To my surprise my search was soon rewarded. Tucked in the angle between the base of the counter and a floor-board was a small square of paper. I unfolded it and could see the marks of writing, but the light was too poor to make out what it said, or even whether it contained words or symbols. The chances were that it was some recipe, made of ants’ tongues and maidens’ tears, to cure the pox or love-sickness. As I was crouching over this little scrap of paper somebody tapped me on the back of my neck! I must have shrieked or shouted. Certainly I jumped several feet back towards the door. My heart was thudding furiously and there was a roaring sound in my ears. I had my hand on the door, ready to pull it open and dive out into the street, when a quieter voice inside, the voice of second thoughts, told me to wait.
The tap wasn’t the tap of a person. Whatever had struck me on the neck was now sliding slowly down my backbone. My first idea was that it was the water which I had heard intermittently dripping in the darkened shop and which I had assumed, without thinking, to be the result of some half-completed experiment or spilled container. But now, even as the idea came clearly in words, I rejected it. Experiments aren’t carried out on the ceiling, and this was where the drip had come from. And water is cold, particularly when it slides down the back of your neck. This little stream was slow-moving and neither warm nor cold. It shared my body heat.
I put my hand up to feel. Then I rubbed my thumb and fingers together. They came away sticky and I knew why. Blood was dropping from the ceiling of the apothecary’s shop. I looked up. My eyes were more used to the darkness now, but it was still hard to make out the objects that swung there. They were simply shapeless, and monstrous. The unicorn’s horn, the mermaid’s tail and the tortoise shells appeared to be implements of torture from hell. The alligator seemed to wink at me with his unmoving eye and I realised with cold horror that the shape suspended from the shop ceiling was no river-beast but a man’s body. As quickly as I had decided that the shape was human came the certainty that, bundled together and trussed up over my head, was all that remained on earth of the wrinkled apothecary. He hung there, the blood in his veins gradually seeping on to the warped wooden floor.
‘And so an end.’
I startled myself with the sound of my own voice. I had time to consider that this was a strange thing to say – even time to reflect that perhaps it was a line from some play. It sounded like a play. It is strange what things will float to the surface of the mind when it scarcely knows itself. Then I had time also to consider that my voice was changed. And then I had further time to wonder whether this was, after all, my own voice or whether it did not belong to one of the shapes that seemed to grow out of the darkness around me. Even as I felt a blow to the back of my neck and others on my head, I was glad to solve this tiny mystery of whose voice it was. It belonged to one of the black shapes that was beating me. It was not my own.
And then everything descended, joltingly, into darkness.
ACT IV
Now, this business was not to be as straightforward as the killing of Francis.
Francis was no more than a simple servant and easily ordered and led, even though at the last moment when he knew that he was going to die he showed unexpected spirit in trying to escape from me.
But Old Nick was a different kettle of fish, a much more slippery customer. I’d had dealings with him before of course. What man past a certain age in London has not needed the potions, lotions and ointments of such a master-mixer, either to stimulate the appetite before love or to cure its ravages afterwards? Also, he prepared much that was useful when slipped into a lady’s cup.
Therefore it was with regret that I decided that Old Nick too would have to go. His absence will be keenly felt among men and women of a particular age and class. Nevertheless, only a fool hesitates between a lesser evil and a greater one – I mean, the loss of another’s life or the loss of one’s own. Because I am afraid that Master Nicholas Revill, in his blundering pursuit of Francis’s shirt and the marks on its sleeve, may be coming a little too close to the truth. One thing may lead to another: a stained sleeve, the means of a secret murder, the identity of the murderer.
I have a less reasonable fear. I have seen for myself that strange facility which Old Nick the apothecary possesses – possessed, I should say. How, often, when he is grasping a fragment of clothing or a personal ornament (ring, brooch), he is able to track down something of the past fortunes or the future fate of its owner. He is like a dog put on the scent. Why, once when I wished to discover whether a certain lady was remaining faithful to me, I brought him an item of apparel which she had worn next to her body. He enjoyed pawing and sniffing at that, and then, tail up and nose to the ground, he was off. I was startled when he spoke in my lady’s voice, and more startled still when the old man began to cry out in the words and accents that she was accustomed to use with me in the privacy of the bed. Even though the words and cries issued from his withered mouth, I felt myself becoming aroused to hear her in him.
When he had recovered I asked if he had seen anything in his fit. He told me that he could never see clear and continuous, but that it was like a landscape glimpsed during thunder and lightning: sharp, quick pictures that were gone before you were able to seize hold of them. Nevertheless he had, he told me, the sensation of being roughly but pleasurably used, and he sniffed again at the piece of clothing as though he would drink up her folded scents through his nostrils. ‘Who was using her?’ I demanded. And Old Nick described the man, though imperfectly seen as through a veil of sweat and delight. All this was some time ago; I have forgotten exactly what the apothecary said. Perhaps I did not listen after I had heard enough to know that the man with my lady was not me. The answer I received was, as I had expected, that she had not remained faithful. Thus I had the licence to make my lady pay for her trangression and pay she did.
It was this facility in the apothecary to see and hear others over a distance of time and space, others whom he had never seen or heard in the flesh, that made me fearful in the matter of Francis’s shirt. For I could not be sure what might be revealed as he smelled after the hapless servant. Nor was it sufficient to recover the shirt by stealth and leave Old Nick to his own devices. There was no telling what or who the old man might tell in turn.
I visited the shop in Paul’s churchyard. I had recruited our false steward Adrian to stand guard over the door in case Old Nick and I should be disturbed. Ever since that business with Francis I have found Adrian to be more and more serviceable. He has evidently decided that his character is better suited to a life of out-and-out villainy than one of petty gains and thievery in an important household. In fact, he has acquired his own little band of disreputable followers. He grows into those traces of the demonic which he is fond of affecting: the black clothes, the black looks. Without boasting, I may say he aspires to the condition of ruthlessness and looks up to me as a model of what might be achieved.
Once inside the dark interior I call out for Old Nick and he appears, pat, from the back quarters.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he says in that tone which tells me that I am not altogether welcome. His voice has a youthful sweetness and doesn’t match its withered old source. Perhaps it is no more his, really his, than the voices which he produces during his fits.
‘It is I,’ I say, ‘come to visit my old friend, Old Nick.’
‘What do you want this time? More of the mixture which will get your lady into bed? Or one that will get her out of it for good?’
‘I require something for an enemy,’ I say.
‘A love potion?’
‘A poison.’
‘Who for this time?’
‘The world.’
‘But you have already procured poison from me, have you not?’
In saying this he has signed and signed again the death warrant which I have brought with me, and yet does not seem to know it.
When I needed the mixture to pour down Sir William Eliot’s ear, in imitation of the way in which th
e villain Claudius pours poison into the sleeping head of old King Hamlet, I naturally turned to Old Nick. Old Nick the master-mixer for love and death, he who will provide lotions and solutions for all events. But the apothecary knew me only as a pursuer of ladies, and I did not wish to reveal myself to him as a purchaser of poison. You see, I have some scruples. So I rented a dumb man in Shoreditch and instructed him to take a paper having my requirements written on it to Old Nick. And told him, be sure to bring back the same paper to me with the mixture. You see, I am careful.
So I thought I was free and clear. There was nothing to connect me to the purchase of the poison, the piece of paper being long since returned and destroyed, and the dumb man of Shoreditch being unable to reveal who sent him to fetch and carry.
But, in this case of murder, I have discovered that you are never free and clear. Once it is done there are a thousand subtle cords that bind you to the act, and each time you snap one you discover that you are still tethered to the deed by the rest. And new cords and cables seem to grow faster than you can break the old ones.
I wondered how the old apothecary knew, whether it was his power of seeing-through-touch. Maybe he had needed only to handle the note brought by the Shoreditch man to be aware of who had really sent it. But, however he knew of the poison which I had caused to be bought, here was another cable connecting me to the death of Sir William, and of Francis, too. A living cable.
He waits for me to say something.
I am surprised that this clever old man cannot foresee his own future – or rather its absence.
‘You have a shirt of mine,’ I say.
‘A shirt?’ He pretends ignorance.
‘Brought to you by a young player and his mistress.’
‘The whore Nell. I know her. But as to that shirt, it is not yours. It is a dead man’s.’
‘He wished me to have it. He told me so before he died.’
‘The young player thought it was his. In fact, he brought it to me so that I could make a repair to the sleeve.’
‘But you are not a tailor.’
‘He wished to discover who or what had caused the damage to the shirt.’
‘All this to-do over a cheap item of clothing. It is not worth repairing. It should have been buried with the dead man.’
‘I would say it is worth a man’s life,’ says the apothecary.
‘It cost him his,’ I say.
‘And others’ besides? There was poison on the sleeve.’
‘Then it was your own,’ I say. ‘Your mixture.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘There is no craftsman in London who has the skill to produce such a potent poison. I thought so when the shirt was first brought to me and a trial or two proved it.’
‘What else did you discover?’
‘A frightened man in the dark called Francis. And another frightened one now.’
‘It is yourself you mean. You know why I have come.’
‘I can see what you are about to do.’
‘You are old and weak,’ I say.
‘But I am not fearful as you are,’ says the impudent apothecary.
‘Why don’t you struggle or protest?’ I say, curious and diverted for an instant, for he stands calm on the other side of the counter.
‘To struggle against fate is futile.’
‘So this is your fate?’ I ask.
‘And yours,’ he says, at which I grow angry.
‘I cannot see an end to this,’ I say, feeling the heat rising beneath my face. ‘I want that piece of clothing.’
‘It is here,’ says Old Nick, producing it from beneath his counter.
‘Thank you,’ I say, grabbing the shirt with one hand and Old Nick with the other. I pull him across the counter, scattering boxes and glass-ware. When I have him on his front over the counter, I carefully place the shirt to one side, telling myself that this time I must remember to take it away. Then I place both hands round the scrawny neck of Old Nick and squeeze and squeeze. He is a tough old bird and my grip is awkward. Although he doesn’t put up a great struggle it seems a long time before his thin legs stop flailing and his withered body stops bucking up and down on the counter-top.
Then I call Adrian from where he has been standing watch outside the apothecary’s door. The man must get used to murder if he is to keep company with me. He swallows the sight of the body with hardly a gulp and then helps me to lower the alligator from its swinging perch. The alligator is hard and shiny and weighs little because it is hollow. We quickly bind up the withered old man and hoist him aloft in the beast’s place. He must have been cut in the struggle by shattered glass because blood begins to drip onto the floor.
Adrian asks why we are doing this and I say it is my humour. I am reminded of Hamlet’s stowing the body of Polonius in the lobby so that he can joke about it.
I tell Adrian that the corpse is expecting a visit from a friend of his, meaning Adrian’s, and the thieving steward asks who and I say, ‘Master Nick Revill, the player’ and even in the half-darkness of the dead man’s shop I see the other’s mouth twist in anger.
‘Perhaps,’ I say, ‘you would wait here until he arrives.’
I leave Adrian after giving him further instructions. As I walk briskly across Paul’s I notice the innocent figure of Master Revill making his way in the opposite direction. I am careful not to be seen. Underneath my doublet is stuffed the shirt that belonged to Francis. I smile and smile like a man in love with this fallen world. I take pains to keep my hands clenched because there is blood on my palms.
* * *
Darkness.
A jolting darkness.
At first I thought that my eyes were tight closed and so made to unfasten them. Either they would not open or they were open already – I could not tell, it was so dark. I attempted to reach up with my hand from where it lay awkwardly under my body, but my hand would not move. My hands were joined together. Next I tried to shift my legs but they too were fastened to each other.
I considered whether I was dead. Close by me were squeaks and squeals and, more distant, thuds and murmurs. This must be the afterlife. Was I in hell or purgatory with gibbering spirits keeping me company, either in torment or in mockery? Well, father, I thought, you were right. Here it is, and here am I in it. I shall describe purgatory. Complete darkness. Your body unable to move but shaken and jolted painfully every moment. No other feeling but aches and pains in every limb. Something close and stifling lying across your face. And tiredness, so that you want to sleep forever but cannot for the aches and pains and the jolting.
Nevertheless I must have slept – or somehow retreated from any knowledge of myself because, moments or hours later, I don’t know which, I went through the whole process again of coming to, and being unsure of whether my eyes were open or shut, and attempting once more to move my hands and feet.
Around this time the thought came to me clearly that I was not dead but alive, in pain and bound up by the hands and feet. I couldn’t see anything because there wasn’t anything to see. The stifling cover over my face and body was a stinking hairy blanket. The jolting motion and the squealing noise were caused by whatever I was being carried in, a cart or wagon most probably, as it jerked across the ground. The regular thuds turned themselves into the sound of a horse’s hooves. The murmurs were the low, occasional voices of the men travelling with me, my captors perched on the driving seat of the cart. The aches and pains in my body were proof not of the torments of hell but that I still had life.
I tugged at my hands but they were securely tied, I could feel the cord biting into my wrists and the backs of my hands. In my mind’s eye I traced back the path which had led to where I found myself now. The visit to Old Nick’s shop. The wait when I was convinced of being watched. The sight of the apothecary’s body swaying from the ceiling. The voice in the darkness saying ‘And so an end’. The blacker shapes growing up around me, blows raining down on my head. The descent into night.
As the conveyance bumped
and swayed on its way I tried to order my thoughts. Whoever the man – or men – who had done this to me, he or they had presumably murdered Old Nick as well. Although ignorant of the means by which the old apothecary had been forced through death’s door, I couldn’t doubt that he had been murdered and then grotesquely raised up into the place where his alligator normally hung. I was less certain about why he’d been killed, but the drowning of Francis, that poor servant’s river-stained shirt, the strange death of Sir William Eliot, together with the play of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, all these things bobbed in my mind like the confused flotsam of some sea-battle.
Why was I still alive? Where was I being taken, joltingly and painfully, in the back of a wagon under a stinking blanket? Since the individual who had disposed of Old Nick had taken me by surprise, why hadn’t he made an end of me there and then, and left me displayed at the apothecary’s? He might as well be hanged for two sheep as for one. Surely, since I was still living and breathing, it must be for a purpose. This gave me a little flare of hope. I was not required to die – or at least not yet. But then, I reflected, the hope that relies on the unknown purposes of a murderer must be slender indeed.
I twisted my head to one side, and winced as the after-pain of a blow forked down my side. I tried to peer under the blanket but there was not even the tiniest gap or cranny through which to see. Or if there was, it was night outside and nothing visible. I listened. No sound except the squeaking wagon and the plodding, panting horse, and the occasional murmured comment which I could not make out clearly. If I had been certain that there were people other than my captors at hand I would have called out. I would have cried, ‘Help! Ho! Murder!’ so loudly as to be heard from Spitalfield to Southwark. But I feared there was nobody to listen. There were no street sounds, no echoes of our passage coming back from walls or houses. We must be outside the city. If I could have thrown off the filthy blanket I would have been able to tell from the quality of the air whether we were within or outside the city walls. The smell of London was the first thing that struck me when I came up from the country.
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