Still, he darted in and slashed at Matthew, who cried out and brought the stave down across Ben’s shoulders with a crack. Ben staggered but righted himself.
I turned back to the slope. I was halfway up the scree, still well below the ledge, when I hit a loose stone, sending a clatter of rocks downward. Turning, Sir Henry pointed, shouting, and Matthew leapt across the ledge, racing to cut me off from the exit.
I scrambled upward. Matthew put on another burst of speed, clattering onto the scree a few feet above me.
I heard a whirring and ducked. There was a thud, and Matthew stumbled, Ben’s knife buried in his shoulder. With a cry of rage, he drove himself into a boulder.
“No!” cried Ben.
But Matthew leaned into it harder. For an instant, we all watched the rock teeter. Then it crashed downward, and around it other rocks began to move. Suddenly, the whole wall of rock was sliding. Ben barreled down toward me, hurling me off to the other side of the cave. Somewhere, a man screamed. The earth shook and rumbled, and then the cavern fell silent.
Illuminated by the glow of a headlamp, the dust of millennia rose around us like a dark mist. I raised my head. A little ways up the slope, Ben lay half buried among the rocks, an immense slab of granite pinning one leg. A little farther up, Matthew knelt groaning. Beyond them, where the fissure had been, no opening was visible—only a steep, solid slope of boulders.
The way out had disappeared.
I rose and stumbled up toward Ben, but Sir Henry reached him first. “All the best laid plans…” he murmured, gazing down at Ben with a stricken look.
He had clapped my helmet on his head; that’s where the light was coming from. Then I saw that he’d also picked up Ben’s gun. I began to run. But Sir Henry raised his arm and fired.
A few feet beyond Ben, Matthew slumped and lay silent. Sir Henry had shot him in the chest. Walking past Ben, he drew close to the body, leaned down, and put another bullet through the lamp on his helmet.
I stifled a cry, and Sir Henry turned.
“Don’t hurt her,” rasped Ben, his breath coming in short, sharp stabs.
“Move back,” Sir Henry said, waving the gun at me.
“I killed you,” I said. “At Athenaide’s.”
“Move back,” he said again.
I stumbled back a few steps. “I killed you.”
Regret passed over his face. “You forget, my dear. I am an actor.”
“But there was blood,” I said.
“Graciela’s, most of it”—he grimaced—“though you cut me once or twice as well. I’m afraid that what you killed, though, was one of Athenaide’s cushions.” Keeping the gun trained on me with one hand, he began moving across the rockslide.
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s the killer, Kate,” said Ben in the silence. “The other one.”
My mind seemed to be working very slowly. Not Matthew and Athenaide. Matthew and Sir Henry. “It was you all along? You were Matthew’s accomplice?”
“He was mine,” said Sir Henry. “A dogged thinker, but not especially nimble. He did fine when he could work by the book—but the minute someone pushed him off-script, as you did at the Capitol, he was lost. Whereas the mark of a great actor is the ability to improvise. Roz, for instance, brought the anniversary of the Globe burning to my attention, and I used it—though I did not, as people keep saying, burn the theater,” he griped. “I burned the exhibition hall and the offices. And you gave me the idea for turning Roz into Hamlet’s father, that afternoon at the Globe. Lovely scene with Jason, that was. You’re not half bad, as Hamlet.”
“You killed Roz?”
His regret deepened. “She had to be stopped. At least it was a fine death. Shakespearean.”
“Matthew’s wasn’t Shakespearean.”
“He was in the process of double-crossing me. He didn’t deserve it.”
“And the others? How many of the others were your handiwork?”
“Let us give credit where credit is due. Ophelia and Caesar were Matthew’s work.”
“How’d you rope him into doing your dirty work?” asked Ben.
Sir Henry reached the far end of the rock slide and stopped, wiping his forehead. “Money and fame. Easy bait. But it was jealousy that really drove him. He was quite envious of Roz.” He glanced at me. “And of you. The hard part was to keep him on point. In killing as in scholarship, he was brilliant at grand gestures, but sloppy with details. The mark of a second-rate mind, I rather think. On the other hand, he didn’t mind the messier scenes.”
Distaste slid across his face. “This Lavinia business, for instance.” Still aiming at me with his gun hand, with the other he began casting his flashlight like a spotlight around the floor of the ledge across the way. “The point, of course, was to kill you and then arrange your body. I suppose, once there were two of you, he could have done Lavinia and Bassianus in the pit. But, really, why bother, when a much finer scene sits ready to hand?”
The light stopped. “There. Do you see my syringe?”
I nodded.
“And we all know where the knife is. Now, I assume Ben has a flashlight. Find it.”
“Why?”
“Because I will have to shoot you if you don’t, and neither of us wants that.”
I picked my way back up toward Ben, who handed me a small flashlight.
“Toss it here,” said Sir Henry, catching and pocketing it. Looking back toward Ben, he shook his head. “Too bad you and Matthew didn’t kill each other, before I arrived. Then I could have pinned everything on the two of you, and rescued Kate.” He shifted to gaze at me. “You were never supposed to be part of this, my dear. I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry. But I’m left with no choice.
“You’ll know the scene I’ve set for you. Poison and the blade—in a tomb, no less. Deaths so beautiful are rarely granted to mortals. At least I can leave you that much grace.”
He switched out his light. I heard footsteps and a skittering of rock. And then I was alone with Ben in the dark.
45
PINNED AMONG THE rocks before me, Ben stirred. “Where did he go?”
I crouched down. “I don’t know.”
“The rock slide blocked the old way out, but it must have opened another. See if you can find it.” A small beam of light shot through the darkness. It came from a small flashlight in Ben’s hand.
“How’d you—”
“Back up,” he said grimly.
The light wasn’t strong enough to do much more than thin out the darkness for a few feet. As quickly as I dared, I made my way across to where I’d last seen Sir Henry. I groped around but found nothing but rock and more rock. Then I felt it. A slight movement of air.
“There’s a draft,” I said. Sir Henry must have felt it right off.
“Go after him.”
“And leave you here?” Fighting back panic, I made my way back toward Ben.
I heard him shift his weight. “Do you still have the brooch? Ophelia’s brooch?”
“Yes.”
“Then all you have to do is get near the surface. There’s a transponder in the back of it.”
“What?”
“It’s how I’ve been following you. I put a chip in the brooch. Its signal won’t carry through this much rock. But get close enough to the surface, and it will.”
“Carry to whom?”
He grimaced and shifted again. “I gave the code to Sinclair. The police will be looking for it. For you.”
I fingered the brooch on its chain, ignoring the tears streaming silently down my face.
“You can do this,” he said.
I crouched down next to him. “No.”
“Kate. I’m pinned. At a guess, my leg is shattered, maybe my whole pelvis. I couldn’t drag myself across this cave, much less walk, even if we could move these rocks, which we can’t. If you stay, we’ll both die. So will the Jiménezes. And Athenaide.”
“Athenaide’s dead.”
“She wo
uld have been, if she’d gone much longer without help. Potassium, again. But swallowed this time.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw the cup. “She was Gertrude. The poisoned queen.”
“Then in her case, the theatrics gave the paramedics just enough time to reach her. That’s what took me so long, catching up to you.” He took my hand. “But she won’t stay alive for long, Kate, if Sir Henry gets away. Is that what you want?”
“No.” Nor did I want to wander through whatever labyrinth had accidentally opened up in the dark, by myself. What if it only went farther in? I would end up at some other dead end, alone with Sir Henry.
“You can do this, Kate.” Ben’s voice staved off the panic, building a wall of hard, clear thinking around me. Crawling and climbing, I would only be able to use the flashlight fitfully. If I managed to get near Sir Henry, I wouldn’t be able to use it at all, without illuminating myself as a target. But there were precautions I could take, caving in the dark.
When he finished, I had to make my way across the cave to find the syringe and crawl back toward Matthew to retrieve the knife. Then I came back to Ben.
“You take the knife,” he said.
Sticking it in my belt, I put the syringe down just inside his reach, though neither of us admitted why. “Why did you say you were Roz’s nephew?” I asked.
“I needed you to trust me.”
More than all the others, I thought, that was the lie that had broken my trust.
He drew in a ragged breath. “She suggested it, actually. The other things Athenaide said—”
I shook my head. “You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do.” Sweat stood out on his forehead, and his mouth was tight with pain. “Everything she said was true. The raid, the deaths, the questions…But the questions were unfounded, Kate. Will you believe that?”
A lump rose in my throat. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
His eyes darkened. “For what?”
“For thinking you were a killer.”
Relief flickered across his face. He forced a smile. “I had my doubts about you, too, once or twice.”
“You did?”
“After Maxine’s death? And Dr. Sanderson’s? Sure. But Mrs. Quigley couldn’t have been you.”
“I thought you were a killer, and you saved my life anyway.”
“Not yet,” he said. It was the same tease he’d used at the Charles, what seemed like a lifetime ago. He touched my hand, and I slipped mine into his, holding tight. “If there’s going to be any saving of lives today, you’ll be the one doing it, Professor.”
The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. Ophelia had labored to reverse that fate. So, it seemed, must I. Pressing back tears, I squeezed his hand once and pulled quickly away, edging my way back across the cave, or I would never have left. I did not trust my voice to speak.
On the other side of the new slope of rubble, I once again felt the strange play of air and worked my way up toward it. The new opening gaped near the top of the slope, a fissure that seemed to be a crack between two planes of granite. “Wait for me,” I said, and squeezed through the gap.
The passage rose steeply through the cliff—at times almost vertically, so that it was more chimney than tunnel; I had to search blindly for purchase. Far above, I heard now and again a step or grunt; once a small scattering of pebbles rained down on me, and I braced myself to be battered by another avalanche of rocks. But the pebbles rattled on past, and nothing followed them but silence.
Once, I glimpsed Sir Henry’s light glimmering far above me. I stopped and rested then, for a few minutes. I had no wish to catch up with him, only to be shot.
My arms began to ache from pulling myself upward, and my legs were cramping from bracing my weight against the steep rock face. In the dark, I had no idea how far I’d come, or how far I might have to go. But fear drove me on. I could not bear to think of Ben’s life draining away in the darkness below.
My mind kept going over the killings. Sir Henry had killed Roz in the theater and then set fire to the building, taking the First Folio.
But why?
I shuddered. In the hours and days since then, he had seemed so kind. So concerned.
You forget, my dear. I am an actor.
After what seemed like hours, the passage leveled out. For a while, I just lay there, thankful for nothing more than the mere fact of a floor beneath my body. But I could not rest long. I had to reach the surface. Pushing myself up, I crawled forward. Not much farther, I rounded a bend and recoiled, blinking.
Light. Slowly, I peered back around the corner. Twenty yards up ahead, maybe. A blinding shaft of reddish-gold light. I stood watching it, letting my eyes remember what to do with it. Then I crept toward it on tiptoe. A narrow crack opened into a shallow cave of red stone hollowed high in a cliff, judging from what I could see across the canyon.
At the lip of the cave, Sir Henry sat with his back to the rock wall, his legs stretched out along the opening. The saddlebag lay open beside him. In one hand, he held a paper; the other held a gun. His head was tilted back against the cave wall; he looked to be asleep. My hand tightened on the knife. Could I rush him? Grab the gun? Somehow, I had to get out near the cave’s edge, for the transponder to work.
“You disappoint me,” he said in his deep silky voice.
I pulled back. If he chose to come shoot into the passage, I’d have nowhere to hide. I’d have to rush him then.
I tensed, listening.
But Sir Henry didn’t move. “So few deaths make sense,” he mused. “Yet you were given a priceless gift of a Shakespearean death…one of the greatest Shakespearean deaths…and you’ve thrown it away. Juliet, darling. You’ve turned your back on Juliet.”
Still, I heard no movement. Cautiously, I peered out. He hadn’t moved, except to open his eyes.
“I know you’re still there, my dear. If you must be mundane, you might as well make yourself useful.” He held up the paper in his left hand. “A letter. To Will, from Will…. Thou hast thy Will, and Will to boot, and Will in overplus…. But Jacobean handwriting is wretched. I cannot read a line of what’s in between.”
A letter! I hadn’t seen that, in with the manuscript.
“I can,” I said. What I needed was for Sir Henry to let me out near the cave’s edge, where the transponder had a chance of being heard.
“The knife or the syringe?” he asked. “You must have brought one of them with you. Probably the knife.”
Damn.
“Either way, leave it and come out with your hands open and empty.” He raised an eyebrow and held out the page.
Torn between eagerness and caution, I edged through the crack, setting the knife down just out of sight. Heat poured into me and pounded into the rock. Then I smelled the metallic scent of rain in the desert and heard the roaring. I walked forward to the edge of the cliff, leaning against the opposite side from Sir Henry and looking down. Two hundred feet below, the sandy bottom of the canyon had disappeared beneath white water raging from bank to bank, spitting trees and debris. My heart sank. No one could come up the canyon. Not till the river ran itself out, which might be days.
Opposite us, the cliff shone pink in late summer light. Off to the left, above the mountains, silver streaks of rain condensed into a gray pall. At the forward edge of the grayness, anvil clouds towered out of my vision. It was not raining here yet, but the storm was coming this way. The air was moist with the scent of rain, and cool buffets of thick, wet wind swept through the cave. The summer monsoons had started early over the Dragoons.
“It began raining midmorning up there, and hasn’t let up yet,” said Sir Henry with a wave. “As you see, we couldn’t have gone back out the way we came in, even if Matthew hadn’t so ill-advisedly filled it in. The entrance is underwater, and I imagine that half that first stretch of tunnel is too.” He patted the cave floor beside him. “Right here, my dear. I want to see you read word for word. And if I think you’
re skipping any, I’ll shoot.”
So I had to move over next to Sir Henry, a few feet farther inside the cave. Would the transponder work from here? On its chain, the brooch dragged at my neck.
The letter was written in the same cramped hand I’d seen in the Folio, and in the Wilton House letter. It was from the earl of Derby, to William Shelton. Word by stumbling word, I read it aloud, with Sir Henry peppering me with sharp questions: What was that letter, that word?
It was an apology for silence, and an explanation.
The only gift in my power to give…a tale of your telling if not of your making, lifted onto the stage. By the strange wanderings of fate, it once ended our little world in fire, and nearly cost the girl her life.
“The girl?” snarled Sir Henry.
“The child caught in the fire at the Globe,” I said. “The first fire. She must have survived.”
A hint dropped here, a fact passed there, and the Howards soon found themselves slipping from grace, with only their own daughter to blame. I liked that—the exchange of troubles.
Now, when all that might be said to be long past, and the other plays, its fellows, are heading into the immortality of print—the old historyrears its horned and sulphurous head like some dragon long thought dead, but only sleeping. This play alone threatens her, for like Leonora, she has found happiness in the unlikely house of Cardenio.
Perhaps you will smile at this now.
Whose? you asked once in anger. Whose child is she?
I thought then that perhaps time would tell. But she is herself, beauty’s rose.
I call her Shakespeare’s daughter, and that is enough.
The letter was snatched from my hands. “Enough indeed,” said Sir Henry.
I reached for the letter, but he raised the gun to my head.
Blood thundered in my veins, louder than the flood below. Shakespeare’s daughter? I ran a tongue around dry lips.
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