The Counterfeit Crank

by Edward Marston

  ‘Yes,’ replied the girl. ‘I wonder what I have done to deserve this.’

  ‘You need help. It would be cruel to turn you away.’

  ‘Yet that’s what everyone else did. Hywel and I begged on the streets for days and most people walked past without even noticing us. Some of those who did spat on us or called us vile names. London is a cruel city.’

  ‘Some people can be very selfish,’ agreed Anne, sadly.

  ‘If only Hywel could have lived to enjoy all this,’ said Dorothea, looking around the room. ‘To wear clean clothes and eat good food and have a roof over his head. It’s not fair that I should have it while he lies dead in the morgue.’

  ‘Do not see it that way, Dorothea.’

  ‘But I must. I still feel so guilty about what happened to him.’

  ‘Without reason.’

  ‘He came to my rescue,’ said Dorothea with feeling. ‘When Master Beechcroft was scolding me, Hywel attacked him and beat him to the ground. That’s why they killed him. It was because of me. And I fear that they’ll do the same to Nicholas. Stop him from going to Bridewell,’ she implored, coming across to Anne. ‘Please, stop him. I don’t want his blood on my conscience as well.’

  Doctor John Mordrake removed the cork from the tiny bottle and sniffed it. He was a big man whose face and body had suffered the ravages of time. His long, lank, silver-grey hair merged with a straggly beard. He wore a capacious black gown, black buckled shoes and a large gold chain that hung down to his chest. Astrologer, alchemist, wizard, seer and royal physician, he exuded a strange power. Nicholas Bracewell had befriended him years before and turned to him on more than one occasion. This time, he had brought Mordrake to examine Edmund Hoode.

  Seated on the bed in his nightshirt, the patient watched with some trepidation. He feared that Doctor Zander might make an evening call at the house and catch him seeking another medical opinion. Seeing his concern, Nicholas gave him an encouraging smile. He wanted the playwright to be treated by a doctor who was not so closely connected to Michael Grammaticus. Some people thought Mordrake a mountebank, others decried him as a necromancer, but Nicholas had every faith in him. He turned to watch as the old man dipped his finger into the bottle, then tasted the medicine on the tip of his tongue. With a grunt of satisfaction, Mordrake put the bottle aside. He reached for one of the candles and held the flame close to Hoode’s face, moving it around so that he could conduct a detailed scrutiny.

  ‘Put out you tongue, sir,’ he ordered.

  ‘Yes, Doctor Mordrake,’ said Hoode, obeying.

  The old man peered at it. ‘You feel no pain?’ Hoode shook his head. Mordrake felt both sides of the patient’s neck. ‘No swelling of the glands?’

  ‘Only at first, when the fever was upon me.’

  ‘What have you been eating?’

  ‘Lots of fruit,’ said Hoode, indicating the bowl. ‘Doctor Zander advised it.’

  Mordrake selected an apple, took a large bite from it, then removed the piece from his mouth. He sniffed it and the rest of the apple before putting both on the table.

  ‘I’ll need to see your water, Master Hoode.’

  ‘The chamber pot is under the bed. It’s not been emptied.’

  ‘Good,’ said Mordrake, lowering himself with some difficulty to his knees and extracting the chamber pot. ‘I’ll take a specimen, if I may.’

  From a pocket somewhere in his gown, he pulled out a stone bottle and uncorked it before filling it with urine. Once again, his nose made the diagnosis. Corking the bottle, he slipped it back into his pocket and eased the chamber pot beneath the bed. Nicholas stepped forward to help him up.

  ‘Thank you, Nicholas,’ said Mordrake, leaning heavily on his arm. ‘I can cure the plague, the pox and the sweating sickness, but I’ve yet to find a remedy for old age.’

  ‘Do you think that you can cure Edmund?’ asked Nicholas.

  ‘Without a doubt.’

  Hoode was heartened. ‘That’s cheering news, Doctor Mordrake,’ he said. ‘How long will it take? Doctor Zander said that it would take several weeks, perhaps even longer.’

  ‘Leave yourself in the hands of that impostor,’ warned Mordrake, raising a long finger, ‘and you may never recover. You suffer from no disease, Master Hoode.’

  ‘No? Then what is wrong with me?’

  ‘You are being poisoned.’

  Margery Firethorn had run out of apologies. Expecting her husband to return in order to spend time with their guest, she was mortified to be left alone again in Shoreditch with her brother-in-law. They had always had an uneasy relationship. She found Jonathan Jarrold far too mild and self-effacing for her taste whereas he was patently intimidated by her potency. To be left alone in a room with Margery made him feel shy and inadequate, and he was eternally grateful that he had married the quieter of the two sisters. Since she had little interest in books, and even less in this particular bookseller, Margery had little to say to him. Their conversation was punctuated by long silences.

  ‘Lawrence will be back soon,’ she said for the fifteenth time.

  ‘I want to congratulate him on his performance at the rehearsal.’

  ‘As long as you do not mention this afternoon. According to the apprentices, it was a sorry affair. That will have put Lawrence in a choleric mood.’

  ‘He was not very cheerful this morning,’ he recalled with a diffident smile. ‘How he yelled at his actors! I’d never heard such curses.’

  ‘He always snaps at their heels,’ said Margery.

  ‘Putting on a play is more difficult than I imagined. This is the first time I’ve witnessed a rehearsal and it opened my eyes. Lawrence was in fine voice himself, so was Barnaby Gill, the clown. I remember seeing him at Cambridge.’

  ‘Who else did you meet? Nick Bracewell, I daresay.’

  ‘Oh, he was most helpful,’ said Jarrold. ‘That was another revelation. I thought that a book holder simply prompted the actors, but this one did so much more than that. He even told people where to move and stand onstage.’

  She gave an affectionate smile. ‘Nick is a jewel.’

  ‘It was he who told me about Michael Grammaticus. I knew him at Cambridge.’

  ‘Was he any livelier there? Lawrence says that the fellow is so morose.’

  ‘I think that Michael still mourns the death of his friend.’

  There was another strained silence. Margery’s ears pricked up hopefully at the sound of a horse in the street outside, but it trotted past the house. She settled back in her chair with a grunt of annoyance. Jarrold was perched on the edge of his stool, conscious that his presence was irritating her yet unable to find words to win her over. Even at her most quiescent, he was wary of Margery. When she was fuming, as now, with barely contained rage, he found her nothing short of terrifying. The thought of sharing a bed with such a termagant made him shudder. Jarrold sensed that he would be devoured alive.

  Feeling that it was his turn to initiate further conversation, he fell back on a sentence that she had already uttered time and again.

  ‘Lawrence will be back soon,’ he said.

  Margery exploded. ‘Where, in the bowels of Christ, is the rogue?’ she howled.

  Lawrence Firethorn watched from a corner as Philomen Lavery dealt the cards. Still reeling from the news of Marwood’s return, Firethorn had drunk far too much wine to be able to resist the landlord’s persuasive tongue. Adam Crowmere had taken him up to the room where three guests were playing cards with Lavery. The landlord advised Firethorn to watch while he took the empty chair at the table. It soon became clear that Crowmere’s run of luck had expired. Time after time he lost a game yet somehow maintained his good humour.

  ‘I’ll withdraw,’ he said with a chuckle, ‘while I still have money enough to feed myself. Take my place, Lawrence,’ he invited. ‘You can do no worse than me.’

  Firethorn shook his head. ‘I’ll not play again.’

  ‘One game,’ suggested Lavery, gathering up the cards. ‘Just
one game.’

  ‘One always leads to another.’

  ‘Not if your will is strong enough, Master Firethorn.’

  ‘My will is like iron,’ boasted the other.

  ‘Then you can play a single game and walk away.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Firethorn. ‘I could, if I wished.’

  ‘Prove it,’ coaxed Lavery. ‘Take the empty chair.’

  With obvious misgivings, Firethorn lowered himself into the seat. Lavery dealt the cards to all the players. Crowmere stood directly behind Firethorn as the actor studied his cards. Seeing what the actor had been dealt, the landlord chortled.

  ‘Well done, Lawrence,’ he said, patting him on the back. ‘With those cards, I think you’ll win at last. I told you that your luck would change.’

  Michael Grammaticus was still poring over his table when the servant entered the room to tell him that he had a visitor. The playwright was puzzled and disturbed. Few people in London even knew where he lodged. When he heard that the caller was Nicholas Bracewell, he relaxed somewhat but he was far from pleased at the intrusion. He told the servant to bring the visitor up then he glanced down again at the scene on which he had been working for so long. When Nicholas was shown in, Grammaticus gave him a guarded welcome.

  ‘I know why you’ve come,’ he said, getting up from his chair. ‘Edmund has sent you to chide me for not calling on him today, but I promised to finish this scene for his play first.’

  ‘How much have you written?’ asked Nicholas.

  ‘Far too much. Enough to furnish three scenes, in fact, but none of it worthy enough to show to anyone else.’ He gave a gesture of hopelessness. ‘Perhaps I do not have a gift for comedy, after all.’

  ‘What do you consider to be your strength as an author, Michael?’

  ‘My sense of drama, Nick. I believe that I have an eye for conflict.’

  ‘You have an eye for something,’ conceded Nicholas, ‘though I am not yet sure what it is. But forgive me for calling so late in the evening. It was important to see you.’

  ‘Does it concern The Siege of Troy?’

  ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘I knew that Lawrence would require more changes.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with Lawrence, but rather with his wife, Margery. Did you know that her sister lives in Cambridge?’

  ‘No. Why should I?’

  ‘Because her brother-in-law is an acquaintance of yours, one Jonathan Jarrold.’

  ‘The bookseller? Yes, I know Master Jarrold well. He keeps a good stock.’

  ‘He’s visiting London,’ said Nicholas, ‘and chanced to attend our rehearsal this morning. We talked at length. Master Jarrold was surprised to learn that you had turned playwright. That was always the ambition of your friend, Stephen Wragby.’

  Grammaticus tensed. ‘Why have you come here, Nick?’

  ‘To find out who really wrote Caesar’s Fall.’

  ‘I did!’ said the other, defiantly.

  ‘What of The Siege of Troy?’

  ‘Every word of it is mine.’

  ‘The Epilogue was certainly penned by you,’ agreed Nicholas. ‘That’s why you took so long to finish it, is it not? And why it is such a poor addition to a rich drama. It was the Epilogue that planted the first seed of doubt in my mind, Michael.’

  ‘If it will not serve,’ said Grammaticus, ‘I’ll write a new and better one.’

  ‘Do you really have the skill to do that?’

  ‘You know that I have!’

  ‘What I know is that The Siege of Troy was first written in Greek by Stephen Wragby. Every word of it may be yours, but only in the sense that you translated it.’

  ‘I worked on the play with Stephen,’ insisted the other. ‘I was a co-author.’

  ‘Taking the credit for someone else’s genius,’ said Nicholas, pointing to the sheets of parchment on the table. ‘As you are trying to do with A Way to Content All Women. Your friend was dead, and unable to stop you, but Edmund Hoode is still alive. So you had to render him helpless.’

  Grammaticus was appalled. ‘What are you talking about? I love Edmund.’

  ‘No, Michael. You only love and covet the position that he holds.’

  ‘He has ever been my inspiration.’

  ‘Is that why you and Doctor Zander conspired to poison him?’ said Nicholas, calmly. ‘I wondered why you were so loath to let anyone visit your lodging. We’d have discovered that you and the doctor slept under the same roof. It also explains why you paid the bills and bought all of Edmund’s food. You were never caring for him, Michael, only making sure that he did not recover.’

  ‘He was recovering,’ argued the playwright. ‘Edmund improved a little each day. You saw that, Nick. It was thanks to the medicine that Doctor Rime prescribed. Or do you accuse him of being in league with us as well?’

  ‘No, I do not. To call in a second doctor was a cunning trick. It made me think that Edmund’s malady was genuine. When I chanced upon the fact that you and Doctor Zander shared a cottage,’ said Nicholas, ‘my suspicion was aroused. I decided to ask for a third opinion on Edmund’s condition.’ Grammaticus was becoming agitated. ‘I fancy that you’ll have heard the name of Doctor Mordrake?’

  The other man gulped. ‘Doctor John Mordrake? The Queen’s physician?’

  ‘The very same. He’s a friend of mine and, since I was able to do him a favour when we travelled to Bohemia, he felt that he was in my debt. That debt,’ explained Nicholas, advancing on him, ‘has been handsomely repaid. The medicine that Edmund has been taking is an antidote to poison.’

  ‘That’s what Doctor Rime told us.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicholas, ‘but he did not realise that you had been supplying the poison in the first place. You first brought Edmund to his knees, then you kept him weak by feeding him more venom day by day.’

  ‘No, no!’ exclaimed the other. ‘Why on earth should I do that?’

  Nicholas pointed to the table. ‘There lies your answer, Michael. You wanted to get your hands on Edmund’s work and usurp his position. The antidote may have revived him a little but you hindered his recovery by administering more poison in the fruit and in the broth that you brought for him.’

  ‘I worshipped the man, Nick. I’d not harm him for the world.’ He crossed to the door. ‘Let Emmanuel explain it to you. He’ll convince you that we acted for the best.’

  Grammaticus let himself out and clattered down the stairs. Nicholas crossed to the table, standing in its own pool of light. Sheets of parchment had already been covered in words but to little effect. When he read one attempt at the new scene, Nicholas found scant wit and feeble humour. Evidently, A Way to Content All Women had found the would-be author out.

  The door swung open again and Grammaticus returned with Doctor Zander at his elbow. Because they were at the darker end of the room Nicholas could only see them in shadow. Zander was pulsing with righteous indignation.

  ‘What’s this I hear?’ he demanded. ‘You called in a doctor behind my back when I was engaged to treat the patient? That’s unforgivable.’

  ‘It was essential,’ returned Nicholas. ‘Doctor Mordrake unmasked you both.’

  ‘Mordrake! Ha! That old fool is no doctor. He’s a mad alchemist who believes he can turn base metal into gold.’

  ‘Her Majesty sees fit to retain him, Doctor Zander. Can you claim that honour?’

  ‘I dispute Mordrake’s conclusion.’

  ‘Then let us call in a fourth and fifth doctor to examine Edmund,’ said Nicholas. ‘They’ll only find what Doctor Rime and Doctor Mordrake did. The patient was being poisoned to keep him away from Westfield’s Men.’

  Zander stamped a foot. ‘Do you dare to insult my reputation?’

  ‘You no longer have a reputation. Before I’ve finished, I’ll see the pair of you behind bars for this. You put a friend of mine through a dreadful ordeal to satisfy your own designs. Heavens!’ said Nicholas. ‘You might have killed him.’

  ‘We’d never
have done that,’ insisted Grammaticus. ‘I swear it.’

  ‘Be quiet, Michael,’ said Zander.

  ‘No, Emmanuel. What is the point? He knows too much.’

  ‘Admit nothing, man. He has no proof.’

  ‘I’ve ample proof,’ said Nicholas. ‘There’s even more on that table. Michael has been humbled. He’s no Edmund Hoode, and it appears that he’s no Stephen Wragby either.’ Grammaticus lowered his head. ‘Who did write those plays, Michael?’

  ‘Stephen did,’ confessed the other.

  ‘Wrote them and translated them?’

  ‘Yes, Nick. But I helped him every inch of the way. I simply wanted to preserve his memory by having Stephen’s work performed upon a London stage.’

  ‘Then why not leave his name on the plays?’

  ‘Because they were bequeathed to me. Don’t you see? They were mine.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Zander, changing his tone. ‘There is a way out of this unfortunate dilemma. What we did was wrong, I grant you, that but there was no malice in it. Why,’ he added with a forced laugh, ‘we kept Edmund Hoode alive to write another day. Do not destroy Michael’s ambition like this. Let his new play be performed.’

  ‘Yes,’ pleaded Grammaticus. ‘We’ll pay you anything, Nick. It’s my dearest wish that The Siege of Troy is seen at the Queen’s Head. Let me have but that and you’ll see no more of me.’

  Zander felt his purse. ‘Come, sir, how much will it cost to buy your silence?’

  ‘We are friends, Nick. Do it as a favour to me.’

  ‘The only favour I’ll do is for Edmund Hoode,’ said Nicholas, firmly. ‘The two of you will be arrested, tried and convicted. What you did was evil and unpardonable.’

  ‘You are a very foolish man,’ said Zander, putting a hand to his belt.

  ‘And you are a corrupt one. You were there to cure, not to inflict more misery.’

  ‘Michael paid me well for my help. Had you been more sensible, you might have shared some of that money. As it is,’ Zander went on, pulling something from his belt, ‘you will get nothing beyond a last farewell.’

  He moved forward so that Nicholas could see that he was holding a pistol. His hand was steady and he looked as if he was determined to shoot. Nicholas was tensing himself to leap at the man when Grammaticus flew into a panic.