A Mystery Of Errors

by Simon Hawke

  “Did you get him?” Smythe asked, anxiously.

  “No, curse the luck,” Sir William said. “But we got his cloak.” He held up the garment. “A couple of the ostlers found it on the stairs.”

  Smythe exhaled heavily. “Damn it! So he got away, then?”

  “Not yet,” Sir William said grimly, shaking his head. “Come with me.”

  They moved toward the theatre entrance. Outside, Smythe saw the guardsmen in their helms and breastplates, posted at the gate. Sir William smiled. “I do not think he had a chance to slip past them,” he said. “They arrived not long after we did.”

  The Captain of the Guard came up to Sir William and saluted. “We stand by for your orders, milord.”

  “No one has been allowed out past you?”

  “No, milord, no one. Only the lady.”

  Worley’s eyes narrowed. “What lady?” he said, sharply.

  “Why, the one you told to leave, milord.”

  “The one I told to leave? What the devil are you talking about? I told no one to leave! I gave strict orders that no one was to be allowed out! No one!”

  The captain looked concerned. “Aye, milord, that was what I told her. I said that Sir William gave strict instructions that no one was to leave, but she said that you had sent her home, because it would be too dangerous for her to remain. There would be trouble and you did not wish to see her placed at risk-”

  “You damn fool!” Sir William said. “Where did she go?”

  “Why, she… she left in the coach, milord.”

  “What coach?”

  There was now panic in the captain’s eyes. “Well, the one she said you sent for her, milord! A very handsome coach, ‘twas, milord. She… she said it bore your crest-”

  “ Gresham!” Smythe said. He looked out and across the field. “Look! There!” He pointed.

  “Damn! Where is my horse?”

  “Right here, milord,” the ostler who had been holding both their horses all along called out to him.

  “Mount up!” Sir William shouted to the guard as he and Smythe ran to get their horses. “There’ll be a gold sovereign for you when we return,” he said to the ostler, as he swung up into the saddle. “And Captain, if you do not catch that coach, you shall be a stableboy by sunset!”

  “Aye, milord!”

  They all set spurs and galloped off full speed across the field. The coach was well ahead of them, but the driver could not match their pace and they closed the distance rapidly. Before long, Smythe, riding up front with Sir William, could see the driver of the coach whipping up the horses, glancing back nervously over his shoulder. That would be Drummond, surely. But who was in the coach?

  If Sir Anthony was not Sir Anthony, as Sir William had said, but his twin brother, who then was the woman? Smythe hoped it wasn’t who he thought it might be. She could not possibly be part of this, he thought, could she?

  They had nearly closed with the coach as they reached the city limits and the chase continued through the cobbled streets. But here the coach was even more at a disadvantage. People scattered, crying out in fear, as the black coach careened wildly through the streets, and then the inevitable happened. Another coach was coming the other way as Drummond whipped his horses round a bend. In a desperate effort to avoid a collision, Drummond swung wide and tried to go around the other coach, but there simply wasn’t enough room. The horses screamed as they collided and the coaches struck one another with a tremendous impact. Gresham ’s coach overturned and the horses fell in a horrible, thrashing tangle.

  As the pursuing guard reined in, Sir William dismounted and went with several of the guardsmen to see if anyone was injured. There was only one occupant of the smaller coach, a young gen-tleman, but though he was shaken up and bruised, with a cut lip and a bloody nose, he seemed otherwise unhurt. Gresham ’s coach had not fared nearly so well.

  Drummond had been thrown from the seat with such force that he had flown through the air more than a dozen feet and struck a building wall, snapping his spine on impact. His battered body was twisted and bent at an unnatural angle when they found it lying in a puddle on the street. Inside the coach, they found Gresham, with his neck broken. But there was one survivor.

  She was badly bruised and bloody when they pulled her out, but Smythe immediately noticed the striking resemblance that he had not marked before, when he had glimpsed her only very briefly at The Hawk and Mouse, on the road outside of London. She looked up at Sir William with a venemous gaze and spat right into his face. “Heretic pig!” she snarled.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Sir William, wiping his cheek with his handkerchief. “Triplets.”

  EPILOGUE

  “SO THEN SIR ANTHONY REALLY is dead?” asked Shakespeare.

  “I am afraid so,” Sir William replied. He turned to Elizabeth Darcie. “What you must have seen that day was his actual murder, the very murder that enabled his twin brother, Alastair, to take his place once and for all, after trying out his impersonation upon you to make certain he could pull it off.”

  “And here I was convinced ‘twas all some sort of trick,” said Smythe. “I thought Sir Anthony had staged his own death to undermine Elizabeth ’s credibility and make it seem as if she were losing her mind.”

  Elizabeth bit her lower lip at the thought and shook her head.

  “An interesting theory,” said Sir William. “And you were not very far from truth, save that ‘twas Alastair Gresham and not his brother, Anthony, who was trying to make it seem as if Elizabeth were mad.”

  They were sitting at a table in The Toad and Badger with Sir William. It was very late and everybody else had long since gone to bed after discussing the day’s tumultuous events. It had been quite a day for all concerned. Sir William had only recently arrived with some wine, and an exceedingly fine wine it was, and now Smythe, Shakespeare, and Elizabeth, who had arrived along with her father, Henry Darcie, were finally discovering the whole truth behind the strange events they had become caught up in.

  “So then Sir Anthony never knew that he had a twin brother? And a sister?” Smythe shook his head. “How could that be?”

  “ ‘Tis a long and complicated story,” said Sir William. “The sister, Allison, confessed it all to me. And I heard the rest from their aging father, James, earlier tonight. When they were children, they were all on a sea voyage together and there was a storm, which caused a shipwreck. Anthony and his father were picked up by a passing ship after drifting for two days, clinging to some wreckage. They were convinced that there were no other survivors. But as it turns out, there were. Alastair and Allison, together with their mother, had also survived and were picked up by another ship, which took them not to England, but to Spain. Their mother, Helena, never fully recovered from her ordeal. She lingered for some time, and finally died, leaving her two children orphans. Or so ‘twas believed, since no one knew that their father and brother had survived and were in England.”

  “Incredible,” said Henry Darcie.

  “It grows even more so,” said Sir William. “The children were raised by Jesuits, and so of course, they were raised as devout Catholics. Anthony and his father, needless to say, were Church of England. And for years, they were all unaware of one another. Until Drummond came upon the scene. Or, perhaps, I should call him Brother Andrew.”

  “Brother Andrew!” Smythe said. “You mean he was a priest?“

  “A member of the Jesuit order, and a fanatic,” Sir William said. “A diabolical provocateur if there ever was one. For years, ever since King Henry broke with the Church of Rome, the Papists had been sending agents into England, many of them priests, in an attempt to undermine the Church of England and eventually bring what they saw as our heretic nation back into the fold.”

  “For which reason, of course, ‘tis a crime to give aid or shelter to a priest,” said Shakespeare.

  “Precisely. Well, Brother Andrew was one such agent, and he traveled often between England and Spain, though secretly, of
course, for ‘twould have meant his death if his true identity were known. He knew Alastair and Allison quite well, because when he was younger, he had been their tutor. Alastair, raised in the strong traditions of the Catholic Church, had wanted to be a priest himself, but Brother Andrew found a better use for him when he learned, apparently quite by accident, that Alastair and Allison had a twin, or perhaps I should say a triplet brother back in England.”

  “So then he turned them against their own family?” said Shakespeare.

  “And quite successfully, it seems. He played upon their sense of loss and fanned it into hatred. He made them believe their father had abandoned them, together with their mother, and that he and Anthony were now living a life of privileged position, having turned their backs on God along with the rest of heretic England, save for those loyal Catholic souls who still maintained the true faith in secret, at risk to their very lives. And he convinced Alastair and his sister that they both could best serve the Church by coming back to England, taking their rightful place, and working in secret for the cause. And thus the plan was hatched.

  “As Andrew Drummond, he managed to secure a position as a servant to Sir Anthony. With his manners and his education, ‘twas probably not difficult at all for him to do. Then, once he was secure in his position, he proceeded with his incredible plan to substitute Alastair for Anthony. But there were two obstacles in his way. One was Mistress Darcie, who had been betrothed to Anthony. Well, you have already surmised what they must have planned for her.” Elizabeth shivered in her cloak and her father clenched his fists upon the table. “The other impediment to their plan,” Sir William continued, “was a spy who appeared to be very effective at exposing Papist agents who were being sent to England. The identity of this spy was not known to Brother Andrew, but he had managed to discover ‘twas a poet, a gifted poet who had achieved considerable acclaim among the players.”

  “Marlowe!” Smythe said.

  “Aye, Marlowe,” said Sir William, nodding. “Only they did not know his name.” He glanced at Shakespeare. “Alastair was posing as his brother Anthony, by then already slain, when Burbage, anxious to secure some patronage, rather bombastically introduced you to him as a man about to make his mark as England’s greatest poet, so Alastair thought you were the one. And there are some other similarities between you and Marlowe. You are both roughly the same age, both poets, both involved with companies of players… Well, Alastair at once went to meet with his sister and report what he had discovered. And they hired those men to kill you.”

  “They very nearly did,” said Shakespeare.

  “Indeed. ‘Twas fortunate that Tuck, here, became involved and followed them, or else they might well have succeeded.”

  “But what puzzles me is what you were doing there, Sir William,” Smythe said.

  “I was following you,” Sir William said.

  “Me?” Smythe was astonished. “You followed me? But why?”

  “Because, I am sorry to say, I had suspected you of being the one sent to dispose of Marlowe.”

  “You thought that I was a hired killer?” Smythe said, scarcely able to believe it.

  “Well, to borrow your theatrical terms, if I were to cast the role of an assassin, you would fill it admirably,” explained Sir William. “A stranger come to town with no connections, young, very fit, powerfully strong, and you at once sought employment with a company of players. Black Billy the brigand is an agent of mine who often enables me to keep track of who is coming to the city at certain times, when information reaches me through other sources that a spy or provocateur may be en route to London. If soldiers were to stop every coach and wagon coming into London along certain routes, there would be repercussions, and a spy might be prepared for that sort of thing. On the other hand, if a highwayman accosts them…”

  “Then no one thinks twice about it,” Shakespeare said, realizing that Sir William had bent the truth a bit because of the Darcies’ presence. “And it does not alert anyone that coaches and wagons en route to London are being checked. Very clever, milord. Very clever, indeed.”

  “But… you mean to say that you suspected all along that I might be an agent sent to murder Marlowe?” Smythe asked, incredulously.

  “Or at the very least to discover who he truly was,” Sir William replied. “And then, perhaps, either dispose of him yourself or else oversee the task.”

  “But you told me about Marlowe yourself!” said Smythe. “And you revealed…” he caught himself just in time. “You revealed certain other things to me, besides! Why do those things if you suspected me?”

  “Because by then I had begun to have my doubts,” Sir William said. “I had begun to have them even before I had you investigated, Tuck, and I found out about your uncle, and about your childhood, and your father’s difficulties, and your burning desire to become a player. None of that seemed to fit the portrait of a hired Papist assassin. Most especially, you had never been abroad to Spain or France. And I also had another suspect. You see, Black Billy had robbed Sir Anthony’s coach shortly after he encountered you. And when his report reached me, I thought ‘twas quite a curious thing to find Sir Anthony on the road to London, when just the previous day, I had seen him at court. Of course, ‘twas not Sir Anthony at all, but Drummond bringing Alastair to London, probably from Bristol, where he had arrived by ship. So I surmised that Gresham had a double, perhaps a twin, but I still needed to be certain about you. And so I took a risk, and dangled Marlowe before you as bait to see if you would rise to it.”

  “Was that not taking a dreadful chance with Marlowe’s life, milord?” asked Shakespeare.

  “Aye, indeed,” Sir William said, “but when you play this sort of game, and for these sort of stakes, then you cannot afford to have much in the way of caution or scruples. And the truth of the matter is that Marlowe is as much of a liability as he is an asset. The things he says and does make it difficult to overlook his indiscretions. Especially since he brings so much attention to himself. He is a clever young man, and quite resourceful, but he is also very difficult, if not nearly impossible to manage. The Papists came to him while he was pursuing his studies at university and recruited him into their cause. He, in turn, came straight to us and offered to work against the efforts of the Counter-Reformation.”

  “Us?” said Smythe.

  “Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” said Sir William, “under Sir Francis Walsingham. And now, you realize, you are privy to knowledge that would cost you your heads if you were ever to reveal it.”

  Elizabeth gasped and her father nodded gravely, to indicate that he understood the severity of this responsibility. “Neither my daughter nor I shall ever tell a soul!” he said, somberly.

  “Nor I,” said Smythe, uneasily. Shakespeare swallowed nervously and nodded in agreement.

  “Had I any doubts upon that score, then I should not have told you any of this,” Sir William said. “Besides, I have a feeling that you may all prove useful, should it ever come to pass that Her Majesty has need of you.”

  “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” Shakespeare said. “I would make a dreadful spy, milord! I fear I have not the mettle nor the constitution for it!”

  Sir William smiled. “Then we shall try neither your mettle nor your constitution, Master Shakespeare. But we shall assay your constancy, methinks. There are many ways that one may serve.”

  “If the queen should ever require my service, then it goes without saying that I am Her Majesty’s to command,” said Henry Darcie.

  Shakespeare grimaced, wryly. “Aye, as are we all.”

  Sir William turned to Smythe. “As for you, Tuck Smythe… we already have ample evidence of both your mettle and your constitution. And of your constancy, I have no doubt. Be a player, if such is your desire, though ‘twould seem to me that you have little talent for it. I think I may have work more suited to your skills. At the very least, there is still the matter of that sword you promised me.”

  “I am at your serv
ice, milord,” said Smythe.

  “Good. Then we shall speak again.” He stood to leave. “And now, ‘tis very late, and I shall leave you to your beds.”

  “But, milord,” said Shakespeare, “what shall we tell the others of this matter on the morrow? They shall be full of questions about the causes behind all these strange events.”

  “And I have no doubt that you shall have suitable answers for them that will satisfy their craving and yet still mask the truth,” Sir William said, putting on his hat and cloak. “After all, as Richard Burbage said, you are ‘soon to make your mark as one of England ’s greatest poets,’ Master Shakespeare.” He chuckled. “Look to your muse to serve you. And now I bid you all good night.”

  As Sir William closed the door behind him, Henry Darcie and Elizabeth stood to leave, as well. “I must thank you for your service to my daughter, Mr. Smythe,” he said. Elizabeth, standing beside him, met Smythe’s gaze. “You believed in her when even her own mother and I did not.”

  “Well, under the circumstances, sir, who could blame you?”

  “I blame myself,” said Darcie. “I should have taken more trouble to examine the suitability of the match, to make inquiries, to… to…”

  “Consider your daughter’s feelings?” Shakespeare suggested.

  “Well…” Darcie grunted, clearly feeling that the poet was presumptuous, but not feeling in a position to say so. “That, too, I suppose. Again, my gratitude to you… gentlemen.” He gave them a curt bow and left. With a lingering glance back, Elizabeth followed her father.

  Shakespeare shook his head, then turned to Smythe and shrugged. “Well… I shall come up with some sort of story to explain all this, I suppose. Though at the moment, Lord only knows what it shall be.” He shook his head. “This has all been the most curious and unsettling affair. Odd’s blood, I need a drink.”

  “Here,” said Smythe. “Have some more wine. We can take the bottle up with us.”

  “To think of it,” said Shakespeare, as they headed up the stairs to their room, “two brothers, identical in every way, to say nothing of a sister, and then a servant who serves both, innocents caught up in strange misapprehensions… you know, with a few small changes here and there to mask the truth of these events, there may well be a story for a play here.”