The Point of Death (24 page)

'Now
were I Morton with Salgado's Solingen steel slipped through my breast, those would be the houses on which I would call down a plague!'

'So,'
said Sir Robert Cecil quietly, 'they decided to keep the boy - and the woman for a while - and kill the rest.'

'As
part of the celebrations tonight. But again, you do not think like them. For just to kill us would never be enough.
Revenge
was all their cry. I had injured, disfigured and humiliated Cotehel. I was to be injured, humiliated and destroyed in turn. I was to be crippled first, then cut to pieces slowly, in public. But later, when Baines had let them down, Salgado had his blades envenomed; and to make assurance double sure, they poisoned one of the drinks. Will, you were to be slaughtered at the very point of knowing your play was preferred at Court and your future all secure. But, as Morton knew, who understood their mind the best, it was the women who were most at risk. You know what revenge was set for Kate, to be buried alive with Morton and me for ghastly company - they had even opened the tomb to be ready. You have heard how they proposed to serve the Lady Margaret, hunting her with horse and hound, then passing her from man to man. Constanza exercised their plans for her a little early, but she was marked for death as well - the speed and comfort of it dependant on Salgado's whim. But in saving me - by accident or by design - she has saved herself, if Villalar's remedy is as effective in her case as it has been in mine.'

Tom
leaned back and stretched until the chair he sat on creaked. 'That is all of the past,' he said. 'But what of the future? This Robert Devereux, this Earl of Essex, owes us all a reckoning. There has been a deal of discomfort for each one here, leave aside the affronts he has committed against the laws of God and man. Shall we pull him down? He is ripe enough for shaking and never likely to rest until he has brought us all to silence.'

Robert
Cecil leaned forward. 'Not with this,' he said. 'There is little enough of this that can be proved, and nothing such as we can use to hurt Essex or Southampton. Our word may carry weight with Council and Star Chamber but not with the Queen; not out in the light where Master Musgrave would have us stand. On whom would we call to venture out in full day and cry down the law on the Earl of Essex's head? Southampton's lover? The sister of Tom Walsingham's lover? The man who murdered Marlowe? An Italian bawd? A slave of the Armada? The mad woman? The boy?' The Queen's secret Secretary rose slowly, looming across the light. 'It is enough that we know,' he said. 'It is enough he knows we know so that he may hold his hand in the future.

'And
what of the future?' he continued softly. 'The man is compound of ambition and lust for power. There is nothing he will not do for power. So we will watch. We will remain in the shadows and we will say nothing, but we will watch and we will wait.'

He
swept across the room as silently as the breeze, but turned in the door, the palest of faces hanging like a shrouded moon in the black of the doorway above the black of his clothing. 'In silence,' he said again, and was gone without even a footfall.

They
sat in silence, digesting his words until the thunder of his horse hooves - and those of his bodyguard - died away into the stillness of the night.

Then
Robert Poley put his hand slowly down over the spark of the candle flame.

'We
have done well to have come through this with enough breath left in our bodies still to breathe, let alone to talk,' he said. The black shadows of his fingers loomed down from the ceiling like the legs of some unimaginable spider come to gather them all into his web, until his palm snuffed out the last tiny spark.

'But
the rest must be silence,' whispered Tom wearily into the darkness. Then he gave a dry chuckle, reached unerringly across and took Kate's hot hand in his. 'For a little while, at least,' he said.

Author's Note

My records show forty-seven printed works consulted, not counting the works of Marlowe, Shakespeare and their contemporaries; twenty-seven Internet sites opened and several hundred pages of information downloaded; eighteen hours of assorted video research, including films, TV programmes and historical reconstructions of Renaissance fencing-bouts. I consulted experts from five major museums including the Guildhall, the Clink, the Rose, the Museum of London and the Manx Heritage Trust - especially at Castle Rushen. But I believe the reader interested in pursuing this subject would be better served by an indication of those works that suited my purpose most efficiently, rather than by a list of authorities. As my purpose was to use this particular part of the Elizabethan era (June 1594) as the setting for a murder-mystery adventure of the most authentic sort possible, the 'best' works tended to be the most specialised.

I
could not even have begun without
The
Reckoning
by Charles Nicholl - a work of immense academic insight and intense excitement and interest - ably supported by Judith Hook's
The
Slicing
Edge
of
Death
and, of course, Antony Burgess's
A
Dead
Man
in
Deptford
. All of these deal with the death of Christopher Marlowe and the Elizabethan Secret Service of which he was such an active and expendable part. My printed authority on fencing was
The Art
and
History
of
Personal
Combat
by Arthur Wise - which I have long used as a 'way in' to
Romeo
and
Juliet
. The most important video research was by Mike Loades – particularly his fascinating
Blow by
Blow Guide
to
Sword
Fighting
in
the
Renaissance
. I was alerted to Mike Loades's work by my friend Dale Clarke, to whom I owe a special debt of thanks. Dale also lent me some of the consultancy work he has done for the Clink Prison Museum and took me round it in person - while taking time off from completing his MA thesis to 'walk the ground' with me. This allowed him to share his expert archaeological knowledge on the exact locations that I was describing. We went everywhere, from the footings of old London Bridge to St Mary Overie (now Southwark Cathedral), past the ruins of Winchester House to the Clink, the Globe, the Rose, the Borough Counter and the Museum of London which still holds at least one of his own discoveries in its exhibits. Dale also found me Tom's rapier (1590s Ferrara hilts but Victorian blade - unlike the one in the Museum of London which has the original Solingen blade, running wolf mark and all). As is often the case, I cannot thank Dale enough for the help, support and friendship he has shown throughout the whole project.

General
historical works consulted included Alison Plowden's wonderful
Life
in
the
Age
of
Elizabeth
as well as a range of 'Lives' of the queen and her father. Akrigg's fascinating parallel biographies of Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton, as well as Katherine Duncan Jones's
Ungentle
Shakespeare
, hot off the press, published as part of the Arden Shakespeare series, whose definitive editions of
Romeo
and
Juliet
and
Hamlet
I also used. Thanks as always must go to the librarians at the Wildernesse School, Sevenoaks Library, Tunbridge Wells Library (for the Tyndale Bible if nothing else), and the George Hardman Library, Port Erin.

I
cannot end this list without recommending some more specialised work to the enthusiast. The HACA website is particularly good on period weaponry. The Internet also supplied George Silver's
Some
Paradoxes
of
Defence
(almost exactly as it was published in 1590) and a truly awesome range of Shakespearean information. There is even a website listing every actor and major figure associated with any Shakespeare play performed within his lifetime (www.clark.net/pub/tross/ws/bd/kathman.htm) This information is rivalled only by E. K. Chambers's seminal
The
Elizabethan
Stage
published over seventy years ago and the backbone of both my minor dissertation and my Master's Thesis a little more recently. E. J. Burford's
Bawds
and
Lodgings
details the disreputable history of Bankside while Martha Carlin supplied a less sensational but no less fascinating
History
of
Southwark
. Further north, Tom himself springs almost unreconstituted from George MacDonald Fraser's
The Steel
Bonnets
, a work of academic research to rival that of Charles Nicholl and Martha Carlin, Alison Plowden and Katherine Duncan Jones. Finally, I was so simply overwhelmed by Gamini Salgado's
The
Elizabethan
Under
world
that I took the liberty of giving his name to one of its most sinister (fictional) denizens. I hope he does not mind.

The
early part of this book was written as part of a series of lessons with Linda James and her writing school at the Trinity Arts Centre in Tunbridge Wells. I must thank Linda and the men and women of the Writing Group who gave so unstintingly of their advice and assistance - especially in the relationships between character, description, exposition and simple narrative. As always, it was the latter that won out with me. Much of the artistry and vividness came out of those wonderful Monday night sessions - thanks to you all.

My
placing of events in and around London is based upon my map. This was supplied in book form (
The
A
-
Z
of
Elizabethan
London
by Adrian Prockter and Robert Taylor) by the Guildhall Museum Library to whom much thanks. I photocopied it, added Rose Alley and Maid Lane and the rest myself and it is now the size of a large double bed. Elfinstone (like Wormwood, Highmeet and everything else to do with the Outrams) is fictional, but it is squarely based on Castle Rushen in Castletown, Isle of Man. Here I was helped in my researches into Elizabethan foodstuffs, poisons and life in general by Lester Townsend and John Kerr of the Manx Trust and Museum. Their unstinting help and advice went far beyond our original remit - to look at the life and (particularly) the death of Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, Earl of Derby, Lord (if not King) of Man - patron of Shakespeare and his company and eater of poisoned strawberries.

And
Lord Ferdinando brings us back to the heart of the book. Part of the fun of such an entertainment is to try and work out which of the personalities and events are rooted in history, and which are purely fictional. I have tried to remain as faithful as possible to the historical record. The Battle of Nijmagen has been moved a little in time. The incident of the walls was filched from Essex's Cadiz venture where the walls did in fact fall on top of the English Army, traditionally giving rise to Hamlet's wry observation about engineers being hoist by their own petards. Leicester and Walsingham died as I say (though traditionally of stomach cancer and a stroke) and Lord Ferdinando ate the strawberries. Tom, Talbot, Ugo and Constanza are fictional; Kate is only half so, being based on her 'big sister' Audrey who really was wife to Tom Walsingham, mistress to Robert Cecil and part-time amateur spy. Robert Poley is not fictional at all. He was spy and spymaster under Walsingham and Cecil in turn - and he was involved both in Mary of Scots' downfall and Kit Marlowe's murder. Will Shakespeare is real, too, of course, though maybe not as I have painted him. Julius Morton is not. The rest of the company are as according to Chambers and Kathman. According to Chambers again (and most modern authorities) the two greatest companies - later the Lord Chamberlain's and the Lord Admiral's men - worked together only once, from 5-15 June 1594. They actually seem to have been housed at Henslowe's southernmost theatre at Newington Butts, but for the purposes of this story I have moved them one mile north to the Rose, for which we have much more accurate records. There is nothing in Henslowe's diary to give details of what they played but
Romeo
was first put on about then and it is a play about poisons, young lust and family responsibilities - and swordfighting, in the deadly new style Mercutio mocks to his tragic cost.

The
last major character in the book is the city of London itself. Except for Wormwood and Highmeet Houses, London is absolutely accurate. Everything is precisely located and what I say went on there did so. This is particularly true of Bankside; and Shakespeare himself recommended the Elephant. Alsatia was real. Bridewell Palace, a gift from Edward IV, contained both whores and Armada men below them. The one regularly liberated by the young bloods of the city and the other desultorily contacted by Señor Perez, poisoner, spy, writer, friend alike to Philip, King of Spain and Robert, Earl of Essex. Topcliffe really was the Queen's Rackmaster. Baines (perhaps our Baines) was hanged at Tyburn a year or two after these events. Tom's fencing school really was in Blackfriars - though he was not.

Whitehall
and Westminster were almost a town outside London Town. The Star Chamber was as I describe it and it did give Kit Marlowe licence to wander, uniquely and suspiciously, less than a month before Ingram Frizer stabbed him in the eye with his twelve-shilling dagger while Nick Skeres and Robert Poley sat by (at the least) in a parlour of Eleanor Bull's house in Deptford, soon after six in the evening of Wednesday,

30
April 1593 - which is where, as I said,
The
Point
of
Death
began.