A Dead Man in Deptford (27 page)

- So the Jesuit-chasing grows hot. You two are my supplements?

- Mr Watson and I are here as true malefactors.

- For true crime?

- We killed a man.

- God’s my little life. You expect the rope? Perhaps it is
not discreet to ask. A life’s but a span. I think much on its
brevity. There be great coiners here. I have met a Mr John
Pole or Poole, a papist and a most ambitious counterfeiter as it
is put. Coining and papistry go together, you know that, modes
of disruption and falsehood. He is a slugabed and late riser but
you will meet him.

There was generosity here, no man might go without for
lack of money, so by eleven o’clock of the morning Kit was
well on to sousing and could hardly see straight when Wyld,
in the mode of a friendly neighbour, came to tell them of the
coroner’s verdict.

- It is as I said. The jury found Bradley killed in self-defence,
his body has been claimed by his father and is due for quick burial
because of this unseasonal heat. Mr Watson here may wait for
acquittal at the next Sessions.

- Why not now? glazed Kit asked.

- It is not within the coroner’s authority. You, Mr Marlin,
are free to go now on surety of forty pound, since you struck
not the final blow, remissible when the Sessions clears you.

- Bail money? Where shall I find that?

- Raleigh, Tom said, no, Raleigh is in Ireland planting
outlandish tubers, the wizard Earl, no, not he, Alleyn, Henslowe,
no. Do, he said urgently to Wyld, tell all to my dear wife, she
will raise money to pay for my privilege of incarceration, she
will bring in pies and a roast and a flagon. Why do we labour
hard and lack money so much?

- Lack of money, aye, an old bent man of fifty or so said,
bowing but already bowed. I see two poets here, I am honoured,
Marlin, he said bowing to Tom, and the other one, bowing to Kit.
Mr Baines, he is beginning his day’s work as informer, see, told
me of you and the interest you have in money. He is not good as an informer, we inform him great lies and he is happy with
them, my name is Pole or Poole as you please.

- God help me, it will have to be Walsingham, Kit said
thickly with drink. Forty pound, oh no.

- I go, Wyld said, leaving you my copy of the report. I
will do what you say, Mr Watson. And he left. Tom read:
Instantly William Bradleigh maide assalte upon Th. Watson
and then and there wounded strooke and illtreated him with
sworde and dagere of iron and steele so that he despared of hys
lyfe wherefore Thos Watson with his sworde of iron and steele
of a valew of 3s 4d did defend himself and -

- Mr Baines, Pole or Poole said, has thought much on
money but to little purpose. He will have it that money is
nothing, a token of value and no more, whereas I have it that
coin of gold and silver has a beauty of lustre. Heap it, I say.
Coin it if you can, and to say it hath no value when a skilful
coiner can take church plate and cut and face it to angels and
the like is the veriest idiocy.

Kit felt he needed his head clear so took a draught of aliger
from a jug that was seasoning a gentleman prisoner’s oysters
just brought in. He recited as best he could from memory;

Pole or Poole attended avidly, a free bestowal from a poet,
and said:

- That is fine, though there are too many somethings.
And you put your finger on my meaning, which is that the
wealth is in the thing and not in its most vulgar passing from
hand to dirty hand, aye, gold comes first, but your fine stones follow. Amethysts, diamonds, aye aye aye. And fine plate in the
churches and cathedrals stolen I may say here without fear by
them that say that what was by good Catholics built is owned
by good protestants. So the stealing back is by way of enforced
restitution. Glastonbury, Canterbury, other edifices of the faith
yield fine metals to be melted, cut and stamped. Mr Baines
wished to know if I knew who had taken plate from Glastonbury
and I gave him names of men non-existent and he wrote them
down, he has this case with quill and knife and inkhorn. He
writes much down.

- So, Kit said, we have as good a right to coin as the
Queen her majesty?

- Aye. I like your line of a little room.

- Infinite riches in a. I must sleep.

Kit lay that afternoon on a bare board, sleeping little but
transporting himself to the warm air of the Middle Sea, where his
Jew named Barabas cheated Turks and Christians alike. Baines
found him at dusk, saying:

- Well, now I may leave. I have crowned my stay, which
thank God is over, with discovery of a Jesuit that was disguised
as a trader of nags. He was heading his letter to a friend with
AMDG, which as all know is Ad Mariam Del’ Genetricem, foul
idolatry, to pray to God’s mother is forbidden.

- You have it wrong, Tom Watson said from the neighbour bed. It is Ad Maiorem Del Gloriam. Has anyone come for
me?

- Is that true? Well, it is all one, filthy jesuitry.

- You report to whom? Kit asked. Direct to Sir Francis?

- No, to Poley. Poley has been back in England these
three weeks.

- Ask Poley to arrange for my bail. Wait. I will write
him a note. And Kit took from his bosom his three pages
of The Massacre at Paris. Lend me your pen and inkhorn.

- And, Baines said while Kit wrote, he was to end his letter
with LDS, which I take to be a request for money, though he
puts the pence before the solidarii.

- Laus Deo Semper, worried Tom corrected.

- Is that true? That makes it worse. You know much,
he added in suspicion.

When Kit rose next morning but one after tortured sleep (here
he was selling himself back to the Service, no longer even when
freed from here a free man), he first pissed into the great sunken
well of the Master’s Hold. Then buttoning he passed blear-eyed
into the boozing ken where boozing already proceeded. There
he saw to little surprise Nicholas Skeres. Skeres greeted him
familiarly with Kit Merlin. He was his first filthy self of the
meeting at Dover that time and seemed much at his ease with
whip-jacks, adam-tilers and clapperdogeons. He offered Kit ale
and part of a cold pasty, asking him to ware of the fingernails
therein. Then he said:

- There be two quick to act as Service sureties, Kitchen
of Clifford’s Inn and Humph Rowland the horner. Robin Poley
was pleased to hear of your eagerness to be back at work after
your playhouse diversions. There is much to do. Enemies everywhere, indeed from the extremities, Catholic and Puritan. You
are to see him at Seething Lane. Sir Francis is very sick, all is
in Robin Poley’s hands.

- I am free to leave?

- Ah, here is Tom Watson. Ale for the swordsman.

- My wife? Has aught come?

- It will be a wearisome wait. Even the innocent are made
to feel guilty. They say guilt is man’s born condition, prisons
are here to remind us of it. You must hope the Sessions jury is
of the same mind as the coroner’s. Aye, free to leave. Come.

K i T1” s first act in his own dwelling, whose lintel he thankfully
kissed, was to flint a candle and welcome the nymph into the very
pits of his lungs. Then he washed with vigour and thoroughly and
changed his shirt. Yet it seemed a prison dankness still clung to
him and could be sniffed in the locks of his hair even when he
had laved it. And when he confronted Poley at Seething Lane he felt the shame of a felon. Poley, fattened somewhat and very
daintily dressed and with most clean fingernails, was inclined to
smother him in love and welcome, my dear Kit, it has been so
long, I have had a hard time, I know the hell of imprisonment,
and I have had the rigours of much travel in the cause, thank
God we are together again, call me Robin.

- Robin, Kit said doubtfully, well, sir, and so I call you
Robin.

- You must listen with care to all I now say, dear Kit.
You owe us, you know that.

- The forty pound will come back to you in December.

- There was cheating that time in Flushing, do not think
we can with impunity be cheated, dear Kit, Baines told us
everything, yet you could not be wholly blamed, Sir Francis’s
mind was made up, there was the Spanish danger about, I know,
I know. Well, in effect you said Drake could attack Cadiz and we
could proceed to war and the war was won and there is an end to
it. But, and here he grew somewhat fierce and struck the table
with the heel of his hand, there is no end to it. The war will be
resumed. There will be no strike in the Channel, not ever again,
ah no. So where will they strike now?

- I presume from another quarter.

- I like thy wit well i’faith, as the clowns say. I have
seen plays, even yours of Faustus and the devil. I like not
thy wit well at the moment. The answer is from the north,
to wit Scotland. There be Calvinists in Scotland and Catholics
in Scotland, so Scotland is a pretty parcel of enmity. And their
king is in it, it is perhaps no wonder when we murdered his
mother.

- So you admit to murder?

- Of course, murder, there was no other way. King James
Sixth is a drunken fool and a known bugger and there be earls
up there that have cajoled him into asking old Philip of Spain
to send some of Parma’s troops from the Low Countries to join
with an army of Scots Catholics from the north to invade us.
There, that is a surprise for you.

- It would fail.

- It must fail, true, but it will set the Catholic nobility
here to thinking of ancient rights of succession. The Queen is
old but still will not name a successor, you know that. You are
a friend of one Catholic earl, he added in a kind of reproach.

- Hardly a friend. I cannot deny meeting with him if it
is the Earl of Northumberland you mean. He is no Catholic.

- You are slow to lose your innocence. He remembers a
father dead for the faith, old allegiances will rush back in if
they are pricked by certain possibilities.

- What would you have me do? Robin, he added.

- Dear Kit, you must proceed to Edinburgh. It is a pleasant
voyage from Deptford if this calm weather holds. You will resume
your old guise as one converted to the old faith, that served you
well that time you will not easily forget -

- Never never.

- It is a precept of Machiavelli that you must never see
the bloodier consequences of your acts for those melt manhood.
This you must have read.

- I do not think so. What must I do?

- Meet the Earl of Huntly. Young Fowler in Edinburgh
also poses as a Catholic but he works for us. He has told
Huntly, also Errol and Angus, that one hot for their cause
will come from England to learn more of strategy and give the
names of some below the border who will raise banners for the
English side. You will have a travelling companion.

- Not Skeres?

- Ah no, not old Nick. It must be someone better able
to assume high rank. You will see.

- When?

- Before their drunken sodomitical idiot of a king proceeds
to Denmark for his wedding to their princess Anne. I shall be
there. He will splutter out nonsense but it will not all be nonsense. There is somewhat required of their king.

- An undertaking not to invade?

- It will not come to that. In one week come to see me, do
not forget you must hold to that as to an oath and no more spells
in Newgate for brawling in the street. You have no sword, I see.

- Taken. Forbidden the use of a weapon sine die so that
friends of the dead one may the more easily strike me down.
But I shall keep myself safe and be here when you say. I am,
he added grudgingly, beholden.

A C A U I_ D R O N for the Jew, Henslowe said, handling the sheets,
that can be done.

- That is Tom Watson, Kit said. He has been beguiling his
prison hours. You can say the play is near complete. Can you
give me money?

Henslowe began to whine. Ned Alleyn said:

- I have a shilling or so. But things are not easy, what with
talk of the censorship. The Queen’s Men are snuffed out like a
candle and the Admiral’s are to take over the Theatre for half a
year if we are permitted to act at all.

- Why leave the Rose?

- Money as always. Lord Strange’s Men pay a fair rent
for the Rose that they may become known. And they borrow
me.

- I know nothing of this Lord Strange. Who is in the
company?

- New men. Tooley, Ostler, Alex Cooke, Dicky Robinson.
One newly up from the country trying his hand, Shogspaw or
Shagspeer or some such name. There have been things proceeding behind your back.

- And who is Lord Strange?

- One that is more than the loaner of a protective name.
He thinks highly of players, he had his own company up in
the north where he keeps his estate. He thinks highly of Dick
Burbage who is like to lead them. My lord Pembroke has, I
think, put the notion in some heads. Truly his lady perhaps.
Sir Philip Sidney’s sister, it is in the blood.

- Sidney thought little of plays.