Death of Kings (26 page)

“Hear you the proclamation of our most blessed sovereign, her majesty Queen Elizabeth, the defender of the faith, a prince anointed by God, the empress of England and Ireland. All good and
loyal citizens are required to listen to her proclamation. Her most excellent Majesty and our gracious Queen hereby declares Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, to be a traitor to her and to her realm.
Moreover, she proclaims that all those who give aid, comfort and succour to the said Earl of Essex by word or deed are equally with him proclaimed traitors and no true subjects of her majesty.
Furthermore, our most excellent sovereign declares that all good and loyal citizens are bound by their allegiance to give to her and to her realm any and all such assistance as shall be required to
defeat the malice of treason and the impiety of rebellion. Long live the Queen!”

All around me there was silence as the import of the herald’s words struck home. It was as if the Essexites had embarked on this enterprise in a reckless moment, or in holiday mood, and
not realised until this very instant the gravity of their situation. For myself, I felt relieved that we had been, as it were, called to order. Surely now everyone would turn their faces homeward
and do their best to bury this unhappy day.

The herald did not deign to gaze at us for more than a few moments after he’d delivered his proclamation. Perhaps he had our measure; or perhaps it was merely that he was commissioned to
pronounce, not to parley. He wheeled his horse around and, surrounded by his entourage, trotted off down Fenchurch Street. There were odd abusive cries from Essex’s company, but they lacked
force or heart. Someone in the vanguard launched off a halberd – perhaps one of those which had just been appropriated – at the retreating troop. It was a gesture; a halberd is not
designed to be thrown. It clattered harmlessly on the cobbles. That was all.

There was a sudden burst of conversation around me. “It’s a trick,” one said, and a second, “We are undone,” while a third contented himself with muttering
“Treachery” several times over in a pensive tone. The crowd moved uncertainly in one direction, then in another. If it had a mind, it was unable to make it up. Then Essex and the rest
emerged from the Sheriffs house. The door was closed firm behind them as if to shut off assistance or retreat that way. He didn’t appear to have got anything from the Sheriff, not even a
change of shirt. I wondered whether Devereux had been sheltering indoors until the herald departed but quickly dismissed that notion. Foolish he might have been; a hothead for sure; not altogether
in his right mind then (and perhaps for many months previously); but he was no coward.

Soon apprised of what had occurred – that he was now officially denounced as a traitor, and that all those who hitched their fortunes to his wagon would be similarly regarded – he
tried to stiffen his followers’ sinews by proclaiming that he alone stood for the good of the Queen and, mindful of his hearers, the good of London too. That if they searched for traitors
now, they should be looking in other directions. His voice came wavering over the men strung out along the street.

But it was too late. Too late to indulge in argument and definitions of treason. Essex’s day might have been saved if the citizens of London had risen in his wake, as their forebears had
massed behind the swaggering Henry Bolingbroke. But our mother city, she had stayed quiet – and thus had London spoken, in her own fashion. Now Essex, having failed to acquire new followers,
started to lose command of those he already had. The company was fraying at the edges. One man near me made off down Mincing Lane. Another strode rapidly up the street, as if he’d just
remembered an urgent, unperformed task. I spied the little-voiced giant edging his way with delicacy through the crowd; evidently he’d decided that, for him, the hour had come and gone.

Strangely, now that it was possible to make an unobtrusive escape from this unhappy scene, I found myself rooted to the spot. It was simple enough for any man to save himself by slipping down
one of the many narrow streets and alleys which lead off Fenchurch Street, and this is what many were now doing. Some even discarded their weapons, either by leaning them carefully against the
walls of houses (perhaps they thought to retrieve them later) or by letting them drop to the ground from nerveless fingers. If I’d earlier thought we were like an army marching, helplessly,
towards a battle, I now saw the scene as a bloodless rout. It was the more shaming because there was no sign of an enemy, no smoke, no cannon, no sword or lance. We were self-driven from the
field.

I don’t know why I should have felt the shame of their defeat as if it were my own. Such a reaction was absurd too, because I had no interest in the Earl of Essex’s success and ought
to have invested every hope in his failure. Nevertheless, I was somehow sorry that events had taken this turn.

I must have fallen into a kind of reverie because the next thing I was aware of was Henry Wriothesley once again at my side.

“Come, Mercury, it will not do to stand here like a lame-brain in the middle of the road. We are all departing.”

“Where?”

“Our day is not done. We have not finished.”

He gestured in the direction of a mass of men beginning to move off in a westerly direction down Fenchurch Street. They were returning along the way we’d come not so long before. A glance
sufficed to show that the Essexites were a depleted force, probably a spent one. I’ve seen mobs of apprentices almost as numerous. The difference was that these men – the ones that had
chosen not to slide away down the alleys and side-streets – were the desperate and the dangerous ones. Or the ones with absolute conviction as to the Tightness of their cause. Perhaps it
comes to the same thing. They were still armed; and now, even though on the move, they were surely cornered. Among their number were several distinguished individuals. Knights and lords of the
realm. Commanders, generals and other men of worth. Men who at other times had done the state some service.

None of these thoughts occurred to me at the time, of course. But later, when I tried to account for the peculiar sadness which the event threw over me, these were the terms in which I explained
it to myself. It was my first experience of the waste – I can think of no better word – the waste, I say, that sometimes seems to lie at the heart of all our striving.

But such reflections were far from my mind now, as I looked at the Earl of Southampton.

“You understand, Mercury. We have not finished.”

“If you say so,” I said dully.

“But you are not with us. You never were.”

While the stragglers of the group flowed past us, I struggled to remember our earlier conversation outside Essex House.

“A witness only,” I said, finally recalling a talk that seemed to have taken place centuries before. “A witness.”

“Like the playwright,” said Wriothesley.

I thought I knew whom he alluded to, but for some reason did not want enlightenment.

“I’m a player, when all is said and done.”

“A player,” he repeated, and I wondered that he could find the leisure to echo my words.

“Nothing more than that,” I said thankfully.

“What did I say?” he said. “I mean the first time that we met. Happy in that you are not over-happy.”

“Though you did not apply the words to me, I accept them willingly.”

“Do not become over-happy, Mercury,” he said, clasping my shoulder. “Now make your escape. Do not travel in our direction.”

“You too, my lord? It isn’t too late to change course.”

“That is the first foolish remark I have heard from your lips,” he said. He half-smiled, turned on his heel and ran to join the vanishing troop.

Comes a time when every man must consider his own preservation. Instinctively I headed for the river and started off down Rood Lane. It was deserted. All good citizens had locked themselves up
safe from the taint of insurrection, while those Essexites who considered discretion the better part of valour had already taken advantage of the few minutes since the herald’s proclamation
to put a space between themselves and their erstwhile leader.

I ran and ran, my feet thudding on the rough cobbles and trying to avoid the kennel which bisected the narrow street and whose contents, not touched by the direct hand of the sun, were
nevertheless beginning to loosen in the warmth of the day and to grow slippery and noxious. Sweat poured down my face and trickled into my eyes, making my passage harder. All I was concerned to do
was to reach the river, catch a ferry to the other side and go to ground in my home territory. Though normally accounted the most lawless region of our great city, Southwark seemed to me now, after
the perils of the northern shores, a positive haven.

It was then that I heard behind me a familiar voice.

“Signor Revill! Signor Revill!”

I slackened and looked round, although I knew what I’d see. Sure enough there was our Italian exquisite in hot pursuit. At first I thought he was chasing after me in order to drag me back
to the Essexites but a glance was enough to establish that he too was running away. His neat features were drawn tight, and I was pleased to note a disorder in his dress and a droop in his
moustache. He drew level.

“Signor Revill.
Mio amico.
”

I made no reply but continued to move at something between a walk and a run.

“
Dove vai?
” he half shouted, keeping pace.

Without understanding his words I could guess at his meaning. He grasped me by the upper arm even as we were proceeding rapidly side by side.

“I say, where you go?”

I tried to shake him off but he had a strong, insistent grip. I wanted to rid myself of Signor Nod’s company not only because I instinctively disliked – and feared – the man
but also because I considered that he was not safe to be with. If they were looking for the leaders of the insurrection, then this loud-mouthed, finely dressed foreigner who had kept the
postern-gate at Essex House would surely not escape their notice.

So I halted, meaning to disengage myself from his grasp even if I had to prise off his fingers one by one. Then, as we were gazing at each other like angry lovers, we heard a swelling sound,
like many voices rising together and carried aloft on the wind. Then a sharper, more unmistakable noise: the rattle of pistol fire from a few streets away. It was coming from the quarter in which
the remaining Essexites had departed. I guessed that they’d encountered some opposition, perhaps as they were trying to exit the city by one of the gates.

Signor Noti turned to look in the direction of the gunfire, releasing my arm as he did so. Then, with one accord, we made off down Rood Lane with renewed urgency. My impulse was still to get to
the river; his impulse, evidently, was to stick by my side. I deferred the problem of escaping from him. As we crossed Thames Street I slowed down slightly, thinking that to be seen running in a
more populous thoroughfare might be to draw attention to oneself, might be construed as the gait of guilt. I needn’t have worried. The houses in this street too were firm shut. There was that
air of fear and withdrawal which I have observed when the plague strikes.

I turned smart down St Mary Hill. I was breathing hard and, in between my own gasps, heard at my back the panting of my unwished-for companion. Moments later I – we – had reached the
river. The February sun glinted off the water. It looked calm, reassuring. But our Thames is like the vulgar mob, never to be trusted, capable of changing its face from one instant to the next.
There was a scatter of keys and landing points along this stretch below the Bridge and usually one found a ferry soon enough. A boatman, sometimes two or three, would be waiting at Billingsgate or
Somar Key, or on his way across with a fare from the other bank.

As my feet clattered on the wooden platform which jettied out over the water, I shaded my eyes and cast about for a ferryman. The river returned my gaze with its blank glitter. There
didn’t appear to be a boat, or at least not a boat in motion, anywhere. I wondered whether the ferrymen too had been seized by the prevailing alarm and had scuttled for shelter until this
storm should have blown itself out.

To my right was the solid wooden cliff of London Bridge, to my left the wider expanses of the river. My home was on the other bank but it might as well have been in far Cathay, or in Elysium,
for all the chance there seemed of reaching it at this moment. Of course, I could have walked the few hundred yards to the Bridge and thus made shift to cross the water. But the sound of gunfire
still rung in my mind, if not my ears. I was convinced that ‘they’, the authorities, would have closed up the entrance on this side or, at the least, would be stopping and interrogating
all those who wanted to cross from north to south. It was what I would have done in their position. Though no voluntary participant in the Essex uprising, though only present at this
morning’s turmoil because of the written instructions of an agent of the state, I was by no means certain that this guaranteed my safety. At worst, I might come within range of a careless
pistol. At best, I could be seized and shut up. Then questioned and threatened. And afterwards tortured.

Not far along the northern bank is that Tower of London which men say was erected by Julius Caesar. I could see it from where I stood. There is a gate that leads straight from the river into the
bowels of that grim building, through which traitors can pass direct and from which they may never emerge again. I was a small and unwilling player in this business, but who knew what sweepings-up
of small players ‘they’ would authorise. My predicament would grow even more parlous when it was discovered that I was a member of the Chamberlain’s, that notorious Company which
only the preceding day had fomented public discord by staging the dangerous drama of
Richard II.
In my mind’s eye, I saw the crouched instruments of agony and persuasion. I heard
myself crying out all those answers which they will ease from you.

I shivered in the brisk air from the river.