An Honourable Murderer by Philip Gooden Page A

may be deluded. The dead should stay where they belong, in my opinion, and not indulge themselves in truanting about our world.
    Maybe it was the bright morning but I also felt a bit of a truant. There were no activities involving the King’s Men scheduled for the next couple of days yet, by participating in Ben’s thing, I was somehow mooching off.
    I turned my head from time to time and kept my eyes open for a flash of red doublet in the street, especially after what Mrs Buckle had told me about yesterday’s caller. But this wasn’t very logical. Why should anyone follow me if they already knew where I lived? Anyway, if I had glimpsed a person like the fellow from the previous evening, I would have accosted him. But there was no one who fitted the picture. Instead, I turned my mind to business and this piece of Jonson’s in which I was playing.
    The idea of the celebratory masque was a shrewd one on the playwright’s part. The King’s Men were ‘in attendance’ on the Spanish party at Somerset House only in a ceremonial sense. But it had occurred to Ben that more might be done to mark the occasion than merely having us flounce around the palace in our cut-price red cloth. So he had come up with the notion of a private masque to be played before a select audience. And, more than a select audience,
Masque of Peace
was to be played by a select cast. You can’t get much more select than the Queen of England.
    The performance was scheduled for a week’s time. Our masque was to herald the imminent outbreak of peace, which was a foregone conclusion. In truth the Spanish party was not in London to negotiate – since such a large and grand group would never have set sail from Spain if the outcome was in doubt – but to seal a treaty. I did not need Giles Cass to tell me that. The actual swearing of the peace would be staged at the Chapel Royal in Whitehall in the presence of the King. The performance at Somerset House was to be a first course for that event. I didn’t know the behind-the-scenes detail but I guessed that this was Anne of Denmark’s way of marking the event, as well as uniting two of her causes. Her partiality both for Spain and for the drama was well known.
    By this stage I’d reached Temple Bar by the Inns of Court. Near here, in Middle Temple during the dying days of Elizabeth’s reign when we were still known as the Chamberlain’s Men, we’d played in WS’s
Troilus and Cressida
. Beyond Temple Bar stretched the Strand with its fine mansions, including Somerset or Denmark House, now a temporary nest of Spaniards. The Blakes’ mansion stood several hundred yards before Somerset House. It wasn’t quite as grand but it would do to be going on with.
    I identified myself as a player at the gatehouse and the doorkeeper waved me through. He had a large, hairy wart on his cheek and if you’d asked me afterwards what he looked like or even whether he had two heads, I wouldn’t have been able to describe him. Just the large, hairy wart. An ample courtyard extended in front of a fine house-front. Although I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, I was a little overawed by the scale of the place and so was pleased to see Ben Jonson standing in a shady spot in the yard. He was deep in conversation with another man. Together they were examining a sheet of paper.
    Not wanting to disturb them by calling out, I coughed and Jonson looked up. He squinted into the sunlight as I approached.
    â€œAh, it is you, Nicholas. Wait there an instant.”
    Obediently I stopped. The other man was a short fellow with a lined face. Jonson nudged his companion and said, “How about
him
, Jonathan Snell?”
    The short man looked me up and down.
    â€œNine and a half, I’d say,” he said.
    There was a pause.
    â€œWell, Revill,” said Ben Jonson. “Is he right? Yes or no.”
    â€œI’d have a better idea of yes or no