The Point of Death (5 page)

Chapter Seven - Worms' Meat

'Bring him in here, swiftly!' commanded Tom.

'Shall
I send for the physician?' asked Ned Alleyn, uncharacteristically hesitant in the face of the shocking event.

'Not
yet,' said Tom as the three of them swung the sagging weight of Julius Morton's body through the doorway and into the tiring house. Here the crabbed little wardrobe keeper swept a jumble of bright cloth off the long tiring table an instant before the corpse crashed down on to the boards, the dull thump of its landing masked by a wave of applause.

'The
doctor would warn the constables or the Bishop's Bailiff. Thank God the Queen's not at Westminster, the width of the river away, or it would be Household men investigating things to boot. Sir William Danby and his crew, like as not; just as it was for Marlowe last year. And in the meantime, where shall we be, awaiting Her Majesty's pleasure? Not on the boards of the Rose, my friend! Especially not with Lord Strange dead and gone and no one to plead our case at Court.'

'We'd
be waiting in the Limbo at Newgate Prison, like as not,' said a newcomer disgustedly. At the sound of his voice they all fell back respectfully, except Tom who was busy with the body. 'Or in the Marshalsea,' continued the newcomer, Philip Henlowe, owner and proprietor of the theatre, the company, the wood yards by the river and the baiting pits nearby. 'The Marshalsea where we can pass a merry afternoon with Master Topcliffe and his red-hot irons as our business goes to rack and ruin.'

Henslowe
had little sense of humour, so it was only Tom who cracked a grim guffaw at the unwitting wit of the final phrase, for it was literally true. Topcliffe, the Archbishop's Pursuivant and the Queen's Rackmaster, would rack them and ruin them all if they fell into his clutches.

A
roar of laughter swept strangely into the suffocating room, recalling the grim occupants to the relentless progress of the play outside in the real world. 'God's life,' swore Alleyn, 'my cue!' and he was gone with a swish of his friar's robes.

'On
with it, all of you,' ordered Tom. 'I will see to this!' And, glad to pass the terrible weights of action, decision and responsibility to the fencing master, even Henslowe slunk away. Tom glanced around the dim, sultry, suddenly deserted little room with its mean window half shuttered. On an impulse, he crossed to this and threw the shutters wide, letting a shaft of sudden sunlight into the room. As he did so, he looked down across the old garden towards Bankside and there, on the corner of Rose Alley, where it ran north through Dead Man's Place to the river, stood a gallant looking up. For a moment more the man stood, still amid the bustle, staring back at the Rose as though expecting some matter of great moment to happen any instant now. Some thing about the man struck Tom. The darkness of his olive skin, perhaps, the glistening of his oiled black curls, the glint of ruby at his ear - a pair to the ruby in Tom's own lobes. As their eyes seemed to meet across the better part of one hundred yards, it was as though a flash of recognition passed between them. Then the man was gone into the crowd towards Bankend and the wherries at St Mary Overie Stairs, leaving nothing but an impression of tobacco doublet slashed with red, black cloak and long, long sword swinging against a broad right thigh.

Another
burst of applause drowned Tom's purposeful tread as he crossed back towards the table with its silent burden. As he stood beside the still form, his eyes narrowed, focussing his thoughts as his mind whirred into action. What was it about poor Julius Morton that bespoke death so clearly? The still, staring, soulless eyes, perhaps. The utter pallor of his face. The stillness of his parted lips and chest, which lay like warm marble beneath Tom's first gentle touch. The stillness at the cooling column of his throat. But more. Even with the absence of blood upon that fine, linen shirt - so excellent a match for his white cheeks now - there was the languor of his limbs. The weight of them. The almost studied carelessness with which his left hand was disposed across the broad boards, its fingers half curled in some final, dying gesture. The hand that had swung wide at the crucial moment, striking one actor and smearing another with bright blood. It was the hand ...

Tom
took a step or two up the table and leaned over to look more closely at the hand. Gently, he folded out the loose grasp of the fingers as though opening the petals of a rose. There, in the centre of the palm, was a tiny pool of blood. Tom remembered the smear that the dying man had left on the shocked Dick Burbage. Frowning, Tom reached into the breast of his jerkin for the Italian lace kerchief he always kept there.

Three
deft dabs revealed a wound – scarcely more than a knife cut - as though the man had stabbed himself while sharpening a quill for a pen.

Tom's
broad forehead folded in a deepening frown as he turned the dead hand over. There, on the back, a pin-prick, scarcely enough to release a ruby drop from the fat vein running along the back of it. Tom tugged at the red-gold point of his beard and thought. Only a poisoned blade could bring death from a wound as small as this - but no poison Tom had heard of would work as swiftly as this one must have done. And Tom knew a great deal about poisons, one way and another. He had learned a good deal more than the science of defence with Maestro Capo Ferro at Siena. He made a mental note to keep a watch on Dick Burbage's face. If there was poison in the blood Morton had wiped upon it then the skin would blister and fester. And Death would enlarge his kingdom by one more actor's soul.

Deep
in thought now, far removed from the howls of sorrow on the stage, Tom folded the wounded hand across the still chest, then he cast it aside again, in the grip of growing revelation. Short of breath suddenly, he tore Morton's shirt-front wide.

The
man was dark, his chest matted with hair, but a moment's careful search revealed, just below his left nipple, where the oily curls were thickest - and most heavily tenanted with fleas - another cut. A cut such as a slightly larger pen-knife, big brother to that which might have cut his hand, might have made.

Shouts
of warning and outrage from the audience. A flickering disturbance to the thick light. A distant rumble of thunder and the first stealthy whisper of rain in the old rose garden outside. Tom heaved the dead man up on to his side. As he moved the corpse, there came a sluggish slopping, as of a quart or so of liquid on the move in the hollow of a barrel. Tom pulled the fine, creased linen out of the dead man's belt above the dagger he wore across his buttocks. Half-balancing the fallen column of the man, holding him still with one hand as he pulled the voluminous linen up to the lightly furred shoulders, Tom stripped Morton's back bare. And there, on the inner curve of his ribs, running in through the inner edge of his shoulder blade almost into the ridged range of his spine, was a wound the width of a little finger. A tiny mouth with a coral gape and a dead black throat, reaching straight into the barrel of his chest. And, as though the weight of Tom's understanding had some magic property, a stream of dark heart's blood burst out of it. The black stream caused Tom to leap back - though its stain would hardly have discoloured his black breeches or boots. He used the movement to spin himself into physical action. A glance out of the window raked across the innocent bustle moving to and from the Bankside. Then he was out into the backstage area, even as Julius Morton, apparently merely asleep, rolled languidly back on to his back upon the table and began to examine the ceiling with bright but heavy-lidded eyes. The dripping sounds grew louder. Moved out of the garden and into the Rose.

The
wardrobe keeper was there, still clutching his precious cloth. 'You'll have some cleaning-up to do,' spat Tom in an undertone as he sprinted for the stage. He knew already he would be too late but he had to make assurance double sure. His long sword spat out of its scabbard, echoing warlike sounds from the stage itself. His shoulder hit the pillar by the stage curtain hard and, breathing a swift prayer of thanks that Master Griggs the carpenter had built Master Henslowe's theatre so stoutly, he used the rapier blade to ease back the heavy brocade. Across the stage, Dick Burbage danced in the final, desperate duel of the play and the County Paris was preparing to die. They were alone onstage except for the sixpenny gallants, so it was easy enough for Tom to see that one of the stools, which had all been full until Julius Morton's murder, stood starkly empty now. One of the courtly blades who had joined unbidden in the sword fights and the riots was gone.

Then,
so was the chance for further speculation. All of the actors came milling up around him, ready to go onstage again to complete the final, vital section of their play. All of their futures depended upon it. And the play could go on of course, for Mercutio, after all, was dead.

Tom
caught hold of Will's princely sleeve and pulled him aside. 'It was murder,' he said, his voice low. 'He has been run through from behind. It was a master's stroke. Only the finest of blades could have done it. Only the blade that came so close to us, I think. And the man that wielded it has gone.'

'But
how could it have been done, Tom? On the stage of the Rose under the eyes of half of London and no one the wiser?'

'Not
only
How
?, Will, but
W'hy
? This was a deep plot, carefully laid. And a tangled web behind it, like as not.'

'But
what are we to do, Tom?'

Tom
opened his mouth to answer. To answer that he did not know. But Will was gone on to the stage and the voice of the Prince rang out across the Rose.

Abruptly
Ugo Stell was there, with the bookkeeper in tow. 'Tell Tom what you told me,' ordered the Dutchman quietly. Pope held up the prompt book. It was covered in scrawled additions - mostly to Julius Morton's speeches. 'I noted what Mercutio said at the end, Master Tom,' he said breathlessly. 'The speech about plagues and houses and making worms' meat of the man. For Master Will had written nothing like it in his original book. There's nothing like that in the original at all.'

'But
you have it written down?'

'Everyword,
truly, sir. But what's the significance?'

'I
have a suspicion,' answered Tom, glaring out on to the stage where Will was delivering the Prince of Verona's doom on Romeo, all unaware of the doom awaiting him back here, 'that there may be a message hidden within it. A message from a murdered man who dared not make his dying message clear. There is work for a Master of Cyphers here.'

'And
for a Master of Logic,' added Ugo.

'And
for a Master of Defence, I shouldn't wonder,' concluded Tom, grimly. And all too soon he was to learn just how true those last words were.

Chapter Eight - A Death Re-played

Later that afternoon the whole company except for Julius Morton was again assembled on the Rose's stage. The whole company of actors, that was. The Bookkeeper was at work in Master Henslowe's office copying out with laborious accuracy every word the dying Morton had spoken, marking the difference between those which followed Master Shakespeare's original and those that he had extemporised for himself.

As
the wet boards and sodden rushes out on the stage itself steamed lazily under the gathering weight of the next thunderstorm, it seemed to more than one mind there that Julius was as fully among them as any of the others, passing spectrally from one ghostly wisp to the next. And in fact he was figured there in person as Will paced out his last moments, rolling in Dick Burbage's arms across the brawny chests of all the others.

The
badly shaken Sly, still half convinced that he must have struck the fatal blow after all, worked carefully and precisely as Tom, narrow-eyed, watched the whole performance, with Ugo by his side.

The
actors were all at their points. Inevitably, after so much rehearsal of such a dangerous piece of action destined to be repeated over and over, every man there knew to within a whisker where every part of his body must be placed. The only difference, apart from the absence of the little tragedy's principal actor, was the equally crucial absence of the sword-wielding sixpenny gallants. But the actors were beginning to build up a clear picture of who among the courtly audience was where, when they left their stools.

'Now,'
called Burbage and Sly together.

'Hold,'
commanded Tom. The action froze. Will was standing in a slight crouch, trapped against the rock-steady chest of Hemminge, held by the encircling arm of Dick Burbage. Sly, caught in the act of bouncing off Condell's solid front, balanced the length of his leaded rapier precisely, ready to thrust under Dick's arm, apparently into the depths of Will's unprotected breast. 'Look about you,' commanded Tom. 'Stir your memories. Who else was close by at this very moment? Where were they facing? What were they doing? What did they look like?'

Of
course a babel of answers arose at once, for there had been eight gallants up from their stools in the midst of the action and all of the horseshoe of actors had seen at least one of them. Tom held up his hand for peace, then he put a simple order on the matter by starting with the outer ends of the half-circle, and establishing through the testimony of at least two actors apiece what each of those eight men had been doing at the vital moment. The outer two - one on each side - had simply been pushing against the wall of actors apparently seeking a clearer view. Those next upstage behind them, at that very moment, had been caught between what was being enacted by the actors and what was going on among the other four of the unruly audience behind them on the stage. Here, between the steady backs of Hemminge and Condell and the curtains over the exits, there were four braggarts at sword-play. Whether two against two or three against one it was hard to say for the mêlée had been brief and none too well observed. Both Hemminge and Con dell were agreed, however, in placing one dark, fragrant, black-clad gallant the closest behind them.

'I
felt his shoulders against my shoulders, jostling me roughly,' said Hemminge. 'He was hard at work, and I have, I calculate, a round dozen bruises on my ribs, courtesy of his elbows as he fought.'

'The
air around me was all a-hiss with foreign tongue and spitting blades - and ahum with fragrant garlic,' added Condell. 'So, he fought with his back to you against at least one other upstage. But he turned, when?'

'Turned?'
asked Hemminge.

'Look
around you, man. You see how Morton stood at your front and this gallant stood at your back. To run his blade beneath your own arm and through Morton to his very hand, he must have turned and thrust.'

'No,'
said both Hemminge and Condell in a kind of chorus. 'He never turned, Tom.'

'They're
in the right of it, Tom,' added Sly. 'I was watching my timing and my thrust but I swear I'd have noticed any man turning in that crowd behind Master Hemminge there.'

'The
boy's right,' called the gruff voice of the Gatherer across the pit. 'I was up here on the upper three-penny gallery and I saw well enough. None of your roaring boys turned. And at the end of the swordplay they sheathed and sat like lambs, no harm done. There were upwards of twelve hundred souls in the house this afternoon and not an eye saw aught amiss for all they told me on their way out at the end. Not an eye dry, Master Will; but not an eye saw one jot or tittle amiss, on my life.'

The
fact that the Gatherer was talking to Will abruptly awoke Tom to the fact that his friend had been standing frozen for a considerable time. 'Will, are you strong enough to stay there for a while longer?'

'For
a while, Tom. Why? What have you in mind?'

But
Tom was paying the motionless playwright scant attention. 'Ugo. Get me one of the leaded blades and stain it with soot from a taper. Bring it to me where the black-clad gallant stood. Then bring another for yourself. Leaded or not - it is your choice; we will try a pass or two in enactment of this strange bout.'

While
Ugo ran to do his bidding, Tom positioned himself where the black-clad swordsman had stood. Much to poor Sly's disquiet as it chanced - for Tom's own clothing was a workmanlike shadow of the gallant's courtly fashion. As he waited for his associate to return with the swords, Tom jostled his way into perfect position.

'Ha,'
gasped Hemminge. 'Your elbows strike the very bruises, Tom. You are a very image of the man.'

'I
hope not,' said Will dryly. 'Another such as Tom would be one blade too many.'

Something
in the ironic quip made Tom frown even as his lip curled in acknowledgement of a palpable hit. Then Ugo was there.

'Here.'
He tossed the tallow-marked blade to Tom and fell into the first position as taught him by Maestro Capo Ferro. The blades clashed as Tom fended off his friend easily, the greater part of his mind occupied with feeling what exactly lay behind him; not before him. His back and elbows were surprisingly sensitive. It was easy, he soon discovered, to sense where the solid trunks of Hemminge and Condell stood and to plumb the vacancy between them. A glance over his shoulder revealed the white cloud of Will's billowing lawn shirt. Then it was the act of only a moment to perform the secret variant on the deadly
Punta
Reverso
that Capo Ferro had taught him. The foil's handle twisted in his hand almost as though it had life of its own. The soot-stained blade slammed up into his right arm-pit, its point sticking out behind his back. Safe in the knowledge that it was well and safely leaded, he pulled his right hand sharply in towards his own breast and was rewarded by a sharp cry from behind. He stepped forward, swinging the sword out to defend himself once more. But Ugo's blade was at his heart.

Now
it was Tom's turn to freeze. 'Too slow, Tom,' said Ugo, heavily.

'Aye,
and a mite wild to boot. I am hurt, sir, but not killed.' Will's voice echoed Ugo's, but the dry irony was gone. The playwright seemed genuinely shaken. Even though the black line from the sooty blade ran along his ribs almost exactly over the welt he had received earlier on that deadly day, he nevertheless saw as clearly as the rest of them that Tom had unmasked the dark heart of the murder.

But
Tom was not satisfied. The blade had gone awry. Unless the duellist opposed to the murderer were a confederate willing to hold the killing stroke as Ugo had done, then that moment of defencelessness would have spelt death for the murderer in any case. He stood, racking his brains for the one vital element he had overlooked – the one thing that would turn this rough botch into a mirror simulacrum of the lethal act.

As
he stood - and the rest stood, still frozen at his command - the rain started again. A stealthy pattering like the footfalls of a prowling cat hunting rats among the rushes. The association of sounds made Tom think of the tiring house with its blood-dripping occupant and the way the pattering of blood had made the most recent downpour seem to come into the room from the rose garden when he had first discovered the cause of Morton's death. And, in a flash, even as the others, groaning, turned to find shelter from the gathering storm, Tom thought of the window, the rose garden and the black-clad gallant standing at the corner of Dead Man's Alley looking back. The gallant standing with a rapier hanging across the solid breadth of his right thigh.

'Hold,'
bellowed Tom, freezing them all once again. Freezing them all as though they had been struck with the same icy touch as Tom's own heart had been. For only two sorts of swordsmen wore their foils like that - left-handers and ambidexters.

Tom
was actually shaking as he swapped the leaded rapier to his own left hand and slid his long Ferrara blade out into the right. Ugo stood before him, white to the lips - the only man there to see as clearly as Tom the horrible danger of what he was proposing. At Tom's curt nod, the Hollander fell to again. Both he and Tom knew that Ugo could have had a companion at his side almost as well-tutored as he was, and Tom would have held them both in play. But what Tom was doing now he had never essayed outside the main salon of Maestro Capo Ferro's school in Siena, for an ability such as this was dangerously close to witchcraft and was even more likely than his uncanny ability with logic and deduction to get him hanged as a witch.

'Hey,'
called Tom, thrusting forward with his right hand as he reversed the point in his left. The motion was so swift that not even the increasingly intrigued actors realised what was going on. Tom straightened, keeping Ugo easily in play. Behind him, Will cried out with shock and surprise, lurching forward into Dick Burbage's arms. The pair of them lurched against Sly and Condell and - but for the slap - the re-enactment was terrifyingly perfect. And, when they looked, in the muggy dryness of the tiring house a few minutes later, the black mark on Will's shirt was on the very point that the blade had run through Julius Morton's linen with so much more deadly effect.

Inevitably, it was Will who pressed him hardest to reveal exactly what he had done to reproduce the method of the murder so perfectly. But Tom remained reticent. Of all the men there, only Ugo, he believed - and hoped – understood exactly what he had done. The ability to fight with both hands at once - using two rapiers instead of one, or rapier and dagger - was one of Capo Ferro's most closely guarded secrets. Up until now, Tom had remained quietly confident that he was the only man in England who could perform the mystery at such an elevated level. Now, as the conversation around him began to gather, taking a course which it was all too easy to predict, Tom was increasingly, uneasily, aware that they were going to ask him to go out in search of this man. To find him, to find out what he was doing and to find out why he had done it to Julius Morton.

The
murderous stranger was, perhaps, the one man in England who could kill Tom in fair combat - and he was, therefore, the man Tom should be most eager to avoid. And yet, as the afternoon wore on and the thunder gathered over the thatched roof of the Rose, bringing with it the sort of weather best suited to the kind of deliberations going on within, he felt a boundless excitement gathering in his breast.

'We
want no authorities brought in on this,' emphasised Master Henslowe again. 'For two years and more we have been at starvation's door and now that the Plague has relented, I'll be damned before I let Fortune play us foul. Or any more foul, given the evil turn the whore gave us in the death of Lord Strange. City, Court and Bishop's Bailiff, all would close us down. And you all heard Master Doorkeeper – it was a big house and not a dry eye. As long as the play runs, our fortunes are on the mend and it will run for ten days more at the least - two houses a day after this, before we approach My Lord Chamberlain to seek preferment to the Queen.'

'We
will need to approach my Lord Strange's executors in any case,' said Ned Alleyn. 'We work under his protection still, in theory. If we also work outside the law, those looking after his affairs will need to be alerted, if not warned.'

'A
dangerous move, surely?' suggested Master Hemminge, the steady churchwarden. 'Like as not, they'll warn Sir William Danby himself and close us anyway. It is the lawful thing to do.'

'Perhaps,'
said Henslowe a little shortly, unused to the frank discussion the Burbages allowed in their company - preferring to limit discussion to that between himself and his son-in-law and leading man Ned Alleyn.

'On
the other hand,' added Will, 'a coded warning in the right ear might allow continued protection of our poor enterprise here should anything go wrong in the near future.'

'And
a good deal could go wrong,' continued Tom. When he paused to order his thoughts, even Master Henslowe sat silently, not a little awed by what the Master of Logic had achieved in the case so far. 'For a start, we have Julius Morton. We have him but we cannot keep him long. What shall we do with him? Dump him in the Fleet River and let him wash away with the rest of the sewerage? Smuggle him over the river and leave him near his lodgings, another corpse in the nearest dark alley?'