An Honourable Murderer (9 page)

From one aspect I was doing my duty by my country.

From another, I was storing up favours with powerful people, wasn't I?

And then, apart from the duty and the favours earned, there was the money.

Ah, the money . . . I patted my pocket and felt the unusual bulk of my purse. As a token of his good faith, the gentleman in the Pure Waterman had given me three sovereigns, with the promise of more to follow. Three whole sovereigns. Count 'em – not one, not two, but three weighty circles. This was the equivalent of almost two months' pay to me.

Money is serious, it should be listened to.

This was how my conversation with the gentleman unfolded.

Nicholas Revill
: Tell me why you've been following me for the last couple of days. Tell me who you are.

The Other Man
: My name is John Ratchett. I have not been following you exactly, Master Revill, but waiting for the opportunity to speak with you.

Nick Revill
: You called at my lodgings recently?

John Ratchett
: You were out.

NR
: And you pursued me down Thames Street yesterday evening, I think. What is it you want with me?

JR
: A word or two.

NR
: Well, I am indebted to you and so must listen.

JR
: We hope that
we
may be indebted to you shortly.

NR
: We?

JR
: Nicholas – may I call you that? – I speak on behalf of a certain group which is interested in the King's Men.

NR
: If you want to hire us for a private performance then you should be speaking to one of the Burbage brothers. I believe our rates are very reasonable.

JR
: More precisely, we are interested in the masque which your man Jonson intends to put on at Denmark House.

NR
: Ben Jonson would be gratified.

JR
: The purpose of the masque is to celebrate the peace between the English and the Spanish?

NR
: That's no secret.

JR
: You've been rehearsing for it in the house of Sir Philip Blake?

NR
: Yes.

JR
: What is your opinion of the Spaniard?

NR
: I do not concern myself with affairs of state. The Spanish were our enemies once, is as much as I know. What is the nature of this group which you speak for, Master Ratchett?

JR
: We are interested in establishing the nature of the ties between England and Spain.

NR
: England and Spain are about to become fast friends, aren't they? Now I remember, it is to be written down in a treaty so it must be so.

JR
: To get to the quick of the matter, there are others who are interested in breaking those ties.

NR
: Old enemies of Spain, I suppose. This is dangerous territory, Master Ratchett.

JR
: Do not worry, you are well protected.

NR
: ‘Protected.' Now you do worry me. How? Why? Who do you speak for?

JR
: I . . .

NR
: Do you speak for . . .?

JR
: I cannot say it.

NR
: Then I shall say it . . . it is the Privy Council, is it not?

JR
: Please lower your voice a little, Nicholas.

NR
: All right. But now I do refuse. Whatever you're suggesting, I refuse. I have worked before for Master Robert Cecil, or rather I have followed his instructions while he was digging into plots. I remember well what danger those instructions led me into. If you'll excuse me . . .

JR
: Sit down again, Nicholas, and wait until I've told you what we require. Sit down. Thank you. What we require is nothing – or as good as nothing.

NR
: Then why are you asking?

JR
: You mentioned plots but there is no plot here. There are rather . . . directions and tendencies. Shades and shadows.

NR
: In plain English, please.

JR
: We are interested in the precise – colouring – of certain individuals with whom you are in touch. For example, Sir Philip Blake and his wife. And there is a person called Giles Cass. We wish to be more precisely informed of their sentiments, their talk.

NR
: And the Queen too? Should I inform on her? You know that she is to participate in the masque?

JR
: Her presence is one of the reasons why it is so important that we are kept informed, thoroughly informed.

NR
: Why me?

JR
: Because you have worked for Secretary Cecil before. You said as much.

NR
: But Secretary Cecil has direct connections with such people. I saw him talking to Sir Philip Blake only yesterday. Why on earth should he want to recruit me?

JR
: The more eyes the better. Listen, Nicholas. We require you only to look out and to listen in. Then to write for us – to write a kind of report – on the preparations for this
Masque of Peace
, material which would be read only in the highest circles. To describe the people, the little events, that occur in the Blake household or in Denmark House, as you see them. Giles Cass, for example, he would bear watching . . .

NR
: Cass? I thought that he worked for Cecil.

JR
: There are outer circles and inner circles.

NR
: Circles, shadows, tendencies. Haven't you anything more solid, Master Ratchett?

JR
: Can I put money in your purse, Nicholas? Will this be solid enough? These coins are a kind of circle after all.

Well, all I had to do was to pen a couple of reports or three on the goings-on surrounding the production of the
Masque of Peace
. Nothing much. As I said earlier, it seemed pretty straightforward. John Ratchett also insinuated that I would be doing the state – or the Privy Council at least – some service. I'd be working under their ‘protection'. I should have known better.

The stuff about the state sounded quite plausible at the time. Although I'd claimed ignorance when he was speaking to me, I knew a bit more than I let on. For example, when Ratchett claimed that there were people who'd like to break the ties between England and Spain, he was only speaking the half of it. There were many more people who were fearful of the Spanish than ready to befriend them. Indeed, under the old Queen, it had been the duty of all right-thinking Englishmen to regard them as the enemy. If we weren't engaged in open warfare, then there was a hidden struggle proceeding all the time. Why, only a few years ago, there had been a mad plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth by smearing the pommel of her horse's saddle with poison. And now we were all meant to whoop and throw our caps into the air when we witnessed the Spaniards sailing up the Thames.

Yet who was I – playing the part of Ignorance in Ben's masque – to question the wisdom of our councillors and statesmen? Peace was a blessing, wasn't it? If I could play some tiny part in furthering an accord, then wasn't it my duty to play that part? This was the sort of inflated notion that swelled up and filled my head.

And then there was the money. “Can I put money in your purse, Nicholas?” he'd asked, as if I was the one doing him a favour by accepting it. John Ratchett was prepared to pay me three pounds for each account I provided. I never knew that writing might be so lucrative, but then I supposed that the Privy Council had a deep purse.

The prospect of cash didn't altogether blind me but, mixing metaphors, it added the cheese to the mousetrap. And when it came to money, I wasn't only thinking of myself. For instance, Ursula Buckle needed money to stay in her Thames Street house. Gaining a little extra cash, which I might hand over to her with a careless flourish, could buy her a bit of time with the unfeeling cousin who wanted to kick her and her daughter Lizzie out on to the streets. It might even be the way to her heart. (But probably not, she wasn't that sort.) While as for me, if I wanted to go on visiting my French friend Blanche in the Mitre, that certainly required a nice fat purse.

And besides all this there was that little implication – the fatal, flattering little implication – that Sir Robert Cecil himself would be reading what I wrote. In spite of what I'd claimed to Ben Jonson on the quayside, about having no wish to meet the Secretary again, the truth was that I was no more immune to a request from on high than most men would be.

So I said yes to Ratchett. Yes, I will report on the masque preparations.

Fool.

I
discovered it wasn't just the red-doubleted Master Ratchett who was interested in the
Masque of Peace
. I was soon approached by William Shakespeare.

“Ah, Nick, good morning,” he said, his tone telling me that something else would follow on from the greeting.

I was standing on the open stage of the Globe playhouse. WS had just emerged from the stage-left entrance. If he'd been making an entrance in a real drama, the style of his approach would have been somewhere between casual and purposeful. The stage floor, not covered with rushes as it usually was for performance, resonated to the playwright's tread.

The Company wasn't playing at the moment. These dog days of August can be dry and dusty for business. Also the energies of the King's Men were officially directed towards playing the Grooms of the Outer Chamber for the duration of the Spanish visit. We had become ‘grooms of the chamber', you see, at about the same time that we received the royal patent. From this court position we earned almost no money, only prestige. But it's customers, not prestige, that pay the rent. And customers need to be drawn to the playhouse, especially since the excitement of our return to town after the plague had worn off. Customers – or the better class, at any rate – enjoy bright, fresh surroundings. So the shareholders were taking the opportunity of the August dog days to smarten up the playhouse.

There were ladders and scaffolding about the stage. Perched twenty feet or so above us were a couple of craftsmen touching up the gilded ribs and the stars of the stage ceiling. One was sitting astride a plank while the other was lying on his back. Only one of his legs was visible, carelessly dangling over the side of a platform as if he had no further to fall than from a truckle-bed.

I turned towards Shakespeare and gestured overhead.

“Look you: a brave overhanging firmament – or it will be again soon,” I said, quoting him, at least in the first few words.

“Fretted with golden fire,” said WS, quoting himself.

“I wouldn't choose that job,” I said.

“No head for heights?”

“I'd be afraid all the time of losing my head.”

“Once you'd been up there for a day you would forget your fear,” said WS.

“I hope Sir Philip Blake has a head for heights,” I said quickly. “He is playing the figure of Truth in Ben's masque, and has to be lowered from the ceiling in a chair.”

WS smiled slightly. I had brought up the subject of Jonson's
Masque of Peace
because, in truth, I was a little uneasy about my participation in it. I suppose I wanted WS to endorse me. Even though the seniors must have given their approval for the Somerset House presentation, if only tacitly, I couldn't escape the notion that Ben Jonson was setting up a little company of his own within the larger Company. It was gratifying to have been asked by Jonson to take part, but I would not have sacrificed the good opinion (as I believed) of the Globe shareholders.

Perhaps WS read something of my anxiety in my face for he put his hand to my shoulder. It was a firm grip but quite different from Jonson's bear-like grasp.

“You have hit on the subject I wanted to talk about, Nick. How do the masquers do?”

“We've only had one rehearsal.”

“Even so . . .?”

“I think that a noble audience will have to learn to be less, er, fastidious than the groundlings.”

“They are less fastidious already. You've played often enough at court to realize that. They have not paid good money for one thing. The spectators are not really watching us most of the time, anyway. They're watching the King or the Queen.”

“Or they're pissed or asleep,” I said, entering into the spirit of the conversation.

“We are to present
Othello
at Whitehall in a few weeks,” said WS. “I hope they'll have woken up in time for that – or sobered up.”

I thought of
Othello
, the play about the Moor of Venice. If anything could wake them up, that should. The King's Men had presented this piece of WS's soon after our spring return to the Globe. We'd drawn good audiences for it. My own parts hadn't exactly been large – a Venetian senator (white beard), a drunken soldier on the isle of Cyprus (black beard). I wondered whether I'd get something a bit bigger next time around.

I sensed that we still hadn't reached the end of our dialogue, WS and I. Overhead the scaffolding and planking creaked and groaned as the painters shifted position. One of them was directly above us. Instead of a leg, all I could see now was an arm waggling across those ‘heavens' which, with their moon, stars and zodiac, provide the roof of our stage-play world.

“Nick,” said WS, “if I were to ask you to report on anything – untoward – which occurs while you are preparing for Ben's masque, you must not suppose that I am asking you to turn into a spy.”

“Untoward?”

I probably looked confused. This was the second time such a request had been made of me within twelve hours. What was this one about? I made a stab in the dark.

“Is the good name of the King's Men at stake here?”

“Not yet but it might be. Ben is one of our number – at least some of the time he is. And you and several others are taking part in his masque.”

“Abel and Laurence Savage and Jack Wilson,” I said, as if I was trying to show that this wasn't my enterprise alone. Or perhaps I was hinting to WS that he could have asked any one of
them
to be his non-spy.