A Dead Man in Deptford (4 page)

- Neutral, Watson said. You know too much, Henslowe.

- That is my trade. I have a new one, and that is to
build a theatre. Give me three months and it will fly its flag
ready for autumn and the opening of parliament. The Burbage
houses are wrongly placed. Bare fields like open country though
full of dogmerds and dead cats. It will not do. The future of
the business lies on the Bankside, among the other bringers of
joy and diversion. The bullring and the bearpit and you know
what.

- So, Alleyn said, we play against roars and screams and
the rapture of dying. He meant, as I knew, the spending of
Henslowe’s brothel clients.

- Well, it is life, it is joy. I have bought a share in the
bearpit and, a hundred yards off, a very pretty rose garden. In
that garden I am ready to build what I shall call the Rose, which
is an apt name. And you, Ned, shall help with the planning and
the design of it.

- So we are to leave poor Burbage and set up over the
river. What will become of poor Burbage?

- To each man his own misery. Drain those and we will
refill. We shall need plays, Mr Kyd. Who is this one here
(beetling at Kit), in the fine velvet cap with a pheasant feather?
It was true that Kit was dressed not like a poor scholar but like
a London gentleman, and I guessed that he was wearing some
of Watson’s discardments. Kit said:

- How much is there in the writing of a play? Henslowe
said:

- Work you mean, or money? Kyd said:

Too much work and too little money. What have you done then? He spoke jealously. Alleyn took sheets much blotted from
his bosom and said:

- Listen.

He then went hm hm and spoke of a grammatic fault: one
Greekish lad with all these poleaxes?

- Licence, Kit said. Kyd said, more jealously:

- Fantastical. Infants swimming, who taught them to swim,
they are not fishes. And what is all this wantonness of cruelty?
I would never go so far.

- The Trojan war, Kit said. It is a play of Dido and
Aeneas. Aeneas speaks.

- Not the whole of the Trojan wars would have spilt enough
blood for a fishpond.

- You think in terms too literal. What you cannot show
you will not have.

- But that is how I have improved on Seneca. Seneca
but reports, and that is bad playmaking. Our groundlings
have read no Seneca, they come to see as well as hear.

- So you would have Oedipus tear out his eyes in full view?

- So I would. They pay to see horrors not hear of them. I
see you go shudder shudder. The fine Cambridge man pedantical
about his classical authors.

- We will save up money to send you to Cambridge, Tom,
Watson said. Or to the other shop if you would wish it.

- My Latin is as good as any’s, Kyd cried. I had Mulcaster at
Merchant Taylor’s. I acted Seneca on the school stage, and they
came from far and wide to hear. Then I saw that they must also
see. So behold me, Cambridge or not.

- This will not do, Alleyn said, his head swinging in a slow shake. This business of Jupiter and Ganymede. It is sodomitical.

- Ah, both Kyd and Henslowe went. And Kyd: You cannot
bugger on the stage. Though in his eyes it seemed he cherished
the notion though not as an act of twofold pleasure: he relished
the fancied scream as the punitive rod of flesh struck home.

- Oh, it is only in prospect, Alleyn said. It is all words.
There are good words here, he added, but alas they are not
for me. I am not Aeneas. ‘t’hough Jack here (meaning myself)
would be a fetching Dido. Ah well, you must try again. And he
handed back the bundle to Kit, who took it, somewhat abashed.
Kyd squinted and said:

- A very foul copy.

- He has not been trained as a noverint, Watson said.

- Noverint? Kit said in puzzlement.

- Noverint universi per praesentes. Let all men know by
these presents. Tom Kyd was a scrivener. He scrivens very
handsomely.

- So, Kyd growled. Is this to be accounted a curse to me?

There were sounds of soothing about the table. Henslowe
drained his pot and said he must go. A little trouble with one
of his newly indentured harlots, it was supposed. A girl named
Deborah, a good Bible name, who drank illicitly and flailed
with her fists. This would not please all customers, though, if
made more formal with whip and nailed club, it might pleasure
a few. I take it, Henslowe said, that my proposition goes down
as well as my ale treat. We will talk further. He went to the
door, opened, peered out, returned, frowning. The bravoes are
in there, he said. They have cleared all out with their brawling.
Your brother Jack looks to be paying out protection money, as
they call it.

- Who?

- Bradley, Orwell and Simkin.

- I’ve told Jack, Alleyn said, that he must not. Give a groat
and it will expand to a noble. They tried this at the Theatre. We
were too many for them and they were surprised to find muscle
under our gaudy onstage raiment. Armed?

- Their usual short daggers. You have nothing save niefs.

- Niefs not knifes, I said. Must we be prisoners in here
till they be gone?

- Oh, we will go, Alleyn said. We will take supper at the
Triple Tun. So we drained, rose, and followed Henslowe out
to the main room, which was indeed empty save for the three
ruffians at a table in the corner bv_ the door that led streetwards.
Jack Alleyn was saying:

- You have drunk enough. This penny should take you
safely to the spewing stage. His brother said, as we neared the
scene:

- Keep up with these disbursements, Jack, and you do
no more than feed their greed.

- You may be right, and Jack Alleyn picked up the brown
coin and pocketed it. Will Bradley was an unwashed rogue, burly
enough, with tangled wires of black all over his lousy scalp. On
his finger-ends were black demilunes. He said:

- We know well enough what you and your fellow sellers of
the well-watered are at. You send bullies with clubs around to
my poor old father to have him hold his son out of the tattery
taverns where the filthy players do booze. Well, here you see a
free man with his companions as free who will go where they
choose and slice any that say not.

- You had best choose to booze at your dear dad’s foul den,
Jack Alleyn said. He meant the Bishop’s Head at the corner of
Holborn and Gray’s Inn Road. So go.

Bradley’s companions sat behind the table and, much at
their ease, tilted their chairs on two legs and leaned back to
make dirty the roughcast wall with their greasy jerkins. Orwell,
a deformed braggart, humped and with a skew-mended broken
left arm, leered at me, twittering:

- Untruss, sweetheart, that I may embrown my piggot.
And how doth filthy Neddy?

- Why then I’ll firk you, Simkin mocked. It was Kit who said:

- These players seem clean enough. I would say that you
three gallows-fodder have the monopoly of dirt here. Ah no,
went Watson under his breath, his hand on Kit’s arm. Orwell
said:

- Big words. A Latin and Greek boy. Monopoliology. Thou
also piggesnie might do well in a back-butting. And he smiled
foolishly and smacked kisses at the air in Kit’s direction. Kit
then. He should not have but he did.

Kit then with two swift hands rammed the table edge so that
the whole sizeable hunk of elmwood was down on Orwell and
Simkin so that they were on the floor heavily. Then he seized
Bradley by the back hair and wound it tight what time he thrust
two fingers ugh and ugh up his filthy nostrils as he would reach
his very pia mater, and Bradley’s blind fingers sought his dagger.
But Kit by his distasteful nose hole-boring, the distaste in his face
much evident, had borne Bradley over and now had him on the
splintery floor planks where he danced briefly upon him, on the
watch for recovering Orwell and Simkin. Bradley’s dagger had
escaped from his belt and Kit now joyously seized it, making
for Orwell and Simkin who were staggering to their feet though
firmly drawing. As Bradley was rising cursing, Kit dealt him a
kick on the chin which thrust him temporarily out of combat. He
then slashed Orwell’s daggering wrist, making Orwell howl and
seek to drink the blood to stem its flow. Simkin crying no no
he then ripped in the trunks so that his shame would be exposed
to the world. This was enough for those two, though Bradley on
his feet with panting oaths and arms flailing made to encircle
Kit’s neck, which, as Kit wore a newly clean ruff to be prized,
Kit would by no means have. So he buffeted Bradley to the wall
by the serving hatch, took a quart pewter mug that rested there,
and battered his lousy head till it lolled. All this time we others
watched and gaped. Kit then panted that he would have water to
wash his hands that were so defiled that he was like to vomit, and
Simkin, hearing that word, began to take it as an injunction to do
so, which he did in green and yellow copiosity. Jack Alleyn’s two
potboys pumped up water from the well in the yard that backed
the inn and brought it in three buckets. Kit washed and washed
and washed as he would never cease washing, then all three
loads were flooded on to Simkin and his puke. He left howling
and soaked and tottering and the others followed with breathy
threats. Kit bestowed a kick in valediction on Bradley and thus the Unicorn was restored to a kind of cleanliness proper to that
emblem of virginity. But Jack Alleyn shook his head, saying:

- They will have you. They will slit your throat. His brother
said:

- Where did you learn?

Kit, who panted less and drank thirstily of a nearquart,
sat and said:

- It was in Canterbury. Fighting the Huguenots. The Huguenots can be very filthy fighters.

- God’s big body, Henslowe said piously. Are they not
our religious brothers?

- I have no love for the Huguenots.

- Come, Ned Alleyn said, to supper. You, Jack?

- I stay. There is a barrel to be broached. He nodded direly
at Kit. So we left. Henslowe made for the Bankside but Tom
Kyd, penniless but hungry, kept close to us, though Watson,
who said he would pay, had not meant that he be included in
the supping company.

- Vomit, Kit said to him. I said the word and that ruffian
did it. It is somewhat like Seneca and Thomas Kyd Esquire,
would you not say?

- I am no esquire, Kyd muttered. Your meaning?

- For the one the word suffices, the other is lost without
the action.

- I do not follow you.

- No matter, Kit said as we walked, oft slithering, the
cobbles were slimy and rats peered from the kennel as the sun
westered and would break the heart of the man who yearned
above our filthy lot with its vision of heaven in trumpet colours.
Masterless dogs scavenged and cats with staring coats darted or
limped. And so we came to the Triple Tun, with its trinity of
barrels on the sign that creaked in the sunset wind. Within,
the lamps were already swinging from the rafters, the flames
of candles danced, and fat was in the fire of the kitchen open to
the view at the far end. So we sat and were greeted by Shilliber
himself who, with his wife, bade the ordinary thrive with its
coffined meats, browned fowls, flummeries, tarts and syllabubs. Good red wine, he announced, had come the long journey from
Bergerac. Jolly eaters waved or nodded at Ned Alleyn, and some
gave him the fanfare of What outcries. So we asked for the great
veal pie with its minced dates and a mingling of cream in the
peppery gravy, also wine in a crock drawn bubbling from the
cask. And Kit, in exhilaration of his dousing the bravoes, grew
talkative. He spoke of Machiavelli and his Prince and of Simon
Patricke’s Englishing of Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel which had
been his bed-book at Corpus Christi. He said:

- I have lines for him. The man himself, old Nick, on
the stage in black, croaking:

I forget the rest, but it is all writ down.

- You spoke that too loud about the childish toy, Kyd said.
See, there is one looking and one taking it down on his tablets.
There are spies all over.