Mask of Night

by Philip Gooden

  This displaying of the dagger was too much for some of us. A few turned away in discomfort, others groaned involuntarily. Perhaps I did too. But what I noticed was that the well-dressed, jowly man looked more . . . interested in the scene than anything else. It was plain that he had some authority here as well as expertise. For an instant I wondered whether he was the coroner after all – but if he was the coroner he would surely have been greeted as such by the inn-keeper.

  He wrapped the dagger up in the handkerchief (a fine silk one) and positioned it on the sheet beside the corpse of Hugh Fern. Then he gazed at the assembled audience, and said, “What happened here?”

  This was what had apparently happened.

  Doctor Hugh Fern, a respected and prosperous physician of the city of Oxford and a friend from boyhood of William Shakespeare, had been invited to take the part of Friar Laurence in a production of Romeo and Juliet. He had been a little nervous at the prospect – as I could testify, having talked with him on this very subject just before the play began. He had overcome his stage-fright, though, and started to enjoy himself. What had he said during the interval? “It’s something I could get a taste for.”

  Shortly after he’d attended to my foot, promising to make up a poultice for it later, he had gone into one of the little changing-rooms down the passageway. Once inside, he had locked the door and left the key in the lock.

  (Pearman was right, by the way. None of the rooms had bolts on the inside. In fact only one had a lock, the one that the Doctor had shut himself up in. There was nothing valuable in that room or any of the others, at least until the Chamberlain’s costumes were put in store. Before that who’d want to steal old rags or discarded bits of seating? Meredith the landlord rather thought that there’d always been a key on the inside but couldn’t remember it ever having been used – hence the rusty manner in which it had turned in my hand.)

  Anyway the Doctor had entered the room and locked himself in, presumably to avoid being disturbed in his inexplicable purpose. Almost immediately Fern must have drawn out from under his friar’s habit a dagger, a plain dagger such as a yeoman might carry, a plain and serviceable one. Or, if he hadn’t taken the dagger with him into the room then he had discovered it there by chance. Or, if he hadn’t found it by chance then he must have previously left the dagger in that place with the intention of doing what he did next.

  What he did next was to hold the tip of the dagger at a little distance from his heart, perhaps searching with his left hand for the appropriate spot between his ribs. After he had found the spot – he was a doctor, more familiar than most with the right place to strike – he had grasped the haft of the dagger with both hands and driven it with all his might into his heart. Then, with his life-blood welling out of him, he had fallen to the floor.

  The Doctor must have died in a very brief space of time because the play had hardly got under way in its second half before Master Shakespeare, trailing Mrs Davenant in attendance, had come rushing into the backstage area, agitated and in search of his friend. Perhaps he suspected something was wrong. At any rate, he was concerned that Fern was literally not in position to make his entry as Friar Laurence. So there was that frantic hunt for a costume that would approximate to a friar’s, there was the hasty dressing, the just-in-time entry of Will Shakespeare and Dick Burbage for the next scene.

  Meanwhile the poor Doctor was no more than a few yards away. At least three of us – WS, then Nicholas Revill and finally Andrew Pearman – had examined the outside of the room where he was lying. All of us were uneasy, but none knew that Fern was already dead or dying from his self-inflicted wound.

  Convinced by all this?

  No, I wasn’t either.

  Especially not by the self-inflicted wound.

  Not that Fern couldn’t have killed himself.

  Suicide is a grave sin, but men and women have done it before and are doing it now, some on the spur of the moment, some after long premeditation. All you need is a rope, a knife, poison . . . and a strong despair mixed with courage. Why, Shakespeare’s own Romeo and Juliet show their fortitude in this matter. They say that poison is a woman’s weapon but it is Romeo who buys poison and drinks it over Juliet’s body in the vault, while it is Juliet who, waking from her sleep, snatches his dagger to plunge it into herself – a masculine act surely? Well, if a young girl has the strength of mind and body for such a desperate action, then surely an old doctor possesses it too?

  But why should Fern have killed himself? If there was a deep and hidden reason (debt, disease, despair) then why should he choose such a peculiar time and place as the middle of a play performance in an inn yard? Why not put an end to himself in the comfort of his fine house on Headington Hill? And he was a doctor. If he knew just where to strike home with the dagger’s point, then surely – with his knowledge of herbs and poisons – he knew many less painful means of making his exit.

  I thought too of the last things he’d said to me. Of how he was getting a taste for playing. Of how he would make up a poultice for my foot. This was hardly the talk of a man who was five minutes away from suicide.

  So it wasn’t that he couldn’t have killed himself but rather (I believed) that he hadn’t.

  And yet what alternative was there?

  Here was a man seen entering a little room. I knew. I’d witnessed him going in. The friar’s robes, the fringe of hair with the balding spot. I was as certain as I could be that it was Fern. And then there was his corpse lying inside that same locked room. I’d actually found and withdrawn the key myself through the hole that Pearman had bashed in the woodwork, then I had unlocked the door from the outside. There was no other way in or out of the room, apart from a barred opening that might have admitted a cat, nothing larger.

  Still I wasn’t convinced.

  The question “What happened here?” remained un answered. Rather, those parts that could be answered (such as the means by which the Doctor had met his death) did no more than scrape the surface.

  As for the man who had asked that question, the well-dressed individual who had so confidently extracted the dagger from the corpse: he, it transpired, was another local physician and worthy. Doctor Ralph Bodkin by name, he lived and practised at the western end of town, near the Castle. Judging by his dress and manner, he was obviously a prosperous member of the fraternity like Hugh Fern.

  Doctor Bodkin had actually been a member of our audience on the fatal afternoon, together with William Sadler. They’d been sitting up in the gallery. I remembered that I’d mentioned in the hearing of both men that the Chamberlain’s were staging Romeo and Juliet on this particular day. Maybe this had sparked the idea that they should come and see the play together.

  Now, it may be that the suspicious mind scents a conspiracy here – or at any rate an unnatural coincidence. What was Sadler doing at the Golden Cross Inn? And why should a well-to-do physician mingle with the common townsfolk, albeit from his position in a more expensive gallery seat? But there was nothing out of the way about their presence. William Sadler had decided to attend the play out of curiosity and perhaps a touch of vanity, for this was the narrative in which he had been cast as Romeo, if not by himself then by Hugh Fern. Ralph Bodkin accompanied him because the Doctor had once been a tutor to William, as I’d surmized, and now stood in some less specified position of guide or mentor. And to suppose that a man like Doctor Bodkin was somehow too superior to attend a public play was to contradict all our experience at the Globe playhouse, where we enjoyed a fine mixture of the rich, the respectable, the feckless and the downright dishonest.

  And, if the really suspicious mind scents something . . . something too convenient, too opportune about Bodkin’s arrival after the discovery of the body then this is simply explained as well.

  Along with most of the audience, William Sadler and Ralph Bodkin had quit the Golden Cross Inn at the end of the performance, walking away together, quite unaware of the drama which was taking place off-stage. They’d been well on
their way towards the church of St Ebbe’s when they were intercepted by the messenger who had been sent in search of the coroner and was returning empty-handed. This breathless individual, a pot-boy called Percy, recognized in Doctor Bodkin an alternative authority and, perhaps confused, panted out his message – that the coroner was already busy – with another dead man – could not attend the Golden Cross for a few hours yet – meantime the body should be kept safe. What dead man? asked Bodkin. Which one, the first or the second dead man? said Percy. The one in the Golden Cross, said Bodkin. Oh that one, said Percy. Yes that one, said Bodkin, who is he? I don’t know, said Percy, before dashing off towards St Martin’s and Cornmarket.

  (I heard later that the dead man – the first one – who was already occupying the attention of the coroner was some individual who’d been fished out of the River Isis earlier in the day. Apparently a waterman. I thought nothing of it at the time, so preoccupied were we all with the death of Hugh Fern.)

  So Doctor Bodkin turned round and walked back to the inn yard, reaching it shortly after the pot-boy. William Sadler, assuming that whatever had occurred was nothing to do with him, wasn’t sufficiently interested in the notion of a corpse at an inn, and decided to continue with his afternoon business. He only found out later that the body in question was that of Hugh Fern, the old family friend of both the Sadlers and the Constants.

  I had this part of the story from Sadler himself. I’ll explain in due course how I came to be asking him questions about the sequence of events surrounding Fern’s death.

  “So although you didn’t know about Doctor Fern’s death,” I said, “didn’t you notice that he was no longer playing the part of the friar?”

  “I noticed that his voice had changed,” said Sadler. “And then I looked harder at the figure inside the habit and realized that he’d changed. I suppose I wondered why Fern wasn’t playing the part any longer. I recognized him in his habit all right. He spent a lot of time looking out at the audience.”

  I refrained from saying that inexperienced players often do that, they are so thrilled to find themselves the centre of all eyes.

  “Then I noticed how his part had been taken by someone else. But I thought that this was maybe how you professional players did things. Change horses in mid-stream.”

  “Not usually,” I said.

  “I tell you one thing though, Nicholas,” said Sadler. “The fellow playing Friar Laurence – in the second half, I mean – he wasn’t much good. Ha!”

  “You’re talking about William Shakespeare.”

  “He still wasn’t much good.”

  “He didn’t expect to have to play that part, or not play that part just then,” I said, wondering why I was bothering to defend WS and conscious that my excuse on his behalf was feeble anyway.

  “He should stick to writing. Your man Burbage wasn’t bad, playing Romeo. Very active, though.”

  “Did you notice your – your betrothed at the play?”

  “My – oh, you mean Sarah. Yes, she was there together with Susan. And the battle-axe of a nurse, Mistress Root. They were sitting on the opposite side of the gallery.”

  “Did you communicate with each other?”

  “Communicate? We waved,” said Sadler.

  This didn’t sound exactly like Romeo-and-Juliet-style behaviour, two lovers waving decorously at each other from the opposite sides of an inn yard. Not quite star-struck. Yet I could hardly come out and ask William directly whether he felt passionate about Sarah Constant. Concerning her feelings, though, I had little doubt. I remembered the smile that had lit up her face in Broad Street.

  Nightshade

  You knew you’d have to kill him when you saw him looking at you.

  There was no doubt that he knew. It was only a matter of time, perhaps, before he made . . . certain discoveries. Even so, the occasion caught you unprepared.

  It was a perilous moment to act. You would have preferred to be in your disguise, in your armour. But it would have been even more perilous to do nothing, to allow Doctor Fern to expose you . . . and you have to admit to yourself that the danger, the fine timing of the business excited you. It nearly went wrong but a cool head and resolution snatched safety out of the jaws of danger.

  The departure of the Doctor is to be regretted but it would have happened sooner or later.

  And coming so soon after the death of the carter. In hindsight you should have stayed behind on the banks of the stream, should have ensured that the little man sunk out of sight in the water. Should have weighted the body down with rocks. As it was, Hoby’s corpse must have been carried away and down towards the big river for it had been discovered at daybreak, snagged on a fallen tree where the river runs shallow by Folly Bridge. With luck the marks on Hoby would be attributed to the effect of a fast-moving current and the inevitable buffetings by logs and stones.

  Anyway the corpse would not be closely examined by coroner or magistrate. The law does not permit it. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?

  Iwas sufficiently troubled about the death of Hugh Fern to want to speak to Shakespeare about it. Maybe it was presumptuous of me but I chose him because, out of all the seniors, he was the one who had in the past rescued me from a couple of tricky situations, the one whom I most respected, and the one who was most ready to give advice or a listening ear to the junior members of the Company.

  Also I believed that WS was more intimately involved with what had happened than anybody else. Doctor Fern was his particular friend and the Chamberlain’s were playing in Oxford largely on account of that connection. In addition, Fern had taken the part which Shakespeare should have been playing. The playwright, together with Mrs Davenant, had been present backstage only a few yards from where Fern lay dead or dying.

  WS was lodging in a chamber in the Tavern, next door to the Golden Cross. It was one of the best rooms, fitting a distinguished guest, with a view out over Cornmarket. The walls were of a glowing red, with white roses and Canterbury bells and bunches of grapes painted, as far as I could see, with a craftsman’s assurance, not the journeyman work you usually find in such places. It was late in the evening of the day of Fern’s death, a cold evening in spring. A fire was burning in the grate. WS looked tired and drawn, and I apologized for interrupting him, then apologized again when I saw he wasn’t alone. Dick Burbage, our afternoon Romeo, was sitting in the half-light on the other side of the fire.

  I made to go out again.

  “No, come in, Nick.”

  Shakespeare indicated a stool and told me to pour myself a glass from a flask which stood on a neighbouring table. I refused, saying that I still felt queasy from the events of the afternoon.

  “Good God, man, we all feel queasy,” said Burbage. “What’s so special with you? A drink will soon cure that.”

  He held up his own glass so that the red liquid glowed from the flames of the fire before gulping it down.

  “Drink, unless you want to be like a green girl.”

  I wasn’t welcome. Why should I be? I got up to leave.

  “Sit down,” said WS. “You injured your foot today, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t want to disturb your council.”

  “You aren’t disturbing anything. In any case we might value your opinion. Eh, Dick?”

  Burbage shrugged. Whatever WS might have valued – and I thought he was just being courteous – Burbage had little time for the views of the ordinary player.

  “Opinion on what, William?”

  “Whether we should leave.”

  “Leave Oxford?”

  “Leave Oxford.”

  “Because we’re going to lose our audience, you mean, after the – after what happened today?”

  Burbage snorted at this. I judged he’d already downed quite a few glasses. No more was he the youthful Romeo but the middle-aged shareholder.

  “Nicholas, you have still got a bit to learn about audiences. We’re likely to increase our numbers after what happened today. They’ll come
to gawp at the site of a recent death and incidentally they might watch a play. Owen Meredith could probably put an extra halfpenny on his beer.”

  Shakespeare raised his hand in Burbage’s direction. Perhaps he considered the remarks improper or tactless, especially given his connection to the dead man. When he spoke, though, it was with weariness rather than irritation.

  “Dick is right enough, I’m afraid. Audiences are human, for better and worse. But it’s not just the death of Doctor Fern. Today has been a day of the dead. A man was found drowned in the Isis this morning for one thing.”

  “Yes, I know, a waterman. I heard it was a waterman,” I said.

  “No, this dead man was a carter,” said WS, “and one known to the Davenants in this place.”

  I remembered the scene the other morning. Jane Davenant shouting at the unfortunate carter who had let fall a crate from the back of his cart, her husband helping him to carry it indoors. Was it the same man? Probably.

  I felt cold. I was sitting at a little distance from the fire. I wondered whether to pour myself a drink after all.

  “And this is not the end of it,” said WS.

  “Another murder?” I said.

  Both WS and Dick Burbage turned their faces towards where I sat on the stool in the recesses of the room. The remark had slipped out but it was the first thing I’d said which really caught their attention.

  “Murder? Who has been murdered?” said Burbage.