The Playmakers (2 page)

Marlowe leaned imperceptibly towards Kyd’s
left ear and whispered, “The sewerage runs in the streets of
England, and Richard Baines swims in it.”

Kyd cocked his head to Marlowe, indicating
that they exit to the side of the square as quickly as possible.
Marlowe smiled, looked at Kyd for a moment, then suddenly jumped up
on his toes and shouted above the noise of the crowd, “Mr Baines!
Mr Baines! You have duties here in Norwich?”

Kyd turned sharply again, looking at Marlowe
in shock, puzzled at this senseless turn of events, his face
pleading that this conversation be taken no further.

Baines slowly turned to his left, gave a
frozen smile, nodded slightly, and moved toward them. “My business
takes me everywhere, Mr Marlowe,” he said stiffly, seemingly
uncomfortable at being spotted by his quarry.

“You must tire of some of the more
distressing elements of the job,” replied Marlowe, nodding toward
the flames.

“Some might say this is distressing, Mr
Marlowe. I call it a result. Your reward may be the sound of hands
clapping. Mine is of flames crackling.”

“I only write of death, Mr Baines. Not
engineer it.”

“Let’s hope your words will not one day
engineer your own death, Mr Marlowe.”

“Engineer my own death? Now there’s a
thought, Mr Baines …”

Baines baulked for a second and then stepped
forward, his face an inch from that of Marlowe’s, his eyes glaring.
“I hate your type, Marlowe. You and your university friends, with
your smart comments, and your scribbling away under patronage,
thinking that what you write is important. As the Lord is my God,
and Elizabeth is my Queen, I swear I’ll get you.”

And suddenly he was gone, melting into the
heaving, foul-smelling crowd.

Kyd shook his head and turned to his friend.
“Are you mad, Christopher?” he screamed. “He’s the number one
informer! He’ll hightail it back to London tonight, to plant the
seeds of our destruction. They’ll never leave us alone.”

“Thomas, just keep writing and making a name
for yourself. The more you write, the greater the chance they will
not touch you.”

“I can’t believe you would be so brash to do
such a thing.”

“I may be a university graduate, Thomas, but
don’t forget, I’m still the son of a shoemaker.”

“Then don’t come running to me in your
father’s lovingly made shoes when they throw you on the rack.”

“Nor you me, Thomas. Nor you me …”

A mighty roar from the crowd, responding as
the flames consumed more of Kett’s body, forced them to look back
at the stake. They fell silent, their eyes misting over. It did not
matter that they could no longer clearly see the awful image
through their tears. The odour of burning flesh told them their
friend was dead, destroyed for daring to think.

The flames ultimately died, as did the noise,
and the crowd began to disperse.

Even tall, thin George, who had kept up his
comments at the executioners all night, had mellowed and was now
making friends with his former rivals.

“Well done, lads,” he said to the pair, as
they collected their belongings. “A little fire like this every
night, and Norwich’ll be the warmest place in all of England.”

Marlowe and Kyd left the square dazed, and
wandered off to a nearby inn, seeking ale to block out the
sadness.

A pretty, dark-haired, buxom serving wench,
her breasts barely contained by her low-cut blouse, brought them
drinks at a rickety wooden table in a corner of the tavern.

“There you are, gentlemen, you look a little
down. This might cheer you up,” she said.

“Nothing can inspire us after what we have
witnessed today,” said Kyd.

“You mean,” she said nodding toward the
square, “out there.”

“He was our friend,” said Marlowe.

“A lot of us have lost friends in the name of
God,” she replied before heading off to serve the next table.

Around them, George and other witnesses of
the execution rushed to the bar to lubricate their excited
discussion of the event.

“What a world we live in,” mused Kyd, as he
watched the unbearably gleeful scene.

“It’s not a world,” said Marlowe, “it’s a
state of mind. And of mind control.”

Kyd stared into his beer for several moments.
“When Mary left the stage,” he finally said, “they said the killing
would stop. How many was it? Two hundred and seventy-four
Protestants she burned at the stake in the name of the Pope? Her
father, old Henry, the original Protestant himself, he must have
turned in his grave.”

“If there was room in there to roll that
bloated body of his over.”

“Christopher!!” Kyd hissed. “Sometimes I can
never make sense of what goes on in that head of yours.”

“Sense?” said Marlowe, waving his hand
expansively at the scene in front of them. “Can anyone make any
sense of any of this?”

Marlowe had touched on the heart of the
matter, the lack of reasoning - if there could be any sense or
reasoning behind religious vengeance - for the death of their
friend Francis Kett, and many others. They were living in a country
racked with suspicion as Elizabeth restored the Protestant views of
her father, Henry VIII. There were still people around who
remembered the five long years when her predecessor, her
half-sister Mary, had insisted on making post-Henry England
Catholic again. Her technique was immortalised in her enduring
nickname, Bloody Mary.

Now, under Elizabeth’s encouragement, the
bishops of the Church of England had regained the upper hand, and
their methods were proving just as brutal.

“The Jesuits have been driven out,” Kyd said
offhandedly. “The Catholics driven underground.”

“And isn’t ‘atheist’ a good, all-round word
to smear a target as a non-believer, a papist, a spy?” said
Marlowe. “None of this lot would have a clue what the word
means.”

‘Heresy’ was a vague, all-encompassing
charge, too. And the Court of the Star Chamber was ruthlessly
efficient at using torture to extract confessions of ‘heresy’, real
or otherwise about any matter that might challenge authority.

“All Francis said was that the Earth revolved
around the Sun,” said Marlowe glumly. “Even Raleigh believes
that.”

“Yes,” said Kyd. “But Raleigh is favoured by
the Queen for his exploits and only admits those things at the
meetings of the free-thinkers. Francis was stupid enough to blurt
it out at some tavern. And you’ll get caught the same way, too, if
you’re not careful.”

“But it’s so obviously true. We are a planet
or somesuch, some sort of orbiting object, and the Sun is the
centre of our Universe. All the thinkers, people like Galileo, they
know it, and they can prove it.”

“Bishops don’t like that sort of thinking,
Christopher. It means that everything they have held so dearly for
so long - the foundation of their control - is being challenged. To
them, the Earth is the centre of all that God created.”

“God created many things, but surely he did
not create fire for the purpose of burning a man at the stake.”

“I’m warning you, be careful about what you
say in public, Christopher. These days you never know whose side
people are on.”

Their conversation was cut short by a mighty
shout as a fat, red-faced man climbed onto a table, held his
tankard high, and declared loudly, “Here’s to the latest Atheist,
burned to a crisp. May his charred, unholy remains forever stay
buried in the bosom of the devil.”

“Aye,” said a supporter from the floor,
grabbing the serving girl from behind with his grubby hands. “And
here’s another bosom I wouldn’t mind gettin’ buried in,
either.”

The girl turned and without a change in her
expression, or spilling a drop from her tray of drinks, lifted her
knee straight up. Hard.

The crowd roared laughing as the man clutched
at his wounded groin, sucked in a short burst of air, crossed his
eyes, and fell to the floor, taking a table down with him.

“I’m hope she’s on our side,” said Marlowe
dryly.

“Waitresses one, patrons none,” declared
George.

The crowd roared.

Unsighted at the other end of the bar,
Richard Baines drained his tankard, took one last look at Marlowe
and Kyd, nodded to the landlord, and headed out the back door for
London.

CHAPTER ONE

John Shakespeare smiled.
Praise the Lord,
he thought.
His
eighteen-year-old son William had that very morning taken out a
licence to be married.

This was the best piece of news the
struggling Stratford leather-maker, alderman, bailiff, and official
beer-tester had heard in years.

He rose from the table in the well-appointed
dining room, scratched one of his flourishing grey sideburns, and
ran a hand through his thinning scalp. A small woman with startling
white skin and dark wavy hair entered with a tray containing plates
of cakes and scones.

“Ah, perfect,” said John, reaching for a
scone.

Mary Shakespeare playfully slapped her
husband’s wrist. “Don’t touch, thank you. Kindly wait until the
happy couple join us.”

“One little scone won’t hurt!”

“Settle down, John.”

“Me? Settle down? At least marriage might
settle down that son of ours.”

“John, he’s not a bad boy.”

“No, he’s a not bad boy, is our young Will.
He’s a skiver, a slugabed, and always on the fiddle, but he’s not a
bad boy.”

“John!”

“And he uses those charms to get his hands on
any money he can …

“John, please!”

“ … so he can go down the Stratford Arms with
those equally dubious friends of his and pour pints of ale down his
throat.”

“Yes, but he loves his mother.”

“True, Mary, he loves his mother.”

Mary Shakespeare was a good mother. She had
overcome the grief of the death of their two first-born daughters
in infancy, to produce seven living children, the oldest, William
and the youngest, Edmund, just two. But William was her favourite.
He was the first boy, and she loved his roguish spirit, his
engaging smile, his eye for an opportunity. He gave plenty of love
in return. Especially when she handed him a few pennies from her
purse.

“Anyway,” said Mary, “where do you think he
get the idea of drinking ale from?”

“What do you mean?” said John defensively,
his brown eyes narrowing.

“Well, who else drinks in this house? Let me
see now ..?”

“Mary, my role as the town beer-tester is an
important job within the community.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, placing her hand under
her chin and staring at the ceiling in mock thought, “how does the
job of a conner go again? You take a pint of new beer at the
inn.”

“Yes.”

“And deliberately spill some on a seat.”

“That’s correct.”

“Then sit on the spilled beer for nearly an
hour.”

“Right!”

“Then you get up to walk away.”

“Yes.”

“And if your leather breeches stick to the
seat, the beer’s got too much sugar or it’s bad.”

“Exactly. And what’s wrong with that?”

“The seven pints you drink while sitting
there …”

“Mary, Mary, it’s all part of the process to
ensure the good citizens of Stratford-upon-Avon are saved from
drinking bad ale.”

“So, John Shakespeare, you are a conner, a
beer-tester, and you wonder why your son hangs around the inn.”

“His reasons are social, mine’s
business.”

“Sometimes, I wish you would concentrate a
little more on the real business.”

Being in business in England in 1582 was a
tricky game at the best of times, profit and loss not only hinging
on market forces and the state of the village economy, but the
level of tension gripping the nation over the seemingly-endless
internal and external religious and political squabbles.

“And being in the leather business has its
own idiosyncrasies,” John Shakespeare would say to anyone prepared
to listen at the inn while he tested a new barrel of ale. “Some of
those tanners and curriers are prepared to bring the game into
disrepute. They tan the leather poorly, and produce a product far
from water-proof, thus enraging my clientele!”

Changing fashion attitudes, too, affected the
leather game. Gloves and shoes were on-going sellers, as were
belts, but products such as leather corsets and bodices came and
went. Being so far from style-setting London, one had to be canny
to pick the trend. The squat figure of John Shakespeare could often
be seen waiting at the coach stop to spot travellers from the big
city and observe the style and cut of their clothes.

Sometimes the only thing selling was cut
leather appliques for dresses, or the soft chamois leather lining
for linen corsets, said to be worn by Queen Elizabeth herself.