SHAKESPEARE’ SECRET

by Elise Broach

  “That makes sense,” Hero agreed.

  Mrs. Roth touched her arm. “There’s more.” She turned the pages to a section of the book marked with a torn piece of paper. “Look at this. It’s a poem Elizabeth wrote when she was twenty, while she was under arrest at Woodstock, held for suspected treason.”

  Hero read aloud:

  “Much suspected by me, Nothing proved can be, Quoth Elizabeth prisoner.”

  Hero looked at Mrs. Roth, puzzled. “I didn’t know she wrote poetry, but I don’t see ...”

  Mrs. Roth tapped the page. Hero glanced down again and felt a chill go through her. The caption under the poem read: “Written with a diamond on her window at Woodstock.”

  “I don’t understand,” Hero said.

  Mrs. Roth beamed. “She used a diamond to write on the window glass. She scratched out the words. She was a prisoner; perhaps she didn’t have pen and paper, or perhaps she wanted to leave a permanent record.”

  “But is it the diamond?” Hero asked. “The Murphy diamond?”

  “I doubt we’ll ever know.” Mrs. Roth shifted the book from Hero’s lap into her own. “But it could be. She was a prisoner, accused of a crime. Why would she have jewels with her? Unless it was one particular jewel, the pendant left to her by her dead mother—”

  Hero interrupted breathlessly “And that’s what I have to tell you. I talked to my dad about Edward de Vere, and he said the connection wasn’t with Anne Boleyn, it was with Elizabeth. I guess people think they might have been in love or something.” She tried to remember all the details. “I’ve been reading about him. His father died when he was little, so he was raised by one of her royal advisors. He was Elizabeth’s favorite at the court, and she even gave him money, a thousand pounds a year, when he grew up.”

  “Really?” Mrs. Roth’s eyes widened. “He might have been her lover? But that seems unlikely, doesn’t it? If he was born in 1550, he was seventeen years younger than Elizabeth.”

  Hero laughed. “Yeah, she’d be old enough to be his mother.”

  Mrs. Roth looked at her strangely. “What did you say?”

  “She’d be old enough to be his mother. Back then, they had kids kind of young, right?”

  Mrs. Roth nodded slowly, turning the pages of the book. “His mother.” She paused, looking at Hero. “What if she were his mother?”

  “But she didn’t have any children,” Hero said. She hesitated. “Unless it was a secret. Unless nobody knew.” She stared at the book.

  “When was Edward de Vere born again?” Mrs. Roth asked.

  “In 1550. Or around there. My dad says the dates aren’t very accurate.”

  “So what happened to Elizabeth in 1550? Let’s see, there was something when she was a teenager, some scandal,” Mrs. Roth flipped the pages. “Ah yes, here it is, in 1548 or 1549. She was living in the house of Catherine Parr—you remember, the last wife of Henry VIII—who had remarried. And there was something involving Catherine Parr’s husband or another man. Some impropriety. It sounds as though nobody knew exactly what happened, but Elizabeth was forced to leave the house afterward.”

  “They kicked her out?” Hero turned to Mrs. Roth suddenly, grabbing her sleeve. “Do you think ... do you think she got pregnant? Could that be it?” She bounced to her feet. “Because if she were Edward de Vere’s mother ... if she were his mother, then Anne Boleyn would be his grandmother!”

  “And it would make sense, perfect sense, for Edward de Vere to inherit his grandmother’s necklace, ” Mrs. Roth finished for her. They looked at each other in astonishment.

  Hero shook her head slowly. She felt a strange thrill running through her. “Not only that,” she said. “It’s more than that. My dad kept saying there was no proof of the relationship between Elizabeth and Edward de Vere, why they were so close. But what if the necklace is the proof?”

  “You mean the proof that Edward de Vere was Elizabeth’s son?” Mrs. Roth asked.

  “And the reason that everything had to be kept secret.” Hero began to pace in front of the porch. “Shakespeare’s plays. If Edward de Vere wrote all those plays, but he was the queen’s son, he couldn’t put his name on anything.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Roth. She looked at Hero, her eyes wide. “Your father said the royals believed playwriting was beneath them. If Edward de Vere was the queen’s son, her illegitimate son no less, it would have been even more important to hide his authorship. She wouldn’t have wanted him to attract attention. It might have exposed their relationship.”

  “And don’t forget the money,” Hero added, hopping from one foot to the other. “The thousand pounds. Maybe she paid him that to keep him from telling anyone about his writing.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Roth said. “As compensation for staying anonymous, because she wasn’t going to have her own son earn his living by writing plays for commoners.” She shook her head in wonder. “Oh, Hero! I’m remembering the plays, all the details of royal life, the intrigues of the court.”

  Hero nodded excitedly. “My dad said that the real Shakespeare was just an ordinary businessman who shouldn’t have known about all that.”

  “And all the plays about slander or betrayal,” Mrs. Roth continued. “Think of your play, Much Ado About Nothing. Hero must fake her death because of a false accusation. If that were Shakespeare’s secret—that he was really Elizabeth’s son and Anne Boleyn’s grandson—all of his writing about slander would be even more powerful. The reason his grandmother died. The reason his mother was imprisoned.”

  “And it all fits,” Hero said, barely able to contain herself. “I mean, there isn’t much known about Edward de Vere’s parents, and he grew up as Elizabeth’s favorite . . . Oh, Mrs. Roth! What if the necklace is the key to everything?”

  Mrs. Roth squeezed her hand. “Think of it! What if we’ve discovered the secret identity of William Shakespeare?”

  Hero looked up and saw Danny about to turn in the gate. “Here comes Danny,” she whispered quickly. “I didn’t tell him about the necklace. I thought you wouldn’t want me to because of his dad. He knows we’re looking for the diamond, but that’s all.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  “Hey,” Danny called to them, glancing at the yard. “You weren’t weeding, were you, Miriam? Let me do that.”

  “Oh, would you?” Mrs. Roth smiled at him gratefully. “That would be lovely. I’ll get us some refreshments.”

  Mrs. Roth went inside, and Hero joined Danny in the garden. She tried not to think about the necklace, but her heart was racing. She was afraid she’d say something she shouldn’t. They crouched side by side, yanking tufts of grass from the dark, loose earth beneath the rosebushes.

  “So your dad doesn’t know you took the spray paint?” Hero asked. “You won’t get in trouble for that, will you?”

  Danny shook his head. “I didn’t use that much.

  And my dad’s got a lot of other stuff to worry about.” He smiled a little. “That’s the good thing about having only one parent around. He’s not watching my every move, you know? He doesn’t have time.”

  “Do you ever see your mom?” Hero asked. “Do you visit her?”

  Danny shook his head. “I haven’t seen her since she left.”

  “Don’t you miss her?”

  Danny shrugged. “I was five when she left. I don’t remember her that well.” He hesitated. “I mean, I do. I remember how she looked. But sometimes I don’t know if I really remember, or if I just know how she looked from the pictures. We have pictures of her all over the place. My dad hung them up. So I wouldn’t forget, I guess.” He sat back on his heels. “I remember how she smelled, and I remember games we played. But I don’t remember how I felt about her. Isn’t that weird?”

  Hero didn’t know what to say. It was strange not to know how you felt about your mom. But it wasn’t strange to forget how you felt about someone who disappeared years ago. “Well,” she said after a minute. “You were five, right? You were really little.”
r />   “Yeah.”

  “So why did she leave?” Hero asked.

  “She just left.” Danny pulled up a fistful of crabgrass, banging it against the flagstone. The ball of dirt around the roots crumbled, and he brushed it back into the flower bed.

  Hero waited.

  “She got tired . . . you know, tired of being a mom.”

  Hero had never heard of such a thing. She stared at him. “Really?”

  “That’s what my dad says.” Danny hesitated. “Well, he doesn’t say that exactly. He says she got tired of her life. She couldn’t stand her life. But, I mean, she was at home with me all the time, so ...” He left the question hanging in the air.

  Hero looked at him, wanting to help. She thought of her own brisk, good-natured mother, who was so annoying at times but at least always there. “Maybe it was something with your dad,” she said. “There are lots of reasons she could have left.” She yanked a leggy weed from the dense shock of tiger lilies. “And now she’s in California?”

  “Yeah, L.A. She wants to be an actress.” Danny collected the weeds at his feet and tossed them onto Hero’s pile. “You know, acting, you can’t do that around here. You pretty much have to be in L.A.”

  “That makes sense.” Hero nodded, watching him. “Well, how’s she doing? Has she made any movies?”

  “Not yet, but she’s done some commercials. She’s trying to break into the film stuff. It’s hard. She doesn’t have any money. But I think she’ll make it. My mom’s really beautiful.”

  “She is?”

  He nodded firmly. “Definitely.”

  Hero stood up, stretching. “It must be hard for you,” she said hesitantly.

  Danny wiped his face on his T-shirt, leaving a damp brown streak across it. “Sometimes. But she wasn’t happy here. My dad says she was never happy.”

  The screen door creaked open, and Mrs. Roth stepped out, balancing a tray.

  “Oh, look at you two!” she said approvingly. “You’ve finished two beds. It would have taken me all afternoon to get that far. Come have something to drink.”

  They all settled on the porch steps, and Hero held the cold glass against her face. The tea tasted cool and sweet, with a lemony sharpness. The china plate was heaped with cookies this time, chocolate chip. Danny took four. Hero rested one on her knee. They all looked across the garden to the Netherfields’ house.

  “So where do you think the diamond is?” Danny asked. “In the house? In the yard? It’s a big diamond, right? It shouldn’t be so hard to find.”

  Mrs. Roth sighed. “Maybe we’re wrong,” she said. “Maybe it’s not there at all.”

  “But the note—” Hero protested, then bit her lip.

  Danny looked at Mrs. Roth with interest. “What note?”

  Mrs. Roth glanced at Hero. “Well, I suppose the cat’s out of the bag on that one. But, Daniel, I’d prefer not to answer police questions about this.”

  “Oh, come on, Miriam. I told you, I won’t say anything. I promise. And my dad won’t ask me. It’s not like he’s still working on it.”

  Mrs. Roth went into the house and returned a few minutes later. She held out the note card to Danny, angling it carefully so that he could only read the back. “It’s from Arthur,” she explained. “We think it has something to do with where the diamond is hidden.”

  Danny peered at the card, frowning. “I don’t get it.”

  Mrs. Roth shook her head in mock disapproval. “Now, Daniel, aren’t you in the eighth grade? I thought Hero told me that English literature is part of the curriculum by then. It’s by Dylan Thomas, a very famous poem he wrote to his dying father.” She read it aloud:

  “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

  “So that’s our clue,” Hero explained to Danny. “The only one we have.”

  “Okay.” Danny reached for another cookie and chewed it thoughtfully. “What does it mean?”

  They sat in silence. Hero watched Mrs. Roth cover the card gently with her pale hands.

  “’Rage against the dying of the light,’” Danny repeated.

  Hero nodded. “So we thought, something that fights death.”

  “Or something that fights the dark,” Danny said. “Like a light.”

  Hero looked at him. She looked at Mrs. Roth. She felt a strange, thrilling flip in her stomach.

  “A light,” she repeated, staring at the side of her house. “There are lots of lights. Lots of old, glass lights on the ceilings. Could it be hidden inside one of those?”

  Mrs. Roth opened her palms, staring at the writing, stark on the creamy paper. She turned to Hero. “Could that be it?” she asked softly. “Are they like the ones at my house? When you change a lightbulb, do you unscrew a knob to remove the glass bowl?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never done it.”

  “The fixtures are so ornate, made of cut glass. It does seem possible.” She touched Danny’s shoulder. “And it would be just like Arthur, too, to be literal. Not ’the dying of the light’ as metaphor, as death, but literally the light being turned out.”

  Hero scrambled to her feet. “We have to start looking! Let’s go.”

  “What about your parents?” Danny asked. “We should wait till no one’s around.”

  Mrs. Roth nodded. “You can’t be ransacking the house beneath their very noses,” she said gently. “Certainly not without an explanation.”

  Hero slumped in disappointment, but then she brightened. “They have a party Friday night. And Triss has a sleepover. But that’s so far away.”

  Mrs. Roth smiled, her eyes soft. “Oh, Hero. Think of the diamond. What if we’ve found it?” She took Hero’s hand and curled it into a fist. “What if the next time I see you, you’re holding it here in your hand?”

  CHAPTER

  23

  For the entire week, while she waited for Friday, Hero thought of nothing but the diamond. At school, the teasing had miraculously subsided. She wasn’t exactly sure why. Maybe it was the brief scolding by Mrs. Vanderley about the need to respect fellow students. Or the impending school assembly on harassment. But more likely, it was Danny’s paint job in the bathroom, which had caused its own stir. Hero could tell that the other kids viewed her warily now. It wasn’t “the way in” that Beatrice had promised, but it was something—a way out of the other situation.

  And it let Hero focus all her attention on her real interest. She spent her school days doodling sharp-sided, glittering diamonds in the margins of her notebooks, sometimes connecting them in a long jewel-laden necklace. She kept imagining the feel of it, the cold, heavy weight in her hand.

  It was the same at home. Hero found herself wandering from room to room, staring at the light fixtures so intently that even her mother noticed.

  “Is there a spider up there?”

  “Uh, no,” Hero answered quickly. “I was just thinking that we have really pretty lights in this house.”

  “And since when are you so interested in interior decor? Does your newfound curiosity about history extend to architectural detail, too?”

  “Sort of.”

  Her mother shook her head, smiling. “Well, do our electricity bill a favor and try to remember to turn off the light when you’re finished appreciating its finer features.”

  “Oh, sure, Mom. Sorry.”

  On Friday evening, Hero lay on the bed in her parents’ room, watching them get ready for the party. The air was heavy with hair spray and cologne, and Hero pulled her shirt over her nose so she could breathe.

  Her mother leaned across the dresser toward the mirror, holding up two different earrings. “Which one?” she asked Hero.

  “The gold looks better.”

  “Really? Maybe you’re right.”

  Hero rolled on her back and studied the light in the middle of her parents’ ceiling. Like the others in the house, it was etched glass, with grooves and ridges outlining little flowers. At the base was a brass knob. If a diamond were hidde
n there, wouldn’t it show? Wouldn’t there be a shadow, some shape against the glass? Her eyes began to hurt from staring at it so long. She turned back to her mother, squinting against the dark blotches that clouded her vision. She thought about her conversation with Danny.

  “Do you ever get tired of being a mom?” she asked.

  Her mother laughed. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you get tired of it? Do you ever just want to quit?”

  Her mother sat next to her and slipped her feet into her stockings, unfurling them along her legs. “Well, I get tired of making lunches. I would be perfectly happy not to make another sandwich for the rest of my life.”

  “So you do get tired of being a mom?” Hero persisted.

  Her mother shook her head. “No, I don’t think that’s possible. I think you get tired of something you do, not something you are.”

  Hero thought for a minute. “Triss and I could make our own lunches,” she offered.

  “Yes, you could, couldn’t you? But my mother always did it for me, so I suppose I can do it for you. It’s not a big deal.” Her mother stood up, smoothing her dress. “What do you think?”

  “You look good,” Hero said.

  “Thank you. Too much perfume?”

  “Well, sure. Always.”

  Her father leaned out of the bathroom, adjusting his tie. “You think I’m wearing too much perfume?” he asked.

  Hero laughed. “No, you should wear more.”

  “I prefer a subtle effect, unlike your mother.”

  Her mother rolled her eyes. “Did Beatrice leave already?” she asked Hero.

  “Yeah, a while ago. She yelled up to you. Didn’t you hear her?”

  Her mother shook her head in disgust. “You girls never let me know what you’re up to.”

  Hero hesitated. She knew she should tell them about Danny coming over. But they wouldn’t understand, and she couldn’t explain the real reason. She would tell them later, she decided.