Anthony Burgess: Enderby's Dark Lady

"It is quiet," Ben said, leading the way into noise, stench, striding over a vomit pool, between knots of swarthy men with daggers. "We can talk in peace and quiet." They sat on a settle before a rickety much-punished table whereon fat flies fed amply from greasy orts and a sauce-smear unwiped. A girl with warty bosom well on show showed black teeth and took an order for wine. "Red wine," Ben said. "Of your best. Blood-red, red as the blood of our blessed Saviour." Some villains turned to look with surly interest. A man with an eyepatch nodded as in friendly threat at Ben. "Buenos días, señor," Ben said.

"For God's sake, Ben, what manner of place is this?"

"A good place, though something filthy. Good fellows all, though but rogues to look on. Now let me speak. A great change is come into my life."

The wine arrived. Will poured. "Change? You have fallen in love with some pocked tib of the Clink and think her to be a disguised angel?"

"Ah, no. By heaven, this is good wine, red, aye, red as the blood that is decanted daily on the blessed holy altars of the one true faith."

"For Christ's sake, Ben."

"Aye, for Christ's sake, you say truly. What I do I do for Christ's dear sake. Let me tell you, my dear friend, what befell. In this noisome stinking rathole behold the word of the Lord came to me."

"Oh Jesus the word of the."

"Aye, a good old priest of the true faith, aye, though earning his bread as a dancing-master, thrown into jail for debt, spake to me loving words and told where the truth doth lie. It was by way of being in the manner somewhat of a revelation." Ben drank fiercely and then said: "Good wine. Enim calix sanguinis. Drink a salute to my holy happiness."

"Keep your voice well down, man," Will said, his voice well down. "See how they all listen."

"They may listen and be glad. I have friends, have I not? Have I not friends here?" he called to the drinkers. "Amigos? There was no response save for a man hawking, though all looked still.

"I am getting out of here," Will said.

"Aye, ever the prudent. Well, there is another word for prudent and you know it well. A plague on all cowards. Why should I not speak aloud my joy in being restored to the one true holy bosom? Is not the Queen's self of the blessed company? I tell you, the day is at hand when we may take the holy body in sunlight before the eyes of all men, not skulking in a dark hole. Hallelujah."

"You know the danger, fool," Will said, sweating. "There was an expectation of tolerance, but it is not fulfilled. The bishops will see it is not. Let us be out of here."

"With this blessed red wine unfinished? With this blood of the grape crimson as the blood of."

"I am going." Will drained the sour stuff and turned down his cup with a clank.

"Well, well, very well, I have told my story. Now, thanks be to God, my true story doth begin." Ben drank straight from the jug, beastlily, emerging spluttering. He wiped his mouth with the dirty back of his hand and nodded in a friendly manner at the company. "Give you good day, all. And God's blessing be ever on your comings and goings and eke your staying where you are."

"Come, idiot."

They left. Ben said, "Aye, aye, we will see how the spirit works. Is anyone following?"

"None. None yet. Do you wish someone to follow?"

"I say no more of it now, Ben Jonson his conversion. Except that you may speak of it to your friends and colleagues and all you will. I care not. I dare all for the lord Jesus. I owe him a death."

"That is mine. I wrote that."

"You did? It is all one. There is a tale they tell of you, do you know that?"

"What tale? Where?"

"Jack Marston told me. It is of Master Shakespeare dead and ascending to heaven's gate and demanding admittance. St Peter says: We have too many landlords here, we need poets to sweeten long eternity. Well, says Master Shakespeare, I am well known to be a poet. Prove it, says St Peter. I am of poor memory, says Master S, and can remember no line I wrote. Well then, says heaven's warder, extemporize somewhat. At that moment within the gates and all visible from the threshold little bow-legged Tom Kyd goes by, a poetic martyr, with his fingers cruelly broke by the late Queen's Commissioners. A bow-legged one, says the saint. Extemporize on him. Whereupon, firequick, Master S comes out with:

"How now, what manner of man is this

That beareth his balls in parenthesis?"

"Whereupon St Peter sighs and says: We have no room for landlords."

"Not funny," Will said. And then: "So they talk of me as dead already, do they?"

"Not dead. Shall we say retired. Your sun setteth. Westward Ho is your cry." Ben looked behind him to see two daggered ruffians following. He said in some small excitement: "Leave me here. Take your leave, aye. I think there are two coming who will show me where I may hear mass Sundays and saint-days. The blessing of Mother Church on you, Will."

"No, no, I want no such blessing."

It was some week or so later that Ben Jonson sat at dinner with new friends, the room being an upper one in Eastcheap. There was Bob Catesby at the head of the table, very fierce and sober, and a swarthy one that had been in that low tavern that time they called Guy though his true name was Guido, somewhat drunk on Spanish wine, and there were Rob Winter, little big-eyed Bates, Kit Wright, Tom Winter brother of Rob, and also Frank Tresham who kept wetting a dry lip and looking shifty. Catesby said to Ben:

"You are wide open, Master Jonson. Your days are numbered."

"By whom?" Ben said. "If you mean that I blab of the brotherhood, by God you are mistaken."

"You have not done that, no, you have been prudent enough there. If you had not been so, Guy here – a soldier, remember, who will cut off ten heads before his breakfast – Guy, I say, would have had you, by God. No, I mean imprudent in that you talk too much of the Godless King and the runagate Queen, who will show her bosom and legs to all and go to mass hiccuping with the drink. I mean treasonable talk. I believe you are destined for a martyr's crown."

"No," Ben said. "I want not that. I will not force apart the jaws of heaven for my precocious entering. Heaven may open in its own good time without my prompting. There is wine for the drinking yet and wenches for the fondling. Nay, no martyrdom."

"Speak out the scheme, Rob," Catesby said to Tom Winter's brother. "You are he that must hold it in his memory. You are our living parchment."

"Well, then," Rob Winter said, looking at Ben, "it is this. It is to do with the new session of the parliament. All will be there – King, Queen, Prince Henry, nobles, judges, knights, esquires and all, all for the forging of new acts and laws to put down the true faith. They will be blown up."

"They will be -?" Ben asked carefully.

"Blown up. We are to place twenty barrels of gunpowder in the cellar beneath with faggots on top. Set but flame to the faggots and there will be a greater blowing up than has ever before been seen in the long tale of tyranny and human suppression."

"Blown up," Catesby said after a pause, as to make sure Ben properly understood.

"The Queen," Ben said, "is of the true faith. Is it right she too should be blown up?"

"You are always ready to talk of her Godlessness," Catesby said. "Well, she will be punished. Alternatively, she will be a martyr. Destiny puts forth a choice."

"However you gloss it," Ben said, "she will be blown up."

"Everybody will be blown up," Tom Winter said, pausing in the picking of his teeth. They had eaten of a roast ham, each mouthful full of teeth-hugging fibres. "Everybody."

"And then there will be a new era of love for the true faith?" Ben asked.

"We will think of that after the blowing up," Catesby said. "Certainly there will be a many problems, but sufficient to the day as the Gospel saith. First the blowing up."