The Merchant of Vengeance

by Simon Hawke

  "You try to reason with her," Elizabeth said to Winifred in frustration. "I am reaching the end of my rope. Another shake of that head and so help me, I shall scream!"

  "You must calm yourself, Elizabeth, please," Winifred replied. "In her grief, perhaps she does not truly understand."

  "Then make her understand, for goodness sake!" Elizabeth replied, throwing up her hands. "This is taking us entirely too much time! We do not have all night! You try to talk some sense into her while I go and pack her things!"

  "Portia," Winifred said, crouching down before her and taking both her hands, "Portia, dear, please… listen to me. Elizabeth only has your best interests at heart, you know. We understand that you came here to be with her because you felt safe here. However, 'tis no longer safe for you here, can you understand that? Some terrible men came and took away your father, took him away I know not where, and I very much fear for his safety."

  Portia simply looked away from her without saying a word.

  Winifred took a deep breath and tightened her grip on the girl's hands. "Portia, dear, you must listen to me, please. Those men who came and broke into your house and tied me up and took your father… those men were asking about you. We believe that they were sent by Charles Locke… Thomas's father. Do you understand, Portia? He is an angry man, Portia, grief-stricken in his own way, just like you, and he wishes revenge for his son's death!"

  She turned and looked at Winifred.

  "You understand now, don't you?" Winifred continued earnestly. "We simply cannot remain here any longer. We have already tarried far too long. 'Tis growing late, and there is a chance that they may find us here, that they may find you here. Please, Portia, please.! We must leave now."

  Portia looked down, nodded, then slowly stood.

  "Good," said Winifred, feeling enormously relieved. "Come now, I shall help you with your cloak."

  A short while later, they came downstairs, with Elizabeth carrying her bag.

  "Is the coach still waiting?" Winifred asked nervously.

  "He had better still be waiting, or he shall not receive the extra wages that I had promised him," Elizabeth replied, handing Winifred the bag. "Go on, I shall be with you presently. Let me first instruct the servants what to do and what to say should anybody come."

  A few moments later, she pulled up the hood of her cloak and ran out into the rain. The coach was waiting, and Winifred and Portia had already climbed inside. The door was open, and the coachman was already up and waiting in his seat, prepared to leave the moment she got in. Thank Heaven, she thought, we are still in time.

  She called out their destination to the coachman, stepped up into the coach, and shut the door behind her. At once, the coachman gave a yell and whipped up the horses, and the coach moved off with a lurch and gathered speed.

  With a shock, Elizabeth suddenly realized that both Winifred and Portia were sitting blindfolded in their seats, their hands bound together in their laps. And they were not alone.

  "Good evenin'," said a dark-cloaked figure, sitting in the seat across from her, next to Winifred. Elizabeth gasped as she felt her bodkin quickly plucked from her belt inside her cloak. "yell not be needin' that, methinks."

  It took a moment for Elizabeth to get over her initial shock. Winifred sat beside the stranger, pale and frozen with fear. Portia sat stiff and immobile.

  "Nice little blade, this. Bit small for serious work, else I just might be tempted. Tell ye what… be a good lass an' give me no trouble, an' I just might give it back to ye when we are done."

  Elizabeth stared at her captor with sudden realization. "Why, you are a woman!" Winifred gasped with disbelief.

  "I was last time I looked," Moll Cutpurse replied. "But then he is not," she added, jerking her head toward the coach window. Elizabeth looked and caught her breath as she saw a swarthy face grinning in at her. There was a man hanging on to the outside of the coach. "An' neither is he," Moll added yet again, jerking her head toward the other window, in the coach door where Elizabeth had gotten in. There, too, a man was clinging to the outside of the coach, leering in at them. "An' there are three more up top," said Moll, pointing at the roof. "So be a good lass an' put this on, eh?" She tossed a blindfold onto Elizabeth's lap.

  Elizabeth hesitated, then picked it up with resignation and began to tie it on. "I know who you are," she said. "You are the infamous Moll Cutpurse. I have heard about you. And I believe I once saw you, at a wedding I attended."

  "I do believe ye did," Moll replied, in her lilting Irish brogue. "'Twas a lovely double wedding, too. You were a friend 0' the first couple, as I recall, an' I was a friend 0' the second. I do not believe that we were ever introduced on that occasion, but 'tis nice to be remembered, just the same. And now hold out yer hands, if ye would be so kind?"

  "We have a mutual friend, as well," Elizabeth continued, moistening her lips nervously as Moll finished tying up her hands. "I . I believe you know my friend Tuck. Smythe?"

  "I do, indeed," Moll replied, leaning back against the seat cushions. "That's him up there, drivin' the coach."

  Elizabeth stiffened abruptly. "What?"

  "Aye, he's drivin' the coach," repeated Moll. "We gave your coachman the rest 0' the night off. So just relax an' enjoy the ride."

  Elizabeth shook her head. "Nay, he could not be a part of this," she said. "He could not! You are lying!"

  "If ye had taken a closer look afore ye got in, ye would have seen that I am tellin' ye the truth," said Moll. "But yer kind never do look at the workin' classes very much, do ye? Beneath yer notice, as it were. However, ye can rest assured, Tuck did not have any choice in this. We have his friend Will. We took them both, just as we took you."

  "I thought you were a friend of his," Elizabeth said.

  "I am," said Moll. "He's a fine lad. Strappin' young man like that, he should have been born Irish."

  "Then why are you doing this?" Elizabeth asked.

  "Because one O' our own was murdered," Moll replied. "An' we want justice."

  "Justice," Elizabeth repeated softly, thinking back to what the cards had said at Granny Meg's. Disillusionment, bonds broken, misery and sorrow… it was all coming to pass.

  "What will happen to us?" Winifred asked fearfully. "Where are we being taken?"

  "To a trial," Moll replied. "An' this coach will come in right handy, thank ye kindly, for we have a few more people to pick up after we deliver you lot. 'Twill be a long night, methinks, but it promises to be an interestin' one."

  Shakespeare sat and listened as the witnesses came forward to give their testimony. In one respect, at least, he found that Mayhew had been right. So far as any sort of judicial hearing was concerned, this one was a mockery. He had attended several trials before, back home in Stratford, and he had some notion of what proper procedures were. None were truly being followed here.

  Criminals being criminals, they, too, had some notion of proper procedure in a trial, at least in an approximate sense, but as this was their trial, they followed their own procedure, and it had much more in common with the carnival atmosphere among the groundlings in a theatre yard than with a courtroom. Serving wenches circulated in the galleries and among the benches and the tables, carrying trays laden with breads and drinks and cheeses, all while testimony was being given, and on occasion a wench would be pulled down into a lap and bussed and squeezed until she squealed, which usually resulted in an outburst of raucous laughter from the onlookers, which in turn brought on another bout of hammer pounding from the dais.

  Mayhew sat stiffly, shaking his head in disgust as he watched it all, appalled, and for the life of him, Shakespeare could not determine whether Mayhew was more frightened than outraged or more outraged than frightened. He surely had to realize that Shy Locke was out for blood, his blood, and that his chances of escaping this alive were very slim, indeed. And yet, he did not truly act afraid. Apprehension showed clearly on his features, and he seemed tense and strained, but he Was not displaying fear. Could it be
that he was truly brave? Or was it that he was simply resigned to the inevitable and did not wish to have this rabble see him cowering in fear before them? Perhaps it was that, his loss of dignity, that he feared more than he feared anything else, even death. Shakespeare realized he did not like this man, but at the same time he found him fascinating. This was a man to whom proper comportment and behavior was everything, a man to whom appearances and presentation mattered a great deal. And this was why, of course, he could not have suffered to have his daughter married to a Jew.

  For himself, Shakespeare did not feel afraid. He had at first, but now he understood that he and Smythe did not really have anything to fear from this assemblage. They had committed no offense against the Thieves Guild, or even against Shy Locke himself. They had had no hand in the death of Thomas Locke, and his father understood that. Locke wanted his revenge, and they were merely there to be part of the process. But Shakespeare was convinced that in this case the process was misguided.

  "Why are you helping me?" Mayhew had asked him, after Smythe had left upon his errand together with Moll Cutpurse and her men and the "trial" had stood in recess for a time. "Truly, why? You do not know me and I do not know you. We are nodding to each other. Why should you take this chance for me?"

  "I do not believe that I am taking any great chance in rising to defend you," Shakespeare had replied. "'Tis not me they wish to harm. Shy Locke believes you killed his son, or else 'twas done upon your orders, one way or the other. For that, he hates you with all of his embittered soul and wishes nothing more than to cut out your heart and have his pound of flesh, to drink hot blood to give cold comfort to his desire for vengeance. I have very little import to his plan."

  "So where do you fit in?" asked Mayhew, puzzled.

  "I understand now that my friend and I were brought here to give testimony as to how he learned you had withdrawn consent for your daughter and his son to marry," Shakespeare answered. "We were the ones who brought him the news, for we had heard it from your son."

  "You knew my son?" asked Mayhew. "You were his friends?"

  Shakespeare shook his head. "We had but met that very morning," he said, "and we did not speak above half an hour. Perhaps not even that."

  Mayhew looked even more perplexed. "I do not understand. Why, then, did you become involved in this?"

  Shakespeare rolled his eyes and sighed. "I have asked myself that very question upon more than one occasion since this started," he replied.

  "And what answer have you arrived upon?"

  Shakespeare grimaced. "When I arrive upon an answer, I shall let you know."

  "You play at words and speak in riddles," Mayhew said impatiently.

  "I am a poet and a player. What would you have of me?"

  "A straight answer, sirrah!"

  "Very well, then, I shall trade you like for like. Did you kill Thomas Locke, or order the deed done?"

  "Nay, sir, I did not."

  Shakespeare stared into Mayhews unflinching gaze. "'Strewth, it seems I do believe you."

  "Why?"

  "Because, sir, you have the manner of a lout, but not a murderer." .

  "You do not care for me.?"

  "Not in the least."

  "Yet you defend me."

  "To the utmost."

  "A straight answer, then, as you had promised. Why?"

  "Because I do not think you did it."

  "And that is why?"

  "Aye, that is why."

  "That does not seem reason enough to me," said Mayhew. "Yet 'tis all the reason that I need," said Shakespeare.

  "I do not understand," said Mayhew.

  "Aye, I know. And more's the pity."

  And so the trial began. One after another, the witnesses came forward, men and women not known to Shakespeare but apparently well known to the assemblage. Each of them gave testimony to the character of Thomas Locke, how they had known him as he grew from a child into a boy, and from a boy through his apprenticeship and into a young journeyman, how he had loved and honored both his father and his mother, and how a life of promise and success had seemed spread out before him. There was nothing there with which Shakespeare could take issue, and so he did not try. Through it all, Mayhew sat stonily, listening to all, apparently resigned to whatever fate they had in store for him. And as Shakespeare watched him, he decided that Mayhew was, indeed, afraid, but that to the very end, come what may, no matter what, he would not show it, for that would be the ultimate indignity for him. He was a puzzling man, detestable in many ways, and Shakespeare did not like him. But he did not wish to see him dead.

  And then the prosecution called forward its last witness.

  "The court calls Rachel Locke!'

  Shakespeare sat forward on the edge of his seat. The boy's mother, he thought. And ironically, it struck him suddenly that all of this had started when he had told Smythe that he would like to meet a Jew. And now, finally, he would have his chance.

  Chapter 12

  In her youth, thought Shakespeare, Rachel Locke must have been very beautiful. She was beautiful still, though in a different way. The thick, long, braided hair that was once as black and lustrous as a raven's wing was heavily silvered now, though traces of the old hue still remained. The body that once was lithe and supple, with sensual, curvaceous hips, long legs, and ripe young breasts, was heavier and thicker now, yet still feminine and graceful in its carriage. Her dark, Mediterranean skin, once taut and smooth, now bore the lines of age, but they spoke less of time and toil than of experience and character. And the eyes, dark as chestnuts and wide as a fawn's, were still striking and exotic, although they spoke now of weariness and pain. She was dressed plainly, in a simple homespun gown, and did not attempt, as many women did, to compensate for lost youth with accumulated finery. The average man, perhaps, would not look twice at Rachel Locke now, Shakespeare thought, but the observant, thoughtful man would notice her… and stare.

  The room fell silent as she came in and took her place upon the improvised stand, a small table and stool that had been placed before the dais. There had truly not been any silence in the room at all at any point during the proceedings, Shakespeare thought. It was like trying to conduct a trial in the middle of a tavern, which in effect was exactly what was being done. However, as Rachel Locke took her place, silence reigned supreme. The serving wenches stopped and watched her. No one spoke and no one moved. This was the grieving wife of one of their own, a mother who had lost her son. And the weight of her grief was palpable upon the entire assemblage.

  She glanced up at her husband, and he merely nodded gravely. She folded her hands in her lap, and then her shoulders rose and fell as she took a deep breath and began.

  "I shall not speak long," she said, the timbre of her voice dear and strong. She paused, considering a moment, then began again. "Many of you know me. And if you do not know me, then you know who I am… or at least what I am. I am a woman, and I am a wife. I am a mother, and I am a Jew. And but for that last, I would be thought as good as anyone among you. And yet for that last, I know that there are many who think me something less, even as this man —" she turned to stare straight at Henry Mayhew "—thinks me something less.

  "This is not new to me," Rachel Locke continued. "I had grown accustomed to it throughout the years. I am what I am, nor would I be aught else. My people, for the most part, were driven from this country before I was ever born. Some were permitted to remain, however… so long as they kept their place and accepted the faith of Christianity. And yet, although their own faith was denied them and they were ordered to accept another, neither were they truly accepted as Christians by other Christians. So then, if they were not accepted by that faith which they were ordered to accept, what were they to accept themselves."

  "If, in my heart, I have always remained true to the faith of my people, neither have I ever been false to the faith of others. I have never dishonored Christianity, nor have I ever dishonored any Christian. I have never hated any other faith, nor ha
ve I ever hated anyone for having a faith other than my own. And yet there are those who would profess that theirs is a faith of love who yet seem to have no love for those who do not share their faith.

  "My son was a Christian." Her voice caught slightly, and Shakespeare saw that she had unclasped her hands and now gripped the folds of her gown tightly. "'Twas his father's faith, and thus he was raised a Christian. But to this man —" she turned once more toward Mayhew with a gaze of anthracite "—to this man he was a despised Jew, because his mother was a despised Jew. Indeed, to a Jew, descent is passed on through the mother. Yet how convenient was it for this one aspect of the Jewish faith to be accepted by this man, who did not accept or honor any other aspect of it? Until he knew that my son had been born of a Jewess, he had considered my son a fit mate for his daughter. He had been pleased to have him at his home, to sup with him at his table, and to introduce him to his friends. He gave his consent for his daughter's marriage to my son, and told Thomas that he would be proud to have him for a son-in-law. And then . he discovered that Thomas's mother was a Jew.

  "The consent for the marriage was at once withdrawn, and Thomas was forbidden by Henry Mayhew ever to see or speak with his daughter again. And now…" She swallowed hard, having difficulty speaking, but she gathered herself together and continued. "And now my son is dead, because he was in love with Portia Mayhew and dared plan to elope with her. And there before you this man sits. the architect of a mother's grief and devastation, and the utter ruin of her life, angrily demanding to know who she is to judge him. After all, who is she but a heathen Jew? And yet, 'tis not only a woman, a wife, a mother, and a Jew who is crying out for justice." She turned to gaze at her husband on the dais. "'Tis also a man, a husband, a father, and a Christian who has likewise lost his son and cries out for revenge. Yet who is he to judge him, this man asks? Indeed, who are any of us to judge him? Who are any of us, after all, compared to the likes of him? We are poor, and he is rich. We are of the humble working class, and he is of the vaunted gentry. We are those whose duty is to serve, and he is one whose due is to have servants. We are very different in his eyes. And yet have we not eyes to see with for ourselves? Have we not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Can we not be fed with the same food and hurt with the same weapons? Are we not subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as he is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us… shall we not revenge?"