An Honourable Murderer (23 page)

And still Jonson was rambling on:

For Truth will shortly put men's foes to flight

And bestow on all an universal light

with plenty more in the same vein. I was sure he'd added a few extra lines once he'd taken over Blake's part. Even more than most actors, Jonson liked being centre stage. I caught the eye of Giles Cass who, in the role of Suspicion, was half kneeling on the opposite side, right hand held up to shield himself from Truth's dazzling glare. Like the other negative qualities, Suspicion would shortly be banished from the stage. Cass winked at me. I felt uncomfortable. It suggested that we were somehow in collusion.

Cass had spoken to me before the performance while we were backstage, in among the scaffolding that supported the backdrop and curtains and the whole apparatus of the gallery. I was peering between a gap in the curtains, watching the audience take their seats. I noticed that the two groups, English and Spanish, were tending to sit in different parts of the hall. They were easily distinguished anyway. The Spanish were even more elaborately dressed than the members of the English court. The women were darker and more attractive. The men looked prouder than their English counterparts. Their ruffs were wider – when some of them looked down, their bodies would surely have been hidden from their eyes – and their hats higher. Two tides of language met from opposing sides of the audience chamber. Whether they mingled it was hard to say. Perhaps they mingled at the edges.

I sensed someone standing by my shoulder and, turning, was surprised to see Giles Cass. He was costumed as Suspicion, wearing the cloak covered with its painted eyes and carrying his elaborate lantern. He placed the lantern on the floor and peeked through the gap in the curtain. He seemed as interested in the gathering audience as a true player would have been.

“All eyes, Master Cass?” I said.

“That is Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire,” he said, putting his mouth to my ear and extending a finger through the gap. He was indicating a chubby-faced, clean-shaven individual who was seating himself near the front. “He has been talking to the Spaniards about the treaty. Did you know that he is living in open adultery with my Lady Penelope Rich?”

“And there is Charles Howard,” I said, determined not to be outdone in the courtier-spotting stakes. Howard was the Earl of Nottingham, the Lord High Admiral, the white-bearded but vigorous gentleman whose example had prompted Ben Jonson to go in search of an afternoon brothel.

“Dear old Charles Howard!” said Cass, standing back and dabbing at his lips. “His new bride was heard singing on their wedding night but nobody knew whether it was to keep the old man awake or to get him to go to sleep.”

“Perhaps it was from joy,” I said.

“And, look, there is our great Secretary.”

Sir Robert Cecil was being carried in a chair to the principal place at the front of the audience, the one that the King would have occupied had he been present. It was a mark of Cecil's standing – although ‘standing' was not the appropriate word for him – that he should take this central position. The little hunchbacked figure was helped from his chair and fussed over by several attendants while he took his seat. I felt uneasy at seeing Cecil, even though I was mostly concealed behind the thick curtains.

“You know the King calls him his beagle, he is so serviceable,” whispered Cass in my ear. I was almost disappointed that Cass could only refer to Cecil's new nickname and had nothing to say about the great man's bedchamber habits, since this seemed to be what interested him.

“No, I didn't know he was the King's beagle,” I said. “How should I know that? Look, I am all Ignorance.”

I tried to make light of it but grew still more uncomfortable. I did not want to be the recipient even of gossip from Cass. I wonded why he'd fastened on me. His fastidiously wiped lips still carried the scent of liquor. I would have moved away but he put a hand on my shoulder.

“I hear you have been asking questions about the death of Sir Philip Blake,” he said.

I went cold.

“I haven't – well, one or two questions maybe. The seniors in my Company were concerned about the effect of – of what happened – on the reputation of the King's Men. One of them asked me whether there was anything strange about it. I meant no harm.”

“If you ask me,” said Cass, “Sir Philip was lucky.”

Curiosity overcome unease for a moment.

“
Lucky
? To have fallen to his death?”

“Our Secretary, Sir Robert Beagle, was pursuing him. He thought that Blake was plotting against the Spanish peace. Now, isn't that ridiculous!”

I shrugged, trying to dislodge the man's hand from my shoulder. I'd rather have been doing anything else at that instant, even flying in a chair twenty feet above the ground.

“I once heard Cecil say,” said Cass, “that he would welcome Blake's death. And now he is dead. And so I say it's a good thing – for Sir Philip Blake and for Sir Robert Beagle. A convenient death.”

“I know nothing of this,” I said.

“Keep it that way,” said Giles Cass. “Ignorance is best.”

I turned and looked him in the face. The dapper man winked at me.

And now here was Cass, at the end of the
masque
performance, once again winking in my direction. This did not make for a quiet mind. Who was he with? Was he a secret Raleigh supporter, as his Mermaid tavern comments had suggested? Or was he really with Cecil, who was no friend to Raleigh? As to Cass's remarks about Sir Philip Blake and his supposed plotting against Spain, they made little sense either.

At last Ben Jonson reached his peroration as Truth. It was official. Peace between England and Spain was here to stay. It would endure longer than the mountains, it would outlast the oceans, it was a monument to the far-sightedness and magnanimity of the Spanish King Philip and the English King James. With this dollop of flattery and with an obeisance in the direction of Queen Anne, Truth at last shut his gob.

We concluded with some music and dancing, and then the
Masque of Peace
was finally done, with much clapping and cheering. Straightaway the non-professionals in the cast jumped from the stage and paraded around to receive the congratulations of their friends. All at once there was refreshment everywhere. It seemed to rain wine while delicate sweetmeats were scattered about the room like manna. Lord and Lady Fortune, Sir Fabian Scaridge with his good wife Agnes, Lady Blake and Maria More, Bill Inman and the rest were surrounded with back-slappers and cheek-kissers. Even the Queen's whitened complexion was showing red. Our noble actors glowed with the gratification of a good job well done. And why shouldn't they? There is almost nothing better in this world than being part of a company at the end of a successful performance, quitting the stage in the knowledge that you have pleased others for two hours of our shared earthly existence.

Of course, one advantage for the nobs was that they didn't have to bother about the prompt return of the scrolls to the book-man or of their costumes and little props to the tire-man. In fact, some of them seemed distinctly reluctant to change out of their gear. Most people like dressing up, provided they don't have to do it for a living. We lesser characters, however, must go off to the little antechamber and account to Bartholomew Ridd for the state of our outfits. I was on my way there, in the wake of Abel Glaze and Laurence Savage and the others, when I passed Doña Luisa de Mendoza,
La Paz
. She was being closely attended by the two Spaniards whom Ratchett had identified, the gentlemen with the great ruffs.

As I walked by she looked up and smiled at me. What a pang went through my heart! I had not spoken a word to her during our two or three rehearsals, and now I wondered what response I would have got if I had dared to approach her. Perhaps I should produce the spotted handkerchief, which I still possessed, and ask whether it belonged to her. This delicate item, it is yours, my lady?
Gracias, señor
,
muchas gracias
.

But these agreeable dreams were broken by Giles Cass, who moved into step beside me. For some reason he was fastening on me like a leech. He was about to open his mouth, probably to pass on another titbit of gossip, when one of the ruffs – the hawk-eyed lawyer, I think – made a complicated bow in our direction. Cass halted and returned the bow. I did the same, happy enough to stay in the neighbourhood of Doña Luisa.

“
Señores, beso los manos
,” said the other grandee, touching his fingertips to his lips to show what he meant.

This led to an even greater outburst of bowing, as if each side was competing with the other in courtesy. I thought I caught Doña Luisa smiling, as though at men's foolishness. When we eventually broke away, Giles Cass whispered in my ear, “Very good but I would wish that they had stooped a little lower and kissed our
anos
rather than our
manos
.”

As crude wit went this was satisfactory, but I wondered at a man who was so friendly with the Spaniards in their presence showing them so little respect out of earshot. I changed into my day-gear. I noticed that Cass did not, preferring to continue in his part as Suspicion as long as the party lasted.

The rest of the evening dissolved into a blur of candlelight and wine and music and dancing and the rest. There were three distinct groups in the audience chamber. At the top were the nobles who'd been among the players and the spectators, both English and Spanish. I noticed that the Queen and Cecil slipped away early. They had a country to run, or at least Cecil did. Then came the professional players. And somewhere to one side were the musicians and the mechanicals, that is, Snell's men. Both Jonathans were present too, together with their principal craftsmen Armitage and Turner.

In between the nobles and the mechanicals were figures with a foot in neither camp, such as Giles Cass or Ben Jonson. Or Martin Barton, that scourge of corruption, who was quite happy to load himself down with courtly dainties. I noticed him in conversation with a handsome Spanish youth with finely slashed sleeves to his doublet. Without a language to share between them, they were gesturing a lot. They might not have a common language but they understood each other well enough. And I also noticed how Lady Blake, the recent widow, seemed to be content to drown her sorrows in drinking and dancing. And her husband barely cold in his grave.

If I sound a bit jaded, then it's probably because I did not drink as much as everybody else in the room. My head isn't that hard. Also it was preoccupied with other things. I was bothered by Giles Cass's words.
Keep it that way. Ignorance is best
. If he was referring to the death of Sir Philip Blake, then I was happy to fall into line. I would ask no more questions. The same applied to the shadowy demise of John Ratchett. It was almost as if I had dreamed of his presence in the Snell workshop, lying outstretched on the ground. For sure, Ratchett had gone when I returned the next day. But I knew that he had been there at nine o'clock in the evening just as certainly as that he had disappeared by the same hour in the morning.

Still, what was there to worry about? No one could connect me to this agent of the French ambassador (if that's what he really was). We had met twice in the Pure Waterman tavern in Southwark, a borough where men do not willingly tell tales, and we had endured one conversation in the Strand. It would be very bad luck if anyone knew both of us and remembered seeing us together. Ratchett was no longer around to make me comply with his demands for ‘information'. Whoever had disposed of him had also done me a favour. That was how I should look at it.

I was mulling over these things in an obscure corner on the far side of the audience chamber when I became aware of a great stir running through the room, like the breeze through the summer trees. Groups of talkers and drinkers and dancers were swirling tighter and faster, then breaking apart and coming together again, gaining and losing numbers as they went. Abel Glaze weaved towards me, brandishing a glass which probably cost the equivalent of a month's wages and slopping most of its contents on the floor.

“Why so long-faced, Nick? Wassamatter?”

“Am I? Sorry.”

“Get pissed like me.”

“What's happening?”

“C'm on, less go see.”

“Where?”

He said something which sounded like Terence, and with his free hand almost dragged me across the great chamber. After a time it became evident that we were headed not for Terence but for the
terrace
, where a great many other people were also heading. After a little more time, and from snippets of excited talk interrupted by shrieks and giggles, I understood that two individuals – a man and a woman – a noble man and a noble woman – had been caught out on the terrace. Caught at it on the terrace. Caught at
it
. Charles Blount and Lady Penelope Rich, were they? Or the Earl of Rutland and Lady Rochester, were they? No one knew. No one cared. We would soon find out anyway, all of us streaming out through the doors and floor-length windows into the summer's night.

The air was soft and moist, with the promise of rain offstage. The flagstones underfoot were dry. Overlaid with cloaks and cushions they would provide a soft bed for urgent lovers. Good luck to them, I thought, although being as eager as everyone else to witness this disgraceful scene, this disgraceful and amusing scene, of a couple of bare-arsed nobles. Though presumably by now they'd have had time to pull up their hose and pull down their skirts. Purses and jewels go missing during performances, to say nothing of handkerchiefs and rings. What is reputation by comparison? I even had the time (or maybe just the sobriety) to feel faintly sorry for Ben Jonson since what everyone would remember from this evening would not be the glories of the
Masque of Peace
but the antics of the audience. And what would the Spaniards think of us? In a different way, of course, our reputation as English might even be enhanced. Look, we can be hotblooded too.