The Bookman's Tale

by Charlie Lovett

“I’ll show you the way,” said Marlowe, draining his mug and pushing back his chair.

  Bartholomew had no wish to betray the tenderness of his feelings to his drunken companions and so banged his mug on the table with false enthusiasm. “Lead on,” he said to Marlowe. “For though you say he dies in poverty, a bookseller can often find profit on a deathbed.”

  Bartholomew parted with Marlowe in front of the narrow house in Dowgate where Robert Greene lay dying. Mrs. Isam let him in.

  “Quite a lot of company he’s ’aving today,” she said. “Though none as can pay off his debts.”

  He was just about to knock on the door at the top of the stairs, when he heard a shrill voice from within.

  “Course he’s yours, you barnacle. You’d think lying there dying you’d be willing to admit it. Not like he can do you any harm now. Just want the poor bastard to be able to say he ’ad a father once.”

  Bartholomew pressed his ear to the door but could not quite hear Greene’s low reply to this outburst. Soon the woman’s voice erupted again. It could only be Emma Ball.

  “Fie on you, then, fie. You’ve only give me two things in me whole life—our son and this useless wad of paper.” He heard a thud as she apparently threw something against the wall. “Well, you can keep that, though much good as it’ll do you where you’re going. Burn up fast there it will. And I’ll choose a more decent corpse for my son’s father.”

  Bartholomew heard angry steps coming toward the door and barely had time to throw himself against the wall before the door flung open and a wild-looking woman in filthy clothes, clutching a mewling wad of rags, flew from the room and down the stairs. Waiting until he heard her pass through the outer door, Bartholomew stepped into the room.

  “Your mother, I presume,” he said to his old friend.

  “Barty!” said Greene, bursting into something between a fit of coughing and a laugh. “How good to see you.”

  Robert Greene’s usually florid face was pale and drawn. It was hard to believe that this was the same man who had produced great romances like Mamillia and Pandosto and written those marvelous pamphlets about life in the underbelly of London. This was the man who had lived with vigor all those rakish adventures he had written about; but now his signature pointed hair was nothing but a wispy tangle, his beard was matted and unkempt, and he wore only a borrowed nightshirt, having sold, he told Bartholomew, his beloved doublet of goose-turd green to offset some of his many debts.

  “Still writing I see,” said Bartholomew, noticing the pen and paper on the crude table by Greene’s bedside.

  “My deathbed confessions,” said Greene. “You shall enjoy this bit, I believe. It’s about the glove-maker’s son.” Greene reached for the papers beside his bed and read in a weak echo of his formerly robust voice.

  “There is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger’s hart wrapped in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.” Greene’s voice again dissolved into coughing and laughter.

  “It will be a shame to see you go,” said Bartholomew, “for no one laughs more heartily at your humor than you do yourself.”

  “True, true,” said Greene, falling back against the pillow. “I doubt Mr. Shakespeare will laugh at this.”

  “And what of your other visitor?” asked Bartholomew.

  “Marlowe?”

  “The one with the shrill voice and the bundle in her arms.”

  “Ah, be careful whom you bed, good Barty, for in bedding there is oft breeding.”

  “Well said, sir,” said Bartholomew. “And that bundle that smelled of shite and sour milk—I’m betting that was your breeding?”

  “So says his whore of a mother. Fortunatus, she calls him, though she’s no cause to. As unfortunate a wretch as was ever brought into this world, and I’ll not claim him when I’m on my way out.” Greene burst into another coughing fit, this one more prolonged than the others. For the first time, Bartholomew truly felt his friend was about to die. He again felt an unexpected surge of emotion—not for the lost debauchery but, surprisingly, for the lost soul. Surely after the life he had led, Robert Greene could expect no heavenly reward.

  “Do me a final favor, Barty,” said Greene when his coughing had subsided.

  “Anything, old friend,” said Bartholomew.

  “There’s a book on the floor there.” He pointed to the other side of the bed and Bartholomew retrieved a thin quarto volume.

  “Pandosto. One of your romances.”

  “Indeed,” said Greene. “In a moment of foolishness I gave it to that sister of a scoundrel and she returned it to me here on my deathbed. Sell it for me, will you, Barty? It’s not worth much, but sell it and give the money to Mrs. Isam. Without her, I should die in the street, and hers is a debt I shan’t be able to repay in this world.”

  “Consider it done,” said Bartholomew, tucking the volume under his arm.

  “Now, off with you,” said Greene. “There are women in Southwark who will miss me tonight, and someone must tend to them.” He laughed again and Bartholomew found that he could not answer, so he only bowed low at the foot of the bed and backed out of the room, gently closing the door behind him. In the dim stairwell he looked at the book Greene had given him. It would bring a few shillings, maybe more with the death of its author. As he stepped out into the late-afternoon light, he suddenly thought that he should like to keep this volume himself, as a memento of his soon-to-be departed friend. Digging into his doublet, he pulled out half a crown and tossed it to Mrs. Isam, who sat in front of the house plucking a chicken.

  “For the debts of your lodger,” he said.

  “Bless you, sir,” said Mrs. Isam. “It’s a start at least.”

  Bartholomew tucked the book back under his arm and strode off toward St. Paul’s, the afternoon sun blurred by the tears in his eyes.

  Kingham, Friday, February 17, 1995

  Peter wiped the sleep from his eyes as he waited for the bread to toast and the kettle to boil. He had looked through the indexes of his books on illustrators, but neither helped him identify B.B. Now he stared at Dr. Strayer’s list pinned to the message board in the kitchen. His original typed instructions were now almost obscured by the notes Peter had scrawled in the margins over the past several months. Underneath a circular stain of tea and a smudge of marmalade he could still read the list:

  Grieve for Amanda; Acknowledge Your Feelings

  Establish Regular Eating and Sleeping Habits

  Meet New People

  Re-establish Your Career

  Use Career to Bring People Closer, Not to Keep Them Away

  Develop a Passion in Addition to Books

  Learn Something New

  Get in Touch with Old Friends

  Re-establish Relationship with Amanda’s Family

  Don’t Run Away, Run Toward

  Beside “Develop a Passion” he had written and then crossed out “poetry” and “painting.” He had almost forgotten that he had purchased a watercolor set in Chipping Norton two months ago. He had given up after trying one painting. Next to “Get in Touch with Old Friends” was Francis Leland’s phone number, though Peter had not dialed it since arriving in Kingham. Beside “Meet New People,” he had scrawled the service schedule for the local parish church, but he had no intention of attending. Peter hadn’t done a very good job with his assignments.

  He would forget about the watercolor portrait, he decided. Today he would work on item number four. He would re-establish his career. After all, he had bought a couple dozen books in Hay-on-Wye for which he had customers back in the United States. He spent the rest of the morning organizing his reference books. He carefully unwrapped his purchases from Hay and put them on a shelf of their own. The Edwin Drood in which he had smuggled the watercolor required repair
, so he would repair it. Hank had been a good teacher, and though Peter was no expert conservator, he could certainly manage a job such as this. He crawled into the dimness of the cupboard under the stairs and began to pull out the boxes that held his tools and supplies. When he had everything out in the light, he realized that he’d also pulled out his abandoned set of watercolors.

  As he was about to put it back, he suddenly remembered something the salesgirl had said when he bought the watercolors. “There’s another artist lives round here. Buys paints in here all the time. A regular expert he is. Even sells old watercolors over at the antiques center.” Without pausing to move the boxes out of his way, Peter ran upstairs, grabbed the watercolor and his car keys, and bolted outside.

  —

  Chipping Norton, or “Chippy” to the locals, was the closest market town to Kingham and the place where Peter did any shopping he couldn’t accomplish in the village shop. It was not overrun by tourists, and thus a good deal more pleasant than many more famous Cotswold towns. The market square, on a steep hill, was lined on all sides with old stone buildings. In addition to the standard high street shops there was a small theater, to which Peter had never been, several nice looking restaurants, in which Peter had never eaten, and an antiques center.

  The bell on the door that jingled as Peter stepped inside didn’t summon any attention, so he set off through a maze of furniture, china, lamps, vases, and more, in search of watercolors. Passing a stall of old books he made a mental note to return some other day and take a closer look. On the second floor he found what he was looking for—about two dozen nicely matted and framed pieces, mostly Victorian, but some eighteenth century. He didn’t have an expert eye, but he suspected that only one or two of them were up to Amanda’s standards. From the corner of each hung a price tag on the back of which was stamped, M. WELLS, ROSE COTTAGE, CHURCHILL.

  Peter had driven through the village of Churchill every time he’d gone to Chippy but had never stopped or paid any attention to the cottages that lined the few streets. Still, it took only five minutes to find Rose Cottage, set back slightly from the Kingham road.

  As he stood on the doorstep in that uncertain interval between knocking and hearing movement within, it occurred to Peter that in seeking out M. Wells, he was following Dr. Strayer’s third instruction: meet new people. No sooner did he think this than the familiar churning stomach, clammy hands, and dizziness that always accompanied the forced meeting of strangers came over him. With one hand leaning against the stone door frame of Rose Cottage, he did his best to shake it off and concentrate on the square of paper in his jacket pocket. Perhaps if he could make tracing the watercolor his new passion, he thought, he could knock out two items on the list at once.

  The door opened to reveal a tall man with swept-back white hair who looked as though he hadn’t shaved in a week. He wore a paint-spattered and moth-eaten brown sweater and an irritated expression.

  “Selling anything?” he said.

  “No,” said Peter.

  “Come to talk about God then, have you?”

  “No, I wanted to talk to you about a watercolor.”

  The man considered Peter as he might a piece of furniture he was thinking of buying. Finally he turned, and with a slight softening of his expression said, “Right, I’ve just put the kettle on. Come in and have a cuppa then.”

  Peter followed the man through a dark and cluttered sitting room and out into a large, sunny conservatory. On an easel stood a watercolor of the view across the fields. A fine Jacobean manor house had been added where a copse of trees now stood.

  “Evenlode House,” said Peter’s host. “You can’t see it anymore, the trees have grown up so, but it’s still there, parts of it anyway.”

  “I’d no idea there was such a lovely manor house so close to Kingham,” said Peter.

  “You from Kingham then?”

  “No,” said Peter. “That is, I’m from the United States. I live in Kingham. I’m Peter Byerly.”

  “Martin,” said the artist, offering neither his last name nor a hand and disappearing into what Peter assumed must be the kitchen. “You’ll not find Evenlode House particularly lovely,” came Martin’s voice from the next room, “if you find it at all. Family’s been out of money for a few generations now. Not sure they even live in the main house anymore. Still, they’re not too proud to keep out the curiosity seekers with a nice load of buckshot.”

  Martin returned with a tray bearing a teapot, two cups, and two digestive biscuits. He put the tray on the table, handed a cup of tea to Peter, and took both biscuits for himself. “So, Mr. Byerly—is it a new watercolor or an old one you’re interested in?”

  “An old one,” said Peter. “But I’m not looking to buy. I thought you might be able to tell me something about this.” He pulled out the portrait and laid it on the table. “I’m trying to find out who the artist is. Or who the subject is.” Martin frowned, set down the half a biscuit he hadn’t yet eaten, and picked up the watercolor. He stared at the painting for nearly a minute, carefully examining both sides.

  “Victorian,” he said. “Paper looks like eighteen seventies or eighteen eighties. See a lot of it in scrapbooks. Nice work. Good lines. Not easy to do detail like that in a watercolor. Someone who really knew how to handle a brush. A fine artist, I’d say.” He paused and squinted at the painting. “B.B. Never heard of him. What day is it?”

  “Uhm . . . Friday,” said Peter, thrown by the non sequitur.

  “Third Friday of the month?”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  “What you want is to go up to London then.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Peter.

  “Historical Watercolour Society meets third Friday of every month. Six-thirty in the Haldane Room, University College. Might be somebody there who can help you.”

  “Thank you,” said Peter. “I appreciate the advice. And if you happen across any other paintings by B.B., I’d be much obliged if you’d give me a call.” He pulled out a business card that read merely “Peter Byerly, Antiquarian Bookseller, Kingham, Oxfordshire” along with his phone number. Martin Wells showed no inclination to take the card from Peter’s outstretched hand, so Peter laid it on the table and showed himself out. Twenty minutes later he was stepping from the platform of Kingham station onto the 13:21 for London Paddington.

  When he and Amanda had rented a flat in Chippy the previous spring during the cottage renovations, they had ridden this train often—taking weekends in London to visit museums and go to the theater. On their last trip to the city they had taken a long walk along the south bank of the Thames. Peter had taken Amanda into Southwark Cathedral, where they found the grave of Shakespeare’s brother Edmund. They had crossed the river at Westminster, and finished the afternoon at Amanda’s beloved Tate Gallery. Peter had not visited London since.

  How much had changed in less than a year. Before, Peter and Amanda always sat facing each other on the train, so they could tease each other with their feet under the table. As ever, Amanda would sit bolt upright, a book propped on the table in front of her. She liked to ride facing forward, so Peter faced backward, looking across landscape through which the train had already passed. Now he sat alone at the back of the car in a forward-facing seat, staring blankly at what lay ahead.

  Although Martin Wells had been a bit gruff and slightly disagreeable, he had been harmless. It was always the anticipation that got Peter in trouble—his pathological dread of the unfamiliar. Dr. Strayer had a thousand explanations for Peter’s phobias, but only Amanda had ever been able to put Peter at ease among strangers. With her at his side, he’d been able to not only cross oceans but attend cocktail parties and make small talk. Amanda made it all seem easy. She could feel him tense up from across a room and would appear at his side, lay her hand on his arm, and siphon all his tension away.

  Peter arrived at Paddington at three o’cl
ock and realized two things: he had over three hours to kill before the meeting of the Historical Watercolour Society, and that the meeting would probably be very much like a cocktail party. Without giving the matter much thought, he let his feet lead him to the tube station, a habit he had developed when he and Amanda would part ways for the afternoon before meeting at Fortnum’s for tea. Amanda would go off to the Victoria and Albert Museum or the National Gallery or the Tate. Peter always went to Bloomsbury.

  He emerged from the Piccadilly Line at Russell Square, and ten minutes later he was climbing the steps of the British Museum. A million things to see in London, and Peter always came back not just to the same museum but to the same set of galleries—the British Library displays to the right of the main entrance. He knew every case by heart. When the manuscript book of Alice in Wonderland moved from the Children’s Books case to the English Literature case, Peter noticed.

  Today, Alice was opened to the scene where she grows so tall she can barely fit into the corridor. Opposite Lewis Carroll’s meticulous printing was his own full-page illustration of Alice folded up into a space too small for her body. The drawing made Peter shiver, not just because of his own bouts of claustrophobia, but because, as he looked at it, Amanda whispered “See the Pre-Raphaelite hair? Carroll was a friend of Rossetti’s.” Amanda was like this, she would rest for a while, leaving Peter in peace, and then, without warning, she would be at his elbow with a comment.

  Peter paused only briefly to admire Alice. He always did this—looked quickly at some well-loved artifact like Handel’s manuscript score of Messiah or the Gutenberg Bible—as an appetizer to his main course, his real reason for coming to the museum. That entree was the collection preserved for posterity by Robert Cotton. Although only a few of Cotton’s treasures were on permanent display, they kept Peter coming back again and again. He had been intrigued by Cotton from the moment Francis Leland first mentioned the great collector. He had learned Old English so he could read a facsimile of the Beowulf manuscript Cotton had rescued. Now he stood before the original, paying silent tribute to his idol. Though the pages were scorched around the edges from a 1731 fire, he could read the careful brown lettering with ease. This was not a translation or even a facsimile, but the Beowulf, the manuscript that forever altered English literature.