Revenger (53 page)

Shakespeare found Simon Forman in remarkably good spirits at Stone House in Fylpot Street. He seemed tired, but otherwise healthy. The astrologer-physician welcomed his visitor with a warm shake of the hand.

“It is good to see someone who does not have the pestilence, Mr. Marvell. I spend all day every day tending to them and dispensing my miraculous tinctures.”

“Indeed, Dr. Forman. I trust they are more miraculous than your charts, for you were certainly wrong about the death of a certain person of high rank—and you could not have chosen a more inauspicious day for a wedding.”

Forman grinned broadly, his generous red lips creasing apart in the small gap between his bushy golden red beard and mustache. “And I am the happiest man in England that my chart erred concerning the great lady, but nor am I surprised—for is she not the sun itself, and do not the very stars trace their paths about her elegant and stately progress?”

“Admit it, Forman. Your charts are as worthless as your potions and ointments. Ash of little green frogs? You prey on gulls, sir.”

Forman shrugged his wide shoulders, still grinning. “I had taken you to be a skeptic, Mr. Marvell. But I tell you this: I was right about my plague cure—for, see, I am hale and my heart is strong. Not only that, but the French welcome is gone, too.” In
truth, he felt himself not only healthy but never happier; women flocked to him for haleking, deciding they must make the most of this world today, for tomorrow they might be in the hereafter. He was also proving himself a real physician who could bring comfort and the occasional cure to the sick. “I am not like those coney-hunters at the College of Physicians who have hounded me without mercy for so many years and are nowhere to be seen now that the people need them. I cured myself and now I take my electuaries to the sick and suffering, be they drabs or gong farmers, and, with God’s grace, I heal many. Only one in five survives, they say, but I do better than that.”

“I am pleased to hear it. I will be even more pleased when you give me what I have come for. And my name is not Marvell but Shakespeare. Strange, is it not, that your charts were unable to reveal that? Now, give me the charts I require and I promise you that you will have immunity from prosecution and all the protection you need from the College of Physicians.”

Forman hesitated. “I wonder,” he asked tentatively, “would you be able to supply me with a letter of patent from Sir Robert? He is not the only powerful man in the land and nor is he immune to the ravages of disease or accidental death. If I take his part in this, I will surely be most unpopular with others. I must think of the future and what would become of me if anything were to happen to him, Mr. Shakespeare.”

“You will have no such letter. But I say again—if you do not supply the charts, you will be in Newgate before this day is done. And the pursuivants I send will destroy every last book, vial, and instrument that you own.”

“Mr. Shakespeare, please …”

“And I will require an affidavit with your mark upon it to show that
you
did cast these charts, and for whom you cast them.”

“No, you cannot ask me to do that!”

“Then good-day to you, Dr. Forman. Mr. Topcliffe will be here with a squadron before day’s end.” Much as he loathed Topcliffe,
Shakespeare knew the power of his name. Where once men spoke of the rack or the manacles or the branding iron, now they simply referred to “Topcliffean practices.”

Shakespeare saw the fear burning bright in Forman’s eyes. “I wonder, Dr. Forman, about the tinctures you supplied for the sickness lately endured by my lord of Essex’s wife, the lady Frances? She said you supplied her with potions to rid her of the little flying things she saw. What, exactly, were they? Wing of sparrow, toe of faerie?”

“Mr. Shakespeare, please. I beg you …”

“Or were they, perhaps, essence of wolfsbane, Dr. Forman?”

Forman held his hand to his chest as though his heart would seize. “Never, sir. Never. I would never be party to such a thing. My mission is to heal, not kill.”

“What, then? We know of your alliance with enemies who tried to poison her, Dr. Forman. You dabble in alchemy—you had the means to acquire whatever they desired. And that thing was wolfsbane. I do believe she was being poisoned with the foul root and you gave it to her.”

Forman sat down. “Mr. Shakespeare,” he said, his voice hoarse and riven with panic. “This is all wicked fancy. I promise you by God’s holy name, I have done no such thing, nor ever would. I talked to the lady and quickly realized she had an affliction of the mind, some languishing sickness. I gave her nothing but a hypocon water of
Hypericum perforatum
—commonly called St. John’s wort—which I know will cure the sadness in some melancholics.”

“It is too much of a coincidence. No court in England would believe the tinctures weren’t poisoned.”

Dr. Forman nodded his head, his shoulders slumped in defeat. “I will do everything you ask, sir. I have the charts prepared already, and you shall have your affidavit before you go.”

Shakespeare smiled and clapped Forman about the back. “Good man. Then we shall be the best of friends and I pledge
that Sir Robert Cecil will look after your interests and save you from the dread attentions of the College of Physicians.”

“And I swear to you that I have never supplied poisons, nor used them, though I have been asked.”

On the way out, with the charts and affidavit tucked safely within his doublet, it felt to Shakespeare as though a hundredweight burden had fallen off his back. At last he had evidence that, he prayed, would satisfy Cecil and save his brother Will.

His thoughts turned to McGunn’s last words, and his pace quickened as he hurried through the echoing, half-deserted streets of London.…

Chapter 47

T
HE HOUSE AT THE CORNER OF BEER LANE AND
Thames Street was boarded and nailed shut. A cross was painted on the door. It was a plague house. Anyone incarcerated there must stay until death took them.

Shakespeare looked about him. Across the street, two men in tattered jerkins sat on a hay bale, tankards of ale and pipes of tobacco in their hands, playing cards. They wore herb-filled plague masks—pointed, beaklike protuberances that made them look like hellish birds of prey.

“Who lives there?” Shakespeare demanded as he approached them, gesturing toward the plague house.

The men looked at each other and laughed. The taller of the two, a rangy, balding fellow, stood up from the hay bale and pulled off his mask to reveal a sour, gaunt face.

“Who wants to know?”

“My name is Shakespeare. I am here on Queen’s business.”

“Well, no one lives there. It’s a plague house. They’ll all be dead.”

Shakespeare noted the man’s voice. His accent was Irish, like McGunn’s.

The men were laughing again.

“Though I did hear a little scratching sound coming from
within this morning, Tom,” the seated one said. “Perhaps it was a mouse.”

The large one drew on his pipe and blew a cloud of smoke toward Shakespeare. “At least the rodents will be feeding well in there,” he said. “So long as they can stomach plague pudding with Puritan sauce.”

“Is Winterberry in there? The merchant Jacob Winterberry?”

“Aye, that he is. Now, aren’t you the clever fellow, Mr. Shakespeare. And we’re here to see that he don’t come out. We don’t want him spreading the plague about, do we? That would be most un-Christian of the man.”

Shakespeare bridled. “And by what authority do you keep watch on this house?”

“Why, sir, the authority of the City of London corporation, which has appointed us plague men and pays us each eight pennies a day for our pains. That and the plague masks they gives us. We brought Mr. Winterberry from his home especially to lodge with this plague family in his last days.”

“There is a family in there with him?”

“Aye, sir, a husbandman and goodwife and their two children. All grievous sickly they were when Mr. Winterberry arrived. I have to say that Mr. Winterberry himself looked in prime good health at the time. No sign of no buboes nor other marks of the pestilence.”

“So you placed a man in perfect health in a house with a contagious family, then nailed him in?”

The tall one took a long draft of ale, then wiped his grubby sleeve across his straggly beard. “Aye, sir, we did. He was not at all pleased to be brought here, mind. Begging like a little child he was, pleading not to be put in there, crying. But we knew what was good for him.”

“He was still a-whimpering as the carpenter hammered the boards across the door and windows.”

“Then you have committed murder!”

The shorter one, still sitting on the bale, nonchalantly tapped out the ashes of his clay pipe against the heel of his shoe and began stuffing in more tobacco. “Now, that is not the way we see it, sir. We see it as saving Her Majesty and the Council the cost of a trial and a hanging, for we know Mr. Winterberry to have been a felon of the worst sort. I am certain there is none more worthy of a painful and unpleasant death.”

Shakespeare pulled the man from the bale, knocking his pipe from his hand and dragging the beak-mask from his head. “Get this house opened straightway or you will answer for it, I promise you. You should know that McGunn is dead. He is dead, a ball through his face and into the depths of his brain. He now rots in a pauper’s grave in the northern wilds of England with worms for company. Now open that house or I will kill you where you stand.”

The men looked at Shakespeare with new respect, even fear. They were no longer sure of themselves. They glanced at Shakespeare’s hand on the hilt of his still-sheathed sword.

“He told us to stay here until there had been no sound from within for at least forty-eight hours,” the taller one began. “They were his orders.” His eyes flickered back and forth between Shakespeare and his companion.

Both men suddenly dropped their tankards and turned on their heels. They dashed as well as they could northward up Beer Lane, stumbling through the shit and kitchen waste that lay un-collected all along their escape route. Shakespeare let them go.

He walked to the boarded-up house and banged on the solidly barred door. From within, he heard a sound, almost like tiny footsteps on the stairs. He hammered again and called out, “Is anyone alive in there?”

Shakespeare thought he heard a small voice from within. “Hold firm,” he said. “I will have this door unbarred.”

He looked about. At the nearby gun foundry, he found an
apprentice smoothing the rough surfaces of a new-forged cannonball. Shakespeare ordered him to bring his tools.

Ten minutes later, they had jimmied off the three-inch-thick planks and pulled out the heavy nails that kept the door so firmly closed. Shakespeare lifted the latch and the door opened. He stumbled back, as did the apprentice, assailed by the most awful stench of rotting flesh and disease.

Clutching his kerchief to his face, Shakespeare gave the boy a coin and told him to go back to the foundry, but the boy stayed, close behind him, peering down the dark entrance hall of the plague house. A body lay close to the door, blocking the way. It was Jacob Winterberry.

With the kerchief held close to his nose and mouth, Shakespeare touched him and knew he was dead. The body, clothed in Puritan-black broadcloth streaked with vomit and dust, was cold and still. The exposed skin was blue, blotchy, and bloated.

Shakespeare turned again to the apprentice. “Go back to your work. This place is not safe for you.”

Reluctantly the boy shuffled away. Shakespeare tied the kerchief around his face and stepped into the hall, over Winterberry’s corpse. A cloud of flies rose from the putrefying mass of pustules that had once been the merchant’s face.

“Is anyone here? Come forth,” he called into the echoing hall.

Half a dozen yards down the way, there was a staircase.

“Come to me and you will be safe.”

From the shadowed recesses of the hall, a figure appeared. A child, Shakespeare thought, or some sort of wraith. The figure stepped forward tentatively, shielding its eyes from the light of day. It was a girl, thin and shivering, clothed in a dark linen smock.

“Come, child. Come to me.”

He guessed she was ten or eleven, but it was difficult to be sure. Her long fair hair was matted with filth, and yet he could
see that her skin was clear of the dread buboes. One in five survived, Forman had said. Well, she must be blessed.

She held back from him. “You will die if you touch me, sir,” she said in a quiet voice.

“No. You are well, child. Your skin is clear.”

“I saw death, but the Lord turned me away.”

“Are there any others alive here?”

She shook her head.

“Then the Lord wants you to live. Come to me. Come from this place.”

She stepped closer to him. He reached out his hand. She stared at it from beneath the sun shield of her right palm, then looked up at him, her eyes creased against the light. Their eyes met. Shakespeare smiled at her. “Come, child,” he said again, reaching out further and taking her left hand. “All will be well.” She allowed him to take her hand. It felt tiny to him. Gently, he led her from the front door out into the daylight.