Shakespeare's Rebel

  ‘Thomas Lawley is the only father I have ever known.’

  ‘Thomas Lawley the Jesuit.’

  ‘The former Jesuit, sir. He gave up that allegiance for love.’

  ‘For the love of your mother, who had already been loved by’ – Cecil squinted – ‘well, an unpronounceable name. A savage anyway, from a tribe of savages.’ He looked up. ‘Does that explain your extraordinary capacity for violence, I wonder?’ He indicated the papers. ‘For these are filled with tales of your savagery, sir.’

  John took a breath, then exhaled slowly. ‘I think you will discover, sir, should you be put to it, that in the heat of the fight, we are each one of us born savages.’

  It was said with all politeness. Yet it was still a hit, for the dwarfish Cecil was not shaped for war or any of its training games – a fact that his rival, and champion jouster, Essex never failed to point out, loudly and in company. The Secretary scowled, looked down again, seeking . . . what next? John wondered. During that ‘conversation’ with this man’s father, he had said many things he could now not remember. The elder Burleigh, for all his so-called Puritanism, had also been a convivial fellow and had succeeded in getting John drunk on several occasions. Anything could have spilled out and no doubt had. He would not otherwise have talked about his origins, the English not caring much for immigrants, as the regular riots against them showed. So he did not think about them, unless forced. Or as now, when a spymaster pored over his recorded words and he needed to defend himself against incrimination.

  His father. His blood. Savage? Perhaps. But his mother, Anne, had spoken of a good man and extraordinary warrior who had given his life to save his tribe – the Tahontaenrat, People of the White-Tailed Deer, they were called – in that land across the Atlantic that the French were calling Canada. Anne had even taught him some of his father’s tongue, which he could yet speak to startle companions in a tavern. The skill had landed him in trouble – most famously when he’d uttered a few phrases in a Falmouth alehouse that the pirate Drake had overheard. He had then promptly kidnapped John to be his interpreter to the tribes he hoped to encounter across the great water. In the near three years of that voyage, John had not used the skill once but he’d learned plenty of others – some of them no doubt recorded in ink on the papers before him.

  ‘What a colourful life,’ Cecil said, as if giving echo to John’s thoughts. ‘Part of Drake’s voyage around the globe. Then you fought with him against the Great Armada.’

  Because that Devonian cur kidnapped me for a second time, John thought but did not say.

  Cecil turned a page. ‘Indeed, wherever there is conflict, there may you be found. You have fought all of England’s wars and a few others besides. You are reputed to be gifted with this’ – he tapped the sword on his desk – ‘as few men living. You studied the arts in Italy and in France, did you not?’

  John nodded. A restless time after his return with Drake and the theatres closed by plague. He’d gone for a season – and stayed away three years. It was written down before the man and so undeniable.

  ‘Well, sir. Most men reading this would come to one of two conclusions. Either you are a worse liar than Mandeville . . . or you are a spy.’ Cecil looked up. ‘I believe this story is too incredible to be untrue. Thus I must conclude that you are the latter.’ He leaned forward. ‘Are you?’

  On occasion, John thought, but answered, ‘Your father asked me the same question. I gave him the same answer. I am no spy.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Your’ – he smiled thinly as he pored among his papers – ‘conversation with my father.’ He lifted a sheet. ‘You, ah, discussed your recent imprisonment in Spain. And how you were freed from it in order to return home . . . to kill the Queen.’

  John lifted the mug, pretended another sip, breathed. This was dangerous ground, now as then. He lowered the mug, spilled a little more. ‘No doubt you also can read there, sir, that I straightway reported the purpose for which the Spanish freed me, why I acceded to it to gain that freedom – and then spent three months in the Tower for my honesty. It is why your father wanted to interview me in person.’

  ‘Yes. One of my father’s last interviews in fact, alas,’ he said, without a trace of sorrow. ‘Well, I am sure it pleased him. In his dotage he was so easily amused.’ He looked up. ‘Are you a Catholic, then, that the Spanish could work on you?’

  John hesitated. ‘I was raised in the Catholic tradition, as many were. I am not a Catholic.’

  ‘Raised but not. A little like your friend Shakespeare, hmm?’ He squinted over the frames and, when John did not reply, lifted another paper. ‘Indeed you do not seem much of anything. The last time we have a record of your parish – for you seem to come and go from records, sirrah, another tick in the tally of suspicion – you paid the recusant’s fine and attended service, not every Sunday as is commanded, but merely twice a year.’

  He could not deny it – and did not see the purpose if he could have. The Master Secretary was, like most in government, a lawyer. John presumed he was building up his case. But the pounding in his skull made him impatient. ‘It is always salutary to hear one’s imperfections tallied,’ he said. ‘Something to reflect upon when next I am a-praying. But I fain would know the purpose of their recounting.’ He shook his head. ‘What is it that you want with me, Master Secretary?’

  Cecil took off his glasses. ‘Want?’ he snapped. ‘Ask rather what I should do. For in these dangerous times, anyone looking at your record and your associations’ – he gave the word a distinct twist – ‘would think it safest to imprison you straightway.’

  ‘On what charge, pray?’

  ‘On any charge I choose, you dog!’ He slapped the papers. ‘These provide several. Spy. Assassin. Murderer. Any one of them could see you to the Tower for further, less convivial talk – and thence to a scaffold.’ His voice dropped to a hiss. ‘So I suggest you answer my questions rather than offer any of your own. Is that agreed?’

  John felt his anger pulse – and quickly suppressed it. If he had drunk the sack, he might not have been able to. Instead he said, ‘Master Secretary,’ and lowered his gaze, as was required.

  He heard a satisfied grunt, as Cecil bent to another scroll. ‘And then there is your other extraordinary life as . . . a player, of all things. A player!’ He gave it as unambiguous an inflection as Despair had done in the yard below.

  ‘It is true, sir. The playhouse is my desired home.’

  ‘Among the whores, thieves . . . and subversives? Of course!’ He grunted. ‘I do not like the players. Especially your dear friend Shakespeare. You would not either if people yelled “Richard the Turd” at you as you progressed through the streets.’

  ‘A play written before your . . . ascendancy, sir.’

  Cecil ignored him. ‘While plays, the personation of people, are like likenesses of saints in a church. Sinful. We have purged our chapels of such devil’s tools. We should do the same with our playhouses.’ He shook his head. ‘They not only encourage the baser appetites of man – and ungodly desires in women – they fail to give instruction as our divines’ sermons do at St Paul’s Cross. More, they ask people to think for themselves.’ He shuddered. ‘And what price the safety of the realm and of the Queen then?’

  John coloured. ‘Yet her majesty seems to enjoy their theatre.’

  ‘Her majesty . . .’ Cecil started angrily, then stopped and, for some strange reason, darted a glance at the left-hand wall, where the tapestry hunt hung. When he turned back, and continued, his voice was slightly different. ‘Her majesty is a lady of taste and refinement in all things.’

  John had glanced at the arras when Cecil did, faced him again when he turned back. Was there a hidden chamber behind it, with another scribe in it taking down Cecil’s words as the scribe in the corner was taking down John’s? Whitehall was a rattery of spies, each faction employing their own and everyone else’s. It would not surprise him if Cecil’s words were inked for the Queen to study. It reminded him again
– be doubly wary! Yet he also knew this – as in a sword fight, you could only defend for so long before you were hit. You needed to counter – if only to deflect your opponent’s assaults for a while, till his weakness could be found. ‘I would not have thought from your applause this night, Master Secretary, that you hated a play so much.’

  The counter surprised. ‘You were there?’

  ‘I watched from above. With the minstrels.’

  ‘Did you? A prime spot for an assassin, I would say. I shall look into that.’ Cecil barked his reply, then breathed deep and stared at him for a few moments, taking the corner of his moustache into his mouth and sucking upon it. ‘And what is it you think you saw?’ he asked.

  John knew what he had seen. A play somewhat adapted for the very purpose Cecil had chastised the playhouses before – to make people think differently. The rise of one man. The fall of another. Yet why would he say any of that? ‘Only the court enjoying themselves,’ he replied. ‘As I thought you did too, sir.’

  Cecil stared for a few moments more. Then he smiled. ‘At least this piece had some . . . salutary lessons to impart.’ The smile left as he lifted another scrap of parchment, glancing at it. ‘You say that the playhouse is your desired home, but it appears that you are an exile from it again as you have so often been from England.’ He looked up, and his tone changed. ‘Yet know this, Goodman Lawley – desires can sometimes be accommodated.’

  John frowned. Had the conversation just switched from his potential as an assassin to . . . his return to the life of a player? He suddenly wished he had taken a swig of sack, not poured so much down his leg. Yet he withheld still, and asked, ‘What . . . mean you, Master Secretary?’

  ‘Only this.’ Cecil leaned forward, his eyes bright. ‘The Lord Chamberlain’s Men are just one of the companies that are called to play at the palace. They could be less favoured. They could be cut out entirely. And their new works could have more . . . difficulty when presented to the Master of the Revels for scrutiny.’

  John swallowed. What the Secretary was threatening might not make Will’s life impossible, just very difficult. And this at the time when Burbage and he had mortgaged their all to build the new playhouse on Bankside. Yet an ‘or’ hung in the air, which Cecil got to before John could say it.

  ‘Or they could be more favoured. More appearances at Whitehall. Fewer obstacles. For these favours, they would, of course, be expected to do some in return.’ The smile came back, as mirthless as before. ‘And they could begin by taking the exile back into their bosom.’

  John wished that if he could not drink, at least he might sit. It had, after all, been a very long day from his waking in that tavern in Wapping. Yet he found himself longing for the company of his bedfellows. Their intentions had been clear – to filch his locket – while Cecil’s . . . ‘Master Secretary, are you suggesting that you might influence the players into taking me back?’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘While at the same time favouring them . . .’

  ‘Rather than hindering? Again, it is possible.’

  John tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry for it. ‘And in return . . . ?’

  Cecil did not reply. But that false smile widened into a genuine one and he looked down to the papers before him, picked one up, read for near a minute, while John felt sweat pool in his armpits. When he laid the paper down and spoke, it was as if there had been no pause. ‘In return, sirrah, many things. To the first of them – let us talk a little, you and I’ – he removed his spectacles – ‘about the Earl of Essex.’

  At last, thought John. They were to it, the true reason he was there, as he’d suspected all along. Robert Devereux.

  Cecil continued, gesturing to the paper he’d just laid down. ‘You have been at his side for thirteen years. Engaged in every scheme he has concocted, every enterprise he has launched. You sired a bastard on his wife’s lady-in-waiting. You are his man.’

  John breathed deep before he spoke. ‘The earl has done me the honour of trying to get me killed almost every one of those thirteen years. I do not think that makes me his man.’

  ‘Indeed? When your career, as laid out upon these pages, fits so perfectly with his own?’ Cecil jabbed a page for every word he spoke. ‘Feckless. Debauched. Deluded. Grandiose.’ He half rose from the table. ‘You are both never so happy than with a sword in one hand – and a goblet in another. You make great gestures as if you were Tamburlaine setting out to conquer the world . . . and yet what do you achieve? Failure in almost everything you desire.’ He leaned forward. ‘Know this, knave. The day of the adventurer is past. We no longer need men who believe that being possessed of a comely figure and the ability to unseat another handsome idiot at a joust is qualification enough to rule the realm. This,’ he said, snatching up a quill, ‘is the weapon of the age. Not this!’ He lifted and dropped John’s sword upon the table. ‘These are new times, sirrah. The age of empty chivalry is dead. This is the age of reason – and men of reason must rule it.’

  A speech worthy of the theatre he so derides, John thought. And it has the quality of one aimed at an audience of more than one. Though if this conversation were a duel I was setting for the stage, this bludgeoning would be a moment for a small pause – followed by a swift counter to the heart. ‘I agree absolutely with your worship,’ he murmured softly. ‘Though I do wonder how well reason has worked before, and will again, with the traitor Tyrone in Ireland?’ He pointed to the quill. ‘Will that suffice for him?’

  Cecil, still half risen in his passion, settled slowly back. ‘So. You trim the candle to the wick. Perhaps you are not quite the fool as these papers have you.’ He nodded. ‘Indeed. Ireland is at the nub of it. And my lord of Essex sent with the snuffer to snuff the candle out.’ He shook his head, as if dissatisfied with extending the metaphor. ‘It is a difficult task and Robert Devereux has shown little appetite for it, regarding it as some trick played upon him, some burden others will him to carry alone. That mood has lasted since he was appointed, yea, right up until this very night, and throughout the play. Yet shall I tell you when it vanished, sirrah?’

  ‘I would be most obliged.’

  ‘It vanished after his clandestine meeting with you in the garden!’ Cecil nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, sirrah. When he returned to the hall . . . he danced, which all know he hates! He caroused. He . . . charmed.’ The eyes narrowed. ‘So the first return for my goodwill, Master Lawley, is to hear precisely what you said to him this night.’

  This last was spoken with another swift glance at the arras. Cecil was speaking on the record. So John would too. ‘I know you have forbidden me questions, Master Secretary . . . yet may I be bold enough to ask but one?’ He cleared his throat. ‘Are you telling me I have been dragged here, confronted with my lowly origins, reminded of my sottishness, and my playing, been accused of treason, threatened with imprisonment or worse, and all because’ – he paused – ‘because I cheered the Earl of Essex up?’

  Cecil’s mouth opened – but it was from beyond the arras that sound came. A laugh, high-pitched enough to be a woman, but low from a stomach. A guffaw then, the words that followed equally deep and amused.

  ‘In God’s name, Master Secretary, enough! Help me from this hole.’

  Cecil rose, and scurried over to the tapestry’s edge. He lifted it and it bellied out as someone moved along its inside to emerge into the light – a woman who strode to the centre of the room, put her hands to her hips and spoke straight. ‘Well, Master Lawley,’ she said, ‘you are a slippery eel and no mistake.’

  And then that belly laugh came again, while the Queen of England leaned back and everyone else in the room dropped to their knees.

  X

  Vivat Vivat Regina

  Oh, this day keeps getting better and better!

  John considered it. From waking on a tavern’s lousy mattress and the fumblings of larcenous scullions to kneeling before the Queen in Whitehall Palace. Why did I choose Shrove Tuesday to end my debauch? W
ould it have hurt to have extended a little into Lent?

  He had seen her earlier from the gallery. Yet though he now kept his head dipped, his first startled glance had revealed much. Of a face beginning to break out of its layers of white lead paint, a high forehead from which the wig of red curls had risen to reveal the grey beneath. The breaks between acts in the play had been used for both refreshment and restoration. But the revels were ended, and disintegration begun.

  ‘Rise, all,’ she commanded, and they did, John to continue his study. If she was older than her disguise by a few decades, she was lively enough in her stance – hands still atop the wide-spread waist of her cream-white dress, the slit in it – he kept his eyes averted from the royal bosom – lined in river pearls. Her gaze too was lively, her eyes following the movements of men with impatience. These were mainly focused on him, a frown line between them as if she knew him from before and was trying to place the when and where.

  A chair was produced – Cecil’s, the only one in the room aside from the scribe’s. The Secretary brought it himself, with some difficulty, from behind his desk, then stood behind it. Behind him, against the rear door, there was another newcomer, a maid who must have been with her mistress behind the arras. Yet John had no time to study her, for the Queen had sat, and was speaking again.

  ‘A slippery eel,’ she repeated, ‘if eels can amuse. For you did indeed cheer my lord of Essex up – something that I and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men had failed to do all night.’ She tipped her head. ‘I am also curious as to how.’

  ‘Majesty, I—’ John began.

  ‘Wait!’ Elizabeth threw up a hand. ‘This is for me alone. Master Secretary, you may go.’

  ‘Go?’ Cecil’s eyes bulged as he stepped around the chair. ‘Your grace, I beseech you . . .’

  ‘Go! Take your scrivener and guards with you. My maid only to remain.’