Martin Stephen - The Conscience of the King

Shakespeare's beard and moustache were reasonably full, without being luxuriant. He wore a fashionably starched yellow collar, with two laces hanging down from it. Thickish nose, eyes quite wide-set. A drinker, Gresham thought — what actor wasn't? — with the veins just starting to go in the nose and cheeks. And those hands, with long, bony fingers. Why on earth did someone his age wear the earring in his left ear? It was the mark of a young dandy, not an ageing actor.

'So would you mind explaining why two… masons… need to smash down my door to see me?' Shakespeare reached for the goblet on the paper-strewn table. Jane, long practised with Ben Jonson, had the jug pouring the wine before he realised what was happening. He took a huge swig of the fluid.

He is outwardly quite relaxed, thought Gresham, but there was the faintest, most distant something in the air. Mannion looked at Gresham. Yes, they had both sensed as much as smelled it. Human fear. The smell both of them knew so well.

'May we sit down?' asked Gresham politely. There was another beautiful high-backed chair to match the one Shakespeare was seated on, and four or five stools.

'Be my guest,' said their host, his eyes not managing to stay on Gresham but flickering between him, Mannion and Jane. %

'My name is Henry Gresham.'

'Sir Henry Gresham. I know your name,' said Shakespeare. 'I remember you from a past it seems I'm not going to be allowed to forget. My name is William Shakespeare now. Not William Hall. And how is Sir Walter?'

'Imprisoned, having lost most of his estates. Locked up on a false charge laid by a scum of a man with no morals except his own best interest. And he's still very angry. As indeed am I.' The menace in Gresham's voice was palpable. Shakespeare had begun to relax, but Gresham's speech caused him to bolt upright.

'You promised no violence!'

'Nor will I deliver any. Not yet,' replied an icy Gresham. Shakespeare blinked, and spoke again.

'You come to the theatre. You're the one they attacked in the riot at The Globe. All the company have done since is talk about you. You work for the King, don't you? Has the King ordered you to kill me?' The tension crackled out in Shakespeare's voice. It was nondescript, a slight trace of Stratford, country-boy burr, not unattractive. The accent of rural England.

Now why on earth would a playmaker think the King of all England and Scotland would be bothered enough to have him killed?

'No one's ordered me to kill you,' said Gresham.

'Then what do you want?' asked Shakespeare. His voice was like footsteps treading on ice, fearful that it might give way at any moment.

'To talk to you,' said Gresham. 'And, please, if you could manage to spare some of that wine for my body servant here, it would stop his gaze boring into the back of my head like someone turning a screw.'

'Would you mind, Lady Gresham?' said Shakespeare, inviting her to fill a tankard for Mannion. He slurped away at it, happily.

A ladies' man, Master Shakespeare, thought Gresham, noting the brilliance of the artificial smile he flung at Jane. Full of contrasts. The wild smile of the actor, the drinker, the philanderer, the man with every mask at his disposal but no mask to call his own. The signs of dissipated living, the veins about to burst out. Yet at the same time the prosperity, the room with its fine chair, the fine hangings on the wall, the expensive goblet, all signs of worldly, rather than artistic, success. And hardly any books, just one chest with two or three volumes and some desultory papers! No pen, no paper! And no stains of ink on those long, bony fingers.

There was silence. Shakespeare looked away under the scrutiny of Gresham's gaze. 'What is it you want to talk about?' he finally asked. i was invited to investigate the loss of certain papers by Lord Cecil of unlamented memory, Sir Edward Coke and, I suppose, Sir Thomas Overbury.' At which name had Shakespeare started? He was trembling so much it was difficult to see. i now know much more than I did. I know, for example, that Kit Marlowe is back here in England and hell-bent on a killing spree.'

Shakespeare's hand gave a spasmodic jerk. His goblet flew off the table and rolled across the floor. There! That had made a crack in the wall! Shakespeare was not fat, at least not grossly so, but there were too many layers of softness over the bones that smoothed out his features. His gut wobbled as he jerked. A good few evenings in the tavern were stored there, thought Gresham.

'What I don't know is where a set of manuscripts relating to the work of Master William Shakespeare fit into this very complicated figure. And I would very much like you to tell me.'

'Will you kill me? Torture me?' Shakespeare's voice was plaintive now, almost as if he had been through this conversation before. Was it acting? Was it real? Or had this man lost the ability to distinguish between fiction and reality?

'If it appears you've betrayed me, or placed myself and my family at risk, I'll have no compunction in doing both. If you tell me the truth, then I'll do neither.' There was a certainty in Gresham's voice that was unanswerable. Jane remembered the spy of Cecil's infiltrated into their household years ago, held over a stinking pit that led to a deep, stone-walled chamber full of water, a chamber from which there was no escape. He had told the truth, eventually. They had then carefully broken his legs, as a reminder. No one betrays Henry Gresham. Jane shuddered at the memory. How was it possible to know so much and yet so little about a man?

'How simple life must seem as a spy!' barked Shakespeare. Another part, another role for the actor to play. The superior, angry man. Yet not played well, Gresham noted. He stopped short of making a true impact, like a punch pulled at the last minute. Shakespeare looked fully at Gresham now, into his eyes. 'You'll not torture and kill me if I tell you the truth, or so you say. Yet there are others who'll most certainly do both if I tell you what I know.'

This man, thought Gresham, is about to break up. He flings different personalities at me, each one less convincing, each one more fragile, each one less revealing of the man within. Whatever is happening to him, it has gone too far for him to be able to cope. Any moment now his heart will stop, or something will crack inside that bald pate. He is caught between a rock and a hard place.

'Is it Marlowe who's threatening you?' asked Gresham gently.

'Threatening me? He's tried to kill me once — and on stage! Good God! Some people really do take the theatre too seriously! If only it were that simple!' Shakespeare had slumped back in his chair and started to cry, a wailing, keening noise, racking sobs near lifting his plump body off the seat, his head held in his hands.

Gresham made a decision. 'Jane,' he said to his mistress. 'Would you please be nice to Master Shakespeare for a while, and talk about how bad you think some of Ben Jonson's writing is? You, Mannion, take Master Shakespeare's wine into a corner, after you've given him some of his own drink, and if he tries to run, kill him.' Gresham smiled at Shakespeare. 'I can't stand the smell of that bread through the window any more. We could all do with a bite to eat. I'll be back in a while.'

Gresham remembered the moment of communication with Andrewes, the single, fleeting meeting of minds in a strange com-, munion. There would be no such meeting with this man. Every signal skittered off the face of his personality, tumbling, falling, never hooking in to anything permanent.

Gresham went down the stairs and greeted his men, who drew themselves up as he made his exit. He took four of them with him, leaving the others to guard the gatehouse. First stop was the bakery, where the soft, pungent aroma of freshly baking bread was taunting passers-by with its promise. Then rough-cut country cheese and butter from a farm wagon, and fresh smoked meats from a stall. Then to the tavern, a respectable-enough looking place, to explore the wine on offer. They haggled and, whistling, Gresham took his wine, picked up his men and went back to the gatehouse.