The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 2 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  The expense left me with no resources save the tiny purse sent as an advance by the Player King, and no option but to accept his commission as a clerk. I dismissed the Player Queen and spent the morning reading the script. It was a strange piece, a sequel to the tragedy of the deposition of King Richard the Second. However, it was no tragedy, unless the rebel Hotspur was deemed to be the hero, and the fascinating character of Owen Glendower disappeared from the action in the middle.

  I took my small purse and went to a shop where much read, corner-turned books could be bought cheaply. I selected a chronicle and repaired to a tavern, where I sat in a window reading and eating a better noon meal than usual. Then I walked down to the bridge and over the river to the Rose Theatre, base of the Derby players.

  The Player King was looking harassed. His beard had not been trimmed and I fancied his hair looked thinner. He was pleased that I had agreed to work on the play, but had little time to discuss it. “It’s tragical-comical-historical.” he said. “The second part will include pastoral scenes, so that will be tragical-comical-pastoral-historical!” He paused and then added: “I have learned that to make a serious play on the deposition of a king, done by an Act of Parliament and not by an assassin’s bodkin, appeals little to the groundlings and a lot less to the Court. I have been pressed to write a sequel, showing the consequences of that unrepeatable act, but done differently.

  “King Henry IV bent the laws of England beyond the point where many would have said they were broken. He died in his bed, uneasy ’tis true but unpunished.” He gave me a cold look, as though to say my own desire for revenge on the King who killed my father must go similarly unrequited. “The whole matter is uneasy, for our beloved Queen traced her line from Henry’s branch and not from his victim’s. Therefore I will give the clowns their day in the sun, and slide the real matter in gently, like a roll of meat into a baguette.”

  “What about this Welsh man Owen Glendower? He had a whole nation to avenge. And according to the chronicle, he did it well, and no one knows his fate at all.”

  “ ’Tis thought he was defeated and disappeared. Though doubtless the Welsh fancy that he will someday return. Their hills are alive with the shadowy warbands of ancient kings, waiting their moment for ever.”

  An unpleasant thought struck me. “You don’t intend to throw his part to your clowns?”

  “I’ll be lucky to throw it to anyone, unless you can get the part written for some apprentice to learn. Our clerk and half our senior actors are ill. They gave up wine for Lent, and poisoned their stomachs with foul water.”

  In the next few days I worked uninterrupted on the play, with no company save the spider I had named Claudius, after my uncle. I had no fresh offers of work, or visitors of any kind, save a message inviting me to dine with Secretary Walsingham. I was uncertain what to make of it. Walsingham’s uncle had not been the most famous man in England, but he had been the most powerful and feared, and the nephew had taken over his office and his company of spies.

  The work on the play went well, though as the Player King had doubtless half-hoped, I did not have the time to improve it much. I left out some of the coarser scenes of visits to taverns by clowns, and enlarged the conversation between Glendower and Hotspur about demons. I found time to read more about Glendower. His claim, which sounded reasonable to me, was traced to a long line of Welsh princes. In history, his rising had been more successful than that of Hotspur: he gained control of most of the towns and castles of Wales, but eventually lost them again.

  The most remarkable aspect of his career was the end of it. For several years he remained alive and in hiding. None of his friends would betray him, even for a reward. No outsider knew exactly when he died, nor where he was buried.

  I was much impressed. A man can usually rely on his enemies to be constant, but to find the same consistence in his friends he must be blessed indeed.

  I had no choice but to accept Walsingham’s offer of dinner, though I could hardly expect him to offer me anything more sustaining than victuals and wine. I knew his queen would not advance me enough money to deal properly with my uncle, and if I was offered any help at all, it would be in exchange for impossible conditions, such as custom-free navigation into the Baltic for English ships.

  This was Thomas Walsingham, nephew of the late master of spies. He had kept most of these men in his service, and I knew the Player King was very anxious not to anger him. We dined alone at his London house. His garb lacked the ostentation of many of the wealthy of that city, but was not drab or Puritan. It was sober rather than sombre. He asked me only briefly about Denmark, preferring to talk of the stage. He knew the classic dramas, and the work of the leading playwrights of the day. He asked if I had been to Rome, and was glad to hear I had not.

  “Though we can learn, not from the Papists, from the old Romans. From their successes, and their mistakes. They say there’s a theatre in Rome so vast it could seat a city, and so well built that if an actor breaks wind on the stage, it can be heard in the back row. That’s where the Emperors used to put on plays to impress their policies on the people.”

  He paused and refilled my glass. “Or, if the censor did not do his job, agitators could put on work to rouse the rabble.” Before I could reply, already thinking about Richard II and its comic sequel, he said: “I gather you are acquainted with the Earl of Derby’s men?”

  “Yes, though I gather the Earl died recently, and their new patron is the Countess Alice.” I did not mention that I was now their acting clerk.

  “You knew the late Earl?”

  “I only met him briefly.”

  “A very promising young man. It was a tragic loss. Of course, he was Her Majesty’s cousin. And there is a matter of succession.”

  I thought quickly: “The players know well that the Queen is in good health, so discussion of the succession is unnecessary.” The Player King had informed me in no uncertain terms that such discussion was banned at Court, though it happened often in taverns.

  “That is true, but I spoke of the Derby succession. The Earl was in good health, but died suddenly. His widow is with child, or says she is. She swears she will bear a son, but thus far has only daughters. The next heir, the late Earl’s brother William, is kept from his inheritance.”

  The two discussions of succession were one. The Queen’s closest cousin was a Scot, the King of that country, and the tavern-talkers were against him. Now the next cousin had died suddenly in good health, and I of all men knew what that was likely to mean. Both issues lay between an unborn child, and this brother. I admitted to not knowing him.

  “William of Derby is not as brilliant as his brother was, but is open to sensible influence. It is hoped he will marry a reliable girl, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. So far, he has not agreed to the match.

  “That’s where you can help. Of course, I would never dream of asking someone in your exalted position to act as a spy, but it would be appropriate for you to be a diplomat. As a friend of the players, you will be well placed to hear talk about the Countess, as to how likely she is to bear a healthy son. And equally, I have advised William to himself patronize the players, and you will be able to learn if he is under any influence which might be harmful.”

  Not being a spy, I was offered no payment for this service, though he did inform me that my uncle could be sent “reliable information” that I was still locked up, and that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had not returned because they were lodging in a house of ill-repute in Southwark, and looking settled into a way of life that suited their depraved natures. As I wanted Claudius to think exactly that, I found myself frugally in Walsingham’s debt.

  I went back to the rooms I rent over the goldsmith’s shop, and stayed up late, working on the play, writing back in the comic scenes I had left out. I saw now there could be no more serious plays about the deposition of monarchs.

  The next morning I delivered the text of this comic historical tragedy to the Rose myself. I found the players
in an unusually sober mood. Several were absent: the rest were watching with a semblance of respect as the Player King described the theatre to a couple of people I took to be visitors of some importance. Both wore black, and I would have taken the man to be one of the Puritans who were more eager censors of the theatre than even Walsingham could have wished for, save that his black weeds were velvet and studded with jet stones, and his companion was a woman with unbound golden hair, who wore a dress of a similar yellow colour under her dark cape.

  Never having learned the disposition of a messenger, I strode up to the Player King, who halted his exposition and said: “Ah, allow me to present my collaborator, the learned Mr Christian, who licks my unformed verses into shape like the whelps of a bear! This is my lord William of Derby, brother of our lamented patron, the late Earl. And Mistress Angharad Atmunt of Lan Bedrock, his protégé.”

  I know better than to judge by faces, and with William of Derby did not even try. His mouth had a vain and silly smile, but the eyes were less foolish. He looked at me keenly, but I sensed more melancholy than suspicion in his gaze, as though he understood that trust and affection were folly, but still regretted that that was so. As for the mistress, she was easier to assess. She had red lips and rosy cheeks, and an expression of sweetness and innocence which I knew at once to be feigned, as such expressions always are.

  “How exciting!” the Earl-who-would-be commented at once. “Dare we hope that your amanuensis has completed your new play, and that we shall soon enjoy a performance?”

  “We are not quite ready, my Lord. Due to sickness, we lack players for several parts. The Prince, for instance . . .”

  “I could play that part!” The Player Queen had been hiding under the trapdoor in the stage: now he jumped through and declaimed: “ ‘Hostess, my breakfast, come! Oh, I could wish this tavern were my drum!’ ”

  “That’s Fastolfe’s line!” I snapped, having burnt my remaining drop of oil the last midnight writing it back in.

  “I’ll play them both! Didn’t I play Queen Margaret, the She-Wolf of France, in the same play as I did the Witch of Orleans? I could play Fastolfe with a few cushions!”

  “With one cushion,” William of Derby said. “You could play my sister-in-law, Countess Alice!”

  He laughed at his own jest, perhaps to show it was one, as no one else made the effort, not even his mistress. The Player King said hastily: “Maybe the boy is ready for the Prince. But we lack anyone to play the great Welsh hero Owen Glendower, this lady’s ancestor.”

  “But you must!” The woman spoke for the first time. Her voice was less blandly pleasant than her face; fiery and exciting, it was like the music for a masque, which displays Dido’s lament for Aeneas. She looked at me; disturbingly, she said: “This gentleman knows all the lines, and he has a noble countenance, like one descended from an ancient line of kings. Does he have a part?”

  I began to explain that I was no player, lamely, for I was poorer than most of them, and was almost ready to thus lower myself for payment. The Player King shrugged: “He has no part, but knows them all. But that is not enough. We have no one at all who could present a most important character: that is, the daughter of Glendower, she who married King Henry’s rival Mortimer. She has to sing a song in Welsh. Our young apprentices are unlicked whelps with singing voices like diseased bats, fit only to play serving-maids. And of course they can’t speak Welsh, let alone sing it!”

  She looked at the would-be Earl, then at me. “Is the part written? What song do you use?”

  I exclaimed: “No one said I had to write a part in Welsh! I don’t . . .”

  “So the play is not ready, unless you have a someone who can play a lady who speaks and sings in Welsh!!” Angharad Atmunt contrived to look utterly distraught, and her lover William said: “Of course, my dear, no actor’s apprentice could sing a Welsh song well enough please those friends of mine who have heard you sing! But ’tis a pity, I had promised them a new play, and it seems they’ll have to wait till Countess Alice gives birth to her pillow, which could be a long gesture . . .”

  “How about herself!” the Player Queen had been staring at Angharad so fixedly she might have been a Gorgon and have turned him to stone. “If she can sing so well . . .”

  The Player King interrupted: “Alas, ladies are not allowed to perform on the stage. Especially Ladies!”

  Angharad’s face had lit up like that of a Siren sighting a mariner in the distance whom she could lure to his doom, and the Player Queen was emboldened to say: “If I can give you a lady disguised as a man, as I often have, surely she can be a boy dressed as a lady!” He made a coarse gesture, indicating that her lasciviously full figure could be made even less boyish by some artifice. “At least let’s hear her sing!”

  “Of course you may!” Angharad had let her mask of innocence slip, by grinning at his lewd gesture. Now she said: “Have you an instrument?” The boy produced a little flute, scarcely better than a tin whistle, and she said: “Well, if you perform at my Lord William’s house, you’ll see I’m used to singing to a much better instrument, a mighty organ, but this’ll have to do!” She ran through a list of songs, and it seemed both knew one the Welsh archers had sung on the field of Agincourt. Then he began to play, and she to sing.

  I was entranced, though not so much as to forget my unpaid commission from Walsingham. If he wanted the Queen’s cousin William to marry a sensible girl of his choice, and this Welsh harlot was William’s other option, then he faced a dilemma few men would envy. For the girl had a voice as sweet and chilling as that which the enchantress Viviane had used to ensnare Merlin, as the voice of Morgan the Fay seducing the Knights of the Round Table.

  William clearly felt the same way, for he clapped loudly and said: “My dear, no one of the Gaullish race has sung so well since the Lady of the Shallots sang for Sir Lance-a-clot! Now you have your players, Master Will!”

  He invited the Player King and I to a meal and a glass of sack in an hour. I was obliged to discuss the arrangements for the play, but my mind was on William himself. I wanted to ask the Player King about him, but I knew it was unlikely that he would give me any useful information that was not required for my own safety. He was a man who spoke freely about distant places, historical times, and imagined persons. But of any important person of Queen Elizabeth’s realm, he spoke as little as if the man himself were hiding in earshot behind an arras with a dagger, ready to spring out and avenge his name. As we left the theatre, I therefore questioned him about the woman, Angharad Atmunt:

  “Will it cause you problems if she appears on the stage?”

  “Probably, but to refuse could cause worse. Every company of players needs a patron of high rank. We were the Earl’s men: his succession is unclear, and we dare not offend either the brother or the possible mother of his son.”

  “You think the Countess is not pregnant with a pillow, and will soon give birth to a son?”

  “Hopefully, though so far she has managed only daughters, and none for seven years.”

  “What about William’s Mistress . . . Angharad? Might she be a future Countess?”

  “I know very little of her.”

  I was surprised. “But you knew she was descended from Owen Glendower!”

  “I guessed. All Welsh with any pretence at nobility claim descent from Glendower. If you encourage her, she will probably claim to be descended from King Arthur himself!”

  As we reached a small house in a relatively quiet street, he explained that the late Earl had left his personal property, including his great town house, to his daughters. William lived quietly and kept few servants. He greeted us in his study, alone, and offered a glass of sack. It seemed he had already partaken of a couple, for he was in a talkative mood. He took us through to his small dining room, showing us a portrait behind his own seat of the first Earl, he who had been king-maker to the first Tudor King, the Queen’s grandfather. I realized the Earldom itself was a mighty prize, even if the Queen preferred
her Scottish cousin as an heir, and I ventured to ask him why his relatives were trying so hard to block him from his inheritance. He shrugged:

  “Block me? I think they fancy I’m a blockhead! A bit of a Nidicock! I don’t know why. I have studied my books and read Latin passably well. Even Greek. I follow the plays and know their meanings. I know the play of King Richard’s death and why it is not one to be put on again, which is more than my brother ever mastered! That is why I need you to perform this comedy of King Henry and Fastolfe!”

  Angharad joined us at that moment. It seemed that while the cook was away she had been supervising the cook’s assistant and helping him mix certain Welsh herbs for the recipe she desired. I noted that she was already exceeding her position to undertaken the duties of a wife. William greeted her warmly, bade us be seated, and said Grace in English, after which he said: “What I have never understood, is certain tendentious arguments by which my brother held he could love the Queen, and still flirt with the Pope’s religion.”

  I was about to reply that I had been raised on Luther’s arguments when Angharad interrupted: “But he was loyal! When a gang of papists tried to corrupt him, he reported them at once to Master Walsingham!”

  She was a good actress, who knew men admire loyalty. I had to admit she was also a superb cook, as well as entertaining company. The meal was mutton with herbs, parsnips, and leeks, taken with a good deal of sack. After this noon meal, which continued until two, I returned to my rooms with the part of Glendower, reluctantly committed to learn it by heart, now I was an acting clerk in every sense.

  I sat in my easy chair reading the part for a while, feeling tried from my labours of the previous night . . . the day was warm and I had eaten better and drunk deeper than for some time. I confess I drifted off to sleep. I had a dream, in which it seemed someone from the spirit world was trying to give me an urgent message but then I was woken by a light, but urgent, knocking at the door of my office. I woke suddenly, scarcely aware of where I was, then got to my feet unsteadily, knocking my papers to the floor, and staggered over to open the door.