Death of Kings Read online

  “If enough travel it, it becomes well paved,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, looking directly at me, “that is quick of you. I believe that I have the right man in front of me. Unlike most roads, the greater the number that walk it the smoother and more even it becomes. So, Master Revill, that is why I require your help. To uproot this fingerpost before it gets firmly planted.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I am sorry on such a night to have kept you from your warm bed but, as you can see, these are urgent matters of state. Your mission is important . . .”

  “Yes,” I said. “I understand.”

  And what I understood was that this man must have in his service as many eyes as there were stars in the frosty sky outside.

  It was under the stars that I was abandoned when the game of my arrival was reversed at the end of the interview. After telling me a little more in respect of the grandly termed ‘mission’, Sir Robert instructed me to return to the lobby and wait. Again, I was grasped from behind and a blind slipped over my eyes before I had an opportunity to glance round. Ushered back into the biting air, I was whirled through the streets, spun round and marched in the opposite direction, not once but several times. Eventually we halted. The same voice as in the beginning, courteous, low but firm.

  “We are leaving, Master Revill. Thank you for your compliance.” He spoke as if I had had a choice. His tones were soft as smoke in the night air. “Even though you might consider this a piece of child’s play, I require you to count up to ten, let us say, when I give the word. After that you may remove your blind and go on your way.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Where you were, sir. Have no fear. Now you should count.”

  I did as I was told and, after counting silently to ten, removed my blindfold. The dark houses rose up before me, seeming no more substantial than pasteboard against the twinkling blackness of the sky. After a moment I was able to confirm that my captor had been as good as his word and that I was standing at the very point where I had first been intercepted, by the corner of Hart Lane. The streets were empty. As far as I could tell from the position of the stars the whole episode had lasted some two hours or more. It was that dead time of the night when even the sots and ne’er-do-wells have retired or fallen down in their places, and honest, hardworking folk are not yet stirred.

  The entire business might have been a dream, yet not for an instant did I consider it so. I returned to my lodgings and lay awake there, unable to stop thinking of the extraordinary events of the night and eventually falling into what seemed to be only a few minutes of strange-coloured slumber before I had to be up for rehearsal.

  My mind was filled with plot and counter-plot. I had been catapaulted onto a greater stage than I was accustomed to play on. One where high and mighty conspirators disposed of whole realms, and played with crowns, as easily as you or I might crack an egg.

  As I’ve mentioned, by chance I had once glimpsed the greatest of these conspirators.

  When my lord of Essex departed for Ireland, he was sent off by the London citizenry as though he was already leading his army home, in triumph. Victory in the field was preordained. Only now do I see – even I, with my little knowledge of the world – that certainty as to outcomes in such affairs is rarely matched by the event. Fortune is truly a strumpet, or so she proved in this case. However, on that March day when the Earl of Essex left for the barbarous isle there was confidence, even exultation, in the air.

  I made up one of the crowd that thronged the thoroughfares along which Essex and his followers paraded. I was then newly arrived in London, a stranger to the playhouse and its kingdom in Southwark. A stranger to my friend Nell and to Master WS and Burbage & Co. There is no creature greener than he who is newly come to the city from the country and who would not, for a thousand pound, wish to have that green-ness revealed. So, it was with amazement that I found myself within a day or two of my arrival tumbled into a crowd that waved and hurrahed a great general. All around us, church bells rang madly. I wondered if this were not some regular happening. Why, perhaps generals and other mighty personages rode through the streets once a fortnight! That would be something to boast about to my untravelled parents back at home in Somerset! (I forgot from time to time that I had no home, except a plague-stricken village, and no parents either who were above ground.)

  Deliberately selecting a fellow member of the crowd who didn’t look too quick-witted, and wouldn’t therefore be inclined to mock my rusticity and ignorance, I asked him what all the to-do was about. Amid great washes of ale-breath, I was informed that a great lord called Middlesex who I could see at the head of the procession – “there, yes, ’im, that’s the one!” – was about to depart for a land far away over the sea. An island beyond the place where the sun sets. Where men’s heads grow out of their chests or their arses, or some such. Where they boil up their young alive and eat ’em for supper. Where they daily have congress with the beasts of the field. And what, I asked, was the lord commander Middlesex going to do when he got there? “Why, kill ’em all,” said my informant, turning away from me in disgust that I’d asked such a stupid question.

  Someone else standing nearby, an apparently more reliable and relatively sober individual, told me that it was the Earl of Essex and that he was going to subdue the Irish once and for all. It was already settled. The Queen had given him the commission. At this moment the head of the procession drew level with where we were standing and the crowd, already bubbling, went wild with pleasure. My ears were deafened with cries of approbation and screams of delight. Some of the women had tears streaming down their faces. Others held up babies, as if they expected the Earl to bless them. He turned his head and the upper part of his body from side to side and smiled benignly on the crowds but in a way that seemed to me somewhat abstracted, as if his mind were already on the other side of that sea which separates the greater island from the lesser.

  And now a very unexpected thing happened, and one that augured ill too. Though it was, as I have said, a day in March when this great company set off for Ireland, the weather had been unseasonably fair. The sky over the streets of Islington was bright and clear. All at once there arose a great black cloud to the north-east, as if cast up by a giant hand. And moments later came thunder and flashes of lightning. Then a great shower of hail and rain. The parade of lords and knights on horseback, sitting so proud and erect, huddled inside their finery and tried to make themselves all small, while the honest citizenry crammed into doorways or cowered beneath the eaves of houses. I found myself sharing a nook with my drunken informant, the one who had identified the Earl of Middlesex. The mood of the crowd, which had been one of celebration, now turned to its opposite, “’tis a hominous progeny, this ’ail and thund’rin,” he said, enveloping me in his reeky breath. “No, I misspeak, ’tis a hominous prodigal.”

  And so it was – a prodigy and ominous both. The Irish enterprise, begun with such fair expectations, was soon enveloped in its own bad weather.

  So much for my introduction to the Earl of Essex.

  But I couldn’t spend all my waking (and sleeping) hours thinking of him and his co-conspirators, and of Secretaries of State and mysterious men who seized one off the street at midnight – I had, after all, a working life to get on with.

  You might consider that the life – or at least the revenue – of a player during the winter is as pinched and bleak as the hours of daylight. Who wishes to pay for the privilege of standing in an unroofed playhouse, stamping their feet and rubbing their mittened hands against the cold? What eloquent words from the playwrights and, more importantly, what fine gestures from the players are scattered by the winter winds or sogged in the winter rains? And it is true, of course, that we are almost as governed by the seasons as those who till the soil. Nevertheless, if we stage plays, the customers come, though in diminished numbers. And since players must continue to live even when what Dick Burbage calls our ‘congregations’ are thin, we in the
Chamberlain’s must continue to play (intermittently) during the cold months. When you consider how matters stand, when you survey our principal enemies – City authorities, plague, Puritans, changes in fashion – then the vagaries of winter come limping some way in the rear.

  Yet our limited performances in the playhouse are not the business that really keeps us warm in January and February before the arrival of Lent curtails our activities.

  The Chamberlain’s Men are the prime company in town. We are the Queen’s favourites, and that is something to warm your hands by. Every winter the Chamberlain’s are commanded to play before Her Majesty at one of her palaces, usually Whitehall. Our playwright, shareholder and occasional player, Master WS, provides the fare to put before her and we do our best to serve it up piping hot and spicy for her delectation. I say ‘we’ (like an old hand) but this is the first year in which I’ve been privileged to be a member of the Company, so I (like new hands everywhere) do my best to appear all easy and unconcerned at the terrifying prospect of appearing and speaking before our sovereign lady – but my heart bangs to think about it and my palms start to sweat a little. Others in the Company, however, really do seem all easy and unconcerned at the idea. To them it’s just another performance, a little special perhaps, more finely honed and better dressed, but essentially no different from playing before the penny knaves on the ground and the gents and ladies in the gallery.

  We have to prepare for this royal appearance. The play must be read beforehand. All plays must, in fact, be read beforehand in the office of the Master of the Revels to see whether they contain anything that might offend or undermine those in authority. The ones intended for the Queen’s eyes and ears are studied with particular care. Of course, our costumes should gleam while Master WS’s lines have to glitter in our mouths. This demands much more time, care and patience than we are accustomed to in rehearsal. A great room, well-lighted and well-heated, is made available to us at the old Priory of St John’s in Clerkenwell where the Master of the Revels holds sway. Here, generally after dark, we prepare Master WS’s Twelfth Night for Her Majesty. Now, the Chamberlain’s had performed this before but never in the royal presence so it was most necessary to plane and polish what was well enough for the general public, plane and polish so that the grain of the play shone through for the Queen. I had been returning from a Clerkenwell rehearsal of this piece when I had been so rudely intercepted in the street and led before Sir Robert Cecil.

  Nevertheless, Queen or no Queen, Secretary of Council or no Secretary of Council, life goes on, art goes on. As I’ve said, the play-business continues through the winter, not in full spate but with a steady trickle of new material and old matter mingled together. If there is work, we players must go to it. I was only too pleased to go to work anyway. I had the strongest reasons for being out and about during the day and, if possible, sleeping somewhere apart from my lodgings at night. This was because my lodgings were more fitted for a pig or a dog or a chicken than a human being. As it happens, they also housed representatives of those farm creatures and others besides (such as rats and bats and cats) as well as four human specimens. At least, I think they were human.

  A poor player cannot be a chooser when it comes to accommodation. He needs to be close to his place of work; he is helped if he has a landlord or landlady who is not implacably hostile to the drama; but above all he requires a bed and a roof that are cheap. South of the river is almost a necessity. The climate of acceptance (or indifference) is warmer down there, the questions are fewer and, I am persuaded, the air is better. Of course, when you’re searching for a place to live, a personal recommendation helps. It was someone connected with the Company who told me that he knew of four sisters who were looking for a man to share their abode off Broadwall.

  So, once I’d got a fairly firm footing with the Chamberlain’s, I took myself down there one autumn morning. It was a few minutes’ walk from the Globe. The day was sharp but only so as to give briskness to one’s stride. My head was clear and my spirits high. Who knew but that the quartet of sisters might not be youthful and limber supporters of the drama? Who knew what they might not be prepared to share with a young and, even though I say it myself, not completely unattractive player? Sisters! – and four of them, a tetrad! Of course, a moment’s thought should have told me that if that was what was in question then my informant in the Company would hardly have passed on the location to me. He’d have kept it for himself.

  The point south of Broadwall is where the town and the country fight it out for supremacy and, as usual on a battlefield, the result is somewhat messy. There were buildings but they were not particularly respectable or well-kept; there was countryside but it was not especially pure and uncluttered.

  I asked a one-eyed man if he knew the whereabouts of the four sisters’ residence – I’d been given no more precise information than that – and after I’d repeated the question some half dozen times he backed away from me, proceeded to make various slurping noises and then stuck out a scarcecrow’s arm. He was pointing at a ragged building a little further down the road. After that he crossed himself.

  The house I’d been directed to seemed to have grown out of the ground. There wasn’t a single straight line or clean angle in it anywhere. Rather, it humped and lumped and swelled like a monstrous dun-coloured vegetable. Weeds sprouted among the moss on the roof. The walls were pocked and blotchy. The windows squinted or leered at me. I approached the door with some trepidation. In the gaps between the boards I could see the darkness of the interior. I knocked but with no result except to roust some pigeons out of the hairy eaves. I knocked again. And again.

  After a time a rustling sound approached the door. It opened a crack and a pig’s snout poked out. A cat darted out beneath the snout. Then a human face peered round above the snout.

  “Whadjoowant?”

  “I – I – am looking for – the sisters.”

  “Hoosentjoo?”

  “What? I’m sorry . . .”

  “Izedhoosentjoo?”

  “Ah, yes. I understand now. It was Master Richard Milford who told me of you.”

  “Hoozee?”

  Another face appeared above the first one. It was this face that now asked “hoozee?”

  “He’s with the Chamberlain’s Company. He’s a playwright . . .”

  My voice faltered. It did not seem as though the name of my Company was going to work its usual magic. This was obviously not a good idea. I wasn’t so desperate for lodgings, was I, that I’d take anything on offer? (Yes, I was that desperate, and down to my last couple of shillings.)

  “Notim . . . hoozisun?”

  This was the second speaker. Then a third voice came from further down the crack in the barely open door.

  “Broo?”

  The face of this third speaker was as bewhiskered and carbuncled as the first two. You could not have put a hair between them for ugliness. Seeing them lined up with the pig, you might have looked from one to the other and not been entirely sure which countenances represented womankind and which the beast.

  “Er . . . I . . . not sure . . .”

  “Youbroo?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “Almost certainly I am not broo – although I am Nicholas Revill, player.”

  “Naynay,” said this creature impatiently, as if it was my fault that I had no idea what she meant. “Youwantbroo?”

  This was evidently a key question because the other two faces, hanging lopsided round the door-edge, regarded me with eyes that were an unappetising mixture of the milky and the blood-shot.

  Then there came words from the area of the pig’s snout.

  “What my sister means is, do you require any of our brew?”

  Jesus, a talking pig!

  I looked down and saw that the snout had withdrawn from the lowest point and been replaced by a different (human) face. There they were, lined up, four heads poking out from a door ajar. All of the faces left everything to be desired. The one at the bottom
, however, was the least far from the feminine.

  “I am looking for the four sisters,” I began again. “I was told that they have lodgings available. I do not know of any brew.”

  The expression on the bottom one’s face broadened.

  “Go, April and June, go, July. I will attend to this person.”

  The other three vanished as if they’d turned into thin air. Then the door was opened in full. The woman who’d spoken last stood there, dressed in a filthy smock.

  “Forgive them, sir, they do not trust strangers and they are not used to talking. I am called May.”

  “Nicholas Revill.”

  I bowed slightly. Never let it be said that Nick Revill does not know how to comport himself before a woman, even one who is somewhat carbuncular and whiskery.

  “This is the right place?” I said.

  “We are the four sisters, April, May, June and July, and we are famous throughout the town,” she said. “Surely you have heard of us? We were named for the spring and the first breath of summer.”

  “Oh yes,” I said.

  In the background I saw the other three fiddling around with a sort of cauldron and sipping with ladles at its contents. The fumes of something heavy and spirituous crept across the floor towards the door. I guessed that, if this unholy quartet marketed their concoctions (hence the one-eyed man’s slurping sounds, hence the incomprehensible ‘broo’ query), they also sampled their own wares extensively.

  “Lodgings, you want?”

  “Only looking,” I said, wondering how fast I could extricate myself from this.

  “We are not dear.”

  “That surprises me.”

  “See your room?”

  “Not mine yet,” I said. But she plucked at my sleeve and led me across a filthy, uneven floor. The pig had retreated to a corner. A chicken squawked in the gloom. A dog with an interesting ancestry growled at me. One of the other sisters, April or June or July, had already succumbed to the contents of the cauldron and was lying flat out on the ground.