King Arthur's Bones (34 page)

We identified the narrow-windowed house on the corner. No light came through the crevices in its shutters, and I hoped we might find it unoccupied or get no answer to the rap that Edmund Shakespeare gave on the door. No such luck. Almost straight away, it was opened by a stocky child.

‘You wish to see Master Scoto?’

The voice was no child’s but deep, a man’s. The little figure was a dwarf. It was impossible to make out his features since the only illumination came from candles in a sconce further down the hall.

‘You’ve guessed it,’ said Edmund.

‘He is expecting you.’

This was not a question but a statement and did not increase my comfort. Ushering us inside, the dwarfish shape told us to go to a door at the end of the hallway and knock three times.

‘Three times. Why not once? What did I tell you, Nicholas?’ whispered Martin Barton as we passed the flickering light of the sconce. ‘Like the little doorman, it is all to heighten the effect.’

But we did as we were instructed. Edmund knocked thrice on the oaken door. Did I detect a slight hesitation in Shakespeare’s brother, as if he too was regretting we’d reached this point? A soft voice said ‘Enter’ and Edmund lifted the latch.

There used to be a shop off St Paul’s Walk owned by an apothecary who styled himself Old Nick, and what I saw now of Scoto’s room reminded me of that place. This one was an extensive den, smoky from the few scattered, guttering candles and with a sweet but disagreeable scent. There were shelves crowded with wooden boxes and earthenware pots, and from the beams over our heads dangled withered roots and bladders and large whitish objects. A table in a corner was encumbered with wide books and greasy glass tubes and alembics. Against the left-hand wall hung a tapestry or arras depicting strange, garbed figures and symbols. The figures seemed half-alive as a draught stirred the arras. On the far side of the room was a desk and behind the desk was a hunched figure, presumably Master Bernardo Scoto. A single candle wavered next to a hand that was scrawling something across a sheet of paper. The hand seemed disembodied from its owner, who was in darkness.

‘
Benvenuto, signori
.’

The voice out of the shadows was soft, insinuating. It made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. We stood there, three awkward supplicants.

‘Your toothache, Signor Barton, ’ow is it?’

How the Italian was aware of the playwright’s bad teeth, I don’t know. Martin was not wincing or cupping his hand to his face, and besides it was dim in the chamber, as I’ve said. But the remark had the effect, no doubt intended, of giving the hunched figure some unusual powers of penetration.

‘You should try chewin’ ’ore’ound,’ said Scoto. ‘I can make you up a preparation if you desire.’

‘I’ll attend to my own teeth, with or without the horehound,’ said Barton. ‘We have come about other business.’

‘You are in search of some bones?’

‘We have been told you have them,’ said Edmund.

‘
Fai attenzione
,’ said Scoto. ‘There are bones above your ’eads.’

Among the vegetable matter hanging from the ceiling there were indeed some bone-like shapes. Despite the sweet-scented fug of the room, I shivered. It was like being in a charnel house.

‘Signor Revill stands beneath the ’orn of a unicorn. Reach up and touch it, sir. It will bring you no ’arm but blessings,
i doni della natura
. It is a protection against the plague. And beside it there are the ribs of a – ’ow do you say it? –
una sirena
. Ah,
si
, a mermaid.’

Wondering how he knew my name, as he had known Martin Barton’s, I restrained myself from reaching up to touch either the mermaid’s ribs or the horn. This latter bone, long and tapering to a point, might have belonged to a unicorn, although there are those who say that no such creature exists.

‘We are not interested in animal remains,’ said Edmund. ‘It is King Arthur’s bones we seek.’

‘I ’ave many oddments here.
Una miscellanea
.’

‘Oddments? These are relics of England’s greatness.’

‘Ha parlato l’oracolo!’

The words were plainly meant as a snide comment, and Edmund took them in that spirit. Stepping forward, he said in a quavering voice: ‘They should not be in foreign hands. If you possess such things, Master Scoto, you ought to surrender them to the authorities. The bones of a great king must not moulder in neglect. You will suffer the consequences otherwise.’

Scoto laughed. The sound was as soft and unsettling as his speech. He moved from his perch behind the desk and came towards us. He was wearing a snug cap and some kind of cloak with geometric figures on it, cabbalistic designs probably. By daylight and in the open, I would have dismissed him as I would any mountebank who sells the elixir of life at a country fair. It wasn’t so easy to do in this dim and smoky place. But of course the man from Mantua did not have Arthur’s bones. This was a fool’s errand. We should quit this darkened house now.

But now was already too late. Instead of seizing Scoto as he had with Davy Owen that afternoon, Edmund Shakespeare produced a little dagger from within the recesses of his jerkin and held it underneath Scoto’s bare chin. ‘Enough of your double talk, signor,’ he said. ‘Give us a straight answer or I shall give you a straight jab with this blade.’

‘If you are so foolish, young man, you will not leave this ’ouse alive.
Non sono solo
. Not alone, you understand.’

‘Oh, that small person who let us in.’

‘Nano, ’e is worth three of you.’

I had to admire the man’s self-possession as well as his confidence in the little doorkeeper. He didn’t retreat in the face of Edmund’s threats but held up his arms in a gesture that spread his patterned cloak like a bird’s dark wings. I glanced first at the rippling arras, as if Scoto might have attendants hidden behind it, and then at Martin Barton. Without a word we took hold of Edmund Shakespeare, one on each side. I was on his right and so it fell to me to grasp his knife-hand, which I did with both my hands around his wrist as tight as a vice. Meanwhile, Scoto watched us with, I could have sworn, an air of amusement.

Edmund was too surprised to struggle, though he turned a burning look on me. Then he seemed to slacken and allowed Martin and me to half-lead, half-drag him back to the entrance of Scoto’s den. All this while he still clutched the knife and, even if I did not think he would have struck at me, I feared a slip. We straggled down the hallway and opened the front door, to let in a gust of cold spring air. There was no sign of the dwarfish porter Nano. We emerged into the street and drew Edmund away from the house on the corner. When we judged that he’d calmed down, we released him. He put away the knife without being told to, but he was still angry.

‘Why did you stop me? That charlatan in there would sooner have responded to a threat than a polite query.’

‘You might not have been content with a threat,’ said Martin Barton, and I was glad not only that the redheaded satirist had kept us company but that he was displaying such good sense. For myself, I’d been shaken by the whole encounter.

‘I suppose you are going to go and tell tales to my brother,’ said Edmund to me.

‘Not a word,’ I said, ‘if you return to your lodgings now and forget this silly quest for Arthur’s bones.’

‘You go back to your lodgings if you please,’ said Edmund. ‘I will go where I like.’

He turned on his heel and stalked off up Seething Lane, leaving us in the dark. No point in pursuing Shakespeare’s younger brother. Perhaps the cool night air would bring him to his senses.

‘How are your teeth?’ I said to Martin. ‘Are you going to try horehound?’

‘I would not take remedies from that charlatan, Nicholas. And another thing. He is not from Mantua.’

‘How do you know?’

‘My mother was from those parts, and his accent is quite different.’

As it happened, I did talk to William Shakespeare the next day on the subject of King Arthur and his bones. But it was WS who raised the subject while I tried my best to keep his brother Edmund out of the conversation. We were at the Globe playhouse and our morning rehearsal was done.

I passed WS in the passage outside the tiring room. He asked in his usual courteous style whether I had a minute to spare. That he wanted a private chat was indicated by the way in which he ushered me into a small office reserved for the shareholders.

‘Nick, you remember when you called on me the other day in Silver Street and I showed you that, ah, relic of King Arthur?’

‘The one Edmund gave you?’

‘Yes. But it has disappeared from my room.’

‘Stolen?’

‘I would not think so were it not for another strange circumstance. As you know, I was working on a piece about the great king. I had not got very far for, in truth, the ink seemed to be flowing very reluctantly from my pen. But the manuscript sheets are missing also.’

I thought straight away of Edmund, wondered whether he had slipped into his brother’s lodgings and for some perverse reason filched the bone and the sheets. But I said nothing. Perhaps the same idea was running through WS’s head, for he seemed troubled.

‘I hope you will not take offence if I ask you whether you told anyone of what I was writing.’

‘Martin Barton may have got to hear of it,’ I said, unwilling to say that it was Edmund who had mentioned the King Arthur play in the Mermaid tavern. ‘But no one else as far as I know.’

‘Barton can be a silly fellow,’ said WS, ‘but he would not stoop to thieving another man’s ideas. He has too high a regard for his own.’

‘No, he’s honest,’ I said, still grateful for Barton’s action at Scoto’s house the previous night.

‘I might even believe my brother Edmund capable of it, but he would hardly steal back something that he’d given me in the first place. Or take a sheaf of my papers.’

I was glad that it was William who had raised the subject. I shook my head with almost as much conviction as I felt. Thieving on the quiet wasn’t Edmund’s style either. Besides, WS’s brother was working as usual at the Globe this very morning, doing the bidding of the tire-man and the bookkeeper. We’d exchanged glances but no words. No longer cheerful, Edmund looked red-eyed and dishevelled as though he’d found somewhere to drink away his anger after quitting us last night.

‘How does my brother do?’ said WS.

‘Well enough.’

‘I can tell it from your tone that something has happened.’

‘Nothing important.’

‘No? Well, one day you might tell me. At least he is not in the Clink.’

He might have been, I thought.

‘And I am grateful to you for keeping him company outside the playhouse.’

‘I’m sorry for the loss of your royal bone and your royal play, William,’ I said, wanting to change the subject since I didn’t think I’d be keeping Edmund company much longer.

‘A play can be written again and written better,’ said WS. ‘And if the bone really belongs to the great king, it cannot be lost. They say that Arthur is sleeping, ready to wake again in the hour of England’s need, even if his bones have to be gathered from the four corners of the country.’

‘Arthur may wake again on the stage,’ I said.

‘Yes, we can resurrect him,’ said WS.

It was characteristic of the man that he should take such a relaxed view of his losses or thefts, although they troubled me slightly on account of the events of the previous day.

But that was as nothing to the trouble that came along the next day.

As I was coming out of my lodgings in Tooley Street in the morning, I was accosted by an individual with a narrow, pustular face who asked bluntly if I was Revill.

‘Who wants to know?’

‘That means you
are
Revill.’

He handed me a crumpled note. It was from Edmund Shakespeare. Scrawled as if written in haste or a poor light, it said: ‘Ask no questions but come with the man who presents this, I beg you, Nicholas.’

It was signed ‘Edmund’. I recognized the same hand I’d seen on the title page of
Venus and Adonis
where Edmund had inked his own name. But it wasn’t the signature or the message which bothered me the most. It was the bloody fingermarks on the crumpled sheet. Edmund’s blood? Or another’s?

Despite Edmund’s injunction, I did ask a couple of questions – basic ones like ‘What’s happened?’ and ‘Where are we going?’ – but received no reply from this unhelpful individual. I rejected my first idea, which was that Edmund had indeed ended up in one of the several Southwark prisons. This spotty pinch-face was no gaoler. Gaolers are generally worse dressed than those they incarcerate and any approach to a friend of a prisoner always involves a demand for money, straight away. Nor did I fear some kind of trap for the fellow’s garments had an official look to them. Indeed there was a badge on his jerkin which I hadn’t had the chance to inspect.

I followed him down Mill Lane. There’s no wharf here but a plain flight of steps and some mooring-posts. A boatman was waiting, and I realized that my guide had already been ferried across the river once this morning. I wondered where the trouble was. I had a nasty feeling that it might be found at Scoto’s house on the corner of Tower Street.

In other circumstances I might have enjoyed being rowed across the Thames on a fine morning in May. The sun dazzled off the windows of the houses on the Bridge, the wind was invigorating and the boat rocked in a manner that wasn’t too puke-making. But I was thinking about my best course: see what mischief Edmund Shakespeare had tumbled into, reassure him that we would do our best and then race back to the Globe to leave the matter in WS’s hands. After all, he really was his brother’s keeper.

I was sitting in the stern of the boat beside the individual who’d brought me Edmund’s note. The boatman facing us was too breathless – it is a harder task rowing downriver below the Bridge – to make conversation or, more likely, to relieve himself with a stream of oaths. My companion still didn’t say anything, and I was able to observe the little insignia on his jerkin. Then I looked up beyond the boatman’s flexing shoulders and, squinting against the sun, saw that we were headed for a particular spot on the northern bank.