THREE

The man Robert Greene was looking for had reinvented himself since leaving Cambridge. Gabriel Harvey, Fellow of Pembroke Hall, had been all set to take over the running of Corpus Christi. He even had plans to re-christen it Harvey College, but it was not to be. Now he was telling everybody that he had come to London to take his rightful place in society as the patron of the poet Edmund Spenser, the most dazzling wordsmith of this or any other age. Harvey had made the man what he was, since Spenser himself could hardly carry a rhyme in a bucket and he wanted to make sure everyone knew that. Not bad for a lad from Saffron Walden whose dad made ropes for a living.

Even so, knowing all this, Robert Greene was not prepared for the apparition sitting alone in Mrs Robertson’s Ordinary along Lombard Street that night. His ruff was so huge he could barely reach his mouth with his fork and his Venetians spread wide along the bench he sat on. Greene caught the man’s eye and doffed his cap, squeezing past the tables in the smoke-filled supper room.

‘The last time I saw you, Greene,’ Harvey said, leaning back to sip his wine, ‘I kicked you out of my college.’

Greene remembered. In an age of patronage, he had once hitched his wagon to Harvey’s star, but in the cutthroat world of literary endeavour, all that seemed a long time ago. ‘Your college, Professor?’ In that cutthroat world, Greene could fence with the best of them.

Harvey paused, the goblet still at his lips. Then he put it down and wiped his fingers on his napkin. ‘I let Copcott have it,’ he said. ‘I’d tired of Cambridge. Decided that my rightful place is here.’

‘May I join you?’ Greene asked, unbuckling his rapier and hooking it on the wall.

Harvey was about to say it was a free country, but neither man believed that. Gloriana sat like a vengeful harpy on her throne. She had had her own cousin executed and no one’s life was worth more than the entrance fee to see a play.

‘You know Tamburlaine opens tomorrow, don’t you?’ Greene asked. ‘Part Two.’

Harvey laughed. ‘So that’s it. I wondered what would make you swallow your pride after our last encounter. Of course; it had to be. Your insane, irrational hatred of Kit Marlowe. Oh, malicious envy! Greene by name and green by nature.’

The would-be playwright sat down heavily, clicking his fingers for service. No one came. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t hate him too.’

‘I don’t have a pretentious bone in my body,’ Harvey said, arranging his stomacher and crimping his ruff. ‘Unlike you, Greene, I know genius when I see it. Marlowe has that quality – what do people call it? His mighty line? It’s just the man I can’t stand.’

‘You’ll go tomorrow?’ Greene asked him.

‘To see Tamburlaine at the Rose? Assuredly.’

‘So will I. As a gallery commoner. I don’t want the smug bastard seeing my face on stage.’

‘You think he’ll be there?’ Harvey asked.

‘Oh, he’ll be there.’ Greene was still looking this way and that, trying to attract a waiter’s attention. He became confidential, leaning in to his man, resting on his elbows. ‘I may have a surprise for him.’

‘Well, well.’ Harvey clicked his fingers and a serving man was hovering at his side in seconds. ‘Let it be a surprise for us all, then,’ he said. ‘Master Greene is about to place an order. Add my reckoning to his, would you?’ And in a swirl of silk and satin, Dr Gabriel Harvey was gone.

The dead man bobbed his way down stream, rolling with the dark waters past Paul’s Wharf. If he had still had his senses, he would have recoiled at the stink of Billingsgate where the corpses of gutted fish floated, like his, on the ebb tide. He was making for the sea in that casual, unhurried way that dead men will. If he once had promises to keep and places to be, he was past all that now. Time was the river’s, as it had always been between those banks. The tall houses of Elizabeth’s London leaned their gables over to watch him glide between them. He dallied for a while at Queenshithe, rubbing shoulders with the tarred ropes that held the merchantmen at their wharves. He half turned to the blind alleys that ran up from the mud to the Ropery and to Ratcliffe. His clouded dead eyes saw, with the second sight of the dead, the spars black against the fleeting clouds and the cold crescent of the moon beyond them. He saw sailors and their trulls rolling home from the taverns that lined the north bank, their calls and curses and laughter like a half-forgotten dream.

The current turned him again, as it turned boats on this stretch of the river too. Ahead loomed the rickety arches of the Bridge, its stanchions knee deep in the wild, foaming water. Lights tumbled here and there from the jumbled houses above and to his right the heads of traitors rotted on their pikes, a reminder to all of the risks of crossing Her Majesty the Queen and those who served her. He was hurrying now, his arms lifting out of the frothing current, rushing towards the confines of the archways. His head came up, as though checking his way in that deathly flood. And, buffeted on the slime-green stone, he hurtled into the foam and shot past the Bridge for one last time.

The rain was drifting across the city the next morning, driving away the mist that wreathed the river. A knot of men stood up to their ankles in the mud alongside Custom House Quay where the St John of Lubeck rode the tide, her cargo laden and waiting for the wind.

‘How long will this take, Master Thynne?’ a fat official called from the greasy planking of the quay, keen to keep his expensive pattens out of the clawing mud.

‘How long is a giraffe’s pizzle?’ Thynne threw back at him. If there was anything Hugh Thynne didn’t suffer gladly, it was fools, especially fools who wore the livery of Her Majesty’s Custom House. Because Hugh Thynne was the High Constable of London and he routinely ate Justices of the Peace for breakfast. Officials of Custom House Quay were just sweet-meat snacks to assuage the hunger pangs of the day.

Thynne was squatting in the mud, hooking up his robe so that it didn’t drag in the water and testing the solidity of the ground with his ivory-handled cane. He was looking at the dead body caught up on the St John’s anchor ropes.

‘Who found him?’ he asked the men of the Watch standing around him.

‘I did, my lord.’ A waterman hauled off his cap and waited. Hugh Thynne wasn’t a lord. He was a member of the Worshipful Company of Skinners and under his official robes he still wore the stitched badge of his calling, the three crowns and the field of ermine. But if garbage like watermen chose to see him as such, well, that served a purpose too.

‘You found him here?’

‘Yes, sir. Just as you see him. All tangled up in them ropes. We get it all the time.’

‘Do we?’ Thynne stood up. ‘How so?’

‘Suicides, my lord,’ the waterman told him. ‘They’re drawn to the river like moths to a flame. Most of ’em jump off of the Bridge. This one …’

‘Yes?’ Thynne narrowed his eyes as the rain drove harder, bouncing off the carvel planks of the St John and spattering on furled canvas. Two or three crewmen in their capes and wide leather hats lolled on the ship’s rail watching the morning’s entertainment.

‘Well, it’s hard to say, sir.’ The waterman rubbed his stubbled chin. While he was talking to his lordship here he wasn’t getting a fare – and time, after all, was money.

Thynne turned to get his bearings. He recognized the tallest tower above the jumble of rooftops behind him. ‘St Dunstan’s in the East,’ he said. ‘Whose parish is that?’

‘Mine, sir.’ One of the constables saluted.

‘Oh, good day, Williams. I didn’t see you there. This is your patch, is it?’

‘Indeed it is, sir.’

‘Pay the man, Williams. You can put it down to expenses for the next quarter.’

Williams’ face fell, but he rummaged in his purse and threw a couple of coins to the waterman who caught both expertly, bit them and slipped them into the leather pouch at his belt.

‘I’d say he went in upstream, sir; somewhere near the Fleet, maybe, or the Bridewell.’

‘What makes you say that?’ Thynne asked.

‘Current’s tricky along that stretch. It’d take him along St Paul’s Wharf. See those marks?’ The waterman pointed to the body’s left arm. Thynne nodded.

‘Tar. The biggest cluster of ships on the river at this time of year is Paul’s Wharf. It’s the hay and firewood wherries from Essex, they put in there mostly. He’d have got caught up there for a while, then the ebb tide would have sent him wide, probably midstream and once under the arches, he’d end up here.’

Thynne was impressed. You didn’t need a local constable or his Watch when you had an expert like the waterman. He looked at the dead man’s head, half submerged in the black water. ‘What did that, would you say?’ He was pointing to the back of the corpse’s skull, shattered and matted with blood, kept liquid by the action of the water. ‘The Bridge?’

‘Could be the Bridge, my lord,’ the waterman said. ‘Could be an Apprentice’s club.’

‘Indeed it could. Constable Williams?’

‘Sir?’

‘Lift that head up. I want to see his face.’

Williams waded out, his boots making grotesque sucking noises as he reached the floating body. He grabbed a handful of the black hair and hauled the head upwards. Thynne took in the pale features, the eyes black with bruising, the mouth open in a snarl.

‘How long would you say, Waterman, he’s been in the water?’

‘Not long, sir. Half a day; may be a little longer.’

‘Why?’

‘Look at his skin, my lord. No washerwoman’s hands. The water makes the skin wrinkle, see, afore it comes away from the flesh altogether. And the rats haven’t got to him yet, neither. Mind you, stuck as he is, that’d only be a matter of time.’

‘Williams.’ Thynne smiled. ‘Whatever you just paid this man, double it. He’s earned his crossing today ten times over. Waterman, give your name to the constable here. You’re First Finder. You’ll need to give evidence at the Inquest. Where are we?’ Thynne looked to his left to where the church of All Hallows sat squat and dwarfed by the grim portals of the Tower. ‘Within the Verge,’ he muttered half to himself. ‘That’ll be Coroner Danby. Well, well. You men.’ He straightened in the river mud. ‘Lend a hand there and get this to dry land. I want to find out who this man was and how he came to pay his respects here at the Custom House.’

‘Lot of riff-raff in today, Thomas.’ George Beaumont tried to make himself heard above the row. ‘Those bloody groundlings will be trying to look up my skirt again!’

‘They should be so lucky,’ Sledd grunted. All morning he had been wrestling with problems of his own, especially how to hoist the Governor of Babylon on his own walls in Act Five, Scene One. Anything before that was the actors’ problem. Still, young Sledd had a soft spot for the boy actors. It hadn’t been so long since he’d worn the farthingale himself and he knew how tricky it could be. Balance and deportment was all and then, of course, you had to be prepared to have leading men slobbering all over you. No, Thomas Sledd didn’t envy George Beaumont at all.

This afternoon, George Beaumont was Zenocrate, wife and love of Tamburlaine, the scourge of God, who had been circling the wooden O earlier signing autographs while the band tuned up. The boy checked his white makeup in the foxed mirror for the last time and the trumpets announced that the play was about to start. Not that that reduced the noise among the groundlings at all. The day-labourers and the journeymen had queued all morning for this, watching for the flag to rise over the Rose, praying that the early-morning rain would not come back and jostling good-naturedly with the ribbon and mask sellers and the Winchester geese who waggled their breasts at them.

Ned Alleyn stood apart from his cast now, as was his custom. He wasn’t on until Scene Four but he must be pitch-perfect the first time the crowd saw him in action. He stood in the Tiring Room, mastering his deep breaths and working his lips to twist around the mighty lines of the legendary Marlowe.

Because Marlowe was already a legend wherever players and playgoers gathered. His Dido had enraptured the city and his first part of Tamburlaine had brought grown men to tears and turned Puritans Papist. One woman was so enravelled by the Scythian Tamburlaine and his conquering sword that she had gone into labour near the orchestra space and a child was born among the flats of Persian tents. Philip Henslowe had nearly died of worry, but the child was healthy and his doting mother called him Tamburlaine Marlowe in honour of the moment. Alleyn was furious that his name appeared nowhere.

The legend that was Marlowe was peering out between the slats above the star-canopied heaven. The place was virtually full – all two thousand seats and standing spaces occupied by faces pale in the limelight; all of them to see Alleyn and to hear the magic words that Marlowe gave him. Marlowe smiled; he could almost hear Henslowe crowing with delight, piling up the clay money boxes for the reckoning the next day.

‘What about tomorrow, though?’ The impresario was suddenly at his elbow, muttering, reading the man’s mind, it seemed.

Marlowe looked at him. ‘See this,’ he said, holding up a goblet, ‘that’s half full, Philip. Not half empty. And if no one comes tomorrow, no one at all, you’ll still have made your pile today.’

‘I don’t know.’ Henslowe scowled, peering through the slats to see the crowd.

‘Relax, Philip,’ Marlowe said. ‘You don’t give refunds, so even if they hate it …’

‘Why would they hate it?’ Henslowe demanded, clutching convulsively at Marlowe’s sleeve. What did the man know that he didn’t?

‘They won’t hate it, Philip,’ the playwright said, lowering his voice and hoping that Henslowe would do the same. ‘Trust me. Well, well, well …’ He was looking up in the gods where a shadowy figure moved to his seat, lesser beings standing up to let him pass. He would know those dark, sharp eyes anywhere, even at that distance.

‘The Spymaster’s here,’ he said, half to himself.

‘Who?’ Henslowe was reduced to biting his nails now.

‘Er … nobody.’ Marlowe smiled. ‘A trick of the light.’

But Jack Windlass wasn’t a trick of the light. He was dressed like a poor man’s roisterer and he was taking his place with the gallery commoners. There was no doubt about it; Marlowe was paying the man too much.

Something had gone wrong stageside. It was more than time for the third fanfare, and yet all they could hear was laughter and a very slow handclap, giving way to boos. The curtain in the doorway was flung aside and the shawm player burst through, clutching his throat.

‘Water,’ he croaked. ‘Water, for God’s sake.’

Thomas Sledd passed him a jug from a table and he gulped from it greedily. He coughed and spat, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. ‘Fly,’ he gasped, and cleared his throat again. ‘I inhaled a fly. Sorry.’ He went out through the curtain again, to ironic applause.

So, finally, the third fanfare sounded and the Prologue strode out to the centre of the O, his pattens clattering on the planking. He swirled his Collyweston over his shoulder and held up his right hand, booming out over the groundlings’ heads. ‘The general welcome Tamburlaine received when he arrived last upon our stage …’

‘Speak up!’ somebody yelled to general laughter, but the Prologue was the warm-up man of the Rose and he’d heard it all before. He didn’t miss a beat. ‘Have made our poet …’ He pointed both hands to the Arras to his left. Marlowe duly stepped out on cue and bowed with a flourish. The crowd went wild, chanting ‘Marlowe! Marlowe!’ The man looked up to where Walsingham sat, face invisible. He sat as he always did, his hands curled round the head of his cane, the tip, silver-shod, firmly planted between his feet. Everyone else lounged about as part of an audience out to make merry. Walsingham sat as though giving an audience, the nearest he ever came to relaxation. Marlowe bowed to the Prologue, who winked and carried on. ‘Have made our poet pen his Second Part, Where death cuts off the progress of his pomp, And murderous Fates throw all his triumphs down.’

There was general booing and shouts of ‘You bastard, Tamburlaine’, but it was difficult to pick out words in that hullabaloo. ‘But …’ The Prologue could pause for England and he did so now, waiting for the crowd to subside, playing with his audience like a cat with a mouse. ‘What became of fair Zenocrate?’

A fond sigh broke from the throats of hundreds, turning into a general ‘Ah’ before some strident harpy among the groundlings echoed the sentiment, ‘Quite so,’ she shrilled. ‘What indeed?’ And she was laughed to scorn.

Marlowe nudged George Beaumont. ‘Get out there, lad, or we won’t get to Scene Four.’ He nodded in Alleyn’s direction, where the greatest actor of his age was buckling on his helmet. ‘And that would never do, would it?’

George curtsied deeply and when he brought up his rouge-painted cheeks, it was to obscene gestures and thrusts from the groundlings’ front row. He blew a fart through his lips and swirled away, powder flying in all directions.

‘And so it begins,’ Harvey muttered to Greene in their seats in the gallery. ‘Did you see Part the First?’

‘Of Tamburlaine?’ Greene yawned. ‘I really can’t remember.’

‘Liar!’ Harvey chuckled. ‘That show brought the house down, as I suspect this one will. Let’s face it, Greene, like it or not – and I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t – Marlowe is the Muses’ darling. No one will touch him in a hundred years. What have you got to offer against that – Alphonsus, King of Aragon?’

Greene was startled. ‘What do you know of that?’ The thing was unfinished, locked safely away – or so he thought – in his lodgings near the Vintry.

‘Enough to know that a hundred years from now, no one will have heard of it – or you, Dominus Greene.’ Harvey’s face hardened as he watched the actors go through their paces. ‘Whereas Marlowe … They’ll still be performing this five hundred years from now.’ And he hated himself for saying it out loud.

‘Well.’ Greene was at his most petulant this afternoon. ‘I’ll not stay here to be insulted.’ And he swept away as bravely as he could, stumbling his way past knees and laps, tipping his hat and mumbling apologies as he went.

It was raining again in the Bear Garden that afternoon. Master Sackerson stretched, yawned and turned his beady little eyes up to the heavens.

‘Looks almost human, doesn’t he, Ing?’ Nicholas Skeres was sheltering under the awning that covered the Bear Pit’s entrance way. ‘You wouldn’t think one swipe of that paw could rip half your face away.’

‘Seen him in action?’ Ingram Frizer was checking the papers in the satchel slung over his shoulder, to make sure they hadn’t got too wet.

‘I have.’ Skeres nodded. ‘I owe that old gentleman a few groats, in fact. Many’s the cur he’s crippled with my blessing.’

‘I heard Henslowe took his teeth out – loses less dogs that way.’ Master Sackerson yawned again, giving Frizer the full extent of his ivory incisors. ‘Looks like I heard wrong.’ The man’s bonhomie vanished at the sight. ‘Where’s he from, Nick?’

‘Russia,’ Skeres told him. ‘The land called Muscovy. They say Henslowe spends more money on him then he does on that bloody theatre – aye up, Nick; customers.’

A young couple were jumping the puddles on their way to the Rose, hurrying past the Bear Garden with its menagerie’s sights and smells.

‘Let me stop you there.’ Skeres stood like an ox in the furrow, barring their way. ‘Play’s started, you know. You’re too late.’

‘Too late?’ The gentleman frowned, spreading his cloak over the head of the lady with him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. We can go in at any time.’

‘Full,’ Skeres insisted.

‘Full?’ The gentleman stopped sheltering the girl now and stood to his full height, hand on his sword hilt. ‘Man, there are two thousand seats in the Rose. They can’t all be taken.’

‘Sir.’ Skeres feigned outrage. ‘This is Tamburlaine by Christopher Marlowe, starring Ned Alleyn. Given that combination, could they be anything else?’

‘Well …’

‘Can I help you?’ Ingram Frizer appeared as if from nowhere as Master Sackerson sprawled on his rock, watching events unfold. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘This … fellow,’ the gentleman said, ‘says the theatre is full.’

‘I fear it is, sir.’ Frizer nodded. ‘Until tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ The gentleman frowned.

Frizer became confidential. ‘It’s actually full for the next week. Master Henslowe is considering running extra performances at night, but you know how it is, sir – the Master of the Revels himself would have to be consulted.’

The gentleman became confidential too. ‘Look, I’ve promised … this lady that she should see Ned Alleyn. Can’t we come to some arrangement?’

Frizer looked the lady up and down. A whore if ever he saw one, a Winchester goose, albeit one only recently plucked. He motioned the pair away from Skeres, who stood resolutely staring into the middle distance, to where the great black bear stretched and rolled in the wet mud.

‘I shouldn’t really do this,’ Frizer whispered, ‘but Philip … Master Henslowe, you know … Philip gives me a few of these.’ He hauled out papers from his satchel. ‘Tickets – for tomorrow’s performance.’

‘How much?’ the gentleman asked.

‘A half angel – each.’

The gentleman swallowed hard.

‘And of course, for an extra half angel …’

‘Each?’ snapped the gentleman.

Frizer shrugged and smiled. ‘Good lord, no, sir. A half angel for the two. For the tour. Chance to meet the cast. But, of course, if you would rather not spend …’

The gentleman looked down the dress of the girl at his side and sighed. ‘I don’t think it is a matter of rather not …’

The goose at his elbow snuggled closer and looked up at his ruff. ‘Go on, Dickie,’ she murmured. ‘You know I’ve got a thing for actors.’

He looked down at her again. He knew exactly where that thing was. ‘Oh, all right.’ He ferreted in his purse. ‘Here.’ He thrust the coins into Frizer’s hand and snatched the tickets. ‘Tomorrow afternoon.’ He nodded and whisked the girl away.

Skeres wandered to Frizer’s side. ‘Tomorrow afternoon, Ing?’ he said.

His friend smiled at him. ‘I thought the Cranes, Nick,’ he said, jingling the money. ‘The drinks are on that gentleman. Not to mention their finest brain pies.’ And they trotted away in the rain, chuckling as they went.

Master Sackerson turned to watch them go, scratching thoughtfully under his belly with a fearsome claw.

‘Now, bright Zenocrate,’ Alleyn boomed, ‘the world’s fair eye …’

‘Don’t you bother with her!’ a voice called from the groundlings’ centre. ‘I’ll give you one in the eye you won’t forget in a hurry!’

The woman’s call was greeted with cheers and whistles. Alleyn was used to this and went on regardless although at times his voice was totally inaudible. The audience settled down after a while, in the usual style of the Rose’s patrons. They needed to get a few ideas off their chest and then they were usually quiet, especially in plays with a little something for everyone – fights, kissing, fights, kissing – all the things the crowd loved best.

Alleyn reached out to Zenocrate and bent her backwards, breathing words of love into her ear.

‘Watch out,’ George whispered. ‘My wig is loose.’

‘You should use more pins,’ Alleyn answered through gritted teeth. ‘Why is your hair so short?’

‘Ringworm,’ George confided, relaxing into the actor’s grip like a woman far gone in ecstasy.

Alleyn made a mental note to kick the lad from here to Kingdom come when the play was over, but for now settled for pulling back slightly from his embrace.

‘Phwoar! That’s the stuff!’ a woman called. ‘That’s the way to do it!’

There was a scuffle in the crowd and two burly men were seen to be carrying out a struggling woman, her grey hair being no bar to being thrown out for the sake of the other patrons. Philip Henslowe took his responsibilities towards the paying public very seriously. Jack Windlass watched it all a little bemused. He liked to keep abreast of what his gentlemen did for a living. His last charge had been a rising star in the Guinea Company; hardly a walk on the wild side. He was enjoying this rather more.

One of the actors not on stage was Richard Burbage. He’d die rather than admit he was there to learn from the great Alleyn, so to that end he had come as an apothecary. His curls were swept up under an academic cap and his usual roisterer’s satin was replaced by brown fustian, authentically stained with nameless liquids at the cuffs. The costume was authentic because he had lifted it from an actual apothecary who had temporarily laid his aside whilst entertaining himself with a Winchester goose along Maiden Lane. Every time he went there, Richard Burbage chuckled at the irony of the name.

Bugger, but Alleyn was good! Alleyn was, blast his eyes, very good. And those words! Burbage slipped a piece of parchment and an inkpot out of his purse and began scribbling in the dull light afforded him by the leaden Southwark sky.

‘And I will teach thee how to charge the foe,’ Tamburlaine was telling his son, ‘And harmless run among the deadly pikes. If thou wilt love the wars and follow me …’

And half the audience who had once been sitting were on their feet, all set to do the same.

Up in the gallery, Eleanor Merchant turned to her sister and pulled her closer so she could speak. ‘When does Master Shakespeare come on stage?’ she asked.

Constance didn’t turn her head; her eyes were full of Ned Alleyn, strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage. ‘Hmm?’

‘Master Shakespeare. When does his part begin?’

Constance turned to her now. ‘I thought Master Shakespeare was just lodging with us,’ she said tartly. She had not been fooled by her sister’s performance the day before.

‘He is, indeed he is,’ Eleanor said. ‘But he kindly gave us these tickets and it is only polite to at least see him when he comes on stage.’

Constance held her gaze for a few seconds longer, then turned away, convinced that she was right. ‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what part he plays.’

The man in front of her turned round. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked. ‘I am here to listen to Master Marlowe’s masterful prose, not two gossiping women.’

Constance dropped her eyes demurely and then looked up from under her lashes. She had found this seldom failed, no matter how tense the situation. ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ she said. ‘My sister and I know some of the actors and we didn’t want to miss their entrance.’

The man looked her up and down and then did the same to Eleanor. ‘You do not surprise me that you … know actors,’ he said, the tiny pause speaking volumes. ‘But can you know them a little more quietly in future?’ He turned back to watch the stage, the back of his neck showing outrage better than many people could do with a written ten-page declaration.

‘I think we had better be quiet, Constance,’ Eleanor said loudly. ‘We wouldn’t want to annoy anyone!’

‘Madam,’ said a black-clothed man to Eleanor’s right in strident tones. ‘Do not worry that you are interrupting this masque of the Devil. We should all lift up our voices and proclaim our hatred of this mumming and blasphemy, with boys dressed as women, and men—’ He was cut off short as the burly men who had removed the bawdy woman appeared at his shoulder.

‘Would you like to come along with us, sir?’ one of them said, grabbing an arm.

‘No, I have paid my penny and I intend to stay!’ the man said, trying and failing to cross his arms.

‘We have Master Henslowe’s instructions to refund your penny, sir,’ said the other man, wondering if anybody realized the extreme unlikeliness of what he had just said. He leaned round and pressed the man’s jaw hard between finger and thumb. When his mouth popped open against his will, the first bouncer put a penny in it and then clamped it shut until he swallowed.

‘Refund complete, Zachariah?’ asked the second bouncer.

‘Complete,’ his colleague answered and, taking an elbow each, they walked the black-clad zealot backwards and flung him out into the street.

Constance and Eleanor had been staring transfixed as the little play within a play had unfolded, but Constance was the first to recover.

‘Eleanor,’ she said, ‘sweet sister, I think that I will never be able to understand this play if I stay in this spot. I can see a quieter part of the crowd over there and if I can make my way there, I will. I will meet you outside by the Bear Garden when the play is over and we can go home together.’

Eleanor nodded and turned back to the stage. It was very true what they said; Master Alleyn had a well-turned calf and if he ever took the armour off, he might display a well-turned manhood, too. Why Constance was being so coy, she would never understand. She let herself drift off on a daydream of the deceased Master Merchant and his one talent, as Marlowe’s mighty lines spun and twisted in the air above her oblivious head.

‘You pleased with it, Kit?’ Thomas Sledd was waving to his man who dutifully trooped out on to the stage with a placard round his neck that read, ‘Act Five, Scene One’. ‘He’ll have to go,’ he muttered to the playwright. ‘Deaf and illiterate. Not the right part for him at all.’

‘Relax, Thomas.’ Marlowe smiled. ‘It’s going well. Will? You look a bit put out.’

Shakespeare was edging his way behind the Arras that screened the orchestra. ‘It’s this bloody gun,’ he mumbled. ‘I hate the things.’

Sledd snatched the arquebus out of the actor’s hand. ‘I’ve told him, Kit, a hundred times. The thing’s as safe as houses. So are all the others.’ He pointed across the stage to the far wings where the others in the scene shouldered their weapons. ‘This fuse will burn for ever but it won’t do anything. You’ll get a flash and a pop and the clapper will do the rest. The Governor will scream – though, please God, not like he did in rehearsals – and you’ll get a round of applause. You’ll like that, Will, won’t you?’ And he stuffed the gun back into Shakespeare’s grasp before pirouetting away into darkness.

‘He’ll have to go,’ the Warwickshire man muttered to Marlowe. ‘Jumped-up stage hand! What does he know about the Muse?’

‘The Muse, Will?’ Marlowe chuckled. ‘Young Sledd has been making the Muse dance and sigh since I was singing at the High Altar at Canterbury and you were creeping unwillingly to school. Trust him. If he says the gun is safe, the gun is safe.’

‘I care not,’ the Governor of Babylon was bellowing from the ramparts below the heavens’ canopy, ‘nor the town will never yield As long as any life is in my breast.’

‘Oh, shit, that’s me!’ Shakespeare stumbled out into the limelight, colliding with Techelles and his guard before straightening and getting into his role.

‘Thou desperate governor of Babylon,’ he cried out, cradling the arquebus in his arms. ‘To save thy life, and us a little labour …’ He paused for Techelles to chuckle in reaction, but the dolt missed his cue and Shakespeare stormed on, ‘Yield speedily the city to our hands. Or else be sure thou shalt be forc’d with pains More exquisite than ever traitor felt.’

Kit Marlowe peered through the slats and sought out the face of Sir Francis Walsingham. He knew more about the pains meted out to traitors than anyone in the Rose that day but the face was as immobile and unreadable as ever.

The orchestra shattered the air and there were mixed cheers and boos as Ned Alleyn came on, drawn by half the cast in chains, their jaws strapped with leather and hauling the chariot Philip Henslowe had mortgaged Master Sackerson’s Bear Garden to buy. The action went on and Marlowe could see what the audience could not. Thomas Sledd and his number two had slipped iron bracelets over the wrists of the Governor of Babylon and hauled him upwards so that he hung from his own walls. The pain in his wrists, arms and legs was appalling and he growled in agony.

‘That’s good,’ Marlowe muttered to cast members nearby. ‘Did he do that in rehearsals?’

‘Your feet!’ Thomas Sledd hissed through the canvas and wood flat. ‘Put your feet on the ledge, you stupid bastard!’

With gratitude, the Governor found the ledge and the feeling flowed back into his wrists and hands.

‘See now, my lord.’ Amyras was Tamburlaine’s son, although John Meres was actually a year older than Ned Alleyn. ‘How brave the captain hangs.’

Alleyn gave another of his cruel, cynical laughs. ‘’Tis brave indeed, my boy: well done!’ He turned to Shakespeare, already fumbling with his wheel-lock. ‘Shoot first, my lord,’ Alleyn ordered, ‘and then the rest shall follow.’ Six guns came up to the carry as the cast became a firing squad.

‘Then have at him,’ the Warwickshire man shouted, ‘to begin withal.’ And he levelled the arquebus, before bringing it up to point at the Governor’s chest. There was a flash and a puff of black smoke. Shakespeare stumbled backwards with the thud of the explosion, momentarily blinded and with an appalling pain in his right shoulder. There was a scream and Eleanor Merchant fell back in the gallery, a gaping hole in her throat.

On his wall, the Governor jumped, jarring his wrists anew and he all but slipped off his perch. That wasn’t supposed to happen. ‘You save my life,’ he said, trying to keep things going, even though the groundlings were screaming and shouting, swaying now towards Eleanor Merchant’s box, now away from it, ‘and let this wound appease the natural fury of great Tamburlaine!’

Great Tamburlaine was striding across the stage. Shakespeare was standing in shock, the murder weapon still in his hand, the harmless wick still smoking. Thomas Sledd was there seconds later, easing the gun out of the actor’s cold hands while Philip Henslowe, as bewildered as everyone else, ran on to the stage and begged for order.

‘A doctor here!’ someone shouted. ‘For the love of God!’

And the screaming started again.