Martyr

Chapter 13

Job Mallinson sat in the court room at Stationers' Hall by St. Pauls and looked out of the tall window onto the company’s bleak winter gardens. He held his hand to his bandaged jaw as if somehow this could relieve his pain of the toothache that had afflicted him all night. In other times, when his head did not throb like a smithy’s hammer beating iron on an anvil, he was known for his good humor and amusing tales. Now he simply sat and shivered and wished the day away. He had decided to come here because he could no longer bear his wife’s ministrations. She had given him salves for his wounded mouth, but they did little to help and, anyway, her talking doubled the pain. A walk to Stationers’ Hall through the brisk air seemed the best way to take his mind off his predicament.

A liveried manservant came in and spoke with him. He hesitated a few moments, then nodded in assent, and the servant disappeared, only to reappear a minute later with John Shakespeare.

Mallinson rose to greet him and the two men shook hands. They had met before, first at a Guildhall banquet celebrating the setting sail of John Davis’s expedition in quest of the northwest passage, and then two or three times since on state business when seditious materials had been discovered.

“I am sorry to see you have some ague about the face, Master Mallinson,” Shakespeare said, indicating the bandage.

“Tooth,” Mallinson said, as well as he could.

Shakespeare, realizing that Mallinson would find conversation difficult, came straight to the point of his visit. “Mr. Mallinson, I need information about some newfound prints that have been discovered.” He held up the scrap of paper. “Is it possible to identify which press has been responsible for printing this?” Then he held out a copy of Walstan Glebe’s broadsheet. “And could it have been printed by the same press that produced this?”

Mallinson examined the papers. As Warden of the Assistants with the Stationers’ Company, he was steeped in all things to do with printing, yet he knew his limitations. In a faint voice, he said, “Yes, I think it is possible, but I am not the man to help you. You need one with more expertise in such matters.” He winced as he spoke, and a trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

“Is there someone here who might be able to help me then, Master Mallinson?”

Mallinson shook his head, then closed his eyes. He breathed deeply, steadying himself to speak once more. “No, Mr. Shakespeare, not here. But there is a man who might be of assistance. His name is Thomas Woode. He is a book merchant and an agent of Christophe Plantin’s printworks of Antwerp. Woode has made much money by his printing of playbills, for which he possesses the monopoly. He has a house close by the Thames at Dowgate. You cannot miss it, sir, because it is scaffolded. If anyone can help you, Thomas can. He is a good man.”

“Thank you, Master Mallinson. And I wish you well of your tooth. One more thing: get your men to break up an illegal press in Fleet Lane. It is run by a scurrilous fellow called Glebe.”

Mallinson attempted to smile, but it was more like a grimace. “Oh yes, Mr. Shakespeare. I know of Walstan Glebe. We have been looking for him for quite a while. It will be a pleasure for our men to break his press into a thousand pieces.”

Starling Day and her cousin Alice were drinking and singing in the Bel Savage. They were certain they had covered their tracks. Half an hour earlier, in Cogg’s bawdy house, they had given a piece of their mind to Parsimony Field and had sauntered out, laughing and jeering. Now they were buying drinks for the off-duty girls and anyone else who happened to be in the tavern.

Parsimony, who was not only Cogg’s best girl but also ran the whorehouse on his behalf, had been struck dumb by the audacity of Starling and Alice. None of the girls had ever dared tell her to fuck off before, and if they had they would have been beaten senseless for their pains; Parsimony was tall and strong enough to hold her own against a lot of men, let alone women, and she had the backing of Cogg. But she had been caught off guard by the pair of them, Starling and Alice, talking to her like that. After regaining her composure, she followed them into the long bar of the Bel Savage and watched them getting more and more drunk by the minute.

“Come on, Arsey-Parsey, come and have a drink with us,” Alice called, catching sight of her. “I’ll buy you a beaker of nightshade cordial, ducks.” And she thrust two fingers in the air as a salute.

For a moment, Parsimony considered going up to the pair at the bar and dragging them by the hair back to the stew. But she wasn’t sure she could manage it with both of them, and she didn’t want to risk humiliation in front of the other girls. Cogg would expect her to act, however, so she must do something. He wouldn’t want to lose two whores, that was certain.

As she watched, the taproom became more and more raucous. In unison, Starling and Alice turned their backs on Parsimony, lifted their skirts, bent forward and exposed themselves full-on in her direction, then farted and collapsed onto the sawdust-strewn floor, laughing. When they got up again, Parsimony noticed something she hadn’t seen before: Starling and Alice were both wearing jewelry-necklaces and bracelets-which looked very much like gold, not the gaudy base metal that whores usually wore. Parsimony knew then that she had to get to Cogg straightway. He would want to know about this. There was something bad here, a stink as bad as a basket of six-day-dead mackerel. Slipping out of the tavern, she gathered up her skirts and, though not dressed for the cold weather, ran to Cogg’s place in Cow Lane.

He wasn’t there and he hadn’t locked up. Parsimony was puzzled. Cogg never went out; with his great girth, he couldn’t move. She went up to his bedchamber. There was a platter of almost-finished food, chicken bones or something, and the bedclothes were awry. She sat down on the bed and tried to gather her thoughts. He should be here. She couldn’t remember the last time he went out anywhere. He couldn’t even make it to the whorehouse by the Bel Savage these days, which was why the girls came to him. He had slowed down a lot this past year. Something must have happened to him.

Parsimony twiddled the ends of her pretty hair in her fingers. She had been with Cogg since her bricklayer husband ran off to be a player and writer of plays when she was sixteen. That was seven years ago. She had liked the life of a whore from the start; swiving for a living seemed like easy money and, at times, enjoyable, too. She liked the mariners best, the ones just returned from long voyages; they were free with their pay, liked a laugh, and had strong, weather-hardened bodies. More to the point, she and Cogg had a good understanding. In return for managing the stew, he let her keep twice as much as the other girls. She reckoned by working for him she could have enough set by to start her own trugging house before she was twenty-five.

She stood up and began looking around in earnest and soon found his body downstairs, packed into a large barrel that had contained hides and furs from the Baltic lands. The skins had been pulled out and shoved into a pile that looked at first sight like a great sleeping bear. The barrel had been tipped on its side so that Cogg’s three-hundredweight corpse could be pushed inside. It didn’t fit; it was only because the opening was turned toward the wall that she had not spotted his blubbery naked feet immediately. It was clearly not a method of concealment that was intended to last long.

So they had killed him. The dirty, cross-biting, light-heeled trugs. They had probably robbed him, too. Well, she’d do for them. And she knew how.

The question was: where was Cogg’s fortune? Had they found it all and stolen it, or was some of it still here? She spent a few minutes searching, but found nothing, then hurried back to the Bel Savage for fear that they would have skipped away.

She threw open the door to the taproom. It was thick with wood smoke and the fumes of ale. Starling Day and Alice were insensible from drink, snoring on the taproom floor, their dresses awry and their limbs splayed. The other girls stood around drinking with their money and making merry with some traders.

For a moment, Parsimony stood there unnoticed. Then one of the girls spotted her and nudged her neighbor. There was a sudden silence as they ceased their carousing and looked at Parsimony fearfully, sensing the anger in her eyes. She strode over and slapped one of the girls hard on the face, then told them all to deal with Starling and Alice sharpish. “Get them back to the vaulting house and stand over them,” she said in a cold voice that she knew would be instantly obeyed. “Don’t let them out of your sight. I want a word with them two foul cozeners when they’re awake. Break the ice on the cask in the yard and chuck a pail of water over them. It’ll be nicely chilled.”