Alms for Oblivion Read online

  Vindice the assassin therefore had every reason to reject the Duke’s murderous commission and to keep the original duchess alive, in order that Ferrobosca couldn’t get his hands on his sister. But, naturally, Vindice did not wish to reveal the true state of affairs between himself and Virginia, nor did he wish to have his reputation as an honest, reliable assassin compromised by an apparent inability to do the job. In addition he needed the money. Therefore he must kill – someone. Fortunately, there was a spare body at hand. Vindice knew (in the Biblical sense) a loose woman named Sostituta who bore a passing resemblance to the original duchess. Now, his amour with Sostituta being long since over, Vindice, villain that he is, contemplated murdering Sostituta and presenting her body to Ferrobosca in a dimly lit room, putting the cash in his purse and making an exit before the imposture was discovered. Meantime he had warned both the original duchess and Virginia to make themselves scarce while this trick was being played.

  So Vindice murders Sostituta . . . displays the body to Duke Ferrobosca in that dimly lit room . . . purses up the cash . . . and makes his exit. All is going according to plan. Unfortunately, the dead Sostituta has a lover who is a Cardinal of the Church, and therefore a powerful man and a vengeful one too. Now this unholy Cardinal, Carnale by name, finds out what’s been happening and he decides to . . .

  Well, you get the picture – or the stage-play, which is what it is. I haven’t the time to detail other aspects of the piece, like the severed limbs made of wax, the dance in the lunatic asylum, the poisoned nightshirt, the bleeding head, and the torn-out heart. It’s a tragedy of a rather ridiculous sort and it all ends in tears, with a pile of mangled corpses, comprising the guilty and the innocent. Comprising just about every character in fact. The last ones to die are Virginia (the tainted heroine) and Vindice (the not insensitive villain), with words of undying love on their lips. This is the most affecting part of the action, even if my eyes stayed dry. Indeed the love between brother and sister, sinful though it is, is well suggested throughout.

  This play, called The World’s Diseas’d, was written by the aforementioned friend of mine, Richard Milford.

  “It’s a good title, Richard,” I’d said to him. “It captures the spirit of the thing. You have painted a sick world.”

  “I merely show mankind his face in the mirror, you know,” said Richard. He might have been talking about a species quite distinct from himself.

  Richard Milford had made great strides since his early association with the Chamberlain’s Company. He came from near the town of Warwick, the same part of the country as William Shakespeare, and it was sometimes said that he was treading in the master’s footsteps. His first play, the first to be performed at least, was A Venetian Whore. I’d caught him out in a little bit of borrowing here, since I’d come across a similar piece in the manuscript-chest at the Globe playhouse and we fell out over this sharp practice.1 But the borrowing went undetected by anyone else, it seemed, and A Venetian Whore was mounted to general acclaim. This success seemed to open a creative vein in him. He speedily drafted a play about a murder in a garden (this one was all his own work, he assured me) and he even brought out a volume of poems called – with artful simplicity – A Garland. Richard was possessed by literary ambitions and he knew that an enduring reputation was to be gained through verse, especially lyrical lines about love and transience, rather than through the more ephemeral effusions of the stage.

  We were on good terms once more, the rift over A Venetian Whore having long since closed. He was a friend, although I could never take him entirely seriously – or not as seriously as he took himself.

  Either because he trusted my judgement and sought my approval or perhaps because he wanted to prove that the work of his hand was truly the product of his brain, Richard was in the habit of presenting me with early copies of his most recent pieces. So it was that I’d seen a ‘foul paper’ copy of The World’s Diseas’d. I knew it was genuine. The foul paper was the earliest stage of finished composition, before the material was sent to a scrivener to make fair copies, and this one was covered with sufficient splotches and crossings-out to attest to the author’s struggle to express himself. Anyway I’d read this piece many weeks before the Chamberlain’s were due to present it on stage. At least I assumed that our Company was going to do it, Richard having established himself as something of a favourite with our audiences. But Milford told me that one or two of the seniors were doubtful about the new play. They didn’t like the incest in The World’s Diseas’d and considered that it might be offensive. Richard was baffled.

  “After all, the brother and sister in my piece are punished,” he said. “They die in the end.”

  “So does everyone else,” I said.

  “Of course everybody dies. It’s a tragedy.”

  “What’s the problem then?”

  “It is rather that Master Burbage and Master Heminges object to the fact that my Vindice and my Virginia are without conscience in their love.”

  “Your lovers don’t say ‘sorry’ often enough.”

  “You have hit it, Nicholas. I might have a brother and sister fall in love and couch together as long as they constantly lament their sinful state. However they don’t, rather they enjoy it.”

  “Indeed, they seem somewhat earthy characters.”

  “Oh come on, you know that audiences like nothing more than a spot of filth. Which is just what the shareholders object to. They’re getting old.”

  “But it is the better part of the play, the brother-and-sister love,” I said.

  He took this for more of a compliment than it was.

  “Thank you, Nicholas. I knew I could rely on you, with your ear for true feeling and real poetry. We men of taste must stick together, you know. Even if Burbage and Heminges don’t appreciate my work there are others who do. But you say ‘the better part’ – does that mean that there are aspects of The World’s Diseas’d which you consider to be, ah, not so good?”

  Richard Milford was still a sensitive creature underneath The shell of his success was thin. He fixed me with a hard stare. He had a little peculiarity in his eyes which was disconcerting when you first noticed it: one of the irises was heavily flecked with green while the other was pure blue.

  “I thought that some of the matter was . . . a little sensational.”

  “Such as?”

  “The severed head and the cut-off arms together in the one scene perhaps.”

  “It is a satire on cruelty.”

  “I thought it was a tragedy.”

  “A satirical tragedy. Or a tragical satire. Or what you will. Those limbs are made of wax, by the way, designed for torment by the cunning of Duke Ferrobosca. They are not real, you know.”

  “But the heart of the wicked Cardinal torn out at the end and brandished before the audience, that is real.”

  They’d use a sheep’s heart but it would still be real in the sense I meant.

  “Nicholas, I tell you,” Richard told me, “this is the way the drama is going.”

  I had to acknowledge that he might be right. You could never lose out by underestimating the taste of an audience, at least when it came to violence. Audiences are funny things though. If you offended them in their proprieties – by advertising the blessings of incest for instance – you ran the risk of failure.

  Even so, I was surprised at the direction Richard Milford’s writing had taken, from the lightness and sugariness of his early pieces to the violent colouring of this latest offering. He might well be correct that the drama was getting darker. By contrast, his own personal circumstances were nothing but sunny. For one thing, he was achieving some professional success. For another, he’d recently married. His wife, Lucy, was a pretty, demure piece. She was a gentlewoman.

  And not only had Richard Milford got himself a wife, he’d acquired a patron too. I’ve mentioned already that he seemed to model himself on William Shakespeare: coming from the same country, setting himself up as a playwright and also try
ing to establish himself as a pure poet. And the one thing a poet needs above all is a patron.

  In his early days William Shakespeare had a patron – Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Even I, a relatively unknown actor, had exchanged words on two occasions with Wriothesley. I remembered his candid gaze. Shakespeare was still, as far as I knew, friends with the Earl although Southampton had been lucky to escape with his life after the Earl of Essex’s rebellion and he yet lived in the shadow of disgrace. WS had dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis to this nobleman, when he was young, when they were both young.

  A little while ago Richard Milford decided that he too required a sponsor and fastened on a noble sprig to garnish his first book of verse. So in the front of A Garland appeared a florid tribute to one R.V., Robert Venner. Venner was the son of some obscure lord from some backwater Loamshire or Clod Hall. Whatever furrow he’d sprouted from, Venner was entitled to be addressed as Lord Robert. He was no Southampton though. No great port, he was barely a tiny harbour. He wasn’t charming and beautiful and dashing like Southampton. Venner was highly undistinguished in appearance, squat and straw-haired. At most a lordling or a lordlet. He was an occasional attender at the Globe playhouse and I’d met him once, very briefly. I thought that Richard Milford ought to have spent longer looking for a patron. I didn’t imagine that Venner had too many poets clamouring for his patronage. Still, it was none of my business.

  All of this – Richard Milford’s new play, titled The World’s Diseas’d, and his connections with his patron – came together for me in an unfortunate conjunction on the following day, the day after Peter Agate’s arrival in my lodgings.

  I left Peter asleep in my room in Dead Man’s Place. It was nine o’clock but he was still flat on his back, a combination of last night’s drinking in the Devil and, no doubt, general excitement at finding himself consorting with real players in the big city. I assumed he’d find something to do to while away the day. I wondered whether he’d pay a return visit to Holland’s Leaguer and Nell. I hoped not.

  The fog was still creeping around Southwark like a disgraced guest. The sound of church bells came muffled through the gloom. Passengers passed like wraiths in the streets.

  In the Globe playhouse it was business as usual today. We played less frequently at this time of year – on the previous day, for example, we’d only had our Troilus and Cressida rehearsal at Middle Temple – but we did continue to perform for the public. Our audiences were loyal.

  In the morning we rehearsed in the tire-house for some play or other – I’ve forgotten what it was now – and in the afternoon there was the revival of a drama called Love’s Diversion by William Hordle. This was a companion piece to his earlier Love’s Disdain, which had also done well for us. Not a bad house for a revival, all things considered, more than half full. The penny-payers in the pit stamped their feet and huddled together near the stage while their plumy breaths and the smoke from their pipes added to the dank fug of the yard. The twopenny- and threepenny-payers in the galleries were tightly swaddled up on their seats. All their attention was held, I think, by William Hordle’s drama of love rewarded. And not a severed head or limb in sight.

  A small part of our audience was secured quite tight against the weather, however. The Globe offered a few boxes in the upper reaches of its galleries. These boxes made up in comfort and privacy what they lacked in a near view of the stage. Indeed, they were furnished with curtains that could be pulled to shut out the sun or the rain or the more tedious parts of a play. You could even enjoy your own private fire in your own private box. (Not a good idea in this humble player’s opinion. If I’d been a shareholder I would have worried that the wooden Globe might one day be reduced to a mountain of ash.)

  After Love’s Diversion was done I headed for a box in the uppermost gallery. Before the performance began Richard Milford had invited me to join him in a box which his patron had hired, to join him for a glass to drink and for some close conversation. Little Lord Robert was holding court up there. From the stage I’d glimpsed two or three figures aloft in that box. At least the curtains hadn’t been drawn, so presumably these people had been attending to the play.

  I don’t know why I accepted his invitation. Amusement and curiosity perhaps. Still wearing my costume, I tapped at the door to the box and went straight in.

  “Ah, Nicholas,” said Richard Milford. “May I present you to Lord Robert. My patron, you know.”

  Oh, didn’t I know.

  It was late afternoon. Standing in the rapidly dimming daylight in the middle of the box was Richard’s stubby patron, his Southampton-substitute. A sea-coal fire threw a flickering glow on the whitewashed walls and kept out the damps. A small woman was sitting at the edge of the little room overlooking the stage. I could see her only in outline. For a moment I hoped that it was Richard Milford’s fresh young wife, Lucy. I inclined my head, very slightly.

  “Nicholas Revill, my lord,” said Milford. “You have met, I believe.”

  “We have met, I believe,” parroted Lord Robert.

  “A promising young player, you know,” added my friend Milford.

  Now, this was the kind of remark sure to gall my kibe. You know you’re getting on in experience, if not in years, when you no longer like being called ‘promising’.

  “Not so young any more, Master Milford,” I said neutrally, “but about your age.”

  “Nor so promising neither, Master Revill? Haw haw.”

  This was Lord Robert speaking. I found it very difficult to think of him as Lord Anything. Lord Bumpkin perhaps. He had a twangy, rusticky sort of voice, with burrs and thistles clinging to it.

  “That is not for me to judge, my lord, how ‘promising’ I am. You have just seen me perform, after all.”

  I indicated my costume. In Love’s Diversion I played a lover – a satisfied lover, unlike Shakespeare’s Troilus – and was wearing something smart but unshowy.

  Lord Bumpkin came forward and felt the material of my doublet. He had little pig-like eyes, hair like a hay-rick and powerful, meaty hands. He stood back and sized up the overall effect of my costume, as if he might be about to buy it. Then he turned towards the woman sitting by the outer rail. Now I saw that she wasn’t Lucy Milford and was disappointed. This woman was much stouter, much thicker. She was also dressed in a style which gave much away, whether you wanted what she was giving or not.

  “Whaddya say, Vinny? Do you like the cut of his cloth?”

  “I am not a tailor, dear.”

  “I mean, is Master Revill’s performance promising – or has he shot his bolt? Haw.”

  “It depends on what he’s promising, don’t it, dear?”

  Her voice was as ugly and countrified as her husband’s.

  “Or what he’s performing, haw haw,” said Lord Bumpkin.

  I said nothing, not feeling up to these rallies of wit.

  Richard Milford, as if he saw that his aristocratic friends were not making a favourable impression, busied himself at a little table and handed me a glass of something spiced with ginger.

  “Well, I thought you did well this afternoon, Nicholas,” he said.

  Well, thank you, Richard, I thought.

  “It is a thin play, this Love’s Diversion, you know,” he added. “It wants a bit of blood and sinew.”

  “William Hordle is a good craftsman,” I said. “Master Shakespeare thinks highly of him.”

  “Oh, Shakespeare,” he said.

  “Tell me, Master Revill, you’re a player . . . ”

  “I am, my lord.”

  Bumpkin Venner seemed to be having difficulty in ordering his thoughts.

  “As a player . . . you are able to say . . . regarding these Shakespeares and these Hordles now . . . they don’t match up to our playwright, do they?”

  “Our playwright – I am not sure who – ”

  “This gent here. They just don’t match up, do they?”

  Squat Lord Bumpkin slammed a meaty paw into Richard’
s back, causing him to spill some of the contents of his glass. Even in the dim light of the box, Richard had the grace to look uncomfortable.

  “Oh, Richard is without equal,” I said.

  O Nicholas, master of the diplomatic equivocation.

  “And he is not merely our playwright. He is our poet as well. Look.”

  And from out of a pocket Lord Bumpkin produced a slim volume which I recognized as Richard Milford’s A Garland. He opened the poetry book near the frontispiece and jabbed a stubby finger at a paragraph. I couldn’t make out much in the half-light of the box but Bumpkin saved me the trouble by reading the words aloud, after a bout of throat-clearing to get rid of the burrs and thistles.

  “‘TO R.V. THE ONLY BEGETTER.’”

  These first words were boldly uttered, fitting the capital letters they were printed in. Then the speaker moderated his delivery, imparting a tender, almost trembling quality to what followed.

  “‘As the weaker growth must needs find some stronger plant to prop it up, so I turn respectfully but fearfully towards your lordship in hope of your favour, since only in the sun of your gaze can my lines thrive and my verses grow. If these first fruits of my brain prove deformed, I shall be sorry they had so noble a godfather, and vow no more to plough so profitless a furrow, but if posterity find in them some scrap of worth, then may all the honour and praise be his to whom these lines are dedicated.’”

  There was a pause. When he’d first opened the Garland, I expected Lord Bumpkin to read one of Richard’s poems but he had chosen instead to read the dedication – the dedication to himself. R.V. THE ONLY BEGETTER, Robert Venner. A dedication may be a kind of poem, I suppose, with a similar degree of pretence and deceit in it. In fact Bumpkin hadn’t so much read as recited it, and I realized that he had the words off by heart. Well, if a volume of verse was dedicated to me I expect I’d know the words pretty thoroughly too. Although I probably wouldn’t read them aloud to a stranger. Not unless I was very self-assured – or stupid.