The Twelfth Night Murder

by Anne Rutherford

  The Goat and Boar lay in an alley off Bank Side, from which there was no access or egress but from that street. There was no entrance to the public house except by walking along the embankment just west of the bridge. Tonight Suzanne, in spite of herself, walked as close to the buildings away from the bank wall as she could. Braving the Bank Side was tempting fate, but not too much. Probably. She stared over at the water’s edge, and slowed.

  It was just a river. Even were she to fall in, she wouldn’t necessarily drown. She knew how to swim, having learned as a child in a pond on her uncle’s farm. Tonight she wasn’t even wearing skirts that might pull her under. If she fell in, it would be a simple matter to swim to a quay, or even float downstream to one, and climb out. The river was filthy, not deadly.

  She stopped walking, and stared some more. Why should she fear something told to her by someone she didn’t know and hadn’t asked? The woman knew the king, but she shouldn’t be taken as a prophet of any kind. After all, Daniel also knew the king and she certainly never took his word as gospel. Not anymore, in any case. It was silly to avoid the river when it couldn’t hurt her. She took some steps toward it.

  As she crossed the street, evening traffic passed around her, this way and that. Street vendors cried their wares to her, but she ignored them. A carriage approached and its driver shouted at her to clear the way, so she hurried a few steps closer to the brink. Clopping horses and rattling wheels passed harmlessly behind her, and she gazed some more at the river.

  Braziers here and there flickered up and down along the stone riverbank. There weren’t many boats on the water this time of day and this time of year, but a few showed torchlight and bobbed like water candles in the current. The dank smell didn’t seem so bad to her; she was used to it. Here in Southwark, all her life the water of the Thames had helped weave the fabric of her days and nights. Her early childhood had been spent in this very street, living and working in the brothel. Maddie was dead now, and her house had been made tenements still occupied by whores and thieves who now paid rent instead of working for it. Her days there had been nearly half a lifetime ago, but since then she’d never strayed far, and the smell of the river still spoke to her of home.

  “Whatever has got you so enraptured?”

  Suzanne jumped. Daniel’s voice spoke so close to her ear it seemed to come from inside her head. He laughed and she turned to slap his arm. Up the street she saw his carriage standing near a brazier, and realized it was the one that had nearly run her down.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you. You were staring so intently at the river, I thought you might have seen something particularly interesting you could share with me.” His smile was wide and handsome, with teeth only slightly discolored by age. He was nearly forty, slightly older than herself, and few men his age could boast a full complement. She saw him as the youth who had once been her lover, who still touched a small, dim place in her heart.

  Those days when she’d been a young, stupid girl had been the time of magic, when anything she wanted had seemed possible and nothing mattered more than their love. Even then he’d been married, for a man of his station must marry for political and financial advantage and she’d offered neither. But that had never been large in her thoughts. She’d given him everything, and he’d squandered it. This bank had been their meeting place.

  “I was only taking in the beauty of the river.”

  That brought a short bark of a laugh. “If you say so, though I can’t imagine anyone thinking that stinking runnel a thing of beauty.”

  Suzanne only shrugged and declined to argue. She thought the river at night was a lovely sight, so deep in the darkness, and torchlit barges moving silently along it. She didn’t care what he thought. “Come,” she said, and took his arm though it hadn’t been offered. “Let us go to the Goat and Boar. I’m thirsty for a glass of wine.”

  “An expensive one, I’ll wager.”

  “Of course. Anything less would not be worth the swallowing, much like most men I’ve known.”

  Daniel let out a long guffaw.

  The Goat and Boar was lively that night. When Suzanne and Daniel arrived they were hard-pressed to find a seat in the throng. An extra table had been brought to seat patrons, and even so, every chair in the room was occupied. Several men stood by the hearth where a mutton joint that dropped fragrant grease into the fire was nearing edibility. They were holding cups and tankards as they argued amiably about bears and bulls that fought dogs in the arenas near the bridge. Some tarts loitered here and there, young girls Suzanne didn’t know. The faces of the whores changed far more often than those of the men in this place, and keeping up with the comings and goings of the girls on Bank Side was near impossible.

  Suzanne looked around to see if any of her Players were there, and her heart lifted to find an entire table of them. The small one at the back was surrounded by actors and musicians from the Globe. Matthew, Liza, Louis, Big Willie, whose physique belied his name, and Horatio, whose wig just would not stay straight on his entirely bald head. It canted to one side, though he was forever straightening it with an absent shove.

  And Ramsay. Diarmid was there, wearing his bright red kilt and a clean, white linen shirt with the drawstring at its neck untied and hanging loose over his chest. His Highland bonnet of blue wool sat on the table before him, next to his cup of whisky. At the moment he was laughing at something someone had just said, but when he looked up and saw Suzanne on Daniel’s arm his smile died.

  Then he resurrected it, for Ramsay was not one to let himself appear defeated. Or even damaged. He leapt to his feet and gestured to his chair that Suzanne should sit instead of himself. Suzanne sat, gladly, for she didn’t care to stand and had not come with Daniel. She didn’t mind letting Ramsay play the gentleman in front of the actual gentleman.

  Now Ramsay and Daniel stood, Ramsay with his whisky and Daniel looking around for somewhere to sit. Louis, knowing his place as the least man present, hopped to his feet so the earl could take his chair. But Daniel, though he gazed at it for a moment to consider sitting, smiled and shook his head. His glance at Ramsay told Suzanne that though his rank entitled him to the chair, he would stand as long as Ramsay did. Daniel was a veteran of the civil war, and he liked to remind everyone that Ramsay was nothing but a soft actor. He gestured to Young Dent, the proprietor, for a whisky for himself and wine in a clean glass for Suzanne. Expensive wine.

  Matthew said, loudly over the roar of voices in the close room, “I’m surprised, Suzanne, to see you so near the river tonight.”

  She laughed. “It takes more than dark mutterings from an old witch to keep me away from the Goat and Boar.”

  “What dark mutterings do you mean, Suze?” Ramsay asked. His far northern brogue had smoothed out some during his months in London, but his speech was still quite crisp with rolling Rs and slender vowels.

  She waved away the subject as if it were nothing, though she didn’t really feel it was. “Oh, just an old woman who told me to stay away from the water for some weeks.”

  “Said she was going to drown, she did,” said Louis.

  “Did not. She only said my life would change and death was involved.”

  “Sounds a great deal like drowning to me.”

  She shrugged and laughed. “In any case, I can hardly stay away from the Thames for so long. Most weeks I cross it more than once. I’d hate to be utterly trapped in Southwark.” She tossed an insouciant grin to Ramsay and Daniel, and found them staring hard at each other, their postures with chests out and chins up, like roosters in a fighting ring. A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. Men had fought over her before, but only when very drunk, and the contest had always been over the money she cost rather than her affections. To see Daniel and Ramsay like this was not just a surprise, but a pleasant one.

  One of the tarts moving through the room in search of a patron for the evening sidled up to Dan
iel, clearly the more affluent of the men at that table. The girl was uncommon-pretty. Her cheeks glowed with natural, ruddy health beneath porcelain skin. Her lips were full and soft, and when she smiled they showed dimples at the corners that seemed in turn to light up her eyes. Her high spirits and quick laugh made her eminently likeable, and Suzanne found her fascinating. There was something about this girl that simply lit up the room with joie de vivre. Suzanne couldn’t help smiling with her.

  She pressed her bosom to Daniel, batted her eyes, and vowed she was so thirsty she could just blow away on the slightest breeze. The way her mouth caressed the word “blow” with O-shaped lips, it was plain what she would give in return for a drink.

  Daniel replied, “Nonsense. You’re as full of piss and vinegar as any girl I’ve ever seen.” Suzanne knew he would buy the girl an ale, but he’d give her a hard time about it first. He might even expect her to take him upstairs immediately and save the drinking for after, but she thought probably not tonight. He wouldn’t care to leave herself and Ramsay in the same room.

  The tart’s bosom wasn’t as ample, and therefore not as revealed, as those of other girls in the room, but her lips were very soft and plump. They were painted a bold crimson that stood out in her very pale face like a winter rose on snow. When she smiled her teeth were large and quite white. Surely she must have been younger than she at first appeared. Tall for her age, and therefore no more than twelve or thirteen. Hardly old enough to have a bosom at all, never mind an ample one. During Suzanne’s day as a tart, she’d seen so many young girls such as this, she came to realize that at seventeen she’d entered the profession very late. She’d been nearly a hag when she’d started at Maddie’s, where other girls had arrived so young many couldn’t remember any other life.

  The girl wore a wig of nearly white blonde, and a dress of blue satin adorned with a profusion of cream-colored lace at wrist and breast, where it somewhat mitigated her lack of mature curves. Her waist was miniscule, so narrow Suzanne might have spanned it with her own rather small hands. Daniel’s one hand rested at the small of her back, and was barely hidden by it. The girl held a fan she waved before her face in tiny, precise movements while she eyed Daniel like a large cat sizing a doe for a kill, with an energy and mischief that mesmerized. Suzanne watched with an amused smile, as if enjoying a well-acted play.

  Then she realized what she was seeing was a true act. More than the usual feigned interest of a prostitute for a client, Suzanne sensed this was a put-on from the very bottom of it. The veins on the girl’s hands stood out in bulging blue ridges. When her fan dropped a little too low, in her throat could be seen a distinct Adam’s apple. A small one, to be sure, but it was there. She began to notice other things. The girl’s posture was just a tiny bit too feminine. Like a caricature of a female rather than a girl who has been one her entire life. The voice was too soft. Too . . . practiced. Suzanne realized what she was looking at was a boy in a dress. A boy just beginning his entry to manhood.

  A smile of mischief spread across her face as she watched Daniel flirt with the boy. Did he know, or would he soon learn a handful of what awaited beneath those skirts was more than he’d bargained for? Suzanne in the past had sometimes passed herself off as a boy, for men of that persuasion rarely cared for the boy bits and she could often service such a client without even disrobing much. She knew there was a demand for boys in dresses, but she’d never come across one. The laws against sodomy being what they were, those who practiced it kept to themselves for the most part. So far as she knew, this was the first male tart she’d ever seen.

  Daniel’s expression never betrayed a knowledge he was about to go upstairs with a boy. Furthermore, as his conversation with the young sodomite progressed, it became plain Daniel did intend to take him upstairs. His hand went into the slit at the side of the boy’s dress, as the boy pretended coyness and stepped away from the earl. He snapped his fan closed and wagged it side-to-side in a no-no gesture. Daniel laughed as if the boy were joking, and pulled him by the waist to press himself against his belly. Suzanne watched closely to see whether Daniel would sense something beneath the copious skirts, but he seemed not to notice anything amiss. His grin was wide as the boy smiled behind his fan and looked up at him with dewy eyes and dimpled cheeks. Daniel looked as if he might steal a kiss.

  It was definitely time to put a stop to this lest he embarrass himself. “Daniel!” she cried, and put a hand on his arm. “Daniel, you must taste this wine! ’Tis the finest Young Dent has ever served here!”

  Daniel was awfully taken with the boy in his arms, if not smitten. It took another pull at his arm to get him to even look at her. She grabbed his collar and yanked him hard enough to bend him at the waist so she could speak directly into his ear. “Daniel! Stop that now!”

  He laughed, ready to ignore her as if she were only jealous of the prostitute, and that surely was the reason for this display. But she held tight to his collar and continued, “That is a boy you’re about to bed!”

  He laughed again, certain she must be having him on.

  “Heed me, Throckmorton! Look at him!” She shook his arm in an attempt to bring him to his senses.

  Daniel saw her eyes, and the smile left his face. A frown put a crease between his eyes, puzzled, and he looked at the boy. For his part, the boy maintained his femininity though he knew he’d been revealed. He graced Daniel with the softest, most adoring eyes and pursed lips Suzanne had ever seen, even in a skilled prostitute.

  But Daniel finally saw through the ruse. He straightened and reddened. Then he looked around to see who else had seen, and found the entire table of Players watching, some grinning and others unsure where to look from embarrassment. There was no saving the moment. So, with all the social grace bred into him by generations of noble ancestry, he took the boy’s free hand and quite formally bent and kissed the back of it in the Continental manner. Then he straightened and said in the warmest tones he could manage at the moment, “I must apologize, mistress. I fear I’ve just remembered a commitment I’ve made elsewhere. I hope you will forgive me, for I must cut short our conversation.”

  The boy said, “Another time, then?”

  There was a snort of laughter from someone at the table. Suzanne looked to see who it was, but couldn’t tell by their faces. They all listened intently for Daniel’s response.

  He replied, “I doubt our paths will cross again.”

  The boy’s eyes betrayed disappointment, but he curtsied with utter grace and said, “As you wish. I should have liked to make your acquaintance, but one must accept what one cannot change.”

  “Indeed.”

  There was another snort, and this time Suzanne caught Louis laughing into his cup. She threw him a sharp look, and he looked away, struggling not to giggle.

  The boy tart tapped the end of his fan against Daniel’s chin, then ran it down his chest as he turned away from his would-be client and the rest of the table, immediately off on his quest for someone with interest as well as money. He disappeared into the press in an instant, and Suzanne looked to Daniel for his reaction.

  The red cloud of embarrassment hovered over him as if he were smoking that tobacco plant from the New World. Suzanne could almost see it rising from the top of his head, in waves of heat.

  Ramsay said, “That boy is one of the most beautiful women I’ve seen in my entire time here in London. ’Tis a pity he lacks the one grace I find indispensible.”

  “Quim?” asked Louis.

  “Bosom. I like a nice cushion for my face.” He gestured to his chin with a mannered flourish of his fingers in wicked satire of the upper classes, and his accent was for the moment straight from Puritan Parliament. The table roared with laughter.

  “Polite little fellow,” remarked Matthew. “He didn’t even seem studied.”

  Suzanne agreed. There was a difference between those who studied manners and those who had been born
to them, and that boy had appeared utterly natural.

  Daniel finally was able to speak. “He might have been a bit more honest about his . . . equipage. That would have been more polite, I think.” Then he turned to Suzanne. “And you might have told me.”

  “I did. As soon as I realized it myself. He was extremely good, wasn’t he? I’ve never seen better, on or off the stage.”

  Ramsay turned to look after the boy, though he’d quite disappeared into the crowd. “I wonder if he even has his equipage, as you say. I saw no hint of a beard. Could be a castrato?”

  “No beard yet. If he was over thirteen, I’ll eat my hat.”

  “My hat, you mean.”

  She laid a hand against the Cavalier’s hat on her head. “I suppose you must have eaten the bird already. All that is left is this feather.” She flicked the long feather so it flipped up and down like a horse’s tail.

  That brought another roar of laughter about the table, and the ugly mood was entirely lifted. Daniel could now shrug off his embarrassment, and conversation turned to that evening’s performance. The boy tart was tucked away in everyone’s minds, to be brought out again for a good laugh on another day.

  Suzanne had no idea at that moment that nobody would ever again laugh about that boy.

  Chapter Three

  The next morning Suzanne attended rehearsal for Julius Caesar, playing the role of Calpurnia, Caesar’s wife. It was a small role, and suited her for that, for it meant little work. She’d recently played Lady Macbeth and was ready for a rest. Besides, she’d resigned herself to smaller roles these days. The few large roles for women were usually for younger women, and there were still many men to take the meatier roles for older women. Today she wasn’t needed in any of the scenes being rehearsed, but sat in a lower gallery to observe the development of the rest of the play. She felt it always went better for the play as a whole if the entire cast paid as much attention as possible to the other scenes if they could. A play was never rehearsed as a whole until its opening, and so the actors were kept busy throughout the morning working on this scene or that, but Suzanne encouraged those who had less to do onstage to pay attention to scenes that didn’t involve them. It made for a more cohesive performance when it all was finally strung together as a whole. Sometimes the difference was negligible, but most times it was significant.