Crimson Rose (14 page)

‘The children are to be wards of court. They are with their aunt, my sister’s husband’s sister, so nothing to me. I am not considered old enough to look after them and I am happy enough with that, so long may they live in Moorfields. I live here because the house is to be mine and there seems to be no hurry to make any other arrangements.’

‘The servants? Are they behaving well? They must be made aware that you are their mistress now.’

‘The servants have all gone, save for the old nurse who is up in the garret, no doubt waiting for her bread and milk. I am her servant now, if she is not to starve. She hasn’t left the room she sleeps in for a year or more now. I don’t know why my sister kept her here.’ She looked sulky and he was amused to see that it made her no less beautiful. She would certainly not be all alone for long.

‘I believe I remember your old nurse,’ Faunt said. ‘She was good to you as a child. Perhaps your sister just kept her out of kindness.’

The eyes that met his were puzzled. ‘Do you think so?’ she asked. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. I won’t turn her out, you know. It’s just my way of speaking.’

‘Do you have a man of business?’ Faunt asked, changing the subject.

‘I think so. I don’t know who. I am hoping that when …’ She cast her arms out to the sides. ‘When all this is settled, I will be able to live here as I did before. There will be servants who won’t know about what happened to Eleanor. There must be someone in London who will come and work for me. I am not a hard mistress –’ not yet, Faunt thought, but given time – ‘and I will need help when the …’

There was a silence that seemed to ring through the house. Faunt fancied he could hear the draperies whispering the echo back to the hall from the highest attic. He coughed a small cough and waited. He was a good waiter, was Nicholas Faunt. He had found over the years that a moment’s careful waiting could do the work of a thousand words.

She decided she had gone so far she might just as well go the whole way. ‘When the baby comes, I shall need some help around the house. A wet nurse, that kind of thing.’

She looked so young standing there, with her great dark eyes turned on him, he almost offered to marry her himself. ‘Er … Master Shakespeare?’

‘He thinks so,’ she said. ‘But no. And anyway, he is married, so no help to me.’

‘Won’t the father marry you, then? Or can’t, perhaps.’

‘I don’t know who he is. We only met … the once, and there was no time for talking.’

Faunt’s ears pricked up even more than they usually were, hearing a nuance where most men would hear none. ‘A stranger?’ he asked, all innocence. ‘In a friend’s house, perhaps?’ He pulled a little face, sympathy and understanding embodied in a tiny gesture. ‘A handsome stable lad, something of that kind.’

She drew herself up. ‘I understand that you may not think much of me … I still can’t remember your name?’ He stayed looking down at her, blandly. ‘Er … I do not consort with stable lads, no matter how handsome. He was –’ she slumped, all the fight gone out of her – ‘passing through.’

Although Faunt’s expression did not alter, inside he was dancing. She clearly didn’t know anything about the goings-on in her sister’s house. In one way, it was a nuisance because he would have to begin again. But in another way, it was excellent, because he wouldn’t have to have this lovely creature silenced, with all that meant in the dark world in which he bustled.

As they both stood there, lost in thought, there was a single sharp rap on the door and before the sound had died away, a sweet and plangent voice hulloaed, ‘Mistress Constance? It is Ned Alleyn, here to pay my respects. May I come in?’

Faunt allowed one eyebrow a tiny twitch, but she saw it and smiled at him.

‘Master Whoever-you-are,’ she said. ‘I must ask you to leave through the kitchen. I believe my baby’s new father is at the door.’

Nicholas Faunt unbent so far as to give her an avuncular kiss on the top of her lovely head. She wasn’t really cut out for keeping secrets, but for sheer barefaced cheek, she outdid the best of his agents in the field. Bar one.

E
noch Harrison held court along the Shambles in the shadow of the Grey Friars. He’d long ago kicked the squatters out and sat on the ornate carved chair into which the late Cardinal Wolsey used to squeeze his haunches every Friday at eight of the clock. He made his way through the throng standing in the low room with the fan-vaulted ceiling and pressed the clove-studded orange to his nose. Not much point in clearing the squatters out if this riff-raff had replaced them. Still,
this
riff-raff was
his
riff-raff and that made all the difference.

One by one they knelt before him, the women curtseying as best they could and the men snatching off their caps. They knew that Harrison was not the man who could solve their problems; after him there was another, and then another, but they had learned not to be slow in bending the knee. They had seen what happened when anyone didn’t do that quickly enough; two very large men with shaven heads and leather jerkins stood slightly behind Wolsey’s chair, to jog their memories and to instil in them all the need to show respect to the Constable. One of them looked as though he hadn’t a thought in his head save violence against his fellow man. One fist was tightly clenched and he bounced it in and out of the opposite palm, as though testing its weight. His eyes were blank and dead-looking and didn’t focus on anything, near or far. The other only looked sentient because he was standing so near his colleague. In any other company, he would have looked as though his last brain cell had died of loneliness years before. He was considered to be the thinker of the two and he was Harrison’s right-hand man.

But it was more complicated than that. Harrison kept these oafs around for effect, for an immediate response. If he was feeling
particularly
bloody-minded, he could always increase the speed and efficiency of his Under Constables, his Headboroughs. An unpaid licence here, the wrong clothes there, a piece of lead no longer on a church roof, a recusancy fine unpaid and Constable Harrison had the power to conduct any of the people now in front of him to Newgate or the Compter, the Clink or any of the dozen other hell-holes that passed as London’s prisons. Goodbye freedom, goodbye family. An appearance before a magistrate? Well that could take weeks, and weeks had a habit of turning into months.

Better not to cross Constable Harrison. Better to provide him with the trinkets he seemed to crave, the glittering things that appealed to his magpie senses, for like a magpie, he was the Devil’s creature. That way, he might just leave them alone.

The Constable looked at the wares they placed before him, trinkets of pewter, silver plate and Venetian glass. Much of it was the loot of the churches, still doing the rounds after all these years since the Dissolution. Once or twice he beckoned a supplicant forward and looked more closely at their offerings, fixing an enlarging glass into his eye-socket and nodding silently. He flicked his fingers right and left and his minions placed certain goods to one side, on a table draped with blackest velvet. These were the choicest goods and the clerk, Sam Renton, wrote them down in his ledger. Every so often, Harrison raised a hand. ‘Not that one, Sam,’ he said with a smile, tapping the side of his nose. ‘That one’s special.’ The clerk’s quill rested in his hand, going nowhere near ink or parchment. The payment for every piece was one penny – just enough for its recipient to go to watch Christopher Marlowe’s new play at the Rose. Renton passed it solemnly over, as if he were delivering the sacrament.

A woman curtseyed to Harrison, letting two short brass candlesticks tumble from her apron. He took in the curve of her cheek and the rise and fall of her breasts. ‘Are you married, madam?’ he asked.

‘I am, sir,’ she answered, not quite able to look the Constable in the face.

‘What is your husband?’ he asked her. ‘His calling?’

‘He is a carpenter, sir.’

‘And now he has a new calling,’ he said. ‘He is a cuckold.’ The minions at his elbows chuckled. So did Renton. ‘I trust he can make his own horns.’ He beckoned her closer and she half rose from her knees. ‘I would normally pay you a penny for this tat, mistress,’ he said.

‘They are worth four groats at least, sir,’ she told him, her eyes fierce, her mouth set firm. She knew the chance she was taking.

‘You know that,’ he said, leaning back again. ‘
I
know that. But the shortfall is more than made up by the fact that you shall share my bed tonight.’

‘I shall, sir?’ Her eyes were wider now.

‘You shall.’ He nodded and jerked his head. A minion swept the woman up as if she were a doll and whisked her away. ‘See that she is bathed,’ he called after the retreating pair. ‘I must be careful not to get splinters.’

A man was hauled in front of the Constable. He was offering no trinkets, just his life.

‘Who is this?’ Harrison asked.

Harrison’s right-hand man threw him down and continued to hold the man with his arm twisted painfully up behind his back. ‘This is Jack Wheeler, sir.’ He leaned closer and spoke quietly out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Gatekeeper at the Clink.’

The Constable looked closely at the man, who was as white as whey and was showing his fear with a line of dank sweat across his brow and upper lip. ‘Get rid of these people,’ he said to his guard, with a dismissive wave at the small group that remained. ‘Another day, another day will do.’ Renton closed his ledger and inkwell and sat back to enjoy whatever show Harrison was about to put on. The Constable then forgot they were even there and turned to the trembling gatekeeper.

‘Master Wheeler, yes. We have been waiting to have a word with you.’ He flicked his hand and the lout let Wheeler go. The man stayed on his knees, always the best place to be in the presence of Harrison and his men, in his experience. Come to think of it, the
very
best place was a hundred miles away, but the dusty floor of his impromptu court would have to do.

‘What can you tell me about Master Shakespeare?’ Harrison asked.

‘Who, sir?’

He felt the lout’s steel-shod boot crunch into his ribs and his forehead hit the floor with a dull thud.

The Constable leaned forward. He’d earned his blood money already tonight and he had a nice warm woman waiting upstairs. ‘Gaoler,’ he said, ‘I am not inclined to be patient. William Shakespeare was entrusted recently to your care and when I sent Master Peach here – Master Peach, by the way, is the one intent on breaking your ribs; I don’t suppose he introduced himself – when I sent Master Peach to interview him, lo and behold, he had gone. Vanished like a conjuror’s monkey.’

‘I know nothing …’

‘Quite probably, Gaoler. But in this case … What is it of the clock, Master Peach?’

The lout half-turned to check the candle guttering on the side table. ‘Nearly ten of the clock, sir,’ he told him.

‘Hmm, not fair to bother Master Topcliffe at this hour. No doubt he’s had a long and busy day.’

‘Master Topcliffe?’ Wheeler mouthed.

‘Yes,’ Harrison said, as though they were discussing the weather. ‘You do know what Master Topcliffe’s calling is, don’t you, Wheeler?’

‘Y … yes, sir.’ The gaoler’s lips were trembling, his eyes flicking from side to side.

‘Tell me,’ the Constable said with the affability of a kindly old schoolmaster testing one of his pupils.

‘He … he’s a rackmaster, sir.’ The gaoler swallowed with difficulty the bile that was rising in his throat.

Harrison frowned. ‘Not
a
rackmaster, Wheeler.
The
Rackmaster. The Queen’s, in fact. Why, he can do things with a length of rope that would make your eyes water.’ He leaned forward. ‘And I mean that.’ He leaned back. ‘But we can’t bother a busy man like that, not tonight. Besides, Master Topcliffe is used to more elegant customers than you – seditious noblemen, Papist priests. I doubt he’d want to dirty his equipment. So …’ A look of concern spread over the Constable’s face. ‘Such a glum face, Master Gaoler,’ he said. ‘We can’t have that. We can provide a useful service here without bothering the important gentlemen at the Tower. Master Peach.’

The lout grabbed both Wheeler’s arms and forced him to kneel upright with his arms pulled taut behind him and Peach’s boot in the small of his back. Harrison stood and slowly drew the silver dagger from the small of his back. He let the blade glint in the candlelight and looked at Wheeler’s face, the working lips, the tear-filled eyes, and shook his head. ‘No,’ the Constable said, ‘we need a smile. Perhaps –’ he pricked the man’s right cheek so that Wheeler gasped and drew back – ‘from there to –’ he jabbed the same point on his left cheek – ‘there.’

Wheeler screamed as he felt the blood trickle down both sides of his face.

‘Let me see,’ Harrison frowned and put his head on one side, as though working out how best to carve a joint of game, ‘if I can join those dots.’

‘He made me do it, sir. I had no choice.’

Harrison was ignoring him, still deciding how best to make the cut as Wheeler struggled against the vice-like grip of Master Peach. ‘Hmm?’ he asked casually. ‘Who made you do what?’

‘The man, sir.’ Wheeler was gabbling for his life now. ‘The popinjay who sprung Shakespeare. He threatened me, sir. My wife. My wife and dear children. Said he’d kill them if I didn’t let Shakespeare go. Kill ’em slow, he would, like …’

‘Like I am going to kill you?’ Harrison smiled, then a thought appeared to come to him. ‘Mr Peach,’ he said, ‘do you know Mrs Wheeler and all the little Wheelers, with their bright eyes and downy cheeks?’

Peach grunted and gave an extra tug on Wheeler’s arms, making him wince. ‘Who’d have him? Only a beast would make the beast with two backs with him.’

Harrison chuckled and leaned forward again to the helpless gaoler. ‘Well, Master Liar, it seems you and I have something in common after all, but apart from our single state, I can think of nothing else. You have one more chance to save yourself and one only. This popinjay, did he give you a name?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Wheeler gabbled and nodded. ‘Oh, yes, he did, sir. I insisted on it. Greene. Robert Greene. Said he was a playwright.’