The Player's Boy is Dead

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The Player's Boy is Dead Page 12

by Leonard Tourney


  "If you had some proof," she said. "The hostler, you say, was your fellow in this?"

  Varnell admitted it again.

  "Did you tell him that Richard's death was my husband's will?"

  Varnell could not remember, but he said yes. He knew he would say anything now. His terror was subsiding, but he was still confused, dizzy with the sudden changes in her manner and sick at heart. He did not know whether to smile agreeably or keep sober and repentent. He wondered if he were walking into another trap, but he did not know how to begin to avoid it. Whichever way he went lay danger. He said, "I would offer you proof indeed if there were aught, but the work was planned in secret and so 'executed. ''

  She looked thoughtful, then she went to a cabinet in the corner of the room, withdrew a small chest, and returned with five gold coins in her hand. "Here," she said. "Keep four for yourself and give the fifth to the hostler.

  "Bring him here. If he confirms what you have said, then I will believe it true and hold you in my heart as a trusted friend. If not, then I will advise my husband of what tales you bear to his wife. I trust he will find another secretary speedily enough."

  "And if the hostler will not come?"

  "Give him the coin only if he does, and take an extra horse with you that you may lose no time in coming and going."

  "I will, my lady."

  "And, Master Varnell," she said as she returned to her bed, "the gold you may consider only partial payment in this business. I may have other work for you as well, but only if you prove honest in this."

  "Believe me, lady, I will prove so, for I would rather serve you than God."

  She laughed huskily at his wit, complimented him on his new satin suit, and bid him Godspeed. "Do not be impious," she called after him. "It is sufficient that you serve me."

  He gave her one final awkward bow and stumbled from the room, still so shaken and bewildered by the variation in her response to him that he did not know whether to feel gratitude or smoldering hate. He had blurted out his part in the murder in a moment of anger—for revenge. He had nearly had himself hanged! What a fool he had been to lose his temper thus. On the other hand, his mistress obviously wished to know the truth. More, she was willing to pay a price for it, and he might yet get something out of that worth the hell he had gone through.

  "I can scarce credit it," Matthew said with wonder when Gwen had finished her story. "The husband a willing witness to his own cuckolding! Had Joan done such, I would have killed the man and probably her after, though I love her as my life."

  "Richard Mull went often to the Hall," Big Tod explained. "I told you not before because I feared it might put us into trouble with Sir Henry. He and his lady are our only patrons. We could little afford their displeasure."

  "God must judge such conduct," Joan said in a whisper, looking to her husband for affirmation of her horror.

  "In faith, 'tis so," Matthew agreed solemnly. "But this only complicates my charge. For how am I to bring to justice him who administers it?"

  The four exchanged glances of bewilderment while the firelight played fantastically upon their faces. Big Tod said, "Of the law I know little, but surety even the magistrate must be accountable for his deeds. If this deed be proved, then 'tis Sir Henry himself who must stand tall for it. If he did not himself slit young Richard's belly, he paid for the act from his own pocket."

  "Aye, that's it," Joan said, shaking her head. "The proof is what is needed. At the motive we may but guess, for we have come upon a well of evil and there's no sounding the bottom."

  Matthew turned to his wife. In the firelight, half of her face fell into shadows like the moon. Huddled together, they all looked like conspirators, their faces intent and solemn, planning some desperate enterprise.

  "From the beginning, Joan, you have had the best nose in this business. I know not if it be woman's wit that has led you to it, but as for now, I am tempted to trust you for the remainder. What think you now?"

  She sat awhile pensively; she did not acknowledge her husband's compliment, although she was grateful for it. She was pleased to be taken so seriously but half afraid of the attention upon her. Seeing in Gwen's face a look of concern, she patted the girl's hand reassuringly. She said, " 'Tis not witchcraft, child. I love God and wish no powers beyond those other mortals have. But since my husband has fallen heir to this business, I have had inklings and seen them confirmed too when we went to the Hall and saw Sir Henry's play. I knew then that she was no happy wife. She carried herself like a woman seeking more than purity of heart allows-. From time to time I read her glances. Trust me that those glances bore no good will toward her husband. You have helped us to know the cause, for 'twould seem neither husband nor wife follows the natural course, but the one is given to dark sins of which honest folk know not even the names."

  "I know this about the law," Matthew added when his wife had done. "And that is that proof is what's wanted. Although none of us doubts who is guilty, neither do we know the why of it, or his agent, and that must be uncovered before justice may be done—in the court of men at least. But now the hour is late, though sleep may come hard to us, considering what we have said here."

  That they took as a signal to bid each other good night. Big Tod and Gwen went to where their lodging had been assigned, Big Tod to bed with the apprentices, Gwen to find a warm place with Alice and Betty.

  "I fear I was not made to be constable, Joan," Matthew said with a yawn when he was already deep within their bed. She climbed in beside him and crept close.

  "No man is made but to be a man. For his calling in this life we must look to other causes."

  "Always the philosopher, Joan," he said sleepily. "You should have been such, had it lain in a woman's way. You! life has been wasted as a mere wife."

  "A mere wife, you say?" She sat upright in bed, feigning outrage. "No mere wife manages your affairs with the skill that I do, keeping a house such as this with two lazy louts as Alice and Betty be and five unruly apprentices to chase from the buttery every quarter of an hour."

  Then she said more seriously to her husband, who has already turned upon his side and shut his eyes, "You have done your best. Cats may see in the dark, but we know well what company they keep. You are a good man, Mat thew. Your ways are straight as God or any wife should wish. I would rather have them so than you a speediei discoverer of wrongdoing."

  But he had fallen asleep. His breath came heavily a his eyelids fluttered as they did when he dreamed.

  Ten

  WHEN the priest awoke, light was already filtering through the windowpane and he could hear rain falling steadily on the roof. He had forgotten how dismal England could be in October. His heart sank, and he wished he were in France again.

  Remembering poor Marlowe's death, even after eight years, had set the tone for this present mood. He found his boots beneath the bed and put them on. Then he stepped across the floor to the closet, where he retrieved the better of his two suits. He examined his face in the glass. He had shaved yesterday. The stubble was just beginning to show and he would not have to shave until tomorrow.

  He used the chamber pot, from which the acrid smell of stale urine rose, and then placed the pot outside his chamber door for the girl. There was no water for washing.

  He dressed quickly, making note of a missing button, and combed his hair. Then he sat down on his bed and waited.

  He had pursued many women, and because they had found him handsome and clever he had always gotten what he wanted. He thought them lesser creatures than men. Their fragility and timidity proved that, and yet he allowed them their mystery, believing that as careful as his scrutiny of them had been there was more than met his eye. The present case proved as much. He had found Cecilia Saltmarsh's strategy of seduction beguiling though transparent, for he had ever considered the artfulness of sensuous woman fascinating even when their goal was his undoing. He was not sure that he had not been undone now. He had allowed her to have her way because he knew that it woul
d bring them both to his. But as for the climax, he could have had more satisfaction from a dull country baggage who knew no more than to lie still and grit her teeth. Now his desire for her, long nurtured in his imagination since their first meeting in France, was quite as cold as his chamber.

  He had accomplished, then, what he had come to the Hall to accomplish. He decided to leave quickly, if only to avoid seeing her again, and yet his curiosity as to which face she might put on for his benefit and her husband's almost overwhelmed him. Yes, he could wait.

  When he heard a rap at his door he said come, thinking it the maid to change his bedding, but when he looked up to see his host himself he rose quickly.

  "You have slept well, sir priest?" Henry Saltmarsh said curtly. He walked deliberately to the center of the chamber, his arms folded before him and his face set in what the priest might have interpreted as the beginning of a smile did the tone of voice not belie it.

  "Sir Henry," he began awkwardly, *T thought not to find you outside or I would have risen to admit you."

  "Say you?" Saltmarsh said icily."

  The priest sensed danger and was silent. Saltmarsh paused, then proceeded in measured phrases as though he were reciting a litany. "You have abused my hospitality, sir, using my wife foully. I would not have tolerated that in a gentleman, much less in a scurvy priest."

  "Sir Henry!" the priest gasped in astonishment.

  "You deny it?"

  The priest fell silent. Although disappointed with the lady's damp amorousness, he had thought he had at least taken accurate measure of her discretion.

  "Has your lady said as much?" he protested weakly.

  Saltmarsh turned his back on the priest contemptuously. "She has indeed told me of your rape. Were I not invested as magistrate, I might well do justice of my own with this sword."

  "What did she tell you?" he asked incredulously.

  Saltmarsh hesitated. "She told me that she came yesternight to your chamber for confession, that in the course of her prayers you did sue unto her. She refusing, you fell to her violently and despite her struggles you lay with her."

  From the comer of his eye the priest caught a mouse scampering across the floor. He realized that the full truth would more likely enrage than appease Saltmarsh. He framed his features into remorse, using the thoughts of his own death as an impetus and the theatrical skill he had acquired as a player at Cambridge.

  ''What her ladyship says is most true,'' he began weakly. "Despite my vows, I was beguiled. Yesternight I thought nought but to hear her confession, *but upon discovery of her humility and loveliness so openly displayed in her nightgown I was overcome with feelings I should never have permitted in my heart and I did lust after her. When she had confessed to me, I confessed my heart to her, but she would have none of my ardor, did in fact plea for a return of my sanity. She belittled her own beauty that it should incite me to such riot and lamented my loss of virtue. I took her by force. When she departed from me, I was overcome with remorse as I am still. I have prayed to God all the night for forgiveness."

  "But you are now dressed. You have attained forgiveness, then?" Saltmarsh inquired cynically, walking toward the small window.

  "I have not yet received forgiveness, and may not, save I am forgiven by both the man and woman I have wronged."

  "Oh, then you seek my forgiveness, and that of my lady?" Saltmarsh mused.

  "If it were possible; if not, 'twere better I were hanged, for in the death of my body for my crime I may yet hope to see my God."

  Saltmarsh turned from the window and walked toward the priest, his arms at his side, his face fixed in the now familiar half smile, the intent of which the priest found quite impenetrable.

  "Forgiving you is hardly compatible with my honor as a gentleman. You have abused my wife, there's no denying it. And yet you may partially redeem yourself in my eyes, and even in hers, should you be willing, and save yourself yet from the gibbet."

  The priest grasped for the opening. "I would do anything, sir, to be restored to your and your lady's good graces, although I could hardly hope for such."

  "I detest the act, despise it as a Christian and a gentleman, but your repentance pleases me well. Let me but think upon your crime the more and ways to redeem it. Your plans, I presume, will not take you from this house?"

  Saltmarsh said this last with sufficient menace to make the priest quite sure of his own answer.

  "They will not, sir. I stay but at your pleasure—and my lady's—hoping to secure your forgiveness and my God's."

  When Saltmarsh had gone, the priest sat back down on the bed, his heart beating rapidly. The craven behavior to which he had been driven filled him with disgust. He played parts well, and could come on more priestly than the Pope should he choose; but he rarely liked the parts his present profession required of him. Besides, he reflected more calmly now, this country lordlet was doubtless a great devil himself with the ladies and one with more sins on his back than fish had scales. Well, his groveling had saved his own neck, at least for the time being. What Saltmarsh might have in mind in the way of redemption was^at present beyond his imagining. Now he must bide his time and wait. It would not do to go running off, or the town constable would have yet another commission to grieve him—and one more easily executed than solving the player's murder of which he had heard in the town.

  "So," she was saying, "you have spoken with the priest. And how did he respond to your threats? He denied all, I should think."

  Fully clothed, her husband extended himself on her bed, his arms behind his head. "More warmly than you to his suit, my dear. Yet he kept his choler hidden well enough under as artful a humility as I have seen. He is fit company for you."

  "But not for you?" she returned sharply.

  "Well, perhaps. But in any case I played the outraged husband and he the fallen priest, and both with such skill that had we been on the London stage we should have brought a good penny to the house. When I accused him of rape, you would have thought he had consumed a live eel so pale did he become—and stuttered too, as though he had lost his teeth in the thicket of his beard. As for me, I put on a face of scarcely contained anger, adorned with the hint of a smile as you see me now—just so—so as to perplex him the more. I sent fear to his gut straightway." '

  She laughed dryly. "And did he fear? Did he grovel?"

  "Oh, most assuredly. And he swore that he had been at prayers most of the night and had yet to gain forgiveness of his God. His God! Were there such, he would fall from high heaven with laughter at the scene."

  She said, "You believe all men hypocrites because you wear many faces yourself. But some men, my husband, are honest. They wear but one face, their own, and it is enough for them."

  Saltmarsh rose from the bed and walked to where she gazed at herself in the ornate mirror he had bought at Paris at considerable cost. Putting his arm around her shoulders, he said. "And what would you do, my lady, were I to wear but one face? What pleasure would that give you, for whom variety is as dear as 'tis to me? Would you prefer to me some straight-faced Puritan such as Sir Thomas Pugh be, he who heaps up gold and is content to give it to orphanages and goes to church twice on Sunday. Should you love me then the more were I such? Hardly, I should think," he continued without waiting her response. "You are the quintessential woman. You balk when you would raise my bile about my fault as a husband—my sickness you would sometimes put it—but you thrive on it as much as do . have done nothing in which you have not had a share, enjoying it more than I, should the truth be known."

  " 'Tis a wife's duty to obey her husband," she said flatly, shrinking from his touch.

  "But you sang another tune on our wedding night when you quenched my passion with your girlish timidity, praying that you might preserve your virginity still but a night or twain and begging me not to do you so roughly. Where was your wifely obedience then?"

  She turned on him suddenly, her face aflame. "It was perhaps where your manhood was, for when you came
to your own duty as husband you could not, but simpered like a child."

  His expression turned stony, the thin smile he wore continuously disappearing into lips pressed white with rage.

  "Whore that you are," he bellowed, "you unmanned me. If I have done the devil's work since, it was you that drove me to it, depriving me of all pleasure but what I could have by looking on."

  He grabbed her by the throat viciously and threw her to the bed, yelping with pain as one of her knees found its way to his groin. His hands lost their grip, and she took that opportunity to gasp deeply for breath. His body lay heavily upon her, suffocating her, a great blanket of flesh defiling her. She dug her nails into his face once, then twice, and then felt drops of blood fall onto her breast as the pain drove him away from her. Both lay side by side breathing heavily, nursing their wounds, wishing the other dead.

  "You would like to see me in my grave, wouldn't you?" she said bitterly, her voice heavy with hatred. "But you have not what it takes to murder me yourself, although you are soon enough to find hirelings."

  "You disgust me," he said weakly, caressing his torn face. "As though I had found some monstrous animal in the barn, neither male nor female, fish nor fowl, but made of many parts, each horrible to look upon."

  "You may find me as you like. Other men know where, and how, to find me a woman." With that she rose quickly from the bed and went to her mirror to examine the reddening of her neck where he had tried to strangle her.

  She said, "I thought myself one rich in fortune to come to a knight's bed his lawful wife. Now I see that the knight is merely a man, conniving, weak, and petty in his pleasures. You have won me to your will. I have played your curious games that would have made a sailor blush. And if I have enjoyed the game myself, I at least did not invent it. When I came to your bed I was a virgin.'Tis true I lost my maidenhead painfully, for I was but sixteen and knew nothing of men or their ways. You could have been patient, gentle, understanding that. You were not so much older than I that you should not have given me a day or two to make the act natural and pleasant to me. If I can give myself to other men now with pleasure it is only because of such practice provided by you, and the pleasure and envy -you have in looking on is a woman's way of revenge."

 

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