Edward Marston - The Mad Courtesan

It was Giles Randolph.

London was burnished by bright summer sunshine but a tempest raged in the hearts of its citizens. Faint suspicions which first started in the corridors of the Palace spread quickly and developed into full-blown rumours. By the time they worked their way down to the very roots of society, they had hardened into incontrovertible fact. Queen Elizabeth was dying. Everyone knew it, from the mightiest earl in his mansion to the meanest wretch who begged outside Bedlam. The report of her slow demise was a thunderclap that destroyed the hearts of thousands. They had known no sovereign but her and had come to see her as a timeless guardian of themselves and their children after them. Conquest and expansion had distinguished a reign that was also remarkable for its peace and stability. Change had been exiled for over thirty years. Its imminent return was menacing. The capital was thrown into gusting confusion and the people who rushed so madly about were so many dry leaves whisked here and there at will by the heartless caprices of Fate.

The Earl of Chichester summed up the common experience.

‘Oh, what an earthquake is the alteration of the state!’

Then he proceeded to exploit the phenomenon with bland irreverence. Others thronged to his alliance or formed new ones as the issue of the succession predominated. Church leaders met in hasty synods to decide where best to bestow their blessing. Puritans advanced their ideas, Presbyterians wanted their say in the election and Catholics looked to Rome for counsel. Every nobleman in the land was jolted out of his complacency and forced to rediscover the meaning of conspiracy and cabal. Lust for power was a giant needle which embroidered its way through the great houses of the nation with politic speed. Vaulting ambition was a thread of gold.

Hopes, fears and wild conjectures were given a sharper focus by two significant events. Lord Burghley vanished and Dr John Mordrake appeared on the scene. The old fox who had served his Queen so faithfully throughout her reign had now gone to ground. William Cecil, Baron Burghley, was the Lord High Treasurer, the senior figure in the government, a man of real political vision with a firm grasp on the complexities of state. In fading from view and affecting an attack of gout, he was giving tacit acknowledgement of the hopelessness of the situation. Dead queens need no bulwarks.

Dr John Mordrake’s intervention was an even clearer signal. He was a desperate last gamble. Orthodox medicine had failed and so it was time to invoke magic. Dr John Mordrake was a scholar, sage, mathematician, alchemist and astrologer. His detractors called him a mountebank and his adherents a genius but nobody could gainsay the fact that a stream of small miracles had flowed through his eccentric career. The long, lean, bending creature in the black gown and black buckled shoes lived and worked in his laboratory in Knightrider Street. A mane of silver-grey hair gave him an almost saintly quality but it was offset by the dark power that seemed to emanate from him. Nobody could be sure whether the huge medallion which dangled from a chain around his neck was a holy relic or the badge of Satan.

The Earl of Banbury inclined to the latter view.

‘Was the old devil allowed to see Her Majesty?’

‘He was in her private apartments for an hour.’

‘What took place, Roger?’

‘Even my spies cannot peer through walls.’

‘Mordrake will not save her!’ said Banbury with ripe contempt. ‘Though he practises the arts of necromancy, he will not raise her mouldering old body from the dead.’

Chichester smiled thinly. ‘He left with a bottle.’

‘What did it contain?’

‘What else but the Queen’s own urine?’ said the other. ‘Doctor Mordrake hastened back to Knightrider Street to put the royal piss to the test. My man tracked him. This time he was able to peer through walls.’

‘How so?’

‘Because walls have windows, sir. By bribing his way into the bedchamber opposite Mordrake’s house, he was able to take part in the experiments as if he were standing at the shoulder of the venerable fraud.’

‘Did Mordrake examine the contents of the bottle?’

‘In every way.’ Roger Godolphin grew lyrical. ‘He touched, he tasted, he held it up to the light. He applied chemicals to change its colour and heat to change its consistency. In short, sir, he did everything but drink the draught down and sing an anthem. From that one pint of liquid history — taken, as it were, from the past life of our dear departing Majesty — he could foretell the future.’ He chuckled quietly. ‘And he did not like what he saw.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Because he began to shudder so much with fear and shake so much with horror that he dropped the bottle on the floor and it was smashed to pieces. The worthy doctor has given a precise diagnosis here. Queen Elizabeth fades away. All he has to remember her by is some damp floorboards.’

‘Your spy deserves ten crowns for this!’

‘He rendered better service yet.’

‘Did he so?’

‘When Mordrake recovered his wits enough to be able to hold a pen, he scribbled a letter and sent if off to the Palace by messenger.’ The Earl of Chichester smirked. ‘My fellow intercepted that messenger. A few gold coins gained him a glance at the letter.’

‘What did it say, Roger?’

‘Forty-eight hours.’

‘That is all?’

‘What more was necessary? Death sentence is passed.’

Banbury rubbed greedy palms. ‘Forty-eight hours!’

‘Two more days of the Tudor dynasty then we move in! Dr John Mordrake has earned his fee, I warrant. That learned magician, who can read the signs of the zodiac, has seen the future of the English nation in a bottle of piss.’

‘I applaud his inspiration.’

‘But forty-eight hours to wait.’

‘How many of the Privy Council have we bought?’

‘Enough.’

‘How many of Westfield’s supporters have we lured?’

‘More than enough.’

‘And Burghley?’

‘We still practise on him,’ said the other. ‘Bess has bestirred herself in Hardwick Hall. She made her gout-ridden stepson, Gilbert Talbot, write to Burghley to advise him to make trial of oil of stag’s blood for his ailment. The Earl of Shrewsbury will win over the Lord High Treasurer by means of the pains in their feet. They will soon walk as one!’

The Earl of Banbury executed a little dance of triumph then threw his arms around his host in congratulation.

‘You have been a supreme general, sir!’

‘Yes,’ said Chichester smugly. ‘I have deployed my army like a strategist. A case of money well spent!’

Nicholas Bracewell took against Cornelius Gant the moment that he saw him. He detected a veiled hostility in Gant’s manner, an ingratiating smile that was really a smirk of malice, friendly gestures that hid a deep contempt, a mock humility that cloaked a soaring arrogance. Nicholas had a job which required him to weigh men up at a glance and he found Gant severely wanting. He could sometimes enjoy the company of plausible rogues — Sebastian Carrick had been a case in point — but here was a more malevolent species. It was paradoxical that a religious purpose brought Gant to the Queen’s Head so early in the morning.

‘I have come for the angels’ wings, sir,’ he said.

‘Wings?’

‘Master Marwood told me of them. You staged a play in his yard that had an angel in the story. He remembers those wings very well, sir.’

‘What of it?’ said Nicholas warily.

‘I wish to buy them from you.’

‘We never sell our costumes.’

‘Then let me rent the wings.’

‘That is not our policy.’