by Simon Hawke
“Marry you!” She stopped, staring at him wide-eyed. For a moment, her mouth simply worked as if of its own accord as she struggled vainly to find speech.
“Aye, marry me. The very thing you had told me that you wanted to avoid, if you will recall our discussion at the playhouse.”
“Indeed, I do recall it very well, Mr. Gresham! Good day!” She turned and walked away from him, forcing him to run several steps to catch up to her again.
“It would be good evening,” he replied, “and the hour grows much too late for you to be walking home alone, howsoever undesirable my company may seem to you.”
“Rest assured that it is as undesirable as it is possible for it to be.”
“So you say. Nevertheless, I fear that I must inflict my company upon you for a while longer, long enough, at least, to see you safely home and perhaps receive the explanation that I came for.”
“An explanation? You ask me for an explanation?” Elizabeth replied, in a tone of outrage. She felt so furious she was trembling.
“You think that an unreasonable request?”
“Unreasonable, unwarranted, and utterly unfathomable!” she replied.
“Understood,” he replied. “Which is to say, I understand that you feel that way. What I do not understand is why.”
“Why?” She rounded on him with astonishment, startling him so that he almost tripped. Involuntarily, he stepped back away from her, apparently genuinely puzzled by the intensity of her response.
“Indeed,” he replied, looking confused. “Why?”
“You dare to ask me why?”
“Apparently, I do,” he said, wryly. “I wonder if you dare to answer.”
She shook her head and took a deep breath, then lit into him like an alley cat pouncing on a rat. “Oh, this is intolerable! This is simply not to be borne! You make me out to be a liar, come to my home and utterly humiliate me, deny the agreement you have made, and pretend that we had never even met, so that even my own mother is convinced that I have made the whole thing up, and then you have the unmitigated gall to act as if I were the one who broke faith with you How in God’s name can you stand there and look me in the eye and pretend to be an innocent when ‘twas you all along who set out to undermine my honor and my reputation, to make me out to be some shrewish liar and manipulative prevaricator whom no man in his right mind would wish to marry, so that my father, fearing to see all his efforts come to naught, would then increase the size of my dowry, paying you a small fortune to take me off his hands!”
As she railed at him, she kept advancing, backing the astonished man away from her, until they had approached a narrow alleyway. She didn’t even notice. She simply could not hold her temper anymore and she kept at him relentlessly.
“But, milady… but… Elizabeth!” he kept saying, over and over, vainly trying to get a word in edgewise as he kept backing away from the unexpected onslaught.
“You knave! You worm! You miserable cur dog! You lying… faithless… dishonorable… misbegotten… loathsome guttersnipe! If there were any justice in the world, then by God, you would be struck down where you stand this very instant!”
Gresham gave a sudden, sharp grunt and his eyes went very wide. He gasped and fell forward into her arms, dragging her down. She cried out with alarmed surprise and fell to her knees, unsuccessfully trying to support his weight. Then she noticed the dagger sticking up out of his back, the blade buried to the hilt between his shoulder blades. Shocked, she released him and he dropped lifeless to the ground. Elizabeth screamed.
***
The insistent hammering on the door and the shouting woke them both from a sound sleep they had only recently fallen into, aided by copious celebratory pints of ale. Shakespeare was the first to rouse himself, though he could not quite manage to raise his body off the bed. It seemed to take a supreme effort just to raise his eyelids.
“God’s wounds,” he moaned, “what is that horrifying row? Tuck? Tuck!”
There was no response from the inert form beside him in the bed.
“Tuck, roast your gizzard! Wake up! Wake up!” He elbowed his roommate fiercely. Just outside their door, the noise was increasing.
“Wha’? Whadizit?” came the slurred and querulous response.
“There is a woman shrieking at the door,” said Shakespeare.
“Tell her we don’ want any,” Smythe said, thickly, without even opening his eyes.
“What?”
Smythe grunted and rolled over. “Tell her t’ go ‘way.”
“You damn well tell her!”
“Wha’? Why the hell should I tell her?”
“Because she is screeching your damned name!”
“Wha’?”
“Get out of bed, you great, lumbering oaf!”
It began to penetrate through Smythe’s consciousness that he was being beaten with something. It took a moment or so longer for him to realize that it was Shakespeare’s shoe, which the poet was bringing down upon his head repeatedly.
“All right, all right, damn you! Stop it!”
He lashed out defensively and felt the satisfying impact of his fist against something soft. There was a sharp wheezing sound, like the whistling of a perforated bellows, followed by a thud.
“Will?”
There was no response. At least, there was no response from Shakespeare. From without, there was all sorts of cacophony. Smythe could hear frenzied hammering on the door, voices, both male and female now, raised in angry shouts, running footsteps, doors slamming open…
“Will?”
He sat up in bed and the room seemed to tilt strangely to one side. “Ohhhhh…” He shut his eyes and brought his hand up to the bridge of his nose. Somewhere right there, between his eyes, someone seemed to have hammered in a spike while he’d been sleeping.
“Tuck! Tuck! Oh, wake up, Tuck, please!“
He recognized the voice. It was Elizabeth Darcie. And she sounded absolutely terrified. He shook off the pain in his head, not entirely successfully, and lurched out of bed.
“I’m coming!” he called out.
“Ruaghhhh!” The growling sound from the floor on the opposite side of the bed scarcely seemed human.
“Be quiet, Will! And get up off the floor!”
“Oh, bollocks! I shall stay right here. ‘Tis safer.”
Smythe unbolted the door and opened it. Elizabeth came rushing into his arms. “Oh, Tuck! You must help me! ‘Twas terrible! Terrible!”
There was a crowd gathered just outside his door. Several members of the company were there, or what little was left of the original company since Alleyn had departed. Dick Burbage was not present, for he did not lodge at The Toad and Badger, but stayed at his father’s house. Will Kemp, however, was there in his nightshirt, as were Robert Speed and several of the hired men who had rooms at the inn.
“What the devil is going on?” asked Kemp, in an affronted tone. “What is all this tumult?”
Elizabeth was sobbing against Smythe’s chest and clutching at him desperately.
“What is this?” demanded the inn’s proprietor, the ursine Courtney Stackpole, elbowing his way through the onlookers. “What is the cause of all this noise?”
“I do not know… yet,” Smythe replied, holding Elizabeth protectively.
“He’s dead!“ Elizabeth sobbed. “Oh, Tuck! He’s dead! Murdered!”
“Who is dead?” asked Speed. “Who was murdered?”
“Murdered?” Kemp drew back. “Good Lord! Who? Where? Here?“
Everyone started talking at once.
“Silence!” Stackpole bellowed. “Go on and get back to your rooms, all of you! We shall determine what has happened here.” He turned to Smythe. “Who is this lady?”
“Her name is Elizabeth Darcie,” Smythe replied. “And I am going to take her inside where she may sit for a moment and compose herself.”
“We still have some wine, I think,” said Shakespeare, from behind him. “A drink might do her good.”
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“Darcie?” Speed said. “Not Henry Darcie’s daughter?” He took a closer look. “Good Lord, it is! God save us!”
“Who is Henry Darcie?” Stackpole asked, as Smythe led the distraught Elizabeth back inside the room and shut the door.
“Only one of the principal investors,” Speed replied.
“What, in the company?” said Shakespeare.
“In the playhouse itself,” Speed replied. “Henry Darcie is one of the principal investors in the Burbage Theatre.”
Shakespeare groaned. “Oh, no.”
“Wait a moment,” said Kemp. “I remember now! That was the same girl who was here before. She was the one with Smythe in… oh, no!”
“Will,” said Speed, “Sweet Will, pray tell us he did not bed the daughter of one of the Theatre’s principal investors.”
“He did not bed the daughter of one of the Theatre’s principal investors,” Shakespeare replied.
“Oh, no,” said Speed, shutting his eyes. “And now he’s got her mixed up in some murder?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Speed!” Shakespeare replied. “She was here earlier this evening and left calmly, with her virtue intact, I am assured, without any talk of death or murder, and since then, Smythe has been in our presence all night long! Use your head, man! This is something that has happened only since she left!”
“But who is it that’s been murdered?” Kemp asked. “And where? And how? And what has she to do with it? More to the point, what have we to do with it?”
“I imagine Tuck is attempting to ascertain those very things even as we speak,” said Shakespeare. “In any event, we are not going to learn anything by congregating in the corridor. I suggest we all repair downstairs until Tuck can speak with her and then tell us what has transpired.”
They all trooped downstairs, where Stackpole opened up the bar and, behind shuttered windows, they sat anxiously, drinking ale by candlelight and discussing what to do. They decided that Dick Burbage should be informed as soon as possible, and John Fleming, too, since both were shareholders of the company and Dick’s father was in business with Henry Darcie. A couple of the hired men were at once dispatched to their homes. Otherwise, they did not yet know anything about the murder that Elizabeth had spoken of, such as who has been killed or how or where, but foremost in all their minds was the singular fact that one of their ostlers, and to all intents and purposes, one of their company, for Shakespeare had arranged a part for Smythe as a hired man, had become involved with the daughter of one of the principal investors in the Burbage Theatre.
Save for Smythe and Shakespeare, who were still new with the company, Hency Darcie was well known to them all. A wealthy merchant who, along with James Burbage’s in-laws, had invested heavily in the construction of the playhouse, he received as a shareholder of the Theatre, as opposed to of the company, a portion of the profits. Before any of them got paid, Hency Darcie got paid and as such, he was a very important person in all of their lives. James Burbage, Richard’s father and the owner of the playhouse, owed a great deal to Henry Darcie, and if-as it certainly appeared to all-Smythe had indeed ruined his daughter, who was, as Speed seemed to recall, betrothed to some nobleman, there would certainly be hell to pay.
“Oh, of all the bloody wenches he could have pronged, why in God’s name did he have to choose Henry Darcie’s daughter?” Kemp moaned, putting his head in his hands and overacting, as usual. “We are undone! We are all undone!”
“Well, for one thing, ‘tis not so certain that ‘twas Smythe who did the choosing,” Shakespeare said. “Remember, I was there when she arrived. ‘Twas she who came knocking on our door in search of him, and insisted upon waiting for him to return while I went to deliver my rewrite of the play.”
“And you let her stay?” Kemp said, in a tone of outrage. “Alone in an inn, in a room shared by two men, unchaperoned?”
“Well, if she were alone, then she would be unchaperoned, wouldn’t she?” Shakespeare replied.
“You can save your poet’s word games, you know damned well what I mean!” said Kemp, angrily. “ ‘Twas your fault, then, that this whole miserable event happened in the first place!”
“How exactly do you arrive at that ridiculous conclusion?” Shakespeare countered. “How was I supposed to know whose daughter she was? I had never even heard of Henry Darcie. On the other hand, when she first arrived here and went up to our room, every single one of you was right here, wassailing and gorging yourselves on bread and cheese and meat pasties, toasting the success of the last performance. Which, I might add, would have been a miserable failure had I not doctored up your play for you.”
“Oh, I see! So now ‘tis you who are the savior of the company, is that it?” replied Kemp. “Why, you insolent young puppy-”
“Be quiet, Kemp, for Heaven’s sake!” interrupted Speed. “This is getting us nowhere. For one thing, the play was not working, and he fixed it. And I, for one, did not hear anyone disputing that fact after the performance. For another, our friend, Shakespeare, is absolutely right. We were all here, Dick and John included, when the girl arrived and asked for Smythe and none of us paid her any mind. ‘Twas not as if Elizabeth Darcie had never attended the Theatre before. She had been to many of our performances together with her father and she had met us all. We simply were not paying attention. We all saw her, but we did not notice her, because we were all much too busy celebrating.”
Kemp snorted. “Well, I cannot go paying attention to every wench who happens to pass by!”
“You pay no attention to any of them,” Speed replied, wryly, “and we all know why.”
“The question is, what are you lot going to do now?” asked Stackpole. “The girl’s parents are going to be concerned that she is missing. The sheriff’s men may be called out.”
“Oh, that is all we need!” wailed Kemp. “We shall all wind up in the Marshalsea!”
“No one is going to prison,” Shakespeare said. “None of us has done anything wrong. Smythe, admittedly, looks to be somewhat at risk, but the rest of us have not broken any laws.”
“It makes no difference,” Kemp said. “Henry Darcie has influential friends. Powerful friends. He shall have the playhouse shut down and we shall all be out of work!”
“As a principal investor, if he has the Theatre shut down, then he only ends up taking money out of his own pocket,” Shakespeare said. “And I have never known a merchant willing to do that.”
Before long, Fleming and young Burbage both arrived. When they’d heard what happened and whose daughter was involved, they had wasted no time in getting there. They were quickly informed of what had transpired in their absence. By that time, Smythe rejoined them. He was alone. No sooner had he come into the tavern than they all surrounded him, peppering him with questions and accusations.
“Enough!” Stackpole shouted at them all. “Leave the lad alone! Give him a chance to speak!”
Smythe glanced at the burly innkeeper gratefully and thanked him.
“First things first,” said Shakespeare. “How is she?”
“She has calmed down a bit and is resting,” Smythe replied. “I gave her some wine. She will sleep now, I think. She has had quite a fright, indeed.”
Stackpole brought him an ale. “There ya go, lad. On the house.”
“Thanks, Court.”
“What happened?” Speed asked.
Smythe related everything Elizabeth had told him, from the time they first met when she came to the Theatre in Gresham ’s coach to her report of Gresham ’s murder.
“Oh, God!” said Kemp, running his fingers through his hair. “Now we have a murdered nobleman! This just keeps getting worse and worse!”
“Be quiet, Will,” said Burbage, with an annoyed glance at Kemp. “Did she see who did it, Tuck?”
Smythe shook his head. “She does not recall seeing or hearing anyone or anything. They were engaged in an argument, it seems, and she was furious with Gresham for the way he’d treated her and wished
that he would be struck down. The very next moment, he was.”
“Good Lord!” said Fleming.
“She said he gave a sort of grunt and fell against her. She almost went down herself, trying to support his weight, and then noticed a dagger protruding from between his shoulder blades. She quite understandably panicked and took to her heels. She ran straight back here.”
“The poor girl!” said Fleming.
“I do not understand,” said Burbage, frowning. “How could he have been stabbed and she not have seen who did it?”
“I was a bit confused about that, too,” said Smythe. “It took a while to calm her down and she does not seem to remember what happened very clearly. But she does recall that there was an alleyway behind them, so my conjecture is that someone threw the dagger from within the alleyway.”
“Threw it!” Fleming said. “Lord! It might have hit the girl!”
Smythe shook his head. “I doubt it. She said it had gone in up to the hilt. That much, she remembers vividly. Whoever threw that dagger knew what he was about.”
“What do you mean?” asked Burbage.
“He means the man was an assassin,” Shakespeare said.
“What!”
“An assassin!”
“But how could you know that?” asked Burbage.
“It only stands to reason,” Shakespeare replied. “There seems to have been no attempt at robbery. And Gresham ’s clothes alone would have fetched a tidy sum, to say nothing of his jewelry and what he must have had in his purse. Elizabeth certainly would not have deterred a robber who was willing to kill to get what he wanted. So, if the man was not killed for what he had, then he was killed for who he was. Somebody wanted Anthony Gresham dead.”
“But there is no way you can know any of this for certain,” Kemp said.
“No, not yet, anyway,” Smythe replied. “But for the moment, I can think of no other explanation.”
“So then she simply left the body lying in the street?” asked Kemp.
“What did you expect her to do, pick it up and carry it back here?” said Speed, with a grimace.
“Well, I merely meant that someone would certainly have discovered it by now,” said Kemp.