The First Murder

by The Medieval Murderers

  As he trudged back through the streets, which gave off a cold glow on account of the freshly fallen snow, Nick tried to sum up what he’d learned.

  Henry Ashe really existed. Therefore Christopher Dole was his agent, presenting The English Brothers to the printer. Had Ashe fallen out with him and killed him? Or was it the second visitor, the one Stephen Atkins claimed he’d heard creeping up the stairs? No, he hadn’t said ‘creeping’, had he? Nick was thoroughly confused. Perhaps it was the result of the blows he’d received to the head.

  The real source of the confusion, though, was the four words scrawled on the scrap of paper from Dole’s room.

  Those words were: ‘Guilielmus Shakespeare hoc fecit.’ ‘William Shakespeare made this.’

  Or as one might say instead: ‘William Shakespeare did this.’

  It was a claim of authorship. So WS was the author of The English Brothers, after all? No, that was Henry Ashe, the man who’d called on Dole the previous afternoon. But if the message on the scrap of paper wasn’t a claim of authorship, then perhaps it was the finger of blame. William Shakespeare did this.

  Killed Christopher Dole.

  The thought crept into Nick’s battered head that maybe WS had called on Dole in the person of Ashe, keeping his face hidden under the hat brim. Shakespeare was a gentleman, he possessed gentlemanly clothes. But you couldn’t claim he spoke in a refined way. He still retained traces of Warwickshire in his voice and he lacked the kind of courtly London tone that would impress a silly young man like Stephen Atkins.

  Was WS the second visitor, though, the unseen one?

  Nick was reluctant to think of WS in this harsh light but he had to. He could not remember seeing Shakespeare so angry as he was when displaying a copy of the play in the little office behind the Globe stage. Was it just that he was indignant over the feeble imitation of his coat of arms on the title page? Or was he frightened that the Privy Council were going to come calling, on the hunt for seditious satire against King James? Frightened enough to take action against anyone he thought responsible for causing him trouble?

  V

  ‘No, I am not familiar with Henry Ashe,’ said Shakespeare. ‘There is no playwright in London with that name. You are sure of it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nick. ‘The name was given me by George Bruton, the printer in Bride Lane. And then I was told that a gentleman called Ashe visited Christopher Dole before he died.’

  ‘Poor Dole,’ said WS. ‘For sure, he is the author of The English Brothers. Henry Ashe was just a blind. I always thought it was Dole. It was he whose play I mocked. It was called The Matricide.’

  Nick studied him carefully. Once again, they were sitting in the small Globe office but this time it was the early afternoon, and shortly before the day’s play was about to begin. Nick did not make his first entrance until the third act so he could delay going along to the tiring-room to put on his costume. In fact, his attention wasn’t really on that afternoon’s production, which was a drama of bloody revenge, but on the reaction of the man sitting across the table from him.

  ‘Was your mockery of his play the only reason for his . . . dislike of you?’

  ‘There were other causes. He thought I’d taken the idea for my Romeo and Juliet from him.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘No, Nicholas, I did not,’ said Shakespeare, in a deliberate sort of way as if he were talking to someone whose understanding was slow. ‘I took it from another and older source – several of them, perhaps. But not from Dole. Not poor Christopher Dole. He may have had the notion at the same time, of course. We all drink from the same well but some of us drink deeper than others.’

  Shakespeare’s sorrow for Dole was not profound, but Nick thought it was genuine. In fact, WS was showing more grief for the death of the one-time player than his own brother had. When Nick had called on Alan Dole in his St Paul’s bookshop, as he’d promised Mrs Atkins he would, Alan had merely pulled a face as though he expected nothing better or more ambitious from his brother than to go off and die. Then the bookseller had started to complain about the funeral expenses. Then he’d asked whether Nick had seen the Oseney text in Christopher’s room. Then it was Nick’s turn to shrug. The Oseney text? He supposed this was the item that Christopher was meant to be returning to his brother.

  By contrast to the brother’s, Shakespeare’s grief looked like the real thing. Shakespeare was an actor, of course, even if he played few parts these days. But he did not put on airs or false attitudes away from the stage. When he saw the marks on Nick’s face and heard how he’d come by them in Mrs Atkins’ lodging house, WS was so full of gratitude and apology that all Nick’s suspicions began to fall away. Nick stuck to the story that Dole had done away with himself.

  He said nothing of the scrap of paper that had fluttered to the floor. Guilielmus Shakespeare hoc fecit. William Shakespeare did this. No, it did not mean anything.

  Richard Burbage, the principal shareholder and king of the players, now poked his head round the door of the tiny office and his presence brought to Nick’s mind the name he had briefly assumed – Dick Newman. Much use it had been.

  Richard Burbage evidently wanted to speak to WS but, seeing Nick, he said: ‘You’ve been in a fight?’

  ‘On my behalf,’ said WS quickly.

  Burbage raised his eyebrows and said, ‘It’s as well you’re playing a villain and not the hero this afternoon. Bruises suit your part, Nicholas.’

  ‘I could have painted them on with greater ease and less pain,’ said Nick.

  WS said: ‘Richard, have you ever heard of a London playwright called Henry Ashe?’

  Burbage put his hand to his neatly tapered beard. He didn’t seem so inclined to dismiss the name as WS had done. ‘I do not believe so. But there are always new people coming into this town. I’ll make enquiries.’

  They went ahead with the performance that afternoon, with the pipe-smoke and the breath of the audience curling up into the freezing December air. Nick Revill threw himself into the part of the villain, forgetting his aches and bruises as he slashed and stabbed his way to his own inevitable doom. But he did not remember much about the play. What happened afterwards was much more significant.

  Nick was leaving the Globe with a couple of his companions from the King’s Men. He had changed into his day clothes in the tire house but had not bothered to wash off the dye that made his complexion more swarthy, nor to remove the false beard that he wore as the villain. Normally clean-shaven, Nick took pleasure in the fact that his neat, tapered beard was reminiscent of Richard Burbage’s. It was made of lamb’s wool and, quite apart from the fact that ungumming it from his face would take a little time, the soft fleece provided a little extra warmth in this cold period.

  Evening was come. No fresh snow had fallen but the old stuff still lodged in street corners and on rooftops. The three players made their way down a street that ran past the Globe, known as Brend’s Rents. They passed the entrance to the playhouse. Standing there was little limping Sam, a doorman who’d been with the company since the early days when they played north of the river. An individual was next to him.

  ‘There he is,’ the old man said to the person beside him. ‘I told you he would be coming.’ Then to Nick: ‘Nicholas Revill, here is someone eager for a word.’

  For some reason, Nick suddenly thought he was about to see Henry Ashe and the hairs rose on the back of his neck at the idea. But the person beside Sam was wearing not a wide-brimmed hat but a cap. Also, to judge by his clothes, this was no gentleman but a craftsman. The light from the entrance lobby fell on the face of the stranger and Nick was surprised to recognise the journeyman from George Bruton’s printing works. He was not wearing his spectacles but he had that distinctive inky mole on the tip of his nose. It was Hans de Worde. As the printer came forward, Sam closed the door of the playhouse to signal that the day’s business was concluded.

  Nick’s companions went on their way with scarcely a backward glance. It wasn
’t so unusual for a player to be waylaid after a performance by someone wishing to give his opinion about the acting and how it might be better done, or wanting an introduction to one of the shareholders. But Hans wasn’t interested in any of that.

  ‘Can I speak to you, Mr Revill?’ said Hans, stressing the last word. Nick wondered why for a moment before recalling that he’d announced himself as Dick Newman, of the Admiral’s Men, in Bruton’s printing-house.

  ‘I tracked you here,’ said Hans. ‘I do not visit these places myself but John, our apprentice, is a keen attender at the playhouse and other disreputable locations on this side of the Thames, even though he should be occupying himself with better things. I have told him so often enough. John thought he recognised you when you came to Bride Lane. He told me afterwards that you weren’t with the Admiral’s but with the King’s Men. He has seen you act.’

  Nick ought to have been pleased to be recognised but the accusation in Hans’s tone put him on the back foot. Yes, he had misrepresented himself at the printing-house. To be more precise, he had told a lie.

  ‘You want to talk with me now?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. It is important. But not here. We are too isolated.’

  Hans looked about him as though he expected a gang of knaves and cut-throats to emerge from the shadows. In the district of Southwark it was not so unlikely. Nick felt a touch of the other man’s fear. Now that the theatre was shut up, and with the players and the playgoers all departed, it was cold and silent in Brend’s Rents.

  ‘We’ll go to a tavern,’ he said.

  ‘I – I do not like to frequent taverns. I have rarely been across the Bridge before. I am not familiar with this side of the river even though my brother Antony lives over here. He is a ferryman.’

  This was an odd piece of information which Nick digested as he led Hans in the direction of London Bridge, only a few hundred yards from the playhouse. It was better lit and more crowded there. In any case, he had to go in that direction to return to his own lodgings.

  Hans said nothing until they had reached the area at the top of the main thoroughfare known as Long Southwark People and vehicles emerged from below the great stone gate of the Bridge. Most of the traffic was southbound at this time of the evening. Almost drowning out the sound of cart wheels and the passers-by was the roar of the river as it forced its way through the many arches of the Bridge.

  Nick and Hans stood to one side of the entrance to the street going towards Bermondsey and called Short Southwark to distinguish it from Long Southwark, from which it ran at a right angle.

  ‘Why did you come to the Globe?’ said Nick.

  ‘I thought you could be found there, Mr Revill. But I had to see you and your fellows on stage before I was able to identify you for certain. The drama was full of blood and fury. Too much of it. It was not real, like that beard which you are wearing.’

  Nick realised he was referring to the revenge play of this afternoon. Too much blood and fury? And not real? Oh, these things are real, thought Nick. Look around you. On the battlements of the gate-tower of the Bridge near where they stood were poles displaying the severed heads of traitors, including those executed after the powder treason of 1605. If no Londoner noticed them, even by daylight, it was only because the sight was so usual.

  ‘It is cold, Mr de Worde, and I am tired and hungry after my day’s work. Why did you want to see me?’

  ‘I have something on my conscience.’

  ‘I am not a priest.’

  ‘There is something I should have told you when you came to the printing-shop yesterday. I knew more than I said.’

  Even as he spoke, low and urgently, Hans’s gaze was darting here and there. He was plainly frightened.

  ‘I visited Mr Dole. I removed an item from his room. I should not have done so.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Nick. ‘What item do you mean? Was Christopher Dole there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he allow you to remove this “item”, whatever it was?’

  ‘No. He could not have allowed me to do anything for he was dead.’

  ‘Hanged?’

  ‘It was a dreadful sight. He had killed himself.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Yes. There was a stool tumbled beneath his feet. He must have stood on it to reach to the ceiling and fix the cord up there. I replaced the stool by the wall and was going to take down his body so that his mortal remains should be displayed more decorously, but my nerve failed me at the last moment . . . and . . . and instead I found the item which I’d come for and ran down the stairs . . . ’

  Nick supposed that de Worde was the second visitor to the lodging-house, the one whose arrival Stephen Atkins had heard. Hans’s description tended to confirm that Dole’s death was not a murder after all.

  ‘Did you see anyone else at the house?’ he said.

  ‘No. But there were men who came to the printing-house this morning. They spoke to Mr Bruton. They were—’

  Hans’s darting gaze suddenly became fixed on a point over Nick’s shoulder. He stopped whatever he was about to say. Automatically, Nick turned round. Coming up Long Southwark was a group of four men, wrapped up in capes, their faces muffled. They moved steadily across the slushy ground and with a gait that was almost military. Despite the poor light, Nick observed that one of the men, slightly in front of the others, was wearing a hat with a great brim. The group was heading straight for Nick and Hans.

  He felt a touch on his arm and spun back. It was Hans de Worde. The touch was nothing more than a feeble parting gesture, for de Worde now took to his heels down Short Southwark. That was in the direction of Nick’s own lodging, but the impulse to run away from the approaching band of four took the player not into the unreliable darkness of Short Southwark but towards the crowds and regular lights of London Bridge. Safety in numbers, Nick instinctively thought. The Bridge was always crowded from before sunrise until late into the night.

  Not breaking into a run, although he wanted to, Nick walked rapidly towards the arch that pierced the Great Stone Gate. He glanced back. It looked as if the four men were not to be distracted by de Worde’s flight down the side road. They were moving at a brisk pace after Nick. Why not go after Hans de Worde? he asked himself. This affair was nothing to do with him.

  Nick felt his heart beating more quickly. He grew breathless, even though he was not yet moving very fast. There were watchmen on duty by the Great Gate but it was no use appealing for help to such timid, indolent men. These representatives of the law could scarcely bestir themselves to stop a fight on the Bridge, and they would certainly not interfere with a determined group like the foursome on Nick’s trail. Besides, whoever his pursuers were, Nick believed they were not robbers but something quite different . . .

  He squeezed past a couple of closed carriages, the horses shifting uneasily in the narrow pathway. Inside the carriages would be well-to-do young men from north London on their way to the gaming houses and brothels on the Southwark shore. On either side of him were houses and shops, most of them shuttered at this time of the evening. Parts of the Bridge were more like a tunnel than an open lane since many of the houses jutted out so far on their upper levels that the occupants could have shaken hands across the divide. There were even places where complete floors extended right over the roadway between the sides.

  Nick might have succeeded in losing himself among the people and the conveyances if it had not been for a fellow tucked into the shadow of a doorway. Drunk or exhausted, he was sitting with his knees drawn up to his chin. As Nick glanced momentarily over his shoulder to see where his pursuers were he stumbled across the other’s feet. In an instant he found himself winded and flat on his face. Behind him there was a slurred curse from the figure in the doorway. Nick started to push himself up again and was surprised when helping hands raised him on each side. This was very un-London-like behaviour, and he was turning to mumble his thanks when he saw that his helpers were the cape
d men. They had been moving more rapidly than he realised.

  Two of the men were hemming him in, on the pretence of helping him up. The one with the wide hat was already ahead and now Nick felt a blow in the small of his back from the man to the rear. These four persons were so muffled that almost nothing of their faces was visible apart from the eyes. Nick was more surprised than fearful. Fear would come later. No use appealing to any constable or watchman, even had one been within sight. His captors had an authority that suggested they were above the law.

  He was hustled forward, his feet scrabbling at the ground. If they had been going any distance Nick might just have had the chance to break away. But they were not. The group moved under a wooden arch framed by columns and entered a passage that ran straight through the newest and finest edifice on the Bridge. This was Nonesuch House, which had replaced a gatehouse and drawbridge that had stood a third of the way across from the south bank. The drawbridge had been an old defence for the city but one no longer needed in these more peaceful times. So the gatehouse had been torn down and Nonesuch put up in its place. Only the rich could afford to take lodgings there.

  Nick had often gazed up at Nonesuch House while he was walking across the Bridge from the Southwark side. The glittering windows and the ornamental woodwork made for a more agreeable prospect than the severed heads of traitors. Nonesuch, with its corner towers topped with onion-shaped domes, was grand enough to make most Londoners wonder what it would be like to set foot over the threshold. Nick Revill was about to find out.

  There were lanterns hanging above the doors within the tunnel-like walkway, through which people and vehicles passed like shadows. The leader of the group rapped at a door to the left. It was promptly opened and Nick was half ushered, half pushed down a couple of steps and into a lobby. A maidservant was waiting on the other side of the door. She lowered her head as the group came in. A mark of deference or fear? The individual with the wide hat said nothing but gestured with a gloved hand and the two men on either side of Nick, who had not relinquished their grip since hoisting him up from the roadway, now escorted him down a wide panelled passageway. The floor was so polished that their boots squeaked across it. At the end, one of them reached out, opened a door and nudged Nick as a sign for him to enter the room. The door closed behind him.