A Fine Madness Alan Judd (beach read book txt) 📖

through working for us. Most likely the former, since Christopher did little for us after the Babington business apart from occasional courier work, though I suspect he saw more of Poley, Skeres and Frizer than I knew. At some point Thomas took Frizer into his household at Scadbury Park in Chislehurst, Kent. It was not far from London and must have meant that Christopher and Frizer saw more of each other. Whatever their differences, they then shared an interest in pleasing their mutual patron. It was to prove a fateful alliance.

My own work was almost all-consuming. It was the time of our war with Spain and of the great Armada sent to invade us which, thanks to weather, Sir Francis Drake and God’s grace, was prevented. Little known then, and not at all now, we had other means of prevention at work. We intercepted their letters, deciphered their codes, divined their intentions and sabotaged many of their fleet’s water and powder barrels before it had even embarked. I would spend whole nights deciphering and still work through the day after.

I said ‘almost’ all-consuming. In the few intervals between sleep and work I courted Mary Turner, visiting her house whenever I could with gifts and favours. She proved amenable. We walked gently together, our minds hand-in-hand as it were, to our eventual marriage, for which great blessing I am ever grateful. My visits to her meant that I saw a little of Christopher there, though not on our business. He was becoming a great figure by then, no longer the humble student – not that he was ever really humble, merely unknown – I had first met. His plays had great success and his poems were sought after in the bookshop by St Paul’s where writers and printers gathered. I never saw any of his plays while he lived. That was my lack and is still my regret. I have seen one or two since and found in them much to question him about.

There was no hiding my courtship from him, of course. He teased me about it. He would greet me with a smile and say, ‘Ah, Thomas, what brings you here? Is it the air, the prospect, are there letters to copy? Or are you in search of rhymes to please our landlady? In which case, Watson and I will furnish you with plenty to further your cause.’ And to Mary he would say in my presence, ‘Goodwife Turner, I must warn you against this fellow, he is a ruffian and a great deceiver, a thief of women’s hearts. I must lend you my sword.’

But then he would leave us to ourselves. I discovered later that he spoke kindly of me to Mary, saying I was an honest thief who, having once stolen a heart, would keep it safe and be true to it. It was that sword of his, though, that led me into further official dealings with him.

I did not witness the affray. It was really nothing to do with Christopher except by mischance. It happened one fine September morning when I was at Mary’s house with apples for her that Mr Secretary had had delivered from Barn Elms to be distributed among us who worked for him. I had been up all night finishing a great hunk of work and had awarded myself a morning of rest before embarking on the next. Both the poet Watson and Christopher were there and the four of us shared a cheerful breakfast, the two of them causing much merriment with demonstrations of smoking tobacco in pipes, a habit then coming into fashion. It seemed difficult to get these engines going and when they did there was so much smoke that the engineers spent more time coughing and spluttering than enjoying it. Mary said that her washing, which was drying by the fire, smelled for days afterwards of tobacco smoke. Later, when he was being racked, Thomas Kyd claimed that Christopher would say that all who did not enjoy tobacco and boys were fools. Perhaps he did but from the few times I saw him with pipe and tobacco I would not say he enjoyed it; he had to work too hard at it for pleasure. As for boys, I never knew him for a sodomite, nor did he ever mention it in my hearing, though in his play King Edward II he had the king buggered with a red-hot poker. Do you know that play, sir? Well, I doubt the King would like it. Kings do not like to see the deaths of kings, especially deaths such as that. But, as I have said, Christopher was ever gentle with me and there might have been many things he did not mention. Certainly, he was not always so gentle with others.

He left the house first that morning to see his collaborator, the other play-maker I had briefly met. As he went he buckled on a sword he had bought, although so far as I know he had not then achieved the status of gentleman that entitled him to bear one in public. No matter, perhaps, because companies of players often had swords for their stage fights. Watson left the house shortly after – he always wore a sword when in the streets, being entitled to it – and Mary and I were left to converse in peace, that free intercourse by which we establish the compatibility of minds which is the bedrock of good marriage. We were interrupted by a great hammering on the door. Mary bade both servants answer before showing herself.

It was two neighbours, both women. Bidden enter, they breathlessly described a great fight at the end of the street in Hog Lane involving Mary’s lodgers and a man who was killed. So confused were their accounts, delivered simultaneously, that it sounded at first as if the fight had been between Watson and Christopher and that one of them was dead. Then, when we had calmed them enough,