by Peter Tonkin
*
St Giles led Tom and John into High Holborn and soon after that they reached John Gerard’s house. To be fair, thought Tom, it was more than a simple house. He knew it well for he had visited before, making use of the herbalist’s knowledge in more than one case of death like that suffered by poor Edmund Spenser. There were simple living quarters upstairs and a kitchen downstairs in which meals could be taken. But that deceptive room could be used for much more than heating and eating, for apart from this one relatively usual chamber, the lower floor was split into the shop at the front where herbal remedies of all sorts were dispensed and sold while behind the shop stood the areas in which the herbs were dried, crushed, boiled, distilled and concocted into the pills, powders, oils and unguents that might be purchased in the shop.
The kitchen, therefore doubled as a laboratorium and manufactory. Its rear door opened into one of the most extensive herb gardens in England where, behind the brick hovel containing the privy, row upon row of plants stood, all carefully and individually labeled; and behind them, bed after bed of shrubs and saplings all equally precisely named culled by the herbalist, his friends and contacts from as far afield as India and the New World so recently explored by Raleigh in search of El Dorado. The thick hawthorn hedge at the rear opening through a gate into Red Lion Fields and, a few yards further north, the red-walled buildings of Grays Inn.
This Inn was not a hostelry or tavern of any kind but the most powerful of the four Inns of Court where, since the reign of Edward III, the brightest and best graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, sons of the most powerful men in the land like William Cecil and Nicholas Bacon studied for the law and, like Anthony and Francis Bacon, prepared themselves to stand for parliament and take the reins of political power in their turn.
Side by side Tom and John walked up to John’s house. The door was, as usual, unlocked; they were entering a shop after all. The chamber that greeted them seemed tidy enough - the shelves behind the counter well-stocked with a range of packages, boxes, and jars all containing dried herbs, powders, pills and liquids of various colours and consistencies. Tom saw nothing amiss except that the apprentice he had come to question was absent.
‘Hal?’ called John, crossing to the counter and raising a section of it, leading Tom through into the back of the shop where his chemical equipment stood and the section of the kitchen where the concoctions were made and tested. ‘Hal!’
The immediate answer came from several children who came thundering downstairs and into the room, followed by a harassed looking woman who Tom recognized as their mother. ‘Mistress Ann,’ he greeted her with a bow. He knew her and the children slightly - the children ranging from a babe in arms, through four or five growing youngsters to Elizabeth who was nigh on eighteen now, and for once not here to help her mother with the youngsters nor to help Hal with the shop.
‘Master Musgrave,’ Ann Gerard curtseyed as best she could with a somnolent baby swaddled in her arms.
‘Ann, my dear, where is Hal?’ asked the apothecary gently as his younger children gathered round him - those nearer Elizabeth’s age out at school, thought Tom; the boys at least..
‘He’s gone out about some business,’ Ann answered. ‘Left soon after you were summoned.’
‘I gave him no commission,’ frowned John. ‘Did he say where he was going?’
‘To Billingsgate, I believe.’
‘Billingsgate! Do we need fish?’
‘No. He went on no errand of mine, husband.’
‘Well enough. But Billingsgate - you’re sure?’ he continued to speak as she nodded. ‘What is there at Billingsgate?’
‘More than fish, certainly,’ said Tom.
‘What more?’ demanded John, his face an almost grotesque mask of confusion.
But even as Tom drew breath to answer, a great peal of bells rang out from St Andrews in Holborn which stood just across the road and, behind it, peal after peal from the bell-tower of every church in the City, carried northwards on a southerly breeze.
‘What in God’s name…’ said John, swinging round to look towards the city, overwhelmed by the cacophony of ill-tuned campanology.
Tom’s eyes were closed, counting the chimes of St Andrews’ peal. ‘Nine tailors,’ he said at last. ‘Nine tailors and forty-six chimes. The bells are being rung for the death of a man aged forty-six - and someone important at that to set every bell in London jangling.’
He paused for a heartbeat, meeting John’s confused gaze. ‘They’re sounding Edmund Spenser’s death knell,’ he explained.
.
Chapter 2: The Arcane Astrologer
‘Simon Forman lives in Billingsgate,’ said Tom.
‘He does. But what of it?’ John’s eyes slid away from Tom’s direct gaze.
‘It seems a strange coincidence to me that the apprentice of one apothecary should visit - for no apparent reason - the place where a rival apothecary lives. It’s as though George Chapman should suddenly frequent Will Shakespeare’s new lodgings in Southwark.’
‘But why would Hal go there? What reason would he have? He is my apprentice not Forman’s.’ Was John protesting too much? Tom wondered, unused to the blustering tone in his old friend’s voice.
‘Is he ambitious, perhaps?’ he probed.
‘He works only for me,’ insisted John. ‘I pay what I can though I am not obliged to do so and I am training him in my craft. But yes, he is young, ambitious, impatient.’
‘Is he bound to you by articles like a normal apprentice?’ asked Tom.
‘He is and has been for a number of years, though he is coming to the end of the term. He has much to be taught but he has also learned a lot. I let him weigh, prepare and pack the medicines I prescribe. When I am absent, he is in charge of the shop - notionally under Ann’s eye. Or under Elizabeth’s if Ann is otherwise occupied. I furnish him with bed and board but I am happy to let him come and go a little more now he is a grown lad. He has always been reliable.’
‘“Under Elizabeth’s eye,”’ echoed Tom. ‘And has he eyes for your Elizabeth? Such things are not unknown.’
‘He does not - and no matter if he did, for she has set her sights far above young apprentices. Her head has been turned by some of my more aristocratic clients…’
‘And she might well look higher than Hal,’ observed Tom, ‘for she is a pretty young woman.’
John nodded proudly, mollified by Tom’s calculated compliment.
‘So young Hal “comes and goes”,’ mused Tom. ‘Where does he go to?’
‘Never to Simon Forman,’ said John, his voice ringing with shock. Perhaps too much shock. Unlike Will Shakespeare, thought Tom, John was no actor.
Both men were speaking with raised voices in spite of the fact that they were in John’s private chambers above the shop. They talked not only over the sound of the bells but over the remains of a light lunch which they had consumed as they spoke, with Ann and the children in the kitchen below. The steady rhythm of the chiming bells seemed to penetrate the walls as easily as it came through the shivering windows.
‘I’m certain sure,’ insisted John.
Unconsciously he ran a nervous finger along one wing of his moustache, brushing away a crumb of cheese. Tom’s old friend was wearing the same sweeping moustaches and pointed beard as Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh - and Sir Thomas his namesake - emphasizing a similarity in their faces as well as their names - though John Gerard’s beard and moustaches were growing silver now. Whereas Tom’s, also cut in the same swashbuckling style, were coloured a virile red-blond, several shades darker than his flaxen hair.
*
‘He has gone off like this once or twice recently,’ the apothecary admitted, sounding a good deal more truthful but suddenly looking his age, which Tom calculated to be rising fifty five. Twenty years more than Will, twenty five years more than Tom himself. Ten years more than poor Spenser had achieved in the end. ‘I had thought perhaps there was a sweetheart - I do not give him enough to afford bee
r or wenches.’
Tom nodded, waiting for John to add more thoughts. Being careful not to repeat his assertion nor the reasons for it which seemed so plain and indisputable to him - Hal was somehow entangled with Forman, probably recently so - conceivably only immediately so - perhaps even at John’s instigation. But what could be so vital that it spurred John to send an apprentice to his greatest rival and then lie about it to one of his closest associates? Yet Tom felt certain that, whatever the case, John knew more than he was saying; more than he had so far let slip.
Tom liked John Gerard and found him too useful an ally to risk alienating him. Especially as the pair of them needed to try and work out precisely what had been poured into Edmund Spencer’s ear and where it had come from - samples of which now lay in John’s work-room awaiting their attention once the more pressing matter of the missing apprentice had been settled. After all, the poisoning was done - its origins, type and effects appeared to be of less importance than the possibility that the apprentice was under arrest and explaining to the Knight Marshal, the Pursuivant Marshal or their henchmen that a heavily cloaked and muffled customer calling himself Will Shakespeare had purchased suspicious amounts of various poisons on the night the poet died.
Tom sat back, his eyes hooded with speculation, his mind racing; his memory of Forman and Chapman loading Spenser’s corpse into the Earl of Essex’ private carriage vivid. Chance, coincidence - or something more sinister it seemed - tied these two apothecaries together through the seemingly reliable but suddenly absent Hal. Who, now Tom thought of it, had prepared the medicines that had put Spenser into such a deep sleep - whether or not assisted by good Kentish ale - while his master tied the bandage over the poet’s ear more than eighteen hours ago. Whose evidence was all that implicated Will Shakespeare in a situation that was rapidly gaining artistic, social and political importance: the City’s bells did not knell for every dead ruffler, roaring boy or beggar.
‘Ah, I see,’ he purred at last. ‘Young Hal could become a potent secret agent, collecting information from Foreman that might be of use to you. Like the intelligencer Robert Poley pretending to be imprisoned in the Clink, the Marshalsea or Newgate jail, listening for sedition and treason amongst the genuine inmates there and bringing his information home to The Council. And Foreman does not mind this canker in his bosom? Or does he not suspect?’
‘NO!’ John Gerard sat up straight, outraged. ‘I have no need of anything that charlatan says he has discovered! No, he’s worse than a charlatan, he’s a… He’s a…’
‘No matter what he is, I know well enough where he is for the time-being at least,’ said Tom, rising and glad to be in action once again. ‘I’m for Billingsgate to search Forman’s premises in the hope he still lingers at Essex House, just in case Hal has looked for something we cannot yet guess at down there. One way or another, it is young Hal I need to question first and soonest.’
‘If you go in search of Hal then I will come with you,’ decided John, all uncertainty and hesitation vanishing. He rose and crossed to a cupboard near the reverberating window, opened it and pulled out the trappings he would need to hang a sword at his hip.
ii
Holborn curved southwards as it ran east and less than ten minutes after leaving John’s premises the pair of them were pushing through the bustle at the New Gate in London’s wall, and elbowing past the prison of that name, paying scant attention to the calls of bankrupt prisoners begging through the gratings at their feet. One of whom at any time might be the impecunious George Chapman, mused Tom, always assuming he did not end up at the Marshalsea instead.
As they approached the precinct of St Paul’s, however, Tom turned abruptly southwards into Blackfriars. ‘I was called betimes this morning,’ he bellowed in explanation, ‘summoned with some urgency as you may imagine and so I came out naked, as you did.’ He struck his left hip where his rapier normally hung. John had armed himself with an old-fashioned short sword, the preferred weapon of an older generation which matched his outmoded clothing with its bright russet doublet tight against chest; its small ruff above with short breeches below, puffed out above long tights. The colour and style those of ten years ago when tobacco and its particular autumnal shade were all the rage. His outfit was in striking contrast to Tom’s fashionable boat-bellied doublet with its slashed sleeves through which silk puffed, galligaskins that reached to the knee almost meeting the Spanish leather boots, all in the expensively modish black.
Within a few minutes they were at the shop owned by the Haberdasher Robert Aske and Tom bounded up the stairs beside it, through the door that led into his own dwelling, school-room and fencing piste above the merchant’s shop as John laboured up behind him. While Tom was strapping on his favorite rapier, his friend and assistant the Dutch gunsmith Ugo Stell came out of his workshop. ‘They say the bells are for Edmund Spenser,’ said the Dutchman. ‘Is it true?’
‘It is. I was called to see the body and summoned John here in turn.’
‘Jesu! How did he die?’
‘We calculate by poison poured into his ear. It has given Will Shakespeare nightmares and will no doubt turn up in one of his plays. Beyond that, we are hunting for facts.’
‘And where is Spenser now?’ asked Ugo.
‘Simon Forman has him at Essex House. He’s assisting the Knight Marshal in post mortem matters.’
‘Forman! And at Essex House? Is that where you’re going?’
‘No. We’re going to Forman’s premises in Billingsgate. There’s something mysterious going on - besides the fact that Spencer has likely been murdered. We might find some answers down there.’
The phlegmatic Dutchman blinked as the news that Spencer had probably been murdered hit him fully. He had known the politician and poet almost as well as Tom. Then, ever practical, he said, ‘Murdered was he, with poisons dropped in his ear? If there’s murder afoot then maybe I’d better come with you. Wait a moment and I’ll get a brace of my new snaphaunce pistols.’
*
The quickest way the three men could take on foot would lead them eastwards from Blackfriars along Carter Lane and Knightrider Street into Old Fish Street then via Cloak Lane down College Hill into Thames Street which ran parallel to the River right across the city until Thames Street crossed New Fish Street which led down to London Bridge, then pushed further on until it turned right into the wide opening of the Romeland coal market and the public well standing beside it and so down to Billingsgate itself.
They had little enough to discuss as they set out along this route, each one prey to his own thoughts. Besides, they were armed to the limit of the law - with Ugo’s pistols almost certainly illegal in public - so their main focus was in keeping their cloaks tight about their waists. Tom tried to converse at first though, for he could not see what young Hal hoped to learn from Simon Forman that he could not learn better and deeper from John. He bellowed his question and could have worked out what the answer would be before John’s loud reply.
‘Astrology. Foreman is a great one for seeing the future in the stars. He says it gives him almost magical power. Power he seems to use in the seduction of every woman with pleasing looks who comes to him for a potion or a prediction. The gossip goes that he practices other, darker arts. Though he keeps close company with such men as Essex, and even with the Queen, so there is never any talk of blasphemy or witchcraft. Merchants flock to him for assurances as to the safety of their argosies, soldiers - such as Essex himself - for the result of their proposed campaigns, bankers for the reliability of their investments, lovers for the outcomes of their affairs - and the potions and philtres that make such outcomes certain; youths and lasses for astrological information about whether they are beloved and by whom…’
‘I can see how such power might appeal to an ambitious lad,’ added Ugo. ‘And the promise of the elevated company - the circle of his rich and influential clients and acquaintance must almost equal yours.’
‘An ambitious and a lusty one,’ add
ed Tom. ‘Is your Hal inclined to the sins of the flesh, John?’
‘He is young and full of fiery humors,’ answered John. ‘His hand is forever in his codpiece when he thinks I am not looking.’
‘Unlimited power over women,’ said Ugo. ‘That would indeed be a great temptation and a powerful motivator to a youth who believed in it.’
‘And the very thought of it enough to coax a lad into mastrupation,’ nodded John sadly.
‘Yet you have kept your Elizabeth safe from all this fiery lust?’ wondered Tom.
The question was enough to stop the conversation, which would have been difficult to pursue much further in any case, as the nine tailors continued to toll in every church they passed - and they passed a lot, for there were more than a hundred in the City. The noise of Spencer’s passing-bells was enough to ensure that the crowds of citizens they moved through, who did need to talk to each-other, did so with voices raised to a shout. And then of course the speakers found they needed to shout louder still to overcome the combined cacophony of bells and bellowed conversations.
The crush and the noise grew worse still as the followed Thames Street across New Fish Street with the church of St Magnus on the corner where the cross road ran southward onto London Bridge and away across the South Wark onto the South Bank. But at last the three of them passed St Mary’s At Hill and came down past the Romeland coal market and the public well into Billingsgate where Simon Foreman lived and did his business.