The Quality of Mercy

by Faye Kellerman

  “And de Andrada had told you that the evidence was indisputable?” Essex said, leaning forward, elbow on his desk.

  “Aye, m’lord,” said Albert. “He used the word indisputable.”

  “Has he informed you of the contents of the letter?” Essex asked.

  “Why no, m’lord,” said Albert. “Did you want him to?”

  Essex picked up a silver bowl of ale and threw it at his servant. It whacked Albert in the stomach and drenched his gown and face. The servant didn’t flinch.

  Essex said, “Of course I don’t want you to know the contents of the letter, you stupid dolt. I just wonder whether the weasel told you things that should have been kept secret.”

  “He told me nothing, m’lord,” answered Albert.

  “Save that the contents of this letter hold indisputable evidence against Dr. Roderigo Lopez.”

  “Aye,” said Albert.

  “Sit,” Essex said, pointing to a stool in the corner.

  Albert obeyed. Essex walked over to the main hearth of the library and stoked the fire. His lodgings at Whitehall Palace were the largest of any nobility. His library was wood-paneled, the ceiling fresco overleafed with gold and silver. Others had to be satisfied with wee cells that barely had enough space for a desk and globe. But his was a huge chamber. It easily accommodated all of his books, two gold floor sconces three feet in diameter, a pair of marble statues dedicated to him by some peasant artist from the Royal Academy, three desks, two fireplaces, four globes, and an assortment of tables and chairs. In addition to the library, Essex’s quarters contained a comfortably sized sleeping chamber—its walls covered with silk arras—a separate wash and tub closet, two guest cells, and ample room for his staff.

  Splendid lodgings reserved for the Queen’s favorite.

  The bitch had softened her anger against him, and he was once again a person to be reckoned with at court. Yet he felt that others laughed at him behind his back. Little pet Essex being scolded by his schoolmaster—say, rather, schoolmistress. Gods, how he wished he could strangle them all—those well-fed, clean-faced asses who brayed.

  They also laughed when Elizabeth had commanded him back home from the Spanish front. Though Essex carried himself proudly, always attired himself in the finest of dress and armed himself with the best of swords, others had snickered that he was naught but a castrated peacock displaying wounded feathers.

  Lopez among them.

  Marry, he’d love to kill the bastard dog of a Jew.

  He sat back down at his desk and once again fingered the letter. With one fluid motion he broke the seal and pulled out the papers.

  He read de Andrada’s letter.

  He read Lopez’s letter to David.

  He reread de Andrada’s letter, then studied all the correspondence carefully.

  He frowned.

  “Indisputable?” he muttered.

  He took his quill, dipped it in the inkwell and began to scribble some notes as he reread de Andrada’s letter.

  He put down his quill and rubbed his chin.

  “Maybe,” he whispered.

  He reread Lopez’s letter to D’Avila and raised his eyes.

  Once again he began to scribble notes.

  “Maybe,” he repeated. Louder. “Though I strongly doubt the verity of the weasel’s words, his implications might work indeed.” He clapped his hands together and studied the letters for an hour, scribbling notes, tearing them up, sighing, laughing, scowling. Finally he stabbed the quill into its holder, sat back and closed his eyes. He sat so quietly that his servant thought him asleep.

  “M’lord?” Albert whispered.

  “Quiet, you fool,” answered Essex without opening his eyes. “I’m thinking.”

  Albert retreated back to the wall. Ten minutes later Essex opened his eyes and dipped his quill in a silver pot of ink. On the finest parchment he addressed a letter to his spy master. With confidence he wrote to Antony Bacon,

  In haste, this morning, I have discovered a most dangerous and desperate treason. The point of conspiracy was Her Majesty’s death. The executioner should have been Dr. Lopez, the manner poison.

  He sealed the letter, then regarded Albert, quaking in the corner.

  “Dispatch this immediately to Master Bacon in Eton, Albert.”

  Albert bolted up. “With assurity, m’lord.”

  “I need not remind you of what discretion is required in this task.”

  “No, m’lord. Not at all.”

  “Well, then! Go!”

  Albert left. Essex sat back in his chair. He smiled.

  Chapter 50

  A week had passed since Fottingham last saw Shakespeare. Yet he wasn’t at all surprised when the player, carrying a leather bag upon his back, showed up at the threshold of his door.

  “Back to London?” Fottingham asked.

  Shakespeare nodded.

  “Come in a moment,” boomed the alderman. “You’ve plenty of daylight left. My house is warm, my fare is plentiful and pleasing to the stomach. I was just about to dine. Do stay and tell me what you’ve discovered about Chambers’s murder this past week. Then I’ll tell you the whisperings about town.”

  Shakespeare had just come to say good-bye, as good manners dictated. Yet the possibility of learning more drew him like bait. Realizing he’d probably have to give information to receive some in return, he weighed his decision. Curiosity won out. He said, “My horse stands uncovered outside. It’s raining heavily.”

  “I’ll have one of the servants stable it,” said Fottingham. “Come in.”

  Shakespeare said thank you, then entered the alderman’s home and dropped his bag on the floor. Fottingham called out the order to a blue-gowned boy, then said to Shakespeare,

  “This is the second time in a week that you have mentioned your horse’s needs before your own. Care about animals, do you?”

  “I’ve an affinity for dumb beasts.”

  “Don’t we all?” said Fottingham.

  Shakespeare smiled and said, “Harry Whitman hired me as stable boy for the fellowship when I first came to London. I was not overly familiar with the finer points of grooming, but I learned very quickly.”

  Shakespeare thought back to his first visit with Harry. Whitman could have called his bluff immediately. But he hadn’t. Not until years later did he admit he’d known Shakespeare had been lying. It had been one of those frequent times where Harry’s drinking had turned him boisterous and unstable. It was hard to take him seriously.

  You didn’t know a damn thing about horses when I took you on, did you, Willy?

  Whitman slapped Shakespeare on the back loudly. The thwack caused men in the alehouse to turn around and laugh.

  Not a whit, Shakespeare said softly.

  Harry let out a series of raucous guffaws. You little cellar rat of a liar.

  If you suspected me of lying, why did you hire me?

  You looked able-bodied enough to do the job.

  Why did you hire me, Harry?

  Aw, what the devil. I admit it. It was the book. Most of the writing was…How shall I put this?

  Whitman held his nose with one hand, fanned away imaginary fumes with the other. He burst into laughter.

  It wasn’t that foul, Shakespeare said.

  It was rot! Harry announced to anyone who had been listening. But! He had held his finger in the air. But it contained two fine soliloquies, Willy. Two beautiful soliloquies. I’d never read anything quite so moving.

  Harry suddenly grew sentimental. There was moisture in his eyes. Had Shakespeare not escorted him out of the alehouse, he would surely have cried.

  A week later, when Harry was sober, Shakespeare asked him the same question.

  Whitman gave him a sad smile.

  I have a soft heart for dreamers and you were as fresh as they come. Aye, I did recognize your talent. But I would have welcomed you even had you been a simpleton. Willy, my son, I know what it’s like to live with thwarted desires.

  Shakespeare
heard the alderman talking.

  “…long have you had the horse?” Fottingham said.

  “The horse?” Shakespeare said. “It isn’t mine. Just a hackney. But it has served me well.”

  “Sit,” the alderman repeated.

  “Thank you, I will,” said Shakespeare.

  Fottingham poured him a pot of beer. “Tell me what you know about Chambers.”

  “He and the whore were murdered in the middle of the night,” Shakespeare said. “The girl was dealt with swiftly—her throat was slashed, her heart by a single stab of a dagger. Chambers was stabbed repeatedly. His throat was also slashed.”

  Fottingham paled. “God in heaven! Where have you learned such horrible detail?”

  “I told the magistrate that I was an eminent physician from London,” said Shakespeare. “He allowed me to examine the bodies. I even signed papers certifying them dead.”

  Fottingham stared at him.

  Shakespeare drank the pot of beer and said, “I’m quite well regarded as an actor.”

  “You signed death papers?”

  “They asked me to perform the honors,” said Shakespeare. “Besides, the cause of demise was obvious.”

  Fottingham said thoughtfully, “I suppose it was. Was any murder weapon found?”

  Shakespeare shook his head no.

  Fottingham asked, “Did not someone hear them cry out at night?”

  “Not a single gentleman claims to have heard a sound,” Shakespeare said. “Chambers’s cell was at the end of a long hallway. Besides, I think the murderer immediately slashed their throats. It prevented them from screaming for help—”

  “My God!”

  “Horrible,” Shakespeare agreed.

  “Yet,” Fottingham said, “the murderer appears to have escaped without punishment.”

  “God witnessed the deed,” Shakespeare said.

  Fottingham thought about that.

  “What have you heard about town?” Shakespeare asked.

  Before the alderman could answer, a servant entered the room and lay on the table a tray holding two stuffed chickens. The birds were ample and would make a satisfactory dinner, but Shakespeare compared the plate to the copious platters of meat the alderman had served him last spring. Wintertimes were hard up here, food supplies scarce. Shakespeare knew the alderman was sharing his dinner with him and appreciated the act of kindness. He thanked him for such mouth-watering fare. Fottingham smiled, tore off the left leg of a bird and took a bite.

  “Be not shy, Willy.” His mouth was stuffed with meat. “Take.”

  Shakespeare amputated the chicken’s other leg. Before he ate, he asked, “What winds of gossip do the townspeople blow?”

  “Chambers had many foes,” said Fottingham, still chewing.

  “Aye? Who?”

  “Myself, for instance,” said the alderman. “I owed him not a small sum.”

  Shakespeare didn’t react.

  Fottingham said, “Aye, you’re a fine player, Willy. Not a hair in your brow did you raise, but I know you must consider me a suspicious man in this whole affair. I knew you were in town. I knew you intended to visit Chambers. Perhaps while you slept soundly in my house I stealthily tiptoed down to the Fishhead and did Chambers and the stew in, rendering my debt to that slimy eel null and void.”

  The conversation was to be a game of wits. Shakespeare countered, “You’d murder for ten pounds six shillings?”

  The alderman smiled slyly. “I knew you were a clever fellow.” He broke the bird in half. Oatmeal stuffing tumbled onto the platter. Fottingham picked up a fistful with his fingers and gorged himself. “How’d you find out?” he mumbled.

  “Many about town paid money to Chambers,” Shakespeare said.

  “How’d you find out about me?”

  “I talked to Chambers’s brother Edmund. He showed me Edgar’s secret accounting ledgers.”

  “Why would Edmund do that?”

  Shakespeare rubbed his thumb back and forth against his fingertips.

  “The Chambers brothers are easily bought,” Fottingham said. He looked at Shakespeare. “Can you be bought as well?”

  “Do you want to buy me?” Shakespeare asked.

  Fottingham chuckled nervously. “No,” he said.

  “I can be bought,” Shakespeare said, “but not for money.”

  “For love?”

  “For a certain love I’d act the ass. For a certain love I’ve been an ass.”

  “In sooth?” said Fottingham.

  “Yes,” Shakespeare said. “But asses are beasts of burden, and lest I become an ass and a burdensome beast, I’ll keep my words sweet and succinct. Why did you borrow money from the innkeeper?”

  Fottingham said, “A personal affair.”

  They ate for a moment without speaking. Shakespeare said,

  “Mayhap I should rephrase my question? Why was the innkeeper extorting money from you?”

  Fottingham stopped chewing. He resumed mastication a moment later, then swallowed his mouthful in a big, dry gulp. He coughed. Shakespeare hit him on the back.

  “What makes you think I was a victim of extortion?” Fottingham sputtered out.

  “Chambers was wrestling money from diverse people.”

  “Who else?”

  “Harry Whitman, for one.”

  “Who else?”

  “My lips are sealed,” Shakespeare said. “However, Edmund’s may be pried open for the right price.”

  The alderman coughed up a bolus of food, spit it onto the floor and managed a sickly smile. Shakespeare had spilled his information. Now he expected the alderman to pay in kind. He asked,

  “What dirt did Chambers—Edgar Chambers—have on you?”

  Fottingham sighed, knowing that the player would discover his secrets eventually. It might as well come from him.

  “I am a member of the Queen’s Church,” Fottingham whispered. “I have lived and shall die a Protestant. But up here…some years ago…and on occasion even to this day, I have housed some cousins of my family…. Somewere very old men and women who still remembered when King Henry the Eighth was called the Defender of the Faith…. Do you understand what I’m saying, Shakespeare?”

  “Chambers knew you had sporadically hidden Papists,” Shakespeare said softly. “He started asking you for money two, maybe three years ago to keep your secrets hushed.”

  Fottingham nodded. He was sweating now. He said, “I’ve asked you this before, Shakespeare, but I’ll ask you again. Was Whitman a Papist?”

  Shakespeare sighed. The alderman had confided treasonous secrets. Shakespeare felt it wise to give him something in exchange. He admitted Whitman’s Catholicism, and Fottingham let out an audible sigh and felt it was safe to proceed. He explained that Hemsdale was like numerous northern burgs in the country, that there were many who were Protestant in their worship, Catholics in their hearts. There were also many who’d welcome Chambers’s death.

  “Edmund showed me a list of no less than twenty names,” Shakespeare said. “Edgar Chambers would have been a rich man had he not been a gambler.”

  That stopped Fottingham for a moment. “Chambers was a gambler?”

  Shakespeare nodded. “The money was scarcely held by the innkeeper. Once it touched his fingers, he was merely a conduit, linking the rivers of his victims’ purses and a certain ruffian’s pocket.”

  Fottingham said, “I’ve never seen Chambers dice.”

  “Edmund informed me that his brother diced in private. Edgar had also accrued enormous debts.”

  Shakespeare explained how Edgar Chambers’s dicing habit was a logical assumption. Why else would George Mackering himself be this far north, away from his own haunts in London, unless there was substantial gain to be made? Mackering must have sent a few men up here a couple of years ago. They must have reported back what a perfect gull Chambers had been. When Mackering first arrived, Chambers hadn’t known him from the hundreds of other gentlemen who’d spent the night in his hostel drinking and
dicing. But Mackering knew Chambers, knew he was a fine coney, as greedy as he was dishonest—the perfect combination. Mackering began to dice regularly with Chambers—as often as every month, according to the ledgers. Only after his debts mounted did Chambers discover with whom he was playing—that Mackering was not a simple gentleman and was not likely to forgive debts. The innkeeper began needing money badly. Shakespeare surmised he began his extortion scheme then.

  The alderman said nothing.

  Shakespeare told him, “You knew Chambers was extorting others for their Catholic beliefs when I first visited Hemsdale, didn’t you?”

  Fottingham squirmed in his chair. “I suspected I wasn’t alone.”

  Shakespeare let him squirm. It was all part of the contest of wills—how much do you reveal, how much do you trust? He steered the conversation back to Harry and asked the alderman if he’d known that Harry had been an extortion victim from the beginning.

  Fottingham turned red and wiped his damp forehead with his robe sleeve. “I swear to you, Shakespeare, I barely knew Harry Whitman. Aye, maybe I suspected he was a Papist, as I knew his uncle had been a Jesuit priest, but I swear I didn’t know that Chambers had embedded his stinger in your friend. I merely thought that Whitman had come up here on a yearly pilgrimage to visit his kinsmen, to escape the grime and loneliness of London.”

  “Even after Harry was murdered you didn’t suspect that Chambers had anything to do with it?” Shakespeare asked.

  “No one in this town had been murdered, yet many had been victims of extortion.” Fottingham was flustered, acting like a trapped animal. He stammered out, “What…what do you want me to say? What should I have done? Made unfounded accusations that Chambers was Harry’s murderer? I directed you to him. I thought that was enough!”

  Shakespeare paused a moment, realizing he was attacking the wrong person.

  “It was, Master Fottingham,” Shakespeare said quietly. “It was. I failed to ask Edgar Chambers the proper questions, and now I’m embarrassed by my incompetence.”

  Fottingham took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He did it again and seemed to calm down.

  “Chambers’s death is no surprise,” the alderman said. “The town spoke ill of him, many had wished him dead. Who would want to kill Whitman is your riddle.”