The Reckoning Read online

  Alleyn toyed with a lordly answer but in the end simply bowed his head, exhaling a cloud of fragrant smoke.

  ‘And then, after a suitable period being lauded by everybody, perhaps go home to Stratford and buy a new place. Hang up my quill and just enjoy life.’

  ‘Swan of Avon, eh?’ Alleyn chuckled.

  ‘Exactly.’ Shaxsper clicked his fingers. ‘Exactly. I couldn’t have put it better myself.’

  ‘Well, what’s stopping you?’

  ‘This play of Marlowe’s for a start,’ Shaxsper said. ‘I’m playing your minion, Ned. Your ingle. Good God, man, we’re in bed together!’

  Alleyn stopped blowing smoke and sat bolt upright. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Where did you read that?’

  ‘Everywhere.’

  ‘Let me have a look.’

  Shaxsper passed the papers to Alleyn.

  ‘What’s this?’ the tragedian said, riffling through them. ‘I haven’t got this.’

  Shaxsper frowned. ‘Well, it’s got a few stage directions. Hasn’t yours?’

  ‘No,’ Alleyn snapped. ‘Kit Marlowe knows better than to tell me how to play a part. In your case, of course … Mother of God!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is the elder Mortimer “Great Alexander lov’d Hephaestus, The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept, And for Patroclus stern Achilles droop’d” … er … “The Roman Tully loved Octavius, Grave Socrates wild Alcibiades”. And then, look here. “They kiss”! That’s the stage direction. Oh, I know, I’ve been kissing boys for years, but only when they’re supposed to be women. If this gets out …’

  ‘… which it will,’ Shaxsper said. ‘Look what happened with Anthony Bacon a few years back in Paris.’

  ‘What happened?’ Alleyn usually let current affairs pass him by.

  ‘Bacon took to fondling his pages … not pages, of course, but people in hose … in full view of the French court.’

  ‘Ah, well, the French court.’ Alleyn dismissed it. ‘That’s different.’

  ‘And they hanged John Swan and John Lister in Edinburgh when I was a lad.’

  ‘Did they?’ Alleyn frowned. ‘For sodomy? Well, I never.’

  ‘I should hope not,’ Shaxsper said. ‘What can we do, Ned? If we go ahead with this, we’ll be, at best, laughing stocks. And at worst, we’ll be dead.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Alleyn had reached a decision. ‘We’ll go and see Marlowe.’

  ‘They’re classical allusions, Ned,’ Marlowe said. He didn’t welcome being wakened at this hour of the night and at the first knock on his door, his dagger was in his hand and his back was to the wall.

  ‘What are?’ Alleyn wanted answers and he wasn’t getting any.

  ‘The bit you just quoted. Alexander, Hephaestus, Hercules, Hylas and the rest. They’re ancient history.’

  ‘Unlike you,’ Shaxsper said, grown mighty with the country’s greatest tragedian at his back, ‘Alleyn and I are not university wits. We don’t have the benefit of a Classical education. I’d go so far as to say that my knowledge of history is severely limited.’

  ‘Glad to hear you say it, Will,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘A man has to know his limitations.’

  ‘We won’t do it, Kit,’ Alleyn folded his arms. ‘The kind of thing you are writing about is against the law in this great country of ours. It’s a hanging offence.’

  ‘Nicholas Udall got away with it,’ Marlowe reminded them, ‘so did Matthew Heaton … a priest, by the way. The law is an ass in such matters. Anyway, it’s faithful to history. Edward the Second and Piers Gaveston. Read your Holinshed.’

  ‘So you won’t change it?’

  ‘Not a line.’ It was Marlowe’s turn to fold his arms. ‘Mighty or otherwise.’

  The four horsemen rode south east out of London with the wind at their backs. The brothers Roger and Peter Dalston were not natural riders. For too long they had been cabined and confined in cloisters in Lincoln’s Inn and, more recently, at a warehouse run by Philip Henslowe. There were times when they never saw the light of day, still less rode the open roads of Gloriana’s England.

  Ingram Frizer and Nicholas Skeres were altogether more travelled, albeit often at speeds slightly ahead of the law or in between spitting out refuse flung at them at the cart’s tail by outraged honest citizens.

  ‘Well,’ Skeres answered Roger Dalston’s question, ‘it’s a new play by Christopher Marlowe. It’s about this Welshman, Rice ap Howell …’ He paused for effect. ‘Moi.’

  ‘Actually,’ Frizer couldn’t help but butt in, ‘it’s one of Kit’s most brilliant creations. Centres on Sir John of Hainault. Naturally, I play the part.’

  The Dalstons looked at each other. What they loved was words and the way the ink flowed on vellum. Actors they could take or leave.

  They left the old pilgrim’s way at Deptford where the masts of the Queen’s ships swayed in the wind and the cormorants dipped in the brackish water. Kent was not much the garden of England as they trotted towards the North Downs. They passed wagons rumbling northwards in the early morning, drovers taking their cattle to slaughter in the stews of Smithfield. It didn’t feel like Christmas at all.

  ‘It doesn’t feel like Christmas,’ Thomas Walsingham sat in his chair, his dog on one boot, his lady on the other. Audrey lifted her jewelled head from his lap.

  ‘There’s a play toward, Thomas,’ she said brightly. ‘It’ll be marvellous. And, because of who has written it, some very important people are going to be here.’

  ‘Oh, I know, I know,’ Walsingham smiled down at her, ‘but from the snippets of rehearsal I’ve caught, it’s not going to be very jolly. More of a tragedy than a comedy. And I do like a laugh.’

  ‘Well, then,’ she bounced to her feet and sat on his knee, tracing her fingers round the fringe of his beard, ‘why don’t we have a Christmas to remember? A Lord of Misrule, devil-dancing, hobby-horses, the whole nonsense?’

  ‘I’m not sure Baines would approve,’ Walsingham raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Baines is an old killjoy,’ she pouted. ‘Look, darling,’ she turned his face to hers, ‘He’s your chaplain and a damned hedge-priest. Who the Hell cares what he thinks? Tell me,’ she stroked his thigh, ‘will you be my Lord of Misrule?’

  He looked at her, then burst out laughing.

  ‘Only of course,’ she said, placing her fingers on his lips, ‘if your Yule log is big enough.’

  ‘Roger and Peter Dalston, Master Marlowe,’ the brothers bowed. ‘We’ve heard so much about you.’

  ‘If it’s from Henslowe, it’s not true,’ Marlowe chuckled. ‘Thank you, gentlemen, for coming. And I’m sorry to spoil your Christmas. Rush job, I’m afraid. The Troublesome Reign of Edward the Second.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Peter nodded sagely, ‘Fell foul of his barons, didn’t he?’

  ‘They were different days,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Roger smiled. ‘History has a habit of repeating itself in my experience.’

  Marlowe shook their hands again. ‘It’s your experience I need, boys,’ he said, ‘and your speed with a quill. Now, the El Dorado question – can you read my handwriting?’

  ‘What are you writing there?’

  Roger Dalston nearly dropped his quill. It was cold in the library at Scadbury but the copyist hadn’t noticed the frost on the window panes or his breath snaking out on the air. That was because of the play he was copying out. Roger Dalston was a clever man; his brother Peter merely a fast writer. What he saw unfolding in the pages before him filled him with horror. It may have been about a king long dead, but it had echoes of the world that Dalston knew today, parallels that ran straight to Hell.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked. The man wore the robes of a priest but that meant little these days.

  ‘I am Richard Baines, Thomas Walsingham’s chaplain.’

  ‘Roger Dalston, Master Baines.’ The copyist rose and bowed.

  ‘I didn’t ask your name, menial; I asked what you were writing.’

/>   ‘The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, sir,’ he said. ‘Christopher Marlowe’s new play.’

  Baines held out his hand. ‘Everything written under this roof must be passed by me first. Master Walsingham’s orders.’

  ‘But … Master Marlowe …’

  ‘… is an irrelevance. Have you finished?’

  ‘Not quite. Another scene.’

  Baines sat down. ‘Then I’ll wait.’

  The candle guttered in the cold of dawn. It would be Christmas in two days’ time but Advent held no interest for the vicar of Chislehurst who was also chaplain to Thomas Walsingham. Baines had snatched the copied play from Dalston and had read it, from the first page to the last. During it, his eyes had widened from time to time. He had taken out the rosary he kept in his secret drawer and had crossed himself in the horror of what he read. At last, he reached the last page – ‘Sweet father, here unto thy murdered ghost I offer up this wicked traitor’s head; And let these tears, distilling from mine eyes, Be witness of my grief and innocency.’

  Slowly, his scowl softened, turning to a smile. He took up a quill and parchment, dabbing in the inkwell. What had Audrey Walsingham said? Write it down? Well, he would. And he would enclose it with this damnable play. And he found himself mouthing Marlowe’s words again – ‘I offer up this wicked traitor’s head.’

  SEVEN

  The snow came to Scadbury that Monday, blanketing the drawbridge and the gables, settling silently on the turrets and battlements, tumbling from a leaden sky. Soon after dawn, it stopped and all the world was white.

  The Lord Chamberlain’s Men had a play to perform and not all of them were happy with its content, but Mistress Walsingham was insistent that the Christmas festivities must come first, so Tom Sledd’s ingenuity was yet again put to the test. By mid-morning, with a lot of noise and many competing egos, the procession was ready for the road, complete with hobby-horses, fire-breathing dragons and a great deal of ale.

  It had to be said that Thomas Walsingham looked every inch the Lord of Misrule, even if the role was wrong for him. The humblest peasant from the estate should have played the part, for at this time of the year the world was turned upside-down and the meek inherited the earth. Thomas Walsingham, amongst his immediate family, was indeed a very humble man, but when it came to worldly goods, he could have bought and sold the rest of the procession ten times over. Audrey had insisted he take the role, however, and so Lord of Misrule he was.

  A scarlet mask hid his face and a plume of white feathers covered his hair and trailed down his back. His venetians were ribboned and his hose cross-gartered, but all of it paled into insignificance compared with his cod-piece, a massive silver horn that jutted from his groin and, if truth were told, was rather heavy and gave him a peculiar gait. The bells on his toes jingled as he danced through the snow and the music struck up.

  The Rose’s band hadn’t expected this but they were troupers and stepped as lively as the snow would let them, slipping and sliding over the drawbridge as terrified ducks squawked and flapped, joining the moorhens in their collective flight to safety. The drums thudded and thundered and the shawms and kits echoed around the outer courtyard. The local crowd gathered on the avenue’s verge had come prepared, with good Kentish ale and warm bread, much of it from Scadbury’s own kitchens. What finery they had, they wore, with ribbons and scarves across their shoulders and hanging from their sleeves. The whole of the county seemed to be there.

  Frizer and Skeres rode hobby-horses side by side, flicking the wooden animals’ tails and rearing their heads.

  ‘Better than a play, this,’ Frizer said, smiling and waving to the crowd. ‘Looks like everyone’s in it, though.’

  ‘Bit like the Spanish Tragedy in a way. Bet we won’t make as much as we did last year, though,’ Skeres said.

  ‘Oh, the Inns of Court do,’ Frizer remembered. ‘Yes, that was a good one.’

  ‘Well, it was until the Lord Mayor got all hoity-toity.’

  ‘Miserable old fart,’ Frizer sneered, executing a leap and a twirl for a particularly pretty girl in the crowd, ‘What was his problem? It’s only a bit of fun.’

  ‘That sergeant died, though, didn’t he?’ Skeres couldn’t quite remember the details. He had downed a few.

  ‘Eventually, yes,’ Frizer’s eye caught that of another girl in the waving crowd and bowed his horse’s head low, making her giggle and blush. ‘Aye, aye,’ he winked at her and nudged Skeres. ‘You may have to bugger off to the stables tonight, Nick.’

  ‘We’re in the stables already, Ing,’ Skeres reminded him. ‘As behoofs.’ He reared his horse. ‘Get it? Behoofs?’

  ‘That’s a good one, Nick,’ Frizer said, straight-faced. ‘Quick. Tell it to Master Marlowe. He’ll put that into Edward the Second – it could do with a few laughs.’

  Master Marlowe, his face covered with black damask, was walking with Nicholas Faunt halfway back. Mercifully, the musicians were forward and to the rear, so neither man felt they had to caper nimbly; walking in time would do.

  ‘Any minute now,’ Faunt murmured, ‘I’m going to realize how utterly stupid and pointless all this is.’ He glanced at Marlowe. ‘And you look ridiculous.’

  ‘Where’s your sense of history?’ Marlowe smiled. ‘This is Saturnalia, the Roman winter solstice.’

  Faunt clicked his fingers and threw his head back, ‘And here’s me thinking we’re celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.’

  ‘You old Puritan,’ Marlowe chuckled.

  ‘Talking of Puritans …’ Faunt pointed ahead to where the church of St Nicholas stood grey and silent under its snow-clad roof. At the lych-gate, arms folded and feet planted apart, stood Richard Baines. The look on his face said that he was not a happy man. A curate stood beside him, gnawing his lip with nerves.

  The column came to a halt, Skeres and Frizer colliding with each other and sending other revellers tumbling like a row of ninepins. The last ten minutes had been pointless. Both their caps were empty, though they had been holding them out to the crowd for most of the time. No, technically, that wasn’t true. Frizer had a rotten apple in his. The Lord of Misrule, his lady beside him in a riot of feathers and lace, her lovely face hidden behind a hawk’s beak, was waving frantically for the band to stop playing.

  ‘I,’ Walsingham began the time-honoured ceremony, ‘am the Lord of Misrule, the Abbot of Unreason, the Master of Merry Disports.’

  ‘Are you?’ Baines sneered, looking him up and down. Walsingham blinked. That wasn’t in the script.

  ‘We are come,’ the master of Scadbury went on regardless, ‘to honour the season and make merry.’

  Baines stood head to head with him. ‘You are come to desecrate this house of God, like devils incarnate,’ he said. ‘I cannot …’ and he pulled his curate to him, linking his arm in his, a human chain of just two links, ‘we cannot, in all conscience, let you pass.’

  Walsingham took off the mask, with some difficulty it had to be said and closed to the priest, blowing a recalcitrant feather from his mouth. ‘Richard,’ he smiled. ‘Look. It’s me. Thomas.’

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’ Audrey called, irritated by the delay.

  Walsingham half turned and patted the air as if to calm everything down. He turned back to Baines. ‘It’s just a bit of fun, Richard,’ he said. ‘Chance for my people to let their hair down for once. You know how hard they work all year round.’

  ‘I know how hard the Lord works,’ Baines said, ‘to keep this Ungodly rabble from His house.’

  Walsingham turned again to Audrey. The woman snarled, tore off her hawk mask and trudged through the snow to confront Baines. ‘What is going on?’

  ‘Richard’s having a bit of a turn,’ Walsingham whispered in her ear.

  Audrey looked over his shoulder at the glowering priest. She swept past the Lord of Misrule and all but pressed her nose against Baines’s. ‘Can I remind you,’ she hissed, ‘that you are my husband’s cha
plain?’

  ‘He’s not your husband,’ Baines hissed back, ‘and I am also the vicar of Chislehurst.’

  ‘Not for much longer,’ she shouted. ‘Archbishop Whitgift, as you know, is a very good friend.’ She caught sight of the curate. ‘What are you looking at?’ she snapped.

  ‘Nothing, my lady,’ the lad jabbered, unable to look the mistress of Scadbury in the eye.

  ‘Are you seriously denying us entry to your miserable churchyard?’ Audrey asked Baines.

  ‘I will not have the souls of the dead ridiculed by this tomfoolery,’ the chaplain said. ‘Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. All these people should be preparing for the coming of the Lord. It could be the day after next, you know.’

  ‘And I,’ Marlowe murmured to Faunt, ‘could be the next Pope.’

  ‘This is better than a play, this is,’ Frizer nudged Skeres, wrestling as he was to control his horse. ‘A bord says Mistress Wossname lands the vicar one.’

  Skeres looked the man – and horse – up and down. ‘You haven’t got a bord.’

  ‘A groat, then,’ Frizer was infinitely adaptable. ‘I’ve got a groat.’

  Walsingham tried the softly, softly approach. ‘Look, Richard, we’ve had these little processions for years. Old Reverend Carmichael never objected.’

  ‘Old Reverend Carmichael was a half-wit,’ Baines observed. ‘Not a tooth in his head nor a thought in it, either. The Lord’s day is coming, Thomas. And some of us must stand ready.’

  Thomas Walsingham was a man of his times and a man of his class. Masks and costumes were all very well, but, essentially, Baines was right. What the procession was doing was mocking God. And that was not Walsingham’s way. He turned his back on Baines and marched through the crowd, putting his scarlet mask back on. ‘Back to the house, everybody,’ he shouted, lurching a little as someone knocked him painfully in the codpiece. ‘Music! Ho!’ And the band struck up.

  ‘This isn’t over,’ Audrey hissed at Baines, but the chaplain stared right through her.

  The drums thundered once more and the crowd cheered. The company of the Lord of Misrule was on the road again.