An Honourable Murderer (6 page)

I looked to the front once more and walked on down the street, with a show of unconcern. The sense of being watched continued, though it was perhaps fainter now. A couple of hundred yards further on I again turned my head for an instant. There was a glimpse of a red doublet. There was a pale hat bobbing in the twilight. But why not? Why shouldn't these be honest citizens taking an evening stroll, as I was? And why should anyone be on my tail anyway? I was involved in no intrigue of any kind. No one was likely to be dogging my footsteps as they might have dogged the famous players in our Company such as Dick Burbage or Bob Armin the clown.

The discomfort in the region of my neck continuing, I looked back yet again. Still visible were the red-doublet man and the pale-hat woman, despite the deepening gloom. I told myself this was ridiculous. Nevertheless some simple fear of not disclosing where I lived – just in case there really was someone on my heels – caused me to take a little detour away from Thames Street and up towards Candlewick Street. I paused there by the London Stone, which is set in an open area in the middle of this wide thoroughfare and which is said to have been brought to our city by Brutus, who was descended from Aeneas of Troy.

It is a popular place with visitors and, like an out-of-towner, I stopped by the low, square block of stone and pretended to examine it in the dying light. They say that as long as the London Stone is safe the city will flourish. Perhaps they're right. We'd endured the plague and a change of rulers in the last year alone, and unlike Troy we were still standing. There was a faint groove across the upper surface and I ran my finger down it. Was it really so old? Had it stood on the sun-kissed plains of Troy? These speculations were at the back of mind. With the front part, I was keeping my eyes open for signs of anyone, especially anyone wearing a red doublet or a pale hat, emerging into the open area. But all I saw was a handful of shadowy shapes, and no one I could plainly identify.

Eventually, I returned in the direction I'd come from and walked a little further down Thames Street to the front door of my lodgings. I felt a bit of a fool. I could have been home ten minutes earlier.

The moment I opened the door, Ursula Buckle appeared in the lobby. Even by the uncertain indoor light she looked pale.

“Nicholas,” she said.

“Mrs Buckle. You are well?”

“Will you join me for supper?”

I'd eaten nothing since that morning apart from the few oysters which were sloshing about in my insides together with the Mermaid tavern's Rhenish, so I gratefully accepted her offer. It was quite late. I wondered whether she'd been waiting for my return before eating. For politeness' sake, I expressed the hope that she hadn't while privately hoping that she had. Where was Elizabeth? I asked. Next door, I was told, visiting with Mrs Morris, another plague-widow but a woman much nearer to Elizabeth's own age and rather better off than her neighbours.

Elizabeth's mother and I sat down at the kitchen table – no formality between us when it came to dining – for some cold pork and bread and cheese brought by the serving-girl with a runny nose. She deposited the platters with a clatter, though not before almost dropping their contents on the floor. I'd grown used to her clumsiness and my landlady never rebuked her. Mrs Buckle was too gentle, and this was another reason why I liked her.

My landlady was a delicate eater. I used knife or fingers while she used a new-fangled fork to spear the occasional sliver of meat and carry it to her mouth. Mrs Buckle had a delicate mouth too, with a quite pronounced indentation running from the base of her nose to her upper lip. The groove reminded me of the line which was threaded across the top of the London Stone and which I had just traced out with my finger. There were a few other lines, less flattering ones maybe, about Mrs Buckle's face but they only enhanced her attractions, to my mind. Nevertheless, I called her ‘Mrs Buckle' even though we'd known each other for several months now. She might have been ‘Ursula' in my mind, but I liked calling her by her married name for some reason, enjoyed the sound of the words in my mouth. Meantime she called me Nicholas rather than Nick, and I am afraid the name was generally spoken in the way that my mother might have spoken it, although rather more warmly.

We talked a bit about the Spaniards and their arrival in London. Like me, she'd seen them although from this side of the river. But I could tell that there was something else on her mind, not to do with Spain. I could guess what was troubling her.

“There is something wrong, Mrs Buckle?”

“I saw him again, I saw him. Just before you came back this evening.”

There was only a scattering of candles in the room but the strain and pallor on her face were clear to see. For the second time that evening I felt a prickling on the nape of my neck.

“Whereabouts this time?”

“The same place as before. Halfway up the stairs. As the light was beginning to fade I was standing in the hall. I was about to do something or go somewhere, I can't remember what now. I looked up and saw the hem of a familiar coat turning the corner where the stairs go out of sight. Then I looked higher up and saw the back of a familiar head.”

“But the light was bad. You cannot be certain of what you saw. A flapping curtain perhaps . . .”

She'd put down her fork altogether, was not even making the pretence of eating. I wanted to put my hand across the table and touch her for reassurance but I did not move.

“I am sure. It was him.”

“You didn't see his face?”

“No. What difference would that make?”

Because you could have told whether he was happy or sad from his expression
, I wanted to say. But ghosts are unhappy by definition, aren't they? Especially the ghost of a husband who has been snatched away by the plague. If they come back, it must be because they are looking for something. Or if not something, then somebody.

“What difference?” repeated Mrs Buckle.

“No difference probably, I don't know,” I said. “Try not to think of it, Mrs Buckle. Tell me about something else.”

And I started on my supper once more. I thought it was best not to humour her belief that she was seeing her dead husband. Perhaps I didn't want it to be true, either. She had seen her husband several times before, as a ghost, that is.

“Still bad news,” she said. “You know that Lizzie and I are here on sufferance.”

She gestured vaguely at the room, meaning to take in the entire house.

“But you pay rent. Anyway the landlord is your late husband's cousin, I think you said.”

“He is a cousin to Hugh, yes. And we do not pay much rent. In truth, Nicholas, the money you give us goes quite a long way towards meeting his demands. But now . . . now he is asking for more, much more.”

“But why?”

“He says things have changed since the pestilence last year. Enough time has gone by, and property is starting to get expensive again. He can rent more profitably to others. Of course we could stay if we could afford it.”

She sounded defeated rather than distressed. I wanted to help her. I would have helped her if I'd been able to but what can a player on a shilling and threepence a day do? Nevertheless my heart went out to her and this time I did stretch my hand across the table and rest it on hers. She allowed my hand to stay there for quite a time before slipping hers out from underneath.

“I nearly forgot, you had a visitor earlier today,” said Mrs Buckle.

“I did. Who was it?”

“He didn't give his name. Just asked whether Nicholas Revill the player lived here.”

I paused with the knife halfway to my mouth.

“He didn't say why he wanted me?”

“No. He didn't seem inclined to say much.”

“But he knew I lived here.”

“Is it a secret?”

Now it was my turn to feel a little uneasy although I couldn't have accounted for the feeling.

“What did he look like?”

“Ordinary.”

“Wearing a red doublet?”

“Why yes, I think he was. A red doublet. So you have seen him after all?”

“No – I – it's just that I think I know who he might be.”

But I had no idea who he was, of course, except that it must be the figure I'd glimpsed behind me in Thames Street.

B
en Jonson had organized a rehearsal of his
Masque of Peace
for the next morning at the house of Sir Philip Blake. Several of the performers would be there (although not the Queen, I assumed). I set off from Mrs Buckle's lodgings and made my way down Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street. A heat-haze was already forming, turning figures in the distance into insubstantial shapes, mere ghosts. I thought of what my landlady had told me about glimpsing her late husband as he climbed the stairs. It was the third or fourth time she'd told me of such a sighting. The detail of watching the hem of his coat, the back of his head, gave a curious truthfulness to the story. But I didn't know whether to believe her. She would not lie – but anyone may be deluded. The dead should stay where they belong, in my opinion, and not indulge themselves in truanting about our world.

Maybe it was the bright morning but I also felt a bit of a truant. There were no activities involving the King's Men scheduled for the next couple of days yet, by participating in Ben's thing, I was somehow mooching off.

I turned my head from time to time and kept my eyes open for a flash of red doublet in the street, especially after what Mrs Buckle had told me about yesterday's caller. But this wasn't very logical. Why should anyone follow me if they already knew where I lived? Anyway, if I had glimpsed a person like the fellow from the previous evening, I would have accosted him. But there was no one who fitted the picture. Instead, I turned my mind to business and this piece of Jonson's in which I was playing.

The idea of the celebratory masque was a shrewd one on the playwright's part. The King's Men were ‘in attendance' on the Spanish party at Somerset House only in a ceremonial sense. But it had occurred to Ben that more might be done to mark the occasion than merely having us flounce around the palace in our cut-price red cloth. So he had come up with the notion of a private masque to be played before a select audience. And, more than a select audience,
Masque of Peace
was to be played by a select cast. You can't get much more select than the Queen of England.

The performance was scheduled for a week's time. Our masque was to herald the imminent outbreak of peace, which was a foregone conclusion. In truth the Spanish party was not in London to negotiate – since such a large and grand group would never have set sail from Spain if the outcome was in doubt – but to seal a treaty. I did not need Giles Cass to tell me that. The actual swearing of the peace would be staged at the Chapel Royal in Whitehall in the presence of the King. The performance at Somerset House was to be a first course for that event. I didn't know the behind-the-scenes detail but I guessed that this was Anne of Denmark's way of marking the event, as well as uniting two of her causes. Her partiality both for Spain and for the drama was well known.

By this stage I'd reached Temple Bar by the Inns of Court. Near here, in Middle Temple during the dying days of Elizabeth's reign when we were still known as the Chamberlain's Men, we'd played in WS's
Troilus and Cressida
. Beyond Temple Bar stretched the Strand with its fine mansions, including Somerset or Denmark House, now a temporary nest of Spaniards. The Blakes' mansion stood several hundred yards before Somerset House. It wasn't quite as grand but it would do to be going on with.

I identified myself as a player at the gatehouse and the doorkeeper waved me through. He had a large, hairy wart on his cheek and if you'd asked me afterwards what he looked like or even whether he had two heads, I wouldn't have been able to describe him. Just the large, hairy wart. An ample courtyard extended in front of a fine house-front. Although I wouldn't have admitted it to anyone, I was a little overawed by the scale of the place and so was pleased to see Ben Jonson standing in a shady spot in the yard. He was deep in conversation with another man. Together they were examining a sheet of paper.

Not wanting to disturb them by calling out, I coughed and Jonson looked up. He squinted into the sunlight as I approached.

“Ah, it is you, Nicholas. Wait there an instant.”

Obediently I stopped. The other man was a short fellow with a lined face. Jonson nudged his companion and said, “How about
him
, Jonathan Snell?”

The short man looked me up and down.

“Nine and a half, I'd say,” he said.

There was a pause.

“Well, Revill,” said Ben Jonson. “Is he right? Yes or no.”

“I'd have a better idea of yes or no if I knew what you were talking about, Ben.”

“We're talking about your weight, man. What do you think nine and a half is? Your age?”

“Is this gentleman a hangman? Why does he need to guess how heavy I am?”

“Do I look like a hangman?” said the man called Jonathan Snell. He sounded amused rather than indignant.

“I can't tell,” I said. “The only hangman I ever saw looked like a parson. His real trade was as a butcher, though.”

“Never mind all that, Nicholas. Is he correct? Do you weigh nine and a half stone?”

“I can't tell that either, Ben. I expect so.”

“Master Snell claims to be able to tell a man's weight just by glancing at him.”

“That must be a useful skill.”

“It is, sir, it is. See.”

Snell held out the sheet of paper which, close to, showed as a mass of lines and circles.

“Oh, you are the engine-man,” I said.

Snell beamed. He transferred the sheet of paper to his other hand and held out his right to shake. He had a long thumb which, disconcertingly, seemed to wrap itself round the back of my own hand.