Death of Kings (28 page)

Struggling, kicking, trying to push out sounds through a water-logged gullet, I came to the surface for a third time and there was that same fucking stupid fellow still attempting to smash me
about the ears. Only I suddenly realised that what he was actually doing was holding out the oar for me to catch hold of and once I’d seen that he meant me no harm I reached out my hands and
clasped gratefully at my salvation and was pulled towards the side of the ferry and with much puffing and oath-making was hauled and tugged and manhandled until I was landed on the bottom of his
boat where I lay gasping, breathless, thankful.

After a time, I sat up and he pulled in towards the jetty. In truth we had never drifted very far from it – but what of that? A man may drown in a bucket, let alone a portion of river. My
ferryman, now my saviour too, looked at me with a mixture of concern and mild amusement.

“Foreign?”

He didn’t have to say who he was referring to. The ladder leading up to the jetty was empty. I nodded, scattering water droplets about me.

“What did I say?” said the boatman triumphantly. “Fucking duplicitous is what I said.”

“You were right, my friend,” I said, suddenly aware of a nasty river taste in my mouth. “Thank you for . . . for saving . . . my . . . you know . . .”

The boatman’s awkwardness matched my own. His scars blushed, he looked away.

“Would’ve been fucking otherwise if you weren’t an Essex man. Then you’d’ve got this over your pate.”

He clattered one of his oars. Smiling weakly and waterily, I hoisted my water-logged self up the slimy ladder and once atop the jetty waved farewell to my preserver. He was already on his way
back to the other bank. Then I looked about me. The platform was deserted. There was no sound apart from the soft patter of my dripping clothes.

Signor Noti had vanished. The sensible Italian. Because, if he’d still been there, I would have thrown him into the water, moustache, finery and all.

Well, I thought to myself, I’m well out of that. Little did I know.

As I learned later, the second act of the Essex uprising was a short-lived affair. The shots that Noti and I had heard as we sped down Rood Lane were indeed the result of a skirmish between the
retreating band of the Earl’s men and a detachment of pikemen and halberdiers by Ludgate. The tattered remnant of the rebels had then, like us, fled in the direction of the river. At about
the same time as I was heading hot-foot (and also wet-foot) for my lodgings at the Coven, the leaders of this lost cause must have been boarding boats at Queenhythe. From there they made their
frantic way back to Essex House. God knows why. Perhaps the Earl thought to use his great hostages to bargain with; perhaps by then he was beyond thought.

The last scene of this strange, eventful history occurred when the Lord High Admiral brought up cannon and threatened to blow Essex House and its occupants into the next world. Surrender soon
followed. The Earl together with Southampton and some of their lesser fellows were brought to that same mighty Tower which I’d glimpsed and shivered at on the north bank.

Essex had raised a head in order to save his own. Now he looked most certain to lose it. Southampton too perhaps, and I could not help but regret the likely execution of a man with whom
I’d passed a few pleasant minutes. I wondered at Master WS’s reaction too. If I knew a little more about these things than the common man in the Strand it was because we in the
Chamberlain’s were deeply interested in the uprising and its aftermath. Not only because of our minor role in mounting
Richard
on the Saturday afternoon. Now Master Augustine Phillips
had been summoned before the Council to explain why we had gone ahead with such a dangerous production. Others in the Company might have to follow him and explain themselves as well.

For my own part, I was glad that there was such a bulwark of older, more experienced men to bear the brunt of the world’s quizzing and disapproval, and possibly worse. It did not seem
likely that the Council’s attention would be directed towards an insignificant young player. In any case, I told myself, I was working for the agents of that Council. Had I not enjoyed a
midnight meeting with Secretary Cecil? Was I not a dutiful spy for the mysterious Nemo? These connections would provide protection – surely?

Nevertheless I also took a small measure to safeguard myself. In my chest in my room at the Coven were the notes I’d made of the conversation between Sir Gelli and Augustine Phillips.
Although Captain Nemo knew that I’d eavesdropped on the scene, having heard my account of it on his dark boat, no one but I knew of the existence of a
written
record. Hadn’t I
seen in the case of Richard Milford how incriminating a few sheets of paper could be? The moment I got back to my lodgings after quitting the Essex boatman and being quit by the Essex Italian, I
went anxiously to my chest.

Now, in the way of such things, it may be that I expected to find it gone. After all, Nat had already tampered with my unlockable chest with fatal results. Were this a story, the papers would
most certainly have disappeared, filched by persons unknown. But no, the dangerous document was still there, tucked up close to my Chamberlain’s contract. Be sure that I speedily set it
alight and watched with satisfaction as the sheets containing Merrick’s and Phillips’ sentences curled and blackened. I ground the ashes thoroughly into my filthy, uneven floor. As a
way of disposing of compromising words, it was preferable to eating them.

End

Friday 13 February – Tuesday 24 February 1601

A
fter all this excitement, I could now get back to worrying about minor domestic matters, such as the aftermath of my amour with the murderous
Isabella Horner. And in order to describe what happened next I am going to introduce:

Another Interlude

Scene
: The Goat & Monkey Tavern

Time
: One morning a few days after the events described on the preceding pages. In fact an ominous day, Friday the Thirteenth. Whatever its number, Friday is an unlucky
day anyway, they say, particularly in matters of the heart.

Characters
: Jack Wilson, Jack Horner, Martin Hancock, myself and a handful of other men of the Company.

Theme
: There was only one theme to our conversation in those days: the uprising, and the role which we in the Chamberlain’s had played on the borders of Essex and
his business; what was going to happen to the rebels; what might happen to us players.

(Mind you, we kept our opinions pretty much to ourselves. We talked low in taverns; we spoke in asides in the tiring-house. On this occasion I was only half listening to the
conversation that was flying to and fro between Wilson and Horner and the rest. Normally, I’d have been willing enough to throw in my groatsworth, though always mindful that I harboured great
secrets of state. But I was distracted. For when we arrived at the Goat & Monkey who should be there but Mistress Isabella Horner, drinking hard on a bench and all the while looking displeased
and dark. Strangely – considering that she’d tried to poison me – I felt a little stab of desire. Her husband greeted her without much surprise but with the abstracted air which
I’d seen him use before, as if to say ‘What are
you
doing here?’ He was more interested in pursuing the debate about
Richard II
with his fellows. That left Mistress
Horner to me, so the following talk ensued when I’d got a drink and positioned myself next to her. I suppose I intended to . . . have it out with her. Recklessly, I would accuse her of being
a reckless homicide. We spoke in urgent but subdued tones. My heart beat hard in my chest. Here sat the wicked woman who was responsible for the death of a poor innocent, Nat the Animal Man. And
almost responsible for the death of another poor innocent, Nick Revill, player.)

Nick Revill
: Well, Mistress Horner, you must be surprised to see me.

Isabella Horner
: Why?

NR
: (
remembering that Isabella’s poison had been, as it were
,
dateless. If her plans had gone a-right, I would only have known the secret of the fatal bottle
when I woke up to find myself dead
): Er.

IH
: Let us turn the tables.
You
seem surprised to see me.

NR
: (
behaving like a player who has lost his prompt
): Um.

IH
: I suppose I may be here sometimes.

NR
: Alone?

IH
: I suppose I may drink alone, Master Revill.

NR
: To be sure. But a woman alone in a place like this might easily be mistaken . . .

IH
: Mistaken?

NR
: . . . for a whore.

JH
: That must be why so many of you playhouse fellows frequent a place like this. To mistake women. To mis-take women, whether we want it or no.

NR
: I cannot speak for the others.

IH
: And when you speak for yourself it is to tell me that your bent is in a different direction.

NR
: If you say so.

IH
: Come, Master Revill, it was you that told me so and told me most clear, the last time we met.

NR
: Perhaps I am cured or reformed by now.

IH
: I thought you liked travelling on your by-ways of vice.

NR
:
Unnatural
by-ways, according to you.

IH
: But ones that are in
your
nature. Tell me, can nature deviate from herself so quick?

NR
: What if I had taken some of the liquor that you prepared for me? You remember? The liquor in the little green bottle that was to restore me to the highway of
women.

IH
: Have you?

NR
: Yes.

IH
: Good.

NR
: You sound – surprised.

IH
: And you seem to be detecting surprise everywhere today, Master Revill. You have swallowed some of my concoction and I say good. That is all.

NR
: And I ask you what my inclination should be now, after I’ve swallowed your concoction.

IH
: That is for you to tell me, surely.

NR
: Oh I will tell you what my inclination is – or what it should be. It should be a dead man’s inclination. I should be lying flat.

IH
: You mean . . . in a bed?

NR
: I mean in a grave.

IH
: I do not understand you.

NR
: Oh you do.

IH
: It is no good growing angry. Besides, you are attracting the attention of the others. Calm yourself. I say, I do not understand you.

NR
: Come, Mistress Isabella, enough evasion.

IH
: How can I evade something if I don’t know what it is I’m meant to be evading? This is about my concoction, is it?

NR
: Say poison rather.

IH
: Poison!

NR
: It was my word, lady.

IH
: I – I – still don’t understand . . .

NR
: Then let me put it plain. You gave me a preparation which you pretended would cure me of my preference for men. It would have cured me of more than my preference, it
would have cured me of my life.

IH
: You say you tried it, and yet you are here.

NR
: I said that to lead you on.

IH
: Lead me on? And I suppose you said that you preferred men to women to lead me on too?

NR
(
realising that this conversation was not going in the direction I’d planned
): Not to lead you on, no . . . but rather to lead you off.

IH
: Master Revill, did you drink deep before you came to the tavern this morning? Very deep? You are making no sense.

You have told me two stories and now you are denying them.

NR
: What did you put in that concoction?

IH
: No more than a compound of a few simples and . . . and . . . something of my bodily self.

NR
: What thing?

IH
: That is my secret. But it was a kind of love potion – to win you back.

NR
: I thought we were finished

IH: You
finished it with your talk of men and unnatural vice.

NR
: I did not mean that. It was all pretence.

IH
: And what is all this about poison? Is that pretence too? Do you not mean that either?

NR
: Forgive me, Mistress Horner, I’m not sure what I do mean any longer. I think I may have made a terrible mistake.

IH
: As when you said I might be taken for a whore?

NR
: That was a joke.

IH
: Oh ha.

NR
(
blushing as furiously as Richard Milford
): I’m sorry.

IH
: But let me treat your nonsense seriously. How would I be taken for a whore? Instruct me.

NR
(
hoping to divert the dialogue onto less dangerous territory
): A piece of advice then, you need a brighter costume – something – something
flame-coloured.

IH
: Like that woman over there?

NR
: Who? Where? Oh her. Oh Jesus.

(
Across the Goat & Monkey came my friend Nell. There wasn’t much doubt about the nature of
her
trade, considering the flame-coloured dress she wore and the
fair bit of tit she was showing for all the coldness of the season. At any other time I’d have been quite pleased to see her but she was arriving at a most inopportune moment, just after I
realised that I’d made a gross error in accusing my ex-mistress of being a poisoner.
)

NELL
: Nick!

NR
: Nell.

NELL
: What are you doing here?

NR
: Finishing a drink. I think I must be getting back to the playhouse now. We are rehearsing for tomorrow afternoon.