The Quality of Mercy (68 page)

The conversation was to be a game of wits. Shakespeare countered, “You’d murder for ten pounds six shillings?”

The alderman smiled slyly. “I knew you were a clever fellow.” He broke the bird in half. Oatmeal stuffing tumbled onto the platter. Fottingham picked up a fistful with his fingers and gorged himself. “How’d you find out?” he mumbled.

“Many about town paid money to Chambers,” Shakespeare said.

“How’d you find out about
me
?”

“I talked to Chambers’s brother Edmund. He showed me Edgar’s secret accounting ledgers.”

“Why would Edmund do that?”

Shakespeare rubbed his thumb back and forth against his fingertips.

“The Chambers brothers are easily bought,” Fottingham said. He looked at Shakespeare. “Can you be bought as well?”

“Do you want to buy me?” Shakespeare asked.

Fottingham chuckled nervously. “No,” he said.

“I can be bought,” Shakespeare said, “but not for money.”

“For love?”

“For a certain love I’d act the ass. For a certain love I’ve
been
an ass.”

“In sooth?” said Fottingham.

“Yes,” Shakespeare said. “But asses are beasts of burden, and lest I become an ass and a burdensome beast, I’ll keep my words sweet and succinct. Why did you borrow money from the innkeeper?”

Fottingham said, “A personal affair.”

They ate for a moment without speaking. Shakespeare said,

“Mayhap I should rephrase my question? Why was the innkeeper extorting money from you?”

Fottingham stopped chewing. He resumed mastication a moment later, then swallowed his mouthful in a big, dry gulp. He coughed. Shakespeare hit him on the back.

“What makes you think I was a victim of extortion?” Fottingham sputtered out.

“Chambers was wrestling money from diverse people.”

“Who else?”

“Harry Whitman, for one.”

“Who else?”

“My lips are sealed,” Shakespeare said. “However, Edmund’s may be pried open for the right price.”

The alderman coughed up a bolus of food, spit it onto the floor and managed a sickly smile. Shakespeare had spilled his information. Now he expected the alderman to pay in kind. He asked,

“What dirt did Chambers — Edgar Chambers — have on you?”

Fottingham sighed, knowing that the player would discover his secrets eventually. It might as well come from him.

“I am a member of the Queen’s Church,” Fottingham whispered. “I have lived and shall die a Protestant. But up here… some years ago… and on occasion even to this day, I have housed some cousins of my family…. Somewere very old men and women who still remembered when King Henry the Eighth was called the Defender of the Faith…. Do you understand what I’m saying, Shakespeare?”

“Chambers knew you had sporadically hidden Papists,” Shakespeare said softly. “He started asking you for money two, maybe three years ago to keep your secrets hushed.”

Fottingham nodded. He was sweating now. He said, “I’ve asked you this before, Shakespeare, but I’ll ask you again. Was Whitman a Papist?”

Shakespeare sighed. The alderman had confided treasonous secrets. Shakespeare felt it wise to give him something in exchange. He admitted Whitman’s Catholicism, and Fottingham let out an audible sigh and felt it was safe to proceed. He explained that Hemsdale was like numerous northern burgs in the country, that there were many who were Protestant in their worship, Catholics in their hearts. There were also many who’d welcome Chambers’s death.

“Edmund showed me a list of no less than twenty names,” Shakespeare said. “Edgar Chambers would have been a rich man had he not been a gambler.”

That stopped Fottingham for a moment. “Chambers was a gambler?”

Shakespeare nodded. “The money was scarcely held by the innkeeper. Once it touched his fingers, he was merely a conduit, linking the rivers of his victims’ purses and a certain ruffian’s pocket.”

Fottingham said, “I’ve never seen Chambers dice.”

“Edmund informed me that his brother diced in private. Edgar had also accrued enormous debts.”

Shakespeare explained how Edgar Chambers’s dicing habit was a logical assumption. Why else would George Mackering himself be this far north, away from his own haunts in London, unless there was substantial gain to be made? Mackering must have sent a few men up here a couple of years ago. They must have reported back what a perfect gull Chambers had been. When Mackering first arrived, Chambers hadn’t known him from the hundreds of other gentlemen who’d spent the night in his hostel drinking and dicing. But Mackering knew Chambers, knew he was a fine coney, as greedy as he was dishonest — the perfect combination. Mackering began to dice regularly with Chambers — as often as every month, according to the ledgers. Only after his debts mounted did Chambers discover with whom he was playing — that Mackering was not a simple gentleman and was not likely to forgive debts. The innkeeper began needing money badly. Shakespeare surmised he began his extortion scheme then.

The alderman said nothing.

Shakespeare told him, “You knew Chambers was extorting others for their Catholic beliefs when I first visited Hemsdale, didn’t you?”

Fottingham squirmed in his chair. “I suspected I wasn’t alone.”

Shakespeare let him squirm. It was all part of the contest of wills — how much do you reveal, how much do you trust? He steered the conversation back to Harry and asked the alderman if he’d known that Harry had been an extortion victim from the beginning.

Fottingham turned red and wiped his damp forehead with his robe sleeve. “I swear to you, Shakespeare, I barely knew Harry Whitman. Aye, maybe I suspected he was a Papist, as I knew his uncle had been a Jesuit priest, but I swear I didn’t know that Chambers had embedded his stinger in your friend. I merely thought that Whitman had come up here on a yearly pilgrimage to visit his kinsmen, to escape the grime and loneliness of London.”

“Even after Harry was murdered you didn’t suspect that Chambers had anything to do with it?” Shakespeare asked.

“No one in this town had been murdered, yet many had been victims of extortion.” Fottingham was flustered, acting like a trapped animal. He stammered out, “What… what do you want me to say? What should I have
done
? Made unfounded accusations that Chambers was Harry’s murderer? I directed
you
to him. I thought that was enough!”

Shakespeare paused a moment, realizing he was attacking the wrong person.

“It was, Master Fottingham,” Shakespeare said quietly. “It was. I failed to ask Edgar Chambers the proper questions, and now I’m embarrassed by my incompetence.”

Fottingham took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He did it again and seemed to calm down.

“Chambers’s death is no surprise,” the alderman said. “The town spoke ill of him, many had wished him dead. Who would want to kill Whitman is your riddle.”

Shakespeare was silent.

Fottingham crossed and uncrossed his legs. He said, “Mayhap Whitman was tired of paying the weasel. Perhaps he announced his intentions to Chambers and an accidental but most disastrous exchange occurred.”

“Chambers killed Whitman?” said Shakespeare dubiously.

Fottingham nodded eagerly.

A bit too eagerly. Shakespeare knew the assumption was absurd. Hours before he died, Harry himself had diced with Mackering in a desperate attempt for money. Harry would not have needed money to pay off Chambers if he were going to speak his mind once and for all. Besides, a confrontation might inspire Chambers to talk to the wrong people. That could have meant death for Harry’s kinsmen, certain death for the Jesuit. Harry would never have chanced it.

Mackering
. He’d caught a healthy group of coneys in Hemsdale. Lots here would have need of extra pence to pay off Chambers. Gambling would be seen as a viable and quick solution.

In one respect Fottingham was correct. The question was not who killed Chambers. The correct query was who killed Whitman. Shakespeare had his suspicions, but he kept them to himself.

The alderman stopped nodding and cast his eyes upon the floor. He had been drained of all his joviality. It was useless to keep badgering him. Shakespeare didn’t believe he’d been involved in Harry’s death, and that’s all that mattered to him at the moment.

“I must be off,” he announced. “I cannot repay you for your kindness, Master Fottingham. You have been a gentleman beyond compare, have heaped upon me, without bound, too much graciousness.”

Fottingham waved him off, saying that his house was open to the player any time. He hesitated, then added in a whisper, “I don’t know who did Chambers in. I swear to you, Shakespeare, I don’t know. But if I knew who he was, I’d kiss him. If it be Mackering, then the ruffian has a warm bed in my house.”

Shakespeare didn’t reply.

“Do you think that Chambers killed Whitman?” Fottingham asked.

Shakespeare shrugged. Fottingham didn’t press him. He was very grateful to see the player off.

The sky had reduced its downpour to simple rain. The country lanes had become rushing brooks and Shakespeare was soaked to the bone. No matter. His stomach was full and he was making good time. He had been riding south for two hours and would probably reach the next inn — the Portwater — by nightfall.

He felt certain of one thing. Chambers’s murder was connected to Harry’s. Someone had waited until Shakespeare had revisited the North to do Chambers in. As for the stew, maybe she was part of it. Or maybe she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Only two people here knew that Shakespeare had meant to question the innkeeper — Fottingham and the Jesuit, Silvera. He had not mentioned Chambers to any of the Henleys, nor to anyone else in town.

One possibility was that Chambers had been killed by Fottingham. The alderman, upon talking to Shakespeare in the alehouse, had felt his grave secret was about to be uncovered. By killing Chambers he rid himself of an extortionist and protected his confidences. But Shakespeare had his doubts about Fottingham cast as a murderer. The hospitable alderman seemed appalled as Shakespeare described the murder, genuinely horrified. Fottingham just didn’t seem like a heartless killer.

A second possibility: Chambers had been killed by Silvera. After Shakespeare had questioned the Jesuit, Silvera assumed that Chambers was the murderer of his true and spiritual son. The priest, consumed with grief, sneaked into town in one of his many disguises and did Chambers in with his own hand. The whore was an unfortunate victim. Or was she? In his religious fanaticism the Jesuit wouldn’t mourn the death of a harlot. Perhaps he believed the town gossip and thought the stew a witch.

Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live
.

There were diverse men who desired Chambers dead. But Shakespeare still had no idea who desired
Harry
murdered, or how the two — or three — slayings were connected.

Mackering was the common thread. Harry was filling the coffers of both Mackering and Chambers. Chambers was dead. So it was back to Mackering and London once again.

Another hour of riding put him in the burg of Cordick at dusk. The town was small and dreary and awash in mud — indistinguishable from Hemsdale. Dusk was an evil witch, as cold and still as death, hooded by shadows — malevolent, vaporous shapes lurking everywhere.

Shadows. They set his nerves tingling. What had he seen in that tavern a week ago? Just a shadow? Or the black beast? Who was he or it? At least Shakespeare knew that shadow wasn’t Fottingham — Shakespeare had seen it leave the alehouse as he spoke with the alderman. It had been watching him constantly. Even as he rode, Shakespeare sensed he was being followed, yet he turned around and saw nothing.

Thick mist was behind him, as amorphic and mutable as the Devil. Shakespeare saw in it the frothy tips of an endless tide, the windblown sails of a stranded ship, the billowing velvet gown of a duchess, a silent, evil specter of night.

A chill swept across his body.

The banging on the front door woke up the entire Lopez household. Rebecca sat up in her bed and reached for her candlestick but knocked it over with the back of her hand. Cursing silently, she dropped to the floor and fumbled around on hands and knees.

The pounding grew even louder, muffled voices inside — her parents, the servants. Scampering feet.

“Open up!” demanded a voice. This one from outside the house. “Open up!”

So loud. Rebecca felt herself shaking. The devil with the candlestick!

She stood up, threw her shawl around her nightdress, and stumbled through the darkened gallery, trying to reach the staircase without tripping. She met her mother on the second-floor landing. Sarah was holding a candlestick, the light quivering from the tremble of her hand.

“Go back to sleep,” Sarah ordered her daughter.

“Where’s Father?” Rebecca asked. “Is he dressing?”

“OPEN THE DOOR!” ordered the voice once again.

“Where’s Martino?” cried Rebecca. “Why isn’t anyone opening the door?”

“Go back to sleep!” Sarah screamed.

A loud thud shook the house.

“They’re breaking the door down, for God’s sake!” said Rebecca. “This is absurd! I’ll open the—”

Sarah grabbed Rebecca’s arm and yanked her away. “You desire to make it easy for that red-haired bastard!”

Rebecca lurched backward as if pushed. It was the first time in her life she had ever heard her mother swear.

Essex,
Rebecca thought. What did that self-serving, evil cur want with Father now! “Where’s Ben?” she screamed above the pounding.

“He heard them coming and dashed out the back way,” Sarah said. “He’s off to your uncle. May God show him strength! May the Almighty have mercy on our wretched souls—”

“Oh Mother!” Rebecca started to cry.

“Stop!” Sarah ordered. “Oh, I pray you, daughter, do not do that.” Her face contorted; scrunched-up eyes that tried to dam the flood of tears. “Stop!”

The two women hugged as they heard the door crack, splinter into planks of wood. They remained motionless, holding each other tightly as the Queen’s men charged through the open embrasure of the door arch. There were a dozen of them, carrying torches and ropes. Swords and daggers swung from belts fastened around their waists.