An Honourable Murderer Read online

  “Get a move on, Ben,” said someone to our rear. “You’re holding everyone up.”

  “I’ll move when I’m ready, thank you,” said Ben, deliberately not budging even though there was now space in front. I would have moved forward but he had me firmly by the elbow.

  “And Cecil. You know Cecil, Nick? There he is.”

  It was easy enough to spot Sir Robert Cecil, Secretary to the Privy Council. Cecil was a short man with a large head topped by a great brow. But his main emblem was the crooked back that accompanied him everywhere. Today he was on his feet although usually he would not walk any distance in public and must be transported in a chair. Seeing Cecil I felt a queasiness in my guts.

  “I have met Secretary Cecil, yes.”

  “You have met him. When?”

  I recalled being taken blindfold through the midnight streets of London for my meeting with Robert Cecil in the closing days of Queen Elizabeth’s reign when the Earl of Essex was plotting his treason. I recalled the task with which Cecil had entrusted me. The secrecy of it.*

  “It’s of no account,” I said. “I’ve no wish to meet him again. He is dedicated to his plots.”

  I pulled out of Jonson’s grasp and started to move down the gangplank before the people behind grew impatient enough to shove us into the Thames.

  “Dedicated to plots? You must tell me about it some time,” said Jonson. “I can smell a story.”

  “Who’s that man and the woman too?” I said to distract him.

  A slight individual with prominent ears was leaning down so that Cecil might whisper something to him. He looked grave, as you would do if the second most powerful (some would say the most powerful) man in the kingdom was addressing you. Nearby stood a largish woman.

  “That is Sir Philip Blake. I know him, know him well. The lady next to him is his wife, Lady Jane. They are both involved in this business with us. You might call them patrons.”

  By this time we were on the shore. There was a certain interest from the passers-by in the presence of such important visitors to the south bank but, being sophisticated Londoners, none of us wanted to show it very much. A glimpse of Queen Anne was hardly comparable to a sight of Queen Elizabeth in the old days. And it may be that everyone’s appetite for spectacle had been sated by the river-borne Spaniards. I looked about for Abel and the others but they’d made themselves scarce.

  The black carriage containing the Queen stood a few dozen yards off, sealed up like a sepulchre, the horses waiting patiently in the shafts. Sir Robert Cecil was evidently going to depart with Anne but was allowing himself to finish his conversation with Sir Philip Blake first. It was a mark of Cecil’s standing – some people might have said, his arrogance – that he could afford to keep the Queen waiting like this.

  The Lord High Admiral strode away from the royal party. He was by himself, a fine old gentleman in an elegant ruff. Closer to, his beard was more white than fair.

  “What do you bet that he’s going to take a little walk on this side of the river,” said Ben Jonson. Hs eyes tracked the admiral’s back. “See, I told you.”

  Charles Howard had turned off in the direction of Paris Garden.

  “He has no fear of wandering by himself in these lawless realms. Every waterman, wrinkled or otherwise, in Southwark is familiar with the victor of the Armada, and would be honoured to see him board his boat. And if we were to follow him now, Nicholas, we would no doubt see him entering the hallowed precincts of Holland’s Leaguer – or some other knocking-shop.”

  “Where every woman, wrinkled or otherwise, would be honoured to have him board her,” I said.

  “Good, good, Nicholas.”

  “You’re very curious about the Lord High Admiral, Ben,” I said.

  For myself, I was surprised rather than curious. Not so much that a man of Howard’s rank might be visiting one of the local brothels – assuming that’s what he was doing – but that he should be so careless about it. As Ben said, the Lord High Admiral would be easily recognized by most of the older watermen, many of whom were ex-sailors.

  “There is encouragement here for all of us who are merely in our middle years, Nicholas Revill,” said Ben Jonson, almost gleefully. “Look at Nottingham. He marries when he’s touching seventy, he gets his young wife with child almost straightaway, and while she is in that state which the French term hors de combat he takes himself off to the Southwark stews because he must have it. He must have it.”

  “I’m not in my middle years,” was my feeble reply. But Jonson wasn’t even listening.

  “I will follow my admirable admiral, I think. He has given me my cue for this hot afternoon,” he said, moving off in the direction taken by Nottingham and pausing only to shout out a reminder that I should present myself at the Mermaid tavern that evening, if I chose. And so Jonson left, presumably for one of the stews which are studded across Southwark like so many buttons on a whore’s outfit.

  I might have done the same, I suppose. I used to frequent Holland’s Leaguer sometimes when my friend Nell worked there (although I enjoyed free what others paid for). But I have lost my taste for that particular place ever since her sad departure. And because the heat which was stirring up Ben Jonson had left me feeling spiritless I made my way back to my lodgings.

  * see Death of Kings

  Where lodges he?

  The story of my lodgings is part of the story of my time in London. Sometimes I thought my changing accommodation was a reflection of my fortunes in more than a monetary sense and, if this was so, then even the most favourable observer couldn’t have said that my fortunes amounted to much. Recently, though, there’d been a welcome and overdue change, or at least a hint of it . . .

  Among my earliest accommodation in the capital had been a sty on the third floor of an establishment in Ship Street. It belonged to a stuck-up woman called Ransom, who kept a slovenly house and gave herself airs and graces. The only merit of this room was a view of the river which was obtainable if you risked your neck by craning out of the little window. There were various reasons why I’d had to leave this place, reasons connected to a carelessly emptied chamber pot and a rampant daughter of the establishment.

  Then I’d sunk even lower by putting up with a peculiar quartet of women in Broadwall who charged four pennies a week for a ‘chamber’ that was more holes and gaps than it was floor, walls or ceiling. My landladies called themselves after the sunnier months of the year – April, May, June and July – and had a local reputation as witches. One of them was murdered at the time of the Essex uprising.

  And after that I had spent more than two years in a room in a household belonging to Master Samuel Benwell in the street known as Dead Man’s Place. This room of his, which was an improvement on my previous lodging (in the same way that purgatory may be said to be an improvement on hell), had the advantage of being close to the Globe playhouse. Master Benwell and I had our troubles – at one time I found myself lodging in prison rather than under his roof – but he remained faithful to his single tenant. Not so much on account of the shilling a week rental which I paid, as for the playhouse gossip which I fed him from time to time. Some of the gossip was actually true.

  And now Master Benwell was no more. He was dead. No, not murdered, if that’s what you’re thinking, but died naturally. Or as naturally as anyone could who perished in the great plague which had started even while our great Queen was on her deathbed and which continued for many long months into the reign of her successor from Scotland. Indeed, the rising bills of mortality had caused James to delay his coronation procession – the very one in which we’d marched with our four and a half yards of cheap red livery – until the summer.

  By a miracle, none of the Chamberlain’s Men was directly touched by the pestilence. True, we’d spent large parts of the year of 1603 away from the city and out on the road. When Queen Elizabeth died we were playing at the Golden Cross Inn in Oxford, although that brainy town did not escape the plague either. Subsequently we ret
urned to London, but it was plain that there would be no theatre business for many months to come. So we took ourselves off to places like Coventry and Bath, and at each stage we seemed to be stalked by a disease which, like a chess player, made unexpected moves to check and frustrate us. When we got to Bath, for example, we found that the plague had made a knight’s jump into Bristol, killing many in that city.

  Eventually the winter months arrived and we decided to lie low in Mortlake for no better reason than that Augustine Phillips, one of the Globe shareholders, had recently bought a house there by the river. Mortlake seemed as good a place as any. It was a safe distance from town and so the family men summoned their wives and children to join them while the rest of us made do with whatever temporary accommodation we could find.

  Anyway it wasn’t until early in the new year of 1604 that the playhouses were allowed to open once again and the King’s Men could resume their London living in both senses. But the city was a changed place. Weeds flourished in many streets and the doors of infected houses hung aimlessly in their frames. Holes were left unrepaired in roofs and walls. The price of property went down, at least away from the fashionable spots like the Strand or Westminster. Although parts of the town seemed less busy or bustling, I was never sure whether this was because some of the people who would normally have thronged there were dead or on account of trade and activity being generally slack.

  As far as we players were concerned, our audiences had held up but they didn’t seem to have the old appetite for comedy, or at least not such innocent comedy. Maybe we didn’t have the appetite for it either, and so we turned to rather darker stuff. Shakespeare produced a play about jealousy and a Moor from Africa who turned suspicious of his wife before killing her. This piece drew them in. The other principal diversions of the Southwark shore – the bear-and-bull-baiting, and the brothel business – held up too. But it would require the end of the world to draw the curtains on those trades.

  I may have taken a bit of a ramble away from the subject of my present accommodation but, trust me, it is connected to the plague and its aftermath. I was now, in August 1604, lodging with a family called Buckle in Thames Street. This thoroughfare runs parallel to the river on its upper side and, though nowhere near as grand as some streets a little further to the north or west, it still enjoys its own smell, as the expression goes.

  Not so long before I’d had a friend and comforter called Lucy Milford who lived in Thames Street until she quit the town at the first outbreak of plague, and so I was quite familiar with it. By lodging here I’d gone up in the world, I suppose.

  My landlady Mrs Buckle had been widowed by the plague and her house left without a man. She did have a daughter, though, who was not yet paired off and so remained at home, though I hardly ever saw her. Two other daughters were married and had establishments in Finsbury and Kingston.

  I’d met Mrs Buckle and her daughter Elizabeth in an unusual way. You could almost say I’d come to their rescue. It was soon after we’d returned to London from Mortlake and the spring season at the Globe playhouse had begun. We hadn’t performed at home for almost a year and it was odd to be striding about on the familiar boards once more. Our audience welcomed us back with a warmth which touched our hearts.

  Late one day in the spring – after we’d played a piece called The Melancholy Man, a drama of blood and disguise by a satirical writer called Martin Barton – I stepped out of the players’ entrance to the theatre and straight into a real-life drama. Our costume man, Bartholomew Ridd, had detained me over some piffling piece of damage to my outfit for which he held me responsible. We’d argued about it, although I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere, and so I was just about the last person to leave the playhouse. In contrast to my mood, which had been aggravated by Ridd, it was a mild evening. The promise of better things to come was in the air. Two women were standing in earnest conversation with a well-dressed couple. The couple had their backs to me but I saw on both the women’s faces signs of distress and confusion.

  As I got nearer I overheard the man say, “I did my best – but he was too quick – he was too quick for me.”

  He was out of breath, and panting in a way that was very obvious.

  “You had better check – that you are all complete – ladies – make certain – you haven’t lost anything.”

  “My husband is right,” said the lady standing next to him. “Best make sure.”

  She put out her hand to touch the younger of the two women on the arm before turning and patting her husband on the shoulder. “So brave you are, Anthony,” she said. Then to the others, “So brave he is. I have heard that there are many villains round these parts and now I see it is true.”

  I might have walked on and left them to it but something made me slow down and draw closer to this little group. Perhaps it was a sense of obligation to the patrons who had stuck by us after our year’s absence. Perhaps it was a desire to prove myself after being put down by the costume man – Ridd had threatened to report me to Burbage for a forfeit because of a tiny tear in the cloak I’d been wearing in my part as a murderer (I can’t help it if cloaks will catch on nails that shouldn’t be sticking out in the first place). Or perhaps it was that the two women were, despite their distress and confusion, quite attractive.

  So I stood at a little distance and watched the proceedings. The couple, apparently husband and wife, were well past the first flush of youth. They were properly turned out. From their outfits you would have said that this particular gentleman and his lady were unlikely to be from our southern side of the water, while their refeened accents told a similar sort of story. He was clean-shaven in the latest style while her cheeks were fashionably whitened. The two women facing them, the quite attractive ones, looked as though they might be mother and daughter. They had the same turn to their mouths, from the little which I could glimpse under their wide-brimmed hats, and there was something similar in the way they were standing.

  “The rascal took nothing, I do hope,” said the gentleman called Anthony. “Best see to all your things. Do not delay now.”

  He’d recovered his breath by this point. He glanced sideways at me and looked away again. The lady smiled at the mother and daughter, giving all her attention to them and pretending not to notice my presence.

  Taking the repeated hint, the women made a kind of inventory with their fingers of what they were wearing or carrying, touching various objects or bringing them out into the light of the spring evening. Item: one locket on a silver chain worn around the neck. Item: one silk purse briefly glimpsed under a mantle. Item: a nicely worked pomander filled with sweet-smelling stuff and attached to a girdle. And so on.

  Seeing that everything was still in its place, they visibly relaxed. Smiles all round. The chalky-faced woman again touched the younger one’s arm in reassurance.

  For the first time, the woman I thought of as being the mother spoke.

  “We haven’t lost anything, I think. Have you, Lizzie?”

  The younger one shook her head.

  “I am Mrs Buckle and this is my daughter Elizabeth. Whom have we to thank for this good service?”

  “I can answer that,” I said, moving forward.

  “What business is this of yours?” said the gentleman.

  “An honest citizen’s business,” I said, stepping between the couple and the two women.

  “Allow me to introduce Mister Anthony Thoroughgood, madam,” I said. “How do, Tony. And this lady here is his wife, Mistress Charity Thoroughgood.”

  “This has nothing to do with you,” said the woman called Charity. “Nothing.”

  All smiles gone now. I could almost feel the hostility coming off the couple like the heat from an oven.

  “These good souls have been helping us,” said the daughter, speaking for the first time. She had a soft voice but sounded wary, if not hostile – not towards the couple but towards me.

  “I don’t know about you, sir,” said the older woman called Buckle, “
but it is not every day a gentleman will risk his life in pursuit of a wrongdoer. A bad man tried to rob us as we came out of the playhouse and Mister, er, Thoroughgood gave chase.”

  “I don’t think Tony was ever at risk of losing anything more than a few lungfuls of air,” I said. “As for the bad man who tried to rob you . . . Who was it this time, Tony? Phil the Foist? Or Nip Drinkell? Or have you got some new lifter on your books?”

  “Oh, begone . . . whoever you are,” said Charity Thorough-good, a tinge of red peeping through her chalky cheeks.

  “I am Nicholas Revill, player and member of the King’s Men.”

  “Oh, now I recognize you,” she said, with quite a convincing shudder. “You have just played a murderer on stage, in disguise.”

  “The difference is that I don’t wear my disguise in the street. But you two I recognize as well. Think back to the Goat & Monkey ale-house last Thursday night. I was sitting in a corner while you were boasting about your latest haul and drinking away most of the proceeds.”

  “Oh, piss off, will yew.”

  Her words and her delivery, in which vehemence struggled with the attempt to hang on to her accent, almost gave the game away. I saw the simple gratitude and relief which had appeared on the faces of the two women being replaced by puzzlement, even suspicion. But it was still me they were more suspicious of. After all, I’d just enacted a murderer’s part. A few evening strollers had halted to watch the outcome of this little scene.

  Tony Thoroughgood decided to go on the attack.

  “Oh, this is good,” he said, to no one in particular. “Very good. I suppose this is one of those Southwark tricks I’ve heard about. It’s the device of some cheapjack player to cause mischief and deprive these good folk of their property by impugning honesty. My honesty.”