“Oh, gis. Which one, do you suppose?”
“There’s no telling. I’ve sent word to Father Gerard asking him to keep an eye out for our man when he’s ministering to his Papist prisoners.”
I felt inside my doublet for my purse, to reassure myself that I still had the three pounds Julia would need for her passage home. The money was there, right enough. What good was it, though, if I had no way of getting it to her?
“Oh, before I forget,” said Mr. Armin, “Sal has asked that you come by to see him.”
“Me?” I hardly considered myself a close friend of his. But perhaps I was the closest thing to it. “How is he?”
Mr. Armin shook his head soberly. “Not good. The grippe has infected his lungs.”
By the time we carted all our possessions across the bridge to the Globe and unloaded them, it was all but dark, and I was all but dead. I would have put off visiting Sal Pavy until another day had it not been for the guilt that was still lodged inside me, like a sliver, reminding me that I had been responsible, at least in part, for his near drowning.
Sal Pavy’s mother, a small, grim-looking woman, showed me to her son’s room. “You mustn’t stay long, and you mustn’t let him do much talking. He’s very weak.”
“Ha’ you brought in a physician?”
She nodded. “He says the boy should recover in time, if he’s kept quiet.”
In truth, Sal Pavy did not appear to be very near to death’s door. Perhaps it was only an effect of the fever, but his face was flushed and his eyes were bright. Propped up in his bed by a multitude of down pillows, he looked rather smug and pampered. Then I glimpsed the kerchief that lay crumpled between his hands. It was covered with rust-colored stains.
“We’ve missed you,” I said, which was not altogether a lie. Sal Pavy was like one of those obnoxious secondary characters that playwrights so often create—Parolles, for example, or Polonius, or Apemantus. Though their main function seems to be to irk the other characters, the play would be poorer without them. He seemed about to reply, but was seized by a fit of coughing that imprinted the kerchief with a fresh stain. “Perhaps … perhaps I should come back another time, when you’re stronger.”
He shook his head and motioned for me to sit on the end of the bed. After struggling for several moments to find enough breath, he got out a few words. “Mr. Armin … says that … you blame yourself … for what happened to me.”
“Aye. I should ha’ had more sense. You never would ha’ gone out on the ice had I refused to.”
He shook his head again. “You’re wrong. I would have … done it anyway. Only you … would not have … been there … to pull me out.”
I gazed at him curiously. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because. You’ve always tried … to be … a friend. When I die … I don’t want you … feeling responsible.”
I forced a feeble laugh. “What makes you think you’re going to die?”
“What makes you … think I’m not?”
“The doctor. He says you’ll be good as new in a week or so.”
He pressed the kerchief to his lips and stifled a cough. “Well … if I do die … I won’t mind so much … really. This way, you see … I’ll be remembered as a … talented youth … full of promise. If I’d lived … to be sixty … I’d have been … just another old actor.”
I arrived home so weary and downcast that even the boys noticed. They let me forgo the usual games and settled for hearing a story instead. Though it was a rousing one, replete with ghosts and magic and bloody deeds, it was far less taxing than being Banks’s horse.
Mr. Pope suggested that my daily report could wait until morning, but I had one matter to discuss that would not wait. “I was wondering,” I said hesitantly, “whether you would mind me taking your last name as me own?”
He stared at me for a moment, as though I’d asked his permission to sprout wings and fly. Then he laughed and, seizing both my arms, shook them so hard that my teeth rattled. “Mind? I’d be honored, Widge!”
“Umm … I’ve decided on a new first name as well. I’d like to be called James.”
“James it is, then!” He tested the words on his tongue. “James Pope. James Pope. I like it! We must christen you, like a ship, with a bottle of brandy!” He called for Goody Willingson and sent her to the cellar to fetch the spirits.
When she returned, she announced, “That same gentleman is here as was here a week ago, and is asking for you, Widge—or James, should I say?” She shook her head. “That will take some getting used to.”
“Show him in,” said Mr. Pope. “I’ll take myself off to bed.”
“There’s no need,” I told him. “Perhaps it’s time I began letting you in on things, instead of keeping them from you.”
Father Gerard had altered his appearance yet again. He wore the sort of linen robe favored by physicians, and he had dyed his beard a shade of red that matched his wig.
“Can I offer you a nip of brandy?” said Mr. Pope.
“No, thank you. I mustn’t linger. I have a message for Widge. From Tom Cogan.”
“You’ve found him, then?” I said.
Gerard nodded grimly. “He’s in Newgate.”
“Gog’s blood! That’s where they take wights that are to be hanged!”
“Yes. He’s been convicted of theft, and it’s his second offense. I was told to ask Cogan for a letter of some sort—something to do with his daughter?”
“Aye. Did ’a give it to you?”
“No. He’d scarcely even talk to me. He said he didn’t trust me. When I told him I was a priest, he said that was all the more reason to distrust me. The only person he will speak to is you, Widge. He says you were his daughter’s friend.”
“All right. Should I go now?”
“No. Meet me outside the prison tomorrow at nones. The warder on duty then is a good Catholic—and an even better one since I slipped him a sovereign. We can tell him you’re Cogan’s son. That’ll get you in.”
The moment Gerard was gone, Mr. Pope began unexpectedly to chuckle.
“What is’t?” I asked.
“Sorry. I know this is serious business. It’s just that up until a week ago, you had no father at all. Now, suddenly, you’ve got three of ‘em—Redshaw, Cogan, and me.” He poured an inch or so of brandy into a glass and handed it to me. “Now. Tell me about Julia.”
Ordinarily I did my best to avoid Newgate. No doubt it had once been an attractive edifice, especially the stone gatehouse. But over the course of nearly two centuries, the soot from the city’s chimneys had given the walls a dark and forbidding aspect that hinted at what lay inside them.
Mr. Henslowe would no doubt have found the prison admirable, for it was run like a business. Those prisoners who could afford it were put in well-lighted, airy quarters, with reasonably comfortable furnishings, and given decent food and drink. Those who could not were thrown together in dark, damp cells that reeked of human waste. They slept on straw—if they were lucky—and dined on gruel and water. The only consolation for these poor wretches was the thought that they might cheat the hangman by dying of jail fever before their execution day arrived.
Tom Cogan was, of course, one of the unfortunate ones, as he had been all his life. Unlike his fellow prisoners, who lounged about playing at cards or dice, or simply sat hunched hoplessly in a corner of the cell, Cogan was pacing restlessly back and forth, back and forth, like a caged lion I had once seen on display at the Tower. Like that beast, he seemed oblivious to everything around him, including the curses of one of the dice players, who threatened to break his kneecaps if he didn’t stop his infernal pacing.
When the warder let us into the cell, Cogan descended upon me like a lion upon its prey. “Good lad! I knew I could count on you!”
“You could have trusted Father Gerard.”
Cogan gave the priest a dismissive glance. “Ahh, all he’s interested in is saving my soul, which ain’t worth the trouble. It’s my neck I
’m worried about.” He sank his fingers painfully into my arm and drew me to the far end of the cell. “And you,” he whispered, “are going to help me save it.”
31
“Me?” I said. “What can I do?”
“Julia never told me nothing much about her actor friends, but she did say once that you was prenticed to a physician.”
“Aye. But what—?”
Cogan’s fingernails sank more deeply into my arm. “This wight I once met—a bid-stand, he was”—this, I had learned, was the London term for a highwayman—”told me that he’d got himself out of prison by taking some stuff that put him into a sort of trance, so they mistook him for dead. As they were hauling him off to the graveyard, he came to and made his escape. Now, have you ever heard of a root or a plant or the like that would do such as that?”
I pried his fingers from my arm. “As a matter of fact, I ha’. But not as a physician’s prentice; as a player. When I’m acting the part of Juliet, Friar Laurence gives me a vial of distilled liquor. An I drink it, ’a says, it will bring on a cold and drowsy humor that has the appearance of death: ‘No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest.’”
“That’s but a play!” Cogan scoffed. “Anything may happen in a play!”
“I ken that. But I asked Mr. Shakespeare what was supposed to be i’ the vial, and ’a said the juice of mandrake root. According to him, it truly works. ‘A learned about it from an apothecary.”
Cogan considered this a moment, then leaned in to me and whispered, “I want you to get me some of it.”
“Mandrake?”
“Whist! Keep your voice down!”
“Sorry. But how would I manage to get it past the warder? ‘A searched us on the way in.”
“Tell him I’m sick, and you’re bringing me medicine.”
“You don’t look very sick.”
He grinned, disclosing his rotten teeth. “You’re not the only wight that can act, you know.”
His scheme sounded doubtful at best and, at worst, risky. But if we did nothing, there was no doubt about what the outcome would be: he would hang. I must at least try—if not for him, then for Julia. “All right. I’ll do ’t. But you must do something for me first.”
“What’s that?”
“Gi’ me the letter wi’ Julia’s address so I may send her money to get home.”
He gave me another unpleasant grin and shook his head. “No, no. First you bring me the mandrake.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, lad. It’s just that I’ve learned a wight is more likely to do what you want if you’ve got something he wants.”
• • •
As we passed from the gloomy, stinking interior of Newgate into sunlight and fresh air again, I told the warder, “I’ll be back in a little while. Me da’s feeling poorly, and I’m to fetch him some wormwood, to settle his stomach.”
The man nodded sympathetically. “I expect I’d feel poorly, too, if I was to be hanged in a few days.”
When we were well away from the prison, Father Gerard asked, “Is Cogan really ill?”
I shook my head. “‘A wants me to bring him mandrake, not wormwood.”
Gerard stared at me. “Does he mean to take his own life?”
“Nay, only to feign death, in order to escape.”
“He may do more than just feign it; mandrake is a deadly poison.”
The apothecary we called upon agreed that in a large enough quantity, mandrake would surely prove fatal. “However, a drop or two of the diluted juice is often used to deaden pain.”
“What about half a dozen drops, then?” I asked.
“I’m not certain. It might cause temporary paralysis and unconsciousness.”
Father Gerard did his best to convince me that Cogan’s plan was foolish, and that I must not be party to it. “Suppose you give him too large a dose? Do you wish to be responsible for a man’s death?”
His words brought another of La Voisin’s predictions back into my mind, where it rang like a death knell: Because of you, someone will die. Someone will die. “But suppose I do naught, and they hang him? Will I not still be responsible? Besides, ’a refuses to tell me Julia’s whereabouts unless I do as ’a says.”
“There are other ways of escaping. I gained my freedom from the Tower of London by sliding down a rope.”
“Truly? I’ve heard folk say that no one has ever escaped from the Tower.”
“Well, they’re wrong. Some six or seven years ago, during my first assignment to London, the pursuivant’s men brought me in for questioning, as they called it—which meant stringing me up by the arms and beating me, in an effort to make me tell them who my superiors were and where they could be found. That’s how I came by these.” He touched the several scars on his face. “When I refused to cooperate, they locked me in the Salt Tower. No doubt they would have executed me eventually, as they did so many of my fellow priests, had my friends not managed to smuggle a rope in to me.”
“But how did you get out of your cell?”
“I wasn’t confined to a cell. I was free to walk about on the battlements.”
“Is Tom Cogan permitted out of his cell?”
“Probably not,” Gerard admitted.
“Then a rope would not do him much good, would it?”
When we came within sight of Newgate, the priest halted. “I’m sorry, Widge. Go on, if you must, but I’ll have no part of it. It’s my duty to save souls, not to damn them.” He turned and walked away.
I called after him, “Would his soul be saved, then, an he met his end on the scaffold?” He did not reply.
The warder took me to the condemned cell at once. “Your da’s gotten worse since you left,” he said. “I think he’s going to need something stronger than wormwood.”
Cogan was no longer pacing back and forth. He was curled up in a corner of the cell, twitching and groaning pitifully. A communal water keg sat against one wall, with a metal cup next to it. I dipped out a cup of water and knelt next to him. He gave a cry so startling that I nearly dropped the cup. “Don’t you think you’re overdoing it just a bit?” I whispered.
He opened one eye and peered at me. “I’m supposed to be dying, ain’t I?”
“Most folk don’t make such a fuss about it.” I took out the apothecary’s vial and eyed the dark liquid within. “Perhaps this is not such a good idea. What an I gi’ you too much? Th’ apothecary says that a large dose is fatal.”
Cogan shrugged. “In any case, I’ll be no worse off than I would have been at the end of a rope, will I?”
“I suppose not.” Feeling that it was better to err on the side of caution, I put only four drops into the water and stirred it with my finger. I was about to hand the cup to him when I remembered his end of the bargain. “Where’s the letter?”
His mask of make-believe agony slipped a little, and a look of genuine discomfort showed through. “Ah,” he said. “The letter.”
“Aye, from Julia. You ha’ it, do you not?”
“Actually … no. The constables who nabbed me took it, along with the bracelet.”
“Oh, gis! So you’ve no idea, either, where to find Julia?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say no idea at all. I mind that the name of the woman who runs the lodging house was Hardy. I remembered it particularly because it don’t sound French.”
I sighed. “That’s all very well, but I can scarcely send a package i’ care of Madame Hardy, Paris, France, can I?”
“I could take it there.”
“Then we’d need another three pounds for your passage. In any case, you can’t go anywhere until we get you out of here.” I handed him the cup.
He raised it to his lips, then lowered it. “If I take this, there’s a chance I won’t wake up again?”
I nodded glumly.
“It ain’t that I’m afeared, you understand. It’s just that … well, I’ve a confession to make first.”
“You should ha’ spoken to Father Ger
ard, then.”
“It ain’t that sort of confession. It has to do with Julia. I know I can trust you to pass it on to her, in case I should hop the twig.”
“Hop the twig?”
“Knock off. You know—die.”
I pointed out that he was supposed to be dying even now, or at least should appear to be. He ignored me, and launched into a long and complicated narrative that was every bit as astounding and unlikely as any I had concocted in my fevered attempts to compose a play. Yet he related it all in such a matter-of-fact manner and provided so many convincing details that I did not doubt for a moment that it was true.
32
When it came to lengthy parting speeches, Cogan managed to outdo even Hamlet—who, after saying, “I am dead, Horatio,” goes on for another twenty lines or so. Cogan spoke without pause for a good quarter of an hour. When his tale finally reached its end, it left me as stunned as I had been at the conclusion of the first play I ever saw performed. It took me several moments to collect myself enough to speak. “Does—does Julia ken any o’ this?”
Cogan shook his head. “Not a bit.”
“Why did you never tell her?”
With one hand he gestured at the dismal prison cell that surrounded us. “You see where knowing it has gotten me.” He lifted the cup and stirred the contents with his finger. “Well, one way or another, I won’t be here much longer.” He threw back his head and downed the mandrake potion in two great gulps, then gave a shudder. “Aggh! That’s nasty stuff. I only hope it does its job.” He waved a dismissive hand at me. “You go on now. I can die well enough by myself.”
“Aye, but can you come back to life by yourself? An you stay unconscious for long, they may bury you.”
He scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Good point. Then it’s up to you to get my corpse off the meat wagon—the cart that takes away the dead prisoners. It comes around every day, just after dark. Revive me if you can. If not … “ He shrugged. “Well, give me a decent burial, will you? It’s more than I’d have got if they’d strung me up.”
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