He was just preparing to attempt it when a voice, unheard till then, cried out, ‘What, John Lawley? Art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?’
The voice was deep and strong enough to silence the buzz for beer and betting. Each man, spectator or combatant, turned to see who had spoken. It was John who first recognised the man who stepped into what had become an impromptu arena.
‘Silver,’ he said. ‘Well met.’ He turned to his drawn friend. ‘I don’t believe you two know each other.’ He gestured between them. ‘Master William Shakespeare. Master George Silver.’
Each man bent slightly from the waist. They were of a height, and so their heads near met somewhere close to John’s mid chest. He looked down upon them, noting the contrast under the caps – his friend’s receding yet still brown locks, his former Cadiz comrade’s now as grizzled as his name, though still thick. The latter lifted first, extended a hand which Will met with his left, keeping a grip on his hilt. ‘I knew you on the instant, sir, from your wonderful playing at the Curtain,’ said Silver, pumping enthusiastically. ‘And even more from your wondrous words.’ He smiled shyly. ‘You may have noted that I quoted you, sir, your play of Romeo and his Juliet.’
‘Indeed,’ replied Will, ‘I thought they sounded familiar, though I couldn’t quite place them . . .’
‘’Twas Tybalt, sir, happening upon Benvolio drawn in the street. It seemed appropriate, given your situation.’ He glanced at the drawn apprentices, then more specifically at their swords, then sniffed. ‘Lads,’ he continued, ‘I understand why Italians in Master Shakespeare’s play wielded rapiers. But true Englishmen like you . . . ?’
The apprentices gaped, still stupefied by the man’s appearance and his words. ‘Master Silver is a great proponent of the vantages of English techniques of swords and swordplay over the foreign,’ said John. ‘He has published a book on the subject.’
‘Principles, sir, not techniques,’ admonished Silver. ‘Techniques will fail when principles always apply. And the book is not published yet. I amended it, after your kind comments. It is at the printer’s now.’ He turned again to Shakespeare. ‘I would be honoured to send you a copy, sir.’
‘As I would be to receive it. Perhaps you would care to . . .’
‘OY!’
It was surprising, John supposed, that the Ludgate Boys had restrained themselves to that point. Perhaps they’d been well trained not to interrupt their betters. But ale and ardour and blades still bared now overtook their manners. ‘Leave off all this talk!’ the butcher’s boy bellowed. ‘Are we going to fight, or what?’
‘Or what indeed!’ Silver now turned back to the mob, stepped forward, ignoring the sword points. ‘Surely, however my friends have offended, it can be forgiven over some foaming English ale?’
‘I already tried that approach,’ said Will, ‘but they prefer to drink hot blood.’
‘Never a harm in establishing cause, sir.’ Silver spoke softly from the side of his mouth. ‘The law will so interfere in an Englishman’s right to quarrel these days. ’Twould be well, if this came to court, that there be witnesses who recalled we offered a truce.’
‘Enough!’ The butcher’s apprentice stepped forward, swishing his sword through the air. ‘We will fight. So get out of the way, short arse!’
Silver turned back. ‘Did I hear aright? Did this red-tinged piece of offal presume to comment upon my stature.’ He smiled. ‘Joy!’ he cried, drawing his sword with a flourish, scything the air with a sound twice as loud as the rapier had made. As the crowd gasped and commented, he spoke aside again. ‘A wonderful opportunity, John, to demonstrate the principles I have expounded in my treatise. To whit’ – he raised his voice – ‘the innate superiority of our short English backswords and bucklers over the foreign fancies of the bird-spit rapier and dagger.’
John replied quietly, ‘George, there are but two of us.’
‘Three,’ said Will, taking his stance. ‘I know you doubt me, John, but I have of late been almost continually in practice.’
‘Three! A band of brothers indeed!’ cried Silver. ‘Would that the odds were greater!’
‘I think these will suffice.’ While John spoke, Silver slipped a small round steel shield from his belt. ‘Also I have no buckler. Neither does Master Shakespeare.’
‘I have one spare,’ Silver said brightly, turning the other hip. ‘Always carry one in case an opponent lacks. Take it.’
With a sigh, John tucked his sword under his arm, then fumbled with the ties until he could slide the shield off. As he did, he muttered, ‘Though I do not doubt your new skills, Will, let the soldiers handle it if at all possible, eh? We need a few plays out of you yet.’
‘Indeed!’ cried Silver, hearing. ‘Lads, do you not know whom you threaten here?’
‘Enough!’ With another bellow, the apprentices’ leader waved his cohort wide.
They obeyed, looking to him for the start. Yet Silver pointed the tip of his sword skywards and cried, ‘Indeed, sirs! I think I should warn you who it is you face here. I leave aside my own modest talents. But my friend’ – he clapped John on the back – ‘is a hero of more wars than you have hairs under your codpieces.’
John sighed. ‘May we not merely proceed, please?’
‘Nay, John, they should know with whom they contend – and take warning!’ He turned back to the crowd, which had quadrupled in the interim, the ruckus drawing customers from other taverns and ordinaries nearby; while someone had pulled up an eel cart and was doing a brisk trade. ‘For this is John Lawley – master of defence to the Earl of Essex.’
‘I am not . . .’ John began.
But he was immediately drowned out by the roar. ‘Essex! Essex!’ cried the crowd. The drawn apprentices all looked at each, their choler cooling in this wash of patriotism. Silver, seeing it, spoke loudly again.
‘And surely some must recognise the other standing here. That prince of players, that master of poetry, the bard of the age . . .’
‘Enough!’ The huge butcher’s apprentice had had the impetus taken away from him by Silver’s appearance and talk. He had to restore it. ‘We don’t care if they is Sir Lancelot and Geoffrey Bloody Chaucer! They’ve let the bloody thief escape. Bollocks to the bard, I says!’ He spread his arms wide in appeal. ‘Bollocks to the bard!’
This crowd, as most, was easily shifted by a slogan. ‘Bollocks to the bard!’ The cry was taken up by all his fellows and a good portion of the rest, and with that cry, all the apprentices, with a whistle of steel in air, once more took their guards.
Silver had drifted to John’s right, drawing three men to face him. To his left, William stepped tentatively towards the smallest apprentice, who, to John’s swift glance, looked as apprehensive as the playwright. Finally, movement forced him to focus fully on the three ranged against him.
Their guards told him much. Two were sloppy, their legs too far back as if to remove their bodies from their weapons, their points wide. Only their leader looked as if he’d had lessons. That would make him either more or less dangerous according to how many. Too few and he’d be thinking style and fail to fight. Many, and he could be good. His guard was, the rapier stretched out in his right hand but with that leg full back, so that the dagger’s point was near level with the other, warding it, like an attendant upon his lord. It was a closed door of pointed steel that John would not try to enter directly. But there were always other ways in.
The three began to advance slowly, yelling taunts. It gave John a moment to remind himself: he must not kill here. It was near as important as not getting killed himself. For he already had the Tyburn brand, M for murderer, upon his thumb. He had escaped the noose by using the scholar’s excuse: he could read the ‘neck verse’ from the Psalms. The brand showed that he had done so and could not do so again. And even if he was able to plead self-defence and enough witnesses testified on his cause, the least this riot could mean was months in the Clink – and what of his hopes for rehabilitation then? What of
Tess, Ned and the Globe?
With this in mind, and striving to ignore Silver, who seemed to be conducting a seminar – ‘Remember, Lawley, the superiority of the blow over the thrust!’ – John recalled suddenly the first rule of any duel, beaten into him by the master he’d trained with in Italy, Viggiani of Bologna, to whom he’d been apprenticed in his youth. ‘Before you even come to the blows, Gianni, make of yourself a great devil,’ the old Italian had said, ‘and make your opponent believe that you are there for the express purpose of whisking his soul straight to hell!’
Recalled and straight acted upon. ‘Buffoon!’ John bellowed. ‘Whoreson dog! Do you think I have time to play with fools and children? I am going to pluck out your liver and eat it raw before your fading eyes.’ Accompanying this with a great swish down through the air with his cutting edge, he leapt forward, seeming to cover a lot of ground while only taking a pace, then bringing his back edge fast up, steel whistling through the air. Next, he put himself into guard – but not in a quiet way, for as he yelled again, he took the step back he needed for room, at the same time sweeping his sword up in a great stroke against the edge of his buckler, making the small shield clang. At shout and strike, the men before him again slowed, so once more he brought his sword hard down from the height, ringing metal on metal again, taking another step back. Then, with a final retire and his guard low, he jerked the sword tip hard up in an unmistakable severing of man’s most precious part. All winced as he then aligned his sword’s tip with his buckler, thrusting both forward, peering over the twin steel even as he stepped back once more.
It was a true swashbuckle. He had executed it well, perhaps lessening the memory of his previous slide to the cobbles. A cheer came from the crowd, drowning Silver’s ‘Oh, sir!’ at this breach of English restraint. Yet both men knew also that the noise had caused a distraction. Both used it now.
John heard that swish of steel beside him, a first yelp of pain, the last things he heard. It was ever thus with him in a fight, the near silent place he went to, entering it even as he launched himself. Thought and action, one.
The main threat was in the middle, so he avoided it directly, slamming the blades on his right with both his own weapons, collecting his foe’s with a slight circle of his own sword, before knocking aside the first thrust at his side with a downward sweep of his buckler. The boy who’d delivered it recovered with a step back, taking guard again, giving John the moment to close right, keeping the rapier and dagger he’d gathered with his sword while sweeping his elbow up, driving it into the apprentice’s cheek.
His weight was behind the blow. The youth went down, falling into the butcher’s boy, blocking another advance – which gave John the second moment he needed. As the apprentice on the other side lunged at his face, from the crouch where his elbow strike had taken him John swept his blade across and hard, knocking the weapon away, exposing the man’s face to the buckler, driven in like a fist, a metalled fist, straight to the nose. The youth cartwheeled backwards, dropping both his blades as he went, and smashed into the eel cart.
‘Oy!’ the stallholder screamed, steadying his stall, though not enough to prevent some of his produce from flopping on to the cobbles.
The butcher’s boy, clear at last of his fallen comrades, thrust now at John’s side, exposed by the blow he’d just delivered with his buckler. It came close, only a leap backwards and a hard strike diagonally downwards with the shield deflecting it, and that only by a finger’s width. But the leap made him stumble, stumble turning to slide as his sole connected with an eel. He did not go down, knew he mustn’t – not when the butcher’s boy, with a whoop, was driving his dagger . . . straight towards John’s left eye.
Knee and sword-grip knuckles on the ground, he pushed off them, shooting his arm up, blade reversed and square before his face, diverting the thrust. Rising, lifting the dagger as he came, John twisted his wrist, flicking the sword tip back and over his shoulder. The parry and the force of his own thrusts had caused the apprentice to step too close, his over-long rapier now flapping uselessly above. So John pulled back fractionally . . . then popped the pommel of his sword straight between the man’s eyes.
He dropped, so hard and fast that his weapons landed a second afterwards. He was undoubtedly unconscious; in a day his eyes would be blacker than Satan’s arse. But in the swift glance he allowed himself before he checked for more enemies, John could tell, and thank heaven for the fact, that at least the youth was not dead.
He breathed deep, shook his head to clear it, which allowed a thought to enter. ‘Will?’ he said, turning on it.
But his friend was safe. Indeed, he and his opponent were standing side by side, swords under their arms. Both were looking at John with mouths open.
‘What?’ said John, crossing to him. ‘Are you well?’
‘I am. After one pass, we came to an immediate truce, this lad and I. But John, I stand humbled. You are a fine player, sure . . .’ Shakespeare shook his head. ‘But you are an extraordinary fighter.’
John shrugged – but it was Silver who spoke. ‘You are indeed. Bravo, Master Lawley.’ The swordsman was himself standing in the centre of a pile of three groaning young men. ‘A touch unorthodox, kneeling to receive a thrust. I would not on the whole recommend it. But the pommel to the face? Pure backsword. Could you do that with a rapier, I ask you?’ He turned the question to the crowd, not even looking down to kick away the dagger the butcher’s boy, one eye already shut and swelling, was groping for. ‘I ask again, could you?’
‘Nay!’ came a great shout, amidst more toasting and the slurping of eels.
‘And this is the weapon that accomplished it,’ he said, swishing his backsword through the air. ‘No foreign fancy of rapier for John Lawley. A yard of true English steel! And, I venture, it will be one such that brings the Irish traitor Tyrone to bay, and forces him to kneel before his conqueror, whose men we are.’ He thrust his point towards the sky. ‘The Earl of Essex!’
The name provoked the same cry, the repetition. ‘Essex! England! Essex!’
‘Speak for yourself, Silver,’ John muttered, looking past him, over the heads of the crowd . . . where he could see, approaching from the direction of the Strand, the halberds of the watch. Murderer he might not be this day, but he could still spend Clink time as a street brawler. ‘Come!’ Seizing his friend’s arm, he called back, ‘Master Silver, we must away.’
Their comrade was in the midst of a pressing throng which included some of the risen Ludgate Boys, clutching heads and bellies. ‘I think I’ll stay awhile. These are stout English lads, with high spirits, that is all. It is not their fault that they have been corrupted by devilish foreign customs. Now that they have learned their error, I would explain more of it – and inform them when and where they can get a copy of my book, for their further education!’ He winked, smiled as someone handed him a pot of ale. ‘To a good contest between Englishmen, and no hard feelings,’ he cried, lifting it. ‘God save the Queen.’
Another universal cheer broke out at this. Cries of ‘The Queen!’ ‘Essex!’ ‘England!’
‘Come, sir,’ John said.
Once more he was resisted. ‘Do you know, John,’ said Will, staring around him, his eyes wide, ‘I think I have been too long in my closet. There is a mood abroad, is there not?’
‘There’s drunkenness, certain. Come . . .’
‘Nay, something beyond the courage that sack, ale and whisky give.’ He looked at John. ‘Do you not think it?’
‘Perhaps.’ As he looked more closely into his friend’s eyes, he noted that the melancholy he’d seen in them before had been displaced. There was a fire now – and he knew the fuel that everyone he’d encountered that day would have him feed it. Cecil. The Queen. Burbage. Even Essex, though he had not asked it of him. Each one wishing the man before him to write a different play than the one he’d been brooding on. So he said, gently, so as not to startle, ‘Then, William, is it not time to address that mood? Something engagi
ng?’ He started to hum. ‘Methinks I hear the Te Deums sung at Agin Court.’
His friend stared, then turned away with a softly spoken, ‘Perhaps I hear them too.’
And in that moment, with those quiet words, John knew he had lost his friend. They walked together, up to the Ludgate, through it into the City. But they did not speak, and parted with scarce a murmur, John to Southwark to retrieve his son, Shakespeare to his lodgings to . . .
Well. As he crossed the bridge, John smiled. He could sense that Will would sleep little now, for he was again about it. While he himself would happily lay claim to influencing his friend, if ever he was asked. Perhaps he had.
When he passed through the archway of the gatehouse and into Southwark proper, he paused. It was past midnight, but taverns were still full, revellers moving between them and Bankside’s other attractions. All would be crammed till dawn, when Ash Wednesday ushered in Lent and a month of sobriety for most. But, John realised, he was ahead of them – for he was sober now. Threats of death – the first in a tavern in Wapping that morning; the last, he hoped, in the recent clash between rapiers and backswords on Fleet Street – had finally cleared his head. He needed sleep, certain. But now he knew he could achieve it without the necessary oblivion that whisky brought. Knew it because, at last, he had a little hope.
To reach the Cardinal Cap Inn and his son, he had to pass the building site of the Globe. They had only just broken ground, yet already the timber frames for walls were rising, scaffolding shrouding the whole. The game’s afoot, he said to himself, smiling as he passed it. The game is afoot.
XIV
‘Cry Harry’
29 August 1599
As the hum of sackbuts and tabors faded, the drums beat out one last martial rhythm before yielding to a single bugle. Two notes, high and low, alternated. It was a call to hunt. Indeed later Burbage would cry ‘the game’s afoot’ and compare his comrades to greyhounds in the slips. Well, if there was some grey around his muzzle and he had waited behind curtains like this uncountable times, John could still feel his heart quicken.