Waking Caliban

by Mike Cartlidge

  It was Miranda who broke the silence. “Would someone mind telling me what the hell is going on?”

  “Forgive me.” Salim sipped from his teacup and then turned to al-Ahmad. “Rashid, it seems that Mr. Hastings may not have as much need of your translation services as we’d imagined, but Ms Smart and I are still anxious to hear what you have discovered. Please tell us all. Leave nothing out.”

  I noticed that al-Ahmad was sweating despite the coolness of the air-conditioned room. I guessed that Salim had instructed him to give us only a censored version of what the papers had to say but that my disclosure that I already knew something of their contents had forced an abrupt change to these plans. Still, from the way he looked at me, I had the feeling that, far from being disappointed that I already knew some of the document’s secrets, al-Ahmad was pleased to have the opportunity to discuss them without restraint. “These are,” he said quickly, “most extraordinary and remarkable documents.”

  “Rashid,” Salim said, “contain your enthusiasm, old friend, and tell us as calmly as you can what you have discovered.”

  “Please excuse me,” said al-Ahmad. “You must understand that, like Mr. Salim here, I am a great admirer and lover of Shakespeare and his works. Mr. Hastings, it would be the crowning event in my life if I could hold the originals of these papers you brought me.”

  “You think they’re genuine, then?”

  “If they are not, then they are a most remarkable forgery. You see, the handwriting matches that of Shakespeare’s signature, of which several copies survive, and also a sample of what scholars believed was his writing in the surviving manuscript of a play called ‘Sir Thomas More’.”

  I frowned. “He didn’t write a play of that name, did he?”

  “The Thomas More play,” he said, “was co-authored, as were many plays of the time. The original play was regarded as too crude or too politically contentious to be produced and it is thought that Shakespeare was engaged to perform some corrective work on it: what our friends in Hollywood call ‘script-doctoring’ nowadays. Shakespeare’s contributions – if they are his – are in what scholars have called ‘Hand D’ and this is what matches the writing in the manuscript you brought us.

  “Apart from this,” he continued, “I must ask myself, what would be the point of preparing a forgery such as this one? Once we have access to the originals, carbon-dating will confirm their age. It is not logical to think that anyone nowadays would take such trouble to forge documents, knowing that science would surely uncover their deception. This helps me to accept that the document is genuine.”

  Miranda leaned towards him. “It’s possible, isn’t it, that the papers could have been forged before people knew about carbon dating?”

  “That is true. But if someone did forge the documents in years gone by, why would they hide them and never try to sell them themselves? It would make no sense. No, it is logical to believe these papers are authentic.”

  “So what do the Latin pages say?” Miranda asked.

  “These papers do not answer all of the mysteries about Shakespeare’s life, but they do address some. They will finally put the lie to the ridiculous theories that the plays were written by someone else. Also, scholars have always puzzled over the question of why England’s greatest playwright decided to retire and move from London to Stratford while he was still in what many of us would consider the prime of life…”

  His hands went to the copied pages and busied themselves straightening their edges so that they were in a perfect pile. “He’d lived in London for the best part of thirty years but, when he was fifty years of age, he left his lodgings there and moved back to Stratford. He lived in that town for two more years before he died, supposedly from typhoid.”

  Salim’s fingers traced the white-edged line of the scar on his left cheek. “So, the papers answer the riddle of why Shakespeare left London?”

  al-Ahmad nodded rapidly. “There were two reasons. The first was that he had grown weary of the corruption and deceit that he saw around him. He was tired of London and its violence and public executions. He abhorred the spectacles of barbarity that would be attended by the same crowds that filled his theatres.”

  Again, his hands fluttered about the pile, rearranging and tidying it. Whether it was from emotion or lack of sleep, his eyes were watering and he seemed unable to compose his thoughts. I stood and poured him a cup of coffee from the pot on the table: when I handed it to him, he muttered his thanks and began to spoon sugar into it.

  “And the second reason why he returned to Stratford …” Miranda prompted.

  “The second reason he returned to his old home was to assemble his life’s work. He did this, according to Mr. Hastings’s document, by retrieving the original copies of his manuscripts from the publishers who had printed them, in the case of the poems, and, in the case of the plays, from the theatre companies that had performed them.”

  “Wouldn’t he have had them already?” Miranda asked.

  “Playwrights at the time sold their work to theatre companies and then had no rights over them. If they wanted them back, they had to buy them. It seems Shakespeare did this: no doubt his task was made easier by the fact that he was a co-owner of his theatre company and the other sharers, men like Richard Burbage, were his close friends.”

  “So,” Salim said, “Shakespeare gathered the original manuscripts together in Stratford…”

  “Yes, yes, he did,” said al-Ahmad. He turned back towards Miranda and me. “Can you imagine the import of these documents? Few of his plays were actually published in his lifetime. The First Folio was only printed after he was dead. Some of his old actor friends collaborated in its production and it seems likely that many of the plays in it were composed from their memories of the lines. Many of these versions have been disputed. For example, there are two very different versions of King Lear in existence. If Shakespeare’s own manuscripts came to light, many, many problems would be resolved.”

  “Presumably,” said Miranda, “these copies would be worth a lot of money.”

  “Many hundreds of millions of dollars … Maybe billions.” al-Ahmad checked himself and glanced at Salim, continuing when Salim nodded.

  “So,” Miranda asked, “why have these papers never come to light before?”

  “From the document I have just translated,” al-Ahmad said, “it is apparent that, towards the end of his life, Shakespeare and his wife Anne were not on good terms. He had, after all, lived away from her for most of their married life and, from one reference in the Latin papers, he seems to have viewed her on the same level as Katherine in ‘The Taming Of The Shrew’ – before Katherine was tamed, of course. This, I think, explains why he wrote the testament in Latin, so that, if Anne saw it, she would not understand what he had written.

  “But his plans, anyway, were probably disrupted when he fell ill. I suspect he knew he had typhoid – it was a common disease of the time – and that few people survived such illness. So, he had all the documents and papers sealed inside lead cylinders and gave them to his friend, the man Hamnet Sadler.”

  Salim spoke again. “And what, Rashid, did Sadler do with these cylinders?”

  “I can only assume he followed Shakespeare’s wishes.”

  “Which were?”

  “It is clear from these pages,” al-Ahmad continued, “that Shakespeare was sick at heart, tired of the sordid nature of everyday life and the deceit that was all around him. There is a passage in the document that speaks of ‘pestered senses that flinch and shrink back from all within me, and compel me to condemn the infamy of men’.

  “He instructed his friend Sadler to hide his works and only to allow them to be brought forth when the world was a better place, when men no longer deceived or killed their fellows for reasons of ambition and greed.”

  “So Sadler hid them?” I asked.

  al-Ahmad shrugged. “We must assume he did. And I think we must also assume that Sadler died before he saw a world that met his
old friend’s specifications for the papers to be revealed.”

  “Wouldn’t he have told other people where they were?” Miranda asked.

  “The papers,” al-Ahmad said, “instruct Sadler to tell no-one of the documents’ existence but his son. But who knows what may have happened? Death in those days often came suddenly upon its victims. Perhaps it carried Sadler off before he could tell his son. Or perhaps his son died before he, in turn, could pass the secret on.”

  Salim sat back in his chair but there was a rigidity to the way he held himself that betrayed an inner tension. “And, Rashid, do the papers reveal where Hamnet Sadler hid the cylinders?”

  al-Ahmad glanced at him and then looked back at me, his damp eyes glittering above the hooked nose. “The location is described in a set of directions and a map on the last page.”

  “Ah,” Salim said. “The page that you, regrettably, neglected to bring to us, Mr. Hastings. We had a deal for you to deliver the original documents to me, did we not?”

  “We did.”

  “And, I trust, you will be prepared to go through with this deal?”

  “Just a minute.” Miranda glanced at me and then smiled at Salim. “The deal we set up was for the delivery of the original dozen pages…”

  Salim spread his hands. “And it still is.”

  “We know now that the initial pages will lead to a whole lot more,” she told him. “And that they’re worth much more than any of us thought.”

  “I see,” said Salim. “So what is it you want now?”

  “Ten million,” she said. I had to admire her nerve. “Up front.”

  He was still for a moment before turning his head to look back at me. “Is this a deal that is acceptable to you as well, Mr. Hastings?”

  “It’ll do me.”

  After a few moments, he nodded. “Very well, my friends. You have a deal.”

  “So,” Miranda asked, “What comes next?”

  “As you may know, I have an aversion to traveling. But, in this case, I will make an exception. We shall go to Stratford together. You will produce the map and I shall reward you accordingly before going on to find that which I seek.” He looked at us and his lips twitched again in that almost-smile. “So, we are partners, you two and I. And do not worry, my friend. When Ghassan Salim makes a deal, he always honors it to the letter.”

  I managed to keep a straight face. If I didn’t trust him before, that last sentence really clinched it.

  Chapter 27

  It was early afternoon the next day by the time Salim’s chartered jet landed at Heathrow. Officials of the charter company met us when we stepped from the plane onto the tarmac and shepherded us towards a private entrance to the Customs and Immigration desks. It was impressive service but perhaps less than might have been expected of a man like Salim, who must surely have aspired to a plane of his own. The thought supported some of the information I’d received from Alex Thornton before going to America.

  After we passed through Customs, Miranda excused herself and headed for the rest rooms. I held her bag until she returned and we walked together to where Salim was waiting outside the terminal. The weather in England was overcast and chilly after the warmth of New York state: Miranda retrieved her bag and pulled a sweater from it, struggling into it as a Rolls Royce pulled up to the curb. I started to move towards the car but Salim waved me back.

  “My friend,” he said apologetically. “My guards insist on traveling with me. It is tiresome but, for a man in my position, it is an unfortunate fact of life.” Salim had been accompanied from America by two large-framed bodyguards. As he spoke, one of the them began to load baggage into the car’s trunk while the other opened the rear door and stood next to it like a soldier at attention. Whoever these guys were, they either weren’t very flash – they should have been moving into positions that would allow them to protect their principal rather than acting like valets – or they were pretty confident that sleepy old England offered no threat.

  Salim stretched his arms and yawned, as if the flight had tired him out, and pointed towards a Mercedes that was gliding towards a parking space behind the Rolls. The Merc was a few years old but shiny as a motor show exhibit.

  “I must ask you and Miranda to take this car,” Salim said to me. “The car is hired but the chauffeur is one of my men. He has been instructed to stay close to my limousine but, should we get separated, I’m sure you can direct him to where we have arranged to meet.”

  “I suppose that’s OK,” I said. The deal I’d made with Salim included our traveling to Stratford and rendezvousing in the lobby of the Almoner’s Arms, where I planned to slip a few more pound notes into the Dandruffy Dan’s hand in exchange for him giving us access to the Internet. The arrangement was then for me to download and print the last page of the Shakespeare papers in return for Salim paying the agreed compensation into Miranda’s and my bank accounts.

  The Rolls was already pulling away by the time Miranda and I had climbed into the back of the Mercedes. We pulled away from the curb and onto the road, Salim’s car still visible in front of us. A couple of times, as we drove along, I noticed our Arab driver glance at us in the rear view mirror but he said nothing. As we left the airport behind, the sight of the closely-built brick English houses was as big a contrast to New York’s wooden buildings as the weather. I felt a stirring of the old depression and, without thinking about it, turned to Miranda as if she could rescue me from my inner impulses. She looked at me and smiled and her hand crept across the crinkled leather of the car seat to touch mine. I wanted more than a touch of hands but I was conscious of the driver and the way his eyes kept flickering towards us in the mirror. I had no doubt he would report our every word and movement to Salim and I decided I wanted to give him as little as possible to pass on.

  I looked out of the window, watching distractedly as we left the congestion of the airport surrounds behind. The driver tuned the radio to a local station, adjusting the volume so that he could hear it but it was barely audible in the back seat. An old Frank Sinatra song was playing and, at some point, I heard it interrupted by a traffic report. I ignored the tinny sound of the announcer’s voice and it became nothing more than a low chattering against the muted road noise.

  Once we’d left the suburbs behind, I noticed that the driver was avoiding the motorway and using A roads and I leaned forward and asked him why he was taking this particular route. He waved his hand and explained in faltering English that he’d been listening to the radio and that the M25 and M1 motorways were heavily congested due to road works.

  I looked at Miranda, who shrugged. Given that the authorities always seemed to schedule road works on the motorways during the summer months, when the maximum number of people would be inconvenienced, the driver’s story was all too credible. I went back to watching the scenery. After a while, I realized that I hadn’t turned my mobile back on since we’d landed. I reached into the overnight bag that I’d stuffed under my feet and, pulling the phone out, hit the ‘on’ key and punched in the security code. As I waited for the phone to find service, I looked from the car window and noticed that we were now driving along what looked like a ‘B’ road, fairly narrow and with high hedgerows and fields to either side. I frowned: the chauffeur may have wanted to avoid the motorways near London but I couldn’t see why he’d want to take a minor road like this. I leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Why are you driving this way?” I looked ahead, through the windscreen. “Where’s the Rolls Royce?”

  The chauffeur half-turned in his seat and glanced at me. “Mr. Salim car in front,” he said. His voice was heavily accented and he sounded as though he’d smoked a million unfiltered cigarettes. “I listen radio. It say big jam on other road. Accident. This short-cut.”

  We’d now had reports of an accident on one route and road works on the other. It was stretching coincidence too far. I was about to tell the driver to stop the car while I worked out what to do when my phone chirped a
nd its screen told me I had a message. I thumbed in the code that would call voicemail and settled back in the seat to listen.

  As soon as the recorded message started to play, I jerked the phone away from my ear. When Madame George is upset, she tends to get shrill. I turned down the volume before restarting the message.

  As I listened, my stomach clenched to match my fists.

  Chapter 28

  I lowered the phone and turned towards Miranda, who had been watching my face anxiously. “That was George. The person who owns the house I live in. She was calling from a hospital. There was some trouble at her place last night.”

  She touched her hand to my arm. “What kind of trouble?”

  “A man posing as a client managed to get into my room. He was disturbed while he was in the process of trashing it. George’s man, Brabant, tried to stop him and got himself shot for his trouble and Chantelle – she’s the woman who was with me when you first came to the house – was beaten up.”

  “Are they going to be all right?”

  “Brabant’s okay, I think. George said he’s in hospital and they’ve pulled a bullet out of his chest but he’s expected to pull through.”

  “And Chantelle?”

  “She’s in hospital, too.”

  “Jesus!” she said. She held her hand to her mouth and fell silent for a moment. “Your computer? Did they take it?”

  “George didn’t say.”

  “But you had the copies of the Shakespeare papers on it?”

  I stared at her. “How did you…”

  “When you were in America, you said something about printing out the copies you’d brought with you.”

  “So somebody else might have…”

  “Figured out that you’d scanned the pages? What do you think?”

  “They wouldn’t know for sure but I guess, when there’s this much at stake, it would be worth a touch of robbery with violence.”