Shakespeare's Spy Read online

  “You are certain you wish to hear it?”

  “Of course. What is it? What did you see?”

  The cunning woman turned toward him, and I caught for the first time a glimpse of her visage. The skin of her face was as thickly covered with warts as a pox victim’s is with scars. “I see that you will turn traitor.”

  Sam gaped at her for a moment before he found his voice. “That’s not a prediction! That’s an accusation!”

  “You said you wished to hear it.”

  “And now I wish to have my penny back! I didn’t pay good money to be insulted!”

  “I am not responsible for what the future holds; I merely say what I see.”

  Sam got to his feet, grumbling under his breath, “Yes, well, if you ask me, you need spectacles.” He waved Sal Pavy toward the stool. “It’s your turn.”

  “I—I don’t believe I—” Sal Pavy started to say.

  Sam cut him off. “Come, now, stop your whingeing and take it like a man. Your future couldn’t possibly be any worse than mine.” Reluctantly, Sal Pavy perched on the edge of the stool. “You’ve got to give her a penny,” Sam reminded him. “Though perhaps you’d do well to make it tuppence; you might get a better reading.” He turned to me. “Not to forget, you owe me a penny. You can well afford it,” he added, with a secret wink, “seeing as how you’re coming into a fortune, and all.”

  “Silence!” hissed La Voisin. She gazed into the ball even longer than before. I nearly strangled, trying to keep from coughing as the coal smoke wafted about me. When the cunning woman spoke at last, she sounded puzzled. “I see … I see nothing.”

  Sal Pavy laughed. “What does that mean? That I have no future?”

  La Voisin gave him a look that erased his skeptical smile. “Perhaps,” she said. “I will look again.”

  “That’s not necessary.” Sal Pavy started to rise. “You may keep the penny.”

  “Sit,” said the woman. Sal Pavy’s knees seemed to bend of their own accord. “I will look again.” She hunched over the ball, her nose nearly pressed against it. After a long minute or two, her voice broke the silence, but only barely. She seemed to breathe the words, rather than speak them, as though they came forth without her willing them to, or even wishing them to. “I see … a rough hand gripping you … a knife … at your neck … “She sat back abruptly and, snatching up the cloth, draped it over the globe. “It has gone dark.”

  “But … what did all that mean?” Sal Pavy demanded.

  “I do not interpret. I only see.”

  Sal Pavy got to his feet, obviously angry, but just as obviously shaken. “What a lot of bilk! I know what you’re trying to do! You believe that if you make only half a prediction, I’II give you money to hear the rest! Well, you’re not as good at seeing the future as you imagine for, by my troth, you’ll have not so much as a brass farthing from me!” He spun about and pushed through the tent flap.

  Sam cleared his throat and, with uncharacteristic meekness, said, “I—um—I’d like to apologize for our friend’s behavior. He’s a bit of a hothead, is all. While I’m at it, I apologize for anything I might have said that … that might have …”

  “You need not bother with your false contrition,” said La Voisin. “I am not going to call down a curse upon your heads. That is Fate’s task, not mine.” She pointed toward the flap of the tent. “Go now.”

  We did not need to be told twice. There was no sign of Sal Pavy outside. “Now, where do you suppose ’a’s got to?” I said as we walked back toward Ludgate.

  “If I was him, I’d go find another soothsayer, and get a second opinion.”

  “So should you, I wis. What could she have meant by that—turning traitor?”

  Sam waved a hand dismissively. “Who knows? Who cares? Obviously she’s just making it all up.”

  “When she predicted you’d win the lottery, you believed her.”

  “Well, wouldn’t you like to believe that you’re going to come into a fortune, the way she said? Speaking of which, where’s my penny?”

  I gave him a hurt look. “Don’t you trust me to pay you back? I thought we were friends.”

  Sam hung his head. “Of course we are,” he said. “That’s why I’d really hate to have to pound you to a pudding if you don’t give me the bleeding penny.”

  With a sigh, I tossed him a coin from my purse. “We’d best find Sal Pavy now, afore some scanderbag pounds him into a pudding and takes all his money.”

  “Some scanderbag?”

  “Aye. What’s wrong wi’ that?”

  Sam shook his head. “How long have you been in London?”

  “Nearly two years. Why?”

  “You still sound as though you’d arrived from Yorkshire yesterday. How do you manage to keep from sounding like such a lob when you’re on the stage?”

  “I don’t ken, exactly. The same way Mr. Heminges manages not to stammer, I suppose.”

  Sam laughed. “One of these days you’re going to forget your lines and have to thribble, and it’s going to come out in York-shire-ese.” He put a hand to his brow, in a parody of the way I played Ophelia in Hamlet. “‘Gog’s blood! I wis some scanderbag has brast his noble costard wi’ a waster!’ “He yodeled the last word in imitation of my uncertain voice.

  I tried to scowl at him, but my features kept wanting to break into a grin. “You sot! I’ll never again be able to do that scene wi’ a straight face!”

  Unexpectedly, Sam’s own expression turned from silly to sober. “Whist! Did you hear that?”

  I halted in my tracks and listened. From a dark, narrow alleyway between two buildings came the sounds of a struggle, then a frantic cry that was cut off abruptly.

  “Oh, gis!” I breathed. “That’s Sal Pavy’s voice. I’m certain of it!”

  4

  Like all prentices, Sam and I were armed only with short daggers that were designed for dining, not for defense. But we drew them and hastened to the mouth of the alleyway.

  Within its gloomy confines I could make out three figures, bunched together. One was, as I had suspected, Sal Pavy. A bald, burly wight with a wooden leg had Sal’s arms pinned behind him with one huge hand; the other was clamped over the boy’s mouth. The scoundrel’s scrawny companion was clutching Sal’s long blond locks and sawing at them with a knife twice the size of ours.

  “Let him loose, you dog-bolts,” I shouted, “or we’ll carve you into collops!” My voice chose that moment to break like a biscuit.

  The underfed fellow laughed. “With those toothpicks? Law, I’m so afeared, I’m trembling!”

  “Stay back now, the both of you,” warned his one-legged friend. “We’ve no wish to harm anyone.”

  “Nay, nor do we,” I said.

  I picked up a good-sized cobblestone, and was set to launch it at him when Sam cried, “Let it be! All they want is his hair!”

  “Smart lad.” The skinny brigand severed the last of Sal Pavy’s golden hair and held it aloft, like Jason holding the Golden Fleece. “Some grand lady will pay a pretty price for this, to make up for what nature failed to give her.”

  The one-legged fellow released Sal Pavy and gave him a shove. The boy stumbled toward us, holding his shorn head between his hands and sobbing. As the two thieves sauntered off down the alley, the burly man said, “Perhaps we should have taken his leg as well. I could have used it.”

  “You’d have more use for a wig,” replied the other man, and cackling with laughter, draped Sal Pavy’s curls across his companion’s bald head.

  I tossed the stone aside. “Stupid sots. We shouldn’t let them get away wi’ this.”

  “There’s no point in getting ourselves killed over it,” Sam said. “There’s little point in calling a constable, either. Those two will get rid of the hair at the nearest wig shop, and even if we found it, we can’t very well put it back, can we?” He retrieved Sal Pavy’s cap and carefully covered the ragged remnants of the boy’s hair with it. “I don’t see any wounds. Did they hurt y
ou?”

  Sal Pavy had ceased sobbing and was fiercely wiping away his tears with the hem of his cloak. “You might have done more to try and chase them off!”

  “What would you have us do? If we’d come any closer, they’d have cut your throat, not just your hair. Besides, we didn’t dare let them get a look at our luxurious locks.” Sam pretended to stroke his nonexistent tresses. “They surely would have cast you aside and snatched us instead.”

  This attempt to coax Sal Pavy out of his foul mood failed miserably. “I might have expected you to make a jest of it! You’ve always made fun of my hair, both of you! I suppose you think it serves me right, getting it chopped off!”

  “Well, you know,” Sam replied, “if you’d had it cut sooner, you could have sold it for a good price yourself. As it is, you’ve neither the currency nor the curls.”

  I took Sam’s arm and drew him aside. “Can’t you see how upset ’a is? Don’t make it worse.”

  “Well, he behaves as though it’s our fault, for not saving his wretched hair!”

  “Perhaps it was. Perhaps we should have done more. In any case, it’s not his fault. Let’s get him home now.”

  “Home? It’s not even nones yet! We have half the afternoon ahead of us!”

  “Well, do as you like. I’m taking him home.”

  “When did you become so concerned about his welfare?”

  “When ’a became a part of our acting company,” I said.

  He scowled. “You’re beginning to sound the way Sander used to—like an older brother.”

  “I consider that a compliment. Now, are you coming wi’ us or not?”

  Sam sighed heavily. “All right, all right. It’s no fun going about by myself.”

  Sal Pavy walked well ahead of us, his cloak pulled tightly about him, his shoulders hunched to shelter his newly bare neck from the cold.

  I said softly to Sam, “Did you notice that things happened back there just as the cunning woman said they would?”

  “Of course I noticed.”

  “Can she truly see into the future, then, do you wis?”

  He sniffed skeptically. “More likely she was in league with those two louts, and she let them know somehow that there was a good head of hair to be had.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” I couldn’t help wondering, all the same. I was not so naive as to suppose that everything La Voisin said could be counted on to come true. Even so, was it not possible that occasionally she got a genuine glimpse of things to come?

  Sam tried his best to talk me into taking a shortcut home, across the Thames. Ordinarily, that would have been a sensible enough suggestion; we need only have paid a wherryman to row us across. But the winter had been so unusually cold that the river was frozen over from London Bridge to Whitehall, so solidly that folk had begun to venture out upon it to skate or to fish through the ice. Some parts were less solid than others, though, and the unfortunate souls who found them often ended up in the land of Rumbelow—that is to say, a watery grave.

  Though Sam seemed to think that it would be a great lark to cross on the ice, I insisted on using the bridge. “Ha’ you never heard the saying: Wise men go over London Bridge; fools go under?”

  “I had no intention of going under the bridge,” Sam grumbled, “only across the ice.”

  We came to the spot on Cheapside where the public pillory stood. Despite the cold, the authorities had sentenced some poor wight to stand there with his arms and neck imprisoned. He appeared more prosperous and respectable than the usual occupant of the pillory. He twisted his stiff neck to give us a beseeching look. “I don’t suppose I could prevail upon you to do me a small favor?”

  “Such as setting you free?” Sam suggested.

  The man tried to grin, but it was more in the way of a grimace. “I wouldn’t refuse. But what I’d really like is for someone to wipe my nose. There’s a kerchief in the pocket of my cloak.”

  Sam retrieved the kerchief and then swiped the man’s cold-reddened nose several times. “You don’t look like a vagrant to me. What did you do to earn this?”

  “Nothing wicked, I assure you. I’d move on now, if I were you. You don’t want to be seen talking to me. They may think I’m attempting to convert you.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Sal Pavy spoke up unexpectedly, and his voice still carried a load of spite. “He means he’s a Papist.”

  “A Catholic? I didn’t ken they punished a wight just for that.”

  Sam leaned in close to him and whispered, “You’re not a priest, are you?”

  “Hardly. Only a printer who was unwise enough to publish a few rather harmless pamphlets defending the old faith.”

  Sam gave the man’s nose a last wipe and returned the kerchief to him. As we turned down Fenchurch Street, Sam said, “It doesn’t seem right, does it, him being put in the stocks just for printing a few pamphlets?”

  “Not just any pamphlets,” Sal Pavy pointed out. “Papist pamphlets.”

  Sam snickered. “I’ll wager you can’t say that quickly three times in a row.”

  “Yes, yes, make a jest of it, as always. You’ve not been exposed to Catholics, as I have.”

  “Oh, you’ve exposed yourself to them, have you?”

  “Stop it, Sam,” I put in. “Can’t you tell when you’ve touched a sore spot?” I turned to Sal Pavy. “What crow do you have to pull wi’ them, then?”

  He scowled at me. “What?”

  “I mean, what’s given you such a poor opinion of them?”

  “I’ll say no more. You’ll only mock me.” Yanking his cloak tightly about him, he again put several paces between himself and us.

  5

  I had no strong feelings about Papists, one way or another. In truth, I knew very little about the old faith except that it had fallen out of favor many years before, when Queen Mary, a staunch Catholic, died and left the throne to her half sister Elizabeth, the present queen.

  My personal experience with Catholics was limited as well. In fact, I had known but two. One was Jamie Redshaw, who for a time had claimed to be my father. He had later done his best to convince me otherwise. As with La Voisin’s predictions, I was left wondering what the truth was. Reason told me to believe one way; hope inclined me in the other.

  My other Catholic acquaintance was the playwright Ben Jonson. Mr. Jonson had been working mainly for the Admiral’s Men, but the company’s manager, Philip Henslowe, had refused to produce his latest play, Sejanus, on the grounds that it was full of pro-Catholic sentiments. Mr. Jonson had proceeded to offer the play to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Our company’s sharers had agreed to perform it, provided that he tone down the Papist propaganda. Mr. Jonson had spent the past week or so resentfully revising it.

  When we set out for the Cross Keys on Monday morning, Sam tried again to talk me into crossing on the ice, and again I insisted on going by way of the bridge. He shook his head in disgust. “You know what your trouble is? You’ve no sense of adventure.”

  As we entered the courtyard of the inn and climbed the stairs to the rooms our company rented, Will Sly leaned over the railing above us. Will was one of our hired men—a step above us prentices, and a step below those who owned shares in the company. “Widge, Mr. Shakespeare’s been asking after you. He’s in the dark parlor.”

  “Oh, law!” Sam exclaimed in mock dismay. “What have you done now?”

  “Naught that I ken.”

  “I wouldn’t fret,” said Will Sly. “He didn’t seem angry, just out of sorts. Where’s your friend Sal Pavy, by the by? I hear he got his curls cropped.”

  “Sulking somewhere, I expect.” Sam stopped at the door of our makeshift tiring-room. “Ah! I know why Mr. Shakespeare wants you!”

  “Why?”

  “He means to give you that fortune you’ve got coming!” Laughing, Sam ducked inside the room before I could assist him with the sole of my boot.

  I descended to the main room of the inn. Though it was by trad
ition called the dark parlor, it was in fact well lighted by a bank of windows that looked out upon the street. Along one wall was a row of tables with wooden dividers between them, providing a degree of privacy for those who desired it.

  I discovered Mr. Shakespeare in one of these booths. Before him sat several sheets of paper filled with scribbles. At the moment he was adding nothing to them, only gazing out at the traffic on Gracechurch Street. I stood there, still and silent, for a passing while, unwilling to interrupt his reverie lest I put to flight some idea or snatch of dialogue that he was attempting to lure into the net of his thoughts.

  When two or three minutes went by and he still took no notice of me, I cleared my throat softly. Absently, he lifted his earthernware tankard and set it at the edge of the table, as though to be refilled with ale. “Um,” I said. “You wished to see me?”

  “What?” He turned to me with a puzzled frown. “Oh, it’s you, Widge. I thought you were the tippler.”

  “Nay. But I can fetch you more ale, an you like.”

  “No, no, sit down. I have a more demanding task for you.”

  I noticed that he was rubbing his right forearm, the one that had been cracked by a catchpoll’s club the previous summer. As I had been the one to mend the arm, I took a sort of proprietary interest in it. “It looks as though your arm is paining you.”

  He nodded and flexed his hand. “It doesn’t like the cold, and when I work it for any length of time, it begins to complain. Actually, it reminds me a good deal of my brother Ned.”

  I couldn’t help laughing at the apt comparison, though in truth Ned’s habits were more annoying than amusing. If he had been anyone but Mr. Shakespeare’s brother, the company would surely have given him the chuck long ago. As an actor, he was competent enough, even engaging given the right role; it was the way he acted off the stage that kept him in constant trouble.

  “However,” Mr. Shakespeare went on, “I did not bring you down to listen to me rail about Ned. I’d like your help.”

  I glanced at the papers spread before him. “Transcribing, I wis.”