Shakespeare No More

by Tony Hays

  “You are here to investigate my broken window. Well, you and I, monsieur, we both know who did it. I complain to the Privy Council about the horrible prices charged by those with the monopoly on gold and silver thread; their knaves come and break my windows. I complain about that and you arrive. And nothing is done. Why should I waste time with you?”

  “I am not here about your broken window, Master Belott.”

  He stopped waving his hands. “Then why are you bothering me?”

  “William Shakespeare was murdered in Stratford-upon-Avon. I am charged with investigating that murder. I know of his involvement in your lawsuit against your father-in-law.”

  Belott, a man with a perpetually sour face, grimaced even further. “My sympathies to his family. But what has that to do with me?”

  “I seek his killer. And I understand that his deposition in your lawsuit did not advance your cause.”

  “His deposition was unimportant. I won my case.”

  “But you do not deny that it worked against you?”

  “I do not deny that he failed to remember many details; who could have after so long a time? But he swore that there were such promises made. Others swore as to their content. Why should I wish to kill him?”

  “Perhaps he took advantage of your wife as well as your mother-in-law.” I swear that I do not know whence the words sprang. No one I had talked to had even hinted that Will had bedded the younger Mountjoy woman.

  But rather than becoming enraged, rather than thrash me as he should have, Stephen Belott just laughed at me. “Perhaps he did. I have no idea. He swived every other woman in Saint Giles-without-Cripplegate and Saint Olave’s.”

  “She was your wife! Care you nothing for the marriage vows?” I was the one incensed. Incensed beyond all reason.

  Belott’s smile cracked his sour face. “You are too old a man to be such a fool. The marriage was about the partnership with old Mountjoy and the dowry. I will not deny that I have enjoyed my rights as her husband, but I am sure that many others have enjoyed her as well. Her mother was the same way.”

  The French! I would never understand them.

  Frustrated yet again, I turned to leave, but Belott’s voice called me back.

  “You would be better served to see old George Wilkins.”

  I turned. The name was familiar; someone had mentioned it in recent days. “Who is Wilkins?”

  “He is a tavern owner. Marie and I stayed with him for six or eight months when Mountjoy refused to honour his promises.”

  “What has he to do with Shakespeare?”

  “They were colleagues, it seemed. In playwriting or whoremongering, I do not know which.”

  Then, I remembered. Something Burbage had said about Wilkins and Shakespeare working on a play together. And about Wilkins being a scurvy type.

  “Where may I find him?”

  “His tavern now is at the corner of Turnmill and Cow Cross streets, in Clerkenwell. I wish you good fortune, for if you go into that district, you will need it.”

  With those eerie words ringing in my ears, I started out immediately for the most notorious district of London.

  ———

  ’Twas but a short walk, yet Clerkenwell was an eternity removed from St. Giles-without-Cripplegate. The signs of its decline were everywhere: broken windows, unrepaired latches, darkened houses, attesting to their vacancy. No shops greeted me along the narrow streets, only pubs and stews. Cutpurses lurked on every corner. If I escaped here with my life intact I would count myself lucky.

  Wilkins’s tavern was in a profitable location, at a busy corner. I entered the room, just now beginning to fill as night closed in around the city.

  Finding an empty table was not yet difficult, and I slid into a seat. I cast about the dimly lit room but all that I saw were strumpets plying their trade and beaten-down men looking for a bit of pleasure. In one corner a man sat smoking some of that tobacco from the New World in a clay pipe. Instinct told me that he had stolen it from one of his betters.

  A woman, more a girl actually, with heavy cosmetics, approached my table and leaned over. “What would you like?” Her hand squeezed my groin as if giving me a sample of the menu. I pushed it away, though I felt that familiar stirring.

  “George Wilkins,” I answered.

  Her lips, painted a bright red, curled into a frown. “He can’t do for you what I can.”

  “Perhaps not, but I wish to speak with him.”

  “Cor, you’re from outside the city!” She draped her arm around my neck.

  “You would wish me to think that you have never met anyone from the countryside? Please, my lady. Do not offend me. And,” I continued, reaching up and grasping the back of her neck in my hand, “return my purse or I will break your neck.”

  With a clink, it fell on the table. “Now, go and fetch George.”

  She shook my hand from her neck and flounced off through a door in the back.

  George Wilkins was truly of the lowest sort. A strange dark brown streak marked the left shoulder of his old doublet. That was where he wiped his dagger, and the brown stain was a mix, no doubt, of food and blood, some of it human. His black hair was greying, and a number of scars marked his wrinkled face. In one ear was a large, dangling earring.

  “You seek me?” The voice matched his face, deep and gravelly.

  “If you be George Wilkins.”

  He cast about, marking the patrons with his eyes, and then settled into the chair opposite.

  “Aye. I am Wilkins. Who be ye?”

  “Simon Saddler of Stratford-upon-Avon.”

  His thick eyebrows jerked skyward. “And your business?”

  “The player Shakespeare is dead.”

  Wilkins shrugged. “I have heard. Good news travels quickly.”

  “Indeed? You consider it good news?”

  “Shakespeare was a thief, and I am being kind. But if you are from Stratford, surely you must know this.”

  I chuckled. That someone of Wilkins’s ilk would call Will a thief defied belief. “He was murdered. I was told that you are the sort of man capable of such.”

  And then it was Wilkins’s turn to laugh, revealing blackened teeth. “You are direct. I like that. So you think I killed Shakespeare?”

  “I think that you may well have had reason. Now that I have spoken with you, I see that I was correct. What was it that he stole from you?”

  “My words, Master Saddler. It was I who truly wrote many of his greatest plays.”

  At that, I knew that Wilkins was as great a liar as he was a rogue. But that did not mean that he did not kill my friend. “In truth? You wrote Lear and Macbeth? How astonishing!”

  Wilkins looked a little uncomfortable. “Perhaps not every word, but they would not have been half so great without my contribution. Upon that, you can rely. We wrote Pericles together. He often came to me for help.”

  “Forgive me, Master Wilkins, but are you not a victualler?”

  “So what if I am? Your Master Shakespeare held gentlemen’s horses when he first came to the city.”

  “Quite right. Allow me to be blunt, Master Wilkins. William Shakespeare was poisoned, and I believe that you could have had a hand in this. A man of your parts was seen recently in the lanes of Stratford.”

  “And you have an eyewitness that says it was me?”

  “No,” I admitted. “But that does not mean it was not you.”

  “It does not, as you say. Your Shakespeare angered many men, and women. Not just me. If you intend to question them all, you will be spending more than a few days in the city. I would plan on a few years.”

  “That is not the Shakespeare that I knew,” I said in my friend’s defense.

  “Then you did not know the Shakespeare of London. He was conniving and crooked. Those who would kill him are legion.”

  “So you would have me believe. But I tend to think that you are just trying to obscure your own guilt.”

  Wilkins’s eyes flashed. “You are
a fool. Do you think that I will confess simply because you came here and asked? Take my advice, return to Stratford and trouble me no longer. I have nothing to say to you.”

  “And you are a pimp. And I do not need your leave to pursue my enquiry.”

  Wilkins jerked to his feet. “Perhaps not, but you may need my leave to stay alive. Get out!”

  Two of his ruffians moved in from opposite corners. But Wilkins waved them off with both hands. “Master Saddler knows the way out.”

  That this villain may have had a hand in ending Will’s life sent a white heat searing through me.

  With his hands outstretched, I took a gamble and kicked him in the groin, hard and square, taking two steps back quickly while a groaning Wilkins, his eyes bulging, collapsed to the floor.

  The ruffians descended on me.

  Almost.

  They stopped short when a dagger magically appeared in my hand. I had been palming it in the last few minutes of talking to Wilkins, trying to decide whether to kill him on the spot or not. He would not be missed, and any high-born friends he had would be scrambling to deny him.

  I backed out of the tavern slowly, with the other customers choosing to stay out of the fracas.

  Once outside, I trotted a block away and stopped to catch my breath, keeping one eye on the tavern door. The day had ended some time before, and Clerkenwell was even more sinister at night.

  I tensed, as the door swung open and a figure emerged.

  Even in the darkness, I could see the swaying shadows of a kirtle. It was one of Wilkins’s women, the one who had acosted me.

  She glanced up and down the street, uncertain, but then turned in my direction.

  Just as she was about to run past me, I reached out from the shadows and snagged her hand.

  “You seek me, mistress?”

  “Master,” she said, her breathing jagged. “You take chances.” In the dim light spilling from a nearby house, I saw that she had her own dagger at the ready. “You are a friend of Will Shakespeare’s?”

  “I am.”

  “And he is dead?”

  “He is.”

  “Last month, a nobleman came to see George. They went to one of the rooms upstairs and George allowed no one else. But I took them a jug of strong beer, and I heard them discussing Shakespeare. Something about papers and that it might be too late. The next day, George left and was gone for six days. Last week, the noble came again. George left on the morrow and just returned yesterday.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Even in the darkness, I could see the twinkle in her eyes, or at least I thought I could. “The noble was Southampton. He comes here often. And they were discussing Shakespeare, and now he is dead. I needed little more.”

  I looked at her in earnest now. Beneath the horrid cosmetics, she was a pretty girl. Young. Too young for a life like this. “Whence came you?”

  “You mean, how did I end up with Wilkins?” She paused, and for a second I feared that I had hurt her feelings. “My parents died when I was twelve. I was sent to live with an uncle, and before I had been in his house a fortnight, he began coming to my room and touching me. I did not know what to do, and he said that it was natural. His wife caught him one night; she beat me and said I had tempted him. He kept coming back, and she caught us again, and this time beat me harder. I ran away. Eventually, I found myself here. Is that what you wished to know?” Her tone was one of challenge.

  “If you would like to leave this life, come to me in Stratford. I can find you work there in a decent home, if that would suit you.”

  She turned from me. “I am no longer fit for such work.”

  “You are fit for whatever you wish to do. My offer stands open. And thank you for your help.” I looked at her carefully, seeing at last the girl beneath the paint. I pulled a crown from my pouch and pressed it firmly into her palm. An hour of pleasure in a stew could be had for twopence; the sum I had given her represented perhaps six months of what Wilkins would let her keep of that twopence.

  Her eyes grew wide as she realized what her hand held. She stumbled backwards a step and then scampered back up the street and slipped into the tavern.

  I leaned against the wall and thought about what she had told me. Could Southampton have conspired to kill Will? Why? In what damnable enterprise had he involved himself?

  While I racked my brain, searching for an answer, I saw the door of the tavern open again. This time it was Wilkins himself who slipped out. I resolved to follow him. Undoubtedly, he was going to get counsel from his patron. Probably Southampton. And that might give me some leverage when I next faced the earl.

  ’Twas but a short walk to Southampton House, and that is exactly where Wilkins went. The guards at the gate did not even blink when the tavern owner brazenly walked straight through. Obviously, he was a frequent visitor.

  And then a second man followed quickly on his heels.

  My heart skipped a beat.

  Ben Jonson.

  I would have given half my wealth to know what those three were discussing. But I could see no way to eavesdrop. I did not know in which chamber they were meeting, and I was certain that if I tried to brazen my way in that I would find myself in a damp, dark gaol cell somewhere.

  Suddenly, I was very tired. This day had been far too long already. There was little else that I could do. Even the walk back across the city to London Bridge and thence to the George seemed too tiresome a journey.

  I found a simple tavern near Gray’s Inn and let a chamber for the night. One of Will’s muses touched me there. I took the chamber in the name of George Wilkins.

  Chapter Seven

  My second night in London passed more peacefully than the first. I did not find Ben Jonson waiting for me in my chamber. No assailant breached my door. But dreams of Will Shakespeare entwined with my Peg breached my sleep.

  I rose early the next morning. Ben and I had made plans to meet at midday for a meal at the Mermaid. That was a meeting I longed for. By that time, I hoped to have seen Southampton again. The events of the previous evening had not changed my plans. Indeed, Southampton would find it very difficult to deny me my request. Bacon and Coke would give me what I needed because they had needs as well.

  As I passed through the public room, I heard two men talking loudly about a fire. The very word struck fear in people. An unchecked fire could level the entire city.

  “A fire?” Curiosity got the better of me.

  One man looked up. “Aye, at the George in Southwark.”

  Though I tried to pretend nonchalance, my eyes could not help but grow wide.

  “Do you know it?” he asked.

  “Aye. When did it start?”

  “After the midnight, in the southern wing. They caught it quickly though. It was confined to but a pair of chambers. Still, it killed one poor fellow.”

  “Who?”

  “What did they say his name was?” the first man asked his fellow.

  “Saddler, I think. From somewhere in the north.”

  A chill cut me to the bone. I knew then what course of action Southampton, Jonson and Wilkins had decided upon. The bothersome constable from Stratford needed to die. I wondered idly who the dead man was, but I had little time to spend on things I could do nothing about.

  I nodded to the two men and emerged from the inn out into the same grey haze that always covered London. Though my feet moved me at a slow gait, my mind was busy, racing through all the possibilities before me.

  It seemed clear now that Southampton, Wilkins and Jonson had conspired to kill Shakespeare, to keep him from revealing whatever he had known about the Overbury Affair. Jonson had probably administered the poison on his most recent trip to visit Will. Wilkins must have been the stranger from the city lurking about Stratford. They thought that they had resolved the matter permanently until I appeared, asking questions about Will’s death, learning more, probably, than they wanted me to. So then I, too, had to be eliminated.

  What
ever Will had done, it must have been critical to the success of the plot. Perhaps he had helped deliver poison to the Tower. Perhaps he had carried instructions to the warders.

  A cold fury built within me. They had used Will and then killed him as they would any sort of creature crossing their path that annoyed them. William Shakespeare deserved better from this world he had entered, or any other world for that matter.

  Poor Will! Had he known what he was involving himself in? Had his need for money been that great? I would have given him what he needed.…

  No, I would not have.

  I would have turned him away.

  And that realisation saddened me.

  What had happened to us?

  Then a reality struck home. I was dead. Or at least Jonson, Southampton and Wilkins thought so. I could use this with Southampton to bend him to my will. The nobles had others do their dirty work. If I appeared, alive, at his home, then he would panic. But he would not strike at me there. He would send messengers to his other conspirators, ordering them to finish the job. But if I judged him correctly, he would do whatever I asked of him, partly from shock and partly from a need to appear agreeable as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

  These were the things that occupied me as I walked back to Holborn and Southampton House. Beneath the earl’s anger and outrage was desperation. And desperation was a powerful motivator. Yes, he would not only see me, he would hurry to my aid. Dead men who are not dead do well as motivators.

  And, as I had predicted to myself, I was rushed to Southampton’s study where he sat, once more, at the small desk. Gone was the anger in his voice and manner, replaced with a naked expression of surprise, and a bit of fear, or so I thought. Hoping to build on that, I chose my words carefully.

  “My lord, I have carefully considered your advice.”

  “I am pleased,” he said, and struggled to seem to mean it. “I grew a bit frustrated yesterday. Please be assured that I mean only the best for you. I understand that you have your duty to perform, and I applaud you for your devotion to it. Would that more of our public officials cared so deeply.”

  “My lord, I have become aware of the present enquiry into the death of Sir Thomas Overbury.”