An Honourable Murderer (3 page)

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 returned 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.”

“It's a device all right,” I said. “Let me tell you how it works. A playgoer is accidentally banged into by a passer-by on the way out of the theatre. A moment later a gentleman shoots off in pursuit of the passer-by, yelling out ‘Stop thief!' or similar words. Meantime the gent's companion – usually a lady because it's more persuasive that way – stays behind to reassure the victim and to prevent them moving off. And a few moments after
that
the pursuer returns, all puffed out. ‘Oh dear, the thief has managed to get away this time. I do hope nothing's been taken.' And nothing
has
been taken up to that point. Best make sure, though. Best produce your goods, and so provide a display of everything valuable which you're carrying. That's when the real thieving starts.”

I saw that my account carried a bit of weight with the Buckle mother and daughter. That's exactly what happened, they were thinking. In a distracted manner both of them started to feel about for their valuables once more.

“This is the reward of virtue, to be slandered by a player. A common player!” said Charity Thoroughgood.

“I will forswear honesty in future since this is all the thanks we get,” said Anthony Thoroughgood.

“Honesty and you haven't been on nodding terms for years, Tony,” I said.

“That's God's truth,” said another voice. “Mister Thorough-good wouldn't recognize honesty even if he found it in another's purse. And as for
her
virtue . . . well, her virtue's been well handled, believe me.”

“Not handled by you, Bartholomew Ridd,” said Charity. “Never been handled by you. You wouldn't know where to put it.”

I turned to see the aforesaid Bartholomew Ridd. The tireman had been on his way out of the Globe, having finished brushing down his costumes and hanging them up and working out who should pay their forfeits for the little harms done. Although I could have clouted him earlier I was glad enough to see him now. It was the playhouse pair versus the husband-and-wife coney-catchers.

The Buckles, the mother and daughter coneys or dupes, looked from the Thoroughgoods to Bartholomew Ridd and me and back again, still not knowing whom to believe but with the balance swinging in our favour, especially after Charity's last outburst. But the lady with the painted cheeks wasn't quite finished.

“Come along, my dear,” said Mistress Thoroughgood. “We will never prevail against such impudence.”