King Arthur's Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  I became absorbed enough in what I was reading to be unaware that WS had laid down his pen and turned around to look at me. ‘What do you read?’ he said. ‘Plutarch, is it?’

  ‘The death of Caesar. How Julius falls at the foot of Pompey’s statue with his three-and-twenty stab wounds. Do you suppose they counted them?’

  ‘Someone might have done.’

  ‘Or the figure was plucked at random out of the air,’ I said.

  ‘Twenty-three knife wounds is a plausible number,’ said Shakespeare. ‘And it spreads the guilt of the killing, spreads it so thin that no one could say for sure who struck the fatal blow.’

  ‘What are you working on, William?’ I said. Since it was he who had asked me to visit him on this fine May morning, I reckoned I was entitled to a query or two, for all his secrecy. ‘You are writing more about the Romans?’

  ‘No, my subject now is the matter of Britain.’

  I must have looked bemused, for WS said: ‘Arthur, King of Britain.’

  ‘Oh, him.’

  ‘Yes, him. As well as Merlin and Queen Guinevere and Mordred, and the Knights of the Round Table. The stories about them are known as the matter of Britain. You can read the account in Thomas Malory. It is a good subject because the king – our King James, I mean – has an interest in Arthur.’

  This was true. On his accession, James had wanted himself styled King of Great Britain and to be seen, like Arthur perhaps, as a monarch embracing the whole circle of our island. So it was typically shrewd of WS to choose a subject which would appeal to our new ruler.

  Now Shakespeare reached for an object on the far side of his desk, and I thought he was going to hand me another book. But when he gestured for me to take it, I was surprised, uneasy even, to see that it was a bone. A long bone, a human bone I presumed, part of a limb. I turned it over in my hands as if the owner’s identity might have been inscribed somewhere on it.

  ‘Do you know whose it is?’ I said, returning the object. A stupid question maybe, but it was for want of anything else to say. I noticed that WS handled the bone with more care than I had done, almost cradling it in his arms before returning it to its position on the desk.

  ‘I know whose it might be. But I am forgetting my manners, Nick. Make yourself easy in that chair and I will get us both some refreshment.’

  He gave me a generous glass of sack before pouring one for himself and returning to the desk to sit down. His own chair looked less comfortable than the one I was on, but there was nowhere else to sit in the room. A silence followed. WS’s rented chamber was at the back of the house and so shut away from the noises of Silver Street. I wondered whether he’d asked his landlord for a quiet room for the sake of his work. I glanced around. Against the wall opposite the window was a canopied four-poster bed with the curtains drawn shut. A fireplace with ornate figures carved on the chimney-piece occupied the side of the room between bed and window. It was a better place than my own lodgings south of the river, but not so much better.

  ‘My brother discovered that bone,’ said Shakespeare suddenly. ‘Edmund gave it to me.’

  ‘You’ve never mentioned Edmund before,’ I said. In fact I don’t think WS had referred to any siblings in my hearing. I did not know much more than that he was married to a wife called Anne, who remained in Stratford-upon-Avon, and that he had fathered a few grown children, who might be anywhere. Shakespeare was a private man.

  ‘Edmund is my youngest brother. He is younger than you, Nick. He was a late bloom in my parents’ lives.’

  WS looked away for a moment towards the open casement. I couldn’t tell what was running through his head but the ironic way in which he’d mentioned the ‘late bloom’ suggested he didn’t have any very high opinion of this brother. So it proved.

  ‘I do not know Edmund . . . not well. Soon after he was born, I married and then I . . . moved away from my birthplace and so came eventually to London,’ said WS. Unusually for him, he was picking a path through his words as if uncertain how much to reveal. ‘But I know that Edmund was a trial to my mother and my late father, God rest his soul, even if he was never a trouble to me. In Stratford he had the reputation of a scapegrace. Now he has followed my own course of more than twenty years ago and arrived in this town.’

  ‘To be a player?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A player with us? With the King’s Men?’

  ‘I fear so.’

  ‘Is that so bad, William? Wanting to be a player with the King’s Men?’

  ‘It is bad for Edmund. He does not have the, ah, discipline to be a player anywhere.’

  Considering the way in which most players behaved, at least during their younger days, I thought this was an odd comment. Yes, you needed discipline to learn your lines and, unless you were treated indulgently, you needed discipline not to overact or play the fool on stage (less because the audience wouldn’t like it and more because of the reaction from your fellows). But outside the playhouse one could go around drinking and swearing and whoring, within the customary limits.

  ‘I can see what you’re thinking, Nick,’ said WS. ‘What need has a young player of discipline except in the matter of his lines and so on?’

  I nodded. He’d read my mind. Not very difficult perhaps.

  ‘You kicked a ball around when you were a boy, Nick? A ball that was made of a pig’s bladder, inflated?’

  I nodded again.

  ‘They can endure plenty of knocks, those bladders; they are strong, yet they are hollow inside. Any man wishing to become a player should have something of the pig’s bladder in him. He should contain plenty of wind in order to mouth his lines but be tough enough on the exterior to withstand the kicks of fortune. I mean those kicks that are particular to our craft, a jeering audience, a playhouse closed on account of the plague, an ankle broken during a sword fight on stage.’

  ‘Players are hollow too,’ I said, falling in with the spirit of WS’s analogy, ‘because they can be filled with others’ words and natures.’

  ‘Yes, we are everyman – and no man too.’

  And then William Shakespeare laughed, as if to rebuke himself for such a high-flown sentiment. ‘My brother Edmund doesn’t have that pig’s bladder quality. If he’s disappointed or frustrated, he will lash out with his fists or go and drown his sorrows in the nearest tavern. If one of the groundlings insulted him, he’d probably jump down and clout him. That’s bad for business. To say nothing of being bad for Edmund. He’ll end up in the Clink.’

  None of this sounded sufficient to prevent Edmund from trying to make his name on the stage. There have been undisciplined, impulsive players before now. Some of them have even served a turn in gaol.

  ‘Can you discourage your brother from becoming a player?’

  ‘Whatever I say will only make him more determined.’

  ‘Then surely one of the other Globe shareholders could turn him down? You need have no part in it.’

  ‘Edmund would see through that. He’d know the decision was mine. It would be cowardly and, besides, there are obligations within a family which have to be acknowledged. No, the only course is to get Edmund to see for himself that the stage is not meant for him. It will take time. We shall have to accommodate him by giving him small parts like any fledgling player.’

  ‘I began as an ambassador in Hamlet,’ I said. ‘I was an ambassador from England, arriving at the end of the action.’

  ‘I remember your ambassador well,’ said WS, which was what I’d been hoping he would say. But he was softening me up, for his next words were: ‘I’d like you to keep a gentle watch on my brother, Nick. Have an eye on him backstage, accompany him to the tavern and . . . other places if necessary.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because I trust you and because I cannot think of who else to turn to in our company. You are older than Edmund and have a shrewd head on your shoulders.’

  I don’t think I’d been called shrewd before, certainly not by William Shakespeare,
so this was pleasing. But I must have looked doutbful, for he continued: ‘You were once fresh up from the country and you learned the hard way about this city and its snares. Edmund is as ready to be taken in as most newcomers but he might accept advice or a warning from you which he’d reject from me. I don’t mean that you should be responsible if things, ah, go badly. If Edmund chooses to ignore you, so be it. But at least you can whisper in his ear that that friendly group of card players in the corner of the Goat and Monkey are coney-catchers . . .’

  ‘. . . or that the new French girl at the Mitre will give you a dose of the pox,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve got the idea,’ said WS, suddenly finding something of great interest in the glass of sack he was holding.

  ‘And how is King Arthur involved in all of this? You said your brother found that bone for you.’

  ‘Edmund tells me that he is a reformed man, no longer the scapegrace of Stratford. He wants to stand well with me and, knowing that I am writing about the matter of Britain, he brought me this relic of Arthur. Like a dog acting against nature and wanting to please its master, he gave up a bone, you might say.’

  Since Shakespeare disliked dogs, feared them even, this was far from being a flattering remark.

  ‘Where did your brother get it?’ I said. ‘Is it really Arthur’s?’

  ‘From one of the bookshops near St Paul’s. Edmund says he was searching for books that might help me in my labours and no doubt telling the seller how he was kin to a well-known playwright whose latest piece is about Arthur of Britain. The shopkeeper had no texts on the subject but offered him this bone instead. He claimed on his mother’s grave that it was a true bone. Edmund said he almost emptied his purse to purchase it for me. I think he meant well, but anyone who was not kin to him might call him gullible.’

  ‘But you don’t call him gullible,’ I said, ‘not on this occasion.’

  ‘Why, no,’ said WS. He put down his glass and picked up the arm- or leg-bone once more. I noticed that he handled it with the same care as before. ‘Tell me, Nick, when you touched this, did you . . . feel anything?’

  ‘Just a bone. It made me feel uneasy, no more. But then I didn’t know whose it is, whose it is supposed to be, rather.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s it. Edmund informed me of the nature of his find before giving me this relic. When I put my fingers on it, I experienced a queer kind of blankness, as though I had walked out of doors and into a mist. It was neither pleasant nor especially unpleasant. But was the sensation produced by Edmund’s words or was it some property of the bone itself ? For nothing is either good or bad, you know, but thinking makes it so.’

  He might have gone on in this vein – an abstracted look had entered his large brown eyes – but he was interrupted by a knock outside. WS barely had time to say ‘Come in’ when the door opened. I turned around in my seat and saw a figure standing there. Without being told, I knew who it must be. Edmund Shakespeare, WS’s scapegrace younger brother.

  II

  A couple of days later I was sitting with Edmund Shakespeare in the Mermaid tavern on Bread Street near St Paul’s. Although it attracted poets and other scribblers, the Mermaid was a well-run house with a reputation for good fish and wine. It was the place where William Shakespeare’s envious rival Ben Jonson, sometimes held court. Jonson haunted the tavern partly because of its food and drink – he reckoned himself a man of refined taste – but mostly because it was half a world away from the common drinking dens like the Goat and Monkey south of the river.

  Ben Jonson wasn’t in session at the Mermaid today, but Edmund and I were awaiting the arrival of another playwright, Martin Barton, who was eager to meet Shakespeare’s brother. Barton was no friend of mine but, encountering him earlier that day, he’d badgered me for an introduction when I let slip that I was meeting Edmund once our playhouse business was done. It was characteristic of the man that he should now keep us waiting. The wait wasn’t too onerous, however, since Edmund and I were sitting side by side on a bench and occupying ourselves with a pile of oysters and a flask of wine.

  During the past two days I’d been doing as William requested, keeping a ‘gentle watch’ over his brother. Because of WS’s position and authority as a senior member of the Globe shareholders, he had easily procured a role for Edmund at the theatre. Not yet as a minor player but as a general dogsbody, running errands for the book-man or assisting Sam, our little limping doorkeeper. Maybe WS hoped to convince Edmund that the playhouse was really a dreary place in which to work and that he’d be better off back home in Stratford-upon-Avon. If so, it was a forlorn hope, for Edmund was wide-eyed about being in London. He’d have been happy sweeping up the draff from a tavern floor. And he wasn’t sweeping up in an alehouse but helping behind the scenes in a playhouse where there is always a touch of magic, even among the wooden swords and the paste jewellery.

  The quick picture that WS had painted of his brother – a gullible individual who was too impulsive, too undisciplined for the stage – didn’t fit with my first or second impressions of the man. Edmund had some physical similarities to his much older sibling. He was slight but tall and wiry, and his eyes had the same large gaze beneath a tall brow. He did not possess the same easy manners as WS, the almost courtly style that enabled the playwright to be comfortable anywhere. But then Edmund was fresh up from the provinces, as WS had once been and as I had been too. We’ve all got to start somewhere. Certainly I had not yet seen any indication of the rapid temper I’d been warned about. Nor had Edmund shown signs of falling prey to any card-playing coney-catchers. But there was a woman in the picture. At least there was one in the Mermaid, a pretty piece who was hanging about his ears when I arrived and whom Edmund daffed away, explaining that he wanted male company. I knew no more about her than that she was called Polly or Dolly and had dark ringlets of hair under a pretty hat and large breasts partly concealed by her dress. Obediently she withdrew, and Edmund and I started gabbing.

  I’d go so far as to say that I was enjoying his company more than expected. Or, to be absolutely honest, I was enjoying playing the experienced citizen of London and the senior player.

  ‘You’ll come with me to visit this fellow Davy Owen, then, Nick?’ said Edmund Shakespeare. He reached forward to help himself to an opened oyster from the pile on a platter in front of us. He tilted his head and I watched his Adam’s apple bob as it slid down his gullet.

  ‘Yes, I’ll come with you. I’m curious.’

  I was curious too. Davy Owen was the bookseller from whom Edmund had bought the bone – King Arthur’s limb – to present to his brother as some sort of peace offering. Now it appeared as though the St Paul’s vendor possessed other items relating to that legendary ruler which he might wish to dispose of. Or so he had told Edmund. Usually I would have dismissed the whole thing as a confidence trick. But William Shakespeare’s odd belief in the Arthurian relic that lay on his desk – the queer sensation he had experienced when first touching it – was enough to make me want to see any further items for myself. And if it was a confidence trick, then it would be as well for me to accompany Edmund to St Paul’s yard and discourage him from wasting the cash that he’d received as an advance for his menial work at the Globe playhouse.

  ‘You are a curious man altogether, Nick,’ said Edmund.

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Curious about my brother William, I mean. All those questions you’ve been asking about him growing up in Stratford.’

  Questions? I suppose so. Had I been asking too many questions? To cover my discomfort, I reached for an oyster myself and gulped it down. I’ll admit I was interested in WS’s life. But there was such a gap of years between William and Edmund that the latter did not have much direct knowledge of his famous brother. However, he did possess a stock of stories which had been preserved in the family and was happy to pass them on, perhaps because several of them showed WS in a less-than-respectable light. Even so, Edmund had a high regard for his brother. That was shown by his c
oming to London to emulate WS. And he carried a copy of WS’s early poem Venus and Adonis, which he showed me with a touch of pride. Indeed, on the title page of Venus and Adonis Edmund had inscribed his name as if he were the author as well as the owner of the book (WS’s own name did not appear).

  Yet now he said: ‘Did I tell you about the time he was caught poaching deer? Yes, the great playwright was a schoolboy poacher on Sir Thomas Lucy’s estate.’

  I was keen to hear more but we were interrupted by the arrival of Martin Barton. It would have been hard to imagine Barton as a poacher or indeed as a person engaged in any kind of outdoor activity. He was a gangly, redheaded individual who wrote rather bitter satirical pieces. One of his plays, The Melancholy Man, had gone down well with the Globe audiences but Barton had recently fallen out with the shareholders and he was now a regular writer for our rivals, the Blackfriars Children. Plays that were acted out by boys in all the parts (and not just playing the females) were fashionable in London and had been for some years. Barton was no doubt happier there since a principal reason for his quitting the King’s Men was a fondness for our own boy players.

  Now he inclined his head towards us in his usual manner – that is, a mildly mocking one – and said: ‘Mr Shakespeare, I presume. Mr Edmund Shakespeare.’

  I made the introductions and Martin Barton seated himself on the other side of the table, helping himself to one oyster, then another and yet one more for luck. He got the attention of a passing pot-boy and, in an insinuating rather than a mocking manner, requested more drink. Then he said to Edmund: ‘You are better looking than your brother, a little better.’