"Burgess, Anthony - Enderby Quartet 04 - Enderby's Dark Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burgess Anthony)

"O Jesus," Ben prayed. "Jack Marston."
It was Marston, true, drunk, true, but able to see, mainly from the bulk, who stood in his path. "Jonson, cheat, rogue, liar, ingrate, thief too. I am out now, see, and have learned all. Graaagh." The sound was of blood rising in the throat.
"You speak too plain to be true Marston. Where be your inkhorn nonsensicalities? Thief, you say. No man says thief to Jonson. Any more," he added to Fawkes, "than he says spy."
"Thief I say again. You said that you would pay me when Henslowe paid you, that Henslowe had not paid you, therefore you could not pay me. But Henslowe has paid you, has, thief. I was with him this night, I saw his account book. Draw, thief." He drew himself, though staggering.
"If it is but six shilling and threepence you want, let us have no talk of drawing. Come to my lodgings and you shall have a little on account. I will not have that thief, Jack. I am a man of probity and of religion."
"Of that we hear too," Marston cried. "The lactifluous nipples of the Christine genetrix and the viniform sanguinity of the eucharistic abomination. Draw."
"Very well." Ben sighed and unsheathed his short dagger. "I have killed, Jack," he said, "and my adversary was sober. I killed Gab Spencer, remember, and he too said thief." Ben now saw the reflection of flames in a bottle-paned window. Torches lurching round the corner of Cow Lane. Four men with swords and cudgels, the watch. With relief he lunged towards Marston. Lunging, he saw Fawkes flee. Wanted no trouble, right too, right for his filthy cause. Marston thrust, tottered, fell. Ben sheathed his dagger and leapt onto Marston's back, took his ears like ewer handles and began to crack his nose into the dirt of the cobbles. Then the watch was on him.
It was four of the morning when Will received the message to go at once to the Marshalsea. A boy hammered at the door below and Will went to his window, Mountjoy in his nightshirt also appearing, a minute later, at his.
"Mester Shakepaw?"
"Approximately. What, boy?"
"Mester Jonson in the jail do want ye naow vis minik."
"He wants money?"
"I fink not sao. E gyve me manny, a ole groat, see ere."
"Go away, garsoon," Mountjoy cried harshly, "discommoding the voisinage so. We desire no parlying of prisons in this quartier. It is a quartier respectable."
"I'll come," Will sighed. "I'll come now."
Few were sleeping in the Marshalsea. There was a kind of growling merriness, with drink, cursing, fumbling at plackets, gaming, a richer though darker version of the dayworld of the free. There was even a one-eyed man selling hot possets. Will listened, sipping, to Ben's story. "The names," Ben said, "take down the names."
"I can remember well enough of the names."
"You cannot. You are poor at remembering. You cannot remember even your own lines. Take your tablet, take down the names. And then to Cecil."
"Now?"
"Now, yes. Easy enough for you. You're a groom of the bedchamber, a sort of royal officer."
"This is no jape?"
"This is by no manner of means a jape, God help us. Go. I am, thank God, safe enough here. Cecil will understand all that, why I wish to be shut away. I am safe enough here till he has them."
"I will write them down, then."
"Do, quick. Then go."
"So," Will said. "Kit is truly your master. Though look where his spying got him. A reckoning in a little room. Keep off it, Ben. Playwork is duller and pays less well. But it is safer."
"Go now. He will be up. He does a day's work before breakfast."
Will sat, in groom's livery, too long in the anteroom. He had spoken of his business to secretaries of progressively ascending status, and none would come alive to the urgency of it. One had even said: "If you would speak of plots for new plays, then must you go to the Lord Chamberlain. Here be grave matters in hand."
"You will be at no graver work than the scotching of this that I tell you of." Weary, three hours gone by, Will took to sketching of a drinking song he had been asked for by Beaumont, something for a comedy to be called Have at You Now Pretty Rogue or some such nonsense:

Red wine it is the soldier's blood
And if it be both old and good
So take a rouse
And let's carouse
And

Strange, he had been infected by Ben's feigned unreformed eucharisticism. No, it was tother way around. Blood turned to wine, not wine to. His head was spinning with lack of sleep, he needed much sleep these days, past his best, looking westward. He began to calculate his fortune in real estate, but that led him to things needful to be done in Stratford. The load of stone still encumbering the grounds of New Place and neither paid for yet by the Council nor taken away. His brother Gilbert had written of some odd useful acres he might -- He was shaken to here and now by the top secretary, who said:
"You are to come in. And quickly, rouse. My lord speaks of urgency."
"He was not very urgent in speaking of it."
"Come your ways."
Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, big-headed and dwarf-bodied, stood with his hunchback turned to the great seacoal fire. Papers, papers everywhere. He said:
"I am glad, albeit it be brief, to make acquaintance of the man. The plays I know. Your Amblet was fine comedy. What is this story?"
Will told him. "And Master Jonson fears for his life now. He deserves, if I may say this, my lord, very well of you."
Cecil picked up a letter from his desk. "This has but now come to me. You know of a certain Francis Tresham Esquire?"
"His name is, I think, on the list I gave."
"He has a brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle. Lord Monteagle has sent me a letter from this Tresham, and it saith nought but this: "They shall receive a terrible blow this parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them. The danger is past as soon as you have burnt this letter." As you see, it was not burnt, nor will it be. I am conveying it at once to His Majesty. So what you bring from Master Jonson conjoined with this does but confirm what the King will say he knew all along, that he hath enemies." Cecil smiled very thinly. "Moreover, it would seem that his dreams are often charged with what may be termed a memoria familiaris. Blowing up comes much into them. His father, the Lord Darnley, was, as you will know, blown skyhigh at Kirk-o-Fields in Scotland while his royal mother was dancing at some rout or other. So, I thank you for this your loyal work --"
"A tragedy, good my lord."
"It might well have been so."
"No, no, my play, which some call Hamlet."
"Was it so? I remember laughing. Now I will remember the intention was tragic. And remember too to have Master Jonson out of the jail where he languisheth as soon as the conspirators be apprehended." Cecil gave his hand, very crusty with rings, to Will. Will was not sure whether he was meant to kiss it. But he shook it sturdily and left.
When Ben Jonson was let out of jail he went straight to William Shakespeare's lodgings in Silver Street and said: