by Peter Tonkin
Until, abruptly, the tableau centre stage was frozen. Romeo held Mercutio back, his
arms wrapped like hoops around his friend. Tybalt stood with his blade thrust beneath Romeo's arm, its tip apparently buried in Mercutio's very heart. Every entranced eye in the theatre, front of house and backstage alike, had seen the vicious, lethal thrust beneath Romeo's innocent arm, and understood that Mercutio was dead.
'Mercutio will fall now,' said Will, suddenly at Tom's shoulder. 'His life and his lines are done. As are Morton's extempore additions to my good play.'
But the mordant playmaker was wrong. Mercutio did not fall. Instead, Morton's left arm swung wide, jerkily, puppet-like, into the face of the nearest actor. Morton wrenched himself out of Burbage's grasp with a guttural kind of scream and staggered sideways drunkenly. Off the chests of the stunned actors he bounced, like a bear at the baiting, trapped within the pit wall. 'I am hurt!' he shouted, with such force, shock and horror that the actors and the audience alike gasped. Burbage glanced back into the darkness backstage behind the curtains and went after the suddenly mad Morton.
'A plague on both your houses,' Morton was yelling into the faces of the stunned actors too slow to move out of his way. 'I am sped!' He was tugging at the edges of his doublet as he raved. Burbage caught up with him. 'Courage, man,' he ad-libbed half heartedly. 'The hurt cannot be much ...'
Morton's doublet was wide now. The lawn of his shirt shone white. No stain of vinegar, even, marked it. Will was still wearing the little bag of fake blood himself. 'It's not as deep as a well,' snarled Morton, suddenly overwhelmed with helpless rage. 'Nor so wide as a church door. But 'tis enough. 'Twill serve!' He opened his hand and smeared red across his fellow-actor's face. 'A rat! A cat to scratch a man to death. Help me into the house or I shall faint!'
Morton hurled himself on to Burbage with such force that they nearly fell. But then they staggered sideways as the stunned company fell back out of their way. Even the braggarts began to slink towards their stools, overcome by the terrible power of the moment. 'A plague on both your houses,' screamed Morton as Burbage ran him, stumbling, off the stage into the darkness of the tiring house. 'They have made worms' meat of me!'
Backstage, Burbage handed the tottering weight of Morton to Tom and Will. As they hurried the sagging actor back away from the stage curtain, the playmaker spat questions and threats at the actor who had extemporised such a lengthy death-speech for himself, but Morton disdained to answer him. None too gently, Tom and Will released the man and turned with a final threat, rushing to get to their places for the next fierce duel - between Tybalt and Romeo himself.
It was at the end of this, when Tybalt too lay bleeding dark red vinegar on to the rushes that dressed the bare boards of the stage and Will, in the person of Escalus the Prince, was hearing from Benvolio the detail of the murderous brawls, that Ugo Stell came up to Tom, with the tall figure of Ned Alleyn, still dressed in the friar's robes beside him.
'Tom,' said Ugo quietly. 'It's Julius Morton.'
'Tell him he'd better make haste away. If Will catches him in this mood, he really will make worms' meat of him.'
'Too late,' said Ned Alleyn, his voice deep and dark with worry.
'He's worms' meat already,' said Ugo, grimly matter-of-fact.
'He's dead?' Tom suddenly thought of the simple weight of the man he and Will had hauled backstage. There was a certain weight that was special to death. He had felt it often enough in the past. How could he have missed it or mistaken it now? 'Dead?' he demanded again.
'Dead as mutton,' confirmed Ned Alleyn.
'Though how and why are mysteries far beyond my understanding. What are we going to do?'
Chapter Seven - Worms' Meat
'Bring him in here, swiftly!' commanded Tom.
'Shall I send for the physician?' asked Ned Alleyn, uncharacteristically hesitant in the face of the shocking event.
'Not yet,' said Tom as the three of them swung the sagging weight of Julius Morton's body through the doorway and into the tiring house. Here the crabbed little wardrobe keeper swept a jumble of bright cloth off the long tiring table an instant before the corpse crashed down on to the boards, the dull thump of its landing masked by a wave of applause.
'The doctor would warn the constables or the Bishop's Bailiff. Thank God the Queen's not at Westminster, the width of the river away, or it would be Household men investigating things to boot. Sir William Danby and his crew, like as not; just as it was for Marlowe last year. And in the meantime, where shall we be, awaiting Her Majesty's pleasure? Not on the boards of the Rose, my friend! Especially not with Lord Strange dead and gone and no one to plead our case at Court.'
'We'd be waiting in the Limbo at Newgate Prison, like as not,' said a newcomer disgustedly. At the sound of his voice they all fell back respectfully, except Tom who was busy with the body. 'Or in the Marshalsea,' continued the newcomer, Philip Henlowe, owner and proprietor of the theatre, the company, the wood yards by the river and the baiting pits nearby. 'The Marshalsea where we can pass a merry afternoon with Master Topcliffe and his red-hot irons as our business goes to rack and ruin.'
Henslowe had little sense of humour, so it was only Tom who cracked a grim guffaw at the unwitting wit of the final phrase, for it was literally true. Topcliffe, the Archbishop's Pursuivant and the Queen's Rackmaster, would rack them and ruin them all if they fell into his clutches.
A roar of laughter swept strangely into the suffocating room, recalling the grim occupants to the relentless progress of the play outside in the real world. 'God's life,' swore Alleyn, 'my cue!' and he was gone with a swish of his friar's robes.
'On with it, all of you,' ordered Tom. 'I will see to this!' And, glad to pass the terrible weights of action, decision and responsibility to the fencing master, even Henslowe slunk away. Tom glanced around the dim, sultry, suddenly deserted little room with its mean window half shuttered. On an impulse, he crossed to this and threw the shutters wide, letting a shaft of sudden sunlight into the room. As he did so, he looked down across the old garden towards Bankside and there, on the corner of Rose Alley, where it ran north through Dead Man's Place to the river, stood a gallant looking up. For a moment more the man stood, still amid the bustle, staring back at the Rose as though expecting some matter of great moment to happen any instant now. Some thing about the man struck Tom. The darkness of his olive skin, perhaps, the glistening of his oiled black curls, the glint of ruby at his ear - a pair to the ruby in Tom's own lobes. As their eyes seemed to meet across the better part of one hundred yards, it was as though a flash of recognition passed between them. Then the man was gone into the crowd towards Bankend and the wherries at St Mary Overie Stairs, leaving nothing but an impression of tobacco doublet slashed with red, black cloak and long, long sword swinging against a broad right thigh.
Another burst of applause drowned Tom's purposeful tread as he crossed back towards the table with its silent burden. As he stood beside the still form, his eyes narrowed, focussing his thoughts as his mind whirred into action. What was it about poor Julius Morton that bespoke death so clearly? The still, staring, soulless eyes, perhaps. The utter pallor of his face. The stillness of his parted lips and chest, which lay like warm marble beneath Tom's first gentle touch. The stillness at the cooling column of his throat. But more. Even with the absence of blood upon that fine, linen shirt - so excellent a match for his white cheeks now - there was the languor of his limbs. The weight of them. The almost studied carelessness with which his left hand was disposed across the broad boards, its fingers half curled in some final, dying gesture. The hand that had swung wide at the crucial moment, striking one actor and smearing another with bright blood. It was the hand ...
Tom took a step or two up the table and leaned over to look more closely at the hand. Gently, he folded out the loose grasp of the fingers as though opening the petals of a rose. There, in the centre of the palm, was a tiny pool of blood. Tom remembered the smear that the dying man had l
eft on the shocked Dick Burbage. Frowning, Tom reached into the breast of his jerkin for the Italian lace kerchief he always kept there.
Three deft dabs revealed a wound – scarcely more than a knife cut - as though the man had stabbed himself while sharpening a quill for a pen.
Tom's broad forehead folded in a deepening frown as he turned the dead hand over. There, on the back, a pin-prick, scarcely enough to release a ruby drop from the fat vein running along the back of it. Tom tugged at the red-gold point of his beard and thought. Only a poisoned blade could bring death from a wound as small as this - but no poison Tom had heard of would work as swiftly as this one must have done. And Tom knew a great deal about poisons, one way and another. He had learned a good deal more than the science of defence with Maestro Capo Ferro at Siena. He made a mental note to keep a watch on Dick Burbage's face. If there was poison in the blood Morton had wiped upon it then the skin would blister and fester. And Death would enlarge his kingdom by one more actor's soul.
Deep in thought now, far removed from the howls of sorrow on the stage, Tom folded the wounded hand across the still chest, then he cast it aside again, in the grip of growing revelation. Short of breath suddenly, he tore Morton's shirt-front wide.
The man was dark, his chest matted with hair, but a moment's careful search revealed, just below his left nipple, where the oily curls were thickest - and most heavily tenanted with fleas - another cut. A cut such as a slightly larger pen-knife, big brother to that which might have cut his hand, might have made.
Shouts of warning and outrage from the audience. A flickering disturbance to the thick light. A distant rumble of thunder and the first stealthy whisper of rain in the old rose garden outside. Tom heaved the dead man up on to his side. As he moved the corpse, there came a sluggish slopping, as of a quart or so of liquid on the move in the hollow of a barrel. Tom pulled the fine, creased linen out of the dead man's belt above the dagger he wore across his buttocks. Half-balancing the fallen column of the man, holding him still with one hand as he pulled the voluminous linen up to the lightly furred shoulders, Tom stripped Morton's back bare. And there, on the inner curve of his ribs, running in through the inner edge of his shoulder blade almost into the ridged range of his spine, was a wound the width of a little finger. A tiny mouth with a coral gape and a dead black throat, reaching straight into the barrel of his chest. And, as though the weight of Tom's understanding had some magic property, a stream of dark heart's blood burst out of it. The black stream caused Tom to leap back - though its stain would hardly have discoloured his black breeches or boots. He used the movement to spin himself into physical action. A glance out of the window raked across the innocent bustle moving to and from the Bankside. Then he was out into the backstage area, even as Julius Morton, apparently merely asleep, rolled languidly back on to his back upon the table and began to examine the ceiling with bright but heavy-lidded eyes. The dripping sounds grew louder. Moved out of the garden and into the Rose.
The wardrobe keeper was there, still clutching his precious cloth. 'You'll have some cleaning-up to do,' spat Tom in an undertone as he sprinted for the stage. He knew already he would be too late but he had to make assurance double sure. His long sword spat out of its scabbard, echoing warlike sounds from the stage itself. His shoulder hit the pillar by the stage curtain hard and, breathing a swift prayer of thanks that Master Griggs the carpenter had built Master Henslowe's theatre so stoutly, he used the rapier blade to ease back the heavy brocade. Across the stage, Dick Burbage danced in the final, desperate duel of the play and the County Paris was preparing to die. They were alone onstage except for the sixpenny gallants, so it was easy enough for Tom to see that one of the stools, which had all been full until Julius Morton's murder, stood starkly empty now. One of the courtly blades who had joined unbidden in the sword fights and the riots was gone.
Then, so was the chance for further speculation. All of the actors came milling up around him, ready to go onstage again to complete the final, vital section of their play. All of their futures depended upon it. And the play could go on of course, for Mercutio, after all, was dead.
Tom caught hold of Will's princely sleeve and pulled him aside. 'It was murder,' he said, his voice low. 'He has been run through from behind. It was a master's stroke. Only the finest of blades could have done it. Only the blade that came so close to us, I think. And the man that wielded it has gone.'
'But how could it have been done, Tom? On the stage of the Rose under the eyes of half of London and no one the wiser?'
'Not only How?, Will, but W'hy? This was a deep plot, carefully laid. And a tangled web behind it, like as not.'
'But what are we to do, Tom?'
Tom opened his mouth to answer. To answer that he did not know. But Will was gone on to the stage and the voice of the Prince rang out across the Rose.
Abruptly Ugo Stell was there, with the bookkeeper in tow. 'Tell Tom what you told me,' ordered the Dutchman quietly. Pope held up the prompt book. It was covered in scrawled additions - mostly to Julius Morton's speeches. 'I noted what Mercutio said at the end, Master Tom,' he said breathlessly. 'The speech about plagues and houses and making worms' meat of the man. For Master Will had written nothing like it in his original book. There's nothing like that in the original at all.'
'But you have it written down?'
'Everyword, truly, sir. But what's the significance?'
'I have a suspicion,' answered Tom, glaring out on to the stage where Will was delivering the Prince of Verona's doom on Romeo, all unaware of the doom awaiting him back here, 'that there may be a message hidden within it. A message from a murdered man who dared not make his dying message clear. There is work for a Master of Cyphers here.'
'And for a Master of Logic,' added Ugo.
'And for a Master of Defence, I shouldn't wonder,' concluded Tom, grimly. And all too soon he was to learn just how true those last words were.
Chapter Eight - A Death Re-played
Later that afternoon the whole company except for Julius Morton was again assembled on the Rose's stage. The whole company of actors, that was. The Bookkeeper was at work in Master Henslowe's office copying out with laborious accuracy every word the dying Morton had spoken, marking the difference between those which followed Master Shakespeare's original and those that he had extemporised for himself.
As the wet boards and sodden rushes out on the stage itself steamed lazily under the gathering weight of the next thunderstorm, it seemed to more than one mind there that Julius was as fully among them as any of the others, passing spectrally from one ghostly wisp to the next. And in fact he was figured there in person as Will paced out his last moments, rolling in Dick Burbage's arms across the brawny chests of all the others.
The badly shaken Sly, still half convinced that he must have struck the fatal blow after all, worked carefully and precisely as Tom, narrow-eyed, watched the whole performance, with Ugo by his side.
The actors were all at their points. Inevitably, after so much rehearsal of such a dangerous piece of action destined to be repeated over and over, every man there knew to within a whisker where every part of his body must be placed. The only difference, apart from the absence of the little tragedy's principal actor, was the equally crucial absence of the sword-wielding sixpenny gallants. But the actors were beginning to build up a clear picture of who among the courtly audience was where, when they left their stools.
'Now,' called Burbage and Sly together.
'Hold,' commanded Tom. The action froze. Will was standing in a slight crouch, trapped against the rock-steady chest of Hemminge, held by the encircling arm of Dick Burbage. Sly, caught in the act of bouncing off Condell's solid front, balanced the length of his leaded rapier precisely, ready to thrust under Dick's arm, apparently into the depths of Will's unprotected breast. 'Look about you,' commanded Tom. 'Stir your memories. Who else was close by at this very moment? Where were they facing? What were they doing? What did they look like?'
; Of course a babel of answers arose at once, for there had been eight gallants up from their stools in the midst of the action and all of the horseshoe of actors had seen at least one of them. Tom held up his hand for peace, then he put a simple order on the matter by starting with the outer ends of the half-circle, and establishing through the testimony of at least two actors apiece what each of those eight men had been doing at the vital moment. The outer two - one on each side - had simply been pushing against the wall of actors apparently seeking a clearer view. Those next upstage behind them, at that very moment, had been caught between what was being enacted by the actors and what was going on among the other four of the unruly audience behind them on the stage. Here, between the steady backs of Hemminge and Condell and the curtains over the exits, there were four braggarts at sword-play. Whether two against two or three against one it was hard to say for the mêlée had been brief and none too well observed. Both Hemminge and Con dell were agreed, however, in placing one dark, fragrant, black-clad gallant the closest behind them.
'I felt his shoulders against my shoulders, jostling me roughly,' said Hemminge. 'He was hard at work, and I have, I calculate, a round dozen bruises on my ribs, courtesy of his elbows as he fought.'
'The air around me was all a-hiss with foreign tongue and spitting blades - and ahum with fragrant garlic,' added Condell. 'So, he fought with his back to you against at least one other upstage. But he turned, when?'
'Turned?' asked Hemminge.
'Look around you, man. You see how Morton stood at your front and this gallant stood at your back. To run his blade beneath your own arm and through Morton to his very hand, he must have turned and thrust.'