And he was not the same. If prison broke
some part of him, it was a secret piece
below the cough he carried eighteen months
beyond the blessedness of his release.
Within his former swagger now, a limp
was hinted at: some slight imbalance stayed.
Behind each joke the deadly serious
would tug a gulp, provoke the listener’s stare.
And he was out of time; his laugh would ring
two beats beyond the point where some of us
would find things funny.
Yet the strangest jest
Tom ever played on us was losing faith
that the world would let him off on self-defence
another time. And so he wrote his end.
Three years would pass before we buried him.
Thrown into Limbo, Newgate’s deepest cell,
to await our pardons, and to join those souls
who spend their hours watching rodents fight
for a crumb of something rotten.
‘Fuck, the smell,’
says Watson, as we’re harried down the hall.
Gaol costs, and those who can’t afford to pay
to shit in a pot have smeared it on the walls.
Here, we’ll await the pardon of the Crown.
The stink of resignation follows us down.
The third night in, the gaoler lets me out
for a visitor who’s paid him handsomely.
And there, in a private room with a solid door,
is Robin Poley.
‘So. You’re faring well?’
‘The God of Shepherds come to find his strays?’
He likes the metaphor. ‘A little beer?’
He passes a jug across. He has a face,
as Watson said, uncoupled from his thoughts.
A windless lake that mirrors the serene
even when lightning cracks the sky above.
I wanted more than drink.
‘Some paper and ink?
A decent quill? A pen-knife?’
‘Not in here.’
‘But you can get me out?’ I say. Again,
that lake of a face shows only silver calm
over its fatal depths.
‘Come sit,’ he says,
proof that the man can smile and slip the noose
over your head before you feel a thing.
‘I cannot bear to be here,’ I begin.
‘The shit, the fleas—’
He stops me. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The Queen’s own servant, are you not?
No livery, grant you; you’re of a higher grade.
A trusted agent, and a royal tutor.’
I gaze at his throat. ‘No doubt that’s over now.’
‘Not so, my friend. Your Poley had a word.
Her guardians were most distressed to know
about your mother’s sudden death.’
‘Her death?’
‘Indeed. You must remember that she’s dead
next time you need excuses.’
‘But she’s not—’
His smile is broad. Untrustworthy as fog.
‘I’ve no idea. Shall I send someone to check?’
I take a seat. I let him pour me beer.
‘An event is like a coin,’ Rob Poley says,
palming an angel deftly out of sight
and back again. ‘It has two faces. You
might see them both, or choose to muse upon
the one side only. Most folk here see tails:
the arse-end of the problem … like the stench.
But on the reverse: our queen, all majesty,
and the cool suggestion one might use one’s head.
There are advantages to prison life.’
‘The exceptional banqueting?’
He meets my eye.
‘The food gets better for a little cash.’
‘Which I can’t earn in here.’
‘And yet, you can.’
The angel is gone; then reappears again
as if by its own free will. ‘A shortish stay
at Her Majesty’s pleasure brings its own rewards.
And you might learn something.’
‘To earn that coin?’
I wish I could say I had no need of it.
I tried to affect disdain. It didn’t fit,
my poet’s poverty too overgrown
to wear indifference lightly.
‘It is yours.’
It’s flipped to the air and, like a falcon’s beak,
my hand has snapped it cold. ‘Look closely now.
And judge the weight of it. Test that it gives
like a woman’s flesh between your teeth.’
I test.
‘Seems good enough,’ I say, and slip the coin
beneath my belt. I scrutinise his face
for the fading pleasure of a punctured ball
but Poley is unmoved. ‘It might prove hard
to break so large a sum; you’d rather change?’
‘I’ll keep the gold.’
He hefts a heavy pouch
of lesser coins. ‘I’ll give you twice the value
in pence and ha’pennies.’
I weigh the offer.
‘All right,’ I say. ‘Let’s see them.’
He makes stacks
and I inspect them, tally them, and then
surrender my angel.
Poley’s smile’s unchanged,
and yet I sense a satisfaction there
as though he’s swallowed something.
‘Yes indeed,’
he says. ‘The highest quality I’ve seen.
You’re smart, yet they got by you. You’ve been gulled.
How much more easily fooled the common man:
the grocer, the soldier and the publican.’
It dawns on me. I’ve swapped my gold for dirt.
‘But coins this small are never counterfeit!’
‘Sadly untrue,’ he says. ‘Still you can spend
that shit in here. The light is very low.’
I pick out a penny, turn it, looking close
as I’ve ever looked upon the Queen’s gnarled head.
‘Perhaps there’s something off,’ I say.
He nods.
‘And yet you’d hardly notice, you’ll agree.
It’s expert stuff. And there are chests of these
buying rebellion on the continent.
You know of Sir William Stanley?’
I adopt
that look I practised in the glass when young:
unwashed contempt. ‘The man who quelled the Irish,
but gave Deventer to the Spanish. Yes.
England’s most famous turncoat. What of him?’
Poley is like a draught beneath the door
that slides around one’s ankles barely felt,
then whispers up the spine.
‘He has command
of a regiment of soldiers near Zutphen.
He keeps his troops in beef with coins like these,
having spent all legal funds. This is much more
than a treasonable insult to the Queen
and Lord Treasurer Burghley. It feeds mutiny.
It pays those who are only building strength
to slit the throats of fellow Englishmen.
We cut those strings, the threat will melt away.’
‘What can I do in here?’
Rob Poley’s face
is an unturned hour-glass. ‘Why, you make friends.’
His foot, snapped like a belt against the floor,
flattens a cockroach. Now tapped from his sole.
‘There is one Poole, a prisoner you might know
thrown here on a misdemeanour. He made these.’
He touches one as if it’s a weevily biscuit.
‘At least, we think he did. We have no proof.
We found him shaven-headed, like a priest,
loaded with coins and not far from the coast.
Sir William Stanley’s sister is his wife.
That’s all I’ll tell you. You’ll tell me the rest.’
‘And when I do?’
‘If you get in with Poole
there will be more employment in the world
outside these walls.’ He rises from his chair
and calls for the guard. ‘Poole’s brother-in-law is cousin
to Ferdinando Stanley, future Earl
of Derby. He keeps a troupe, Lord Strange’s Men,
who masquerade as players, though they act
abominably, in my view.’
There’s the latch
undoing our meeting. ‘You, I hear, write plays.’
‘When I’ve the time.’
‘I’ll leave you with this thought.
A servant of Lord Strange would have the time.’
John Poole, a big man, like a side of beef
hung till the blood drains out of it, just chews.
‘Limbo. The biggest joke is in the name:
we’re in a place the State denies exists.’
He doesn’t fence a smile. ‘If you’re amused
in eighteen months, explain the humour then.’
‘You’ve been here eighteen months?’
‘And seven days.
I don’t need friends.’
That told me. But a week
of watching me cross myself before I eat
and he has softened up.
‘You keep the faith?’
‘This? It’s a mime to scare the flies away.’
His grimace is a gift of blackened teeth.
‘That’s good. I’ll try that one.’
He eyes the bread
that I’ve paid extra for. Watson’s asleep;
shedding the time.
‘They say he killed a man,
your friend.’ Poole nods at him. ‘He don’t look tough.’
‘How looks deceive. Were we to go by looks
I’d say you were a shaven-headed priest
whose locks grew out.’ He cackles. ‘So you heard.
Arrested for a haircut.’ Runs his hand
across the lank lengths of his grown-out sides,
the crop on a once-bald pate.
‘You’re not a priest?’
He laughs. ‘No Latin. I
dressed
as a priest.
For a private joke on my sister’s wedding day.
A crime of clothing, though no law exists
until they make one up.’ Those teeth again,
like headstones, lean and list above his gums
as though the land has slipped. He slides his back
down the wall and sits beside me. ‘Sir. You seem
like a gentleman,’ he says, ‘whose charity
I’d not want to abuse. But I am short
of the grease that moves the gaolers. Would you have
a groat or two for a brother?’
Now, my purse
is fat with coppers which the very hand
that asks for them has minted. What to do?
I think of Ned; how he can wear a thought
or state of being, shrug on innocence
and make it fit. I put the broth aside,
with its balanced bread, and hand him several bits
which he slides, no questions, underneath his belt.
Fear has my stomach clenched, I don’t pick up
my bowl again. ‘Are you not having that?’
he asks. ‘I’m full.’ He grabs it like a thief
would grasp a chicken by its neck, and eats.
And after wiping his mouth, he’s glad to talk.
‘You know Lord Strange?’ he asks, thus saving me
two days of round-the-houses. ‘He’s the cousin
of my brother-in-law. My father dines with him.
I have connections, see. Your kindness here
will add to your account when you get out.
You’re getting out, I take it.’
‘Yes, due course.
Both of us filed a plea of self-defence.
You?’
‘When the wind slides round. Which I think it will.’
‘You do?’
‘Connections.’ Taps his nose.
Some men
fear they might fade away unless they talk,
and will at the smallest chance unleash their thoughts
to anyone who’ll listen. And John Poole –
whose best advice is keep things to yourself –
is one of those. I’m blessed.
‘My brother-in-law.
Sir William Stanley. You’ll have heard of him.’
‘Christ!’ I shush him. ‘Not in here. The guards—’
‘They’re deaf as posts, I tell you.’ My attempt
at quieting him provokes a greater urge
to spill himself. ‘He keeps a company
of disgruntled soldiers, growing by the day.
He speaks of religious freedom on these shores.
A Catholic Head of State.’
‘But this is—’ Here,
I stop myself to barely mouth the words.
‘
But this is treason!
’
‘She is getting old.’
His whisper would reach back to the cheapest seats.
His cupped hand doesn’t shield, but magnifies.
‘I don’t say kill her; though I know some do.
Simply, when death vacates the English throne
some Catholic will replace her. And the gaols
will be for Protestants.’ His fingers spread
to offer our grim surroundings to the foes
that occupy his head. He fiercely smiles.
Watson drifts over. ‘Kit. You coming back?’
‘Up!’ is the word that sends us to our cells.
It was a fearsome and unbalanced smile
that I adjusted to in several weeks
over the conversations as he poured
his life into my hands. Until one night,
returned from ablutions, with his hands still wet,
he had me by the throat, pinned to the wall,
lavender sickly over the smell of shit.
‘You tricked me,’ he says.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Don’t pretend
you don’t know anything. Your money’s bent.’
Believe your innocence.
(Thanks, Ned.) My eyes
must speak for my closed-down windpipe, and they do:
he drops me like a wool-sack. Rubbing my throat,
‘You mean it’s worthless?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because it’s mine. I made it.’ If the guard
ten yards away has heard, he doesn’t care.
‘I hadn’t seen it closely, in the light,’
he spits, as if I’d called him stupid. No,
neither had I. Light was in short supply.
He comes at me, ‘Which suits you, weasel man!’
Getting me by the collar leaves my throat
a corridor of air to answer him.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘From my cousin, sir.’
‘Where did he get it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say,
squeezed like a pimple in his pinching hands.
‘He gave it to me’ (coughing) ‘so that I
would not die here for want of sustenance.
I didn’t question where it came from. Why
would I suspect him?’
‘Why would I trust you?’
Poole growls. ‘Has your cousin ever been abroad?’
and he twists my collar. ‘Often,’ I reply,
though the word’s half lost for choking. ‘Often, sir.
He is a soldier. Half his life’s abroad.
Recently Flushing. And he plays at cards,
perhaps he won it.’
Like a house at night
where a fiercely burning candle’s pulled away
from a window, and seen flickering elsewhere,
at the back of other rooms, or up the stairs,
Poole’s thinking pulls away from murdering me.
He lets me slide on to the earth, sits down.
‘I couldn’t know it wasn’t real,’ I say.
I dig some coins from the purse beneath my belt.
‘It still looks real to me. Extraordinary.
Do you jest with me? You made this?’
‘Yes.’ He nods.
And on some grains of truth, I build a plinth
to set us on again. Within an hour
he’s marvelling at coincidence and Fate:
and how two brothers, for we almost were,
might use some slivers of cathedral plate
that he had minted for a higher cause
to buy some privy time, and newer beef.
And I am complimenting him on work
so finely wrought that very few would know
except perhaps himself.
‘It is an art.’
He glows.
‘Astonishing. How do you make
the points so fine?’
He grins.
‘There is a method.’
He mimes an action, but does not enlarge.
‘Obtaining silver is the harder part.
The higher coins are better worth my skill.’
‘I have a friend,’ I say, ‘a noble friend
whose greatest interest is in alchemy.
He has a well-equipped laboratory.’
‘A wizard?’ Poole is wary.
‘No, an earl.
Northumberland.’
Thus are our goods exchanged:
his counterfeiting knowledge swapped for hope
that basest metals might transmute to gold.
The information that I gleaned from him
will only lead me further up the chain.
His parting gift the day I am released:
a letter of introduction to Lord Strange.