An Honourable Murderer (5 page)

T
he Mermaid tavern, where Ben Jonson had fixed to meet me on the evening after we'd watched the advance of the Spanish party upriver, is situated in Bread Street. This thoroughfare runs up at right angles to Thames Street in the area to the east of St Paul's and not too far from where I was lodging with the Buckles. The Mermaid tavern is a well-run house, and so offers a different world from the usual players' dens like the Goat & Monkey. Its fish and wine are recommended by those who know their food and drink.

When I got there on this fine summer's evening Ben Jonson was already installed at the end of a table, his invariable position.

“Ah, Nicholas, sit yourself there – and help yourself to this and afterwards to these.”

Jonson was a casually commanding person and a generous one too, with himself as much as with others. William Shakespeare rarely put himself at the helm in this manner. But then perhaps WS didn't need to.

Jonson gestured once more. In front of him was ‘this' and ‘these': a large flask of wine and a heap of opened oysters. I wondered whether the playwright needed to fortify himself after an energetic afternoon in the stews of Southwark. But the truth is that he was a man of large appetites, on any occasion. Now he reached for one of the oysters and tilted his head. I watched his Adam's apple bobbing about as the oyster slithered down his gullet.

Already sitting to one side of the table was a red-headed man called Martin Barton, whom I knew glancingly. He was a poet and playwright, an up-and-coming satirical writer. He had recently written that play called
The Melancholy Man
, after a performance of which I'd first met Ursula and Elizabeth. And then there were Jack Wilson and Laurence Savage. I expected them to be present. I hadn't expected to see Abel Glaze on the opposite side of the table. I was surprised that my friend had said nothing to me earlier about coming to this tavern meeting, but then we were no longer living in each other's pockets.

“We were talking of the whelp,” said Ben Jonson.

“The whelp?”

“The whelp that was born to Elizabeth in the Tower of London,” said Abel.

“Oh, the lioness,” I said. I was with them now. There was a lioness among the animals in the Tower. She was named for our old queen.

“It was a rare thing, her whelping,” said Abel.

“But the whelp has died,” said Ben Jonson.

“Died unbaptized,” said Martin Barton. “Do you think it will go to purgatory now?”

“Do not be flippant, Martin,” said Ben. He took his religion seriously and, according to some, had turned Catholic during one of his spells in gaol.

I saw Barton's eyes flare for a moment at Jonson's rebuke. Barton had a mercurial temper, which was in keeping with his red hair and which he was said to have inherited from his Italian mother. He and Jonson had fallen out in the past, and although there was a truce at the moment, it might be broken at any time and then they'd be back to slanging each other again.

“There is still a
lion
in the Tower though, as well as a lioness,” said Barton, perhaps determined to show that he was willing to steer the conversation in a risky direction. “Walter and his Elizabeth are together even in their captivity.”

No one had to ask the identity of the ‘lion' for it was Sir Walter Raleigh, currently languishing at the King's pleasure after being found guilty of treason. He had been a favourite of Queen Elizabeth's but, unlike many others, he had not succeeded in making the smooth – some might say, the greasy – transfer from favour under one monarch to favour under her successor.

At this moment a newcomer joined our party. He was a dapper fellow who smiled round at the four of us before sitting down at the tavern table. Jonson introduced him as Giles Cass. He repeatedly dabbed at his lips as if wiping away some fragment of food stuck there. I learned later that he had some sort of ill-defined function in Robert Cecil's office, being used by the Secretary to flit between King James at Whitehall and Queen Anne at Somerset House.

Whatever part he played, he was indiscreet. Perhaps because he'd heard Martin Barton's remarks about Raleigh, he pushed the talk further in the same direction. Had we seen them, he asked, the Spanish party that afternoon? What did we think of their impudence in floating up the river in full fig? It would never have happened in the days of Queen Elizabeth, he claimed. You could have cut out her heart before she would have welcomed them.

I thought Giles Cass was overdoing it a bit, protesting too much. Perhaps he was doing it to elicit a response from us but, if so, I couldn't think why.

“I have heard,” said Laurence during a pause while Cass poured himself a glass of wine, “that some members of the Spanish party were so seasick that they had to recover at Dover before they could travel on to Gravesend.”

“That's true,” said Cass, dabbing at his mouth.

“A fine armada they'd make now!”

“While I have been informed that they brought two loads of ice with them in the barges,” said Jack Wilson.

“The ice is for their wine,” said Giles Cass. “Or for the Constable of Castile's wine, to be precise. The Spaniard puts it in his drink in his own country.”

And we all gawped at those foreigners who'd put ice in their drink.

“Gentlemen,” said Ben Jonson, “this is quite enough about the Spaniard's drinking habits. To work.”

Ben did not like attention being diverted from himself, or rather he was always eager to keep control of any conversation. This was his Mermaid meeting anyway. We were to discuss the presentation of a masque in a few days' time at Somerset House.

Masques were one of Ben's things. They are mixtures of song and dance and verse, as well as of fine costumes and effects which cost a great deal of money.

“I bring good news and better news, Benjamin,” said Giles Cass. “Sir Philip and Lady Blake are eager to participate in your
Masque of Peace
. They have offered their house for practices.”

I remembered the thin man and the large woman we'd seen that afternoon standing next to Robert Cecil by the river.

“That's good. And the better news?”

“Oh, nothing much. Only that the Queen herself is willing to take part.”

There were little sounds of surprise, even amazement, from the six of us.

“That is good, very good,” said Jonson with real gladness. “Thank you, Giles. What role should we assign to her now?”

“The part of Jealousy,” said Martin Barton. “She could come on and drive away a host of those new knights from her Scottish husband. Those well-known parasites Sir Duncan McLeech and Sir Lennox Bloodsucker.”

I glanced at Cass to see how he responded to this suggestion, which was risky enough. But he laughed with the rest of us.

“Anne could be the Queen of the Arctic, they say she is so cold,” said Abel Glaze.

“Then perhaps the Spaniards ought to be borrowing their ice from her,” I said.

“And perhaps
we
ought to be more careful of our tongues,” said Jonson, glancing round the tavern, although no one seemed to be paying much attention.

“Of course, Ben. I forgot you had reason to fear for your bodily parts. For your tongue and your thumb,” said Martin Barton.

“I am thinking of the law of slander, which applies even to queens. Anyway there is a difference between fear and a proper respect,” said Jonson.

“All the same, show us your thumb, Ben Jonson,” said Barton.

“Not for you,” said Jonson.

“I have not seen it,” said Giles Cass. “Give me your hand, do, good Benjamin.”

With a resigned expression – though I thought I detected a touch of pride in the action too – Jonson put down the wine glass which he was holding in his left hand and exposed his bare, splayed palm to the table.

Across the mound at the base of his thumb was etched a dark device. It consisted of a miniature upright and a crossbar. The flesh around this T-shape was pale and puckered. I did not have to ask what the ‘T' stood for.

“Not so bad though,” said Barton. “You could have had an ‘M' which would have taken up more space.”

“An ‘M' would have been convenient in your case, Martin,” said Ben.

“How so? What are you saying? Are you accusing me – ”

“Only that with an ‘M' you would have carried your own initial around with you in case you forget who you are.”

“I think it's you who are forgetting yourself, Ben,” said Barton.

“That was not done with any cold iron,” I said, unable to take my eyes from the ragged ‘T' on Jonson's fleshy palm, and unable too to rise to any half humorous remark. I felt a little shiver inside myself. The taste of the Mermaid's Rhenish wine was suddenly sour in my mouth. Like Cass, I had never seen this mark of Jonson's before.

“Of course it was not done with any cold iron,” said Jonson, and again a little pride was detectable. “Do you think the law is kind? I have been through fire – or fire has been through me. Never mind.
Fiat justitia
. Let justice be done. Are we all satisfied now?”

He snapped his hand shut as though he were closing a book. Whether he intended it or not, Jonson's display of the mark left by the hot branding-iron brought a kind of seriousness to the tavern table. We turned to discussing the Somerset House masque and there were no more jokes about the Queen or anybody else.

Over the remains of the wine and oysters, we sorted out who was to play whom, or rather Jonson directed us as to his wishes. The outline of the
Masque of Peace
was straightforward. The figure of Peace would arrive across the sea from Spain, to be greeted on this side of the water by her twin sister. This use of twins was a neat way of suggesting that each country was alike in its desire for Peace. The two Peaces would be attended by Plenty and Tranquillity and other desirable qualities. There has to be a little bit of grit even in the smoothest masques, however, so such figures as Ignorance and Suspicion and Stubbornness would gather on the sidelines, making ineffectual moves to impede the twins' union. But they would be dismissed by the Spanish Peace and the English Peace, and at the end of the action the presiding figure of Truth would descend from above to bless the new-found harmony between the nations.

There was an hour or so of discussion before we all went our separate ways, having arranged a rehearsal for the following day. Giles Cass was left to consult with the Queen's followers as to whether she was content to play the part of the English Peace, other less flattering epithets having been ruled out for Anne of Denmark. Whatever we thought of Anne, there was a buzz to this part of the conversation. You don't find yourself playing next to a monarch every day.

I stepped out of the Mermaid tavern. It was a fine summer's evening. There was still a feeling of festival in the busy streets, a hangover from the mood of the crowds who'd gathered during the afternoon to watch the arrival of the Spanish.

As I made my way down Bread Street and back to Mrs Buckle's house in Thames Street, my thoughts were still on the masque, whose purpose was to celebrate the end of hostilities between England and Spain. I still wasn't quite sure why Ben had approached me. True, my particular friends like Jack Wilson and Abel Glaze were taking part. We shared a position in the King's Men somewhere between the long-established ones and the newcomers. Maybe Jonson knew that the older, more senior members of the Company would have turned him down.

The crowd in the streets was starting to thin out slightly as evening drew in. Absorbed with my thoughts, I was hardly aware of where I was going. As if on cue, the name of Thames Street swum into my vision. It was halfway up a wall, displayed at the point where Bread Street joined the main thoroughfare. The name was cut into a corner-stone. I halted and looked at the name. City grime had turned solid inside the individual letters. The back of my neck began to itch, as if a rope was grazing against it. The ‘T' of ‘Thames' seemed to jump out and glare at me, like the T-shape branded into the base of Jonson's left thumb.

The letter on his thumb stood for ‘Tyburn', the gallows destination which Jonson had been lucky enough, or educated enough, to escape. Rather than the ‘T' he might instead have been branded with an ‘M', as Martin Barton had hinted. ‘M' for murderer. A few years earlier Jonson had fought a duel with another player up at Hoxton Fields. Ben managed to see off his opponent – a man called Spencer who was said to be a violent, bad-tempered individual – by giving him a fatal thrust in the side. Though the fight was an honourable one, Jonson was arrested and charged with murder.

This wasn't the first time he'd been to gaol but never before had he faced such a serious charge. Jonson might have been ripe for the rope but he was also able to read. He pleaded benefit of clergy and, having selected what the wits call a neckverse, he read the Bible passage out loud in court. I know all about neck-verses – I'm a parson's son after all, and it was parsons that the neck-verse had been intended to preserve back in the good old days when parson and squire would have been the only ones capable of reading and writing in a village. The murderous parson or squire may escape the noose but, like Cain, they will carry for the rest of their lives a sign of their crime. Unlike with Cain, who was marked by God on his bare forehead, our judges are more humane and allow the murderer to bear his shame tucked away in the palm of his hand.

Once again I felt an itching at the nape of my neck. Perhaps it was the reminder of the gallows fate which Ben Jonson had escaped through his simple ability to read a few lines from the Bible. Or perhaps the itching was due to something else altogether . . .

I moved on a few paces. The itching sensation stayed with me. I knew the symptoms now. There was someone at my heels. I was being watched. I waited a moment before turning my head sharply as though someone had called out my name. Within a dozen or so yards there were maybe half that number of people ambling or pacing along behind me. The street was full of shadows, with the first candles beginning to glimmer in the neighbouring windows. In the half-light it was hard to tell whether anyone averted their eyes suddenly or slowed their pace, as a person will do instinctively if he is caught out following another. I thought I detected a kind of flinching movement in a bearded fellow who was trailing along the edge of the street. He was dressed in a red doublet. And then there was a woman with a pale hat who turned aside and entered a doorway.