The School of Night (44 page)

Mr. Wax's collection.

Alonzo's missing books. Missing, too, from my thoughts all these days and weeks. Coming home at last to roost.

“So this is for real?” I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

I had gone so far as to place the check in my hand. I could actually feel the numerals pressing through the paper.

“Will there be anything else, Mr. Cavendish?”

“No.”

*   *   *

I slept poorly that night. The next morning, I went to Peregrine Coffee and, feeling slightly extravagant, ordered a three-shot latte with a fleur-de-lis of scalded milk on top and sat outside in my sweater, hunched over my mug, listing all the reasons I had for keeping the money.

1. Alonzo was dead. For real this time.

2. I had never asked to be his beneficiary.

3. I had played no part in the disappearance of his collection. Had known nothing of it. Had never once imagined I would benefit from it.

4. I had no idea where the collection currently was and no idea of how to find it. The only people who did know were dead.

Seen strictly in legal terms, my claim seemed secure. As for
extra
legal considerations … wouldn't Alonzo have wanted me to have the money? Me above all others?

Which is where my house of ethics came crumbling down. For if this was truly what Alonzo had wished, how could I square it with what was good and just?

I emptied my cup, set it on the table a little harder than I should have. And then I watched as the chair on the other side of the table moved away.

Moved by itself, or so I thought, until I saw the small hand resting on top of it.

Clarissa Gordon—
Dale,
as was—in her car coat. Pale and drawn but also quickened by autumn, her lips redder, the black of her eyes richer.

“Is this seat taken?” she asked.

52

B
UT THE SITTING
part didn't work too well: We didn't have enough shelter from each other. So we got up and took a walk.

The weather was much cooler than the last time we'd strolled across Capitol Hill. The sun was small and mellow; only the maples were blazing. And yet, just as before, Clarissa stopped after a couple of blocks.

“Mind if we sit down now, Henry?”

She didn't seem remotely tired.

“Um … I don't see any…”

“How about there?”

She pointed to a tiny stone bench with carved animal curlicues, sitting in front of an old farmhouse. It was one of those benches you picture your kids sitting on during long July afternoons, laughing, drinking lemonade, forming memories. Only you know they never will.

“That's someone's yard,” I pointed out.

“Bet they're not home.”

The only way to fit on the bench was to lower ourselves in tandem and draw our knees straight to our chests. It would have been altogether impossible to feel adult … were there not adult feelings stirring inside me. Prompted by nothing more than her mint-and-clove smell.

“I've been thinking,” she said. “About all the reasons you might hate me. So how about I go through my list, and you can tell me if there are any left over?”

“Okay.”

“There's, first of all, the lying. Which I grant you, except not as much as you might think. I really
am
a dumb business major. Bernard liked me that way, he didn't want me to be an expert.”

“Or you'd break your dumb-business-major cover.”

“Something like that. My point is … all those questions I was asking you about Harriot and Ralegh, they were all sincere. I really wanted to know. And being with you and Alonzo—it was a real education.”

“You've been an education, too.”

“Huh. Really?” Her knees rose to her chin. “I won't explore that. So
another
reason you might hate me is you think I was lying about the visions. Which is not true because that really is how I met Bernard in the first place. I was living in London then, and these damned visions were coming every night, and they were—killing me, basically—and Bernard was giving a lecture at the Humanities and Arts Research Centre. On, what do you know, the School of Night.

“So I went. And afterward, I went up to him—just like I did with Alonzo a few weeks later—and I told him I have this problem, and he said, ‘Funny, I have a problem, too. And
you've
got this security background, so how about we join forces?
You'll
learn all you need to know about the School, and
I'll
get my document back.' Seemed like a win-win all around.”

She paused to interrogate herself.

“And I needed money, and this was a job. At least it was supposed to be.”

She picked up a Bradford pear leaf and very carefully began to shred it. The margins first, then the veins and the midrib. When it was nothing more than a petiole, she flung it away.

“At the wedding, Henry. When I told you—”

“Yeah.”

“I mean when I said I loved you.”

“Right.”

“Well, that wasn't a lie, either. It was just—you know, it was lousy timing. So anyway, for the things I
did
lie about, I apologize. Truly. And for putting you in danger, too, which I never meant to do but still. And…” She exhaled, shook her shoulders. “What else?”

“I don't know.” I shrugged. “It's not like I kept a spreadsheet.”

“Well, that's good.”

“I'm glad you came.”

“Well. I'm unemployed again, so…”

We sat for some minutes. Alone, except for a single tricycle, rolling mysteriously past, unattached to any child.

“It wasn't lousy timing,” I said. “To say those words.”

“No?”

“See, the thing is—I mean, you have to understand, I have a very fraught relationship with those words, all right? I used them with the first girl who had sex with me. I was so—immoderately grateful, they just came out. And since then—God, is it a dozen?
More
than a dozen women, probably, have heard me say those words and I was, frankly, most of the time, mistaken, though never exactly insincere, but the problem is I can't speak them anymore without thinking it's more bullshit. Which is the last thing I want in my life, even though I'm not exactly sure what's left—after the bullshit leaves.”

“Okay. I get that.”

“No.
No
…”

And now I could no longer sit on that tiny unbearable bench, but my legs, under compression, had nodded off, and when I tried to stand, they folded under me and left me … on my knees, yes, in the cool grass. Staring up at Clarissa. Very conscious of my humiliation, but conscious, too, that this was the best attitude to take when everything comes rising up.

“I love you,” I said. “I love you, Clarissa Dale … Gordon …
Borgia,
whatever your name is. Whatever your infamy. I love you more than is good for me. More than may be good for you. I love you for the duration. Five acts, plus epilogue, plus curtain call. I love you without refund.”

A single tear vibrated on the corner of her eye. She angrily brushed it away.

“Henry.”

“I'm only sorry—”

“What?”

“That it's going to be so hard to stand up again.”

She laughed.

“You don't know the half of it, Henry.”

She helped me to my feet, and then she drew my arms around her and pulled me tight. And she was
there,
suddenly, all of her, scent and touch and heart and soul, ravishingly concentrated, her dark eyes shining like tomorrow.
No face is fair that is not full so black
 …

“Glad we cleared things up,” she said.

Just then, an ancient dog-walking woman in a wearable-art sweater walked past us. Her face lit up with a yenta's smile, and we grinned back, delighted to be exactly the people she assumed us to be.

“Let's walk,” Clarissa suggested.

And so we did. Down blocks innumerable, toward every point of the compass. Past bird baths, azalea bushes, corner stores, abandoned middle schools. The breeze laid a chill on our skin, and the sun scorched it off. I envied no one.

“Henry, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Alonzo. Did he … was he the man who jumped from Kew Bridge?”

I nodded.

“Well, I'm sorry,” she said. “I'll miss him, if that doesn't sound strange.”

“It doesn't. I don't know if—see, I found out Alonzo was—”

“Lily and Amory, yeah. I was getting around to that conclusion myself. Lord knows, Bernard
could've
done it, it wouldn't have shocked me, I just couldn't see why he
would.
There was no motive.”

“What about the treasure? Wasn't that an incentive?”

She shook her head. “Bernard never put much store in that. He was willing to hold off for a little, see what came of it, but he was after another prize.”

“Which was?”

She gave me a puzzled look. “The document, Henry.”

“But that…”

I frowned, jerked my head away.

“It doesn't make sense. Why would he care so much about a few lines of Walter Ralegh's? I mean, sure, it'd be worth
some
money, but not
that
much. Nothing worth dying for, that's for sure.”

“For
him
it was.”

“Why?”

“Because without the letter's second page—without that signature from Ralegh—the first page loses most of its value. All of it, really.”

I stared at her.

“There's a
first
page?”

“Yep.”

“But Alonzo—”

“Never saw it. See? Bernard wasn't as much a fool as Alonzo thought. He might flash you a card or two, but he'd never tip his whole hand.”

“So all along Styles had this first page. In his possession.”

“Yep.”

“And all he wanted to do was … reunite it with the second.”

“Yep.”

“So what makes the first page so special?”

Clarissa smiled then: slow and lippy. She unsnapped her cordovan handbag and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.

“See for yourself.”

It was a digitalized copy. Written in the same hand as the other document. Written at the same time by the same man. But breaking a hole in everything.

“It can't be,” I murmured.

“Keep reading.”

To my verie loving frende and master Thomas Harryott of London, gent,

Yew were goode enough to ask after our healthe.

The Queene lyes now at White Hall dead. Shee came in with the fall of the leafe, and went away in the Spring, and neuer, I thinke, has the English Nation been so robed in black as youreself. In spite of the generall terror her death has occasioned, you shall perceiue that I haue more cause to mourne than most. The wheele of Fate turns, a new Sun rises vp out of the North, and no more shall the Truth bee my warrante.

All ready are slaunderous and shamefull speeches bruited abroade. I doe not knowe when I myself shalbe arayned, althoughe I must confess that my hearte is not heavy but of singuler lightness, I knowe not how. Besse and I haue taken ouersels to the Innes of Court, there to behold the latest fancy of master Shaxper. Yt was titled Alls wele thatt ends wele, and a more curious and straunge play haue I neuer seen. I was most forceibly strucke by the epithet resarved for ovr Hero, hight Bertram. Towit, foolish idle boye and for all thatt verie ruttish.

Was this not, in all its particulars, howe Kit used to speke of Shaxper? You recall ful wele, I hope, that night at Sherburne, whene Kit brought his louer there to mingle at lengthe with our Schollers. Wordes came but sparingly to the younge wight's lips, and though wee scanned the remotest Orbs for their deepeste Misteries, there was for him no misterie, no glorie greter than his well-loved Kit. Howe little wee regarded him then, Warwickshire stripling, except when he had bene reduced most to tears by Kits gibes and japes.

I read it again and again. The words didn't scatter, as I kept expecting, but remained stubbornly, surreally in place. And how neatly they segued into that second page, which rose now from memory.

Hee wold not be the first louer so to be served by Kit, who wold burn Hotte and Cold in the space of but one breth and who cold conjure up proofs for the Deuil or our Savior, howsoever the winde tourned him.

The one figure I'd never given a second thought to—Marlowe's lover—was the Colossus that had been squatting over us the whole time.

I laughed so hard I actually fell down. Sprawled there in a tree box, with a row of liriope.

“Henry?”

In my defense: It's not every day the entire field of Shakespearean scholarship bursts open. Violence like that can make a fellow shaky.

“Breathe, Henry.”

But if anything, it was a case of too much oxygen. Too much possibility.

Where even to begin? If this was a genuine letter, it would be the most exciting find since—Jesus, the plays themselves.

It would fill in the seven-year historical gap between the birth of Shakespeare's twins in Stratford and his first emergence in the London theater scene.

It would give the School of Night new and global renown as the incubator of some of England's greatest masterworks.

It would tie Shakespeare to Ralegh, to Harriot, to Chapman … and, most thrillingly, to Marlowe, who was not just Shakespeare's colleague or rival or associate but his
intimate
.

And here was the point I was still groping toward. It would give Shakespeare's career an entirely new trajectory: an arc of revenge.

*   *   *

“Sit up,” said Clarissa. “And explain that last part.”

“If we're to believe this letter,” I said, “the young Shakespeare was mad,
crazy
in love with Christopher Marlowe.
No mysterie, no glorie greter than his well-loved Kit.”