A serpent in the garden, p.1
A Serpent in the Garden, page 1
A Serpent in the Garden
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
A Recollection
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Afterword
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Howard Linskey
Copyright
Title Page
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
For Erin & Alison with love
‘When a man’s verses cannot be understood…
…it strikes a man more dead than
a great reckoning in a little room.’
As You Like It
Quod me nutrit me destruit.
That which nourishes me destroys me.
Motto on the portrait of Christopher Marlowe, 1585
Preface
Nothing is known about the life of William Shakespeare between 1585 and 1592: his ‘lost years’. The son of a glove maker and disgraced wool merchant who had fallen on hard times, Will left Stratford, aged twenty-one, with no prospects. His wife and three young children remained there. Will’s next recorded location was London, seven years later.
Somehow, in the interim, he managed to amass a large enough sum of money to buy a partnership in a theatre company. No one knows how he did this.
A Recollection
When Will looked back on it, as he often did in his later years, he realised the tale had everything. There was a murder – more than one, in fact – but there was also love of a deep and lasting kind and, it had to be admitted, a fair portion of lust. Fortunes changed hands, men were elevated and some fell. There was conspiracy, intrigue and betrayal. It had its lighter, more comedic moments, when misunderstandings and mistaken identities set the course of incredible events in motion, and the stakes were almost always far too high. There was justice, of a kind, for some but not all. By God, if you threw in a shipwreck, it would have had all the makings of a damn good play. Not that he could ever have written a word of it, for he was sworn to secrecy and would take the events of that year to his grave, or be in it sooner than he planned. In any case, who would ever have believed him?
Prologue
London, 1592
Hic Incipit Pestis
Here Begins the Plague
It was a shrill and piercing scream and it cut through the din of the streets. The click-clack of horses’ hooves, the rumble of wooden cartwheels bearing heavy loads along uneven roads, the shouts of hawkers, beggars and Bible-men were drowned out for an instant. The scream was loud enough to command the attention of all and they turned to her, as one. A young, dark-haired, slender woman, of perhaps twenty years, had burst suddenly from the building, as if fleeing from the devil’s house, but all who heard her could tell this was no cry of alarm or appeal for help. This was a wail born of unbearable grief.
The woman’s hair was wild, her eyes nearly blind with tears and her face reddened with an anger that seemed directed at God himself. Her second cry moved all who heard it. She fell to her knees, tilted her head back and her features contorted in agony as she cried, ‘My lady is dead!’
Chapter One
‘Fetch me my rapier, boy.’
— Romeo and Juliet
The first thrust nearly cost him an eye. The second, Will managed to parry at the very last moment, and the third forced him desperately backwards but too swiftly to maintain his balance. The movement almost sent him tumbling over, as he fought to avoid the rapier’s point.
His attacker paused for an instant to survey Will but a second later the next thrust came, aimed at his midriff. Will swiped at the blade, a defensive movement across his body that managed to block the blow. It was but a temporary respite, however, and the next thrust from his opponent might have sliced through him if Will had been closer to his attacker. He stepped quickly to one side and tried to get around his assailant but was soon closed in again. For a second time, as he tried to dodge the thrust of the sword, he almost fell.
‘This is no sport! Come at me!’ his attacker urged, beckoning him with his free hand as he jabbed at Will with the other. Will stepped to one side so quickly he collided with a wall and it knocked the wind out of him. His pride was injured more than his body and the taunts continued. He was slow, he was ungainly, he was very far from being a warrior.
‘I was not ready!’ he called back, aware that it was a weak objection to the first thrust, which had come a dozen blows earlier. He had been on the defensive ever since.
‘My sword cares not whether you are ready! Yours sleeps in your hand.’
‘There is no balance to this blade,’ Will protested, and he wiggled the sword out in front of him, regarding it suspiciously.
His adversary would hear nothing of this. ‘What is the purpose of a rapier if you know not how to use it?’
‘I know how to use it.’
‘Are you sure? It is not just part of your apparel. This is your weapon. Do you even remember the moves?’ The other man was scornful.
‘I remember them well enough.’ It was said through gritted teeth. ‘Remember your own, Richard.’
‘Ready then?’ And, without waiting for an answer, Richard Burbage launched himself at Will, thrusting out the rapier once more, calling out the moves as if he was the other man’s dance partner, while Will tried frantically to parry them. His friend stopped, stepped back and immediately urged Will to ‘now thrust and lunge’.
This he managed to do, though not well enough to satisfy Burbage, who swatted his sword thrusts aside contemptuously. ‘Convince me, Will. Make it real or at least make it seem so. Convince me,’ his fellow actor repeated, ‘or you will not convince the audience.’
Will would have rallied then, eager as he was to show his friend he was a better man than evidenced by his ungainly part in this feeble duel. Before he could do so, they were prevented from further combat by a familiar voice that roared up at them. It came from the space before the stage where the groundlings stood during a performance. Though it was now empty, it barely contained the older man’s fury.
‘William Shakespeare! If you break my scenery, you will pay for it, by God!’ Then the theatre owner turned his attention to the other man, ‘Or my son shall!’ James Burbage regarded Richard scornfully, with the contempt a father reserves for a son he genuinely fears will come to naught.
Richard tried to calm his father’s temper with a smile. ‘There’s no damage…’ Then he looked more closely at the piece of lopsided scenery that had been displaced by Will’s collision with the wall, adding, ‘…that cannot easily be fixed.’
His father joined them on the stage to survey the dislodged emblem of a carved Lancashire Rose that had been placed there some weeks ago, for a performance of Henry VI. This was William Shakespeare’s first and, as yet, only play as writer as well as actor and, by the look of fury on James Burbage’s ruddy face, it might well prove to be his last.
‘What in God’s name are you doing?’ he demanded.
‘Rehearsing,’ said Richard.
‘Our theatre is closed,’ the exasperated man reminded his son, ‘or haven’t you noticed?’ He flailed his arms at the empty benches around them.
‘And one day it will open again. Better for us to master a stage fight before it is needed, and we thought we might put on an exhibition beforehand to lure our audience in. It has worked before.’
His father was not placated. ‘While laying wast
‘Arses on seats.’ Richard used one of his father’s favoured expressions to justify the chaos.
The older Burbage looked as if he wanted to continue the argument until his tone suddenly softened, his curiosity getting the better of his temper. ‘Why do you say our theatre will open again? What have you heard?’
‘I say it will reopen for it always does,’ Richard explained. ‘They are never shut overlong, not for a riot.’ He said this as if a riot was a trivial thing.
‘So, you have heard nothing.’
‘I heard something,’ Will offered and the theatre owner gave him an inquisitorial look. ‘I was told the queen herself had enquired as to when the theatre might be reopened for her subjects.’
‘Where did you hear this?’ In truth, Will hadn’t heard it but he wanted the argument changed from one about wrecked scenery to another about the timing of opened theatres, the better to placate James Burbage.
‘From Marlowe,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I think, or was it Kyd?’
‘There!’ proclaimed the younger Burbage, as if Will had proven an argument with a quote from the Good Book and not simply conjured the names of two fellow playmakers, albeit ones far more established than himself.
His father shook his head. ‘They will not reopen us,’ he said, and the younger men exchanged glances. Will was surprised by the lack of hope in his voice. There had been a riot, certainly, and it had begun during only the fifth performance of his first play, enacted by their troupe at this very theatre. Burbage seemed to be surveying the octagonal amphitheatre with resignation now. He had built it with his own hands, using his skills as a trained carpenter, named it The Theatre, and drawn huge crowds to this spot just off Curtain Road in Shoreditch. The open-air arena where the groundlings paid a penny to stand and watch a performance was called the pit. The stage projected out into the pit and there were three tiers of roofed galleries with balconies beyond, which overlooked the stage. The more affluent audience members paid twopence to sit there.
No one knew why the riot had started and it was doubtful that the content of the play, which was neither seditious nor heretical, had prompted it. More likely, the whole thing had begun with a shove or a trodden-on foot, causing an escalation of anger amongst the groundlings who were packed tightly into the pit, like fish in a net. If one man suddenly struck another, he could not help but bring several more into the fight. Then roaring boys would set about each other in a melee that soon became loud enough to drown out the actors on the stage.
Some were hurt in the fighting, other innocents trampled during a panicked exit of the crowd, and one man lay dead from a stab to the heart. The company was blamed for the affray and the theatre shut immediately.
Surely it would not stay closed forever, though? London crowds loved the theatre, even at the risk of a few cracked heads or broken limbs, and would demand its swift return. Each of the players now standing idle expected this, following a suitable period of penance from the company.
Not so, it seemed.
‘Why will they not reopen us, Father?’ asked Richard.
When James Burbage replied, it was with a heavy heart. ‘Plague is in London.’
Chapter Two
‘What other pleasure can the world afford?
I’ll make my heaven in a lady’s lap’
— Henry VI
‘They have been counting the dead using the parish registers,’ James Burbage explained. ‘Once they reach thirty a week, all public assembly will be stopped. We live in most uncertain times. How can a man prosper when his theatre can be closed on the whim of the Privy Council? They shut us down because of a riot but will keep us closed for the plague.’
‘Is plague here for certain?’ asked Will. ‘There was talk of it months ago when a gentlewoman died of it.’
‘Lady Celia Vernon,’ James answered.
‘You knew her?’ asked his son.
‘I did not know her but knew of her.’
Will recalled the general alarm at the time. To think that plague could reach the centre of London so suddenly, taking a gentlewoman’s life into the bargain? ‘Then it abated,’ he said, ‘and none more perished for a while.’
‘Not at first,’ James agreed. ‘There were some new cases on the edge of the city, following that lady’s death. They tried to contain it by nailing up the doors of any family with infection. I heard most perished but it stopped the spread for a time. Plague is a persistent malady though, and they do say it loves London, so it will always find a way in.’
‘Churchmen say the plague is God’s judgement for lewdness, drinking and whoring. And who encourages this?’ asked Richard Burbage rhetorically. ‘Why, it is the actors of course, playing at murder and displaying lustful acts, leading good Christian men from the right path. The minute the crowd departs, it heads to the taverns and brothels, so shut them too and blame the plague!’
If Richard was trying to console his father, he may have chosen the wrong method. ‘A pox on the plague!’ he cried out before exiting to the rear of the stage.
‘Did he just wish a pox on a plague?’
Richard smiled. ‘My father is a man of many moods. Today he most resembles an angry bear. Best exit now.’
‘Good then and timely,’ said Will, and when Richard seemed not to understand, he added, ‘you have not forgotten our meeting?’
Richard thought for a time then said uncertainly, ‘With the fair Lady… Katherine?’ The look on Will’s face showed his disappointment.
‘I did forget,’ admitted Richard. ‘It is today? When?’
‘We should leave for the river soon.’
‘Very well.’
But when Will made to leave, Richard placed a restraining hand upon his arm. ‘You are sure she brings her friend?’
‘The lady did assure me she would.’ This was not quite the same as being sure of it. The fair Lady Katherine had indeed promised to bring a companion to walk with Richard Burbage, while she strolled with Will.
Richard halted him once more, squeezing the same spot on his arm. ‘And this friend is fair?’
‘I am sure she is.’ Though he had never set eyes upon her. A woman as fair as Katherine must surely have friends of equal beauty, but he was hardly going to insist upon it, though Will did not want to give his friend any reason to remove himself from this liaison he had spent so much time arranging. They would meet on the north bank of the river at London Bridge, where merchants sold all manner of things of interest to even the most noble of women. They would then walk together for a time, their afternoon full of possibilities.
While Richard practised his easy charm on the other girl, Will would look to bring the long courtship he had conducted with the Lady Katherine to a happy conclusion. If Richard’s fair looks distracted the other lady, might it even be possible for Will to bring Katherine back to his rooms? She had virtue but not so much that she felt unable to meet him unchaperoned, except for a friend Richard could keep occupied.
Will first met Katherine after a performance of Henry VI, when she had made her way to the rear of the stage to tell him how much she enjoyed the theatre and his play. Since that day, he had penned many words to her, expressing his admiration for her beauty, elegance, wit, gentle nature and, of course, virtue, while quietly hoping she might one day choose to surrender it to him.
* * *
It took a little over a quarter of an hour to walk from Holywell Lane in Shoreditch down to London Bridge. On their walk to the river, the two men discussed a familiar topic.
‘I had hoped to God we would avoid a full reckoning with the plague,’ said Richard. ‘It has been weeks since those first victims were identified.’
‘The men off that French ship, or was it from the lowlands?’ Will tried to recall. ‘Ten of them, I believe.’
‘Yet it did not spread from the docks to the streets as we once feared. Most likely because the ship was quarantined in time.’
‘There was that lady who was stricken down.’ He reminded Richard of their conversation with his father.
‘I recall the fear that spread upon her passing. There is nothing strikes terror in the lowly more than hearing that even the prosperous can die suddenly of some sickness or another. Plague being the worst of them all.’
