, probably a story to tell. At the same time I recalled the reason why I’d returned to my lodgings.

  �
�I normally wouldn’t be here, only I forgot my scroll – my part in the play we’re practising.”

  I reached across to the rickety little table where my few possessions were piled and took the rolled-up papers.

  “There’s a rehearsal I must attend immediately,” I said. “Otherwise Burbage will use my guts to tie his points.”

  “That would be Cuthbert?”

  “No, it would be his brother Dick. But you’re well informed.”

  “For a country lad.”

  “Town or country. Most Londoners know of Dick Burbage, but not so many could name Cuthbert. He’s more behind the scenes. Which is where I ought to be now, if you’ll forgive me. We shall talk later.”

  I made to go through the door then stopped and considered.

  “If I were you, Peter, I wouldn’t want to spend two or three hours shivering in an ill-lit room. There’s an ale-house nearby. The Goat & Monkey. A players’ place, if you don’t object to that. Martin Bly’s the landlord.”

  I said this, I must confess, not only because I was thinking of my friend’s comfort but also because I wanted to show off my familiarity with the neighbourhood. I almost added, in reference to his drinking at the good old Goat, ‘Put it on my slate,’ before reflecting that patronage can go too far. (Also I was reflecting on that little debt of mine.)

  “Thank you, Nick,” said Peter. “I have no objection to a players’ place, none at all. I’ll try it.”

  I gave him a couple of directions, making them pretty precise on account of the weather, and said I’d join him in the tavern as soon as I could. As I paced speedily through the fog in the direction of the Globe, hoping that I wouldn’t have been missed yet, part of my mind was occupied with the question of exactly why Peter Agate had quit his home in Somerset and suddenly appeared in London.

  Like me, Peter came from the village of Miching. Or rather he came from outside that spot, a place once lovely, now blighted. He was lucky in being a little removed from the village – as I had been lucky. The memory of that early spring morning returned, its terrible flavours and colours hardly diminished. That bright morning when I had run down towards my birthplace, fear taking tighter and tighter hold of my guts.