‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more …’
For the first time since the opening line, she moved away from her spot at the curtain, unable to watch any more, the weight of the impending trial almost too heavy to bear. Briefly she paced in the tiring house, but the words beyond the curtain inevitably drew her back to watch, her own fate tied to the fate of the play.
‘They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the course …’
Macbeth, trapped in the curse of his own making and condemned to see it through.
The audience was tense and silent, the illusion complete, and even the hawkers had ceased to offer their cakes and ale. There were gasps as the final battle began, Macbeth and Macduff locking swords and fighting for their lives, and though Sarah had seen them rehearse it a hundred times, it had never looked so real before today. She flinched as every cut and blow seemed to find its mark, the actors grunting with the effort, steel ringing on steel. Then she froze as Nick staggered back and Heminges lowered his sword with horror on his face and blood upon the blade. A woman in the front row screamed. Another, further back, fainted, and not one person bent to care for her. Nick clutched at his arm and stumbled upstage; Heminges followed uncertainly, sword half-lifted.
Sarah held her breath and stepped away as Nick crashed through the curtain to the floor of the tiring house with John Heminges close behind him.
‘What happened?’
Heminges lifted the bloodied blade and shook his head in wonder, then turned again to make his re-entrance on the stage as victor of the battle. Automatically, Sarah knelt to examine the wound on Nick’s arm, her fingers lightly touching his hand to coax it free, but when the grip remained obstinately tight, she lifted her eyes to his in question and the look that met hers was charged with distrust.
‘Don’t touch me,’ he hissed. Then lower, in a breath that only she could hear, ‘Witch.’
‘Forgive me,’ she murmured. Then, overcome, she fled from the playhouse and down to the shingle on the riverbank to sit in the frigid afternoon and watch the water roll by, inexorable as time. Hugging her knees, she prayed to Hecate for courage. Her hour was almost done.
She sat for a long time until darkness claimed the day and she was frozen to her soul. The performance would be long finished by now and the theatre empty, the Company at play in the tavern or the brothel to celebrate. It had been a success after all, she reflected, in spite of the ill-wind that had followed it and the suffering in its wake. Brilliant and beautiful, a study in the madness of power. But at what cost? She wondered at Nick’s injury and how the blades had come to be switched. Her first thought was Tom, seeking revenge, but she dismissed the idea at once – such brutality was not in his nature. An accident, then? Ill fate conjured by the words of the play? She didn’t like to hazard a guess. But she knew it wasn’t down to her, despite Nick’s accusation.
She wanted warmth but she did not know where to go for it.
She could go home, she thought, to the house in Water Lane. In spite of everything, Nick must love and want her still. He had no choice: he was bound to her by the power of her magic, her prisoner.
She did not want him so.
She thought of his body in the night over hers, the strength of him, the beauty of his muscles. Loving her but not of his own free will, a slave to the passions she had wrought in him.
He was not hers by right.
Then she thought of Tom – their love exchanged in freedom, love desired and freely given. Love that was worth the taking. Love between two souls.
She had to set Nick free.
Uncertainly, but working out of instinct, she took out the poppet she still carried, the little protective figure she had fashioned out of yarn the night she scried for Will. It seemed so long ago now – she had been a different person then, a maid, barely more than a child. Carefully she unwove it, wrapping the wool around her fingers as she did so, watching the little figure diminish into nothing, and a slight fear touched the act for it had kept her safe till now.
When there was nothing left of the poppet but the yarn that was wrapped around her hand, she began to make something new. Working intuitively, she started to fashion two new figures of herself and Nick that were joined by single threads at the hands and heart and feet. A drop of blood from her thumb that she drew with her pocket-knife gave her essence to the one, and the key to Nick’s house that she carried on a ribbon at her neck attached his essence to the other. She would tell him she had lost it. She let the two poppets be together for a while, holding them in her hands so that they touched gently, a last farewell. Then she cut the threads that joined them one by one.
‘Once I cut to break the tie. Twice I cut for pain to fly. Thrice I cut the bond to cease.’
Holding the two figures separately now, one in each hand, she got to her feet and walked close to the water’s edge to stand beside it, watching the tide bear the water seaward to the east for a moment before she raised her arm and cast the poppet that was Nick into the river.
‘I set you free,’ she murmured. ‘Go with love and honour.’
The poppet disappeared into the current, borne away on the tide to a different future. It was done. She sighed, twinges of regret pulling at her thoughts: she would never know his touch again. Putting the other poppet back in her skirts, she stepped away from the river, glancing upstream, trying to decide where to go.
She could no longer go to Nick’s – that bond was severed now and the house at Water Lane was no longer her home – and though the tavern was tempting she was reluctant to intrude on the Company’s gathering. They had worked hard for the play and they deserved to celebrate. She would be a burden and a worry and they would behave differently in front of her.
So she made for the playhouse.
The walk from the river warmed her a little and the feeling had returned to her feet by the time she climbed the stairs to the wardrobe door, the key still in her skirts. She fingered it as she made her way up the steps, warm from its closeness to her leg, the iron worn and smooth. But when she reached the top of the staircase and lifted her eyes to the door, she saw that it was already open and that candles were burning within. She stopped, startled, but curiosity drove her forward and she peered through the door and into the room that sprawled three steps below.
Tom was lying on the couch with a book in his hand, though he did not seem to be reading, eyes staring off into some distance only he could see. He swung himself off the couch when he heard her footstep on the stair and came immediately towards her. There was no trace left of the Lady and he was himself again, but the bruise was still livid and his lip had swollen more.
‘I knew you’d come here,’ he said, holding out his hands for her. ‘Where else would you go?’
‘Why aren’t you at the tavern with the others?’ she asked. She had never known him to pass up a drink or a night with a whore.
‘I was waiting for you.’ He took her hand and drew her into the room. A host of candles blazed on the bench and she stepped towards it, reaching out her hands to the warmth. ‘Where did you go?’
‘To the river.’
He nodded, understanding. It was good to be with him, no need to explain. She sat on her work stool and rested her arms on the bench, fingers extended toward the heat and light of the candles.
‘It was the warmest I could make it,’ he said with a shrug. ‘It’s not so warm …’
‘The riverbank was freezing,’ she answered. ‘My feet went to sleep.’
‘Shall I rub them?’
She smiled and shook her head. Their mother had sometimes rubbed their feet as children – it had been a great treat. ‘How’s your jaw?’
‘Sore,’ he said. ‘Your sweetheart makes a pretty fist.’
‘He’s not my sweetheart any more,’ she said. ‘I set him free at the river. I didn’t
think I knew how, but somehow I worked it out and let him go. We are free of each other now and his wife can have him after all.’
Here, close to Tom in this room that was their sanctuary, the words hurt less than she’d expected. The long hours at the river had worked their peace: it was not only Nick who had been freed. Then, reaching across the table and taking one of his hands, stroking the long cold fingers, she said, ‘What happened?’
‘He challenged me about last night so I told him he only had himself to blame – where else were you going to go but to me? He took offence.’
She gave him a half-smile. ‘He doesn’t understand,’ she said. ‘He thinks you’re an agent of the Devil. He thinks that you corrupted me.’
Sliding off the stool she moved around the bench to stand beside him and examine his jaw more closely, tipping his head to one side, running her fingertips over the bruise. ‘Mother will have a salve for it,’ she said.
He nodded, then placed his hands either side of her waist, drawing her closer in, looking up into her face. ‘And do you think I corrupted you?’
She smiled and ran her fingers through his hair. ‘I think we corrupted each other.’
‘So we’re sinners?’
‘If you believe in such things.’
He stood up and cradled her face in his palm, his mouth close to hers. ‘Then sin with me again,’ he whispered. ‘My sweet, sweet sinner.’
She smiled and they kissed and it was the sweetest sin she had ever tasted.
In the morning she woke early in the silent playhouse and turned to watch her brother sleeping. His eyelids flickered in his dream, troubled, and she laid a hand lightly on his shoulder. The muscle was smooth and hard and cold, but he stirred with her touch and opened his eyes.
‘You were dreaming,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘What did you dream?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, with a smile that hid the truth. ‘It was nothing.’
She let it go. Perhaps he was right not to tell her – sometimes it was better not to know.
She rolled out of the makeshift bed, the piles of rugs and blankets they had made on the floor, and stood up to dress. He lay on his back with his head propped on his hands to watch her. Once she was clothed he got up too, and when both of them were ready, with the blankets stowed back in their proper place, he took her hands in his and looked down into her face. She could hardly bear to look at him, the day to come pressing on her spirit, draining the life from her blood.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked.
‘As I’ll ever be.’ She nodded, raising her eyes to his face for a moment. ‘I couldn’t do it without you.’
‘I know.’ He smiled and lowered his head to kiss her once again and she could taste the salt of her own tears on their lips.
Then they crossed the room to the stair and, with a final look back at this haven she doubted she would ever see again, she ducked out through the door and into the dawning day.
They took a wherry for a penny to the courthouse in Kingston, the boat moving swiftly on the tide, too fast. She wanted the moments to slow, to savour every moment, every breeze against her face, every plash of the oar as it hit the river’s surface. She held on to Tom’s hand, aware of his body close to hers, and when the boat pulled in at the landing stairs, too soon, she was sad to step out of it and onto solid earth.
The day passed in a blur of faces and questions she did not know how to answer, her guilt assumed by the jury of men who examined her. John’s reappearance had changed the stakes – he had charged her with bewitching him to murder, and the physician backed his claim. It was no longer a matter of a young boy lured to commit a sexual sin: Jane’s blood was on her hands and she had no doubt they would send her to trial.
Everyone spoke for her, though they each spoke to the jury in private, taking turns, so she did not know what they said. Will and Nick and Tom. Her mother and others of the Company. She was grateful, but her blood churned in her veins, and the hard ball that was her stomach tightened and heaved through the hours. Finally, at the end of the endless day, she was committed for trial and led away by the constable to the Marshalsea to wait.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Fatal Bellman
The night before her trial she did not sleep, standing instead beside the small barred opening to the outside world to catch glimpses of a starless sky, brief moments of the young crescent moon as it peeped from behind a shifting shroud of cloud. She wondered if she would ever see the moon after this night or if this would be her final sight of the heavens.
She was aware of everything, senses alert to the smallest sensations, her heartbeats numbered, each breath treasured and precious. She spoke to Tom in her mind and hoped that he would hear her, recalling how he had been at the Grove, his body white and ghostly in the moonlight, and the beauty of his smile. She would miss his smile the most, she realised, more than anything else in this world. Unconsciously she raised her fingers to her neck, caressing the soft skin and fighting against her thoughts as they bent to imagine the roughness of the rope around it, tightening. The long hours passed too quickly, and when the guard came at last to fetch her with the dawn, his appearance took her by surprise.
The court was busy. Officers whose roles she did not know moved to and fro with sheaves of paper in their hands, and the twelve men who would decide her fate sat talking quietly amongst themselves. She saw Wickham, who nodded his recognition, and her belly recoiled at the memory of his fingers on her skin.
She stood in her allotted place and wished they had allowed her a seat. The sleeplessness of the night had begun to tell in the weariness of her limbs, and she wondered how she could possibly stay standing for the duration of the trial. The room buzzed with business and chatter and she realised that for everyone but her it was just another day.
The judge entered and the room fell silent, every man rising to his feet until the great man had sat down behind his desk, arranging himself carefully, neatening the papers in front of him until he was satisfied and ready. Then he lifted his eyes from the hands that were clasped before him to look at the girl on trial for her life. He observed her carefully, forming his impression, and she struggled to calm the quickness of her breathing, the racing of her heartbeat. He was old, she thought, grey hair thinning, a neat silver beard, and the lines that scored his cheek and brow told of a life hard-lived. But his eyes held an openness that gave her hope.
The clerk read out the indictment – words of Latin she did not understand. When the clerk had finished, the judge pinned her with his gaze. ‘How do you plead?’ he said.
‘Not guilty, sir,’ she said and her voice sounded unlike her own as it cut through the expectant hush. She saw the clerk scrawling in the ledger, the words to come that would condemn her being transcribed in black and white.
‘Who is the victim?’
John entered, the constable’s hand on his arm, staring about him, still jumpy, still fearful. He seemed every bit as though he were under a curse, and any last glint of hope she’d held flickered and died. He stood behind the table as he was bid with the constable at his shoulder and, once he had taken his oath, he began to give his evidence.
He had seen her, he said, always watching him, muttered curses thrown his way.
She had stitched her evil into the seams of the shirt that he wore, charms woven in his clothes to inflame him with wicked lusts.
She had filled his wine with her potions, he said, to lead him to unnatural acts, to corrupt him into sin.
She had bewitched his master to lure him to her bed and trick him to adulterous love.
She consorted with the Devil. He had seen her in the playhouse, hiding in the topmost gallery, talking to the daemons of the night, conversing with unseen forces.
She had visited his dreams and forced herself upon him.
She had sent her imps to drive him into madness so that he confused right and wrong, good and evil, and everywhere he looked were shadows, Satan�
�s creatures, tempting, cursing, corrupting.
She had provoked him to murder with her familiars and her ill wishes, and he had not stood a chance.
He had seen all this, he said.
And he could see her now, still sending him ill wishes, trying to stop his mouth with fear and madness.
He was her prisoner, and only her death would set him free.
He finished, and the courtroom was silent as he stood shaking and trembling, his face averted from Sarah, afraid to meet her eyes. She turned to regard the jury, trying to read their reactions, but their faces were closed to her and she slid her eyes away. She could feel herself swaying, hunger and sleeplessness taking their toll, and the officer beside her placed his hand under her arm.
‘Are you all right, miss?’ he asked, and she could have wept at his kindness.
She nodded and let him hold her steady while John began to answer the questions that were asked of him. She tried to concentrate on the words he was saying, but her head felt light and it was hard to make sense of it all. Tom’s name was mentioned and her thoughts snapped back to attention.
‘You had carnal relations with the defendant’s brother?’
‘Yes.’
‘On how many occasions?’
John had to think. ‘Three times.’
‘And on each occasion buggery occurred?’
He shook his head. ‘Not the first time.’
‘What happened the first time?’
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