Book of Souls

Chapter 24

1581

Wroxall

Edgar Cantwell looked and felt like a very old man. At age seventy-two everything had turned gray, his hair, his beard, even his shriveling, silvery skin. He was bothered by painful ailments from his abscessed jaw all the way down to his gouty toe, and his disposition was chronically sour. His main pleasures were sleeping and drinking wine, and he spent the lion’s share of his days in both pursuits.

His daughters Grace and Bess were solicitous to him, and their husbands were tolerable fellows, he supposed. His youngest boy Richard was a good, studious lad, already proficient in Greek and Latin at the age of thirteen but he could not look upon his fair head without thinking of the boy’s mother, who died of puerperal fever when he was only two days old.

But it was his oldest son, John, who was the bane of his existence, a source of anger and irritation. The nineteen-year-old had progressed to be no more than a drunk and a braggart who seemed to treat everything Edgar held sacred with an air of contempt.

He dimly recalled that in his day he had been a rebellious lad with a streak of licentiousness, but he had always obeyed his father and acquiesced to his wishes, even toddling off like a dumb lamb to slaughter to attend that horrible Montaigu.

His son did not subscribe to this kind of filial respect and obligation. He was a child of the times, his head turned by the trappings of Elizabethan modernity-dandyish clothes, frivolous music, theater troupes, and a far-too-cavalier approach to the serious business of God and religion. As far as Edgar was concerned, his son had more respect for a jug of wine or a lass’s rump than his father’s desires. If only Richard were the eldest, he would not have so dreaded the state of his legacy.

His legacy, he felt, was especially worthy of protection because he had labored so assiduously his entire life for Crown, for country and for Cantwell, and he was not about to blithely hand over his hard-acquired influence to a drunken fool. Thrust into baronial responsibilities immediately upon the untimely death of his father, he had begun a career as a public man who was forced carefully to navigate the treacherous waters of state politics.

When he returned to England in 1532, King Henry had already, unbeknownst to Edgar and indeed most of his subjects, secretly married Anne Boleyn, and thus begun his great conflict with Rome, seeking an annulment of his first marriage to Catherine. These were busy days for Edgar, who committed himself to taking charge of his estate, building his private chapel, his miniature Notre Dame, as a tribute to his murdered father, assuming a position befitting his legal education on the Council of the Marches, and finding a suitable wife.

The breaking of the chains that bound England to Rome occurred little by little, a succession of political moves and countermoves that culminated in Edgar’s first great crisis when, in 1534, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy making it high treason to refuse to swear that Henry was the Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of England.

Edgar pledged his affirmation especially quickly because he was aware of rumblings at Court about the papist shrine he was erecting at Wroxall. He was a good Catholic, to be sure, but his years at Paris, his friendship with Jean Calvin, and his secret knowledge of the certainty of predestination made him sufficiently “protestant” to convince himself he was not condemning his soul to damnation and hellfire by siding with the king in his Great Matter.

King Henry prodded Cromwell, and Cromwell prodded Parliament, and link by link the chain between England and Rome was separated until it was done in 1536. The Act Against the Pope’s Authority drove the last nail into the coffin. England was the Reformer’s country now.

Edgar married Katherine Peake, a homely woman from a substantial family, but she died in stillborn childbirth and left him a childless widower. He threw himself into his work and became in succession a judge at the Quarter Sessions Court, then the Great Sessions Court, where he rose to chief judge. To a degree, his fortunes swelled and deflated with the rise and fall of King Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, since the Seymour family had blood connections to the Cantwells. But when her son, Edward, ascended to the Crown in 1547 and Jane’s brother, Edward Seymour, became Lord Protector, Edgar was blissfully elevated to the House of Lords and the Privy Council.

King Edward’s Reformation was harsher than his father’s, and all vestiges of the Papacy were purged from the countryside. The business of dismantling Catholic churches was completed in an orgy of shattered stained glass, broken statues, and burned vestments. The clergy were released from celibacy, processions were banned, ashes and palms were prohibited, stone altars were replaced by wooden communion tables. Edgar’s friend Calvin, in far-off Geneva, was exerting a profound influence on the English Isles. Edgar’s tiny Notre Dame chapel survived the tumult only because it was on private land, and he was a powerful and discreet noble.

For a time, the pendulum swung in the other direction when Queen Mary succeeded her brother and reigned for five brief years. Mary zealously sought to restore the Catholic faith. So it was Protestant men who were being seized and burned at the stake. Edgar deftly rediscovered his papist roots, marrying his second wife, Juliana, who hailed from a Stratford-upon-Avon family of closeted Catholics. Juliana, almost fifteen years his junior, began to bear him children, and his two daughters were ushered into the world as Catholics.

Then the pendulum moved once again. In 1558, Mary was dead, her sister, Elizabeth became queen and England once again became a Protestant reign. Edgar shrugged it off and became Protestant again, closing his ears to the entreaties of his wife, who nevertheless, continued to take secret mass in their chapel and educate her daughters with the Latin Bible. Though advanced in years, he finally sired a son whom his wife baptized, John, in a clandestine Catholic ceremony. Five years later, Richard was born, and Juliana’s life was lost amidst Edgar’s salty tears.

Now, in his old age, the exertions of living a life as a political and religious chameleon had taken their toll. He was hobbled by infirmities and rarely left Cantwell Hall. He hadn’t been to Court in two years, and he supposed the queen had forgotten he existed. But most of all, he obsessed about his ne’er-do-well son.

It was a hot summer day, but Edgar was perpetually cold. He insisted on sitting by his small bedroom fire, his shoulders covered by a shawl, his legs wrapped in a blanket. His appetite was naught, and his bowels were persistently liquid, which he attributed to the remedies his dolt of a country apothecary was administering for the gout. If the old healer Nostradamus were still alive, he would have begged him to travel to England to attend to his maladies.

From the garden below his window, he heard a burst of male laughter and cavorting, and when he clenched his infected jaw in anger, the pain almost toppled him from his chair. He drank the rest of the wine from his flagon in quick, large gulps, staining his chin red. Better his brain be dulled than to suffer this mental and physical anguish. He wished he possessed the book from Vectis, which contained the date he would die so he could know how much longer he had to suffer. His son was laughing again, prattling on like a girl.

John was drunkenly enjoying a glorious high-summer day where the grass was thick and green, the sun hot and yellow, and the flowers in the garden a blazing inferno of color. He was playing at archery, the hay-stuffed targets safe from his misguided arrows. Each time he missed, his friend literally fell to the grass in hysterics.

“Bugger yourself, Will,” John cried. “You can do no better!”

John, though young, already had the thick body of a commoner-a drinker and a brawler rather than a gentleman or scholar. Like some of the youths of the day, he was clean-shaven, which as far as his father was concerned, made his face look naked. The Cantwell chin looked better under a beard, and the young man was no beauty. The beaky Cantwell nose didn’t sit well between his watery eyes and fleshy cheeks, and his lips were pursed in a perpetual leer. During his woeful two years at Oxford before he was expelled for rioting, the ladies at his brothel dreaded being chosen by the violent oaf.

His friend was a more genteel sort. He was seventeen, wiry and muscular with an intelligent face and the earnest beginnings of a moustache and goatee. His long black hair flowed over his collar and looked like ebony against the hue of his smooth skin. He had mischievous blue eyes and a winsome smile that never seemed to fade. His elocution was clear and precise, and he possessed a presence that demanded men take him seriously.

He had known John Cantwell since childhood, when both of them attended the King’s New School in Stratford. Though Will was far and away the superior student, Will’s father, a merchant, lacked the means to send him to university. When John was expelled from Oxford, he returned to his country seat and remade acquaintance with the lad. The two of them became fast friends again, reveling in each other’s bawdy company.

Will squirted ale into his mouth from a skin and seized the bow from his drunken companion. “Indeed I can do better, sir.”

He smoothly pulled the bowstring back, aimed, and let an arrow fly. It sailed true and straight and struck the target in its center.

John groaned loudly, “Damn you to Hades, Master Shakespeare.”

Will grinned at him and threw down the bow in favor of more ale.

“Let us go inside,” John said. “It is too hot for sport. To the library, your favorite spot!”

In truth, whenever Will entered the Cantwell library, he looked like a little boy who had stumbled upon a roomful of unguarded fruit pies. He made a straight line for one of his favorite books, Plutarch’s Lives, pulling it off a shelf and sinking into a large chair by the window.

“You should let me take this home, John,” he said. “I will make better use of it than you.”

John called the hall servant for more ale then flopped onto a divan, and replied, “You should steal it. Hide it under your shirt. I do not care.”

“Your father might.”

“I think he will never know. He does not read any longer. He does much of nothing. The only time he comes in here is to hold The Book in his lap and pet it like an old dog.” He said The Book with mock reverence. He pointed contemptuously at the book sitting in its pride of place on the first shelf, its spine engraved with the date, 1527.

Will laughed, “Ah, the magic book of Cantwell Hall.” Will affected a child’s voice, “Pray tell me, sir, when shall I meet my darkest fate?”

“Today if you do not shut your mouth.”

“And who will be the instrument of my death, knave?”

John sloshed more ale down. “You are looking into his eyes.”

“You?” Will laughed. “You and what legions?”

This was an invitation to wrestle, and both boys rose and circled, sniggered at each other. When Will charged to upend his friend, John reached for the first book his hand could grasp and flung it hard at the back of Will’s head.

“Ow!” Will stopped his charge, rubbed his occiput, then picked up the book from the floorboards. The pages had violently separated from the cover. “Ye Gods! A tragedy!” he cried melodramatically. “You have torn asunder a Greek tragedy and have awoken the wrath of Sophocles!”

A voice from the door startled them. “You ruined one of Father’s books!”

Young Richard was standing there, hands on hips, like an indignant lady. His lips were trembling with rage. None in the family was more attuned to the sentiments of his father, and he took personal umbrage with the behavior of his brother.

“Be gone, brat,” John said.

“I will not. You must confess to Father what you have done.”

“Leave us, little toad, or I will have more to confess than that.”

“I will not leave!” he said stubbornly.

“Then I will make you.”

John dashed for the door. The boy turned and fled but not fast enough. He was caught in the center of the Great Hall just before he was going to slip under the banqueting table.

John roughly laid him on his back and straddled him, knees on shoulders, hips on waist so the boy was powerless to move. All he could do was spit, which so enraged his older brother that he boxed him on the side of his head with a closed fist, his signet ring scraping flesh and opening a scalp vein. A gush of blood brought the proceedings to an abrupt halt. John released him with an oath and as the boy ran off, he shouted at him that he had caused the incident by his own insolence.

Minutes later, John was moodily drinking back in the library; Will had his nose buried in a book. Edgar Cantwell appeared in their midst, painfully shuffling on his bad foot, an unseasonably heavy cloak lying over his shoulders. He had a fearsome visage, a mixture of rage and disgust, and his rasping shout curdled his son’s blood, “You have hurt the boy!”

John pouted drunkenly, “He hurt himself. It was an accident. Shakespeare will tell you.”

“I saw it not, sir,” Will said truthfully, trying to avoid the old man’s stare.

“Well, young sirs, what I can see are drunken idiots good for nothing but their inclination to idleness and sinful pursuit. You, Shakespeare, are your father’s concern, but this wretch is mine!”

“He is to marry, Father,” John snorted impudently. “He will be Anne Hathaway’s concern soon!”

“Marriage and procreation are nobler than any of your aspirations! Drinking and whoring are your sole desires.”

“Well, Father,” John sneered, “at least we share one common bond. Would you like more wine?”

The old man exploded, his face sanguineous. “I am not only your father, I am a lawyer, you fool! One of the best in England. Do not rest your haunches on primogeniture. There is precedent for ultimogeniture, and I have the influence at the Court of Assize to declare you an invalid heir and elevate your brother! You carry on without reform, and we shall see what happens!”

Shaking with anger, Edgar withdrew, leaving the two young men speechless. Finally, John broke the silence, and dryly croaked with a forced cheerfulness to his voice, “What say I have a servant fetch us a bottle of mead from the cellar?”

It was late at night, and the household had gone to bed. The two friends had whiled away the hours in the library getting drunk, napping, becoming sober, then drunk again. They had slept through the family supper, and the servants had brought them a tray later on.

The waxing and waning inebriation had turned John dark and surly. While Will flitted from one book to another, John stared into space and brooded.

By the glow of candlelight, he suddenly asked a question he had been ruminating on all day, “Why should I aspire to more than wine and women? What’s the point of reading and studying and working myself silly? All this is mine anyway. I’ll be a baron soon, with land and money enough.”

“And what if your father makes good on his other plan of succession? Would your bleeding brother keep your jug and purse full, I wonder?”

“Father was spouting words, nothing more.”

“I would not be so sure.”

John sighed. “You, young Willie, have not the burden of nobility.”

Will mocked him. “A burden, you say!”

“I have no inclination to better myself as I have always trusted time to do the job. To your credit, you have had to set lofty goals.”

“My goals are not so lofty.”

“No?” John laughed. “To be among the great actors? To be a writer of plays? To have London worshipping at your feet?”

Will waved his hand as an actor might. “Mere trifles.”

John uncorked yet another bottle of mead. “You know, I have an aspiration long held and never shared, and it plays with a certain advantage I hold over my dear little prig of a brother.”

“Other than your size?”

“The book,” John hissed. “I know the secret of the book. He does not and will not until he is older.”

“Even I know it!”

“Only because you are my friend, and you have sworn an oath.”

“Yes, yes, my oath,” Will said wearily.

“Do not take it lightly.”

“All right. I am utmost serious.”

John retrieved the book of Vectis from the shelf and sat down with it near Will. He dropped his voice to a low, conspiratorial tone. “I know you are not as staunch a believer as I, but I have a notion.”

Will raised his eyebrows with interest.

“You have seen the letter. You know what this old monk, Felix, wrote. Perhaps the Library was not destroyed after all. Perhaps it exists still? What if I could find it and take possession of these books? What would I care if I had meager Wroxall then? If I had the keys to the future, I would be as rich as any lord, more famous than father’s friend, old Nostradamus who, as we know, lacked full powers.”

Will watched him rant, fascinated by his crazy eyes. “What would you do, go there?”

“Yes! Come with me.”

“You’re mad. I am to marry, not partake in adventure. I will travel to London soon, to be sure, but no farther. Besides, I take this Abbot’s letter to be a work of fancy. He spins a good story, I’ll give him his due, but monks with ginger hair and green eyes! It is too much.”

“Then I will go alone. I believe in the book with all my heart,” John said truculently.

“I wish you good speed.”

“Listen, Will, I refuse to let my brother learn the secret. I wish to hide the papers, all of them. Without the letters from Felix and Calvin and Nostradamus, the book is useless. Even if my father were to tell my brother its origins, there would be no basis for belief.”

“Where would you hide them?”

John shrugged. “I do not know. In a hole in the ground. Behind a wall. It is a large house.”

Will’s eyes began to sparkle, and he sat upright. “Why not turn this into a game?”

“What sort of a game?”

“So, let us hide your precious letters, but let us make them clues in a hunt for hidden treasure! I will compose a puzzle poem with all the clues, then we will hide the poem too!”

John laughed heartily and poured both of them more mead. “I can always count on you to thoroughly amuse me, Shakespeare! Let us proceed with your game.”

The two of them scampered around the house, giggling like children, looking for hiding places, shushing themselves so not to wake the servants. When they had a rudimentary plan, Will asked for sheets of parchment and writing implements.

John knew where his father kept the Vectis papers, inside a wooden box secreted behind other books on the top shelf. He used the library ladder to reach it, and when he hauled it down, he reread Felix’s letter while Will bent over the writing table. After dipping the quill, he would quickly write a line or two, then tickle his cheek with the feathered end for inspiration.

When he was done, he waved the sheet above his head to dry and presented it to John for inspection. “I am best pleased with my effort and so should you be,” he said. “I have chosen the sonnet form, which adds further amusement to the enterprise.”

John began to read it, and as he did, he squirmed in his chair with impish pleasure. “Can’t be well! Clever, very clever.”

“I thank you,” Will said proudly. “It is pleasing enough that I have signed it, though I doubt my vanity will ever be discovered!”

John slapped his thighs. “The clues are challenging but not insurmountable. The tone, playful but not frivolous. It serves its purpose most ably. I am indeed pleased! Now, let us bury our treasure like a pair of filthy pirates marooned on an island!”

They returned to the Great Hall and lit a few more candles to ease their task. Their first clue went inside one of the great candlesticks that adorned the banqueting table. John had wrenched one open and satisfied himself it would hold several rolled sheets. Will had argued that Felix’s letter should be divided into a first clue and a last, since the end of the letter held the greatest revelation. John placed the pages and forced the candlestick back together, banging the base on the carpeted floor to make sure it would hold firm.

The next clue, the Calvin letter, required more effort. John scurried off to the barn to fetch a mallet, chisel, an auger, and grout, and a full hour later, drenched in sweat, they had succeeded in prying off one of the fireplace tiles and drilling a deep hole. After inserting the rolled letter, they plugged the hole and regrouted the tile. In celebration, they raided the pantry, had some bread and cold mutton and the rest of a good bottle of wine from an onion-shaped green-glass bottle.

It was the middle of the night, but there was still work to do. The Nostradamus letter and the page from his Prophecies book needed to find their way up to the bell tower of the chapel. As long as they didn’t drunkenly ring the bell, there was little chance of being discovered so far away from the house. That task took longer than they had planned because the planking was devilishly hard to rip up, but when they were done, they had put their spent bottle of wine to good use as the repository of the pages. To finish, Will etched a small rose on the plank with his sheath knife.

They feared that dawn would come before they hid the last clue, so they proceeded with great speed to complete this task, one that they might not have been able to accomplish if sober.

When they returned to the house smudged and smelly from their physical labors, they retired to the library as the first rays of sunlight streaked the sky.

John gleefully approved Will’s idea for the poem’s hiding place and applauded its perfection. Will cut a piece of parchment to size and made it into a false endpaper. Then the exhausted boys made for the kitchen, relieved that the cooks were still in bed. The bookish Will knew how to make a bookbinder’s paste from bread, flour, and water, and in a short while they had the white glue they needed to seal the poem into place inside the back cover of the Vectis book.

When they were done, they placed the heavy book back onto its shelf. The library was getting bright from the rising sun, and they could hear the house stirring with activity. They sank into their chairs for a final laughing fit. When they burned themselves out, they sat for a while, chests heaving, close to nodding off.

“You know,” Will said, “this has all been for naught. You, yourself, will undoubtedly undo all this fine work and retrieve the papers on your own account.”

“You are probably right,” John smiled sleepily, “but it has been excellent fun.”

“One of these days I may write a play about this,” Will said, closing his reddened eyes. His friend was already snoring. “I will call it Much Ado About Nothing. ”