The Play's the Thing (The Chronicles of Christoval Alvarez Book 7)

by Ann Swinfen

  ‘I spoke to Master Wandesford briefly before the meal,’ I said, ‘and he was already showing signs of the effects of the poison. He told me he had been suffering all week. Then just before he died, he said more.’

  ‘He spoke before he died!’ Will exclaimed. ‘I thought he was past speech.’

  ‘He was, very nearly. He was losing control of the muscles of his throat and mouth. But he managed to say that he had tasted it before, whatever was in the wine. He must have meant the taste of the belladonna. As I said, it is very distinctive, but unless you recognised it, you would not immediately think it was poison.’

  ‘What you mean,’ Simon said slowly, ‘is that someone has been trying to poison him over several days.’

  ‘That is what I suspect. Whoever did it must have used small quantities earlier, perhaps thinking that a larger quantity would be detected from the taste, however he administered it, in food or drink. It is so lethal, he must have used very small quantities indeed, or Wandesford would have been dead before now. Then tonight the–’ I hesitated. ‘The killer increased the dose, and it was fatal.’

  ‘It must have been added to his glass during the meal,’ Will said.

  ‘It must. Probably not until it was getting quite dark. I’m sure that would not have been the first glass Wandesford drank. Another symptom is a very dry mouth. I noticed that his lips were dry and cracked. He would have been thirsty.’

  ‘Why is it called belladonna?’ Simon said. ‘It seems an inappropriate name, “beautiful woman”, for something so deadly.’

  I smiled bitterly. ‘Fashionable women put drops of the tincture into their eyes because it enlarges the pupils. I have to say, if they look anything like Wandesford’s eyes, it must give them the appearance of a toad.’

  They both laughed, though uncomfortably.

  ‘It is not entirely an evil herb,’ I said. ‘It has certain valuable uses outside the body, but never, ever, to be taken internally.’

  ‘What I do not understand,’ Will said, ‘is why anyone should want to hurt poor Wandesford, let alone to kill him. He has always seemed a harmless old fellow to me. You have known him longer than I, Simon. Had he any enemies?’

  Simon shrugged. ‘None that I ever heard of. He was already with the company when I joined as a boy actor, straight from Paul’s school. All I know is that he was once a clergyman. Why he ceased to be one, I do not know. There have been whispers that he did not choose to leave but was unfrocked for some misdeed. That’s nothing but rumour. I cannot imagine that he did anything very terrible, a quiet little man as he was. Like you, I have always thought him harmless. Guy might know more, he was already in the company when Wandesford joined.’

  ‘If the reason for killing him does not lie in the past, it must lie in the present,’ Will said. ‘But what could he possibly have done to make someone want to kill him?’

  ‘There, I cannot help you,’ I said. ‘I am quite certain what killed him and how it was administered, and we are sure when, but why or who I have no idea. I barely knew the man.’

  They both looked baffled.

  ‘I will talk to Guy in the morning,’ Simon said. ‘He probably knew Wandesford better than most of us. They have both been with the company a long time, back when Cuthbert and Dick and Christopher and I were still boys. And I doubt Master Burbage ever knew him well.’

  ‘Aye, that’s a good plan,’ Will said. ‘I might have a word with his landlady, to see if she knows anything about his life outside the playhouse. His lodgings are not far from my new place.’

  ‘Did he have a life outside the playhouse?’ Simon got up to fetch us more ale. I shook my head, but Will held out his tankard. ‘I always felt he was alone, with no one – no family, no friends but for Burbage’s company.’

  ‘What I do not know,’ I said, ‘is whether there will be a coroner’s inquest. What is the law, do you know? I believe there is usually an inquest after someone dies in a brawl or is stabbed, but what happens if someone dies suddenly like this, while dining at an inn?’

  ‘I do not know,’ Will said. ‘But what I do know,’ he added shrewdly, ‘is that Master Burbage and Lord Hunsdon will want this whole affair brushed aside. They’ll want to avoid any scandal. A heart attack, that is what they will say.’

  I looked at them wretchedly. ‘That is all very well, but I am a licensed physician and I was there. I cannot let it pass. The man was poisoned. This was murder.’

  Unfortunately I could do nothing to help Simon and Will the following morning, for Dr Nuñez sent a message to say he had decided that this was the day we should ride out to the one remaining patient he was making over to me, the wealthy mercer who had turned minor gentleman and had built himself a small manor house near Windsor.

  At any other time I would have welcomed the diversion, but I felt I should be helping the others in trying to discover more about Master Wandesford and who might have had a reason to kill him. However, my new patients would be important for me, so I collected Hector, then rode round to Mark Lane, where Dr Nuñez was just mounting his own horse, a steady old grey cob. We headed along Thames Street, making for Ludgate and the Strand.

  ‘We have not ridden together since our time in Portugal, Kit,’ he said.

  I shuddered. That last ride from Lisbon to Cascais had been terrible, reining back the horses to keep pace with the sick and dying foot soldiers who struggled to make the journey back to the ships.

  ‘Do you still think of Portugal as home, sir?’ I asked. The Nuñez family had come to England long before my father and I had done, but I remembered that when we had been sailing there he had spoken of it as “home”.’

  He took some time answering. Finally, he shook his head.

  ‘Nay, for many years I yearned to go back. I built my business here, and I have prospered, but I still hoped that one day I would return. After the Spanish invaded our country, I clung to the belief that they would be driven out, and of course that was the object of the expedition.’

  ‘For some it was.’

  ‘Aye, for some.’ He sighed. ‘After we returned to England, Beatriz told me quite firmly that she never wanted to go back, once she had heard all the details of our disaster. At first I could not quite give up hope . . . but now? Now I see that I was mistaken. I was foolish ever to suppose that I could recapture the Portugal of my childhood. The world has changed. The vicious blight which is the Inquisition has fallen over the country. The leaders of our people who might have made a stand against Spain were executed because of our clumsy invasion, as you well know. Nay, now my home is England, and I am English in spirit. My children and grandchildren will be English. They are even starting to call themselves “Nones” instead of “Nuñez”.’

  We began riding north and west from Westminster, taking the country road that led to Windsor, as he turned in his saddle.

  ‘And what of you, Kit? Do you feel any ties to Portugal? Or do you think of yourself as English?’

  ‘For myself, I am English,’ I said slowly. ‘Aye. That is how I think of myself now. Nearly half my life has been here. And I have no love of Portugal. But I have one link still with the country.’

  I had never told him this, but saw no reason why I should not now. There was no one I trusted more, and he had been endlessly kind to me. Why should I keep it a secret from him? There could be no harm in telling him. I trusted Simon. Of course I did. But I was not sure that I trusted myself with him. Not since he had kissed me when we parted in the harbour at Wardhouse. It had not felt like the kiss merely of a friend. If I started to tell him about this hidden part of my life, I might accidentally reveal too much.

  ‘I have a younger sister still in Portugal,’ I said.

  He looked at me in total astonishment.

  ‘I thought that you and your father were all that were left of your family.’

  I shook my head. ‘My younger sister and brother were with my grandparents when my parents and I were arrested. They were to have come to England with us, but
were taken ill, and my brother died. Isabel was too ill to travel.’

  I looked past him at the road ahead. On either side, the country folk were already out harvesting the grain crops, fully six weeks early. They were right to hasten and gather the crops in, for there was a feeling in the air, a kind of hush, that foreshadowed a break at long last in this unrelenting heat wave. The heavy air carried the sweet scent of the cut stems and even here on the dusty road we could hear the rhythmic swish of the scythes through the wheat, like the sound of a heavy silk gown trailing down a wide staircase. The women following behind the reapers were singing as they built the stooks, their movements like a complex dance known since childhood – a stoop to gather an armful of wheat, a tap to level the bottom of the stems, a quick twist of straw to bundle them firmly together, then the careful placement of each bundle in its rightful place in the stook. Six bundles, two and two, leaning their grainy heads together, one bundle at each end, to support the group.

  After a long pause, as the horses plodded on at the steady pace that Dr Nuñez favoured, I sighed, and continued.

  ‘Do you remember that I went away for a few days, while the expedition stayed at Peniche?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I went looking for Isabel. I expected to find her at my grandparents’ house, but when I arrived there, I learned that both of them were dead and my sister living at a farm on the estate. One of the farmers claimed she was his wife, but I don’t believe they were married. She had two children, and another on the way.’

  Dr Nuñez looked shocked. ‘But . . . how old was she? You were nineteen that summer. She is younger?’

  ‘She was seventeen then. She cannot have been more than thirteen when she bore the first child. I tried to persuade her to come away with me, but the man terrifies her, treats her like a slave, and she would not leave the children.’

  I twisted round in my saddle to look at him. ‘Some day,’ I said fiercely, ‘someday I will rescue her from him. I do not know how, but I will do it.’

  He was clearly both astonished and worried by my revelations. ‘You must be careful, Kit! If you return to Portugal, you will be in great danger.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ I said drearily. ‘It was a wild scheme, back then. And how would she have survived that march to Lisbon, pregnant, and perhaps with the children too? I should have had all their deaths on my head. Nay, I must find some other way, but I swear, some day I will make the attempt once more.’

  We rode on for some while in silence. I had never spoken my half-formed intention out loud before, but it had been growing in me. Somehow, telling Dr Nuñez about Isabel relieved the burden of that terrible memory a little. Spoken out, it seemed no longer the nightmare which still visited me from time to time, but a reality I could confront. When the children were a little older, when I was able to construct a feasible scheme, not an ill thought out gamble, then I would find Isabel and bring her to England.

  Clearly I had worried Dr Nuñez by my sudden declaration, and he began arguing against it.

  ‘Never fear,’ I said ruefully. ‘It will need time and money to devise a means, and for now I have neither.’

  Then I sought to divert him from the subject by telling him about the death of Master Wandesford the previous evening.

  ‘Because it was Lord Hunsdon who gave the dinner, my friends believe that he and Master Burbage will wish to imply it was a natural death, from a heart attack. They will not want the Lord Chamberlain to be associated with a scandal.’

  He nodded. ‘Very likely.’

  ‘But I am certain Master Wandesford was poisoned, and indeed had been given poison for some days before the dinner.’

  I described Wandesford’s symptoms, and the adulterated wine left in his glass.

  ‘Aye, it certainly sounds like belladonna,’ he said. ‘The man could not have taken it himself, by mistake?’

  ‘Gathered the berries? Squeezed the juice from them? Carried it to the inn? Then added it to his wine?’

  I gave a sceptical grimace.

  ‘Unlikely, I agree,’ he said. ‘However, I have heard of a few cases where people have taken small doses of belladonna because it gave them vivid hallucinations, but I believe they are almost invariably devilish visions and very frightening. It takes a strange mind to wish to indulge in such a thing. A witches’ coven, perhaps . . .’

  I remembered the snakes the little boy thought he had seen.

  ‘Master Wandesford was no such person,’ I said firmly. ‘He was a quiet, shy, decent man. Nay, he would never have taken belladonna deliberately.’

  I paused. I still did not know the answer to a question that was worrying me. ‘Do you know whether there is likely to be a coroner’s inquest?’

  He pursed his lips. ‘Difficult to say. As you suspect, powerful men may wish to divert any attention from the episode, but if it was known to be a deliberate poisoning, then I think there would need to be an inquest.’

  ‘You say “if it was known”. I know, and Simon Hetherington and Will Shakespeare know. Possibly Cuthbert Burbage overheard me last night. I have not spoken to Master Burbage, he was too occupied with Lord Hunsdon at the time. Do you think I should tell him?’

  ‘Aye, I do. He employed the man. He has an interest in his death, even if he also wishes to oblige Lord Hunsdon. Or of course you could go directly to the coroner yourself.’

  ‘I would not like to do that behind Master Burbage’s back.’

  ‘Aye, better not. Take your evidence to him, and see what he says.’

  ‘And if he does not wish to pursue it?’

  ‘Then it will be on your conscience.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Either to go to the coroner against his wishes, and the wishes of the Lord Chamberlain, or to suppress the knowledge that the man was murdered.’

  I groaned. ‘Not a pleasant choice.’

  ‘Nay. But personally I have no doubts about where your conscience will lead you. Have a care, though. Great lords can be dangerous enemies.’

  We rode on in silence. Dr Nuñez had simply articulated what I knew to be the truth of the matter, which had changed nothing.

  ‘There,’ he said at last, pointing ahead where a pleasant small manor house built of warm brick stood atop a low hill about half a mile away and slightly off to the right. I could make out a stand of newly-planted young trees, and a area of brown earth where something was to be constructed, perhaps a terrace, a place where the owner could sit of an evening with a glass of wine and survey his small kingdom. I wondered whether it was possible to see Windsor Castle from there.

  The former mercer, Thomas Buckford, proved affable and courteous, taking us on a tour of his newly acquired demesne. Thatchers were roofing the recently completed stables (although the house was roofed with Flemish tiles). Everywhere about the grounds gardeners were at work, laying out formal beds, and planting more trees, including an orchard.

  It was pleasant to walk about outdoors, for up here on the hill there was a whisper of a breeze, but I could see that Dr Nuñez was growing tired, so I was glad when Master Buckford led us inside to meet his wife, who had a cheery homely face, though she affected rather elegant clothes, and their six children, so close in age that I thought they must have arrived at yearly intervals.

  The whole family was ruddy with health, no doubt partly owing to the country air here, well away from the insalubrious fumes and fogs of London. I doubted I would have much medical business here. However, it had been a delight to escape those same fumes and fogs myself today, for the continuing heat and the growing threat of thunder were making London almost intolerable.

  Our ride home in the early afternoon was peaceful. As we passed them again, I noticed that the harvesters had moved on to the next field. We chatted about everyday matters; no more mention of that terrible journey to Portugal. Dr Nuñez also told me all the details of a tiresome legal case he was pursuing through the courts, in an attempt to recoup a debt owing to him these many months.

  ‘I shall end by paying out mo
re to my lawyer than I shall recover – if I ever do recover the monies owing to me.’

  ‘Is it then worth the effort and the worry?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye, it is. One must take a stand against those who default on their debts, otherwise no man would ever pay his due and every merchant would flounder. This was payment for a shipment of spices and silk – half the cargo of one of my smaller ships. The fellow had the goods from me near a year ago, he has had plenty of time to pay. He will have sold everything now, so will have no lack of cash in hand. There is no excuse not to pay me, only greed. My ships and my crews are risked on the high seas to fetch these precious commodities. Are they to be risked merely for his convenience? Of course the lawyers will try to draw out the case, for the longer it takes, the more they will be paid.’

  He was still complaining about lawyers and their practices when we reached Mark Lane.

  ‘Come within, Kit,’ he said. ‘you will be the better for a cold drink.’

  I shook my head. ’I thank you, but after I have stabled Hector, I think I will go and confront Master Burbage with my discoveries about the death of Wandesford.’

  He smiled, as he always did, when I mentioned my horse by name, for he too bore the name Hector.

  ‘Very well. That is the right thing to do. It will place the first burden of choice on Master Burbage’s shoulders. It will be interesting to see which way he turns.’

  ‘Aye,’ I said, without too much conviction. ‘It will indeed.’

  After stabling Hector at the Walsingham house in Seething Lane, I made my way to the Theatre, having collected Rikki from the stable lad Harry. It was too early for the players to have finished their performance, so I followed a country lane which led west and then north into Finsbury Fields, skirting the drying green where the weavers stretched their finished cloth on tenter hooks, and continued on well beyond the archery butts. These were always in use, as the male citizens of London practised their shooting skills, and indeed regular practice at the butts was laid down by law for every male between the ages of seven and sixty, despite the fact that gunnery was becoming more and more the weapon of war. A good archer could fire a dozen arrows while a musket man was reloading after his first shot, so archery was still of considerable importance. I had managed to avoid the requirement to practise, for certain professions, like that of physician, were exempt, although sometimes I thought it might be a useful skill to acquire.