The Quality of Mercy (8 page)

Her future. If only she had some control over her destiny. Her life, always in the hands of another — her elders, her cousins, her brother, God — in any hands but hers. Were her hands any less capable than Benjamin’s, than Dunstan’s or Thomas’s? But her hands had the misfortune to be attached to the body of a woman.

She swallowed back tears, cursed her lot in life. A moment later she broke into sobs, feeling sudden shame at her rantings. Why had she been allowed to live and her betrothed taken in his prime?

Poor Raphael, how did you meet your end?

Rebecca had loved him because it had been her duty. She had addressed him with a modulated tone of voice, greeted him with smiles, suffered his dark moods in silence. She knew it was his work, not she, that had been his true passion. Life was a mysterious animal. In the end it was his passion that did him in. She worried that the passion might also destroy her dear Miguel.

Miguel was her distant cousin but her brother in spirit. He’d never been a lover of women. Yet he was also a dutiful son. If their fathers wished them to wed, they would wed. And what a mockery that would be.

There was a knock on her door, her mother’s whisperings. Rebecca forced herself upright, unlocked the door, then fell back atop her counterpane. Sarah Lopez, clad in her bedclothes, entered the bedchamber and sat on her daughter’s mattress. A moonbeam fell across her face, turned her cheeks ghostly white. Her eyes looked so sad, but Rebecca had never remembered a day when they had looked happy. Sarah brushed her waist-length gray hair off her shoulders and touched Rebecca’s hand. It was rigid and cold.

“Under the covers, Becca,” Sarah ordered gently. “I’ll not allow you to grow ill from the frigid air. Tis a tomb inside here — dark and wintry. I’ll call the chambermaid and have her rekindle the hearth immediately.”

Rebecca squeezed her mother’s hand. “How can I allow myself warmth and comfort when Raphael sits for eternity in an icy bed?”

Sarah pulled back the bedcovers. “Inside, little one, I prithee.”

Rebecca slithered underneath the down blanket. Sarah drew the spread up to her daughter’s chin.

“I’m not half the clever wordsmith that you are, Becca,” spoke Sarah. “I’ve stayed up for hours trying to find proper words of solace, yet my mind is as empty as a newborn babe’s. Tell me what to do to comfort you.”

Rebecca didn’t answer. Her mother’s voice, though soothing, sounded so weary. It saddened Rebecca to think that she’d brought any more woes to her mother. She embraced her mother and told her she loved her.

Sarah said, “You are my joy, Becca. All I desire is happiness for you and Benjamin.”

Rebecca knew this to be the truth. She’d never seen her mother engaged in idle play. Sarah’s life revolved around Father and his activities, around her and Ben.

Rebecca asked, “Has Father made mention to you of my future?”

“He has yet to return home from Uncle Jorge’s.” She sighed. “I suspect he’ll spend the night there. By and by you’ll know of Father’s intention. He’s never been one to hide from you his plans.”

“I wish he’d leave me in solitude.”

“That is impossible, dear Becca,” Sarah said. “While you’re still somewhat young, the years do pass by quickly. Best to have children while your womb is strong.”

“I wish—” Rebecca realized how quiet was the night and dropped her voice. “I wish our religion allowed us nunneries.”

“Black is a color ill-suited for your complexion,” Sarah said. She kissed her daughter’s cheek. “Have you said your proper prayers for… for Raphael?”

Rebecca nodded.

Sarah said, “God will hear them.”

Rebecca asked, “Have you told Grandmama about Raphael?”

“
I
didn’t tell her, yet she knew,” Sarah said. “Sometimes I think my mother a witch rather than an addled old woman.”

“She is neither,” Rebecca said. “She is a marvelous woman.”

“Tis most inappropriate for you to doubt my love and affection for my mother, Becca.”

Sarah’s voice held a wounded note. Rebecca picked up her hand and kissed it.

“I apologize, my gentle mother.”

Sarah squeezed her daughter’s hand and said,

“Grandmama shows no fretting over the news. She keeps her tears inside. Yet we both know she feels deeply. Raphael had been kind to her.”

“May I spend my mourning in Grandmama’s room?”

Sarah thought for a moment. “Father would never permit it. Guests will come to comfort you—”

“They come to eat.”

“Nonetheless, you must be visible and behave appropriately. Accept their platitudes of sorrow as if they meant something to you.”

“Playact, aye?”

Sarah sighed. “Yes,” she said. “Playact.”

“At least may I pass my nights with her?”

Her mother lowered her head and said, “Father prefers to keep you away—”

“Father errs,” Rebecca interrupted. “Father thinks Grandmama’s an old harpy with a head full of mush. You know that’s not so.”

“Rebecca, my obligations come first to my master, second to my mother and children. You must learn that else you’ll make a poor English gentlewoman and wife.”

“I’d rather become not an English wife but an English spinster,” Rebecca blurted out. “I’ve no desire to marry!”

She expected to hear reproachment from her mother. Instead Sarah patted her hand in sympathy.

“Time will alter your desires,” she said.

Rebecca noticed for the first time how her mother trembled from cold. She held open her cover for her, bade her to come inside. Sarah shook her head.

“I must get back to my chambers. Father will be furious if he finds me sleeping with you. He thinks I’ve spoiled you beyond redemption.”

“In sooth, his assessment is not far from wrong.”

Sarah smiled. “Do try to sleep.”

“Mother?”

“Aye.”

“Can you request of Father to allow me to sleep with Grandmama? I’d find it most comforting.”

“I’ll pose the question to him. But I think you’ll mislike the response.”

“Plead with him.”

“I’ll do what I can, Becca.”

Rebecca hesitated, then said, “I’m being selfish, Mother. Plead not with him. Ask him most noncommitally. Don’t risk his wrath for my sake.”

Sarah kissed her daughter. “I’ll do what I can,” she repeated. “Should I call the chambermaid to rekindle the fire?”

“Not necessary,” Rebecca said. “I’m very sleepy.”

“Well then,” Sarah said. “Good night, Becca. Things will be better come the morning light.”

Rebecca nodded, watched her mother’s shadow disappear from the room. Her mother, the hours of her life divvied up by Father and his work, by her and Ben, by Grandmama. But never a moment for herself. Sarah had once told her that she thought of herself as an extra arm for the members of her family. Rebecca also remembered when her mother had confided her reveries as a young girl — how one day she’d live in the clouds made of spun sugar, fly upon the back of a golden eagle and touch the sun. Where did those dreams go? Her mother — her heart in the sky, her muscles saddled with duty.

Shakespeare knew he was lost. He’d passed the same bridge-shaped rock an hour ago. Madness to come up North alone, trying to retrace a dead man’s last steps, chasing revenge as elusive as the wind. He should have insisted to Margaret that the trip would accomplish nothing. But something had propelled him forward, something more than a widow’s pleas.

Past images. A costume and a scroll being shoved under his nose as he tended the horses of the playgoers. Harry slapping him on the back…

Fiacre Nits, who plays the watchman in the second act, has just turned ill. Vomited all over the ground. Good hap that he wore not his costume
.

Harry had turned nearly purple from laughter.

You want me on stage?
was all that Shakespeare had been able to say.

You’re the only one who’s sober enough to memorize the lines on such short notice
.

More laughter. Whitman’s laughter. It played in Shakespeare’s head. A painful reminder, the sound so hollow now.

Shakespeare kicked the haunches of his horse, sending it into a gallop. He cursed, wondered where the hell he was.

So far he’d managed to follow Harry’s path quite closely. But this particular route, although the most direct to the burg of Hemsdale, was full of nature’s detours — hilly rocks and sudden dales, steep crags and crevices that plunged raggedly into the ground, circumscribing the knolls like a moat around a castle.

He pulled the horse to the left, hoping he’d find a decent inn before dusk. Polished, windswept ledges of sandstone erupted out of rocks and grassland abloom with clumps of purple heather. The summits of the hills reflected the gold of the sun, setting them on fire like a flame on a candle. At least this terrain allowed easy riding — soft, gritty soil that yielded under each beat of the hoof — far more comfortable on the body than the hard slate rock he’d experienced in the extreme northern regions.

He’d been fortunate. The weather had been accommodating, allowing him to cover much ground in a short time; barely a week since he’d left the walls of London. He’d fallen prey to only a few days of hard rain, and this morning just a thin blanket of haze covered the sky — that already burning away in the afternoon sun. His horse trampled over a heather bush plump with baby grouse. They scampered off in all directions — a delicious feast of tender meat dissipating before his eyes. He groaned, suddenly, realizing how long it had been since he’d taken a stomach. He would eat, but not while the sun was out. No time to be wasted.

Days of riding with nothing but a sore bum to show for it. So far the trip had illuminated nothing about Harry. Questions had been asked and answered by protestations of ignorance. Shakespeare had spoken to at least two dozen innkeepers. Three hostlers told him that the great actor had indeed blessed their modest hostel with his drunken but amusing presence. They smiled as they told Shakespeare that Harry had entertained the guests with a (cough, cough) randy soliloquy. But beyond that, Whitman had been a gentleman. He had stayed the night, paid his bills, and left early the following morning in fine health. One hostler did recall Harry speaking with excitement about his impending visit to his relatives up North.

Anything else,
Shakespeare asked.

The innkeeper shook his head no.

His friend’s last days of life seemed ordinary. What could Harry have possibly done to instill murder in a man’s heart? What nefarious creature had done him in? And the ever nagging question of why.

Shakespeare had been determined to find answers — for Margaret’s sake as well as his own. But now, after much wasted time, the ardor for truth had cooled. He missed London, his cell, his poetry writings and books.

But he’d come this far. Might as well finish his task. From the inns Shakespeare learned that Harry had visited his relatives — a first cousin, Viscount Henley and his family.

And, as Whitman had once mentioned in passing, Lord Henley
was
genuine peerage. He’d been granted a township in Northumberland. Brithall was the name of his castle, and an impressive pile of bricks it was. Before Shakespeare left, Margaret had told him that
all
of her husband’s kinsmen were secret Papists, followers of Rome, like many of the northerners. She said that Harry had once confided to her that Brithall held a secret underground chapel where votive candles were kept along with icons of the Virgin. But the boldest act of outrage was a fugitive priest in their hire — a Jesuit who narrowly escaped capture from the authorities by hiding in one of the castle’s priest holes. Harry later recanted his story about the priest, saying it had been a tale told in jest — to scare her. But Margaret felt his denial had been a lie.

Margaret had always been nervous about Harry’s excursions — the length of the trip, the dangers of the highways — but after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, with anti-Catholic sentiment running high, she’d actively protested his visit.

What if
that
priest were discovered?

Harry had always taken pains to reassure her. Queen Eliza was a tolerant woman, God sing her praises. Hadn’t it been rumored that Eliza’s private chapel mimicked those of the High Church despite her excommunication from Rome?

But Margaret hadn’t been easily consoled.

Who could say that Eliza will always be tolerant,
she’d told Harry.
Is not the Queen older, more eccentric? Did not she hang six hundred northerners for treason? Papist northerners? Priests — and their followers — had been burned before. They could be burned again
.

But Harry had continued his visits.

Harry as a Catholic: that had surprised Shakespeare. His friend and mentor had always been irreverent, and religion was his favorite topic of scorn. How he’d mocked the Puritan, ridiculed the pious parish priest. And now to discover that it wasn’t the institution that had offended his sensibilities, but rather the method of worship.

A side of Harry Shakespeare knew little about.

Yet he had known a side of Harry that he loved. He knew him as the man who had coached his voice, had taught him how to project over the shouts of the groundlings and the boos of the twopenny rowdies. He knew Harry as the man who instructed him in dance, as the man who had insisted that the fellowship take Shakespeare on as a sharer. He knew Harry as a money lender, the one who paid the enormous sharer’s fee of twenty pounds for his ’prentice, Willy.

Yes, once Harry had taken care of him. But Shakespeare had loved him deeply even when the roles had reversed. Shakespeare, apologizing to an irate tapster for Harry’s big mouth; Shakespeare, pulling him out of brabbles with younger men ready to kill them both; Shakespeare, patting the back of a stuporous man, hugging him as he cried.

His love for Harry flowed through his veins as sure as blood. Shakespeare’s quest for Harry’s murderer, for his mentor’s eternal peace, was strong and potent — like the sting in the loins.

He’d ridden farther, thinking about the different side of Harry — the one which he’d not been privy to know.