by Peter Tonkin
‘Acolyte,’ Gelly Martin seemed to chew on the word. ‘How amusingly religious; I must discuss it with Sir Francis. You make us sound like choir-boys, which, as you both know we most certainly are not. No. This time I was to extend an invitation on behalf of Sir Antony, who regrets he is too unwell to visit you in person at the moment. Ah well,’ he pulled himself erect. ‘I see my cohorts are not going to arrive after all. Another time, therefore. He crossed to the door and paused. ‘Sometime soon, though. You may be sure of that.’ He stepped past Tom, and ran light-footed down the stairs.
‘Cohorts,’ said Tom, coming right into the room and lowering the pistol. ‘So much more military than acolytes…’
v
‘I should have let him take me,’ said Rosalind next morning, that of Friday 19th, after a night filled with talk rather than slumber. In the small hours they had lain side by side on the bed, both still clothed, their minds resolutely fixed on discussion rather than on fornication. Now they sat face to face over a breakfast of stale bread, cold milk and dry cheese. ‘Next time I shall do so. It seems Sir Anthony Bacon is not so far beyond our reach after all, if I approach him as his apparent prisoner.’
‘He plans - I assume - to question you, peine forte et dure as the Spanish Inquisition has it, not the other way round,’ warned Tom who had emerged from their discussions worried by the recklessness of her plans as well as by her determination to enact them.
‘What is planned and what is achieved are not necessarily the same thing,’ she said, unconsciously echoing his thoughts, ‘as Sir Gelly Meyrick and his associates discovered last night.’
‘Very well. But Sir Anthony and Essex’ cohorts are something for the future. More immediately there is the question of Simon Forman. And there I fear it is you who underestimate the danger.’
‘How so? Do you suppose Forman will murder me when I will present myself as a client willing to part with coin in order to purchase his occult wisdom? Surely not! Rumor has it that he is visited by men and women of the highest rank - and you yourself have pointed out he is not above drawing up charts for more lowly folk. What did you call Gerard’s daughter? An apprentice’s light o’ love? And yet there is no talk of murder…’
‘Except with regard to the apprentice in question, of course.’
‘You argue with yourself there, then, for did you not say he died through accident?’
‘So I believed, but…’
‘There you are, then. I will present myself in Billingsgate once I am certain Will is safe and settled. All I will ask of you is a purse. One that is weighty enough to attract attention without being rich enough to rouse suspicion.’
‘The richness of the purse, surely, will depend on the part you choose to play - for you cannot tell the truth.’
‘True. But Poley would no doubt advise that I stay as close to truth as possible. And it so happens that I can do that most effectively; my own character and situation hardly changed. My clothing is appropriate to my station and my purse is perhaps a little heavier than might be expected but only so because my lover, although not rich, is generous.’
‘I see,’ Tom was impressed and amused. ‘And the part you will play?’
‘Why, that of a poor country girl recently orphaned and rendered near destitute by a fire. Newly come to London from Saffron Walden where I was born and raised, fresh as a rose…’
‘A rose that has not been plucked too often…’
‘Who has no intention of letting Forman even scent, let alone pluck…’
‘But what has brought you to Billingsgate, fair Rosa - linda?’
‘Fear for my lover and our future. I have come Londonwards to join my family who are carters but I have fallen in with a troupe of players for whom my family works on occasion. And I visit Forman because my lover, Will Shakespeare by name, has been taken up by the Pursuivant Marshal and is currently held in the Marshalsea, for what reason I do not know. With what possible outcome I cannot guess. But in the meantime I am racked with terror. Does Will truly love me? If so, how will we fare together? When will he be released? Will he prosper? Can the stars advise me where to seek friendship and support in this dark hour should he be held for much longer or - Heaven forefend - found guilty of some terrible crime? My Will and my family have scraped together enough coin for us to set up house - coin I now must spend on finding what the future has in store. I must know or I shall run mad or die with the stress of ignorance…’
*
‘I still think I should come in with you,’ said Tom. ‘Saying you are Will’s woman should make you irresistible to Forman independently of the weight of your purse. But there are still terrible risks. Remember, we still debate whether or not Hal’s death was an accident.’
‘No! You have convinced me that it was an accident so I shall be doubly careful to avoid such things! And to be honest it was bad enough having you trailing along at the Marshalsea. Your verbal fencing with Poley was bad enough but you reduced Humiliation Gauge to such rage I thought all would be undone and Will chained in the furthest corner of the deepest dungeon because of you!’
‘But all was well in the end. You must admit that!’
‘Perhaps. By a whisker as the saying is. If you come in here as well, you will undo most of what I am trying to achieve before you even open your mouth. How can Will Shakespeare’s lover be in company with Tom Musgrave?’
‘The world knows we are friends. I taught Dick Burbage and Will the fencing moves in the Italian style for his play of Romeo…’
‘A fact we would have Forman forget rather than have it emphasized!’
‘I could pretend to be Martin Fletcher, your cousin the carter…’
‘Dressed in the height of fashion and carrying a blade of that quality? Do you know nothing about playing a part? Besides, I’ll lay odds you have some equally fashionable young men waiting in your school of defense, wondering where their master is and why no lessons are toward. Leave me. I will be safe. I have Will’s dagger to protect me - and he will find that before he gets anywhere near my shift or my person. And if he finds it, then rest assured, I will use it!’
‘I did not fear rapine. Or rather I did not fear only rapine…’
‘I fear nothing else and am armed against it. Now go!’
Tom had no choice but to obey. Rosalind had made several telling points, prime amongst which was the probability that he had aristocratic students waiting at his school of defense in Blackfriars. Students all too willing to go elsewhere if he were repeatedly tardy. In earlier days, he had been one of the only masters of the Italian art of rapier-play in London. Now such masters were ten-a-penny.
Rather than waste time walking, he ran nimbly down Billingsgate stairs and hailed a wherry, ‘Westward-ho!’
vi
The tide was rising beneath the stern of the boat that answered his call so that he was able to run up the Blackfriars stairs and into Water Lane little more than fifteen minutes later. The narrow lane led up the hill from the river towards St Paul’s and passed Blackfriars on the way so that he arrived in the square outside his school above Robert Aske’s haberdashery scarcely five minutes later still. He was hurrying towards the door when a familiar figure stepped out in front of him to block his way. It was his neighbor and professional rival Rocco Bonetti, also a master in the Italian method, but a student of the late Camillo Agrippa rather than Tom’s master Ridolfo Capo Ferro. Tom’s footsteps faltered. ‘Signior Bonetti,’ he said as he came to a stand and gave a slight bow. He glanced around. Blackfriars was unusually quiet. They were alone and apparently unobserved.
‘I have been awaiting you,’ said Bonetti. His Italian accent was thick but his English words were clear.
‘I am flattered, Signior, but to what purpose?’
‘I have been asked to give you a message.’
‘Really, Signior? What message is that?’
‘That it is your time to die.’ As he spoke, Bonetti unsheathed his rapier and fell into Agrippa’s first
position, right foot forward, right arm held near waist height, elbow in and fist steady holding the point of the rapier unwaveringly towards Tom’s chest ready for the opening lunge.
Just for an instant, probably governed by the unreality of the situation, Tom was struck by an illuminating irrelevance. Agrippa’s method, lampooned at his suggestion in Will’s play of Romeo, was all to do with numbers and their movement in space, time and relation to each other. Agrippa was not alone in believing that a man who truly understood the Aristotelian, Euclidian and Pythagorean theories of number could master anything, for they represented a language in which the macrocosm of the universe under heaven and the motions of men - both mental and physical in the earthly microcosm - could meet and communicate. In Bonetti’s case, such numbers could be used in the perfection of fencing; in Forman’s case in the magical control and prediction of both the present and the future.
But, as Romeo himself proved when facing Tybalt with his Agrippa-inspired prick-song technique, keeping time, distance, and proportion with his minim rests - one, two, and the third in your bosom, the practical power of Capo Ferro’s more modern and less esoteric techniques could put one in your bosom just that heartbeat more swiftly.
*
Tom fell into Capo Ferro’s favoured third guard which was a mirror image of Bonetti’s. He settled on wide measure to begin with, meaning that either of them would have to move their feet to strike their opponent. There seemed little point in talking, though Tom was burning to know who had put Bonetti up to this. Talking would distract the speaker more than the listener who could disregard the words entirely and concentrate on his fencing. Bonetti was a master swordsman after all and no-one to be dismissed lightly. As he proved by thrusting with the speed of a striking snake, his point, as Agrippa dictated, flashing straight for Tom’s chest as he stepped forward into the narrow measure where the killing was done. Tom parried, his blade turning Bonetti’s off-line. Both men recovered.
As he settled into the third guard again, Tom’s mind seemed to focus in a way it only ever did when he was fencing. He became almost supernaturally aware not only of his opponent, his eyes, his sword, his feet, but also of the makeshift piste on which they were fighting. Bonetti stepped sideways as he fell into Agrippa’s guard once more, his movement moving the line along which the next section of the combat would take place. As he turned to face his opponent, Tom became aware of a wall behind him. If he retired at the end of the next pass he would be unable to take Capo Ferro’s favored two steps back without hitting it. And, with Tom trapped against the brickwork, Bonetti could move from wide measure to narrow - almost chest to chest - whenever he wanted.
These thoughts occupied less than a heartbeat as Bonetti thrust again, his point flashing toward Tom’s left eye. Tom parried but instead of simply knocking Bonetti’s blade off-line, he stepped forward in riposte, sliding his blade along his opponent’s so that as Bonetti’s point passed harmlessly past his ear, his own point stabbed through the Italian’s upper torso, in that triangle of thick muscle joining the side of the neck to the point of the shoulder. With both blades still in place, his own grating against Bonetti’s collar-bone, Tom stepped forward and sideways, turning Bonetti like a lamb on a spit. The move placed Tom back in the mouth of Water Lane so that when he disengaged, he was able to take two steps back, his rapier held high, the point and a good foot of the blade covered in Bonetti’s blood.
As Tom had expected, Bonetti jumped into the close ward and attacked again immediately. All the masters of defence, and indeed the masters of horsemanship, agreed - if you fall off, get straight back on. Furthermore, Bonetti was losing blood fast, and with it, strength, speed and concentration. Time suddenly became a matter of more than Agrippa’s minim rests. Although he was expecting the attack and was focused on Bonetti’s eyes and sword-point, the strike against his groin almost took him by surprise. He riposted again so that the Italian’s blade passed the outside of his thigh while his own point went safely past his opponent’s shoulder. Instead of stepping back, he pushed forward himself, tearing his rapier sideways and nearly disarming Bonetti. But the Italian kept tight hold of his rapier, snarling with pain and effort, and reached behind his back with his left hand.
In a flash, Tom did the same so that when Bonetti’s dagger swung in and plunged towards Tom’s throat, he was able to catch it and hold it back from doing any damage, blade against blade, quillions grinding together. He stepped forward half a pace once more until his flaring nostrils were filled with the Italian’s garlic-scented breath. Then, without warning, he head-butted Bonetti full in the face as hard as he could, feeling his opponent’s nose shatter against his forehead.
‘I didn’t learn that at the school in Sienna,’ he said as Bonetti reeled back, bleeding and blinded. ‘I learned that at university in Glasgow. A good education is never wasted.’
Then he lunged at the helpless man, sending his point through Bonetti’s right arm, just below the shoulder. He was about to disengage and step back when the Italian threw himself blindly forward, his sword-arm useless, but stabbing viciously with his dagger. Taken off guard, Tom felt the cold steel pierce his own shoulder. Once again he was face-to face with Bonetti but now the Italian’s eyes were wide with shock and surprise.
Only then did Tom realize what had happened. Bonetti had attacked before Tom could free his sword. The Italian had simply skewered himself upon it - the weight of his body thrusting the point of Tom’s rapier not only through his arm but through his chest behind it. Both sword and dagger clattered to the ground. Bonetti fell to his knees, disarming Tom at last as his body-weight tore Tom’s rapier from his grasp. Then, with a yard of Solingen steel reaching from one arm-pit to the other, the Italian pitched face down on the cobbles as a great gout of blood vomited from his gaping mouth.
‘I came to Signior Bonetti for my accustomed lesson,’ said a virile baritone voice with a west-country accent even stronger than Will’s. ‘But I did not think to see an exhibition bout as fearsome or fatal as that!’
Tom straightened, turned, and found himself standing face to face with Sir Walter Raleigh.
Chapter 12: The Dangers of Deception
i
‘So,’ said Simon Forman, ‘you are William Shakespeare’s mistress.’ He leaned forward and licked his lips. The point of his tongue was surprisingly red. It pushed the ends of his greasy moustache to one side and then to the other as it cleaned droplets of wine from the ill-trimmed hairs while his bulbous eyes undressed his visitor with more license than normal.
She was clearly no virginal shrinking violet despite her apparent youth, he calculated - not if she was mistress to a player; a profession notorious for their lechery and that of their audiences. Forman himself often attended plays, well aware that other - female - members of the audience were alluringly loose in their morals.
Rosalind took a deep breath, suddenly uneasy at being here with him. She was used to lecherous gazes, but not many had been as direct as Forman’s. If she hadn’t heard a reassuring bustle of activity and muted conversations from deeper within the house, she might well have made an excuse and left. She would certainly never have accepted the glass of canary-yellow wine he offered, or taken a sip of its chilly, bitter contents. But it was done now. She was here and even though Hal’s mysterious fate haunted her more poignantly than she had expected, it was time to continue building the deceptive character she was playing and press on with her investigation.
‘That I am your worship,’ answered Rosalind well aware of the veniality of his glaze. ‘Rosalind Fletcher late of Saffron Waldon, orphaned by a terrible fire at my father’s inn, The Crown.’ She wiped her eyes, glancing secretly at Forman over the folded cloth of her kerchief, aware that she was performing in spite of the fact that the tears were real enough. True, she was playing herself as she told her own story - but a slower, much less intelligent, country-bumpkin version of herself. She was gambling on the belief that, like many clever men of her acquaintance, Form
an was likely to patronize such a creature, underestimate her and overestimate his abilities in relation to her. A situation compounded by the fact that he obviously lusted after not only her money but also her body. She was counting on the belief that she could handle Forman and half a dozen like him - she just wished Tom Musgrave could have been somewhere close at hand after all. Her seduction of Tom himself and her acquisition from him of the information requested by Poley had been on another level altogether; more urgent and immediate, less coldly calculating; somehow less dangerous.
‘Well, you’re a pretty little thing,’ said Forman unctuously. ‘It’s terrible that such misfortune should have overcome you.’ He reached a sympathetic hand across the table at which they were both sitting, a hand that covered one of hers - the one that held her purse.
The table stood in front of a low-banked fire in the front room of his Billingsgate house. This was the room that was situated immediately within the front door; the one which contained his shop. Behind his right shoulder there was a counter and behind that a wall of shelves containing bottles of colourful powders and potions almost without number. Behind his left shoulder, a high window looked south towards the Thames and the fish-market but neither was actually visible. Behind Rosalind, broad windows flanked a door whose upper portion was also glazed. It all looked out onto Billingsgate, but little diamond-shaped panes of thick green glass made it difficult to see in. From each side, however, came the sounds of people passing or pausing to do business - which matched those reassuring noises from deeper within Forman’s house itself.
Rosalind and Forman were alone in the room if not in the house and Forman had told her more than once already that she was lucky to have found him so. For, as he explained, - having listened to her as he poured out two glasses of white wine and carried them over to her - he had business all over London which often called him away and a list of regular clients and visitors long enough to have filled one of her lover’s theatres. She took him at his word for the moment. She had not begun to find him much more than disturbing - certainly not frightening.