The Slaying Of The Shrew

by Simon Hawke

  Worley frowned. “Good Lord, Godfrey! Is that what you thought?”

  “What else should I think, damn you?” Middleton shot back, and then he suddenly caught his breath and paled as comprehension dawned. “Dear God in Heaven! Do you mean to tell me she was murdered?”

  “I fear she was, Godfrey,” Worley said. “Smythe, here, overheard two men last night, plotting in the garden, and it very nearly cost him his life. I thought it best if he were to tell you what he heard in his own words.”

  Quickly, Smythe recounted the details of what had transpired in the maze the previous night. Middleton listened without saying a word, his features strained, his lips compressed into a tight grimace. When Smythe had finished, Middleton simply stood there, motionless and silent, as if he could find no words to say.

  At length, Sir William broke the awkward silence. “Godfrey… are you well? Perhaps you should sit down?”

  Middleton blinked several times and looked at him. “My God,” he said, hoarsely. He made a weak, waving sort of gesture towards the sideboard. “There is wine… in the decanter there. Help yourselves, please. I insist.”

  Smythe went to pour them all a drink. He handed a goblet to Middleton, one to Sir William, and then took one for himself.

  “How is the groom taking it?” asked Worley.

  Middleton snorted. “Sir Percival? He is out there somewhere, dithering and acting very put upon. One would think that Catherine died just to inconvenience him.” He grimaced, then raised his goblet in a toast. “To my daughter, Catherine,” he said, somberly. “May merciful Almighty God rest and protect her poor, unhappy and un-shriven soul.”

  “Amen,” said Worley, softly.

  They drank.

  Middleton simply tossed the goblet aside onto the floor. “Now then,” he said, grimly, “what are we going to do about this?”

  “We are going to find the guilty parties, Godfrey,” Worley said, “and then they shall hang.”

  “Not nearly punishment enough,” said Middleton, with a hard edge to his voice, “but as we are not Spaniards, I suppose that it shall have to do. What do you want from me?”

  “Proceed with the funeral and hold the fair, as planned,” said Worley. “Let it be known that it shall be held in Catherine’s memory. In the meantime, we shall begin to ferret out our plotters by paying particular attention to your younger daughter’s present suitors, especially those whose families we do not know. In this regard, Tuck Smythe here will assist us, as will young Shakespeare when he returns. They have assisted me before in a matter of great import and they have my fullest confidence.”

  Middleton nodded. “Then that is good enough for me. I shall see to it that they have whatever they require.”

  “Do so, but pray, do so with discretion,” Worley cautioned him. “Our quarry shall be brought to ground more swiftly if they do not suspect that they are being hunted.”

  “It shall be done as you wish, Sir William,” said Middleton. “I am in your debt.”

  “He who strikes out at my neighbor strikes at me,” said Worley. “I am certain that you would do no less if you were in my place. Smythe and Shakespeare shall be our hounds in this regard. For the present, I fear that I must leave and rejoin Her Majesty, who shall be awaiting my return. However, I shall inform her of what has happened here and beg her leave to absent myself from court in order to pursue this matter to its swift conclusion. I feel confident that she shall not refuse me.”

  “You honor me in this,” said Middleton.

  “Murder does dishonor to us all,” Worley replied. “Now, before I leave, let us sit down and put our heads together, so that Smythe may have the benefit of our common knowledge and proceed in my absence…”

  The funeral was held late that afternoon, when the performance of the play had originally been scheduled. Much to everyone’s surprise, however, it was announced that the players would still perform on the afternoon of the following day. This news was as much of a surprise to the Queen’s Men as to anybody else. They had fully expected that their performance would be cancelled because of the bride’s death and were thus quite taken aback by the announcement. They had already returned the Roman togas they were given as costumes for the bride’s arrival and had started packing up their gear to leave. Now, with this unexpected turn of events, it brought about a flurry of unpacking and new preparations.

  A lively debate ensued among them about which play from their repertoire should be performed. Burbage was strongly of the opinion that Shakespeare’s new play, being a broad and rather bawdy comedy, would now be completely unsuitable for the occasion, and most of the players agreed. Kemp, of course, was the notable exception, for any comedy with a good deal of physicality and broad humor played mostly to his strengths as a dancer and a clown. John Fleming argued that a tragedy should be performed instead, for that would be more in keeping with the funereal occasion.

  Part of the problem was that with Shakespeare still away in London, the man who would be most adept at making any last minute alterations in any of their plays to render them more suitable was gone, and they could not seem to agree on which play should be performed or whether any changes should be made. The one thing they all seemed able to agree on was that, under the circumstances, the success of their performance would almost certainly be doomed from the beginning. However, they could not very well refuse to perform. It simply was not done, aside from which, they had already been paid; their audience would be an illustrious one; and their host was a good friend of one of their principal investors. It was a situation that none of them were pleased with and their mood was petulant and sullen.

  After explaining that he and Shakespeare had both been directed by Sir William to perform some special tasks for their bereaved host, Smythe left them arguing amongst themselves. As he was not one of the principal actors, or even a significant supporting player, Smythe thought wryly that he would not truly be missed unless there was a need to move any heavy objects. It occurred to him, in passing, that here was probably the single greatest opportunity for him as a player to make a good impression on some of the most important people in the city, and it now looked as if he would not even be setting foot upon the stage. But then again, the few times that he had set foot upon it, he had not distinguished himself for anything save his maladroitness.

  “Face it, Smythe,” he mumbled to himself, as he left the others arguing in their quarters, “as a player, you make an admirable blacksmith.”

  In the months since he had arrived in London together with Will Shakespeare, whom he had met upon the road, they had accomplished much together. They had managed to find jobs, for one thing, which in itself was a significant accomplishment, considering the vast numbers of people arriving in London every day from small towns and villages across the country. And not only had they found jobs, but they had found positions with one of the most illustrious companies of players in the land, which had been the dream they shared in common.

  Granted, they had started out as ostlers, tending to the horses and carriages of playgoers, but Shakespeare had quickly demonstrated his value to the company as a poet and adapter of existing plays, while he, at least, had managed to move up to stagehand and occasional spear carrier, though he was still expected to perform his duties as an ostler when not otherwise engaged. And considering his appalling lack of talent as an actor and his disastrous clumsiness on stage, Smythe knew that he should consider himself fortunate not to have been summarily dismissed from the company. In all likelihood, he thought, he would have been let go already, were it not for Shakespeare, whose abilities were highly valued by the Queen’s Men and for whose sake they had kept him on.

  In all, Smythe knew that he had nothing to complain about.

  There were many men and women in London who were jammed together in absolutely squalid quarters, a dozen to a room or more, barely able to eke out an existence by picking up odd jobs, or begging, or stealing, or selling themselves upon the streets. For many, their dreams of ma
king a new life for themselves in the city would end up on the gibbet, or in prison, or perhaps worse still, in Bedlam, among the screaming lunatics. Yet, at odd moments, Smythe wondered what his life would have been like if he had remained in his small village in the Midlands and followed the trade to which he had been apprenticed.

  He would have continued to work together with his Uncle Thomas at his forge, spending his days with the man who was more of a father to him than his own father ever was, and he would have pursued a trade at which he had some skill. Smythe knew he was a good smith, an excellent farrier, thanks to his natural way with horses, and he had a serviceable talent as a forger of blades which, under the skilled and gifted tutelage of his uncle, he could have developed into a separate trade of his own. In time, perhaps, he would have met a girl and married, and then had children and a home of his own. It would have been a good life, undoubtedly, better than most. From any practical standpoint, leaving home and coming instead to London to pursue a life in the theatre had been foolish beyond measure.

  Yet, it had always been his dream. It was all he had wanted to do ever since he had seen his first play performed by the Queen’s Men upon a makeshift stage in the courtyard of a village inn. Now, he had joined that very company, and was embarking upon his very first tour. True, the beginnings of the tour were certainly far from auspicious, and the players were already speaking with trepidation of the tour being ill-omened, but Smythe nevertheless felt buoyed by the knowledge that he was living out his dream.

  Even the present circumstances could not dampen his enthusiasm. He was on the road with the Queen’s Men and he was having an adventure. He could feel sympathy for Godfrey Middleton, and he certainly felt sorry for what had happened to his daughter, but then, he had never known her. It was not his tragedy and he could feel no grief. There was really only one dark cloud on his horizon… the possibility that Elizabeth had found somebody else.

  Perhaps he was wrong for feeling jealous. After all, it was not as if Elizabeth were his lover. They had never been intimate; they did not have any sort of understanding between them and, indeed, they could not. Shakespeare was right when he pointed out that she was much too far above him. Her father was a wealthy man, a principal investor in the Burbage Theatre, and if Henry Darcie was not quite yet a member of the landed gentry, then the tide of “gentleman” was certainly not very far beyond his reach. Henry Darcie often purchased dresses for his daughter that cost more than Smythe could make in several months. The thought that he could ever hope to meet with her on equal terms was ludicrous. Her father tolerated their friendship-rather grudgingly, it seemed-because of the service Smythe had rendered to his family, and because he knew that Sir William Worley had taken Smythe under his wing, but at the same time, Smythe knew it was a tolerance that would not bear much testing. Darcie still hoped to make a good, advantageous marriage for his daughter. He would not stand idly by and watch some randy young ostler spoil his plans.

  Smythe knew and understood that, but still could not help the way he felt. And until recently, he had been certain that Elizabeth had felt something for him, too, something more than friendship. Now, he was no longer certain. Since the day they had argued in St. Paul ’s, Elizabeth had been avoiding him. She had barely even spoken to him, and the one time that she had, she had put him off. Granted, she had promised him that they would speak, and under the circumstances, it would have been the height of selfishness if he had expected her to put his needs above those of a grieving father, especially when the daughter he was grieving for had been Elizabeth ’s close friend. Smythe very much wanted to believe that was all it was. Yet, there was still the troublesome riddle of what Elizabeth had been doing in the garden maze that night.

  It worried him throughout the funeral ceremony, which was mercifully short, doubtless because Godfrey Middleton would have found it unbearable to draw it out into an elaborate ritual, as he had intended to do with Catherine’s wedding. The musicians who had been engaged to play for the wedding now played for the funeral instead, offering up sweet and solemn tunes which they played upon lutes, recorders, citterns, sackbutts, harps and psaltries, coaxing more than a few tears from the assembled guests, especially the women, many of whom joined in to sing several psalms for the procession to the family vault.

  As it was a newly built estate, the vault was new as well, a small yet stately stone mausoleum which contained but one coffin, that of Catherine’s mother. Now Catherine would sleep beside her, laid out in her wedding dress upon the slab until her own coffin could be prepared. It would doubtless be speedily arranged upon the morrow, if Middleton or, more likely, his steward did not already have a carpenter at the estate busily engaged upon the task. The procession gathered in the front courtyard of the house and then slowly and solemnly made its way across the grounds, in the opposite direction from the fair’s pavillions, down a path that led along the riverside and through the woods to where the vault stood in a small clearing, surrounded by a stone wall with an iron gate set into it. It would, thought Smythe, be a very peaceful place to rest.

  His thoughts and his attention were less upon the funeral, however, than upon those in attendance, in particular a certain few who had been the subject of discussion earlier between Godfrey Middle-ton, Sir William, and himself. Because of what he had overheard, their discussion had centered upon Blanche Middleton’s suitors, in particular those who were not well known to either Middleton or Worley. Given that Blanche was quite a sultry beauty, and with a very wealthy father, there seemed to be no shortage of eager suitors for her hand in marriage. However, a good number of them were easily eliminated from consideration as suspects due to either Middleton or Worley being well acquainted with their families, if not with the young men themselves. That still left three or four who seemed quite worthy of suspicion.

  One such was young Andrew Braithwaite, a baron’s son who hailed from Lancashire. Or so he claimed. Middleton knew nothing of him and Worley had no knowledge of him, either. However, that did not necessarily mean Braithwaite was not who he said he was. Not all the members of England ’s nobility were regulars at court or sat among their peers in the House of Lords; some never even came to London. Consequently, they did not necessarily all know one another. Sir William had explained, primarily for Smythe’s benefit, that presently there were three degrees of nobility in England, those of baron, viscount, and earl, in descending order. A duke would have been above a baron, of course, but at present, no one held that tide.

  As a country commoner with little formal education, Smythe did not know a great deal about the nobility, nor had he learned very much more since he came to London. He knew that a noble was created by the sovereign through a patent bearing the Great Seal of England and the title of that noble was thereupon passed down through the eldest son. He also knew that bishops, equal to the nobility in rank, were likewise appointed by the sovereign, and their offices were not hereditary. Below them were knights and gentlemen, with knighthood bestowed for special service or as a mark of favor by either the sovereign or a deputy empowered to act in the sovereign’s name, such as a general or an admiral in time of war. As with a bishopric, a knighthood was not hereditary, and a gentleman could only properly call himself a gentleman when the College of Heralds saw fit to award him with a coat of arms. And that, essentially, was the limit of Smythe’s knowledge.

  Sir William was not sure exactly how many nobles there were in England at the present time. There were a dozen earls or so, he thought, a few viscounts, and probably more barons than any other degree of nobility, perhaps thirty or more. There were people at court, he said, who paid far more attention to that sort of thing than he did. Her Majesty, for one, would have more knowledge at her fingertips, as would her ministers and any of the heralds, for among their varied functions was the granting of coats of arms to gentlemen and the preservation of all records of England’s noble families.

  The heralds took their duties very seriously, Sir William had explained. Organized into
a college, they were under the authority of the Earl Marshal, who was a court official. The three senior heralds held the tides of Garter King at Arms, Clarenceaux King at Arms, and Norry King at Arms. Below them were the heralds of York, Somerset, Lancaster, Richmond, Chester, and Windsor, with four pursuivants below them bearing the colorful titles of Rouge Dragon, Blue Mantle, Portcullis, and Rouge Croix. And while Her Majesty might conceivably lose track of a noble or two, Sir William said, especially if he were not in regular attendance at her court, it was unthinkable that a herald should do so, for one of their most important duties was to examine the claims of anyone, including foreign visitors, who claimed to be of noble or gentle birth. Regretably, there were no heralds handy, and with the royal court away from London, a bold imposter might easily believe that he could pass himself off as a nobleman and get away with it, at least for a while.

  Young Braithwaite seemed modest to a fault, a quality which had initially impressed Middleton quite favorably, but that now made him suspicious. Braithwaite’s apparent reticence in discussing his family had at first seemed like modest self-effacement, but now, given what Smythe had overheard from the two mysterious plotters, it could readily be perceived as guile. Moreover, there was something rather rakish about young Andrew Braithwaite, despite his outward display of manners. He was approximately the same age as Smythe, chestnut-haired, blue-eyed, clean-shaven and handsome in a rugged, provincial sort of way, but there was something in his manner that Smythe did not quite care for. He had a way of strutting when he walked, a sort of loose-hipped, rolling swagger that did not quite seem to match his seeming outward modesty. It was a small thing, perhaps, but it rubbed Smythe the wrong way.

  The elder Braithwaite was not in attendance, which might have cast some doubt on the younger Braithwaite as a suspect, for the plan that Smythe had overheard involved one of the two men posing as the father. However, as Worley had pointed out, knowing that someone had overheard them, even if they did not know precisely who it was, could easily have brought about a change in the two scoundrels’ plans. If they knew that someone might expect a nobleman and his son to be imposters, then it was possible that they might have decided to withhold the father, so to speak, and just advance the son, thus hoping to confuse anyone looking for a father and a son, while keeping the other man in reserve, standing by to perform whatever unsavory task might be required of him. That made sense to Smythe, therefore he did not dismiss the strutting Andrew Braithwaite out of hand. Nor did he miss the fact that Blanche very much seemed to enjoy the attention he was paying to her. But then, at the same time, she seemed more than willing to encourage the attentions of the chevalier Phillipe Dubois, as well.