Bianca looked desperately from face to face but saw nothing to help her.
“She meant for the masquerade with the arsenicum to cover her horrible mistake.” Viola picked up the sewing basket and poured it out. Colorful loops of thread spilled across the tabletop. Among them was a square of brown paper studded with pins and needles. Creases showed where it had once been folded into an envelope. “Is this the packet that held the poison?”
“It was made of such paper,” said Helen. “What did you do with the arsenicum itself, Bianca, pour it down the necessary?”
With the short wail of a trapped animal, Bianca began to cry.
“She is indeed guilty of foolishness,” Viola said sadly. “The question is whether she’s guilty of murder. She didn’t mean to kill Count Leonardo. His death was as much an accident as if he’d died of tainted food.”
“A court of law would find her culpable.” Maria’s look crossed Viola’s. “Helen, Ferdinand, take Bianca to the shed and lock her in.”
Feste strummed his lute. “The Count is counted among the dead, died a glorious death for his country and for the Duke’s honor, for honor cannot be tainted even if apricots can.” He, too, looked at Viola.
She offered him a thin smile, sure now he knew of her mission here. “No court would find Malvolio culpable. And yet, if only he had a motive to dispose of the Count, I would think he directed the entire plot.”
“I can guess at his motive. Come with me.” Gathering her skirts, Maria led the way into the back hall. Around a corner, at the corridor’s far end, she threw open a door. “This is Malvolio’s chamber.”
The room was comfortably but plainly appointed. One window looked out over the front drive and another into the gardens, as though the room were a sentry post. Just inside the door stood a writing desk, papers and books arranged in their individual slots. Viola inspected the spines of several books and picked up one. “An herbal.”
“Is one of the pages marked, by any chance?”
Viola leafed quickly through the book. “No. Not a one. But here’s an etching of the black hellebore, with its fatal properties clearly set out. And yet he told Bianca it was a healing plant.” She glanced at a couple of chapbooks containing popular romances, not the sort of thing she’d expect Malvolio to be reading. “Here’s the story of the Lady of Strachey, who married a yeoman of the wardrobe. And here’s another, similar tale. Surely he can’t dream of . . .”
“He can, yes.” Maria pulled a piece of paper from a stack of inventories and receipts. On it was written several times, with flourishes, “Count Malvolio.”
“Infamous!” Suddenly Viola saw the entire play, act and scene. Her stomach turned.
Maria slapped the paper back into its pile. “Malvolio has the Countess’s favor, having been appointed by her late father. If I tell her of our suspicions she’ll have none of them. . . .”
A step in the door. Viola and Maria spun around. There was Malvolio himself, his eyes slitted with rage, his chin so stiff above the wings of his starched collar Viola could imagine pulling his head off like a cork from a bottle. “How dare you trespass in my chamber! Leave this house at once, you impertinent wench, and in the future remember your station! As for you, Maria . . .”
Maria drew herself up. “The Countess might hear nothing against you, Malvolio, but she’ll hear nothing against me either.”
Malvolio snorted indignantly.
“Bianca told us of your attentions to her.”
“Bianca? That ignorant baggage? She claims I’ve paid her attentions? Who would take her word over mine?”
Gritting her teeth, Viola answered silently, no one. Even if a court did believe Bianca’s testimony, there was no real case against Malvolio. With an abrupt curtsey, she walked out of the room.
Behind her she heard Maria say, “The girl Bianca poured a tisane of hellebore into the Count’s dish of apricots, thinking it was a restorative. The same dish of apricots you commanded Helen make for him.”
“As was my duty, to please my employer by serving a favorite dish. A shame Bianca’s stupidity and Leonardo’s taste for contrived food led to his death.”
“Oh yes,” said Maria, stamping out of the room, “it is indeed a shame.”
In the distance Sir Toby and Sir Andrew exchanged bray for bray, with Olivia’s quiet but steady voice as counterpoint. Viola waited until she and Maria were around the corner, away from Malvolio’s baleful glare, before she asked, “What will you tell the Countess?”
“I’ll tell her the truth, that her brother died accidentally of apricots tainted by mistake.”
“Bianca must face a court of law even so.”
“I’ll plead her case with the Countess and with Sir Toby, who has a good heart beneath his bluster, and suggest they do the same with Duke Orsino.”
“As I’ve been ordered to leave this house,” Viola said dryly, “I’ll take a letter to the Duke and resume my place in his household.”
Maria stopped outside the kitchen door and turned her most penetrating look on Viola. “Did Duke Orsino send you here to spy upon the Countess?”
“Not at all. He sent me here to learn the truth of her brother’s death and so ease her mind.”
“You’ve done that,” said Maria, even more dryly. “While the Countess will be grateful, gratitude won’t necessarily further the Duke’s suit.”
“He knows that.” As do I, Viola admitted to herself, and went on, “The Countess won’t be grateful to Sir Andrew, who introduced the bottled food into the house. I daresay that was Malvolio’s plot to begin with, to leave the Countess a wealthy spinster and rid himself of a rival suitor with one blow. He intended for at least one other person to eat of the apricots and sicken as well, to support his argument against the food. When that didn’t happen and Bianca told the tale of the arsenicum, then sly Malvolio played along.”
“If others of us had sickened then we—you—would never have discovered the truth.”
“If the Count hadn’t eaten the entire dish he might not have taken enough of the poison to kill him. . . .” Viola shook her head. “If, if, if.”
“Death is certain,” said Maria. “Life is ambiguous.”
So is love. “Surely the Countess wouldn’t hear Malvolio’s suit, even if he dared press it.”
“I don’t know what manner of man would tickle her fancy. Neither does Malvolio, I warrant.” Maria grimaced. “Perhaps I can use his ambitions against him, and dress him a dish of poison appropriate to his nature, thereby toppling him from his high horse. Bianca was most notoriously abused. Malvolio deserves no less.”
Viola followed Maria into the kitchen. Malvolio had said that sinners seldom recognize the errors of their ways. True enough. He was himself corrupt, his righteousness bearing poisoned fruit.
Feste sat beside the fireplace, the cat curled next to him, strumming his lute. The fool, thought Viola, had the most reason of them all.
He winked at her, and his cracked voice sang softly, “Journeys end in lovers meeting.”
Do they? Viola asked herself. Do they?
* * * * *
Orsino gazed thoughtfully at the parchment marked with Olivia’s seal. His brows were drawn down, his mouth a straight line. “So that was the way of Leonardo’s death. And the Countess and Sir Toby have already been acquainted with the particulars, leaving me little role to play.”
“Oh no, my lord. As magistrate your role is the greatest of all, the disposition of the criminal.” Viola refilled his wineglass and set the bottle down. Legs apart, she reminded herself. Shoulders back. Voice rough. “Mercy is as a gentle rain from heaven upon the parched earth beneath.”
“Mercy, yes.” Orsino’s lips softened. “I’ll set out a decree of banishment and send the poor foolish girl beyond Illyria’s borders.”
Viola thought of Bianca far from her native land, lacking friends, family, and dowry. She would live, but she would suffer for her crime even so. As for Malvolio—well, vengeance might more proper
ly belong to God, but just now Viola was rooting for Maria.
“Surely this tragedy,” Orsino went on, “will lead Olivia to reject that coxcomb Andrew Aguecheek’s suit.”
“It may well do so, my lord.”
“Isn’t it nobler to love the woman herself rather than her wealth, as he does?”
“Oh yes,” Viola said. “That it is.”
Orsino lay back in the corner of the settee and stretched out his legs. He smiled. “Well then, Cesario. You have done my will admirably. What reward would you have of me?”
“The honor of attending upon you.” She couldn’t keep the irony from her voice.
For a long moment Orsino considered Viola—Cesario—standing before him. His bright blue eyes reflected something between puzzlement and recognition, as though he heard a distant strain of music but couldn’t identify the instrument. Then, with a slight shrug, he threw his confusion away.
Indicating the harpsichord in the corner, he said, “Then play for me. Something by Herr Mozart. Your touch is much more delicate than Curio or Valentine’s blunderings about the keyboard.”
Her smile repeating his, Viola sat down and stroked a light arpeggio.
Orsino lifted his glass to his lips. “I’ll try my suit with Olivia once again, sending a new ambassador this time. After Leonardo’s tragedy, perhaps she’ll now share my taste for romance.”
Romance, Viola thought, which can just as well become comedy. She began to play.
Orsino closed his eyes. “If music be the food of love, play on.”
As you wish, my lord. What you will.
Author’s Note
“A Dish of Poison” first appeared in Much Ado About Murder, edited by Anne Perry, Berkley Prime Crime/Berkley Publishing Group, 2002
I was asked to write a mystery based on a Shakespeare play soon after I saw Twelfth Night both on the stage and on screen. The film is the version starring Toby Stephens as Orsino, enough to make any red-blooded woman weak in the knees, no matter what gender she’s pretending to be.
Again, this story is almost fan-fiction, filling in the blanks by answering the question of whatever happened to Olivia’s brother, anyway. In the play, he’s just dead, period.
I had also just seen a PBS biography of Napoleon. Since all Shakespeare says is that the play takes place right after a war, I took the liberty of setting the story soon after Waterloo. And the old TV series Connections provided the very helpful details of the origins of canned and bottled food.
And yes, I realize I lapse into Merchant of Venice at one point here, but I think Viola could well be Portia’s sister under the skin.
The Diamonds of Golkonda
A story in the style of Robert E. Howard
Sandy Macfarlane had just pressed his cheek against the lattice covering the harem window when he felt the cold kiss of a steel blade on his throat.
His vision might still be dazzled with the image of a mahogany-skinned woman draped in saffron silk and glittering with jewels, but his wiry sinews, honed in battle, twisted him aside and into the darkness. The blade of the tulwar shaved the shoulder of his crimson coat. Hah! Had he been an officer, that stroke would have caught an epaulet and he would not now be crouching, his broadsword in one hand, his dirk in the other, poised to fight.
The shadowy figure garbed in turban and belted salwar khameez shifted its tulwar from one hand to the other, drew a long dagger, and leaped forward. Macfarlane leaped also, sideways. As he moved, he slashed. Similar thrusts had disemboweled larger men, but now the broadsword caught only fabric. By gawd, the fellow was quick! That lithe, slender body slipped through the black and orange night like a cat.
With short sharp clangs of steel against steel, dirk met tulwar, broadsword met dagger. The kilted Caledonian strained against his attacker, but the fellow parried the double blow and spun away. In the lamplight broken to shards by the window lattices, Macfarlane could see only dark liquid eyes, the sheen of the tulwar, and white teeth exposed in a feral smile. Across the courtyard, horns bleated and drums thrummed, but not as loudly as Macfarlane’s heart beat in his own ears.
He had to cut this inconvenient sentry down. He could then sheathe his weapons and walk as guilelessly out of the fortress city of Golkonda as he had walked in, and regain the British cantonment before the alarm was raised. A sad waste of one of the Nizam’s warriors, when all were needed to support the war against Tipoo Sultan.
But Macfarlane had come out to India and joined the British contingent here in the Dekkan in order to find his fortune. He had no intention of dying of fever, as so many of his compatriots, much less meeting a gruesome end tied across a cannon or beneath the foot of an elephant. He pressed his attack.
Blade licked blade and booted feet scuffed the paving stones. This time it was the guard who twisted away. Macfarlane followed, prey becoming predator, but his opponent turned and again steel clashed. Then the white teeth in the smooth face parted, a treble voice spat, “Ferengi dog,” and Macfarlane realized he was confronting a woman.
In that moment of astonishment he hesitated. The Amazon spun from his grasp, and this time the kiss of steel on his throat was not cold but hot.
Their struggle had carried them across the courtyard to another window. From inside came words, distinct words, a man’s voice speaking in French-accented English: “You will include the forged directive amongst the others then, munshi?”
“Yes, sahib,” returned a voice speaking with a Urdu accent. “Osman Khan will never guess that the orders do not come from the Nizam himself. When he opens the treasury to pay Colonel Smith his—consideration—he will also hand over the great jewels, the Eyes of the Tiger. They will be in my master’s hands by noon tomorrow. And in your hands by sunset.”
“And in return there will be a place for you with Tipoo in Mysore.”
“Indeed, sahib. But which will be more welcome? My humble person, or the diamonds?”
A satiny laugh was his only reply. Through the window came the sound of a door closing.
The woman warrior was frozen into position, her tulwar steady at Macfarlane’s throat, listening to the ferengi language spoken so near at hand. He, too, held his ground, not in fear at his position but in rage and indignation at recognizing the voices. One was that of de Morville, the Corsican corporal’s envoy to the Nizam’s court. The other was that of Goolam Ali, the Nizam’s secretary, who had, not half an hour before, taken Colonel Smith’s report from Macfarlane’s own hand.
“That’s treachery, it is,” he said aloud and in English.
To his even greater astonishment, the virago returned his sentiments, her words accented with the lilt of the local dialect, Telugu, but perfectly sensible. “Treachery. Yes.”
This time it was she who dropped her guard, and with it her sword. Instead of pressing his advantage, Macfarlane sprang away, weapons raised to parry a renewed attack, even as his inborn Gaelic cunning whispered sweet somethings in his mind.
He had heard that the Nizam employed woman to guard his harem. He had discredited such tales, along with the tales that in the Nizam’s treasury lay not only emeralds, pearls, rubies, but also diamonds the size of walnuts. And yet he had sneaked into the private quarters of the palace to see for himself the Nizam’s daughter wearing such jewels. Whether it was her beauty or that of the gemstones that still bedazzled his eyes, he couldn’t say. And Jahan Begoom’s jewels were but baubles compared to the fabled Eyes of the Tiger. The huge diamonds could not be allowed to fall into the grasping hands of the French and their ally, the evil Tipoo. Such wealth could buy a good many impediments to the plans of both British Crown and British Company, and not just here in India.
The Amazon was springing lightly from side to side, like a cat teasing a mouse. Macfarlane brandished his weapons and said, “You speak English, do you?”
“Missionaries taught me,” she replied, with a dismissive gesture of her dagger.
“Who is Goolam Ali’s master, then?”
“The minste
r Mir Sikander.”
“Ah. The fellow who’s made so much trouble for the Colonel. He’s never appreciated the benefits of the British treaties, has he? Who’s defending him against his neighbors, I’d like to know?”
“And would the ferengi be so helpful, if there were not fortunes to be made?”
Macfarlane’s shrug turned into a feint.
Their blades clashed. “The Nizam must be warned,” she said between her teeth, “so that he can protect his treasure and his borders as well.”
“And who’ll go telling him? You? What’s the word of a harem guard against that of Mir Sikander?”
The nearby din of drums and horns was joined by a voice that might have been the keening of a beann sidhe, known to Macfarlane’s Highland tribe as a harbinger of death. But of whose death? That was the question!
The Amazon’s brown face, cast from lamplight to shadow and back again to lamplight as she circled him, as he circled her, was furrowed with calculation, but her black eyes never wavered. “Then I shall protect the jewels myself.”
“You’re obliged to spirit the Eyes of the Tiger away to a safe place, then. Give them to your mistress Jahan to hide ‘til Mir Sikander’s schemes come to naught.”
“And what of your schemes, ferengi?”
“I reckon you’re wanting someone, someone accustomed to battle, to watch your back.”
Her brows rose in surprise, then fell into a scowl that raked him with contempt.
“I’ll be helping my own people by keeping the jewels safe, won’t I now? If the Nizam can lumber himself with ferengi allies, then surely you can do as well.”
Slowly she straightened, withdrawing her weapons. “If you have me in a cleft stick, then I have you in one as well.”
“Oh aye, that you do,” he replied, cautiously lowering his guard. “Do you know where the great jewels are kept?”
The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth Page 13
