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

we learned that although one was wounded – they were confused as to which – he did not look like to die. But another man whom no one knew was dead.

We hurried down to Hog Lane and there found a crowd gathered over the body of a young man by the ditch. He was on his back with a sword wound to his chest an inch or more wide. There was not much blood but he was without doubt dead. His eyes were wide, staring skywards as if in surprise. Beside him stood Tom Watson, his sword sheathed. He was stooping and holding a rag to a bleeding wound in his thigh. Christopher stood a few feet off, his sword also sheathed. Of all there he alone looked calm and untroubled. He held up his hand when he saw us. ‘It’s all right. No need for worry. Thomas’s wound is slight.’ He nodded at the body. ‘And the dog is dead.’

Someone had summoned the parish constable, a tailor called Wylde. He was not a robust fellow and approached the two men fearfully, as if they might go for him. But Watson reassured him, saying, ‘We will make statements, we have nothing to hide. I killed the man in self-defence as my friend Mr Marlowe can vouch. So too can some here who witnessed it.’ The constable bade them accompany him to the justice, Sir Owen Hopton, Lieutenant of the Tower. As they went Christopher turned to me and said in an undertone, ‘It is true, we are both innocent. But can you help if need be?’

It took time for the full story to emerge. I give it here in short form because it was later put about that Christopher had killed the man in a brawl. He was not brawling and he killed no one. It was the dead man, William Bradley, son of a Holborn innkeeper, who was the brawler, and known for one. He had a grievance against Tom Watson over a debt that he, Bradley, owed the brother of Edward Alleyn, the leading actor of those days who took the great parts in Christopher’s plays. Alleyn’s brother had hired Watson’s brother-in-law, an attorney, to take Bradley to court. Bradley had threatened the attorney with violence, upon which the attorney, Alleyn’s brother and Watson himself had threatened him. Blaming Watson for this, Bradley waited for him in Hog Lane that day, presumably to give him a beating.

Instead it was Christopher who came first from Mary’s house and turned the corner into Hog Lane where he was accosted by Bradley, who knew him for an intimate of Watson’s. They had words and Christopher – never one to back down from a fight – gave as good as he got. Swords were drawn and they were having at each other, though with no blood yet drawn, when Watson appeared. Bradley saw him and cried, ‘Art thou now come? Then I will have a bout with thee.’ He turned upon Watson and Christopher stood aside. There was no doubt, Christopher said, that Bradley by then meant to kill. He wielded his sword in his right hand and his dagger in his left, the latter for parrying close thrusts, and the fury of his assault drove Watson back to the edge of the ditch where he had no choice but to stand his ground and fight. He parried one of Bradley’s thrusts and counter-attacked, straightening his arm quickly enough to evade Bradley’s knife-parry. Bradley’s momentum carried him forward onto Watson’s blade, which sank six inches into his chest. He stumbled, coughed and cried out as Watson withdrew his blade. Then he dropped his weapons, sank to his knees, made a noise between a sigh and a gurgle, and rolled onto his back where he lay, one leg hooked beneath the other, staring heavenwards.

What struck Christopher was how it was over on an instant. One moment there was a man, a life, a voice, a vivid moving presence, a whole world in that man’s head. Another moment and there was merely a carcass, food for rats and worms, that whole world, everything that man knew and would have said or done, gone in an instant. And immediately everything else, the rest of the teeming world, was as if he had never been. ‘Nothing happens when you die,’ I remember him saying. ‘It is not even an event, just a ceasing. Why fear it?’

‘We fear God’s judgement and punishment for our sins.’ I said such things with confidence then.

‘We fear nothingness more. Extinction, total, eternal, everlasting. That is what we really fear. We would prefer Hell.’

‘Easily said when you’re not in it.’

‘Hell keeps hope alive, Thomas. There’s always the possibility of the alternative. But think on nothingness, think hard on nothing. See how long you can bear it.’

That was typical of him, of how he spoke and thought.

The law took its usual leisurely course. They were sent to Newgate gaol on suspicion of murder and the inquest next day decided that Thomas Watson slew William Bradley in self-defence, not by felony, and that Christopher had no part in it. But they could not be released without the Queen’s official pardon, which would take months, and so they were returned to Newgate. I had by then reported to Mr Secretary, who always wanted to know the doings of our agents or anyone associated with us. He told me to arrange bail for Christopher. I engaged a lawyer from Clifford’s Inn whom we often called upon and a prosperous tradesman we knew, a horner from Smithfield. In return for favours past and to come they stood bail for twenty pounds apiece. Christopher was freed and bound over to appear at the next Newgate sessions in a couple of months, but Watson had to remain in that stinking hole.

This took precious days during which the flood of work nearly overwhelmed me. Mr Secretary demanded the same quick results with no allowance made for other tasks he imposed,