A Dead Man in Deptford (36 page)

Indeed, it was the writers rather than the brawlers who
now became most under suspicion during the time of the
troubles. I come to the month of May, a most perilous period,
and in particular to May 5, when the verse libel was set up in
several copies on the walls of the Dutch Church and there was
great howling in the Dutch embassy. It began

And it went on

And then it attacked not the Dutch but those high English
that protected them and doubtless were paid in foreign gold to
do so.

It was clear that the poor but vicious poetaster had read or
seen Kit’s plays, for not only did he invoke Kit’s last play in

but he signed with the pseudonym of Tamburlaine.

Kit knew little of this, being at Scadbury. News of Tom
Watson’s death and burial, brought to the manor house by
Frizer, hurt him sorely, but he would not go to London to
throw flowers of the season on his deep grave. Talk in the
town of what Greene had writ on his atheism was also, by
the same messenger, brought, with, Kit thought, a certain glee
unconcealed. Of the libel nailed to the Dutch Church he as yet
knew nothing, nor the one in prose that followed, ending with
these words: Be it known to all Flemings and Frenchmen that
it is best for them to depart out of the realm before the ninth of
July next. If not then to take what follows. For there shall be
many a sore stripe. Apprentices will rise to the number of 2336.
And all prentices and journeymen will down with Flemings and
Strangers.

And it was now that the Privy Council instructed the
Lord Mayor and aldermen to search out the writers of
libels, examine such as were quick with the pen, rake them
for admission of seditious scribbling, and, for the speedier
execution of a confession, put them to the torture in Bridewell.
So it was, on May 12, the very day after the Council put out its
order, that two officers appeared at Tom Kyd’s lodging to arrest
him.

- On what warrant?

- We will have no talk of warrants. You are under suspicion
of expeditious writings and must come your ways.

- Not expeditious, said the other officer, seditious is the
word.

- All one. Here is the basket and here are the papers,
there are a many. It is unnatural that there be so many. And
both officers proceeded to thrust in, with fists that had never
handled book, papers they crumpled, all and every paper, bills
and notes and plays unfinished, the poem on St Paul, documents
well copied beginning Noverint, all. And one led Kyd manacled
to the Bridewell while the other grumbled at his basketload. May
rain fell, though not heavily. The Bridewell stank of its freight
of misery, but the room to which Kyd was pushed, with a jovial
tripping or two on the way, had large May light coming in from
the window and there were May flowers on the table of the man
who was to examine him. He was a well-fleshed gentleman of
some thirty years, who had ale and rolls by him and kind eyes.
He said:

- Sit, sit. He of the Spanish Tragedy? Well, I have seen
it, blood and the biting out of a tongue, difficult to do. It
will save time for us all if you state at once what here in this
over-filled basket is pertinent to our enquiry. For I take it you
admit guilt.

- Guilt of what?

- Of dangerous writing.

- Never, never. I write for the theatre and you will find
there an heroic poem on the blessed St Paul. I court no danger.

- I have a note here sent from high up on your writing
a play on Sir Thomas More. Do you admit this?

- I admit it.

- He was a notable scoundrel that denied the lawfulness of
our gracious Queen’s father his rule of the Church, and he was
tortured and lopped for it. And you writ a play on him.

- A play on him only in his time as Sheriff of London.

- But he ended on the scaffold rightly and it was perilous
to write on him.

- The play was not permitted to be performed. Nor was the play my notion, it came from my lord Strange in the manner of
a commandment and I could not well disobey.

- Well, that is one thing but there are others. We will
not throw away time which is a most precious commodity. I
will read and you will proceed to the torture. Nick Gardner,
he called.

- Why is this? Why torture? I hold nothing back. I beg,
no torture, I claim the clerk’s exemption by law.

- On that you can read and write? That will save you
only from Tyburn. Yours is not a Tyburn matter. Or I think
not. Ah, here.

The Nick Gardner he had called entered, a gross man in a
leathern apron, chewing a bever and cheery enough. He led
Kyd somewhat kindly to his chamber of terror, where an assistant or prentice was cheery too, though with few teeth and those
black. Gardner shewed Kyd with some pride the machines of his
profession - a rack well bloodied, a thumb and finger screw, the
ceiling manacles for hanging, the oil lamp for skin-singeing, the
wire whips of fine steel for whipping.

- What is to be, master? You are to be put to it till you
scream you are ripe to confess of infamy, that being the manner
of it. Will you come to this gear?

- I will confess now. And Kyd shook as in a dance that
the assistant greatly admired. There is no need of this.

- Ah nay, master, you know not the game of it. Well, there
are others to be done, this is a fretful morning, so we will break
fingers only. See, Jack, this is how it is done. Aaaaargh.

Kyd’s writing hand was a mess of throbbing and swollen
flesh, a nail or two had been pincered out before the cracking
of bone in the little render as it was termed, and he howled and
groaned as he was led back to his interrogator who had been
steady in his reading.

- Well, all this is enough and more, it shall be taped in red
and sent up to the Council. And writ with so fine a hand, what,
man, were you thinking on, what were you then about? And he
showed Kyd what he had written in a crude hand on the verso
of the outer folded leaf. 12 May 1593: Vile Heretical Conceits denying the Deity of Jesus Christ our Saviour found among the
papers of Thomas Kyd prisoner.

- Aaargh. Not mine.

- You deny this to be your scrivener’s fist?

- No. Writ under constraint. Dagger at back. Mr Marlin,
Marley, Marlowe. Kyd swooned but was face-flapped back to
attention.

- Marlowe of Tamburlaine and The Yew? His words but
your copy?

- That.

- It is not always good to interrogate directly after the
torture, I have said that often. A man does not speak clear.
Well, you shall have a day and night in the cells, you may
bind up your wounds in rags of your own shirt and tomorrow
we may resume.

AND, of course, at Scadbury Kit knew nothing of this. He was
being honoured by a visit from Robert Poley, who had ridden
express from the Garden. He greeted Tom Walsingham friendlily and with a superior affability slapped Frizer on the back, a
known confederate in lowly tasks in the past. Great swollen left
ballock of St Athanasius, was the whole world then in it?

- To talk, Kit. We will take a turn among the trees this
fine May morning. Such fine leafy canopies that bid the sun
be gentle, but in this blessed uninvaded island always gentle.
The Spanish are fiery because they have a fiery luminary in the
heavens burning their souls to furious madness. They will come,
Kit, if they can.

- I am to do something?

- You are not longer sporting with the flummeries of
the playhouse, that is a good thing. What do you do?

- I finish my heroic poem. I translate a little Ovid, a
little Lucan.

- Like a gentleman, good. Well, here is the story. The Catholic earls of Scotland did not arrive in Berwick. Who
forewarned them? We do not know. Do you know?

- How could I know? Unless you suggest -

- Suggest nothing. Your loyalty is unassailable. I have my
suspicions of our little man in Edinburgh, the world is full of
turners about and twisters, a foul world. To my story. The
Scottish Catholic earls will not appear on English soil at all, not
yet. All seems to be in the hands of Sir William Stanley. I told
you of him?

- The cousin of Lord Strange.

- Even so. He has this papist army in the Low Countries,
English scoundrels and Irish kerns. He is to come over to meet
his noble cousin and confirm that he is to be the centre of Scottish
Catholic hopes. And, of course, Spanish. There is to be a London
meeting - when it is to be I must find out in Flanders. It seems
that we are go back to the old days, Kit - Babington and the
rest of them. Will Lord Strange be able to accept your feigned
conversion?

- Lord Strange will no doubt have heard of my supposed
atheism. I have not met him. But atheism and Catholicism are
easily wrapped in the one blanket.

- We shall know better what to do when I return from
Flanders. Two weeks only of absence, I cannot afford more. I
sail out from Deptford and sail back thither. Let us meet there
on May the thirtieth. You know the house, Tom Walsingham
tells me. Mistress Bull is now the Widow Bull. Come early in
the day to be on the safest side.

- I am unsure of this. Unsure of my power to perform
the old feigning.

- That is why we shall have to talk. Deptford is cool,
the garden is leafy. The plague has not struck there, it seems
unwilling to swim the Thames.

- No harm in our meeting.