King Arthur's Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  Wondering how he knew my name, as he had known Martin Barton’s, I restrained myself from reaching up to touch either the mermaid’s ribs or the horn. This latter bone, long and tapering to a point, might have belonged to a unicorn, although there are those who say that no such creature exists.

  ‘We are not interested in animal remains,’ said Edmund. ‘It is King Arthur’s bones we seek.’

  ‘I ’ave many oddments here. Una miscellanea.’

  ‘Oddments? These are relics of England’s greatness.’

  ‘Ha parlato l’oracolo!’

  The words were plainly meant as a snide comment, and Edmund took them in that spirit. Stepping forward, he said in a quavering voice: ‘They should not be in foreign hands. If you possess such things, Master Scoto, you ought to surrender them to the authorities. The bones of a great king must not moulder in neglect. You will suffer the consequences otherwise.’

  Scoto laughed. The sound was as soft and unsettling as his speech. He moved from his perch behind the desk and came towards us. He was wearing a snug cap and some kind of cloak with geometric figures on it, cabbalistic designs probably. By daylight and in the open, I would have dismissed him as I would any mountebank who sells the elixir of life at a country fair. It wasn’t so easy to do in this dim and smoky place. But of course the man from Mantua did not have Arthur’s bones. This was a fool’s errand. We should quit this darkened house now.

  But now was already too late. Instead of seizing Scoto as he had with Davy Owen that afternoon, Edmund Shakespeare produced a little dagger from within the recesses of his jerkin and held it underneath Scoto’s bare chin. ‘Enough of your double talk, signor,’ he said. ‘Give us a straight answer or I shall give you a straight jab with this blade.’

  ‘If you are so foolish, young man, you will not leave this ’ouse alive. Non sono solo. Not alone, you understand.’

  ‘Oh, that small person who let us in.’

  ‘Nano, ’e is worth three of you.’

  I had to admire the man’s self-possession as well as his confidence in the little doorkeeper. He didn’t retreat in the face of Edmund’s threats but held up his arms in a gesture that spread his patterned cloak like a bird’s dark wings. I glanced first at the rippling arras, as if Scoto might have attendants hidden behind it, and then at Martin Barton. Without a word we took hold of Edmund Shakespeare, one on each side. I was on his right and so it fell to me to grasp his knife-hand, which I did with both my hands around his wrist as tight as a vice. Meanwhile, Scoto watched us with, I could have sworn, an air of amusement.

  Edmund was too surprised to struggle, though he turned a burning look on me. Then he seemed to slacken and allowed Martin and me to half-lead, half-drag him back to the entrance of Scoto’s den. All this while he still clutched the knife and, even if I did not think he would have struck at me, I feared a slip. We straggled down the hallway and opened the front door, to let in a gust of cold spring air. There was no sign of the dwarfish porter Nano. We emerged into the street and drew Edmund away from the house on the corner. When we judged that he’d calmed down, we released him. He put away the knife without being told to, but he was still angry.

  ‘Why did you stop me? That charlatan in there would sooner have responded to a threat than a polite query.’

  ‘You might not have been content with a threat,’ said Martin Barton, and I was glad not only that the redheaded satirist had kept us company but that he was displaying such good sense. For myself, I’d been shaken by the whole encounter.

  ‘I suppose you are going to go and tell tales to my brother,’ said Edmund to me.

  ‘Not a word,’ I said, ‘if you return to your lodgings now and forget this silly quest for Arthur’s bones.’

  ‘You go back to your lodgings if you please,’ said Edmund. ‘I will go where I like.’

  He turned on his heel and stalked off up Seething Lane, leaving us in the dark. No point in pursuing Shakespeare’s younger brother. Perhaps the cool night air would bring him to his senses.

  ‘How are your teeth?’ I said to Martin. ‘Are you going to try horehound?’

  ‘I would not take remedies from that charlatan, Nicholas. And another thing. He is not from Mantua.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘My mother was from those parts, and his accent is quite different.’

  IV

  As it happened, I did talk to William Shakespeare the next day on the subject of King Arthur and his bones. But it was WS who raised the subject while I tried my best to keep his brother Edmund out of the conversation. We were at the Globe playhouse and our morning rehearsal was done.

  I passed WS in the passage outside the tiring room. He asked in his usual courteous style whether I had a minute to spare. That he wanted a private chat was indicated by the way in which he ushered me into a small office reserved for the shareholders.

  ‘Nick, you remember when you called on me the other day in Silver Street and I showed you that, ah, relic of King Arthur?’

  ‘The one Edmund gave you?’

  ‘Yes. But it has disappeared from my room.’

  ‘Stolen?’

  ‘I would not think so were it not for another strange circumstance. As you know, I was working on a piece about the great king. I had not got very far for, in truth, the ink seemed to be flowing very reluctantly from my pen. But the manuscript sheets are missing also.’

  I thought straight away of Edmund, wondered whether he had slipped into his brother’s lodgings and for some perverse reason filched the bone and the sheets. But I said nothing. Perhaps the same idea was running through WS’s head, for he seemed troubled.

  ‘I hope you will not take offence if I ask you whether you told anyone of what I was writing.’

  ‘Martin Barton may have got to hear of it,’ I said, unwilling to say that it was Edmund who had mentioned the King Arthur play in the Mermaid tavern. ‘But no one else as far as I know.’

  ‘Barton can be a silly fellow,’ said WS, ‘but he would not stoop to thieving another man’s ideas. He has too high a regard for his own.’

  ‘No, he’s honest,’ I said, still grateful for Barton’s action at Scoto’s house the previous night.

  ‘I might even believe my brother Edmund capable of it, but he would hardly steal back something that he’d given me in the first place. Or take a sheaf of my papers.’

  I was glad that it was William who had raised the subject. I shook my head with almost as much conviction as I felt. Thieving on the quiet wasn’t Edmund’s style either. Besides, WS’s brother was working as usual at the Globe this very morning, doing the bidding of the tire-man and the bookkeeper. We’d exchanged glances but no words. No longer cheerful, Edmund looked red-eyed and dishevelled as though he’d found somewhere to drink away his anger after quitting us last night.

  ‘How does my brother do?’ said WS.

  ‘Well enough.’

  ‘I can tell it from your tone that something has happened.’

  ‘Nothing important.’

  ‘No? Well, one day you might tell me. At least he is not in the Clink.’

  He might have been, I thought.

  ‘And I am grateful to you for keeping him company outside the playhouse.’

  ‘I’m sorry for the loss of your royal bone and your royal play, William,’ I said, wanting to change the subject since I didn’t think I’d be keeping Edmund company much longer.

  ‘A play can be written again and written better,’ said WS. ‘And if the bone really belongs to the great king, it cannot be lost. They say that Arthur is sleeping, ready to wake again in the hour of England’s need, even if his bones have to be gathered from the four corners of the country.’

  ‘Arthur may wake again on the stage,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, we can resurrect him,’ said WS.

  It was characteristic of the man that he should take such a relaxed view of his losses or thefts, although they troubled me slightly on account of the events of the previous day.

/>   But that was as nothing to the trouble that came along the next day.

  As I was coming out of my lodgings in Tooley Street in the morning, I was accosted by an individual with a narrow, pustular face who asked bluntly if I was Revill.

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘That means you are Revill.’

  He handed me a crumpled note. It was from Edmund Shakespeare. Scrawled as if written in haste or a poor light, it said: ‘Ask no questions but come with the man who presents this, I beg you, Nicholas.’

  It was signed ‘Edmund’. I recognized the same hand I’d seen on the title page of Venus and Adonis where Edmund had inked his own name. But it wasn’t the signature or the message which bothered me the most. It was the bloody fingermarks on the crumpled sheet. Edmund’s blood? Or another’s?

  Despite Edmund’s injunction, I did ask a couple of questions – basic ones like ‘What’s happened?’ and ‘Where are we going?’ – but received no reply from this unhelpful individual. I rejected my first idea, which was that Edmund had indeed ended up in one of the several Southwark prisons. This spotty pinch-face was no gaoler. Gaolers are generally worse dressed than those they incarcerate and any approach to a friend of a prisoner always involves a demand for money, straight away. Nor did I fear some kind of trap for the fellow’s garments had an official look to them. Indeed there was a badge on his jerkin which I hadn’t had the chance to inspect.

  I followed him down Mill Lane. There’s no wharf here but a plain flight of steps and some mooring-posts. A boatman was waiting, and I realized that my guide had already been ferried across the river once this morning. I wondered where the trouble was. I had a nasty feeling that it might be found at Scoto’s house on the corner of Tower Street.

  In other circumstances I might have enjoyed being rowed across the Thames on a fine morning in May. The sun dazzled off the windows of the houses on the Bridge, the wind was invigorating and the boat rocked in a manner that wasn’t too puke-making. But I was thinking about my best course: see what mischief Edmund Shakespeare had tumbled into, reassure him that we would do our best and then race back to the Globe to leave the matter in WS’s hands. After all, he really was his brother’s keeper.

  I was sitting in the stern of the boat beside the individual who’d brought me Edmund’s note. The boatman facing us was too breathless – it is a harder task rowing downriver below the Bridge – to make conversation or, more likely, to relieve himself with a stream of oaths. My companion still didn’t say anything, and I was able to observe the little insignia on his jerkin. Then I looked up beyond the boatman’s flexing shoulders and, squinting against the sun, saw that we were headed for a particular spot on the northern bank.

  My heart and guts did a little dance. Or rather they both got up at once and ran into each other as if trying to flee from my mortal frame.

  Even if I had never seen its precise equivalent before, the badge on my fellow passenger’s jerkin was a royal one without a doubt. It showed a lion rampant, and everyone knows that the lion and the king are one. This and the direction of the boat confirmed our destination.

  We were soon to put in at the wharf under the southwest corner of the Tower. There are plenty of stairs and berths along here, together with cranes and winches for unloading supplies. But nobody lands in this place for pleasure. Only for business. Or worse. Further along is that dreadful watergate through which traitors are conveyed into the bowels of the Tower. We were not headed there, thank God! – and a moment’s sane reflection would have convinced me that there could be no reason why a humble player would have that honour – but it was bad enough to be conveyed to any point of the wharf fronting the Tower palace. Especially when summoned by a blood-marked note which was still screwed up in my gloved fist.

  No longer much bothered about the fate of Edmund Shakespeare, I am hardly ashamed to say that I was more concerned with the immediate future of Nicholas Revill.

  But even that was driven out of my head by the sight that now lay before me. The tide was out and a stretch of foreshore, muddy and pebbled, was exposed. Sitting in the sun by the water’s edge was a bear. Almost every citizen of London from the age of six to sixty has seen captive bears dancing at fairs or fighting for their lives in the bear-pits by the Southwark theatres. But those bears are brown while the one sitting on the banks of the Thames was white. I had never seen this creature but had heard people talk of it. It was a gift from the King of Norway and its whiteness was a reflection of the desolate and ice-bound stretches of that distant land. In truth, the bear was more of a yellowy-white than snow-coloured.

  I wondered why it did not swim away, then saw that it was tethered by a chain to a great stake sunk deep into the foreshore. Shackled like a prisoner, it was also muzzled. Despite this, it looked contented enough, dashing a paw through the water in a playful way. Then it occurred to me that the white bear was being more than playful; it was trying to scoop up fish. There was no sign of any keeper.

  Our boat squelched into the mud of the shore and the boatman hopped out with the skill of long practice to secure us to one of several posts driven into the mud. The bear paid us no attention but continued to strike its paws into the water. Nearby was a set of stairs. Pinch-face indicated that I should go first while he was settling with the boatman. I thought about taking to my heels. But I wasn’t confident I could outrun him when all around was the territory of the Tower, unfamiliar to me. And given that he had found me once near my lodgings, he would find me again. And furthermore I had done nothing wrong. (Not that that’s any defence.)

  So, in a docile fashion, I slithered across the foreshore, giving the dirty white bear a very wide berth, and climbed the stairs and waited for my escort at the top. The air was not so fresh here on account of the tubs of rotting meat which, recently unloaded from the offal-boat, were sitting on the wharf. Lettering on the tubs indicated they were supplied by the Butchers’ Company – no doubt for the other Tower animals which I could hear even now. A mixture of barks, brays, screeches and growls was coming out of the mouths of God-knows-what creatures over the wall on the other side of the moat. This south-west corner was dominated by the Lion Tower, which, to judge by the unfinished castellations and the scaffolding still clinging to the bright new stonework, was being enlarged.

  It was widely known that King James had a special interest in the beasts of the Tower, not because he wished to study them but because he liked watching them kill each other. He enjoyed seeing his lions baited by dogs, bulls, boars and so on. Of course the lions tended to prevail, but I’d heard that any animal, such as a fighting mastiff, which acquitted itself honourably might be allowed to live out the rest of its days in peace. The grand animal contests were restricted to the king and his circle, but on other days any citizen might gaze at the Tower beasts either by paying three pennies or by bringing his own domestic animal – dogs, chickens, sheep – to be devoured by the larger ones. I had never seen the Tower beasts myself, though whether it was out of lack of curiosity or reluctance to open my purse I’m not sure.

  By now the pustular pinch-face had joined me at the top of the stairs. He beckoned me to follow him, and we walked around the moat and the bulging western flank of the area that housed the animals. The moat had been almost drained, presumably for ease of work on the buildings in this quarter. Or perhaps it was that London no longer feared an attack on its greatest citadel. Beyond this was a drawbridge and a great gate. There were two soldiers sitting in a little sentry-house, but they were eating and drinking and hardly glanced up as we approached. We had come through more than half a circle so that ahead of us was the causeway leading back to the Lion Tower. My heart thudded louder in my ears than my feet sounded on the drawbridge. I felt as helpless as one of those domestic dogs being delivered over to the lions’ pleasure.

  We went through a second gate at the end of the causeway, where my guide nodded at a single soldier who didn’t return the greeting, and into the cluster of buildings grouped under the L
ion Tower. Still I saw no beasts, but I could smell their rank odours as well as hear them. Then it was up a flight of spiral stairs to an oak door on which pinch-face knocked, almost with delicacy. Receiving some reply, he unlatched the door and, putting a hand in the small of my back, as good as pushed me into the chamber.

  ‘Here he is, sir,’ he said, before shutting the door and leaving me alone with the room’s occupant.

  Like Scoto the Mantuan in Tower Street, this individual was sitting behind a desk, working on some papers. But there the resemblance ended. The room was neat and clean, with a view of the river through a glazed window. The desk-man was a kindly faced gent, with spectacles. I could have sworn he looked relieved to see me once he had taken off his spectacles. And for the first time in what was only a half-hour but seemed like half a lifetime, my terror started to subside. Perhaps I would escape incarceration in the Tower after all.

  ‘You are Nicholas Revill of the King’s Men?’

  ‘I am – but I don’t understand what I am doing here.’

  ‘Be patient, Mr Revill, and I will explain our difficult position. I am Ralph Gill . . .’

  There was a second’s hesitation as if to give me the chance to recognize the name. I nodded but had no idea who he was. Luckily he supplied the answer.

  ‘. . . Keeper of the King’s Lions. Naturally there are other animals under my charge, but it is only the lions which matter. My father, Thomas Gill, also bore the same title, and I hope that my son will inherit it in due course. It is an honour, you know.’

  I nodded again, although with no notion of where we were heading.

  ‘This morning we made an unfortunate discovery. It involves a friend of yours.’

  ‘Edmund Shakespeare?’

  ‘Just so. Edmund Shakespeare. It was the name which gave me pause and made me agree to his sending you a note asking for your presence here. You are able to confirm, Mr Revill, that this individual is indeed the brother of William Shakespeare?’