Alms for Oblivion (25 page)

“Dick Burbage says though that you may resume the part – if – ”

“I am not going to be released in time, Jack.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“I am not going to be released at all.”

“And Master Shakespeare asked me to convey his greetings – and condolences on – on the death of your friend.”

This affected me more than anything that Jack had said so far. Without troubling to conceal it, I brushed away the water from my eyes. Slowly we threaded our way past the other knots of people
in the aisle. Turned round, marched back again like sad sentries. Two individuals were squatting on the floor playing draughts. There was an animated trio of merchants, in here for their own
protection and waiting to come to composition with their creditors (so they’d told me, quite proudly). A well-dressed man, more of a gallant than a tradesman, was in close consultation with
the chief turnkey, fat Wagman. A red-faced woman and a couple of small children were visiting a man who habitually wore a long, mournful face. His expression hadn’t changed. He did not look
pleased to see her or the children and stood there, stroking his face. The urgent conversations, the whispered asides.

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

“I know,” said my friend. “All those who know Nicholas Revill know that.”

“Not quite all. Coroner Talbot is determined to find me guilty.”

“He is a hard man, he has that reputation.”

“He says that justice must be done.”

“I have brought you some money,” said Jack Wilson. “Is it safe to hand it over?”

“Do you think this place is full of thieves?”

Jack laughed.

“There is a kind of twisted honour among these people,” I said. “I mean among the gaolers. They will sell anything but they will not take money by force, except as a last
resort. They can get more by extortion.”

Glancing round, Jack handed me a purse. I did not forget myself so far as to examine its contents like a hungry creditor but it felt weighty enough. It was just as well that Jack went on to
speak because I was suddenly too full to say anything. Anyway he guessed my question.

“No, it’s not mine, though I’ve added my share. This is the gift of the Company, Nick. It is bad enough being in a place like this without having to go through the additional
misery of being deprived of food or drink or a bed. I once had to endure a few days in the Clink.”

“Did you? Why?”

I was inexplicably pleased to hear this.

“A small misunderstanding over an affray in my younger, wilder days. So I know a little of what it’s like.”

“That group are clapped up for debt,” I whispered as we skirted the trio of merchants. I was eager to move the conversation away from my own woes.

“They don’t look too unhappy about it.”

“It’s an odd fact that some of the inhabitants of this place are here by choice. Those merchants are waiting until their creditors get desperate enough to settle on any terms. They
will still come out at a profit.”

“I would rather be free and poor,” said Jack.

“But it’s that gentleman over there, the well-dressed one talking to Wagman, who has pulled the neatest trick when it comes to a debt. He’s made a profession of it.”

“How so?”

“This is the third or fourth time he’s been inside. He has boasted to me of how he gets himself arrested on a trumped-up charge of owing a few pounds, and waits for his friends to
get the money together to free him. Then he gives Wagman his commission and walks out whistling, a free man. It gives him enough to live well on for a month, he says.”

“What about his generous friends?”

“Oh, they can go whistle too while they’re waiting for their cash.”

“One day they will run out of cash or patience,” said Jack. “And he will run out of friends.”

“I rather think that day might have come,” I said, looking at the earnestness of the dialogue between Wagman and the gallant.

“And what crime has that individual committed, the one who is being pawed by that woman?”

“He is called Topcourt and an unhappy man. He’s mild and soft-spoken, and guilty of already having a wife.”

“That woman?”

“That woman might be the wife. On the other hand, she might be the other woman, if you see what I mean.”

Even as I said this, the red-faced woman’s pawing turned to blows. Topcourt stood there, long-nosed and passive as a donkey, while the woman’s fists thudded into him. She varied this
with a few open-handed slaps to his face. Following their mother’s lead, the children also started to flail at him. Fortunately he was well protected by a thick woollen coat. This domestic
tussle was hardly remarked on by anyone else in the aisle. The other prisoners were apparently used to seeing Topcourt beaten up. It wasn’t even amusing.

“In fact, he may already have a
couple
of wives apart from her,” I said. “I think he cannot say no. He would agree to anything.”

“I can see why he’s unhappy.”

“Not for the obvious reason. He’s says he’s unhappy because he’s being released tomorrow. His women have clubbed together to pay for his release.”

“Why do they want him out and free if he’s deceived them by marrying several times?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps they think that prison is not a sufficient punishment. They can do better themselves.”

“And perhaps he’d rather stay here in the Counter than face the wives outside.”

“You have probably hit it.”

“No, I think she is hitting it,” said Jack as the rain of blows continued. We watched. It was as good as a play. Then, abruptly the woman turned on her heel and left, with her
children clinging to her skirts. Topcourt still stood there, stroking his face, as patient and silly-looking as a donkey.

“You have made friends quickly in this place, Nick. Or got their confidences at any rate.”

“Much of the table-talk is about crime. A few of us deny everything but the majority are pleased to boast about what they’ve done.”

“So what have you said?”

“That I’m in here for debt, like most of the rest of them. I don’t want to lay claim to three murders.”

“You could say you were innocent.”

“No one would believe it if I did. Strange. You can claim the most gross crimes in here and everyone believes you. But innocence is the one thing that nobody credits.”

“Then it is a little world in here, like the stage-play world.”

“It’s one I’d just as soon not be a part of.”

“All experience is useful.”

“I used to think so, but am revising that opinion.”

“Well,” said Jack, “don’t become like your other friends over there and make a practice out of going to gaol. We could not afford another subscription.”

“I will save you the trouble,” I said. “A noose comes cheap. If we were doing Kyd’s
Spanish Tragedy
now I could actually be hanged up on the stage. Do you think
Burbage would approve?”

“No.”

“Just think of the audience we’d get. You could double the prices at the door.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Nick.”

“I promise to make a good end. I will kick and struggle with the best of them.”

My tongue was running away with me and I could not entirely control my voice. For a moment I took the idea seriously. After all, in Thomas Kyd’s
Tragedy
there’s a villain who
goes to the scaffold convinced that it’s all in play and that he will be pardoned at the last moment. He isn’t. He dies, his laughter choked off. Well, why should not Revill be truly
hanged for the delectation of our audiences? It was only a play, wasn’t it? The audience would all go home afterwards.

“I will give my last performance gratis,” I added.

Jack stopped in our pacing up and down the church aisle. He turned about and put his hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eye.

“Nick, you shall not talk so. Do not abandon hope. Do not sink to the level of this place.”

“I thought it was a good joke,” I said.

“It was. But there are some jokes that are worse than despair. And, believe me, if you were really about to be turned off you would not be convincing in the part.”

This was reminiscent of the little discussion which Coroner Talbot and I had had about playing the drunkard. I brought myself to a smile.

“I thank you for this,” I said, patting the place where I’d secreted the purse of money from my Company. “You are to convey my love and gratitude to my friends. God
willing, I shall see them all again.”

“God willing, you will, and soon,” said Jack Wilson.

And with that he left me.

I was cheered by his visit and for a time indulged myself in notions of acquittal and release. But soon I sank into the glooms once more. My fellow prisoners, whose predicaments had seemed
amusing or interesting while I’d described them to Jack, now wearied me. So I retreated to my cobwebby box. I fingered the purse which Jack had given me. At least I was guaranteed a few more
days and nights in here through the generosity of my friends, the players. I could buy more candle-stubs. What was the point though? I lamented that I had nothing to read, nothing to distract me. I
watched a spider going about his horrid business, scuttling backwards and forwards between the centre of his web and a fly which was trapped in the suburbs of his kingdom. Well, this little room
was my kingdom. Like WS’s imprisoned King Richard the Second I strove to draw parallels between my cell and the great world outside. But it was too easy to see myself as the fly with Coroner
Talbot as the energetic spider, and I soon abandoned the effort.

If this was a story I would have been looking about for ways to escape from my captivity. There would have been a hidden floor-trap under the straw, or a whole section of the wall capable of
being removed at a single stroke or by dint of scrabbling with hands and nails. (But the stonework, although powdery in places, was solid. There wasn’t even a finger’s width of a crevice
to burrow into.)

In a story the purse which Jack had given me would contain a scrawled map illustrating a secret route out of my cell. A map sketched in invisible ink, made with onion juice or urine, which would
emerge when held over the flickering flame of a candle. (But the purse contained nothing more than coins. I opened it and checked.)

In a story, Wagman the turnkey would have a beautiful daughter who, falling for the charms of the handsome young player-prisoner, comes to him in the middle of the night and, after a hasty
embrace and whispered endearments, leads him out past the slumbering guards and turnkeys.
It is quite safe, my darling
, she breathes in my ear,
they are dead to the world. I slipped a
draught into their possets. Remember me in your dreams
. (But, if Wagman possessed a daughter, it was most unlikely that she was beautiful. And, anyway, she would know better than to spend her
time hanging around prisons in the hope of meeting handsome young players.)

Soothing myself with these stories I fell into an uneasy slumber. I didn’t dream of tearing down the prison walls to emerge into the sunlight or of the gaoler’s beautiful daughter
ushering me past the drugged guards. Instead I dreamed a grotesque scene in which I was indeed being executed on the stage of the Globe playhouse, more or less as I’d described it to Jack
Wilson.

Dick Burbage approached me in the middle of the performance – although this was not Kyd’s
Spanish Tragedy
but some other play as yet unwritten – while I was actually
standing on the scaffold. Except that it was not a scaffold but a chair. I remember being irritated at this. If I was prepared to go to the trouble of being hanged for the Chamberlain’s, they
might have provided something more colourful, more dramatic than a humble chair. Then, as if sensing my displeasure, Burbage insisted on paying me at a double rate, telling me it was the least he
could do considering the size of the audience that afternoon. I kept on protesting that this was unprofessional – couldn’t he see that we were in the middle of a play, for God’s
sake? I was doing it for the good of the Company and, besides, what use would the money be to me after I was dead? But Burbage talked about keeping the books straight and at last, to shut him up, I
wrapped my hand round the coins he was holding out.

Then it all happened very quickly. Even as I felt the warm money in my grasp, someone tugged the chair from beneath my feet. The noose tightened about my neck. The rope was rough and it burned.
A sea of faces looked up at me. Burbage was right, we had a full house. Some gazed in excitement, some in horror, but all with interest. I didn’t blame them. In their position I’d have
done the same. I was glad that, with my dying breaths, I was conferring a benefit on my Company. Then I concentrated on fighting for those breaths. But the noose was tougher than my windpipe and I
could hear wheezing. In my mind’s eye I now saw the noose as a closing circle towards which I was running. If I could only get through it before it closed altogether . . . I urged myself
forward but my legs could find no purchase on the ground and my lungs would only drag in spoonfuls of air and the circle of rope was fast shrinking to a zero, to a pinprick, to a nothing . . .

I woke up, sweaty and shivering. A grimy sheet had knotted itself around my neck. In my slick palm lay a mound of coins from Jack’s purse. I was doubled up as if to shield myself from an
assault. I stretched out at full length on the straw pallet, panting and shaking and wondering whether I was really so very glad to be recalled to life. I feared that the scene which I’d just
dreamed about would soon be enacted in reality, and that the last faces I’d see would be not the Globe spectators but the howling mob at Tyburn. I saw myself at the bottom of the ladder with
the gibbet and the slack, hungry noose standing out against the blue sky. The light was dazzling. I wanted to shade my eyes but my hands were shackled behind my back. It was a beautiful day, though
. . . the sun sat snug in his heaven . . . not a day to die . . .

I must have fallen asleep again because the next thing was that someone was pulling at me by the shoulder. It was William Topcourt, the gentleman with more than one wife. He was holding a
lighted candle-stub. What was he doing in my room? There was barely space for one.