The Player's Boy is Dead

by Leonard Tourney

THE WINTER came and went, and life for the Stocks pursued its normal course. No longer constable, Matthew looked to his business and Joan to the house. Daughter Elizabeth and her husband moved into a pretty cottage at the end of High Street, giving the Stocks much company on cold December nights. But about the Saltmarsh affair, Matthew held his peace. Joan understood his silence, respected it, but she watched knowingly. Meanwhile the Saltmarshes did not return to the Hall. Then in early April Matthew had a letter from Big Tod and Gwen, who were now settled in London. They were well, the letter said. The theaters were full, and they had seen the Saltmarshes, man and wife, riding proudly one afternoon through the London streets.

  For a few days after, Matthew brooded. He ignored his accounts and custom, paced the floors, stared stonily from the window into the street. Finally he could contain himself no longer. He would be off to London that very day. He declared that he should not sleep soundly ever again in his life if Henry Saltmarsh were to go free. To this, Joan put up no argument. She called Alice to prepare the master's bag and fetch some cheese and ale for the journey. She saw to his cloak herself, saying, "Look to yourself. Sir Henry is bound to have powerful friends who will not take your pursuit of him kindly."

  He nodded his agreement, securing his cloak to his shoulders and then making sure his purse was full and fast to his belt. "I'll lodge at the Blue Boar without Aldgate. The wagons from Chelmsford do come there on Wednesdays. If I have not returned by then send Samuel—"

  She interrupted, "I'll send myself, not Samuel. Keep you warm."

  Alice brought the bag while Matthew and Joan embraced. Then he hurried into the street and down to the corner where the London coach passed every afternoon at one o'clock. He paid his fare to the driver, boarded the coach, and sat by a window. He watched the street rush by, a sprinkling of familiar faces, the clearing sky in the west and greening hills of emergent spring. This was the world of his childhood, of his life. His heart sank as he thought of Joan and Elizabeth. He wondered momentarily if he were experiencing a presentiment of his own death, and shuddered. But now in open country the black mood passed. Headed southward, he laid his plans, and soon, lulled by the monotonous beat of hooves upon the road, he fell into an unquiet sleep.

  The Blue Boar was cheap but convenient. Matthew secured a dark room under the eaves. He needed nothing fancy; his stay would be brief. His plan was to appeal to some great lord, to somehow surmount Saltmarsh's little tyranny. If that failed, then he would admit defeat and homeward straightway. He would bury his knowledge in his heart. God would dispose.

  On the day following his arrival he went directly to an old acquaintance who had left Chelmsford for London years earlier to seek his fortune. The friend had begun as apprentice to a butcher, become in due time his master's heir, and ended as an investor in foreign trade. He had been as far as Muscovy and had returned the richer. Most important, he knew his way about the city and was acquainted with influential persons at court.

  Matthew's friend lived in a spacious new house in an elegant quarter of the city. Luckily he was at home when Matthew called, happy to oblige, if only to display his influence, and having heard an abbreviated account of Matthew's purpose, to furnish him with a letter of introduction to Master Giles, the secretary of Sir Robert Cecil, who was Secretary of State. But the friend gave Matthew little hope. Amused at the clothier's earnestness, he observed cynically that if murder were all Saltmarsh were guilty of he might expect rather to die an earl than a mere knight, for surely it was a wicked world. Indeed, he knew worse of two privy councillors and a bishop. Crestfallen, Matthew thanked the man for the letter and left.

  He spent most of the afternoon discovering that Robert Cecil was not in London; then he rented a horse and rode two hours for Theobalds, where he had been informed the great lord had retired to read and hunt. There, dismounting before a broad avenue of elm and ash still barren of leaves, Matthew stared at the great house with its high square towers and many mullioned windows ablaze in the late afternoon sun, thinking all the while that the house was more fit for a king than for a courtier. The liveried servant who took his horse looked at his letter to Master Giles contemptuously and led him to a side entrance, muttering something about the lateness of the hour and looking askance at Matthew's shabby suit and dusty boots.

  He was led down several long passages into a small win-dowless chamber occupied by a young well-dressed man seated primly at a desk with pen in hand and face resting in his palm. The only other occupant in the chamber, after the servant had turned away, was a gray-bearded man of Matthew's years and stature, looking very downcast and holding a file of papers tightly to his chest as though he expected any moment to have it snatched from him. The young man—Master Giles, Matthew supposed—motioned him to a bench. After a few minutes of silence, the gentleman with the file rose wearily, approached the clerk, whispered something in his ear to which the young man shook his head firmly, and then walked past Matthew and through the door the clothier had just entered. Matthew waited while the young man wrote in a book, sharpened his quill, stared vacantly into space. But he did not once look up at Matthew.

  It was nearly an hour before the secretary spoke, beckoning him forward and then studying his letter of introduction as though it had been composed in a foreign tongue.

  "Your business with Master Giles?"

  "You are not he?" Matthew began, quite bewildered.

  The secretary looked up with hard eyes. "I am his lordship's secretary's secretary," he responded matter-of-factly, his gaze falling again to Matthew's letter. "Your business?"

  "My business is with Master Giles," Matthew said dryly.

  The secretary snorted and continued to peruse the letter while Matthew waited with growing impatience. The air in the room was stale; tobacco smoke, he thought, a vile thing he thanked God had yet to find its way to Chelmsford.

  The secretary at last looked up. "Master Giles has left for the day."

  "When will he return?"

  "Tomorrow, perhaps. You may return yourself then if you really feel your business with him merits it."

  Matthew tried to ignore the insolence of the reply, folding and unfolding his moist hands behind him. But then he could contain himself no longer; he had ridden too far and waited too long. "You are Master Giles's secretary and you know so little of his affairs that you cannot tell me plainly whether he will return tomorrow or no?"

  The young man drained of color, his hard eyes narrowed. "I said what I have said," he replied flatly, placing Matthew's letter of introduction within the drawer of his desk and locking it with a tiny key he had drawn in an instant from his laced cuff.

  "May I have my letter back?" Matthew asked.

  "The letter is addressed to Master Giles. I will show it to him when 'tis convenient."

  Matthew had begun to protest, when suddenly he became aware of movement behind him. The servant who had brought him hither had returned along with two burly companions. The three stood with their arms folded, their eyes hostile. Intimidated, Matthew turned to the secretary. "I am indebted to you, sir, for your courtesy." He did not bother to conceal his vexation.

  The secretary nodded to the servants, and Matthew stepped out carefully between the brawny shoulders of the servingman and his companions and proceeded down what he thought was the same narrow passage he had entered. Behind him he could hear the muffled laughter of the men, and his face reddened with anger. As he opened the door at the end of the passage, he emerged not into the courtyard as he had expected but found himself at the end of still another passage. Confused, he pushed on, not wishing to humiliate himself further by returning to inquire directions of the undersecretary. After a few steps he came to yet another door. Upon opening it, he found himself in a large well-appointed chamber hung with tapestries and portraits, an office of sorts, but certainly not that of an undersecretary. Before Theobalds, he would have thought it fit for the Queen; now in light of what he had already seen, he supposed it might well be the chamber of the
elusive Master Giles. The room itself had many doors, some of which he presumed were closets. He realized that he was passing deeper into the great house and that now he had no alternative but to push on. Perhaps he could find another servant who would doubtless be all too ready to show him the way out.

  He walked about the chamber listening for voices in unseen chambers beyond but heard nothing. Finally he selected a door at random and opened it.

  Before him was the richness of summer-trees in their pride, fully leaved and heavy with fruit. He stared incredulously. Then high above he saw the ornate vaulted ceiling and realized he was in an immense room. The trees lining the walls had been fashioned by some marvelously clever artisan. Over his head an artificial sun traced the path of the zodiac.

  He was about to reach out for a golden pear partially hidden in a clump of brightly enameled leaves, when he heard a voice behind him. "Nay, 'tis forbidden fruit."

  Matthew turned abruptly. The command had come from a recess in the wall. As he was considering the possibility that the voice too was an illusion, its owner—a splendidly dressed young man with broad forehead and shapely pointed beard—materialized from behind a potted shrub. The young man eyed Matthew curiously. A handsome man, Matthew thought, his slightly hunched back was more the pity.

  "Master Giles?" Matthew asked, having found his own voice at last.

  "Master Cecil," the lord of Theobalds replied, smiling wryly.

  Sir Robert Cecil composed himself at his desk, his delicate hands assuming the shape of a cathedral spire and pressing against his thin lips. "Your evidence, Master Stock, lacks credit, without which any accusation against Sir Henry Saltmarsh and his lady is more likely to accrue danger to you than to them."

  "I know, Sir Robert, that I be no more than a former town constable and that those who would swear against Sir Henry are humble folk like unto myself. But that they would swear truly I would pledge my life."

  "Your earnestness I doubt not," Cecil said after a moment's pause. "But I can do nothing for you. This business is not a matter of state. It is a local affair.''

  Matthew, who rose with his august host, felt his heart sink within him. When Sir Robert had consented to speak with him despite the lateness of the hour and the inconvenience of the interruption of what he had called his hour of meditation, he was sure he had come to both the end and the reward of his effort. Now it would seem he was at an end without reward. Justice was hardly closer than it had been before he left Chelmsford in this last, desperate attempt.

  "Then the murderer of the players' boy and the priest must go free," Matthew said beneath his breath.

  "What is that you say?" Cecil asked with sudden interest.

  Matthew repeated himself.

  "You said nothing before of a priest."

  Matthew proceeded to explain how the priest's body had been found in the road and his relationship with the Saltmarshes as reported by Gwen Mair.

  "Quickly, then, describe this priest. How tall a man was he? Of what years and complexion?"

  Matthew did so to the best of his memory, puzzled by the excitement his mention of the priest had occasioned. Then Cecil rang a little golden bell on his desk. Within seconds, a tall angular man with bushy eyebrows and blank expression stepped quietly and efficiently into the chamber and was listening attentively to something his master was whispering into his right ear. The man with the bushy eyebrows passed out of the chamber as quietly as he had entered, only to return instantly with a file of documents which he proceeded to lay out before his master. From the file, Cecil pulled what appeared to be a letter, held it to the light, and muttered the name "Hayforth" beneath his breath.

  "It would appear I do know your knight somewhat better than I recalled," Cecil said after a few moments of reflection.

  "Sir?"

  'Your Sir Henry's Papist sympathies have been noted. Though no great devil, he is nonetheless one whose activities have borne watching. This letter confirms the serving girl's account of his hospitality to the priest, who was, by the way, a priest in appearance only. Indeed, he has been for more than a dozen years one of our agents. This letter in his own hand confirms his English itinerary, including a projected visit to Saltmarsh Hall, Essex. This is his last report. He is dead, then?"

  "I myself saw to his burial."

  "The priest's involvement puts a new face on the matter," Cecil said coolly, reaching for a quill and beginning to scribble something.

  Matthew watched the man's face intently. He was beginning to feel hopeful again, but he had been misled by hope so often he tried now to restrain his expectations. To Matthew, a murder was a murder. His sense of justice was not complicated by the drawing of distinctions between victims. But if this great man so knowledgeable in the law drew such, then he would not say nay, though the distinction be beyond his understanding.

  "You will charge Sir Henry, then, with the murder of the priest?" Matthew asked finally.

  "No, not murder, but for harboring a priest. 'Twill be an easier charge to confirm, and in some ways 'tis the more grievous. The state has lost little in the death of a players' boy. His place can be readily taken by five hundred tomorrow with prettier faces and sweeter voices. Nor is the priest's death much of a loss. An old spy grows stale. It has been five years since he was worth his keep. But to harbor a priest is to undermine the state—what stands between our liberty and the Pope's tyranny."

  Cecil handed Matthew what he had been writing. It was a letter authorizing him to accompany a Queen's officer in the arrest of Sir Henry and Cecilia Saltmarsh and their secretary. "Go you now," he said. "My officer will have his warrant before noon tomorrow, and if the Saltmarshes be yet in London they shall have supper in the Tower.''

  Back at the inn, Matthew pulled off his boots and fell back on the bed, too weary to remove his coat. A fire had been laid in the grate, thank God for that. It had been a long day, the strangest of his life. Now he needed time to think, and he needed sleep despite the turmoil in his brain. After an hour's staring at the rafters, during which his mind wandered the dimly lit tortuous passages of the Saltmarsh business, he rose, went to his chamber's small table, took writing materials from his bag, and began a letter to Joan, careful to make his characters large and clear.

  Writing helped him put his thoughts in order. It was comforting to think of Joan, of daughter Elizabeth, of their cheery house on High Street, of his busy and prosperous shop. In the letter he said nothing of Theobalds or Sir Robert Cecil. The explanation would have taken too long. Besides, he had no gift of expression. For now he wanted no more than to assure Joan of his safety and to inform her that things were going well. It gave him pleasure to save much for later when he could read her gray eyes and touch her with his hands. The writing made him sleepy at last.

  He prayed that the Saltmarshes had not left the city. If they had, their apprehension might prove difficult. Besides, he wanted for all the world to be present at their arrest, not so much to see their fear as to see himself justified. While his imagination thus prophesied of things to come, he watched the fire burn low and finally die. He signed the letter, sealed it, and lay back on the bed. As the chamber grew colder, he yielded to sleep. Slowly the room became crowded with vague images of the day, partially concealed faces and muffled voices. He stood again before Theobalds and walked the maze of its corridors. In his gathering dream he reached out for a golden pear, luminescent on a shimmering green bough, brought it to his lips, and found the fruit delicious to his taste.

  Matthew rode the water uneasily, perched in the bow of the boat. Before him sat Cecil's man, a captain of the Queen's guard, dressed in scarlet and girdled with a businesslike sword. With them were two pikemen, sturdy young fellows in the Queen's livery and bearing expressions of stolid determination. The captain grumbled to himself. The day was fair, full of the promise of the spring, but the air on the river was cold. Downstream, Matthew could see the great bridge of London; behind him the city itself unfolded like a mural. Ahead, on the appr
oaching south bank of the river, Matthew saw the theater itself, rising above the thatched roofs of smaller houses like a stout keg of beer. A flag flew from its mast. Across the water came the sound of cannon fire.

  "The play's begun," the captain said. "We'll take them indoors, worse luck. If we can make it through the gang of lords, gentlefolk, thieves, punks, and pickpurses that keep house at the Globe on such a day as this."

  The tide was low, and the men steadied themselves as the bow of the boat nudged other boats pulled up in the mud. When the captain paid the waterman, the man cringed, taking his pay with ill-concealed dissatisfaction and casting a resentful look at Matthew, who at the moment was concentrating on his footing in the marshy bank. The trip across the river had been Matthew's first experience on water and he felt somewhat unsettled still, although he was not .sure whether it was the river crossing or the expectation of the arrest that made his stomach churn.

  They trudged up the bank to a flight of stairs and then down a lane intersected by foul-smelling ditches. Matthew had a full view of the theater now, a roundish building of timber and plaster rising a good thirty to forty feet in the midst of a scattering of trees and solid looking houses. Outside the theater, vendors of meat and drink had set up booths, giving the immediate area the look of a country fair. At the moment, however, the booths were empty: late patrons had crowded in front of the doors, pushing and shoving, holding out their pennies to the gatherer.

  Matthew followed the captain as he pushed the latecomers aside while the gatherer with his money box took one look at the pikeman and without a word waved them through into the theater. Inside, it was as tumultuous as a bear-baiting. The yard was jammed to the walls with shirt-sleeved apprentices, countrymen, and poor gentlemen, elbowing each other for standing room and picking quarrels at random. Just above their heads, Matthew could see the stage, jutting out into the center of the great wooden "O" of the theater like a peninsula. Players—fools and jesters by their motley dress and rough and tumble motions—were entertaining the crowd with a comic swordfight. Around and above him, the galleries for the two-penny patrons rose in tiers to the open sky. Matthew screwed up his eyes in search of the Saltmarshes, but it was hopeless. He could see nothing but the backs of heads and the elegant hats of gallants. A coarse-faced cake vendor pushed her basket into his ribs. The place smelled foully of unwashed bodies and garlic to ward off the plague. Here and there tobacco smoke ascended to the sky.