A Dead Man in Deptford (15 page)

Also we do know that, by order of her Protestant Majesty,
Fidei Defensor, Philips or Phelips breathed on his spectacles and
polished them to forge a postscript that affirmed the Queen of
Scots her complicity, for in it she is represented as enquiring
of the names of the six gentlemen that were to release her and
convey her to the throne. For it had never seemed to her
Protestant Majesty, our late lady Elizabeth, Occidental Star,
that the Act which condemned her innocent cousin for the
guilt of others would prevail greatly in Europe. But here in
Philippine good black ink was proof of conspiracy enough, and
that would serve. Philips or Phelips, in forger’s triumph, could
not resist the sketching, in three broad lines, of a gallows on the
outer cover of the letter. Perhaps, seeing this, Babington, who
was no fool, began to have his doubts of the whole procedure.
And the arrests began with the taking of Father Ballard, soon
stripped of the swaggering Foscue disguise and reduced to a
shivering priestling ripe for the rack of Mr Topcliffe.

It was Robin Poley who reported this to Babington while
the latter lay slugabed one morning after a night of little
sleep. Then Poley betook himself to hide in Richmond where
Mr Secretary had followed the court, granting Babington the
benison of an address so that he might clinch the affair with a
palpitant culpatory missive. And indeed Babington wrote, saying
Est exilium inter malos vivere, it is truly exile to dwell among the
wicked, and Farewell, sweet Robin, if, as I take thee, true to
me. If not, Adieu, omnium bipedum nequissimus, of all that walk
on two feet the wickedest (and that alternative was just and to
be Poley’s best epitaph). He then concluded: The furnace is
prepared wherein our faith must be tried. Farewell till we meet, when God knows well. Thine, how far thou knowest, A.B.

The date is well attested of the taking of Father John Ballard.
It was on August 4, in the year of grace or something 1586. He
strode aswagger, much the captain, into Poley’s house, or rather
the garden of the Garden, full of flowers dry in the heat, where
he was to meet with Babington, and Mr Secretary’s men were
all about.

- And where is good Robin?

- If that means Mr Poley, he is already taken. This was Mr
Secretary’s man Francis Milles, who then ordered the arrest to
be made by a Mr Casty that was a deputy alderman of Aldgate.
It was not true that Poley had been taken, but there was to be
a semblance of taking in good time, Poley in the Tower, having
freely walked thither, there in his spidery script to write his long
report and, ever piously mindful of the papist peril, to incriminate such as he found, priests starved and past dissembling and
the like. It was said by the equivocator Southwell that Poley
poisoned the Bishop of Armagh that is in Ireland who had been
haled out of his diocese with a piece of cheese but this may not
be true. Yet many-tongued rumour babbled over the years and
the Catholics were at the last to know their enemy.

Babington and others fled north to the wilderness of St
John’s Wood, where, unprotected by either the Precursor or the
Beloved Disciple, they wandered, sought shelter, ate sour apples,
wore rags and stained their faces with juice of nuts. Savage that
was to have borne the knife lumbered south, a large man and
slow. All were caught with but little trouble, and there were
among the final criminal band names that mean nothing now,
these being attached to helpers and shelterers, pitiers when not
believers, ploughmen and woodcutters and farmers’ wives.

Kit said, truly in his cups after Tamburlaine Two but most
plausibly and perhaps not weaving a play out of it, that, on Mr
Secretary’s order, he was made attend the trial on September
13, the Michaelmas term not yet begun, at Westminster before a
commission of Over and Terminer, with Sir Christopher Hatton,
the Queen’s dancing man, as chief prosecutor. There could be no
defence and so for the defence there was no counsel. The trial in the great hall under its high vaults, dusty sunlight shafting in,
full of murmurers and growlers quietened by beadles and bailiffs,
with howlers in the streets held back with pikes, was by way of
being a play without plot or exercise in what the Senecans term
stichomythia. Father John Ballard, with wrenched beard, torn
hair and scarred cheeks, as well as a shoulder freshly deformed,
was carried in in a chair.

- Rise. To sit is insolence to the court.

- I would rise if I could. My broken legs are somewhat
of a hindrance.

- Do you acknowledge yourself to be a foul traitor and villain?

- If you seek villainy look elsewhere. Look to your chief
torturer Mr Topcliffe, who while busy with the screws and
stretchers did regale me with tales of feeling the breasts and
belly of your lady the Queen under her kirtle. There is decorum
in all things, even in the breaking of a man.

- We will not have this.

- It skills little what you will or not have. I am too weary
and broken for your game. If you seek guilt you must probe
among yourselves that threw away the true faith on a king’s
whim.

- You then admit your treason?

- To Christ our Lord never, to the true Church he founded
never, to my sacred office that with all diligence I pursued never
and again never.

- So you acknowledge yourself to be a villain.

- If in your tortured logic to be Christ’s priest is to be a
villain, then amen. Let me to my crucifixion and my reward.

- You are also a blasphemer. You shall have your crucifixion
and worse.

- To that too amen. May this realm struggle out of its
darkness towards the light.

When Savage, ragged and wild of eye and not belying his
name, was thrust into the court, he was called at once an assassin.

- To assassinate is to kill. I have not killed. Ergo I am
no assassin.

- We speak of your avowed intention.

- The intention was the fiction of one Gifford who is now
proved a double-dealer and author of a plot that should entrap
many, not least the Queen of Scots. I ever opposed it.

- We have letters of proof.

- Letters of forgery.

- You attaint the Queen’s counsellors with villainy?

- The Queen’s counsellors are doubtless best able to judge
of the morality of their acts.

- You are a foul villain and a treacherous assassin.

- How long must this wheel turn?

It was all a wearisome business, and by September 16 fourteen had been found guilty and condemned. Four days later
came the first of the two bloody public shows, the weather
continuing dry but not sunny, and Kit again much against his
will was constrained to attend at St Giles’s Fields the hanging
and butchering of the chief conspirators, Ballard, Babington,
Savage, others, including the Tilney that, in his scaffold speech,
was challenged by a Dr White, that was learned in the reformed
versions of theology, and to him replied that he came hither to
die, not to argue.

Kit had no special post of spectation. He noted that the
chambers that Babington had used in Holborn, from whose
casements something of a view was afforded, seemed to have
been usurped by Philips or Phelips, Berdon or Beard, Faunt and,
he did not wish to believe his eyes on this, Tom as a Walsingham
presence. But he stood at the rear of the crowd of the ill-washed
but staunchly protestant, children even on fathers’ shoulders,
gossiping matrons, even pie-sellers, taking in the stink as at least
the stink of life. The show began with the trugging of the sleds
through the streets, the crowd’s groans and japes (they be given
free passage and no labour of limbs), then the untrussing of the
victims and the thrusting of them to the ladders. The hangman,
masked but known to be Jack Flood from his gapped grin and the
width of his shoulders, had two assistants, young boys already in
blood well steeped, and it was they that did the thrusting up to
the gallows with their knifepoints. Ballard was first and, at the
ladder’s foot, gave with such dignity as a broken man might his hope of England’s seeing its folly and bathing at the last in truth’s
recovered light and much else. He signed the air crosswise, glad
at least, he said, to be permitted at last to do this in the open,
and voices called on him to repent. He smiled sadly, shaking his
head, then was hauled up, firmly noosed, then kicked from the
ladder. Here was skill shown. The single garment ripped down,
the prick and ballocks exposed then sliced away, the first blood
healthily flowing, then the cross-cut along the belly so that the
bowels gushed out and, here was the skill of it, the victim saw
before his eyes turned up. Then was the whole body cut down
and chopped by the hangman and his two (never eat flesh more,
vomited a girl that pushed her way away from it), the hacking
most vigorous so that sweat showed on the bare chests of the
hackers. The quarters were heft up as at Smithfield and thrown
into the boiling tub, there would be a fair stew soon, it lacked
but carrots and onions and the coils of entrails pulled by the two
lads as to unwind a rope for the hangman’s skipping. All this
Babington saw, he was next, and swooned to be revived with a
slash across the chaps with Ballard’s own bowels (unfair that his
eyes be shut, he must see all, that is the rule of it), noosed as he
screamed no no, kicked off, lost what were termed his privities,
saw, saw, saw in disbelief the door of his belly widely opened and
his inner self gush out. His heart was held up, but the hangman
cursed, as one failed in his craft, that he who was now heartless
was eke sightless, there was no justice in the manner raw nature
did ever seek to foil arts hardly learned, and then it was the
turn of Savage (he is a rogue of bulk, there will be a fairsized
knockmedown upon him, thou wilt see else). But Savage in his
heaviness broke the warped rope and fell unhanged (there will
be questions on this, old rope is for tethering your jennyass), so
that he saw in living awareness the slicing off of his manhood
and the bloodgush (fairsized, did I not say) and the uncurtaining
of his entrails. So here was one that observed somewhat of his
anatomy, his beatless heart included, before yielding the ghost
and turning to fresh butcher’s meat.

Of this Kit could stomach no more, so he shoved his way out
(there is more to come, cully, you miss half the show), seeing himself in an overwhelming measure as the hangman by proxy,
riding from Tom Walsingham’s bed to sign that he had witnessed
conspiracy and here were the names, he had taken bloody money
before blood was spilt and converted it to bloodhued satin for his
back. A kind arm upheld him as he tottered and a kind voice
said it was all enough, let us breathe fresher air at the rear of
St Giles’s church. Kit looked up into the black eyes of he had
forgot the name but soon he knew it, Skeres.

- Nick Skeres. We are a long way from Dover where we
took ship that time. All for the cause, the cause.

They sat on a grassy tump behind the solid hulk that proclaimed God’s protestant truth, and Skeres kindly watched while
Kit voided his breakfast.

- Let us come away from there, you have made your offering
or oblation or whatever a man is to call it. You need drink now
to settle the inner being.

Kit retched and retched but stringy spittle only came up.
He lurched on Skeres’s arm to sit under the ancient oak. The
sun had clouted away its cloudy obstruents and gushed heat like
blood; here was shade. Skeres, Kit now saw, was in decent black
as for mourning and was no more the dirty rogue of the feast
of Dover fish. His nails were trimmed and a clean hand played
with a clean dagger.

- It is all over now, the crowd is departing, pleased at a
fine spectacle and no money charged. See them go, pleased and
chattering. It is filth, filth and again filth.

- And we were both part of it.

- I do not see myself as such. The bodyguard of Robin
Poley and now his daily messenger while he is in the Tower.
He is well provided for, with his wine and victuals brought in
and his work of writing it all down and a mistress when he has
done his day’s work. A happy man, you would say. And happy
that he was not there to witness the outcome of his dealings and
double-dealings. Squeamish, you could call him. It is all Plato
with him, ideas skirling in the empyrean.

- You sound more scholarly than I would have thought
should fit your office.

- Oh, I am no scholar. A picker up only. I cite bonny
Robin. Well, the labours are not quite done. There will be
the matter of rousing the people with fears and tremors before
the head of the second bloody Mary can be struck off. That is
a great and grave matter and it will not be at Tyburn or in St
Giles’s Fields. This striking off of heads and loosing by the knife
of what is best kept hidden is no more to my taste than to yours.
A strike to the heart should be enough, one thrust and all over
and little blood. My hands feel sticky with it, I feel it will flow
crying to heaven all over the fields and end here at our feet.

He feigned with his dagger to strike Kit to the heart, smiling
rather than grinning.

- I go my ways and you yours, he then said. Get some ale
in, it will wash the blood away. And he rose and helped Kit up.
His gait was swift, he seemed to vanish in the flowing crowd
that enjoyed the sun as much if no more than all it had seen.
A small boy clinging to his father’s hand, an honest tradesman
by his look, looked up at his father saying And and and, hand
firmly locked. Kit, a little bloody money in his purse, made his
way to the Unicorn on Bishopsgate. Here was the realm of the
playhouse, where only pig’s blood gushed from bladders hidden,
where swords of lath struck and axes were of pulped paper
moulded. It was safer, all was pretence. But the tavern was
crammed with onlookers at the show now seeking refreshment,
the tables filled and many standing about, swilling, calling for
more. Alleyn’s brother, presiding, did not seem to remember
Kit. Nor did, who was it, yes, Bradley nor Orwell, yes that name,
who both sat in the corner covertly comparing cutpurse gains at
the hanging. Kit found room at a table of honest tradesmen who
discussed, disagreed, compared points of the executioner’s art -
that right arm is grown slow, Gosport that is dead was better at
it, they say it all goes to Greenwich to feed the Queen’s hounds,
nay there are some that hunger for man’s flesh but it is unlawful.
Kit called for a whole quart. True, it settled him, washed the
blood away but, as a mischievous spirit, rose to his head and
bade him curse.