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  The Conscience of the King

  ( Henry Gresham - 2 )

  Martin Stephen

  Martin Stephen

  The Conscience of the King

  The play's the thing Wherein to catch the conscience of the King

  Hamlet by William Shakespeare, 1601 version, Act 3, Scene 1,1.47.

  Prologue

  30th May, 1593 Deptford, South London

  'A great reckoning in a little room…'

  Shakespeare, As You Like It

  'Time for you to die.’ Poley's voice was quiet, menacing

  The river by Deptford was stained a dark red-brown. The slaughterhouses were at work. They cut channels in the hard floors to take the blood of the slaughtered animals and feed it out to the waiting Thames. The river was foul enough anyway, carrying all London's sludge with it, and on killing days the blood, shit and piss of the terrified beasts stained it an even deeper brown. The noise of the animals, sensing their own death and the death of their kind, was terrible, shrieks and roars that could have come from the mouth of Hell. However deep they dug the channels, the blood seemed to splash against the timbers of the walls and rot them quicker than the wettest winter.

  'I will decide when it is time.' Marlowe flung himself on the window seat. Christopher Marlowe. Kit Marlowe. The greatest, the first and the finest dramatist in England. His extravagantly slashed black velvet doublet was stained, elbows rubbed to a matt sheen where they had rested on tables in so many taverns.

  'You no longer decide things. We do. You lost the power to decide anything when you became unsafe.' Poley spoke as calmly as ever, but with the slightest edge to his voice. 'You had a bargain. You did as you were told and you kept silent. As all of us do. But you had. to speak out, didn't you? You had to make a noise, draw attention to yourself.' There was hatred in Poley's eyes, in his voice. A hatred of weakness. A hatred of men who let their emotions take control.

  'Sweet Jesus!' said Marlowe, grinning stupidly. 'Is even the great Master Poley showing signs of strain?' But to die in Deptford, he thought to himself. The heroes and villains he had created in his plays had bestrode heaven and hell, and all that lay between. The poet who had given them life was to die in London's arse-end.

  'It's time.' The control in Poley's voice was more frightening than any anger. 'It's time now.'

  He was right. The agreement was that Marlowe would die in a dispute over the bill for the meal they had shared. The meal had been eaten. It was time for the reckoning.

  Marlowe jumped up steadily enough. Poley remained seated, watching him, outwardly calm, as emotional as drawn steel. Frizer and Skeres, the hired help, edged back, nervous, eyes flicking between Marlowe and Poley, waiting for orders. Marlowe looked at them and let a thin sneer curl his upper lip. He started to strip off, first the doublet, then the lace collar he had always preferred over the ruff. The poor clothes lay on the table waiting for him, the jerkin stained and stinking of sweat.

  They had supposed they would find a young sailor to kill for the body that a simple local Justice would accept as being that of Christopher Marlowe. Bodies of all sorts were cheap in Deptford, and souls even cheaper. Then providence had intervened. They had decided to hang a mad Puritan, the writer of the infamous Marprelate tracts, four miles up the road at St. Thomas-a-Watering only yesterday evening. John Penry was a year older than Marlowe and, ironically, also a Cambridge man. Some money to a sexton who cared little where a hanged man was buried had emptied the cheap coffin, and a ruff in place of Marlowe's lace collar would hide the rope marks well enough. It was better than the sailor. They would have had to have got him drunk, which would have been easy, and then separate him from his friends, which would have been harder. True, no one would miss another dead seaman. But they would miss someone already dead even less, and a body whose fingers had the dark stains of ink on them and were untroubled by hauling ropes for a living was an unexpected bonus.

  The act of putting on the filthy clothes sobered Marlowe. The purse was heavy, and he half waited for an attack from Poley and the two other men. It did not come. They would try to kill him, of course, despite their agreement and the bond struck with Henry Gresham. Poley had not lived and prospered as long as he had in England's dark underworld by being stupid. He wouldn't risk doing it in the house. There would be one or two men waiting on Deptford Strand, Marlowe thought, or, even better, one of the sailors on board the brig Poley knew he was to sail on with the tide. Well, sweet Robin Poley was in for some shocks of his own.

  Marlowe nodded to the men. Poley stepped out of the door, and returned a minute or so later.

  'It's clear,' was all he said. The less Poley spoke, the more dangerous he was.

  Marlowe felt stupid in his stained workingman's clothes. He wanted to make a grand exit, like one of the characters in his plays, or speak an epilogue to his own life. What were the lines he had written for Faustus?

  Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apollo's laurel bough

  Instead, all he could think of was a line from the same play:

  Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it

  The three watchers saw nothing of Marlowe's inner turmoil. One moment he was standing by the low wooden door, silent, unmoving, the next he was gone into the deepening light of the evening. It was the last any of them would see of him. In a few moments they would start the ruckus that would lead to the supposed death of Christopher Marlowe, and poor John Penry's body, already suitably mutilated, would be laid out and buried in an unmarked grave in Marlowe's name.

  1

  May, 1612 The Globe Theatre, Bankside, London

  'Murder most foul'

  Shakespeare, Hamlet

  The blue of the sky was almost painful to the eyes. The thin pall of smoke hanging over Bankside was pungent, the smell of unseasoned wood, the sap bubbling and boiling and snapping at the nose, mingling with the heavier, earthier stench of sea coal. The smoke had given up trying to dampen the warmth of the sun, roasting the men and women still for the most part dressed in heavy, winterish woollens that exuded the thick, musty smell of a long winter.

  Five hundred years ago, the Norman conquerors had set down the forbidding bulk of the Tower of London to control men's bodies and the mass of St Paul's Cathedral to control their minds. Both still squatted over London's citizens, a raw glare of power. Yet now there was a new power afoot, uncontrolled, anarchic, threatening. The theatre had come to London.

  They came to the play in their thousands. Shipwrights and sailors from St Dunstan's; weavers and cobblers from St Giles Cripplegate; the silk weavers from Allhallows Honey Lane. From the fine, high-timbered merchant's houses to the acrid stench of the hatmakers' workshop, through the narrow streets where the shrieks and cries of the vendors seemed to overwhelm the ears, they flocked over London Bridge or called out from the landing stages — Westward Ho! ' 'Eastward Ho!' — to be ferried across the Thames. The boats buzzed and flicked around the jetties like flies to horse dung.

  The flag flew above The Globe theatre, its sides high to wind and weather. It was a packed house. The timbers cracked and spat like an old man roused from slumber by his family.

  'Like an old woman, isn't she?' John Hemminge was one of the founders of the company. 'All the paint and gilt in the world can't cover up her cracks!'

  The Actor listened and smiled despite his sickness. He loved The Globe. He had been there on that famous night eleven years ago when the players had taken down the timbers of The Theatre plank by plank and seen them off in a string of wagons and then boats across the river to build The Globe. The Lord Chamberlain's Men, the finest troupe of actors in the realm, had not owned the land on which The Theatre sat
, but they had ownership of its timbers. The bastard Alleyn, who owned the site, had threatened to foreclose on them. So they had taken what was their own and moved it piece by piece over the river to make their new home: The Globe.

  'Don't watch too long, old friend.' Hemminge spoke softly to the Actor. 'Watch too long and you might start to think we have any real importance.'

  Thousands flocked to see them play. They had kings and admirals as their patrons. They stood in the sunshine of public adoration and fame. Yet, thought the Actor, the players were little more than piss and shit in the eyes of the power brokers. At best they were seen as popinjays with no breeding. At worst they were considered seditious, riotous drunkards. Those in power detested most of all their capacity to arouse deep emotions in their audiences. What had a noble lord said recently of them? 'Of no more worth than a common beggar.'

  The newer, younger members of the company groaned and grumbled, affecting a distaste for the cramped and crammed hordes filling the playhouse. 'Oh God!' one of them murmured as he wafted by, scented handkerchief held to costumed lips, 'so very many of the poorer sort! This is so vulgar.'

  Hemminge exploded, rounding on the new recruit. 'And what's vulgar about good people wanting to see us perform?'Stick your vulgarity up your arse! This vulgarity is what we exist for. Two and a half thousand people out there, two and a half thousand people who've paid to see us perform! D'you hear, young'un? There's fewer people at a king's funeral!'

  The handkerchief wondered whether to have a tantrum, remembered who he was talking to and bowed instead. He felt the excitement. The Actor could see it in the boy's face and in his body as he walked away. They all did.

  'We've spoilt them, haven't we, these young fops?' John Hemminge grabbed a cheap stool, a long-forgotten prop from a play, and sat opposite the Actor. 'Let them forget their meat and drink, forget where they really come from. They've had it on a plate; never had to fight, as we did.'

  Too many indoor performances, the older ones said, either at Court or in the new theatre at Blackfriars.

  'What about this new play?' asked Hemminge after a moment's pause, patting the pocket specially put into his doublet to hold his pipe. 'This lost manuscript. By Marlowe.'

  The Actor felt the band of pain tighten across his brow. 'Steer clear of it, John,' he said. 'Well clear of it. Marlowe was trouble when he was alive, and people like him are trouble when they're dead. God knows what he knew. If he's put half of it into this damned play no one appears to have seen, I dread to think what the consequences will be. The last thing this company needs is the government down their throats after a riot. Can you imagine? They say this mysterious manuscript has the King as a sodomite and his favourite as Satan.'

  'Strange, isn't it?' mused Hemminge, contentedly drawing the foul smoke down into his lungs and making a small V of his mouth as he gently exhaled it, 'how Marlowe could be so prescient as to write a play about a sodomite king and an anti-Christ favourite? With Queen Elizabeth still on the throne when he died and six years — was it six? — to go before good King James took over? Remarkable.' The smoke rose slowly until the air, agitated by the vast crowd, caught and dispersed it. The two men's eyes locked for a moment. 'They do say it's very, very powerful. A masterpiece, they say, those few as are meant to have seen it. Better than anything anyone else has done…' A thin smile crossed Hemminge's face as he mused, outwardly at peace with the world and his pipe.

  The sweeping tide of nausea came on the Actor again, as if his lips and nose had been sealed. The thin, bitter vomit rose in his throat, burning as it cascaded on to his tongue. Thank God he had not thrown up, in front of them all.

  'Are you… well?' asked John, always sensitive despite his bluster, always his friend.

  'No,' the Actor said simply, 'not well. Not well at all.' Neither in body nor in mind, he added silently. Not for some months now. He paused, swallowed, felt the beads of sweat break out across his forehead. 'It's this same sickness, the one I told you about before. It doesn't go away.'

  'Can you play?'

  'There's no option. I have to.'

  'Perhaps not. I think one of your parts turned up an hour ago, pleading for work. Old Ben Thomas, remember him? We sacked him for drunkenness — two years ago, was it? A bit player, but good enough when he works at it. Well, he's out there, sober for once, and he knows the play.' John Hemminge looked down at the Actor, more worried than he tried to show. 'Take a rest. You look as if you need it. And Ben certainly needs the work.'

  'Will you ask him? And thank you,' the Actor replied.

  'Yes, of course,' said John, throwing the words back over his shoulder as he strode purposefully away. 'Provided you pay him!'

  Hemminge went off to the back room where the actors were gathering, and where Old Ben had gone to scrounge whatever food, coin and drink his old companions might give him. The parts were easy, undemanding, thought the Actor. Rather demeaning, actually. What they revealed was that the Actor was not really a very good actor at all. Well, he had made Ben's day at least.

  The boy came round, pasting up details of the plot backstage along with a list of scenes and who was required in each one.

  From where he sat the Actor could see out into the Pit and the galleries. The merchants, the doctors, the lawyers and the incessant flood of foreign visitors crammed the galleries, their ladies giggling as they tried to keep decorum while forcing their way up the narrow stairs to the seats. The vendors were moving among the crowd, cheerfully breaking the law by selling their nuts, apples, gingerbread, pears and bottled ale. It was the noise and smell he would always remember. Two thousand and more bodies crammed together: the sweating excitement; the rustle of silks and taffetas from the ladies in the galleries; the shouts of the vendors; the cracking of the nut shells and the clink of glass on glass; the conversations in roars and the conversations in secret whispers; the raw smell of dock tobacco mingling with the stale smell of beer and the tang of garlic. The half hour before a performance to a packed house was better than being drunk, better than sex — it was all life's excitement rolled up into one ball and flung in the face of time. Caught up in it, the Actor even forgot the pain in his gut.

  The tension in the air now was palpable. One of the younger players looked as if he were about to be sick. Stagefright, the Actor thought, and understandable. Where else since Roman times had a man been able to speak in the voice of a poet to thousands of souls gathered before him? It was the power of the gods, the power of kings.

  The Actor realised Henry Condell was sitting by him. He had not heard him come, realised it must have been a result of Hemminge tipping his other old friend off that there was something wrong. He and Condell gazed for a moment on the seething mass of humanity waiting to hear their play. Old friends do not always need to speak in order to communicate.

  'A bad business, the other night.' It was Henry who broke the silence.

  'Bad for us,' the Actor answered, 'and even worse for Tom.' Tom was the porter at The Globe, given his bed and keep there in order to guard it overnight and in the few hours when it was not occupied. He had been found by his young apprentice, his throat slit, two nights previously.

  'Why steal two manuscripts only? Why not take the whole lot?' Henry spoke in a musing tone.

  Two manuscripts had been found missing from the store where they kept the precious paper. The real text of a play was the most valuable thing a company held, after its costumes. They had paid Tom to protect both.

  'Why indeed?' the Actor responded as his heart jolted. He knew why. And not even one of his oldest friends could be allowed to share in the secret. He had brought death to old Tom. Was he to murder his oldest friends as well by telling them a truth they did not need to know?

  'And then all this fuss about Marlowe's lost play… When ever has there been such fuss about manuscripts?' Henry looked into the Actor's eyes. There was no response.

  The trumpet blew for the last time. As much of a hush as ever fell over an audience at The Globe dr
opped down on them. They opened.

  'Who's there?’

  'Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself!'

  Hamlet was still one of the great attractions, old as it was. And even greater with Burbage in the lead. The audience were moved in a moment from an English summer to the freezing battlements of Elsinore, moved by words alone. Two frightened men on guard, terrified by a ghost. It shut the crowd up like a finger snap. They were off and away.

  The Actor had fallen asleep for a while, something he noted he often did after the sickness came upon him, and woke with a start. In the play-within-the-play Old Hamlet, played by Ben in place of the Actor, was about to have poison poured in his ear. Lucianus, the poisoner, flourished the bottle with much evil gesturing and grimaces. Strange, the Actor thought, it was a different bottle. His usual prop was a nasty green thing, its colour screaming something wicked. This time Lucianus had an expensive blue bottle, rather elegant in fact. He poured the poison into Old Hamlet's ear.

  The Actor had always hated this part. Whatever he did, the fluid in the bottle was cold, and he could never persuade the others to leave the bottle empty and mime it. It had become something of a joke within the company. When the cold water hit his inner ear he always jerked convulsively with the shock. It was no bad thing, of course. As the stuff was meant to kill him he would have to jerk up and down anyway.

  'Ben's going overboard on this one, isn't he?' Condell had drifted back to the Actor's side. Old Hamlet was throwing huge spasms, hurling himself around on the bed with gasps and muffled shrieks of heart-breaking proportions.

  What a pity, thought the Actor. All that effort from Ben for no reward. The play was broken up in chaos just after the moment of the poisoning, the real King rising in guilt and anger and storming out. With Hamlet mouthing off and the King just about to ruin the party, no one would have time to look at an old actor going way over the top in a death scene no one was interested in anyway. Ben was wasting his energies, even to the white froth he had managed to make come from his lips.