King Arthur's Bones (37 page)

‘I apologize,’ said Edmund.

‘There is more than one way of acquiring favour with a monarch, you know,’ continued Barton after a pause. ‘It is said that Leman was devising some scheme for pleasing the king. And it was specially needful for him to gain favour.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, Nicholas, some unflattering remarks that he made about the Scots nation got back to the king’s ears.’

Ever since James had come by the throne, two topics provided London’s gossip: his preference for handsome courtiers (in this he was not so unlike the old queen) and his favouritism towards his fellow countrymen, or at least the nobility among them. They’d been flocking south to join him. So much so that it sometimes seemed as if half of Scotland had tumbled down the map into the bottom of England.

‘So what is this scheme for regaining the king’s favour?’ I said. The idea flashed through my mind that it might be connected to the mysterious Scoto.

‘I do not know everything, Nicholas.’

‘You are much better informed than we are,’ I said. This was flattery, but it was also the truth. ‘What can you tell us about Alice Leman?’

‘Not much more than you saw for yourself outside that bookseller’s. She is younger than her husband by a good few years. She is large-boned and striking.’

‘That she is,’ said Edmund.

‘The story goes that each married the other in the expectation of coming by a great fortune, and that both have been disappointed. Which I believe often occurs in a marriage.’

‘And which made it even more necessary for Leonard Leman to regain the king’s favour, if money was in question’ I said. ‘I wonder how his wife is taking the news of his death.’

‘I could find out,’ said Martin. ‘I could call on her to present my condolences. I might even offer to compose a piece or two in memory of Mr Leman. She might welcome an elegy or a eulogy. She knows me, slightly.’

I refrained from saying that she hadn’t even noticed him outside Owen’s shop the other day and instead remarked: ‘You don’t write elegies but satires.’

‘Like Edmund’s brother, the great William, I can turn my hand to anything,’ said Martin Barton. ‘Besides, the widow’s patronage would be useful.’

Martin grew more animated. I don’t know whether he had suggested the visit out of simple curiosity or whether he was really on the watch for a patron. I was more convinced than ever that all of Barton’s satirical bile was a cover for a fawning attitude towards those more powerful and wealthy than he – which, in the case of a writer (or a player), comprises nearly everybody. Nevertheless, and almost against my will, I felt myself warming towards the redhead. There was something artless about his guile.

‘I will come with you,’ I said. ‘I too will condole with the widow Leman.’

‘What about me?’ said Edmund.

‘You? You will keep out of mischief,’ I said. ‘You’d be recognized – particularly if Alice Leman was one of those who attacked you.’

‘What’s all this?’ said Martin. ‘So you were attacked, Edmund Shakespeare, and by a woman too. Now you must keep your side of the bargain and tell all.’

It didn’t take long for Edmund to recount his time in the animal house in the Tower or for me to throw in my ha’p’orth. Edmund was voluble enough now that his immediate fear of being accused and incarcerated seemed to be receding. In fact his chief anxiety was that his brother might get to hear of his adventures. For myself, I thought that he remained in great danger from the law and that an interrogation by WS would be as nothing to what he’d get from a Justice. He was still open to blame.

We left him nursing his wound in Martin Barton’s lodgings and likely to fall asleep after such a testing night. The Lemans lived near the Strand and so the playwright and I set off westwards. Despite everything that had happened, it was not yet midday. The sun burned with holiday warmth, and the air, softened by a pleasant breeze, was clearer than usual. Naturally Martin had taken the trouble to find out about the Lemans’ dwelling, which was called Pride House. ‘Not on account of the aspirations of the owner, Nicholas,’ he said, ‘but because a religious foundation once stood on the site. The name is probably a corruption of “prayer” or “priory”.’ Martin was unusually cheerful and chattered away about widows and wealth and the corruption of all earthly things.

Leonard and Alice Leman did not have one of the great dwellings by the Strand, but Pride House was ample enough, with a main entrance in a high wall fronting a courtyard. There was a porter to whom Martin spoke in a lofty fashion, saying that we’d come to pay our respects to Mrs Leman. The porter said not a word but waved us through with a supercilious smile, as if he knew we were the mere sweepings of the public stage. Either that or he felt an obligation to live up to the name of the house. I might have thought it odd that the gatekeeper did not look particularly sad even though the master of the house was dead, but the idea never occurred to me.

What did occur was regret that I had offered to accompany Martin. I had no business being here, no part to play. Weren’t we just prying? Prying in Pride House? But another, inner voice said that, if we could somehow discover the truth about what had happened in the animal arena the previous night, it would help to exonerate Edmund Shakespeare from blame. I had time to think these thoughts because the paved courtyard was empty and the house presented a blank face to us. There were no servants scurrying about, no open windows, no sounds. Perhaps this really was a place in mourning.

The silence was abruptly broken by a woman’s cry. It sounded almost like grief and came not from within the house but from a wide walk that led down one flank of the building. Martin and I glanced at each other and together we moved towards the source. Flowering trees and shrubs clustered next to the pebbled path, and flakes of blossom floated through the air. The walk opened into a garden at the rear of the house, and at the point where it did there was an arbour so that the owner might sit in peace, shaded and secure, to survey his property. One side of the arbour was the outer wall of the garden, while along and over the wooden lattice which shielded it from our eyes there grew rosemary and roses which were not yet in full bloom.

But despite the foliage we were aware of figures, unidentified figures, on the other side of the lattice. There was the sound of rustling fabric, there were subdued sighs and groans. Grief ? I did not think so.

We crept closer. Fortunately there was grass under our feet now. But I do not think we would have been heard anyway. The persons in the arbour were too occupied with their own concerns. Getting as close as we dared, Martin and I squinted between the interstices of the wooden frame, with the scent of rosemary tickling at our nostrils.

There was a long stone seat immediately below us. It must have been quite hard – the notion drifted across the back of my mind – quite hard to lie on, especially when you were bearing the weight of another individual. But Alice Leman did not seem to be aware of the stoniness of her couch. Rather, her eyes were tight shut and her arms firmly fastened around the back of the man who was lying on top of her, shoving away. I could have reached through and grasped one of the lady’s shod feet since it and the corresponding leg were awkwardly propped on the back of the stone bench, while the other was out of sight, no doubt planted on the ground as a kind of buttress. The man’s posture looked nearly as uncomfortable as hers, but he too was oblivious to his surroundings. I wasn’t sure of the man’s identity. It certainly wasn’t Alice Leman’s husband. Not only was he dead, but he had fair hair which was quite unlike the dark locks on the fellow assailing the widow.

We watched the scene for a while. Once we’d had enough, we crept backwards like villains in a play. When we were at a safe distance, we did an about-face and I said to Martin Barton: ‘That puts paid to your idea of writing an elegy. Alice Leman has better things to do with her time than lament a dead husband.’

‘Not at all, Nick,’ said Martin. ‘She’ll feel guilty as sin after a while and welcome a lament.’

‘Who was that man with her?’

‘I believe it was the household steward, Jack Corner.’

I remembered the individual, thin as a rail, who’d been keeping company with Mr and Mrs Leman outside Davy Owen’s bookshop. I remembered the way he’d been gazing at her. It is not unknown for stewards to enjoy a liaison with the lady of the house and, for every one who succeeds, there may be a dozen who aspire to it. The only surprising thing was the speed with which the affair was being consummated.

Then two or three things happened at once. We were about halfway down the path beside the house and, believing that the couple in the arbour were fully occupied, did not trouble to keep our voices down as much as we should. But the silence from that quarter might have told us that they were finished and more at leisure to pay attention to their surroundings. Then I was seized with a fit of sneezing. Something spring-like and itchy – the memory of the rosemary on the arbour lattice or a different plant beside the path – got up my nose, and I was convulsed with atishoos. At the same instant a person appeared at the point where the path met the courtyard at the front of the house. He halted when he saw us. There were shouts from our rear, a man and a woman. It was the steward and the widow.

Martin Barton and I took to our heels. As we neared the individual standing at the corner of the house, we swerved to avoid him, one on either side. But in all the confusion Martin and I managed to strike him a blow on each shoulder so that he tumbled backwards to the ground and almost took us with him. Though my eyes were still blurry from the sneezing fit, I recognized Davy Owen. He was carrying a rectangular box that flew out of his hands and up over his head, landing with a crack on the paving of the courtyard. Without thinking, I stooped to pick it up. I don’t know why. Perhaps I was intending to return it to the St Paul’s yard bookseller out of some sense of guilt. But there came more cries from behind us and Martin tugged at my sleeve to urge me on. We made for the entrance.

Alerted by the noise, the porter was too quick for us and, stepping out of his lodge, he slammed shut the door and stood there, arms folded and a grin on his face. Meantime, more figures had emerged from the house and were approaching Martin and me at a diagonal. We slowed, then halted, uncertain where to go next.

I glanced down at the box cradled in my arms. Made of wood but reinforced with metal at the corners, the box had been damaged by the force with which it had struck the ground. A panel on the top was cracked. The case was large enough to contain, say, a pair of pistols. But it was not pistols that I could glimpse through the splintered wood.

By now we were surrounded by the occupants of Pride House: Mistress Leman, her steward Jack Corner, the gatekeeper and several servants dressed in yellow livery. I noticed that Alice Leman and Corner looked flustered, with their clothes in slight disarray, but I suppose that could have been accounted for by their haste to raise the alarm. I also noticed Alice looking curiously at Martin Barton, as though she half-recognized him. Even so, it’s possible we might have bluffed our way out of the place if it hadn’t been for Davy Owen. He remembered us very well and, with the indignity of being tumbled on his back all too apparent on his face, he drew near.

‘It is you,’ he said. ‘I thought it was you. A pair of rogues, you are. Give me back my property.’

He made to grab the case but I turned away and clutched it tighter. It was a pointless gesture. Martin and I could easily have been overpowered, and the box seized from my hands, but we had not yet reached the moment of physical force. We weren’t exactly intruders – we’d been freely admitted by the gatekeeper – but neither were we welcome guests. Martin did a little bow and said: ‘My condolences, madam, on the death of your husband.’

Alice Leman looked surprised as if she’d already forgotten about her husband. Then she recovered herself and said: ‘Thank you, Mr . . . ?’

‘Martin Barton. Of the Blackfriars Children.’

‘That is where I have seen you.’

‘And I you,’ said Martin, all self-possession now. ‘You and your husband.’

To give the widow credit, she did not indulge in any false tears or long faces. ‘Well, my husband is gone. But I am here. Who are you?’

‘Nicholas Revill, a player with the King’s Men. I too am sorry to hear of your loss. In the Tower, wasn’t it?’

I said this to prompt her to some expression of regret, although all she said was: ‘A sad misfortune but an accident. Those animals!’

For an instant I thought she was referring to men behaving like beasts but, of course, she meant the lions that might have killed Leonard Leman. This was the story that would now be put about. She never asked how we had come by the news, and that in itself was odd. As was the arrival at Pride House of Davy Owen with his box. Or my box at the moment.

Jack Corner the steward coughed to draw attention to himself. He said: ‘My Lady, we do not need to stand here listening to a couple of players.’

‘I am no player but a playwright and poet,’ said Martin, at which Corner wafted his hand as if the distinction was meaningless, while Davy Owen put in: ‘Calls himself a playwright – oh, and a satirist too. He does not like the Welsh.’

‘We know something of the death of your husband,’ I said to Mrs Leman.

She glanced about at the servants standing at a respectful distance before saying: ‘It is hot out here and tempers are getting frayed. We should all go indoors.’

So we did.

We assembled in a large chamber on the upper floor of Pride House. It was a tense, uneasy gathering even after the servants had been dismissed. I was still clutching the wooden box. Davy Owen kept his eyes on it rather than on anything or anyone else, but he did not attempt to wrest it from me. Jack Corner, whose height was made more apparent by a small head, regarded Martin and me with hostility. Alice Leman, meanwhile, seemed divided between curiosity and suspicion.

‘What do you know of my husband’s death, Mr Revill?’

‘Nothing directly, madam. But an associate of ours was present when it happened, and he says that others were there too. He doubts that it was an accident.’