“I’m afraid you can’t stop here,” said a voice. I jumped, snapping the locket shut.
The car had slowed, and someone had put the window down. Framed in it was the face of a middle-aged man with short gray hair and thick glasses; he wore a red verger’s robe. Behind him, the white stone lace of the abbey filled my view. “You can’t stop here,” he began again, and stopped. “Oh. Sir Henry. I wasn’t aware it was you. Lovely to see you again, sir.”
And then, though the rules expressly forbid it, Sir Henry finagled permission to park his Bentley right in front of the abbey’s gate, with the excuse that he wished to introduce two young friends to the glories of Evensong. I thrust the brooch in the pocket of my jacket and we climbed out of the car.
The verger was turning away a small gaggle of tourists. “The service has already begun, I’m afraid,” said the verger.
“Quiet as church mice,” Sir Henry promised.
“In and out,” Ben directed as we hurried up toward the great western front. “As quickly as possible.”
Inside, a watery gray-green light shimmered faintly with brighter colors from the prophets in the stained glass of the west window. Up ahead, the unearthly sound of a lone boy soprano arced high into the vaults of the ceiling. My soul doth magnify the Lord…. The deep tones of the men’s choir joined in, twining around the young voices in the aural lace of Elizabethan polyphony. William Byrd, maybe, or Thomas Tallis.
Sir Henry was skimming across the empty nave toward the warm golden glow of the quire. I had to hurry to catch up. Through a high pointed arch of stone lacework, I glimpsed the choir and congregation, but Sir Henry ducked to the right, behind a massive pillar, and headed up a dimly lit aisle. Ben and I followed. The space opened out again, and Sir Henry stopped and pointed. We were in the south transept. Poets’ Corner.
Straight ahead, on a high platform beneath a neoclassical pediment, Shakespeare held casual court in life-sized white marble. On the wall around him the busts of other poets floated like a swarm of solemn cherubs, but the playwright either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Forever nonchalant, he leaned forward slightly on a pile of books, his left arm draped across his body, his forefinger pointing at a scroll.
I tiptoed forward to read the words carved on it. Prospero’s words, the magician’s nostalgic farewell to art from The Tempest, even as the singing now off to our left dipped and soared.
The Cloud Capt Tow’rs,
The Gorgeous Palaces,
The Solemn Temples,
The Great Globe itself—
Yea all which it Inherit
Shall Dissolve,
And like the baseless Fabrick of a Vision
Leave not a wreck behind.
“He points to the word Temples,” said Ben. “Do you think that’s significant?”
I rolled my eyes, and Sir Henry groaned. “Please, God, no more temples. Or Templars either.”
“He’s not home, poor chap,” said a mournful voice behind us, and all three of us jumped. “Buried elsewhere, you know. Stratford has him, and Stratford will keep him. Though by rights—national treasure and whatnot—he ought to be here.”
I turned to see another red-gowned verger. A few stray hairs sprouted defiantly from the top of his head, and wrinkles curved across his brow in a great M; his ears stuck out like teapot handles. Hands clasped behind him, he was looking at Shakespeare reverently. “But you are here,” he said, shifting his gaze downward to glare at us, “though by rights, you ought not to be. The service,” he added somewhat unnecessarily, “is in the quire. Begging your pardons.”
Sir Henry ignored the man’s gesture back toward the congregation. “Why does Shakespeare point at Temples?”
“Does he, now?” The verger drew his brows together. “He doesn’t always.”
“Are you suggesting that the ruddy thing moves?” asked Sir Henry.
“He can’t, sir,” said the verger. “He’s dead. Though not, as I say, dead here. As Jonson put it, ‘A monument without a tomb.’ I’m a bit of a poet myself, as it happens. Would you like to hear a line or two?”
“We would,” said Ben with an impossibly straight face.
“We most assuredly would not,” said Sir Henry, but the man was off and running:
When Shakespeare died, the world cried: O Will, why did you leave us?
“The monument,” insisted Sir Henry through gritted teeth.
“I’m getting to that bit,” said the verger. “O marble tomb! O earthy womb!”
“Does it move?” asked Sir Henry.
The verger stopped in consternation. “Does what move, sir?”
“The statue.”
“As I said, sir, it’s marble. Why should it move?”
“You said it did.”
He frowned. “Why would I say that?”
“Never mind why,” snapped Sir Henry. “Just tell me what else our friend Shakespeare points to besides Temples when he does move?”
“But he doesn’t move, sir. Perhaps the other statue does. If you’re keen on temples, now, there’s the Temple Church, the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple”—he was reeling them off on his fingers—“and of course Temple Bar—though that’s been removed to Paternoster Row, now. Then there are the Masonic temples—”
I cut him off. “What other statue?”
He frowned. “The only other one there is. In the House of the Incompetents.”
“The what?” Sir Henry was near apoplexy.
Clearing his throat, the verger solemnly intoned: “To the most Notable and Incompetent pair of brethren, William, Earl of Pembroke, et cetera, and Philip, Earl of Montgomery, et cetera.” He blinked at us with benevolent pleasure. “The brothers who desecrate the opening pages of Mr. Shakespeare’s First Folio. The earl of Pembroke—a later one, of course—had a copy of this statue made for his home.”
Behind us, the choir swelled into the Nunc dimittis: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”
Sir Henry grabbed the startled verger by both cheeks and kissed him. “‘Incomparable,’ you glorious fool,” hooted Sir Henry. “‘The Incomparable Brethren.’ Not incompetent.” A scattering of heads from the congregation began to turn. Sir Henry ignored them, nearly dancing around the verger. “And they decorate, dear heart. They most certainly do not desecrate.”
Releasing the verger at last, Sir Henry dragged Ben and me back down the aisle. “What does the Pembroke statue point to?” he called over his shoulder.
In the shadows by the statue, the verger turned pink. “I do not know, sir. I’ve never seen it.” He pulled a folded paper from his pocket. “I do have a copy of my poem….”
But Sir Henry did not stay to hear his offer. As we ran back through the nave, the music soared once more, twirling and spinning around us. Outside, we skidded down the walkway and raced for the car.
“Wilton House, Barnes,” directed Sir Henry. “Home of the earls of Pembroke.”
“That was too easy,” said Ben as the car pulled away.
“What were you hoping for?” groused Sir Henry. “The guard around Downing Street or Buckingham Palace?”
“Poets’ Corner is an obvious target. There should have been some police presence.”
“But there wasn’t,” said Sir Henry. “Count your blessing. Perhaps Inspector Grimmest thinks the killer is only concerned with books. Perhaps he thinks that since Shakespeare’s not home, as our friend put it, the abbey doesn’t count. Perhaps the dean just said no.”
“Perhaps they were there, and we’ve acquired company,” said Ben.
I turned to look back. The abbey’s two towers were still visible, just. “Have you seen anything?”
“Not yet,” he replied.
31
WE BROKE FREE of London’s traffic, heading southwest toward the small cathedral city of Salisbury, and still Ben had seen nothing suspicious. I opened my copy of the First Folio. Just past Shakespeare’s picture, I came to the dedicatory letter:
TO THE MOST NO
BLE
AND
INCOMPARABLE PAIRE
OF BRETHREN.
“The Incomparables,” said Sir Henry with relish.
“You make them sound like superheroes,” I said.
William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, and his brother Philip, earl of Montgomery—“Will and Phil,” quipped Ben—had been two of the great peers of Jacobean England. On their father’s side, they were scions of one of the most successful houses among the nouveau riche Tudor aristocracy. The family had begun its rise only two generations earlier, when King Henry VIII took a liking to their grandfather, William Herbert, a hearty and hot-tempered Welshman married to the sister of Henry’s sixth and last queen, Katherine Parr. From hot-blooded murder, to French exile, to the king’s pardon, followed by knighthood, barony, and finally an earldom, was a steep, unlikely stairway to greatness which the first earl bounded up in short strides that made it seem easy.
On their mother’s side, they inherited what you might call lordship of language. Mary Sidney, countess of Pembroke, was a great patroness of letters and learning, and a fine poet in her own right. Her brother, the Incomparables’ uncle, had been the poet-soldier Sir Philip Sidney, whose gallantry, wit, idealism, and death far too young on the battlefield arced over the Elizabethan court with the doomed brightness of a falling star. After his death, the countess made herself the self-proclaimed keeper of her brother’s flame.
Fueled by family example and almost unimaginable wealth, her sons both grew to be men of exquisite culture and taste. Kings had trusted them as connoisseurs: Between them, they ruled over King James’s and King Charles I’s households as successive lords chamberlain for twenty-six years.
One of the arts they knew how to appreciate was drama. Since your Lordships have beene pleas’d to thinke these trifles some-thing, heeretofore, read the Folio, and have prosequuted both them, and their Authour living, with so much favour…we have but collected them, and done an office to the dead, to procure his Orphanes Guardians; without ambition either of selfe-profit, or fame: onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend, & Fellow alive, as was our SHAKESPEARE, by humble offer of his playes, to your most noble patronage.
The letter was signed by Shakespeare’s fellow actors in the King’s Men, John Heminges and Henry Condell.
“You see?” said Sir Henry. The plays are by Shakespeare. Heminges and Condell knew it, and both Pembroke and Montgomery knew it.”
I gave him a wicked grin. “Unless you believe the entire Folio is a perpetuation of an already long-standing cover-up.”
“You don’t believe that, and you know it. What’s more, I know it.”
I sighed. The chief problem with this theory was the size of the conspiracy required. Heminges and Condell had signed the letter, but it bore marks of casual scholarship and rhetorical flourish that sounded an awful lot like Ben Jonson, who many scholars believed had written it, never mind who signed it. If it were a conspiracy, then, not only Heminges and Condell, but probably all of the King’s Men, knew the truth, as did Ben Jonson, and at least two peers of the realm. But no one had ever spilled the beans.
“No,” I said, “you’re right. I don’t.” I no longer knew what to believe. Pulling the brooch from my pocket, I sat thinking of the golden-haired man within as we drove through the long British summer evening, the blue of the sky imperceptibly deepening, the greens of field and wood condensing to jewel tones. Skimming over the top of the downs, we passed Stonehenge standing sentinel off to the right. A little later we turned south off the main road, diving down through the fields on a narrow road lined with hedgerows.
Still the private home of the earls of Pembroke, Wilton House commands the entrance to the village of Wilton, a few miles west of Salisbury. The first I saw of it was a high stone wall covered in moss. Atop a triumphal arch, a Roman emperor astride a stallion gazed down on us benevolently, but the wrought-iron gate that barred our way remained resolutely closed. A sign proclaimed that concert parking was around on the opposite side of the estate; at the bottom was a map.
Concert? We could see lights up ahead at the other end of the forecourt, but no people.
Sir Henry ignored both the sign and the emptiness, directing Barnes to pull up to the keypad in front of the gate. Rolling down his window, he pressed the “Call” key. “Sir Henry Lee here,” he said majestically. “To see the house.”
What was he thinking? It was nearly eight o’clock at night.
The intercom remained silent.
Sir Henry was reaching for the button again when the gate jerked into life and began reluctantly creaking open. The Bentley crept forward, wheels crunching on gravel as we swept around a central garden bordered by small trees whose interwoven boughs hid all but the spray of a large fountain. On the other side of the garden, a grand door stood open. Stepping outside was a small woman with an anxious smile on her face.
“Welcome to Wilton House, home of the earl of Pembroke. What a pleasure to meet you, Sir Henry.” She put out her hand. “Mrs. Quigley. Marjorie Quigley, that is, head guide. I’d no idea you were on the list for the tour tonight. Though it does make sense, doesn’t it? The music of Shakespeare, and all. But I’m afraid you’re quite early,” she said as we unfolded from the car. “You see, the house tour is planned for after the concert—which is starting even as we speak.”
“And I had so looked forward to both,” said Sir Henry with a sigh. “But as it turns out, my young friends here cannot stay a moment past the last note.”
“What a pity!” exclaimed Mrs. Quigley, turning to us. “The house is so lovely by candlelight.”
“Perhaps…” Sir Henry coughed discreetly. “Would it be a terrible inconvenience if we just took a quick nip round the place now?”
“But you will miss the concert,” she said with dismay. “The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in ‘An Evening of Shakespeare in Music.’”
“I would rather miss the concert than the house,” said Sir Henry.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Quigley. “Of course you must come in.” We crowded through the door before she could change her mind.
In the middle of an echoing entry hall, Shakespeare stood framed by Gothic arched windows, backlit with the pale blue light of early evening. As in Westminster Abbey, he leaned casually on one elbow, propped on a pile of books. But here he was not huddled under a porch. Standing freely in the center of the room, he seemed both bigger and more relaxed. The cloak tossed over his shoulder rippled in some unseen wind, while its wearer stared straight ahead, lost in thought as if composing some new trifle. Nothing so intricate or exhausting as a whole play, but a sonnet maybe, or a song. Something with rhymes.
“Lovely, isn’t he?” said Mrs. Quigley with pride. “A copy, made in 1743, of the statue in Westminster Abbey.”
But it was not an exact copy. As the verger had said, the words on the scroll were different:
LIFE’S but a walking SHADOW
a poor PLAYER
That struts & frets his hour
upon the STAGE
And then is heard no more!
Shak’s. Macbt.
“My niece tells me that actors believe Macbeth to be an unlucky play,” said Mrs. Quigley, “but the Pembrokes have never found it so, I’m sure. This quotation has been part of the fabric of this house since Shakespeare’s day. He visited here, you know.”
The hair on the back of my neck lifted.
“But the statue dates from more than a century after his death,” said Sir Henry sharply.
“Yes, indeed. But before the statue, that same quotation adorned the old entryway to the house.”
Sir Henry whirled to look at the door we’d come through.
“Not that one,” said Mrs. Quigley, with evident amusement. “The entire approach to the house was altered in the nineteenth century.” Walking past the statue, through the doors into the cloistered corridor that circled the inside of the house, she pointed down into a courtyard below. Like Widener Library, Wilton House w
as a hollow square surrounding a courtyard; we’d entered into what appeared to be the ground floor, but it now became clear that on every other side of the house, we were on the second story, as if the house had been set back against a hill.
Below and to the left was a vaulted doorway. In Shakespeare’s time, Mrs. Quigley told us, it had been an open-air archway leading into the courtyard. Coaches would drive through it to deposit their lords and ladies—and the occasional troupe of players—at the formal entry, then on the inside of the courtyard. A lovely little portico, as she put it, complete with gargoyles, more or less below where we stood.
Shakespeare had passed through that arch, I thought. He had stood on the stones of the court below, gazing up at the sky—would it rain or would it be fine? He had eaten and drunk his fill of ale or maybe wine somewhere within these walls, exchanged sly looks with a girl with fine brown eyes, scribbled a note, plucked a field flower, pissed in a puddle, tossed some dice, slept and maybe dreamed here. With a director’s merciless eye, he had watched the audience as they watched his play, taking in the fidgets and the furtive amorous glances, the tears and gasps, and best of all, the laughter. The frisson of presence was something that neither Athenaide, nor the Folgers, nor the Globe Trust, with all their bushels and barrels and trunksful of money, could ever re-create. He had been here.
“The Shakespeare House, they used to call that little porch,” mused Mrs. Quigley. “There are family legends, you know, of the King’s Men using it as a stage. But mostly it’s called the Holbein Porch now.”
“It still exists?” Sir Henry’s voice had an eager catch in it.
“Oh, yes. By luck and by loyalty, I suppose. It was dismantled when the house was remodeled in the early nineteenth century, and its stone came as near as you can say to being scattered. But a stubborn old mason who’d spent his life working on the estate refused to let it be lost. Stone by stone, he carted it out to the garden and rebuilt it. And there it’s stayed ever since, at the end of the earl’s private garden. I’m afraid the quotation’s vanished without a trace, though.”
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