by Bart Casey
“Just so you know,” Stephen continued, “I never went off you either. Meanwhile, here we are again, in the midst of another disaster. I have no idea how it will all turn out, so let’s just keep going and help each other get through it. We don’t have to figure everything out right now. I’m going to have another glass of wine, Margaret. Can I get you one?” he asked, heading into the kitchen. “Then I want to show you something new.”
“Yes. Lovely,” she answered, feeling relief at the realization she wasn’t really alone anymore.
“Come into the dining room,” said Stephen, putting the two wineglasses on the dining room table and walking over to grab his briefcase as Margaret came in and sat down.
“We made a joke the other day about whether Shakespeare would show up—you know, whether he knew Anne and Sir Henry. Well at least one of his friends may just have showed up early this morning when I was putting a little time in looking at the papers.” Stephen took out a short note from his briefcase. “This note is very short and cryptic, but I think it may be signed by John Heminge, who was one of the actors in the same troupe as Shakespeare. He was also the business manager—the one who collected the money for the plays they put on at court and so on.”
“Good lord,” said Margaret. “What does it say?”
“It’s addressed to ‘Mistress Vavasour’ to thank her ‘for the cut that woke the Dane now pry’d back out from J.’ And then there’s just the signature ‘Heminge.’”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, I’m not sure. Perhaps he was returning something that was attached to this note. I’m also not certain that this Heminge is the same Heminge or Heminges involved with Shakespeare. Since the actor Heminge signed contracts and leases for theaters and so on, there must be examples of his signature down at the British Museum, the National Archives, or somewhere. So I need to get down to London next week. None of the likely places are open for research on weekends, of course.”
“The cut that woke the Dane?”
“No ideas yet really. I mean, I thought that the most famous Dane for Shakespeare would be Hamlet—the ‘melancholy Dane’—or someone else in that play—but I can’t remember any Dane getting cut and waking up. Maybe the Ghost? But then, I also have to read over that play again and check.”
“Wow. Would a note like this from the actor Heminge have value?”
“I don’t know about money. The man himself isn’t a great celebrity today. But I do know it would fuel rampant speculation and scholarly hubbub on an enormous scale. I mean there are literally thousands of articles published each year about minutiae related to Shakespeare. It’s an industry. Crazy theories everywhere, and this would throw petrol on the bonfire. Of course, I’m hoping I might find something else among your papers that helps explain the message. I still have quite a few things to wade through, but I intend to scan through everything I haven’t read yet as soon as I can to see if anything jumps out.”
“Very exciting.”
“And I also wanted to show you that scroll Professor Rowe was asking about.”
Stephen opened the long top drawer of the buffet and lifted out the scroll carefully. He put one edge of it under one of the candlesticks on the table and then gently rolled out about two feet of it in front of her, anchoring the right side under another candlestick, and with many more feet curled up to her right.
“You can see how they made this. It started with a paper sheet about a quarter of the size of the letters we have. Someone probably folded a regular sheet and cut it up. Then lines were written out on the small pages in narrow columns, and each page was pasted to the edge of the previous sheet. Then they kept adding sheet after sheet along the righthand side. So it kept getting longer, until the only way to deal with it was to roll the pasted pages up into a scroll.”
“I thought scrolls were out sometime before the Middle Ages,” said Margaret. “I mean, weren’t they? At some point, books were the big innovation. You could stand them up along shelves and number the pages and so on—I think of scrolls more as being in Rome, ancient Greece, and Egypt, for god’s sake.”
“No, that’s right,” replied Stephen. “It does seem very odd—I’ve never seen anything like this at Oxford. I never did work with any scrolls at the Bodleian—I suppose they have them—but even in monasteries before the Norman Conquest, the monks were all working with books and flat sheets. And this one has several different contributors.”
Stephen pointed over to the start of the scroll on the left. “You can see whoever wrote these columns here was different from the person who was writing in the middle of the third column over here. I know you probably can’t make out any of the words, but you can see the swooshes and strokes are quite different. Do you see?”
“Yes. I suppose so,” replied Margaret.
“And over here on the right, someone has pasted a new patch on top of what probably was an earlier text below—and that seems to be in another style of writing all together: italics. Most of the handwriting we’re looking at are examples of the so-called secretary hand—but, just like today, everyone sort of makes their handwriting quirks their own, and the difference between individual writers is obvious. Also, there are queer numbers and dashes everywhere around the sections separated by the lines across the columns. And, if I rolled out the whole thing, you’d see many other styles and contributors as well.”
“Fascinating,” said Margaret. “Can you actually read this stuff?”
“I used to be pretty good at it at school, and it’s coming back. Most people are surprised to learn just about everyone was literate in Tudor times—even in the country people did go to school and read the words for the hymns at church and so on.”
“Really?” mused Margaret. “I never knew that.”
“Yes, reading was widespread, but writing not so much so. We think of them going together, but not everyone who could read back then could also write.” Stephen carefully lifted up one of the candlesticks and let the scroll nest back into itself so he could put it back in the buffet drawer.
“I’ll get back to the scroll, but meanwhile I think it’s more important for me to keep going through the papers that aren’t so totally mysterious. Those I can fly through, by comparison.”
Stephen paused for a minute or so, deciding whether or not to say something that was now on his mind. And why not, he concluded.
“Margaret, I know how annoying the detectives were today, with their insinuations, but I actually agree with them that you should have all of these things looked over by experts soon, and get an idea of exactly what value they have. I haven’t come across any maps to buried treasure so far, and I don’t really know if they are worth a lot. Great houses all around England still have family documents moldering away in their libraries, cellars, and attics, and I just don’t know if these are extraordinary or not.”
“Hmmm, I suppose so, although I’m not exactly hard up for money,” said Margaret, now turning a little sad again, and staring off into the carpet. Stephen didn’t mean to bring up anything at all about her inheritance now that her parents were both gone—that hadn’t been it at all. He hurried back into the conversation.
“Within a week or so, I should have the sort of descriptive inventory that would really help any appraiser. Sure, they will want to verify it and go over it all themselves, but it would be more than just a start—it should save everyone time and money.”
“Okay, you carry on with the inventory—I do know that you like that sort of thing, but I’ve decided to do more of my thing
as well.”
“What do you mean?” asked Stephen.
“I don’t know about you, but I didn’t think that new county detective and his friend were like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot—did you? More like Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther, if you ask me. I mean, I’m a bloody investigative reporter when I’m at home—usually—and I’m going to make this my new story to crack open. I can’t help with those scratch
ings—that’s your department—but I can get on the trail of all this, and probably stay miles ahead of the blessed county police. The BBC have given me weeks of what they call ‘bereavement leave,’ so I can sort out my family affairs. I mean, they’ll appoint a new vicar and I’ll have to empty everything of ours out of this vicarage and so on. But, meanwhile, I’m going into the damn office next week—and I’ll get things cracking.”
Stephen had no doubt that she would.
The last week had passed like a bad dream, thought Margaret on Monday morning as she walked from King’s Cross train station to her office at the BBC. It made her feel ill to remember. Six days before, her dear father had died. She’d thought he was in the safest place on the planet—his own vicarage in the English countryside, for god’s sake. And yet he ended up a victim of a vicious attack in their family kitchen, and never regained consciousness enough even to say goodbye. Now he was with her mother in heaven, he would have thought. All I want to remember is that I am going to get the bastard who did it, damn it.
There would be a lot of commotion ahead of her. The bishop was letting her keep the vicarage until the end of the year. Then a new vicar would be moving in to shepherd the village flock, and she would have to clear out. And no doubt she would now inherit her mother’s house—the family seat her mother had grown up in and rented out while Margaret’s dad made the vicarage
their home.
That house would mean she could stay close to Stephen. He was a rock—helping her through the horror of alleged crimes, hospitals, investigations, police, and the other unthinkable complications arising. Good lord, she realized, there will be some sort of trial to live through. That will be awful…but, again, she won’t be alone for that, but with Stephen, again.
Right after university, it seemed they’d be together forever. Back then, without a care in the world, she used to wander through the pages of Brides and Setting Up Home magazine, picking out ravishing dresses and looking at furniture, thinking how she would redecorate some big house someday. Then there would be children, even if they were adopted, and her seeing them off in their uniforms to the local schools. A doll’s house life was in store for her. What a baby she was.
Of course, breaking off the engagement damn well wasn’t Stephen’s fault. She did that. Traded him for the supposed glory of her work—she had always wanted that. Or so she thought. But now she knew there was no point to it. She just popped up in one place, covered some bloody disaster, and then was thrown into another foreign hell where there had been a massacre, a bombing, or something.
One time, living on the edge even turned into romance, or that’s what it seemed then. She was covering fighting among different factions in South Africa. It all seemed straightforward. A skirmish had happened the day before, and she and her crew were on-site, telling the story. But then, in a reversal of fortune, the victors of the night before were driven back and brought the fighting right back with them. The BBC and other press couldn’t get out. For three days all the reporters were holed up in an old country hotel with the shutters nailed closed, sandbags blocking the doors, and gunshots outside. All they could do was gather down in an interior windowless room off the bar, drink, and share stories while worrying they were all about to be killed.
That was when she met David. He was covering the action for the domestic South African press. He was lovely, she thought—tall, handsome, fit, tanned, and brave. He wasn’t afraid at all. He regaled her with stories of growing up on his parents’ farm just to the north, in the old Southern Rhodesia. He and his sisters used to play with lion cubs on their porch—and he had photos in his wallet to prove it. He told her how he learned to conquer fear by playing “snakepit” after school. The boys would take turns standing in an actual snakepit and see who could stay the longest. The trick was just to stay still and calm because the snakes could sense movement and fear—and they would strike out at either. Eventually, he could just stand there indefinitely.
“Like a bee charmer?” she had said—and he laughed a great belly laugh. When he recovered, he said, “Yes, I guess in England I would have been a bee charmer—never thought of that.” And he laughed again.
She was scared, and he was calm, and she felt much less nervous sitting very close to him as the shooting went on around the hotel. He forced the nervousness out of her by making her laugh, of all things. So when he knocked on her door one evening before they went down to the bar, why should she say no? In fact, having sex with him was a way to say yes to life instead of death—make love, not war—and the sex was great. Yes, yes, yes.
When the danger finally passed, and the press could get out, they said they would see each other soon—but they did not—just a few letters and then nothing. She hoped he was well, but it was all too simple, long ago, and now very much over.
So why should she be bothered about Stephen and his Miranda? I’m the one who set that up anyway, she said to herself, walking out on him as he had to take on that job at his father’s school because I wanted adventure. Well, I got the adventure, and where am I now?
It’s not my intellect or fine French-led education that are making me succeed—it’s now just as important that I look good on camera. “Be sure to give a quick comb to your hair, Margaret, before you go on. And then turn to give us more of your good right side.” Bloody hell.
And one day, after a shoot like that, she remembered going along with other reporters to visit a hospital. One ward was all children. She still could see the brave nine-year-old boy, now with only a left arm, trying to comfort his infant sister who lay on her back hugging the stump of her right leg that had been blown off, just the way healthy babies hugged their legs and tried to suck their toes. Those sights would never leave her.
Then she remembered a family holiday in Yugoslavia when she was about ten. The sea at Dubrovnik was lovely, and the town with its stucco and red-tile-roofed houses seemed so much more magical than the French Riviera or Italy. Magical indeed—because the magic wand of Marshal Tito held the country’s six states together in a trance of unification. Now he was long gone, and all bets were off as centuries-old hatreds erupted in a misplaced frenzy of nationalism and independence. Dubrovnik itself had been under siege since the autumn of 1991. Elsewhere massacres and atrocities went on every day. And, Margaret thought, we weren’t even giving those stories prime placement on the news—more likely Princess Di and Fergie. The foreign reporters hunkering down at the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo agreed they were given no coverage because their siege was rated only fourteenth on a new list of “The Worst Situations on Earth.” It was ranked way behind famine in Africa, even though one of the women reporters had just had her jaw shot off.
At least Margaret heard one uplifting story about reporters visiting an orphanage, where the children were crouching around so they wouldn’t be killed by the bullets coming through the windows. One of the ITN news correspondents decided to bring one of the girls there home with him to England and adopt her. And he did it. Talked her through security at Heathrow and kept her in Surrey with his family. At least that made a difference, she thought. Saving one child was worth a lot more than writing out a massacre story and sending it in to get it buried as a quick prelude to the weather on the BBC World Service news. She had to remember that.
~
Striding along, she was soon in sight of the imposing presence of Broadcasting House, the BBC’s art deco “battleship of modernism,” which had seemed to have been the right statement for the fast-growing broadcasting empire back in 1932, with its lofty mission to inform, educate, and entertain the nation.
As Margaret passed through the recently restored lobby toward the lifts at the back, she decided she would reach out to one of the few contacts she had inside the domestic U.K. news part of the organization. One of them was Guy Mitchell. About eighteen months earlier, Margaret became friends with him when they were “teamed” together during a weeklong BBC training program for journalists in hostile situations. Sadly, “the tro
ubles” with the IRA had made terrorist bombings part of the U.K. beat as well as international, and they were both on the course to learn strategies for maintaining security in the field and for interacting with traumatized victims. They stayed in touch afterward as Guy sent her occasional congratulations for her stories, and she did the same.
So right after she reached her “visiting journalist” desk that morning, she left a message on his extension. She soon had an answer back that he would meet her for a coffee down in the main canteen at Broadcasting House at 11:15 a.m.—right after her call with Sarajevo.
~
The cafeteria was almost empty when she went in, and Guy soon came off the lift and waved to her as he walked over to her corner table.
“Hello, Margaret! Here for a visit?” he said, smiling and obviously glad to see her.
“Kind of,” she said. “I’m actually home on bereavement leave. My father—” She paused to light a cigarette and exhaled a long first drag of blue smoke.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Margaret. I heard you were helping on Sarajevo.”
“I am—but from here and not down there, thank god. It’s bloody awful,” she said.
“I know,” said Guy, looking concerned for her.
“But it’s actually about my father that I wanted to talk to you.”
“Okay. What happened?” he said.
“Well, at first it seemed he just had a fall and went into a coma. But when they examined the wounds closely, the doctors and police decided it was an assault. Then he died without waking up and everything escalated into a full-scale police investigation,” she explained.
“Good lord. Didn’t you tell me he was a vicar?”
“Yes, that’s right. But there had been a recent discovery in one of the tombs at his church—old papers that could be quite valuable—and perhaps that could have been a motive. Then there was a sensational story in the local paper—‘treasure in the tombs’—and, right after that, his fall. The point is, I’ve met the police working on the case and I wasn’t impressed. So I wanted to look into it myself as well. I mean, if he was murdered, I bloody well want to get the bastards who did it.”