Interred with Their Bones

by Jennifer Lee Carrell

  It wouldn’t be unpleasant, she remembered thinking at the time. The boy—Will—was certainly beautiful enough—golden of hair and skin, quicksilver of wit. She had noticed him from his first appearance in Shakespeare’s company, noticed the older man’s eyes following him, though whether this was because young Will was kinsman, protégé, or lover she could not tell and had not asked. He was obviously, in some manner, beloved.

  “Why?” she’d asked, when the poet’s pleading subsided. Not meaning, “Why should you wish it?” Meaning simply, “Why me?”

  Because Will had never noticed her. She was accustomed to the force of men’s eyes upon her; even men who quickened only for other men usually appreciated her as a work of art. But William Shelton was different. He had seen her, that much she knew. They had spoken, once or twice. But he had never noticed her.

  “Why?” she’d asked again.

  Shakespeare had stopped at the window, gripping the sill. “He dreams of becoming a priest.” He’d looked around, and only then had she seen the despair in his eyes. “A Catholic priest. A Jesuit.”

  In spite of herself, she’d shuddered. Answering directly to the pope, the Jesuits saw themselves as soldiers of Christ, dedicated to carrying Truth into the most dangerous corners of the heathen world. Which included England, so long as England and her heretic queen clung to the Protestant faith. Queen Elizabeth’s ministers, however, took another view. They abhorred the Jesuit order as a nest of religious fanatics, endlessly plotting to kill the queen, restore a Catholic monarchy to England’s throne, and drag the whole English populace through the hellfires of the Inquisition, with Spanish swords at their throats.

  It was treason for a Jesuit so much as to step foot into England. They came, all the same. They were hunted without mercy, and when they were caught, they were tortured with all the fiendish inventions the queen’s interrogators could think up. What was left was turned over to the executioner.

  The thought of the boy’s lithe golden beauty subjected to those agonies made her pale.

  It wasn’t uncommon for Irish families with many sons to designate one for the priesthood. But Will’s brothers, said Shakespeare bitterly, had instilled in him a yearning for martyrdom, and they were in a position to help him achieve it. They were creatures of the Howards, and though loudly, publicly Protestant whenever necessary to save their skins, in private the Howards were known to be Catholic to save their souls. Led by the serpentine earl of Northampton and his nephew, the earl of Suffolk, they were also rumored to be on the king of Spain’s payroll. If anyone could help a young Englishman find safe passage to enemy Spain and the forbidden haven of a Jesuit seminary, it would be the Howards, who did penance for their own spiritual waffling by aiding the zeal of others.

  No wonder Shakespeare was desperate. She had crossed the room and set her hands on his shoulders in pity. He had run one finger along the line of her cheek and down into the hollow of her throat. “You could teach him to want something else,” he’d said.

  As a challenge, it interested her. She had sparred with wives and sweethearts, with boys and men, for the hearts of their beloveds—and almost always she had won. But she had never yet sparred with God. She had been on the point of agreeing when she realized the extent of the request. Shakespeare was not just asking her to seduce the boy. He was asking her to satisfy him.

  For a moment, she had been tempted to walk out and never return. She was not a whore, whose temporary services he could buy or win at a wager. She was not a wife, whose permanent services he had bought at a rate somewhat more dear, and might count himself able to transfer. She was her own woman, and while she liked a good tease—and was not beyond selling that at the price of a fine jewel or a new gown—her love was given, not bought. It stung her to the quick that he should so fear for the boy’s unscratched beauty that he should ask her to prostitute hers.

  Deep within, she had felt a slow glowering vengefulness swell into being. She would seduce Will, yes, but she would not stop there. At the same time, she would seduce Shakespeare all over again, until both poet and youth burned for her with fires that would not be put out. And when the time was ripe, she would see that both of them knew it.

  So she had draped herself in silk and pearls, and arranged her black hair in long shining falls, and she had gone from the poet to the boy, luring Will into a web of music, candlelit delight, and longing, honey and gall, until he was caught fast. And all the while, she’d been aware of Shakespeare sitting in the high-backed chair in the hall below, staring into the heart of the fire.

  Several months ago, that had been.

  Through the gap in the curtain, she saw Will cross himself, and a flush crossed the creamy skin of her breast.

  Just yesterday, wandering around Shakespeare’s chamber below, she’d come upon a poem quite by accident, and before she knew what it was, she had read the first line. Two loves I have of comfort and despair. She’d pulled back as if bitten. She did not like to read his words unasked. It felt like a violation.

  Perhaps if he had not kept her waiting, she would not have been tempted to continue. But the line nipped and plucked at her mind. No doubt he meant himself as that bewildered “I,” but it fit her as well. So when he had not come, she’d read on:

  Two loves I have of comfort and despair,

  That like two spirits do suggest me still.

  The better angel is a man right fair,

  The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.

  Flames had risen in her cheeks. The poem was about her, but not for her. Colored ill? Worser spirit? Was that his measure of her?

  She looked back at the poem.

  To win me soon to hell, my female evil

  Tempteth my better angel from my side,

  And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

  Wooing his purity with her fair pride.

  It was what she had wanted, she told herself, this upwelling of jealousy and confusion. What she had not planned on was snaring herself in her own web. She had not planned on falling in love with Will.

  And whether that my angel be turn’d fiend,

  Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

  For being both to me, both to each, friend

  I guess one angel in another’s hell.

  The sonnet—if that was what it was meant to be—was unfinished, missing its final capping couplet. A small laugh of bitter triumph rose through her. If Shakespeare hadn’t finished it, it was because he couldn’t. He didn’t know how the story ended. She might be caught like a fly in her own web, but at least she knew the shape of the plot. She did not have to guess, as he did.

  Then another thought struck her. Had the poem been left out, had she been left alone, so she would see it? Was Shakespeare asking, indirectly, for an answer? Trolling for truth, with poetry?

  A pen and an inkwell lay nearby. Back and forth before the window she paced, her gown catching now and then on the rush matting. She had always meant for Shakespeare to learn the truth. But she could not risk a split with him. Not now. Not until she was sure that she could, by herself, sustain Will in turning a deaf ear to the attentions of his brothers and the offers of the Howards. So her answering taunt must be pitch-perfect.

  At last she picked up the quill, and carefully, tongue caught between teeth, set pen to paper.

  The Truth I shall not know, but live in doubt—

  She’d heard a noise outside the door. Laying down the quill, she’d crossed to the window and smoothed her gown, gazing unseeing at the garden below.

  If Shakespeare had seen, at a glance, what she had done, he’d said nothing. They’d made love that afternoon with unusual fervor, again and again, from late afternoon through the slow blue sigh of dusk, the scent of violets drifting through the open casement.

  When he could have finished the poem, she did not know. He had hardly gone from her side save to pour wine and bring it, foaming in a silver cup, to her as she lay spent in his bed.

  But as she left, candlelight
had shown her line capped by another, and the sonnet finished.

  Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

  It had felt like a slap across her hand, if not her cheek, in its bawdy lightness. A refusal, given in a grand flourish, to take seriously the poem, her love—anything at all save Will.

  Now, watching the boy at the altar, she realized that it had also been an admission. Shakespeare did not guess one angel in another’s “hell.” He knew. He just refused to admit it, and would go on doing so until it was all over and she had cast Will off. For that is how he assumed it would end: that he would be left holding the prize.

  In that instant she knew what she would do. No matter what it took, she would win. In the matter of Will Shelton’s heart, she would best Shakespeare, the Howards, and God.

  Flicking aside the tapestry hung across the chapel doorway, she walked into the room.

  At the sound of her steps, Will leapt to his feet, his hand going to his sword, but his eyes shone when he recognized her. “My lady,” he said with a bow.

  “You are careless,” she said. “I might have been anyone.”

  “This chapel is well hidden.”

  “I found you,” she observed with a lift of one brow.

  “I was not hiding from you,” he countered.

  She allowed him to brush her fingers with his lips, and then she leaned in close. “There is a painter waiting for you downstairs,” she murmured. “After that, if he is not too long, you may find someone else waiting for you in the garden.” With a promising smile, she swept away, leaving him with nothing but the scent of violets and a lingering hunger.

  ACT II

  14

  MY PENCIL ROLLED off the desk to the cork-tiled floor. I dived after it, hunching down, my back to the door, just as DCI Sinclair strode in with one of the guards, followed by two men in dark suits. At the main desk, the dark suits flashed some ID. “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” one of them said quietly to the librarian. I couldn’t make out the rest. Were they here for me?

  I went very still, peering over my shoulder at the crease in Sinclair’s trousers. The librarian padded out from behind the desk. “This way, please,” he said, and the little crowd at the main desk turned away, walking toward the other end of the reading room and out onto the bridge with its catalog and computers.

  I twisted to look up at Ben. “The British cop,” I mouthed.

  “Go,” Ben said quietly, without lifting his head from his book.

  “But I’ve only copied half—”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “I need the whole—”

  “Now.”

  Sliding my pad of paper from the table, I scrawled Bookstore across Mass. Ave.—Shakespeare section. Handing it to Ben, I rose and walked quickly to the door, and was buzzed out.

  In the lobby, the other guard sat in a pool of yellow light, studying the Boston Herald. He glanced up, squinting, as I walked toward him on shaky legs. I held up the pencil that was all I was carrying, and he lazily waved me on.

  Holding my gait just below a trot, I crossed to the locker room, grabbed my purse, and headed for the exit. Wet heat oozed around me as I pushed through the doors into the Yard. Behind, the locked door to the Reading Room buzzed once more. Glancing back in alarm, I barreled into somebody else on the library steps.

  Hands grabbed my shoulders, steadying me. “Kate Stanley!” exclaimed a light tenor voice. Dark golden hair and blue eyes came into focus beneath a worn Red Sox hat, and I recognized the stocky form of Matthew Morris. Harvard’s other Shakespeare professor. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Leaving.” Damn, damn, damn. This was no time for a chat. Especially with him.

  I pulled away, but his grip tightened. “I haven’t seen you in three years, and all I get is a good-bye without a hello? That’s rough.”

  “I thought you were in D.C. At the Folger,” I said with a spike of irritation.

  He was wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. Maybe because he was the scion of Boston Brahmins, he went out of his way to avoid all the clichés of the tweedy Ivy League professor. “I was, till the phone rang at an obscene hour this morning. It seems we’ve got a bona fide Shakespeare emergency on our hands, and I’ve been called back as the resident expert.”

  Cold air billowed around us as the door was flung open. I flinched and turned. A plump woman with short brown hair nodded at us curtly as she wheezed her way down the steps, carrying a stack of books and a bulging computer bag.

  “Little jumpy there, Kate,” observed Matthew, as she walked off.

  “Shakespeare emergency?” I shot back.

  He looked around and then leaned in close. “It’s the First Folio. After the fire last night, the Widener rotunda’s littered with partly charred pages and scraps of the Gutenberg, but so far, they’ve found no identifiable trace of the Folio. And the case that held the two books seems to have been tampered with.”

  The air around me seemed suddenly frigid. “What are you saying?”

  “It looks like the Folio may have been lifted before the bomb exploded.”

  A small square of moonlight and threat flared in my mind’s eye, a hand scrawled in blue ink jabbing across it: Enter Lavinia. A page ripped from a First Folio.

  “It’ll take some time to be certain,” added Matthew, “but it’s an intriguing possibility, since something similar seems to have happened at the Globe. Are you all right? You’re white as a sheet.”

  I pulled away. “I have to go.”

  “Wait.”

  At the bottom stair, I paused.

  “These last few days must have been hell for you.” His eyes crinkled with concern and regret. “Look. I don’t know what I did to piss you off in the first place, but give me a chance to make it up. Why don’t you meet me for a drink later? We can toast to Roz.” He smiled ruefully. “She’d have been the first to say it hasn’t been the same around here since you left…. You look great, by the way. Theater must be agreeing with you.”

  “Matthew—”

  “You won’t have to go out of your way; I’ll come to you. Where are you staying?”

  “The”—I caught myself—“the Inn at Harvard.”

  “Perfect. Let’s say the Faculty Club, then. Right across the street from the Inn. Five thirty.” He opened the library door, and another burst of cold air billowed out. Beyond, I heard the Reading Room door buzz once more.

  “Fine,” I lied, turning abruptly away. Walking as fast as I could down the length of the building, I rounded the corner and broke into a run, plunging into the archway that cut through Wigglesworth Hall. I emerged onto Mass. Ave., still thinking of Matthew’s news.

  The Folios were missing. Not destroyed. Missing.

  A bus roared by only a foot from my nose, blasting the blue-gray stench of diesel exhaust through my hair, already damp with sweat. Crossing the street, I walked over brick sidewalks toward familiar plate glass windows framed in black; across the top, neat gold lettering read HARVARD BOOK STORE.

  I stepped inside. Except for the books displayed in the front window, the place hadn’t changed since I’d left Cambridge. I made my way back toward the room devoted to literature. In the center stood shelvesful of Shakespeare. I stopped in front of them, dragging a finger across the books, my mind elsewhere.

  Up until about fifteen minutes ago, I’d assumed that the Chambers clue would explain in some way Roz’s reference to the Jacobean magnum opus, A.D. 1623: the First Folio. But Chambers had spun around to point toward Cardenio, while the First Folio seemed to be disappearing down another path altogether. Literally, if Matthew was right.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. At least the Folios weren’t being destroyed, burned at the stake one by one. On the other hand, if the son of a bitch who’d chased me through the library wasn’t destroying them, he was taking them. Which meant he wanted them. Badly.

  For what?

  Surely both the letter and the Folios led to the same place, in
the end: a Shakespearean manuscript, hopefully still covered in a thick velvet layer of dust.

  Did he know what he was looking for? Maybe not, since he’d moved so quickly from one copy of the Folio to another—and even to a third, if you counted the facsimile taken from Roz’s office. But no: He must have had some idea what he was doing. Who would risk stealing from the well-guarded treasure houses of the Globe and Widener and then cover their tracks with fire, on no more than a whim and a chance?

  Much as I hated to admit it, the killer probably had a much clearer notion about what he was doing than I did. I had not a single decent lead on the Jacobean magnum opus.

  On the other hand, I had a letter about Cardenio. Or Houghton did, at any rate.

  Christ, I’d left the library so fast, I’d even left the crucial volume of Chambers’s Elizabethan Stage behind. I hoped tightly that Ben would remember that too.

  I scanned the store restlessly and peered through the windows to the street beyond. Where was he? What was taking him so long?

  He wasn’t a scholar. Would he have known what I meant by copying? Copying everything exactly, every misspelling and punctuation mark, no matter how awkward? I wanted Granville’s words, to be sure, but I wanted his idiosyncrasies and his errors too. It was precisely such oddities, so easy to smooth over without thinking, that were the faint footprints that gave direction to a scholar tracking the history and habits of a writer.

  I sighed. Until he showed up, the only three specific shards of information I had were the names Jeremy Granville and Francis Child, and Don Quixote in English translation. It didn’t take much effort to reason that an English play, tucked into an English translation, and lost “soon after its making,” must have been lost somewhere in England, hidden and then forgotten in some nook in a chimney, walled up in a tower room or a dungeon, or buried in a chest at the foot of a standing stone on some lonely moor. Granville’s spellings, I seemed to remember, were British.