King Arthur's Bones (35 page)

My heart and guts did a little dance. Or rather they both got up at once and ran into each other as if trying to flee from my mortal frame.

Even if I had never seen its precise equivalent before, the badge on my fellow passenger’s jerkin was a royal one without a doubt. It showed a lion rampant, and everyone knows that the lion and the king are one. This and the direction of the boat confirmed our destination.

We were soon to put in at the wharf under the southwest corner of the Tower. There are plenty of stairs and berths along here, together with cranes and winches for unloading supplies. But nobody lands in this place for pleasure. Only for business. Or worse. Further along is that dreadful watergate through which traitors are conveyed into the bowels of the Tower. We were not headed there, thank God! – and a moment’s sane reflection would have convinced me that there could be no reason why a humble player would have that honour – but it was bad enough to be conveyed to any point of the wharf fronting the Tower palace. Especially when summoned by a blood-marked note which was still screwed up in my gloved fist.

No longer much bothered about the fate of Edmund Shakespeare, I am hardly ashamed to say that I was more concerned with the immediate future of Nicholas Revill.

But even that was driven out of my head by the sight that now lay before me. The tide was out and a stretch of foreshore, muddy and pebbled, was exposed. Sitting in the sun by the water’s edge was a bear. Almost every citizen of London from the age of six to sixty has seen captive bears dancing at fairs or fighting for their lives in the bear-pits by the Southwark theatres. But those bears are brown while the one sitting on the banks of the Thames was white. I had never seen this creature but had heard people talk of it. It was a gift from the King of Norway and its whiteness was a reflection of the desolate and ice-bound stretches of that distant land. In truth, the bear was more of a yellowy-white than snow-coloured.

I wondered why it did not swim away, then saw that it was tethered by a chain to a great stake sunk deep into the foreshore. Shackled like a prisoner, it was also muzzled. Despite this, it looked contented enough, dashing a paw through the water in a playful way. Then it occurred to me that the white bear was being more than playful; it was trying to scoop up fish. There was no sign of any keeper.

Our boat squelched into the mud of the shore and the boatman hopped out with the skill of long practice to secure us to one of several posts driven into the mud. The bear paid us no attention but continued to strike its paws into the water. Nearby was a set of stairs. Pinch-face indicated that I should go first while he was settling with the boatman. I thought about taking to my heels. But I wasn’t confident I could outrun him when all around was the territory of the Tower, unfamiliar to me. And given that he had found me once near my lodgings, he would find me again. And furthermore I had done nothing wrong. (Not that that’s any defence.)

So, in a docile fashion, I slithered across the foreshore, giving the dirty white bear a very wide berth, and climbed the stairs and waited for my escort at the top. The air was not so fresh here on account of the tubs of rotting meat which, recently unloaded from the offal-boat, were sitting on the wharf. Lettering on the tubs indicated they were supplied by the Butchers’ Company – no doubt for the other Tower animals which I could hear even now. A mixture of barks, brays, screeches and growls was coming out of the mouths of God-knows-what creatures over the wall on the other side of the moat. This south-west corner was dominated by the Lion Tower, which, to judge by the unfinished castellations and the scaffolding still clinging to the bright new stonework, was being enlarged.

It was widely known that King James had a special interest in the beasts of the Tower, not because he wished to study them but because he liked watching them kill each other. He enjoyed seeing his lions baited by dogs, bulls, boars and so on. Of course the lions tended to prevail, but I’d heard that any animal, such as a fighting mastiff, which acquitted itself honourably might be allowed to live out the rest of its days in peace. The grand animal contests were restricted to the king and his circle, but on other days any citizen might gaze at the Tower beasts either by paying three pennies or by bringing his own domestic animal – dogs, chickens, sheep – to be devoured by the larger ones. I had never seen the Tower beasts myself, though whether it was out of lack of curiosity or reluctance to open my purse I’m not sure.

By now the pustular pinch-face had joined me at the top of the stairs. He beckoned me to follow him, and we walked around the moat and the bulging western flank of the area that housed the animals. The moat had been almost drained, presumably for ease of work on the buildings in this quarter. Or perhaps it was that London no longer feared an attack on its greatest citadel. Beyond this was a drawbridge and a great gate. There were two soldiers sitting in a little sentry-house, but they were eating and drinking and hardly glanced up as we approached. We had come through more than half a circle so that ahead of us was the causeway leading back to the Lion Tower. My heart thudded louder in my ears than my feet sounded on the drawbridge. I felt as helpless as one of those domestic dogs being delivered over to the lions’ pleasure.

We went through a second gate at the end of the causeway, where my guide nodded at a single soldier who didn’t return the greeting, and into the cluster of buildings grouped under the Lion Tower. Still I saw no beasts, but I could smell their rank odours as well as hear them. Then it was up a flight of spiral stairs to an oak door on which pinch-face knocked, almost with delicacy. Receiving some reply, he unlatched the door and, putting a hand in the small of my back, as good as pushed me into the chamber.

‘Here he is, sir,’ he said, before shutting the door and leaving me alone with the room’s occupant.

Like Scoto the Mantuan in Tower Street, this individual was sitting behind a desk, working on some papers. But there the resemblance ended. The room was neat and clean, with a view of the river through a glazed window. The desk-man was a kindly faced gent, with spectacles. I could have sworn he looked relieved to see me once he had taken off his spectacles. And for the first time in what was only a half-hour but seemed like half a lifetime, my terror started to subside. Perhaps I would escape incarceration in the Tower after all.

‘You are Nicholas Revill of the King’s Men?’

‘I am – but I don’t understand what I am doing here.’

‘Be patient, Mr Revill, and I will explain our difficult position. I am Ralph Gill . . .’

There was a second’s hesitation as if to give me the chance to recognize the name. I nodded but had no idea who he was. Luckily he supplied the answer.

‘. . . Keeper of the King’s Lions. Naturally there are other animals under my charge, but it is only the lions which matter. My father, Thomas Gill, also bore the same title, and I hope that my son will inherit it in due course. It is an honour, you know.’

I nodded again, although with no notion of where we were heading.

‘This morning we made an unfortunate discovery. It involves a friend of yours.’

‘Edmund Shakespeare?’

‘Just so. Edmund Shakespeare. It was the name which gave me pause and made me agree to his sending you a note asking for your presence here. You are able to confirm, Mr Revill, that this individual is indeed the brother of William Shakespeare?’

‘He is.’

‘He was adamant that he did not want his brother to know of his . . . predicament.’

‘Yes, that sounds like Edmund.’

‘I must tread carefully where William Shakespeare and the King’s Men are concerned. The king is patron to us all, you know. Plays are not so near the heart of James as are his lions, but I believe his queen is fond of the drama?’

‘She is.’

‘I thought so,’ said Ralph Gill, almost mournfully.

‘Sir,’ I said, ‘can you tell me what Edmund has done?’

‘Oh, he has done murder,’ said the spectacled gent. ‘It may well be murder. Come with me.’

He came around from behind the desk and we left the room, going down the spiral stairs, across a lobby and down a further flight. Now that my personal fears were fading, anxiety over Edmund returned. Murder? Was it possible? Yes, I thought, remembering WS’s brother threatening Davy Owen or brandishing a knife at Scoto’s throat, it was possible.

As we descended through the building with its many twists and turns, I realized that this was not one edifice but several which had grown up and into each over the centuries. Meanwhile, the animal stench became stronger. Eventually we emerged from a tunnel-like passage into a yard via a barred gate that Mr Gill unlocked. The yard was in the shape of a great D, turned the wrong way about, and with the straight side formed by the buildings from which Ralph Gill and I had just come.

The surrounding walls were so high and the spring sky with its fast-moving clouds, seemed so distant that it was like being at the bottom of a well. A curved viewing platform with a canopy projected from the southern side, supported by scarred wooden struts. That would be where the king and his retinue surveyed the lions as they went about their work of dispatching the lesser beasts. And down here in the yard was where the killing took place, as evidenced by dark stains among the mixture of mud and shit and roughly levelled stone composing the floor. There was a large water trough and a platform-like area scattered with straw on the northern side for the animals to disport themselves.

Fortunately there were no beasts wandering free but in their place a couple of fellows garbed like the one who had collected me in Tooley Street. They nodded deferentially at Master Gill. I was glad of all the human company available because of the proximity of the beasts. They were at our backs in cages and behind doors set in the walls of the buildings nestling around the Lion Tower. I smelled and heard them. I felt their eyes on me and when I turned fearfully for a better look I caught glimpses of tawny fur, of yellow eyes, dark stripes, bedraggled tails. What I took for a wrinkled human hand thrusting out like a prisoner’s from a panel in a low door belonged, said Ralph Gill, to an ape. There was a brown bear huddling miserably in the corner of its little chamber, and another creature which I mistook for a dog but which Gill informed me was a wolf, the very last in England. It was a lean, ugly thing, maybe on account of pondering its melancholy uniqueness.

In his pride at his collection, the lion keeper had for a moment forgotten why we had come to this level. But he soon led me off into yet another passage and past more cages and caverns set within the very foundations of the place. It was dark and noisome down here, with the only light provided by torches in iron wall-brackets. Feeble gusts of air indicated that there were hidden holes venting the place; otherwise every living thing would soon have been choked. The low noises, which might almost have been human, the bars and locks everywhere, could not but remind me of a gaol.

In this honeycomb or warren were little chambers set aside for provisions or the use of the keepers, but Ralph Gill led me to a pair of adjoining cells cut into the rock and meant for beasts. They were presently occupied by men. Candles had been brought in to help them see. In one cell a body lay face up, arms and legs splayed among the dirt. His fair beard and white ruff, his fine doublet and hose, all were dyed with blood. I feared very much that I knew his identity. It was the luxuriant beard that gave the clue.

In the other pen were three individuals, each of them alive. One was slumped, head in hands, in a corner, while on either side stood two of the fellows that I now recognized by their garb and royal insignia to be assistant keepers. They were holding cudgels, normally used, I supposed, to ward off the wild animals. We stood by the open gate since the interior was too small for five men.

Edmund Shakespeare looked up. His forehead was bloody and swollen.

‘I did not do this thing, Nick. I am innocent, I swear.’

Not sure whether to believe his denial, I nodded at Shakespeare’s brother and spoke instead to Ralph Gill. ‘What happened here?’

‘My men discovered early this morning that the lions were roaming in the yard, something never known before. They had a deal of trouble to drive them back to their cages with burning torches. It was only after they had done so that they heard human cries coming from this underground quarter. Here they discovered the sight before you, Mr Revill. A man dead by violence and another man cowering and shouting in this enclosure next door. I was summoned straight away and established this . . . gentleman’s name. I was for calling out the Justice but he begged instead to be allowed to scrawl a note to you. I was minded to refuse, but when I heard his name and that he was a member of the King’s Men I decided to give him that, ah, benefit.’

I could see how Mr Gill had risen to his present eminence. He had quickly taken stock of what had occurred and, not knowing whether Edmund was really an important person or not, he responded with prudence. Clear-headed and diplomatic, Gill must have been a valuable servant of the Crown. I let it pass that Edmund was not a King’s Man (or not properly so). It was more likely the Shakespeare name which had done the trick.

‘Who is the dead man?’ I said, though I was almost certain I already knew. Nevertheless Gill’s answer gave me a jolt. ‘He is called Leonard Leman. He and his wife are frequent visitors to the animals, not as ordinary Londoners but as members of the court parties who grace us with their presence.’

Leman was one of the group we’d seen arguing with the bookseller in St Paul’s yard.

‘How did he die?’

‘He has many wounds on his body, Mr Revill, which could have been produced by a knife. And your fellow here was discovered clutching a knife this morning.’

‘What happened, Edmund?’ I said.

‘I . . . I was tricked into entering this place,’ said Edmund. ‘I received a note telling me to come to the Lion Tower last evening.’

‘A note? Who from? Where is it?’

‘I don’t know. It is gone. But once here, I was surprised by men I could not see and beaten about the head. My hat was lost. See . . .’