The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [38]
He leant upon the rail and rested his head in his hands. Below him, past the line of portholes, the water slapped against the curve of the hull. And beneath that, what? Fathomless depths. Darkness and silence. How easy it would be to miss one's step, to pitch when the ship was tossing, and to tumble, alone and unnoticed, into that murky abyss. What was the nightmare that he had put in Clarence's mouth in The Tragedy of King Richard the Third? "Lord, Lord, methought what pain it was to drown: what dreadful noise of water in mine ears, what sights of ugly death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wracks; a thousand men that fishes gnawed upon; wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, all scattered in the bottom of the sea. Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept as it were in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems that woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep, and mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by."
He pulled his mind away from those morbid and somewhat flowery words, and found them migrating toward the play that they came from. Sudden anger surged up within him - or, at least, he thought it was anger. It might have been the last fragments of his breakfast. Not only had that zooterkin Christopher Marlowe stolen some of his themes for Edward II, but that coney-catching mountebank Francis Pearson had produced his own inferior copy and called it The True Tragedie of Richard the Third. Marlowe was dead, thank the Lord, and Pearson was a talentless hack who would never amount to anything, but there was no saying what was happening in London with Shakespeare gone. He could return to find his entire body of work being performed under other titles by inferior actors, with some upstart writer getting all the credit. Worse still, Macbeth was in rehearsal, ready to be performed before the King at Hampton Court Palace. What travesties might Richard Burbage and the rest of the King's Men commit upon it in his absence?
Perhaps he should think about returning to Stratford, his family and his grain-dealing business. Writing was a fool's game. Long hours, low pay and little praise.
Just like spying, really. "All right, Mr Hall?" Shakespeare almost didn't acknowledge the sailor walking past, but at the last moment he remembered his false identity - the one that Walsingham had persuaded him to take on for this mission. "Feeling a little unsteady," he replied.
"Get some victuals down your neck," the sailor shouted back over his shoulder.
"Thank you," Shakespeare muttered. "I'll try." He turned to stare across the damp boards at his fellow passengers, trying to distract his mind from the warring sensations of hunger and nausea. There were other Englishmen aboard, but they seemed to be avoiding him as assiduously as he was avoiding them. Their dress was old fashioned and much patched, and despite their gaiety he discerned some darker feeling within them, some hidden mood that could only be glimpsed in their eyes.
Or perhaps he was just being foolish. What had possessed him, agreeing to this absurd mission? His work as an informant and courier for Francis Walsingham, the Secretary of State whose network of agents and informers had been set up to protect the Queen from Catholic plots, had been fulfilling and financially rewarding. The work had taken him across Europe, from Denmark to Venice, and provided the raw material for many of his plays, but when Walsingham died Shakespeare had thought that he was free of the life of intrigue, free to return to grain dealing and acting. No such luck. Thomas