Philip Gooden - Sleep of Death

It was his custom in summer afternoons to sleep outside. He slipped through the back quarters of the house, through its passages and offices, and into the garden. The garden was walled. He could hear occasional cries from Mixen Lane, the distant splashing of the wherries on the river, the boatmen’s shouts. The sun lay evenly across the gravel walks. He made his way towards a door in the far wall and unlocked it. Through the door was an orchard, doubly enclosed from the city beyond the outer wall. Once inside this inner space, he turned and carefully relocked the oak door. He paused and looked around, drawing a deep pleasurable breath. Tongues of leaves wagged at him in the breeze.

He traced a serpentine path through the apple trees and the pears and the plums, thinking of the way that, when autumn arrived, the massed scents and juices of the ripe fruit would be strong enough to overlie the river smells that now vaulted the wall. When he came to the hammock which was slung between two apple trees he paused again and glanced up between the glassy leaves of a nearby pear. From somewhere inside his house there was a shriek — of amusement, of surprise, he couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. No one would disturb him now, when he was secure in his orchard. The servants had the strictest orders. Once he had been in the habit of bringing Alice here. Underneath the trees, lying on mattresses of blossom or on the tussocky grass. The orchard trees were lower then. He could not remember when he and Alice had last visited the garden together. Alice with her oval, decided face, Alice with her hair still untouched by the years. For no reason — but he was deceiving himself, and knew that he was deceiving himself even as he denied there was a reason — the image of Thomas, his brother, slipped itself between him and Alice. A large jovial man, held in the world’s regard, his brother Thomas. Equable, easy-going, popular. . but a hollow man, without substance behind his fine, external walls. He hated him.

Wearily, he levered himself into the hammock. The apple trees groaned under his weight. Segments of sky swayed as he looked up. A wall of white cloud was advancing from south of the river. He closed his eyes and waited for sleep. Something brushed his cheek. A leaf, no more. There was a rustle overhead. Pictures slipped through his head and then fell away from him like tumbling playing cards. King, queen, knave. .

A few yards distant, the figure up in the pear tree shifted slightly. It waited to see if the man in the hammock was really asleep, whether he wouldn’t respond to the creaking branches, the swishing leaves. But the man below remained still. The figure swung itself down from the tree. It landed on the tussocky ground, and crouched. There was a sound from the hammock, something between a snore and a sigh. The bulk of the man in the hammock could be seen, his dark humped mass straining at the cords of the netting. The figure slowly straightened up and then loped towards the sleeping man. By the hammock it paused again before withdrawing from a fold of its cloak a tiny flask of opaque glass. The flask was closed with a wax seal. The seal was prised off by inserting a long thumbnail under a protruding flange of wax. The wax came away as easily as a ripe scab.

At that moment the sleeping man shifted. He canted himself sideways so that he was almost facing the figure, which stood, breath stopped, over him. His eyes stayed shut. This was better, this was comfortable! The sleeper’s bearded right cheek was laid nearly as flat as a plate. He might have been on the block, positioning himself for the executioner’s convenience. The figure could see his enemy’s bristles, the way his lips fluttered under each expelled breath, the whorl of his ear. His ear, that was what concerned the figure. There was a fringe of fine hair round the sleeper’s ear, a poor defence, weak little whisker-palisades against what was contained within the opaque flask. The figure thought of the porches and alleys, the winding paths that lead off into the head’s interior from this one hole. Of all the ways into the head this is the least guarded; it is the postern-gate which the treacherous servant leaves ajar for the besieging army.

The flask drew close to the sleeper’s ear and was tremblingly positioned above the hole. At the lipped mouth of the flask a colourless bead of liquid gathered itself before being transformed into a thin thread flowing directly downwards. The thread insinuated itself into the man’s ear, it burrowed its way down. In a moment the sleeping man stirred. He flapped a hand, as if to brush aside something that had disturbed him, another leaf perhaps or an insect. The figure clamped a hand over the side of the other’s face to hold him in position. The spool unwinding from the flask ran faster, like the last moments of a man’s life slipping out of his grasp. Some of the liquid began now to pool over the edges of the sleeper’s ear-hole. The movements of his head became sharper, jerkier, and so the murderer pressed down harder, harder, with the left hand, while the right jiggled to keep the flask steady and to ensure that the final strings of liquid entered the waking man’s head.

Done! Now the murderer didn’t care if the sleeper woke. It would be better if he woke, to see the cause of his death. The murderer stepped back, like a craftsman admiring his handiwork. The man in the hammock clapped a hand to his ear. His eyes, they flew open. They searched among the surrounding trees before coming to rest on a shape which, to be sure, had smutted its face and was wearing a short cloak of goose-turd green that made it hard to distinguish among the thick foliage. Would have made it hard even for a man newly awoken and without any suspicion of harm in this fallen world. But the man in the hammock was dying and had only seconds to grasp the sight of the shape in his orchard before a hot knife of pain skewered his head and was withdrawn, and then thrust in again and again.

‘You know the play?’

This was said with surprise. Players aren’t supposed to know plays, players are only supposed to know their parts.

‘I’ve seen it,’ I said. ‘Last month. You were magnificent. No flattery. I have said that to many others since then, before I am saying it to you now.’

Nerves were twisting my speech. What was intended as genuine compliment came out as clumsy buttering-up. And pompous, as well as patronising, considering I was talking to a man old enough to be my father.

Master Burbage shrugged but was graceful enough to smile.

‘I’ve played with the Admiral’s Men,’ I said, to change the subject. ‘Nottingham’s, I should say.’

‘The Admiral’s will do. That’s what they were on this side of the river. How do they do in the north of the town?’

‘Well enough,’ I said.

‘Tactful, Master Revill,’ said Burbage. ‘The audiences are different over there, more respectable — and more respectful — than our Southwark spectators. But the Admiral’s Men ran away when we appeared south of the river, essentially they ran away, although Henslowe would claim that it was purely commercial.’

‘Everything is commercial with Master Henslowe,’ I said.

‘All bearpits and brothel business, his enemies say,’ said Burbage.

‘Henslowe sees plays and playhouses as a good investment, nothing more. At least, that was my impression,’ I said, eager to make a good impression myself, and to cancel out something of the clumsiness of my earlier remarks. I didn’t really know how Henslowe saw things, but there was nothing wrong with running him down to curry favour with a business rival.