At first I hadn’t recognised him. From my position lying along the branch I looked straight down on the top and brim of his hat. This hat was so broad that it almost concealed the figure beneath. His breath plumed out into the cold morning air. Then he coughed again and shuffled a couple of paces forward.
My heart was thudding and my mouth was dry. I kept still. With luck he should move off. I assumed his two companions were within calling distance. When he went away I would jump down from the tree and run for my life, run for my city. It was just a matter of being patient – and still.
I continued to look at Adrian, at his back covered by the black mantle, at the hat which sat on him like a sooty chimney. But there is a strange sense in us, or in some of us, that says we are being watched even when we cannot see the watcher. Perhaps the poets are right when they poeticise about the threads of gold which connect them to their lover’s eyes or the daggers which kill when she looks on them unfavourably.
Or perhaps I simply made a noise or Adrian was brushed by a falling leaf. For whatever reason he turned to look and I knew even as his head began to move round that he was aware that something was behind and above him.
I didn’t take the time to think. If I had, various pictures would probably have flashed across my mind’s eye to do with Adrian calling out for help and the other two joining him, and then all three trapping me up the tree, like dogs with a cat. And, if I had spent time thinking it out, that is probably what would have happened.
Instead I acted by instinct.
Before Adrian’s head and upper body had completed a full turn I launched myself from the branch like a thunderbolt, like a dart of lightning. ‘Fell’ might be more precise than ‘launched’. I struck him somewhere about the middle before landing heavily and clumsily on top of him. He crumpled up and broke my fall. I did not pause to see what damage I had done to him. Frightened that he would call and bring on the others, I lashed out almost as soon as we had arrived on the ground in a tangle of limbs. I struck him about the face, I pummeled his back and shoulders. His hat had fallen off so I seized him by the hair and banged his head on the earth.
After a time I clambered upright. The red mist of anger that dropped before my eyes in the hut had returned and, through it, I cast around for a log or a stone, anything to strike at this man and crush him like a beetle. I found a fallen branch and swung it at his unmoving head like an axe. The branch must have been half-rotten – or my blows very forceful – because it snapped after ten or a dozen swings and I almost fell on top of him, carried by the force of my blows. That brought me to my senses and I staggered back against the trunk of the tree which had sheltered me and felt my gorge rise and I puked and was ashamed. Nub and Ralph were elsewhere in the forest. If anyone had been near they would have been alerted by the sounds of the fight and my gasping breath.
Nevertheless I had no time to lose. I knew what I had to do. Adrian was lying on his front, his legs in a strange, frog-like position. Blood covered the side of his face and was matted in his hair. The leaves and grass surrounding him were spattered with it. It was on my own clothing too as well as on my hands and, no doubt, face. I picked up his tall hat from where it had rolled into the undergrowth. Averting my gaze I plucked the black mantle from around his shoulders. He did not move. I was not sure that he would ever move again.
I had no time to be sorry. I scooped up Adrian’s cloak and hat in my arms and, taking a deep breath, I set my face in the direction of London. The early morning mist had nearly burnt up in the heat of the rising sun. Ahead lay the city, not quite so bright and gleaming as when I had first glimpsed it from up the beech tree. The pure azure sky was streaked with cloud.
I ran downhill, clutching Adrian’s garments. As I ran, tears and sweat streamed down my face. I had remembered the part that I was playing that afternoon at the Globe theatre. I knew what I had to do.
The play’s the thing . . .
ACT V
Now Master Ralph Ransom he comes to me early in the morning in my lodgings as I am resting and preparing to go about the business of the day. Seeing him I expect him to report success in the matter of Master Revill. But first I am surprised not to see Adrian and say so.
Fat Ralph shuffles uncomfortably.
‘Master Adrian is still there,’ he says.
‘Where?’
‘In the w-w-w-woods.’
‘Why didn’t he come back with you?’
‘He will never come b-b-b-back.’
I struggle to gain control of myself, of my anger – and fear.
‘And Master Revill, he will never come back neither?’
‘He is spoken for.’
I sigh with relief but suspect all sorts of things.
‘Explain.’
Ralph Ransom begins a long and complicated story of how they managed to surprise the player and take him off to the woods and how they met with Nub –
‘Who is Nub?’
‘A creature of Adrian’s. A d-d-d-desperate man. A charcoal burner.’
‘I see.’
But I am angry at the news. There are more and more people involved in this. Safety does not lie in numbers.
They carried Master Nicholas to some hut. He was bound hand and foot. They meant to play with him a little before they killed him.
‘And . . .?’
He had a message, Ralph said, a note. In his hand the player held a note.
‘Get to the point.’
‘The p-p-p-p-point is, Master—’
‘No names, not even in private. I have told you before. Simply tell me what happened.’
‘In short, the p-p-p-player managed to run off while we were examining the note and our attention was d-d-distracted.’
‘And you caught him?’
I begin to fear the worst. In fact I have feared the worst ever since Ralph put his fat greasy face round my door.
‘We p-p-p-pursued him. Adrian must have found him. Because there was a struggle.’
Ralph’s breath is coming thicker and quicker.
‘A struggle which Adrian lost,’ I say.
‘. . . In short, yes.’
‘But Master Revill, he is spoken for, you said.’
‘Oh, he crawled off into the b-b-b-b-bushes to die.’
‘You saw him? His body?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Ocular proof?’
‘No, b-b-b-b-but Adrian gave a good account of himself, and inflicted some mortal strokes.’
‘On the body of a man you haven’t seen and can’t find.’
‘Adrian hates Master Revill. I hate Master Revill.’
‘Hatred by itself is not enough. It has to be accompanied by good sense.’
‘I am sure it w-w-w-was so.’
‘Wishers were ever fools,’ I say.
‘What else c-c-c-c-could have happened?’
‘Anything, you fool.’
And then I change my tone because I have decided what I have to do now.
‘Never mind,’ I say, ‘perhaps you are right and Master Revill lies even now in some ditch with twenty trenched gashes on his head, each one of them a mortal wound.’
Fat Ralph sighs with relief. His blubbery shoulders seem to grow more rounded. He repeats himself.
‘I am sure it w-w-was so.’
‘Let us assume that Master Nicholas is dead,’ I say cheerily. ‘We’ll drink to that.’
I turn my back on Ralph Ransom, telling him to make himself at ease, and go to my table and prepare two glasses of red wine. With a flourish I present one to him. I am reminded of the public display that King Claudius makes when Prince Hamlet is about to fight the duel against Laertes. How the King drops a pearl into the goblet which his nephew should drink from. How Queen Gertrude mistakenly picks up the goblet containing the pearl. How the King tries to prevent the Queen from drinking.
‘Let us drink to . . . the end of our enemies.’
‘The end of our enemies,’ repeats Ralph.
‘Now,
’ I say, ‘this other man, this charcoal burner . . .?’
‘Nub.’
‘Yes, him. Is he secure?’
‘Secure?’
‘He will not talk.’
‘He cannot t-t-t-talk,’ says Ralph jocularly. ‘Or if he did no one would be able to understand him.‘
‘He is a foreigner?’
‘He lives in the forest, it’s the same thing,’
Ralph is now very much at his ease. So much at his ease that he begins, for the first time, to look round my lodgings. From his expression, which he scarcely troubles to keep concealed, I judge that he considers them rather meagre. True enough. I do not live as I would. I require more money, always require more money. This wooing of the ladies, it is a costly business. I am a generous fellow. Occasionally, I may take something from them in return for the expenses I am driven to (as I would have taken my lady Alice’s pearl necklace, using Adrian as my instrument, had not the young player intervened) but I spend more than I get. That is the nub of the matter. And this word brings me back to the question of the charcoal-burner, and his silence.
‘So no one will talk?’
‘No one, oh no,’ says easy Ralph.
‘Good,’ I say. ‘Have some more wine.’
‘Oh yes,’ says the dead man.
‘I have a wine-supplier in Cheapside. Perhaps you have heard of him. He is French – Monsieur Lamord.’
‘Lamord,’ says Master Ralph, rolling the name round his tongue and pretending to a knowledge of vintners that he doesn’t possess, although in this case there is no vintner called Monsieur Lamord.
‘A strange name,’ I say.
‘How so, Master—’ says Ralph, stopping when he remembers that I’ve forbidden him from uttering my name aloud.
‘In French, “l’amour” means “love”.’
‘Love, that’s a fine name for a wine-seller,’ says Ralph, ‘though too much of one is the enemy of the other.’ He sniggers. I notice that when he is relaxed and thinks himself out of danger he speaks smooth and without stuttering.
‘It also means something else if it is construed a little differently,’ I say. ‘La mort . . .’
‘Yes?’ all unsuspecting.
‘. . . means “death”. So Lamord is love and death, two opposites in the one word.’
‘Very good. Ha ha. Lamord. Love, death . . .’
He glances at the wine glass which he has almost drained for the second time. Then he glances at me. Then his face turns grey.
‘I cannot resist a pun,’ I say.
Ralph makes to fling the glass away from him but he is too weak, either through fear or through the quick-acting effects of the venom, and I am on him. He is already a dead man with what he has swallowed, but for the sake of completeness I hold the glass against his chattering lips and teeth, and force him to drink it to the very last drop. Some red wine dribbles down his chin and spills on his clothing where it looks like blood. He chokes and arches his back. Froth forms on the corners of his mouth. His eyes roll upward into his head. His hands clench and unclench on the arms of the chair.
When I am sure that there is nothing more I can do for him I lock the door of the room and leave him to die.
I cannot deny that this business is not going according to plan. By this time perhaps there is no plan. The murder of Sir William Eliot was carefully plotted and executed. It was an act of revenge, of mischief, and of other things besides. But with the other murders that have proceeded from that, I cannot say. Once you have embarked on this bloody course there is no turning back.
It is tedious.
Like in all human affairs, the more often it is done the easier it is done, with less scruple and heart-searching.
But it is also pleasurable. I had no intention of killing Ralph Ransom. The idea occurred to me as I was talking to him. With Francis and the apothecary, I set out to kill them. The player I left to others: obviously a mistake. But with Ralph there was the word, then there was the blow. I am like a fencer who cannot foresee the direction a bout will take, the moves of his opponent, the counter-strokes he himself will employ, but must rely only on his skill and quick wits. One day soon his arm will tire or his wits grow dull and he will lose, but until that time he loves his own craftiness.
These murderous actions, planned or unplanned, create their own consequences and sequels. Now I have to dispose of Ransom’s body. Lug his fatness down the stairs and towards the river when the tide is high in the small hours of the morning. I could enlist someone to help me – Southwark swarms with the lawless and the desperate. But every accomplice is another mouth to feed or to silence. I shall do this alone.
As for Master Nicholas Revill, fat Ralph might be right. Perhaps the steward did inflict some mortal wound on the player and he is even now dying or dead in the woods. Or if he is not, then he might be scared for his life and have run away from London town. So there will be a gap in the play this afternoon.
But I expect to see him again. I will be prepared for that. I don’t know what I will do but it will be something fitting.
* * *
‘My God,’ said Richard Burbage. ‘What happened to you?’
He was preparing for his first appearance, all in black in the court of King Claudius and Queen Gertrude. In the background I saw WS looking curiously in my direction. He too was arrayed in his opening costume, the suit of armour worn by the Ghost of Hamlet’s father.
‘I fell into a fight.’
Burbage looked slightly displeased.
‘Did you win?’
‘I suppose so,’ I said.
‘I shouldn’t like to see your opponent.’
‘I don’t think you will.’
‘You’ve been away, Nick. And away in the wars to judge by the look of you.’
This was Master WS, who appeared at my shoulder as soundlessly as if he really were the Ghost that he played.
‘Away?’
‘I saw you this morning on the back of a farm cart coming up from the country.’
This was true. After quitting Adrian and gathering up his black hat and cloak (which I had brought to the theatre) I started to run for the town. Within a few hundred yards exhaustion overtook me. I stumbled and fell, and might have been lying there till this moment, had not a horse and cart trundled by. At first the carter suspected me for a thief and my ragged, bloody state for a ploy. I was able to convince him that it was I who was the victim of thieves, and he allowed me to slump into his conveyance. So I returned to London as I had left it, in the back of a jolting cart.
The carter was ferrying sackfulls of apples. Their sharp-sweet, heady smell crept over me as I lay huddled in the bottom of the cart, trying to make myself as small as possible. I drifted into an uneasy sleep, in which memories of stealing apples in Bristol orchards were wiped away by frantic chases through dark forests, A rat-like man was coming to cut off a tail which I had grown. My father’s body went sailing through the air to land with a thud in the communal grave of plague victims. The cart went bumping on its way to the markets north of the river and I awoke just before we reached the Bridge. It must have been somewhere around this point that Master WS had seen me and my strange mode of conveyance.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I suppose you could say that I have been away.’
‘Before the climax of a play the hero shall withdraw from the action,’ said Master WS, reminding me of his words on the previous afternoon, in what was another life. Although he was wearing armour he looked not warlike but melancholy, befitting a spirit come from the underworld with no happy news.
‘We must speak after the performance,’ said Dick Burbage to me. ‘I have something to say to you.’
‘Yes, we shall speak,’ said Master WS, Burbage’s fellow-shareholder.
A trumpet sounded the beginning of things. The musicians fluted and sawed from the gallery.
‘I must be on,’ said Master WS. He vanished.
‘And I,’ said Burbage.
I went to change
in the tiring-house, although my entrance was many scenes away. Under the eyes of Alfred the tireman, I donned my costume as Lucianus, the poisoner in the play-within-the-play. I planned to add one or two items later, but needed to do it out of his sight.
My head was whirling with madcap schemes and plans. I think that I was half-mad at this time. Like a man in a maze I was struggling to find the centre, but in no very ordered fashion.
My reasoning went as follows: old Sir William Eliot had been murdered, of that there was no doubt. The circumstances of his death provided an uncanny parallel with the circumstances of old Hamlet’s death in the play by Master WS. Both victims were sleeping in an orchard, both were taken by surprise, cut off without time to prepare for death. A poison was poured into the ear of the dormant King and the same method most probably employed on Sir William. There was a brother – Claudius, Sir Thomas – hovering off-stage and waiting to take up the reins of a impatient, lascivious wife, whether Gertrude or Lady Alice. There were sons, although each had reacted differently to the father’s death: Hamlet was deeply unhappy with his mother’s choice of a second husband and bitter because he sees the throne of Denmark slipping out of his grasp; young William Eliot was grieving for his father but claimed to respect (rather than suspect) his uncle and to love his mother. Nevertheless William had been troubled enough by the parallels between art and life to ask me to ‘watch and listen’ in his own house.
I might have been inclined to put William’s sense that all wasn’t well down to fancy or imagination. Since he was afflicted by the need to model himself on Hamlet, what more natural than that he should assume his hero’s distrust of the world, and the feeling that everything in it was rank and rotten, an unweeded garden? But the events of the past few days, from the drowning of Francis to my own scrape with death, had shown me that William’s intuition was right. All was very far from being well.
The question I came back to, the one that I’d entered in Greek lettering in my notebook, was: who?
Who had been responsible for the death of Sir William, the death of Francis, the employment of Adrian and fat Ralph to kidnap and kill me?
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