Secret World Read online

  He lifted the latch and went inside. This was another new meeting place, the fourth, or was it fifth, he had been told to find in the space of the last two months. There was no doubt about it, Benedict was a careful man.

  ‘Your usual, Shakespeare?’ The voice was like velvet in the darkness. A candle spluttered into life and lit the man’s face. Two goblets lay on the table. There was one jug.

  ‘It’s a little early for me, Benedict,’ he said. ‘Or is it late?’

  ‘Never too late,’ and he poured a drink for himself. ‘What do you have for me?’

  The visitor sat down. ‘A tale of woe, I fear.’

  ‘Leonard Morton …?’

  ‘Wears an opal around his neck.’

  There was a pause. ‘And does he wear it there, still? Or did you hack it free?’

  ‘I slit the throat of his man,’ came the answer, ‘but I was interrupted.’

  ‘By his people?’

  ‘By Kit Marlowe.’

  Benedict paused in mid-sip. ‘That name again. Is the man everywhere?’

  ‘He would like us to think so, fire and air as he is.’

  ‘He is a man!’ Benedict slammed the cup down so that the jug jumped. ‘And I want him stopped.’

  There was a silence between them.

  ‘Charles Angleton,’ Benedict said. ‘Not a stone’s throw from here. That’s where you’ll find the lapis lazuli. And no mistakes, this time, Shakespeare. I’m beginning to wonder what I pay you for.’

  ‘Lowestoft was expensive,’ the man replied, by way of a hint. ‘In more ways than one.’

  ‘I know,’ Benedict replied with a smile, but no purse appeared on the table. ‘Lowestoft always is. They’re a funny lot round there.’

  Ithamore had only heard old Joshua use that word once before and that was when he had driven a spike into his thumb in a careless moment at his bench. Now he used it again, but he was not working. He was looking in disbelief at the state of his workshop, the hapless boy standing in the middle of it. Joshua scowled at him. What was it about the boy that made him look so guilty? He could be as innocent as a lamb, as pure as the first new snow that fluttered on to the roofs of the Vintry in the depths of winter, but there was something about his face that screamed a furtive guilt.

  Joshua hit him around the head.

  ‘Ow!’ The boy’s breaking voice shot skyward with surprise – although perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised at all. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘This!’ Joshua threw his arms wide to indicate the chaos. Every drawer had been wrenched open, every lock smashed, every pot overturned. Papers lay strewn in scrolls across the floor.

  ‘I didn’t do it!’ the boy protested, suddenly not caring whether the old Jew gave him his notice or not.

  ‘No,’ Joshua spat as he rummaged through the papers, checking corners, nooks and crannies. ‘But you didn’t stop it, either.’

  Ithamore did not live in, like most apprentices. He lived with the unholy brood his mother had spawned, they whose fathers were some sailors and the children’s skin was of the colours of the rainbow, sired as they had been by Turks, Chinamen, Levanters and Mongols. Joshua knew perfectly well that the boy had to wade through the shit of the Vintry’s streets to get here from the Tower. It was half an hour’s run. And Joshua was insistent that he ran. How long it took the boy to get home after work was his own affair.

  Joshua was actually angry with himself, but slapping yourself around the head was not half as satisfying as slapping the next man; and Ithamore was the next man in this and every situation.

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there, boy,’ the Jew snapped. ‘Clear it up.’

  Ithamore hopped to it, righting furniture and replacing drawer contents. Joshua’s brain whirled. He couldn’t see anything obviously missing. The gold was where it had been, give or take a lock or two. So was the silver. Had the thief been so blind that he had overlooked that? Surely not. If you’re going to turn over a silversmith’s, isn’t it precious metal that’s uppermost in your mind? Unless, of course …

  ‘Ithamore …’ Joshua had no sooner taken his cap off in disbelief and astonishment than it was back on his head again. ‘Who came to see us the other day?’

  ‘Er …’ Ithamore was at a loss. He spent most of his time out in the yard; he didn’t know who the people were who came and went. His master had always made it clear that the less he knew, the better it would be for him.

  Joshua gave him another clip around the ear for good measure. ‘Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Christopher Marlowe, the playwright.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Ithamore remembered vaguely. He had been there when Ithamore had spilled the silver. Again.

  ‘And where do you find a playwright, Ithamore?’

  ‘Er … at the theatre?’ Ithamore could never be sure whether Joshua’s weren’t trick questions.

  ‘Right,’ said the Jew and he wagged a warning finger at the boy. ‘Last chance, mind. How many is that I’ve given you now? Last chances, I mean.’

  ‘One or two, sir.’ Ithamore saw his chance to minimize things.

  ‘Well, let this be the last. When I get back, I want this place spotless.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got to do something.’ Ned Alleyn slapped his thigh. There was a crown at a rakish angle on his head and he was well into his second bottle of wine. He was the foremost actor of his day, everybody said so, but he’d been daft enough to take on the role of the king in King Henry the Sixth because Philip Henslowe had begged him to do it. And why not? Alleyn had dared God out of Heaven with Kit Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. Obviously, only Alleyn could play the lead in any play at the Rose, but this was not just any play – it was the first, fumbling, faltering attempt by Will Shaxsper and it needed work. A lot of work.

  ‘It’s like Marlowe without the Marlowe.’ Tom Sledd was drinking too, nodding his agreement and sympathizing. ‘Pentameter, just not very iambic, somehow.’ He sat in full plate armour with a long skirt under his taces, as unhappy with his role as Joan la Pucelle as Alleyn was with Mad Harry.

  ‘I just assumed,’ Alleyn went on in his booming stage voice that carried to the Bear Garden across the road, ‘that the king would be a heroic character, something I could get my teeth into. Instead, he’s as mad as a tree and crawls around people – anything for a quiet life. Well, that’s just not me.’

  La Pucelle wasn’t Tom Sledd either. There was a time when he always played the female leads. He had the face for it, the innocent eyes, the high voice. Some said he had the legs as well, but they said it softly because buggery got you burned in Elizabeth’s England. Now, though, he was stage manager at the Rose and had thought all that was behind him. Then that useless boy Ben August had gone down with something nasty he’d caught from one of the Bishop of Winchester’s geese, so here Sledd was, back in the petticoats again.

  ‘Would he do a rewrite, do you think?’ Mad Harry asked the Maid of Orleans. ‘Marlowe, I mean.’

  ‘Restore the mighty line?’ Sledd took a hefty swig before hauling up his skirts to scratch under his codpiece. ‘That would be favourite.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind so much if Shaxsper had even finished the bloody thing,’ Alleyn lamented, hanging the crown of England on the chair behind him. ‘At least I’d have a death scene. Go out on a memorable note.’

  Sledd saw the man’s point. No one died on stage quite like Ned Alleyn.

  ‘Where the bloody hell is Shaxsper?’ Alleyn asked, somewhat plaintively.

  But before Sledd could answer, there was the loud clearing of a throat in the darkness of the auditorium. The morning sun lit the alien features of Joshua, as he stepped forward into the centre of the yard like a groundling with the plague.

  ‘Show doesn’t start for another two hours, mate.’ Sledd was in no mood to be civil, even to a paying punter.

  ‘I’m looking for Kit Marlowe,’ Joshua said.

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ Alleyn sighed.

  ‘Try Henslowe.’ Sledd refilled his cup and Alleyn’s. �
��Up there,’ he said and pointed to the gallery. ‘In his counting house. You can’t miss it.’

  Joshua smiled. Counting house was a phrase he understood all too clearly. ‘Henslowe?’ For that he needed more information.

  ‘Runs the place,’ Sledd told him.

  ‘Our Lord and Master.’ Alleyn bowed; he who never acknowledged he had such a thing; he who bowed to no one. And he broke into his lines – ‘“And poise the cause in justice’ equal scales, Whose beam stands sure, whose rightful cause prevails”. Mother of God, you couldn’t make it up.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Sledd sighed, ‘Will Shaxsper could. And has.’

  Halfway along the gallery, the Rose became confusing. Flats blocked the only obvious access and a man was sitting there, painting one of them.

  ‘Would you be Master Henslowe?’ Joshua asked politely, a little surprised to find the owner of a Southwark theatre carrying out so menial a task.

  ‘Not for ready money. He’s along there, second door on the right.’

  ‘Really?’ Joshua was lost. ‘I was told it was this way.’

  ‘By who?’

  ‘Er … the lad in the dress, down on the stage.’

  ‘Oh, him; yes, well, they’re actors. Funny lot around here. I don’t mingle with them any more than I can help it.’ The painter dipped his brush into a pot of rose madder and swept a sunset swathe across the top of the flat, stepping back and looking at it critically, his head on one side. He clearly had no more to add on the subject.

  ‘Quite,’ replied Joshua and followed his new instructions.

  He heard the rattle of coins before he reached the room and recognized the muttering sound of someone counting money under their breath.

  ‘Master Henslowe?’

  Philip Henslowe stopped counting and crouched over the table like a naughty schoolboy caught stealing sweetmeats or a lunatic chained to a wall in Bedlam. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘My name is Joshua. I am looking for Kit Marlowe.’

  ‘Joshua?’ Henslowe half rose from his chair, careful to scoop all the takings out of sight first. ‘How Biblical.’ He took in the man’s odd robe, the ringlets tucked behind his ears. ‘Er … Joshua of …?’

  ‘All points east.’ Joshua shrugged. ‘My home, I suppose, is in Venice.’

  ‘Italian!’ Henslowe beamed, clicking his fingers. ‘I thought so. I never misplace an accent. What news on the Rialto?’

  Joshua shrugged and looked skywards, seeing only the cobwebs shimmering in the sun shafts that lit Henslowe’s inner sanctum, up here beyond the Gods. ‘I haven’t seen that for years. There’s a rather good little brothel at the eastern end of it.’

  ‘Is there?’ Henslowe said, ever a man of the world. ‘I did not know that.’

  ‘Master Marlowe?’ Joshua reminded the man why he had come.

  The theatre manager suddenly became very paternal. ‘May I ask why you wish to see him?’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s my business,’ Joshua said.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. It’s just that, well, in this business, actors, playwrights, they draw their creatures, you know, their following. Fanatics, some of them. We can’t just give out details will-they, nil-they.’

  ‘I owe him some money,’ Joshua said, sliding a bulging purse from his sleeve.

  Henslowe’s eyes glittered in the reflected sunlight. ‘I see. Well, I’m afraid Marlowe’s not here at the moment. I could look after it for him, if you would like to …’

  Joshua replaced the purse and shook his head. ‘His address?’

  Henslowe’s face fell. ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly …’

  Joshua let a silver coin clatter on to Henslowe’s table, where it rolled in a diminishing circle before it was joined by one more, then another.

  ‘Hog Lane,’ Henslowe said to the coins.

  Another two followed.

  ‘Number sixteen. By the sign of the Grey Mare. You can’t miss it.’

  By the time Joshua had reached the Liberty of Norton Folgate, the sun of that endless summer had reached its height and Moorfields lay parched under it, its grass yellow, its windmills still; no wind to ruffle their sails. A strumpet offered him her services outside the Grey Mare, but Joshua’s mind was elsewhere and he rapped sharply on the low, studded door of number sixteen.

  A dog barked at Joshua as he waited and a couple of apprentices, their leather aprons dirty and their hair cropped short, looked at him with distaste. Then the door was opened and a handsome young man stood there in his shirt and Venetians. He looked Joshua up and down. ‘Not today, thank you,’ he said and made to close the door.

  The Jew was faster and he wedged his foot in the way. ‘I’m a friend of Kit Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Is he in?’

  The man frowned at him. ‘So am I. And no, he’s not.’

  ‘I’ll wait,’ and Joshua barged past both door and man.

  ‘Now, look …’ But the man never finished his sentence because Joshua was holding the tip of a knife blade under his chin. He flashed a glance around the hall. It was clean and neat with a flight of stairs leading up to the first floor. There was no sign of a servant. Conversely, there was no sign of Kit Marlowe.

  ‘Who are you?’ Joshua wanted to know.

  ‘I am Thomas Watson,’ the man replied with a gulp. He was not a coward by nature, but in the lifelong battle between discretion and valour, it was usually discretion that won in the world of Tom Watson.

  ‘What are you?’ Joshua probed, both with his questions and his blade.

  ‘A poet,’ Watson told him. ‘Musician. Philosopher of sorts.’

  ‘And Marlowe?’

  ‘Er … a playwright. University wit. The Muses’ darling. All fire and air.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Joshua hissed. ‘I read his handbills too. I mean, what is Marlowe to you?’

  ‘A friend. And my landlord, I suppose. I live with him. Or he with me. In the nicest possible sense of the term, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Joshua said. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Er … I don’t know. He hasn’t been here for a night or two, but we are our own fellows, you know. We come and go as we please.’

  Joshua relaxed his grip on Watson’s sleeve and the poet drew his first free breath in some minutes. ‘So, are you expecting him?’ he asked.

  Watson felt his throat. Thank God. No blood. ‘No. I told you …’

  ‘You are your own fellows; yes, I know. Give Marlowe a message from me, will you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Tell him he has the list. Tell him he has all I have to give. Tell him there was no need to turn my place upside down. Give him this.’

  ‘What it is?’ the poet asked.

  ‘It’s a bill,’ Joshua said. ‘A reckoning up of the damage he caused to my workshop. He’s got until cock-shut on Thursday to pay me. He does, of course, know the address. After that, I shall take it out of his flesh.’ And he slid the dagger away.

  Nothing much had changed on stage at the Rose, except perhaps the addition of another bottle, well on the way to being empty. Ned Alleyn was now lying on the floor, one knee bent and the other leg in the air, a crown twirling on his extended toe. Tom Sledd was still in his skirts, but they were now hauled up with no pretence at modesty and he was sitting on the apron of the stage, a sullen pipe in his mouth, smoke trickling out despondently. They scarcely looked up as the door at stage right crashed back and Thomas Watson stormed into their midst.

  ‘Where’s Kit?’ he gasped, hand to his chest.

  Alleyn snorted. ‘Kit who?’ he said, finally.

  Watson kicked him non-too-gently in the ribs. ‘Christopher Marlowe, playwright and poet,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, him,’ Alleyn said nastily. ‘The playwright and poet who should be here, rescuing this rubbish of Shaxsper’s from disaster and me from death by turnip.’

  Watson listened carefully. Had the generation’s greatest actor just said turnip? ‘I beg your pardon, Master Alleyn,’ he said.

  ‘Tur
nip.’ Alleyn kicked the crown up in the air and reached out to catch it. It clattered somewhere behind some scenery and he lost interest in it. ‘I say turnip, of course. Generic vegetable.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sledd got up and shook out his skirts. ‘It was half a cabbage nearly got me the other night, but still … this play is a disaster. They just come to throw things, that’s what I think.’ He sucked furiously on his pipe, which had gone out.

  ‘It can’t be that bad,’ Watson said, dismissively, ‘but, look, this is important. I need to find Kit …’

  ‘We all need to find Kit,’ the two actors said in perfect unison.

  ‘A man is after him. He says Kit … well, I’m not sure what he has done, but I know that this man is angry. Really angry.’

  Alleyn seemed to see Watson for the first time. ‘You’re Thomas Watson, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes!’ Watson could have screamed with frustration. ‘But …’

  ‘You’re a writer, aren’t you?’ Alleyn nodded at Sledd, who moved forward, putting an avuncular arm across Watson’s shoulder.

  With Alleyn on the other side, Watson had been caught in a perfect pincer movement. ‘I dabble,’ he said, looking at each man dubiously.

  Alleyn treated him to his musical laugh, which had women the length and breadth of London swooning. ‘Dear boy,’ he said, dropping his voice now to its deepest timbre. ‘More than dabble, or so I hear.’

  Sledd grimaced. He had heard Watson’s stuff but any old port in a storm.

  ‘I’m more of a poet, really,’ Watson offered. ‘Musician, I should say. Lyricist.’

  Alleyn waved his protestations away with a languid hand. ‘This will be a simple task for anyone who is imbued with Marlowe’s mighty line every day,’ he said.

  As the last conversation he had had with Marlowe had been through a haze of alcohol, Watson was not so sure, but Alleyn’s voice had a way of creeping under the skin, making a man feel all was possible and, almost without his conscious intervention, Watson’s head began to nod, at first slightly, then enthusiastically. ‘I’ll do it!’ he cried.

  ‘Good man!’ Alleyn clapped him on the back. ‘Tom –’ he smiled at the stage manager – ‘get someone to clear that little room at the back, you know the one.’