The Tainted Relic

by The Medieval Murderers

  So it was that on this fine morning I found myself at St Bartholomew’s Fair with Jack Wilson and Abel Glaze. I’d met my friends in the Goat and Monkey the previous evening and outlined Shakespeare’s request. I’d no hesitation in doing this since WS himself had suggested I might take some company to give ‘colour’ to the enterprise, as he put it. He gave no other instructions on how to go about getting hold of his Domitian foul papers, merely leaving it to my ‘discretion’ and ‘good sense’. Perhaps he was a flatterer after all.

  The three of us threaded among the crowds and between the confectioners and horse dealers, the barbers and the pin-makers. At one point Abel said, ‘Isn’t that Tom Gally?’

  Crossing the path ahead of us was an individual with unkempt black hair. The man certainly looked like Gally, who acted as a kind of unofficial agent for Philip Henslowe, the owner and promoter of playhouses, bear pits and much else besides. I knew Tom Gally and distrusted him. His long, soft hair was reminiscent of a sheep’s fleece but there was a wolf beneath. I wondered what was his business at St Bartholomew’s Fair and whether he was after the Domitian foul papers too.

  We came to a relatively quiet little quarter of the fairground, one given over to the vendors of books and pamphlets and printed ballads. We weren’t long in finding our objective. Among the stalls was a more elaborate yellow-and-white-striped tent with its flaps folded back on one side. Hanging from a crossbar above a trestle table scattered with sheets and tatty volumes was a sign announcing the presence of Ulysses Hatch, Publisher. Many booksellers are also publishers and prefer to advertise themselves as such. There was no one to be seen at the mouth of the tent.

  Like the browsers we were, we idly cast our eyes over Master Hatch’s wares on the table-top. I glanced into the interior of the tent. The sunlight made it difficult to see much of the inside. In any case, there was a curtain slung near the entrance which shielded the interior. The curtain quivered and I had the feeling that we were being observed, probably through some small slit or spyhole. Confirmation that the tent was occupied came from indistinct sounds of talking within.

  ‘This seller seems to specialize in cony-catching and thief detection,’ said Abel Glaze, picking up a handful of the pamphlets. They were headed by titles such as A Manifest Detection of Dice-play or A Notable Discovery of Cozenage, this latter adorned with a picture of a rabbit or cony holding up a playing card in each paw.

  ‘Not altogether,’ said Jack Wilson, pointing to a pile whose topmost title read The Quickest Way to Heaven. ‘This should be more up Nick’s street, eh?’

  Jack was in the habit of pretending that, since I was a parson’s son, I must have devout tastes. I ignored him and picked up a volume I recognized. It was by a playwright I’d once known, a man called Richard Milford, and this was a piece of his entitled The World’s Diseas’d, a play that was performed and published posthumously, as it happened. I knew it well, for I had played the character of Vindice the revenger. Now this book, which couldn’t have been more than three or four years old, looked forlorn and dusty in the summer sun. I already owned a copy but, if I hadn’t, I might have bought it for the sake of Milford’s memory. I hefted the book in my hand. Who else would remember him in a few years’ time? Before I could start on a melancholy train of thought about memory and reputation (the thing that William Shakespeare was so concerned with), my attention was caught by a definite stirring behind the curtain in the tent’s interior.

  A man came out from the shadows. If anyone, I expected it to be Ulysses Hatch, proprietor, publisher and bookseller. I’d never seen him before and knew nothing about him, except that he’d once had a falling-out with WS and that he was fat. But the individual who came into the space by the mouth of the tent was small and slight. Furthermore I did recognize him. So did Abel and Jack, for it was the nip or cutpurse who’d been standing near Ben Nightingale the ballad singer. Peter Perkin was still wearing his rustic hat with the tickling straws. With the merest glance at us and the tiniest inclination of his head, he edged round the trestle table and walked off into the crowd.

  I was surprised to encounter him. What was he doing inside a bookseller’s tent? The last we’d seen of this gent, only a few minutes earlier, he’d been in pursuit of a couple of the more prosperous-looking members of Nightingale’s audience. True, he might have carried out a fistful of thefts in that time (nips can be as quick as lightning), but surely his place was at the ballad singer’s heels, prospecting for new victims? Abel and Jack and I looked at each other, queries on our faces. I put down the volume I was holding.

  ‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’

  Distracted by the appearance of the cutpurse, we hadn’t noticed another man emerging from the tent. He stood behind the table. Or rather he leaned against it, his belly flopping on to the surface as though it was a further object for sale. Ulysses Hatch was one of the fattest men I’d ever seen. Just as the pig’s head on a stake had reminded me of the traitors’ heads on London Bridge, so now Hatch’s visage reminded me of the pig’s. His cheeks bulged, his chin drooped and his eyes were small and reddened. There was a fringe of white hair round his head like a garland of dirty snow. He breathed heavily and there was sweat on his brow as though he’d been running to get to his present position behind the trestle table.

  ‘Only looking,’ said Jack.

  ‘I’ve got something stronger back there,’ said the pig-faced seller, peering at the three of us and indicating the inside of the tent with a plump hand. ‘Spicier wares. The Widow’s Solace, you know the ballad? Or Venus Pleasure? It tells you what Mars did with Venus. There are pictures with that one. I publish them myself so quality is guaranteed.’

  We all shrugged or grimaced as if to say ‘no thanks’, but I suspect that if any of us had been by himself he might have permitted the bookseller to show off some of his spicier wares. From the sounds of conversation emanating from the tent, there were others already in there.

  ‘Shut your gob!’

  I started. The voice came from the tent. Ulysses Hatch smiled and jerked his head.

  ‘Hark at him,’ he said, then, seeing my expression, added ‘Don’t worry, sir. That wasn’t directed at you.’

  As if to prove his words, a woman’s voice said something in altercation only to be answered with another ‘Shut your gob!’ in the same tone as before.

  Jack was perusing a pamphlet called Kemp’s Nine Days’ Wonder. On the front was a picture of a dancing man in motley, with a drummer in the background. Like The World’s Diseas’d, this item I was also familiar with, since Will Kemp had been a clown in the Chamberlain’s Men, though before my time. Kemp’s career had dwindled after he’d quit the company, and his most notable feat had been to jig all the way from London to Norwich in nine days. Afterwards he wrote an account of his journey.

  ‘Ah, Will Kemp,’ said Ulysses Hatch. ‘Those were the glory days. He was a man of rare parts.’

  Now, I’m pretty sure that Jack Wilson had known Kemp personally, since he’d been playing onstage longer than either of us. And indeed, both Abel Glaze and I had met the clown once when he was retired, and sick and listless in lodgings in Dow-gate. Nevertheless, our faces gave nothing away. For some reason, we were all on our guard.

  ‘They were fools to replace Kemp with Bob Armin,’ said Hatch.

  Robert Armin was the current clown of the company and they were the King’s Men–us, or the shareholders to be precise. I had the sense that this fat man was probing us, testing us. Certainly he was familiar with the big names of the playing companies. None of us responded to his comment about the clowns.

  ‘Now our stage grows refined,’ continued the bookseller. ‘Audiences want a roof over their heads and carriages to convey them to the playhouse. They want polite clowns. They want cushions under their bums.’

  ‘You’re in the right there,’ said Abel.

  ‘You gentlemen are connected to the theatre, then?’ said Hatch, shifting his piggy head from side to side.

 
‘In a manner of speaking,’ I said.

  ‘And what manner might that be?’

  I shrugged. This wasn’t going how I’d planned it. Or rather I hadn’t planned anything, relying instead on the ‘discretion’ and ‘good sense’ that WS had credited me with. He’d also called me ‘straightforward’, so now I decided that an honest approach might be best. Nevertheless, I paused before I spoke and glanced around. The business and pleasure of Bartholomew Fair trickled past us, rather sluggish in this backwater. No one was paying attention to three men standing at the door of a bookseller’s tent. If anyone had noticed us, they’d most likely assume we were in search of Hatch’s spicy wares.

  ‘You have found us out, sir,’ I said. ‘We are to do with the playhouse.’

  ‘Which playhouse?’

  ‘Any one that will have us,’ I said.

  ‘Not Shakespeare’s.’

  I shook my head almost imperceptibly, no spoken lie. The others said nothing.

  ‘As long as you’re not from Shakeshaft’s lot,’ said Hatch. ‘But I thought you were players. I can smell you over a distance.’

  ‘Then I hope we smell sweet,’ said Abel.

  Hatch’s expression suggested otherwise. Once more he looked from one to the other of us. A kind of calculation entered his gaze. He seemed to come to some decision. If his face was easy enough to read, his next words were obscure. ‘I was not expecting three of you.’

  Not expecting three of us? How could he be expecting us at all, since he didn’t know we were visiting Bartholomew Fair, did he? And Shakespeare certainly wouldn’t have gone about broadcasting our mission. But Hatch’s remark indicated that he was expecting someone. I thought of the cutpurse man with the straws in his hat, but it couldn’t be him because he’d already been and gone.

  I blundered forward, feeling more and more unsure of my ground. After denying that we were part of WS’s playing company, I now tried relative honesty. ‘I have been, ah, commissioned to come to your stall, Master Hatch, to retrieve something…to pay a fair price for a…for an…’

  I dithered. What was I to say? A journeyman play by Shakespeare? A piece about a mad Roman emperor? Then the author’s own phrase floated into my head. ‘You might say we’re looking for a relic,’ I said.

  ‘Not so loud,’ said Ulysses Hatch, although I had been speaking quietly enough and there was no one in our immediate neighbourhood. He reached across with a plump hand and gripped me hard by the shoulder.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Nick Revill.’

  No recognition at all showed on his face and for once I could be glad. Hadn’t I described myself to WS as an obscure player? Here was the proof of that.

  ‘You alone can see the item,’ he said. ‘Your friends must remain outside.’

  I felt baffled. It was as if this fat man had divined straight away what I was searching for. And, more than baffled, I felt a little alarmed. Still, what was there to fear from this large, sweating individual? Or the others who were in his tent? I raised my eyebrows at Abel Glaze and Jack Wilson and, skirting the table, followed Hatch into his striped tent. He pulled aside the hanging curtain and ushered me into his inner sanctum.

  After the brightness of the day outside, the interior was dim. Flies buzzed and Hatch wheezed. The place smelt musty, as if shut up for years, yet Hatch’s tent could have stood on this spot only for a couple of days. There were books and pamphlets stacked in casual piles and scattered on the ground, as well as a couple of trunks. A woman was sitting on one of the trunks. She looked me up and down. She might have been handsome not so long ago but the features in her large face were on the point of melting, as if she’d been left out in the sun too long. Her hair, which was unbonneted, straggled over dark shiny eyes. She had a leathern flask in one hand. She raised it to her lips, after giving me the once-over.

  ‘Shut your gob!’

  I jumped. The voice came from over my shoulder. I looked up to see a raven sitting on a perch. It repeated itself and then cocked its head on one side as if to estimate the effect of its words on me. There was an unpleasant glint in its diamond eye.

  ‘Master Revill,’ said Ulysses Hatch, ‘let me introduce you to Hold-fast. I call him that because once’s he’s got something in his grip he doesn’t let go. Oh no, he doesn’t let go.’

  ‘Oh no. Hold-fast doesn’t let go,’ said the raven. ‘Jump to it. Shut your gob!’

  ‘You wouldn’t think it but he’s an old boy,’ said Hatch. ‘He was old when he adopted me for his own.’

  The raven looked ageless to me. It seemed odd to talk about an animal, a bird, adopting a man rather than the other way about, but perhaps that’s how it is with ravens. I glanced at the woman sitting on the trunk.

  ‘What about me?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to this nice young man?’

  Master Hatch made a little bow, or at least bent as far as his bulk would allow.

  ‘May I also present Wapping Doll.’

  ‘I used to live south of the river,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, good for you,’ said the woman, her speech slightly slurred. ‘But what’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Ha ha. He thinks you come from Wapping,’ said Ulysses Hatch. ‘But let me tell you, Nick Revill, that for this good lady Wapping isn’t a place–it’s what she used to do with her time. It’s what she did for a living. You know. She wapped, she knocked and she banged.’

  ‘Still do, for a living,’ said Doll, rolling her eyes. They were like ripe blackberries, glossy, squashy.

  ‘Alas, sir, her price has fallen of late. Who’d have her?’

  ‘You can shog off, Ulysses Hatch,’ said the woman, lifting up her flask once more but pausing before she stuffed it in her mouth. ‘Who’d have you anyway, you great bag of guts?’

  ‘You would. You did have me, yesterday morning,’ said Hatch.

  ‘Apart from me nobody’d touch you, you bombard of sack.’

  ‘Go ask at the pig stall,’ said Hatch with what sounded like genuine indignation.

  ‘Shog off,’ said the raven.

  I coughed to remind them all of my presence and the bookseller seemed to remember why he’d summoned me inside his tent.

  ‘Get your fat arse off that chest,’ said Ulysses Hatch to his doxy. ‘Come to think of it, get your fat arse out of this place altogether.’

  The woman hoisted herself to her feet.

  ‘Oh, Ulysses, oh, Yew-lee, you’d not banish your Doll, would you? Banish your Wapping Doll?’

  She spoke somewhere between earnest and jest, and pouted her lips in a similar spirit. She winked at me.

  ‘This gentleman and I have a matter to discuss. You know, the item.’

  Hatch gestured towards the other trunk. I didn’t know what he was talking about but from the expression on Wapping Doll’s face, she did. Her good humour disappeared and she said, ‘Not again, Ulysses. That item brings me out all over goose bumps.’

  Hatch swung one of his hands and whacked her on the arse, but it was an affectionate blow as far as I could see, and she exited from the tent, still clutching her leathern flask.

  Then he got down on his hams, an awkward manoeuvre given his size, and retrieved a key from his doublet. He fiddled with the padlock of the trunk, not the one recently vacated by Wapping Doll but the other. Suddenly he looked up at me. The raven’s coal-black head flicked with deep suspicion between his kneeling master and me, yet any time I looked at the bird he pretended indifference.

  ‘What are you after, Master Revill?’

  ‘I…have already said it,’ I said, uncertain what reply he wanted, for I had not yet named the item that I was in pursuit of, the foul papers of Shakespeare’s unperformed play, Domitian.

  ‘You spoke of a relic.’

  ‘I did,’ I said, wondering why he fastened on this word so.

  ‘Then behold,’ he said.

  Hatch pushed at the lid of the trunk. It swung open. Inside, I glimpsed bolts of cloth and what l
ooked like items of plate. Quite delicately he moved these objects aside. In the middle of the collection was something wrapped up in a dark, coarse cloth. With what seemed to me exaggerated care, Ulysses Hatch lifted it from the trunk and laid it on a clear patch of ground. He knelt in front of this anonymous little bundle, then began to unfold the woollen wrapping.

  I was abruptly conscious of my surrounding. The dusty light that filtered through the yellow fabric of the tent. The buzz of the flies, lazy, as if they knew that summer was near its end. The heavy breathing of the bookseller. The raven shuffling on his perch.

  I was curious and puzzled, and not a little apprehensive. Whatever was going to emerge from this dumb-show would not be WS’s manuscript–for one thing, the shape of the bundle was wrong–but something altogether different.

  What did emerge was, at first sight, disappointing. A small oblong wooden box with a hinged lid that had an inlaid pattern of a star. Hatch opened it. Without raising the box from the ground, he beckoned me to look more closely. Inside was a glass vial, a little more than a finger’s length, with a faded gilt stopper. Treating the vial as warily as he might the contents of Pandora’s box, Ulysses Hatch lifted it out and cradled it in a pudgy palm.

  ‘Look near,’ he said. ‘What do you see inside?’

  ‘I see a bit of wood.’

  ‘Yes, and…?’

  ‘Jump to it,’ said the raven.

  ‘The wood is grey and stained in places,’ I said, attempting to ignore the bird.

  ‘Just so.’

  I made to reach out my hand to take the glass vial with its unremarkable contents for a closer examination, but Hatch snatched it towards him and began wrapping it up once more inside the woollen cloth.