Prince - John Shakespeare 03 - Read Free Page A

on your pleasure, Mr Danby, it might have been too late. The body would have been as cold as winter. Mr Peace might not have been able to determine the time of death with such accuracy.’
    ‘It is for me to say how accurate Mr Peace’s conclusions are. And I say that he is a diabolical dabbler. He plays with dead bodies in a most unchristian way. I will have none of Mr Peace.’ Danby swept past Shakespeare, then paused at the door. ‘And mark me well: I will have words with my lord Burghley regarding your part in this.’ With a final, puffed-up flourish, he departed.
    Topcliffe bared his yellow teeth and chuckled. He prodded Shakespeare’s chest with his silver-tipped blackthorn stick. ‘That’s told you, Shakespeare.’
    Shakespeare brushed the stick aside with a sweep of his arm and glared into Topcliffe’s gloating face. ‘God blind you,’ he said. ‘You are a malign presence.’ This whole business was putting Shakespeare in an ill humour. He had not liked it from the start, when Cecil had ordered him to inquire into Marlowe’s dealings. Anyone could have written those placards. And if it had been Marlowe, why would he have signed it Tamburlaine ? Only a fool would draw attention to himself in such a way – and Marlowe, however hot-blooded and wild, had never been a fool.
    ‘Now, now, Mr Shakespeare,’ Topcliffe said, putting up his stick as if it were a rapier. ‘Hear me out.’
    ‘I want to hear nothing from you, Topcliffe. Have you not women or children to torment somewhere?’
    ‘Wait, Shakespeare. I know we do not see eye to eye on much, but I have to tell you that I am with you on this. Marlowe was a dunghill of iniquity, but he had his fair parts. The verdict was wrong, I am certain. He was murdered.’
    ‘Then why did you say nothing?’
    ‘I had no evidence, Mr Shakespeare. Why did you say nothing?’
    Shakespeare ignored the question. ‘And what was Marlowe to you, anyway? Why are you here?’
    Topcliffe took a smouldering pipe from the pocket of his fine doublet and thrust it in his mouth. He sucked hard and blew out two thin streams of smoke from his nostrils. ‘Marlowe? I would happily have drawn out his entrails and hacked off his pizzle like a Papist girl-boy for his godless ways and playmaking. And yet –’ Topcliffe’s menacing growl almost softened for a moment. ‘And yet I will admit, in other things his heart was right. His denunciation of the foreign incomers was something that should gladden all English hearts, for who can stomach these strangers overrunning our land, taking bread from stout English tables? Five years ago, Drake sank the strangers who tried to invade our shores. Now the Council welcomes so many ragtag beggars from France and the Low Countries that you scarce hear an English voice in London. Marlowe was right and I am with him. I would push every last one of them back into the narrow seas and cheer their drowning.’
    The pall-bearers entered the room and lifted the body of Christopher Marlowe from the day bed to carry him away for burial.
    Shakespeare turned away. Topcliffe understood nothing. This was not about Marlowe’s views, this was about murder. The trouble was that in these days of famine and rising prices, when many men could not find a day’s work, there were plenty who thought like Topcliffe, plenty who would do evil to the incomers and their wives and children, Catholic or Protestant. Their only crime? Not being English.

Chapter 3
    O UTSIDE M RS B ULL’S house on Deptford Strand a small crowd had gathered, perhaps fifteen strong. Shakespeare was taken aback to see his brother Will among them, with a group of familiar faces from the playhouses. Henslowe was there, Alleyn and Burbage, an uncommonly doleful Will Kempe, his customary jest and smile absent today. Marlowe’s patron, the poetry-loving Thomas Walsingham, stood tall and stiff with the little group. Nephew to Shakespeare’s late employer, Sir Francis Walsingham, Thomas cut an