by Simon Hawke
“And was she?”
“I never learned the truth of it,” admitted Smythe. “I lost her in the maze, and then I heard the voices of those men, and you already know the rest. More than anything, I feared that they would stumble upon her and she would come to harm. Hence, I shouted out to warn her and to draw them off.”
“Well, if ‘twas ever any doubt that foul play was at hand, this certainly dispells it,” Worley said. “Whoever those two plotters are, it seems evident from their attack on you that they will not stop at murder to achieve their goal. And now with Catherine’s tragic death…” He grimaced and shook his head. “Catherine was, G6d rest her soul, a strong-minded young woman. Godfrey had been trying to get her married off for quite some time, but whether ‘twas justified or not, she had a reputation as a shrew. Her sister seems to have a milder disposition, one most men would doubtless find preferable in a wife, but ‘twas well known that Godfrey would never have consented to the betrothal of his younger daughter before the older one was married. And now Catherine is dead… ‘out of the way,’ as that miserable scoundrel put it.”
“And with no sons to inherit Middleton’s fortune, ‘twould all go to Blanche now,” Shakespeare said. “Or, more to the point, to whoever should become her husband.”
“Indeed,” said Worley. “And whoever marries Blanche will likely find her far more manageable than ever her sister would have been.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Smythe, “but either way, methinks Master Middleton should know of this.” He sighed heavily. “If I had only said something last night…” His voice trailed off.
“ ‘Twould have made no difference in the end, Tuck,” said Shakespeare, gently. “Last night, as it turns out, Middleton was in London with his daughters. We did not know that then, yet even if we did, word could never have reached him in time to save Catherine. How were you to know that someone meant to kill her? And even if you knew, you could not have known she would be poisoned.”
“Your friend speaks sensibly and truly,” Worley said. “You are entirely blameless in the matter, Tuck. The guilt rests with the murderers. And we shall find them, have no fear. There cannot be many here who are not known to me. We shall look to Blanche’s suitors for our suspects.”
“But will they not be forewarned now?” Smythe asked.
“Perhaps,” said Worley. “However, we have a number of things working in our favor. For one thing, they may not know who you are. And for another, even if they do, they can have no way of knowing that you have discussed with me the things you overheard last night. They shall have no reason to suspect any relationship between us, and we shall give them no reason to suspect one. For all they know, you are merely someone who may have overheard part of their conversation last night. They cannot know for certain what you may have heard, or whether you shall do anything about it, or even whether you shall make any connection between their plot to impersonate aristocrats and Catherine’s death.”
“But in either case,” said Shakespeare, “would it not be in their interest to eliminate even the least possibility that their plot may be exposed?”
“To be sure,” Worley agreed. “And they have already demonstrated their willingness to do so in their attack on Tuck. And if they did not hesitate to do so once, they shall not hesitate to try again. Remember that without Blanche Middleton, they have nothing. The entire success of their plan rests on their remaining here and seeing it through. And that is where they shall give themselves away.”
Smythe sighed. “I fear I know where this is headed.”
Worley clapped him on the shoulder. “Tuck, no one shall force you to take any risks you do not wish to take,” he said. “But consider that one woman has already died and the welfare of another is at stake.”
“I had already considered those things, Sir William,” Smythe replied. “And there can be no question but that I must do whatever must be done. I am completely at your service.”
“Good lad.”
“I, too, stand ready to assist,” said Shakespeare. “What would you have us do?”
“I knew that I could count on you both,” Sir William said. “We shall have to move quickly, however. The more time that elapses, the more it favors the killers.” He turned to Shakespeare. “Will, you must make all haste to London with this flask and see your Granny Meg. I shall have a carriage made ready for you at once.”
“We shall change our clothes and leave immediately,” said Smythe.
“Not you, Tuck,” Worley said. “You shall be staying here. You have a different part to play.”
“That of the Judas goat,” said Smythe, dryly.
“Precisely. We must bait them into coming after you once more. Are you up to it?”
Smythe took a deep breath. “I am.”
“Good. Now, the first order of business shall be to get Will on his way to Granny Meg’s and then see to Catherine’s funeral. I shall speak with Godfrey Middleton and fix him to our purpose. It shall not be difficult. He may appear foppish, but there is iron in his spine. I should not wish to have him as an enemy. Once he finds out that his daughter has been murdered, he shall not rest until he has seen her killers brought to justice. But at the same time, we must see to it that in his anger, he does not give our plan away.”
“We have a plan, then?” Shakespeare asked.
“Aye,” Smythe replied, “to put me into harm’s way and see who tries to harm me.”
“Ah. It sounds like a good plan to me.”
“Oh, does it, indeed?” asked Smythe, wryly.
“Well, I much prefer it to putting myself into harm’s way,” the poet said, nonchalantly.
“ ‘Twould be an awful thing if the carriage hit a rut and dropped a wheel on its way to London, so that you fell out and broke your neck,” said Smythe.
“Aye, and ‘twould be terrible if someone stuck a rapier in your gizzard whilst I was not there to watch your back,” Shakespeare riposted.
“If you two are finished fencing, there is more to be discussed,” said Worley. “Now then, mark me well, here is what we shall do…”
The journey back to London in Godfrey Middleton’s light carriage took far less time than the trip out, but it was also far less comfortable. When they had set out for Middleton Manor, the Queen’s Men had travelled by horseback and by wagon, but because their wagon was large and rather cumbersome and loaded with all of their gear, they had traveled slowly, those of them on horseback proceeding at an easy walk so as not to lose the wagon. This was Shakespeare’s first ride in a gentleman’s open carriage, and he was not especially enjoying the experience.
The well-padded, velvet-covered seats were certainly a vast improvement over a simple leather saddle or the hard, unupholstered wooden bench of a wagon, but the rate at which they travelled made the carriage bounce and jounce as they careened along the rutted road to London and each jarring impact was transmitted through the wooden wheels of the carriage to its frame, then through the seats, despite their padding, directly into the poet’s bones. Every bump made his teeth click together sharply and at least twice he had almost bitten through his tongue. Sir William had directed the driver to waste no time in getting him to London and back, and the man was complying with disconcerting efficiency.
Shakespeare knew better than to ask the driver to slow down. The liveried servant had stared at him with thinly veiled contempt when he discovered whom he would be driving to the city and back. After all, he was a gentleman’s driver. He had certain standards and a reputation to uphold. And Shakespeare knew that he did not even remotely resemble a gentleman.
Someday, he thought, it would be a fine thing to be able to call oneself a gentleman, with good clothes and a grand house and servants who would tug their forelocks at you. He imagined what it must be like to have his own coat-of-arms to display over his doorway and his mantelpiece, and have painted on the sides of a fine, black-lacquered coach. A coach whose driver he could order to drive slowly. He swore to himself as ye
t another jarring impact shot painfully through his tailbone into his spine. If this was how a gentleman was meant to travel, then he could damn well do without it. If I should ever become a gentleman, he thought, then I shall travel everywhere on horseback. At a walking pace.
It struck him suddenly how utterly ludicrous that thought was. That an actor should ever be regarded as a gentleman was simply ridiculous. An actor, he thought, had about as much chance of becoming a gentleman as he did of being knighted. Still, it was a lovely fantasy with which to pass the time.
It was not very long before the rutted road led to the outskirts of the city and then gave way to London ’s cobbled streets, which were no less gentle to the poet’s fragile frame than they were to the stout, wooden frame of the carriage. Shakespeare swore softly to himself as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Carriages and coaches were a fairly recent addition to the traffic on the streets of London, but there were now so many of them vying for space with the wooden-wheeled carts and wagons of the farmers and tradesmen, not to mention the horses and pedestrians, that the streets were more often than not hopelessly clogged. It was becoming insufferable and Shakespeare could not see it getting any better as more and more of the “new men” were infiltrating the ranks of the upper classes and buying carriages and coaches of their own.
The ditches that ran down the middle of each street trickled with a stinking quagmire of every sort of waste, including human and animal, raising a stench that was enough to take the starch out of a pleated ruff. And for those who could not navigate these streets from the relative safety of a carriage or a perch on horseback, it was a constant hazard to be splashed with the awful ooze, or to lose one’s footing on the slippery cobbles. Not a few elegant suits of clothes in evidence on the streets were inelegantly bespattered, and those that were not bore testimony to the light-footedness of their owners.
At the same time, however, London was full to brimming with a sense of energy and purpose that Shakespeare found invigorating and even intoxicating. Unlike his sleepy home village of Stratford, this was a place where things were happening all the time. Here in these teeming streets, and behind those doors, fortunes were being made and lost and people struggled to survive, to live and love, sometimes with passion worthy of a poet’s muse, and sometimes with a dull, rutting mindlessness that was nothing more than some primitive, instinctual affirmation of existence. It was all here, the base and the sublime, the endless drama of human character and existence that he found so endlessly fascinating and compelling. Just being here made him feel alive.
To him, this was the true theatre, whose machinations he wanted his more artificial theatre to reflect. There was an ongoing drama unfolding in these streets that was far more essential, far more basic, far more tragic, comedic, and uplifting than anything that was currently being acted on the stage. Compared to all of this, he thought, as his alert gaze swept the streets around him, how tawdry, how simple-minded and how utterly banal were the highjinks, jokes and caperings indulged in by the players of the day. All that petty posturing, all those silly, ribald songs, all those grandiloquent speeches said nothing at all about the piece of work man truly was. The ancient Greeks had understood something that men like Greene and his academic cronies seemed to have forgotten, and that was that the highest king could have at heart the motives of the basest peasant, and the meanest menial could possess nobility that would surpass that of the highest king.
The carriage had slowed considerably when they had entered the city and now, as it turned down a winding, narrow street, it slowed even more as the driver scanned the buildings carefully, unsure of his surroundings. Shakespeare called out to him, “Just a short way further on! Look for the sign of the mortar and the pestle!”
Moments later, the driver was reining in before a small apothecary shop on the ground floor of a small, two-story timbered house, crammed wall-to-wall in a row with other similar houses that lined the narrow, winding street. Above the heavy, planked front door hung a wooden sign with a mortar and a pestle painted on it, identifying the apothecary shop.
“Wait here,” Shakespeare said to the driver, rather superfluously, for of course the man would wait. He had been ordered to take him there and back. The driver merely glanced at him with disdain and said nothing.
The shop was still open for business, so Shakespeare went straight in. The strong aroma of herbs filled the air inside the shop.
It was the same curious, yet somehow comforting mixture of rich smells he remembered from the first time he had visited the shop, together with Tuck Smythe, Dick Burbage, and Elizabeth Darcie. The door shut behind him with a loud, protracted creaking sound, accented by a soft tinkling of small bells tied to a cord. A profusion of herbs hung drying from the ceiling beams in bunches, dozens and dozens of them, giving the ceiling the appearance of a hanging garden. From one instant to the next, depending upon where he stood, different odors wafted over him, some familiar, like rosemary, fennel, thyme and basil, others strange and exotic. Wooden shelves from floor to ceiling lined all four walls, each shelf holding a wide assortment of earthenware jars of various sizes. In front of one row of shelves, to his left as he entered the shop, stood a long wooden counter upon which were spread cutting boards and mixing bowls, mortars and pestles, scales with weights and measures, scoops, funnels, scissors, knives and various other tools, some of which he could not even identify. For all the clutter, however, there was not a speck of dirt or dust anywhere in evidence.
A hanging cloth embroidered with the symbols of the zodiac was pushed aside and a tall, almost skeletal-looking man in a long black robe stepped out. His dark eyes were deeply set, giving them a hooded aspect, and his features were lined and gaunt. He had high, prominent cheekbones and a high forehead with long, wispy, snow white hair cascading down over his shoulders from beneath a woven skullcap. His face was set into what appeared to be a perpetual expression of somberness. Once again, Shakespeare thought that he looked like the very image of a sorcerer, only instead of having a dramatic name like Merlin Ambrosius or Asmodeus or some other suitably necromantic appellation, he bore the rather prosaic and innocuous name of Freddy.
“Good day to you, Master Shakespeare,” Freddy said, greeting him with a slight bow.
“ ‘Allo, Freddy. I am pleased to see that you remembered me.”
“Indeed, I do remember, sir. And if I had not, then Meg would have reminded me. She told me that we might be expecting you today.”
“Did she?” The poet shook his head, smiling. “Your good wife continues to amaze me, Freddy. And did she also, by any chance, happen to tell you on what errand I would come?”
“A grave errand, Master Shakespeare.”
The smile slipped from Shakespeare’s face. “Aye. A grave errand, indeed. I trust that she will see me then?”
“But of course,” said Freddy, standing aside and beckoning him through the doorway. “This way, sir.”
The poet went through as Freddy held aside the hanging cloth and together they proceeded to the back of the dimly lit shop, towards a steep and narrow flight of stairs against the far wall. Shakespeare slowly climbed the creaky wooden stairs until he came out through the floor of the living quarters on the second story. It was a narrow, one-room apartment, longer than it was wide, with whitewashed walls and a planked wood floor that was, unlike the floor in the shop below, not covered with rushes, but swept bare and kept immaculately clean.
At the far end of the room was the only window, looking out over the street below. It was partially hidden by a free-standing wooden shelf that also functioned as a divider to screen off the sleeping area in the back. Nothing at all had changed since the last time he was here. The furnishings were still simple and rough-hewn, consisting of not much more than a couple of sturdy wooden chairs, several three-legged stools and a number of large, old-looking wooden chests. A rectangular wood-planked table similar to those that one might find in any tavern stood in the center of the room, before a fireplace.
> Except in the homes of the wealthy, fireplaces on the second floor were simply unheard of. In thatch-roofed country homes, where the ceilings on the upper floors were usually just the dry thatch on the roof, the fire hazard would have been extreme, to say nothing of the flammability of the rushes strewn upon the floors.
However, there were no rushes scattered here, and the ceiling was planked and wood-beamed, not thatch. With the exception of a couple of candles, the flames from the hearth provided most of the light in the room, and there were several black cauldrons of various sizes hanging from iron hooks over the fire. In his mind’s eye, the unbidden image of three witches came to him as they stood over the cauldrons, stirring the bubbling brew and cackling to themselves. He shook his head and smiled at his own foolishness, yet at the same time, his surroundings were very much conducive to that sort of vision.
Like the apothecary shop below, the walls were all but covered with wooden shelves crammed full of books and earthen jars, curious looking wooden carvings and small statuary made of stone, clay pots of every shape and size, necklaces and amulets of every description, little leather pouches suspended from thongs with who knew what sort of strange talismans contained therein… Shakespeare imagined eyes of newts and wings of bats and pulverized horn of unicorn. Everywhere he looked, there was something wonderfully different and strange to arrest his attention.
“Freddy, I was wondering…” he began as he turned around, then stopped abruptly when he saw that Freddy was not there. He frowned. He could have sworn that Freddy had come up the stairs right behind him. In fact, he was certain that he had. He made a wry grimace and shook his head. “The man moves like a ghost,” he said to himself.
“Not all ghosts move quietly,” said a soft, low voice from behind him.
He started when she spoke and turned around again to see Granny Meg standing by the table in front of the fireplace. It seemed as if she had simply appeared from out of nowhere. Clearly, she must have come from behind the screen at the far end of the room, by the window, but she was barefoot and had moved so quietly that he had not heard her footsteps. He tried to recall if Freddy had been barefoot also, but he had not noticed, and with his floor-length robe, it would have been difficult to tell, in any case.
