The Playmakers (31 page)

“Ship? It’s got no sails!”

“It is a manner of speech,” replied the big
fellow. “Think of the desert as a big sea of sand.

“Sea? Of sand?"

“Yes, it has its own undulating waves, called
dunes. And just as a handsome rigger will bear Raleigh or Drake
over the bounding main, then a camel will transport its passengers
and cargo across the endless stretches of shimmering golden
grains.”

“Oh,” said William Smith. “I see. So, this
man on the, er …”

“Camel.”

“Camel. Yes. Is that her husband?” he added,
pointing towards the man with the sallow face who was looking
increasingly uncomfortable in the saddle, as his animal began to
wave its head from side to side and emit more braying noises.

“No, no, no,” said the big man. “That is
Monsieur Le Doux.”

“Le Doux? Oh, yes, I’ve heard his name around
here.”

That’s interesting,
thought the big fellow.
Seeing as I only selected
the name for him in desperation from a piece of paper that someone
handed to me outside the theatre one evening. It seemed French and
seemed to fit.

“No doubt you have,” continued the big
fellow. “He has been known to come and go from these shores before
…”

“Has he got a passport?”

“Absolutely. He has all the necessary papers,
right up to date. In fact, young man, you would not believe how up
to date they are.”

“Hmm, well, I better have a look at them. But
I’m still worried about your Queen here. I’ve got my orders, you
know.”

“Absolutely, but I’m sure if you check with
Mr Le Doux, all will be fine.”

“Le Doux? What does he do?”

“A brilliant job,” said the big fellow. “He
is the principal private secretary of the Queen of Nubia, and
travels with her wherever she goes.”

“Boy, what job,” said the guard whistling.
“Riding around the world with a fancy woman like that doing bugger
all. I bet you he gives her one every now and then, too, hey?
Hey?”

“Ah, let me assure you, sir, Monsieur Le Doux
is the epitome of discretion and restraint,” said the big man
seriously.

“Oh, yair?”

“And the job it is not as easy as it looks,”
continued the big voice. “He has a busy day, arranging her
itinerary, maintaining her daily diary, acting as a go-between her
and her hosts, acceding to her every whim, dealing with the
idiosyncrasies of other royals. Why, Monsieur Le Doux is fluent in
seven languages …”

As if almost to prove this point, the young
man with the sallow face suddenly began shouting, “Arrêtez,
arrêtez, s’il vous plait! Arrêtez, arrêtez!” as the camel began to
get agitated, swinging its body from side to side, rocking the
saddle.

“Arrêtez, arrêtez, you feckless bastard,” he
screamed, as the camel jerked violently, flinging him off the
saddle and landing him on his backside in the mud.

“ … but alas,” continued the big man, to the
roars of mirth of the entourage, “he has yet to master basic Camel
…”

That was enough. “Go on,” said guard William
Smith, laughing and wiping the tears from his ears as the displaced
jockey began to wipe the mud from his expensive clothes. “Go on
with the lot of you! Go through. Get out of my sight. This is
enough for one long day.”

Stepping diplomatically out of the way of the
pygmy’s spear and the giant’s club, he waved them through, and
turning toward the docks, got down on one knee, and shouted, “Make
way for the Queen of Nubia!”

The cry was picked up by dock-workers and
sailors as the mighty entourage, minus the big fellow who waved
from the gate, wended its way down to a resplendent barque once
used by Raleigh to sail to the New Country and recently bought and
re-fitted by Walsingham.

And within weeks, “Make way for the Queen of
Nubia!” was reverberating across Europe as the exotic, gorgeous,
African monarch and her strange entourage progressed from
city-state to city-state, bedazzling her excited hosts with her
beauty, her mystique, her charm, her regal bearing.

“Well, I am a Queen, of sorts,” Rasa
whispered to Christopher one night, after he had sneaked into her
room in the castle of the Viscount de Romy in south-eastern France.
“After all, my father was King of the tribe, and he used to call me
Princess, until I ran away.”

“And I am a private secretary, of sorts,
too,” said Marlowe, undoing the cord on her loose-fitting pyjamas
and delicately rubbing his hand on her right breast. “I write
things on bits of paper. And”, he added, gently licking the nipple,
“attend with great diligence to your every personal need!”

“And no one,” she added, pulling him closer
to her breast, “need be the wiser.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Dead? Dead? You didn’t say anything about
him ending up dead!”

As he shouted the words, William Shakespeare
nervously dropped the silver goblet of wine from his hand. He was
completely oblivious of the noise as it bounced, and the ruby red
liquid spilled across the marble floor of the plush Walsingham
dining room.

“Get an actor, you told me,” he continued,
shouting. “Get someone who looks like Christopher, you said. Get
him to turn up at Mrs Bull’s for a day on the pretence he was going
to a party. That’s what you said. You didn’t say anything about him
getting killed!”

“William, William,” said Walsingham, calmly,
“don’t get upset. That's the way it had to be.”

“Had to be? Had to be? Why did it have to be?
He was only there playing the role of Christopher. In fact, the
poor sod didn't even know he was doing that. He just happened to
look like Marlowe and had the right sort of theatrical flair about
him. He thought he was going to a party.”

“He did!” shouted Walsingham. “He did go to a
party. And he had a great time, too, according to all reports.
Apparently, he scoffed every morsel of food in sight, drank
anything liquid that passed by on the tray, and lapped up every bit
of the luxury provided by Dame Eleanor’s rooms. What a way to
go.”

“Way to go? What a way to go! You make it
sound as if he was a person of no substance whatsoever. That he
never even existed at all. And that he should be appreciative that
you so kindly organised such a nice death for him!”

“Well,” said Walsingham curtly, “it’d be
better than being burned at the stake."

“Oh, my God, I can't believe I am hearing
this,” said Shakespeare, shaking his head.

“Besides, William …”

“Besides? Besides what?”

“When you think about it, he really didn't
exist in the first place. Consider it - born of German parents,
brought here illegally when he was three, cast adrift when they
died almost straight away, and then thrown from pillar to post by
an uncaring succession of guardians, most of whom were either too
drunk or too stupid to remember him, until he stumbled through the
stage door and found a refuge in the world of theatre. No papers,
no family, no persona. He’s a non-person, William. He didn’t exist
in the legal sense. And now he doesn’t exist in the physical
sense.”

“But his birth would surely have been noted
back in Germany?”

“That,” said Walsingham evenly, “has been
taken care of, too.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Listen, William,” said Walsingham, placing
his wine carefully on the table and moving closer. “You are now
playing in the Theatre of Life, not the Playhouse of Fiction. It’s
a serious script, with a powerful plot and heavyweight characters
in it. And the ending …”

“The ending? It’s going to be tragic is it?
Like Kyd’s play - no one left alive on stage.”

“No, no, young man. The ending does not have
to be a disaster at all. We can all live happily ever after - as
long as we just stick to the script, read our lines, and leave
nothing to chance.”

“Such as?”

“When I say things have been fixed in
Germany, I say they have been fixed - your actor friend’s birth
details, any references to his life, any remote scrap of paper with
his name, has been expunged, just like that.”

Snapping his fingers, he turned his back on
Shakespeare, walked to the other end of the carved oak dining table
and picked up his wine.

“This is unbelievable!” said William.

“No, no.” Walsingham wheeled around and came
straight back at him. “That's the point! It is all believable. As
far as the world is concerned, Christopher Marlowe is dead. Dead,
you hear? Dead. He died two days ago at Deptford, at Dame Eleanor’s
tavern, in a fight over the bill. Dame Eleanor saw him earlier in
the day looking fit and well, saw the bloodied body later, heard
the ghastly story from the only three witnesses …”

“Who are on your payroll …”

“And reliable trustworthy men, they are too,
I can vouchsafe for that,” said Walsingham, backing away with a
slight smile. “Damn fine actors, too, I might add. Why, they even
had your man, what was his name ..?”

“Derek. His name was Derek. Derek
Berkhardt.”

“Derek. That’s right. They even had him
convinced he was not only getting free drink and food but might end
up with a little jollity in the bed so conveniently placed in the
corner. But Derek, that is, Christopher, is now dead, and the
coroner will shortly tell the world so.”

“My God, it extends to this! The coroner’s in
on it, too.”

“He’s a cousin. Well, he’s not exactly a
cousin. His cousin was a nanny to one of my children and he’s sort
of family.”

“Good heavens.”

“Don’t worry. Danby knows what to do. He’s
the coroner to the Royal Household, and it just so happens that
this dastardly crime was committed within twelve miles of the
presence of her Gracious Majesty, the Queen. Elizabeth, that is;
not our dark lady.”

“How did that happen?”

“She just happened to be staying up the road
from Deptford at the Nonsuch Palace. That rather unbelievable pile
of oblique stones started by her father, and the sooner they pull
it down the better.”

“Good fortune, or good organisation?”

“That’s for you to work out, dear William.
But it means that the event happened within the verge, or control,
of the Queen, and thus the Royal Coroner, Gold bless him, takes the
case, over the head of the local coroner.”

“God Almighty,” said Shakespeare, shaking his
head.

“He is Almighty, William, and He does
wondrous things. Perhaps even inspires me to formulate these plans,
but He is not directly involved in the intricacies of arrangements
such as these. My good and faithful servant Frizer, you know
him?”

“No. I saw him lurking in the shadows behind
you outside the theatre one evening, but I have never met him and
wouldn’t recognize him.”

“Well, he should be free within the
month.”

“Free! But he killed a man!”

“No, actually, he didn’t. Skeres killed him.
With a pillow. But that is only a minor point.”

“Minor!”

“In the scheme of things, yes. But it was
better to lump the charge on my man Frizer. He will serve
twenty-eight days and then be let out, on the basis that although
he killed a man, it was self-defence.”

“Twenty-eight days! How do you know?”

“Queen’s Pardon.”

“Queen’s Pardon! You mean you know already
that she will pardon him?”

“I know many things, William. Many, many
things.”

“Well, I know one thing. That this bloody
Skeres fellow killed Derek Berkhardt, and that while his acting
career was hardly what you would call a triumph, and while you may
consider him a non-person, he was still a real person to me, and
I’m going to tell the world and ensure Skeres gets his due
punishment.”

There was the clatter of another silver
goblet across the marble, but this time it had not been dropped in
shock by Shakespeare, but thrown in anger by Walsingham.

Rushing up to Shakespeare, and grabbing him
by the satin ruff around his neck, he pushed him back up against
the wall. Shakespeare could feel the hardwood frame of an ancestral
portrait cutting into the back of his neck.

“Listen,” hissed Walsingham, his face barely
three inches from that of Shakespeare. “Listen well, my little
theatrical impresario and so-called writer. We are all in this
together, right?”

Shakespeare, his eyes bulging with terror,
made no sound.

“Right?” snarled Walsingham again.

“Yes, yes, we are all in this together,”
whispered Shakespeare slowly.

“It goes like this. Christopher is now free
to travel through Europe and write plays as he pleases, yes?”

“Yes,” whispered Shakespeare.

“What was that? Was that a ‘yes’? I didn’t
hear it clearly.”

“Yes. It was yes.”

“He sends the scripts back and you produce
them, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Under your name, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And we will all make a lot of money and be
very happy, right?”