by Peter Tonkin
‘We shall go at once!’ breathed Kate.
‘No, my love,’ responded Tom. ‘I at least shall stay.’
‘But you hate poetry - not that this deserves the name.’
‘True. But there is more than mere versifying going on here and I mean to get to the bottom of it!’
‘To the bottom of the grave as like as not,’ she hissed.
‘If need be,’ he responded, thinking that that was where the tell-tale poems all would be lying, thrown in by their creators with the black quill pens that wrote them. ‘To the bottom of the grave if need be.’
Chapter 8: The Silence and the Night
i
Sir Gelly Meyrick and the Bacon brothers accompanied Essex down the nave followed by Assheton and the rest of his entourage. After a moment - so as not to be too closely associated with them, perhaps - Poley strode after them. Sir Thomas’s group, including Kate, left with Sir Thomas, closely followed by Ugo and the others who had arrived with Tom.
All alone except for the headless King Henry, the Master of Logic began to wonder if he had made a miscalculation. This uneasiness was compounded by the fact that many of the congregation and a good number of the poets also headed for Essex House and sustenance rather than lingering at the graveside in the hope of immortality. Perhaps there was no hidden agenda; perhaps all there was here after all was a lot of mediocre versifying and a little coincidence.
But the fact that the crowd in the Nave had thinned revealed one or two things which had been hidden earlier. Against Tom’s suspicion, Secretary Cecil had actually been there, and he remained now, listening to the poems with apparent interest. Robert Poley, Chief Intelligencer and Pursuivant Marshal had gone with his new employer the Earl Marshal, but Cecil was still supported by Thomas Phelippes, Poley’s opposite number in charge of codes and communications for the Council’s section of Her Majesty’s secret service. And, Tom realised with a start, Sir Richard Topcliffe, Rackmaster to the Tower stood beside the Secretary and the codemaster. Were the three of them secret poetry-lovers, Tom wondered, or were they, like him, listening for sedition in verse? Surely they could not, also like him, be listening for clues as to Spenser’s murder in spite of the fact that so little had been made of it so far. Or could they? Automatically, he stepped back into the shadows beside Henry Vth’s tomb, hoping they hadn’t seen him - but then wondering why he should be concerned either way.
The answer to those questions lay simply in Tom’s lingering certainty that this was not the innocent funeral of a man everyone assumed had died of natural causes if unexpectedly and tragically young, or, as Ben Jonson was apparently suggesting, of starvation. Whether or not the corpse’s ears were now as clean as sea-shells recently cast ashore, there appeared to be a growing number of powerful people who seemed to know - or suspect - about the distillation of hemlock. But did they know - or was there anything in verse to tell them - about Hal the missing apprentice and his accusation that Will Shakespeare bought the poison on the evening Spenser died? Or, indeed, the unsettling coincidence of Poley’s predecessor’s fatal accident up in the most dangerous catholic nests of the north.
Tom took a step further back into the shadows and began to look around, formulating a plan. There were still several poets left with elegies of varying length and Charles Fitzgeoffrey was only a little way through his. The bier had been removed as soon as the coffin was lowered. Abdias Assheton had gone with his earthly master and there was no sign of gravedigger or sexton. The hole would obviously not be filled tonight with anything other than paper and feathers. He suspected that the Abbey would be secured, perhaps even guarded, by the Dean’s orders and men. If he waited until all was done, there were plenty of hiding places close at hand, Queen Catherine’s tomb if nowhere else. But the only problem with planning to wait undiscovered until the place was empty lay in the fact that it would also be absolutely dark - and Tom had not brought tinder or taper with him. It would be useless even to steal a candle, of which there were plenty, as he hadn’t the means to light it.
He was so deep in these thoughts that he actually jumped when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder from behind.
*
‘We raided the Earl’s collation,’ growled a deep voice. Tom turned to see Ugo and Kate standing just behind him. The Dutchman was holding a kerchief laden with patties and pastries while Kate held some winter fruit and a bottle of Rhenish.
‘This should make even the poetry more palatable,’ she whispered cheerfully.
They laid it out on Queen Catherine’s tomb to eat and drink as they listened to the last of the poems. By the time they and the eulogizing were finished, night had clearly fallen, for there was nothing to see but darkness through either windows or doors; deepening shadows gathered around and - especially - above them. As Secretary Cecil and his sinister companions left, with the last of the poets trailing after them regretting, no doubt, that they had missed the funeral feast, the Dean’s men began a sweep through the Abbey. It was the student who found them and moved them on. Tom went willingly enough, his plan almost perfectly formed in his mind. As they reached the wide space where the Transepts met the Nave, he turned right, leading Ugo and Kate to the North Door. A careful glance back as they were shown out and the door locked behind them was sufficient to show Tom that the smaller, more accessible portal also had a smaller lock than that on the Great West Doorway, one that would yield more easily to the dark arts of his lock-pick. And his ears told him that once the lock was secured, there were no bolts sliding home. Breaking back in should be easy enough.
Though as he began to walk down towards the river and a wherry home, he wondered a little superstitiously whether the locks to the Abbey had ever been picked before - and, if so, what revenge The Lord had taken on the charm responsible for the sacrilege. Something similar, he supposed, to whatever plague had been visited on the men who stole King Henry’s silver head and hands.
Back at Blackfriars, the atmosphere grew tense at once. Kate wanted to become sportive but Tom had no time to indulge her. He and Ugo were too busy getting ready to return to the Abbey, break in and recover the poems from Spenser’s grave. In the face of this, Kate decided that she would come with them. ‘If I derive no enjoyment from this evening in one way, I will do so in the other,’ she announced. Tom instantly forbade it. He had little idea of what dangers - physical or spiritual - they might face but he had no intension of allowing Kate to face them too. The proposals became discussions and discussions rapidly became arguments. The arguments drew out long past the moment he had planned to leave. Past curfew indeed, when Kate could not get back to Nonsuch on her own - and neither Tom nor Ugo could escort her without losing the chance to break into the Abbey altogether.
‘You have drawn this argument out a’purpose,’ he said at last, more amused than angry at having been outmaneuvered. ‘You will not stay. You cannot go. Therefore, much against my judgment, I must acquiesce. You may come. But I warn you, My Lady Willful, you have at the least submitted yourself to a long march from Blackfriars down to Essex House and then along the route followed by the poet-drawn hearse of this afternoon. And if we are lucky, all that weary way back again laden with elegiac doggerel.’
ii
A little over an hour later, Tom knelt in front of the Abbey’s North Door while the other two kept watch. He had talked his heavily-cloaked companions through Lud Gate, relying on a couple of friendly watchmen and parting with several silver coins. He guided them up Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street, then to The Strand and Essex House - and so along the route followed by Spenser’s hearse. Beneath their capacious cloaks, Ugo, Kate and he were well supplied with flint and steel, tinder and a dark-lantern, but a freshening wind had blown the ragged clouds away during their brisk walk here and there was enough moonlight for him to see what he was doing as he went to work with his lock picks. To see also, though he said nothing for the moment, that someone else had been trying to pick the lock he was planning to charm. There were scratches on the
ancient wood around the massive key-hole which were pale, recent and which had not been there when he looked back on leaving earlier. Whether or not the would-be burglars had succeeded in breaking in he could not tell, but as he felt the tongue of the ancient mechanism slide back he rose quickly to his feet and whispered, ‘Wait!’
He took the great round handle of the latch and twisted it. The simple mechanism moved silently. The door swung open as he pushed. It moved smoothly enough but the hinges groaned - the sound behaving strangely as it moved out into the gusty night and into the echoing stillness of the Abbey. Tom found that he was holding his breath, straining to hear the slightest sound that might be out of place. At the same time, straining his eyes until tears began to come, seeking the merest glimmer of light in the absolute blackness of the massive space before them. But there was neither sound nor brightness, so he stepped cautiously in, signaling the others to follow. Five steps into the North Transept took them out of the wind but left them in the last of the moonlight. They stopped here and lit the dark-lantern before Tom pushed the door closed and leaned against it to ensure it stayed shut as the latch dropped back into place even with the wind rattling it.
Ugo held the lantern. It was a column of thin horn panes perhaps eighteen inches in height and six in diameter held together by narrow metal struts, one section of which was hinged to open, allowing it to be lit. On the circular base there was a simple oil lamp with a deep reservoir and a thick wick. On the top, an inverted cone rose to a shielded chimney. Above that, a wire handle carefully placed to protect the user’s fingers from the heat escaping upward. Opposite the horn-paned door, an extra vertical strut joined the top to the base and held two metal wings that could be closed over the column of brightness, cutting down the illumination until only the thinnest blade escaped to light the way.
At Tom’s whispered prompting, Ugo set the lantern to its darkest and then the three of them followed the sliver of light into the dark and echoing immensity. It had always seemed to Tom that darkness dampened noise, especially darkness as absolute as this. But the Abbey worked to rules far beyond those of nature. Every breath and footfall seemed to be amplified until the three of them appeared to be making as much noise as an invading army. Even when they stopped to shine the golden blade of light around to try and get their bearings, the sounds they had made just echoed on and on. Conversation was out of the question - they hardly dared whisper. Tom found that his fists were closed tight on the handles of his rapier and dagger. When Kate brushed nervously against him without warning he nearly drew on her.
At last they reached the Nave and the light from Ugo’s lantern showed the Choir to the right of them and the Sanctuary looming on their left. Spenser’s grave was straight ahead with Chaucer’s tomb behind it, flag stones standing against it, just visible over the pile of earth from the grave. As Ugo swung the light from side to side a simple truth occurred to Tom which he had overlooked so far. They were surrounded by shadowy, half-seen figures whose faces stared more or less accusingly down at them. Even in the sepulchral darkness, some part of him must have been aware of their stony gazes, which had been more than enough to unsettle the three interlopers.
‘There’s the grave,’ he said more confidently. ‘Let’s go.’
*
Even with his mind settled on what had made the adventure so far so disquieting; Tom approached the edge of Spenser’s grave cautiously, as though some demonic monster might be waiting down there. Or, after his conversation this afternoon, as though the Sin-Eater had failed in his duty and Spenser’s ghost was waiting to harrow up their souls with a description of his tortures during the day. He and Ugo approached the sharp edge of the black pit side by side with the blade of light probing ahead of them and Kate for once a little behind them. Tom saw the square of the far side beneath the piled earth and the slabs fronting Chaucer’s tomb. The cliff of black mud reached down as perfectly vertical as any brick wall in London, as shiny as the marble sides of the tombs standing around them.
He knew what he expected to see, could almost summon it into ghostly vision he was so certain of it. Spenser’s coffin lying covered in a snow-drift of paper, each flake covered with writing and accompanied by a dead-black quill. Beneath Ugo’s cloak, a rope clung tightly-wrapped around his waist to steady Tom as he climbed downwards. He had no intention of jumping onto Spenser’s final resting place or even of lowering himself over the edge and feeling for the wooden lid with his toes. Though he was by no means given to superstition, he was not about to make any noise or movement that might wake the dead. But he was going to retrieve those verses and gut them for hidden meanings that might explain the murders. Or go some way towards an explanation at least. That was why they were here and he was not going to leave with his mission unfulfilled.
But the light from Ugo’s lantern showed something he had not been expecting at all. Lying on top of Spenser’s coffin, revealed bit by bit as the three of them approached the edge and the light fell deeper and deeper, was the corpse of a young man. Tom knew in his bones it was Hal the missing apprentice though he had never met the boy before. The body lay on its back on top of Spenser’s coffin. Its eyes were wide and staring in a face as white as the paper beneath and around it. It was clothed in the modest, unfashionable attire to be expected of an apprentice, especially one apprenticed to a slightly down-at-heel apothecary. The only thing that came as a surprise to Tom was the dagger pushed through the left breast of the brown fustian doublet. Buried to the hilt, in fact and doing more than skewering the young man’s heart. It held in place yet another piece of paper.
‘Another elegy, perhaps,’ said Tom.
‘Certainly,’ Ugo agreed.
‘But who penned it?’ wondered Kate standing beside the pair of them on the lip of the grave looking dispassionately down at the corpse. Never had Tom been more grateful for the fact that Kate was not the fainting sort.
‘I’ll lay you odds,’ said Tom thoughtfully, ‘that it will appear to be from Will Shakespeare.’
iii
‘When in the chronicle of long-past time,’ read Tom slowly,
‘I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And Spenser making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and Lordly knights,
Then, in despite of ruin, sweet poesy's best,
Of Fairy Queene, Mother Hubbard, Colin Clout,
I see his antique pen would have express'd,
Even such a sadness as we master now.
We Aped his verse with all our Foxy wit
His ironic lines with burning satire season’d,
But Spenser’s subtle style we never hit
Nor ever any thought of speaking treason.
So all our praises were but dull prophecies
Of parting from this Irish sire of phantasies.’
He was standing astride the corpse, his feet resting on the edges of the coffin, with the poem in one hand and the dagger that had been run through it in the other. His head and shoulders stuck bizarrely out of the grave, a fact emphasised because Ugo had opened both wings of the dark lantern and bathed the tomb with brightness.
‘Could Will have written that?’ breathed Kate. ‘There’s something of his style in it, but...’
‘I agree. I feel I’ve read something of his like this before. But we’ll need to show it to him in order to be sure.’
‘Is that wise?’ wondered Ugo.
‘None of this is wise,’ said Tom. ‘But we can’t just leave everything as we found it. Throw the rope here and we’ll lift poor Hal out of the grave he seems to have invaded...’
‘How do you know who the dead boy is?’ asked Kate as Tom went about looping the rope beneath the corpse’s chest, under his arms. ‘Have you met this Hal before?’
‘Never. But I have seen where he died and there could not be two such.’
‘He died of a dagger through the heart surely, and there are many such!’ argued Kate.
‘No, Kate. He was
dead before he was stabbed and he died far from here of a shattered skull and a broken neck from a tumble down some stairs. He has been brought here, furnished with the poem which was stabbed in place and left to do as a corpse what he could no longer do as a living person. To wit, make the Earl Marshal, his lieutenants and their pursuivants go after Will for murdering Spenser and now, for slaughtering the boy as well.’
‘How have you come to these conclusions? Here, Ugo, let me help you draw the poor lad up.’
‘As you do so, you will see plain enough the shattered skull and broken neck.’
‘And so I do,’ admitted Kate as she and Ugo laid the corpse reverently at the graveside, her voice beginning to tremble at last. ‘But hois fists are lenched as though he would fight us still.’
‘Leave well alone,’ ordered Ugo. ‘Fore the time-being atleast.’
‘Further to which there is no blood,’ continued Tom, paying no attention to this byplay, ‘neither on the dagger nor on the poem nor on any of the other writings here nor on Spencer’s coffin. Living men bleed copiously when stabbed. Only corpses do not. This one, I am certain, has been secreted for nigh on three days in Simon Forman’s garden privy.’ As he talked, Tom was kneeling on one knee gathering together all the poems from on and around Spenser’s coffin.
‘So Forman brought him here?’ asked Ugo.
‘Somehow to put blame on Will?’ asked Kate. ‘How might that be effected?’
‘To an eye already open to such things, the poem would seem to be a most potent link. An admission of guilt, almost, by the man that wrote it. I would not go so far as to say Forman brought him here, but Forman is caught up in the plot to blame Will and distract attention from the actual culprit. Forman has to be involved, with George Chapman, in some part of this and certainly in arranging today’s service. But I suspect they are just puppets under more powerful men who pull their strings. You see how the poem, fashioned to be like one of Will’s also makes such pointed mention of all the most potent themes and motives we have discussed so far - Ireland and the lands over which he was lord until his castle was burned, Mother Hubberd, his new targets Cecil - Fairy Queen Elizabeth’s Ape - and Raleigh the Fox. Moreover, when we have time to mull things over there may well be more here.’ He held up the bundle of poems he had collected.