Sword of Shame

ACT FIVE

Ickleton, 1604

It was early afternoon but already the weather was closing in, so I was relieved to see the arrow-shaped spire of the church and a scatter of houses. The snow, which had been falling in a half-hearted fashion, was starting to come down in great wet gouts. I reined my horse in and took stock of the surroundings. What little I could see of the landscape stretched flat and lifeless beyond the confines of the village. Bare trees marked the lines of watercourses, before everything was swallowed up in the snowy haze.

My hired horse shook his head as if in doubt over the whole enterprise. The horse’s name was Rounce. Rounce wasn’t happy. Well, that made two of us. The extra sense which animals are said to possess probably told him that I wasn’t comfortable in his company.

I glanced over my shoulder as if I might have been able to glimpse the city of Cambridge but, of course, it lay several miles behind me. If I turned round straightaway, I’d probably get back by nightfall-or I would have done in the absence of snow. Now the track would be growing obscure and I risked blundering into some fen. There were more ditches, rhines and fens in this part of the world than you could shake a stick at. In any case, I was reluctant to give up my quest.

I’d found the village of Ickleton, identifying it by the arrow-like spire of the church. An old fellow who was a member of one of the university colleges had been very helpful, even if he turned out to be somewhat deaf so that I’d had to repeat my request several times. He told me that the Maskells were long-time inhabitants of Ickleton, a village to the south of the city. The kind old gent had even traced out the route on a scrap of paper. Finding the house called Valence should be the easy part. And at least I had come this far, although the journey had taken longer than I’d thought and I hadn’t foreseen the change in the weather. My horse and I had started off on a cold, crisp morning with the sun burning fair in the sky. Now I was growing anxious about the return. But before I could turn round I had to reach my destination.

If only this damned snow would lift for a moment…

And, as if my thoughts had been overheard up above, it did lift when the wind dropped momentarily and the snow paused about its business. To my left was revealed a large house standing in isolation. Trees lined the sides of a track leading towards it. The house looked flat in the whitened air, as if cut from card. Instinctively I knew that this was the place I was looking for, the house called Valence. More cheerful now, I turned Rounce’s head in the direction of the house. But the animal’s gait altered within a few paces and I realized something was wrong.

I dismounted thankfully-getting off a horse is always a pleasure as far as I’m concerned-and lifted Rounce’s front hoof, his left one. Sure enough, a stone was lodged there. I took off my gloves and tried prying it out with my fingers. But my hands were cold and clumsy, and the horse suddenly grew restive. Rather than attempting to get the stone out myself it would be much easier to lead him the short distance to the house I’d just glimpsed and let the stable-hand take care of him. Why, old Rounce might even be fed and watered there, and old Nick Revill receive some refreshment indoors.

While I was down at ground level I saw that I was having trouble with my own left foot. It wasn’t so much that my shoes weren’t watertight-nothing new there, I’m only a poor player who must wear his shoes to the bone-but that the copper buckle on the left one was loose. The buckle has no value but I like it because it is in the shape of a love-knot. Rather than risk the buckle falling off and getting lost, I detached it altogether and slipped it into the pocket of my doublet.

Taking Rounce by the bridle I paced towards the house. The view down here wasn’t as good as it had been up on horseback, and the snow had started to fall again, but from what I was able to see it appeared a ramshackle sort of place. But I was glad to see smoke from a couple of chimneys mixing dirtily with the falling snow. There were people inside. There was warmth.

While I walked towards the gatehouse whose thatched roof poked above the wall, I ran through the reasons for my visit to the Maskell household, rather as if I was accounting for myself like an everyday hawker or pedlar.

Who are you?

Revill’s the name, Nicholas Revill. I work at the Globe Playhouse in Southwark. That’s in London. (Pause) I’m with the King’s Men.

The King’s Men!

(Modestly) That’s right, the King’s Men.

Sounds impressive.

Now-and not that I’d repeat this to anyone outside the trade or mystery of playing, you understand-it may be that the best thing about being part of the King’s Men was the sound of those words rather than their substance.

Soon after the arrival of James (the sixth in his native Scotland but the first of that name ever to rule over us in England), our playing company had been elevated from being mere Chamberlain’s Men to being the King’s. In truth, James the Scot wasn’t very interested in the playhouse, unlike his predecessor, Elizabeth. James’s consort, Queen Anne (hailing from Denmark), showed some taste for the theatre but her preference was for masques which, in my view, don’t have much to do with real playing. Just about all we’d received as a mark of royal favour were four and half yards of red cloth each to make doublet and breeches for the coronation procession. That, and a couple of guineas for the whole company which scarcely covered the cost of getting our collective beards trimmed for the great day.

Don’t be dazzled by titles when it comes to patrons, then, however elevated they are. What we want above all from these gentlemen-or ladies, since we’re not particular-is a passionate interest in the theatre. And a deep purse. Or the other way round. As I say, we’re not particular.

Which goes a little way towards explaining why I now found myself leading a hobbling horse up a snowy, treelined track towards a large, dilapidated house in the country. As you’ll have guessed, the time now was the middle of winter. But I’d been visiting Cambridge to discuss the possibility of the King’s Men doing a tour the next summer. Summer is the season when playing companies go on the road. It’s good to get away from the stench and heat of London, for all that it’s the finest city in the world. It’s good to bring the gift of our playing to different towns and parishes in the kingdom when people are in holiday mood. And, more practically, the roads aren’t so passable the rest of the year.

We’d played Oxford before but never Cambridge. University towns are tricky places. They’re stuffed full of people who consider themselves to be clever. These clever people can be sniffy about ‘uneducated’ players, even if, in my opinion, our principal playwright, William Shakespeare, is cleverer and more witty than a whole college-full of students. In addition, the authorities sometimes take a dim view of players as likely to foment trouble. At least it had been so when we visited Oxford in the year of Queen Elizabeth’s death. But I enjoyed a warmer reception in Cambridge, where various civic worthies assured me that they’d be delighted to receive the King’s Men the following summer.

So this was my business, entrusted to me by the Burbage brothers, Richard and Cuthbert, and the other shareholders who ran the Globe. Or part of my business. The other was to call on the people who lived in the house now looming through the snow. Like all playing companies, however humble or grand, we are quite happy to stage private performances as well as public ones. I had no idea why the Maskell family wanted us to perform in their house next summer, but the usual reason for a private show is to celebrate a wedding. We’ve done a few of those in our time, marking forthcoming nuptials with dramas such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Romeo and Juliet (though the last one’s a bit of an oddity if you’re planning on a long and happy union). What the shareholders wanted to know was whether there would be adequate playing space for us in this house. From the outside the place didn’t look very promising. I visualized an old-fashioned hall with a low ceiling, full of draughts in winter and stifling airs in summer. Still, as long as it didn’t fall down about our ears while we were mouthing our lines, it would do. And even if it did fall down, we’d probably be able to stage something in the grounds.

By now I’d reached the gatehouse. This wasn’t much more than a blocky swelling in the wall, with a couple of pinched windows set above an arched, gated entrance. The arch was wide and high enough to drive a cart through, with a postern-like door set into the larger wooden gate. A wisp of smoke fluttered from the gate-house chimney. With Rounce breathing down my neck, I raised my hand to rap on the little door. To my surprise the door opened before I could bring my fist down. A young fellow with jug ears stuck his head out. He looked at me without surprise. It was almost as if I’d been expected, an impression reinforced by his first words.

‘Another one,’ he said. He peered more closely at me, while the snow flakes swirled between us. If his first words had been odd enough, his next were totally inexplicable.

‘Though I can’t say as you’ve got the nose.’

‘Pardon?’

‘The nose. You haven’t got it.’

‘Perhaps it’s fallen off in this cold,’ I said, resisting the temptation-which was quite a strong one-to reach up and check that my nose was still attached to my face. ‘Is this Valence House?’

The jug-eared boy nodded as he continued to inspect my face. Maybe they had people turning up every quarter of an hour, even on a winter’s afternoon, to present their noses for inspection. If I hadn’t been so taken aback I might have felt that jug-ears was being insolent or playing a joke. With some reluctance, I was about to account for myself when he stepped away from the little door and disappeared. There was the sound of bolts and bars being withdrawn, and the large gate slowly swung open. It gave a view onto a snow-covered courtyard.

I led the hobbling Rounce through the deep archway. A door pierced it on the right-hand side. The door was open. Smells of smoke and cooking crept out and I remembered I’d eaten nothing since breakfast. A man appeared in the doorway. He stretched out his arm and collared the youth, who was standing to one side to let me through. He yanked the boy towards him and cuffed him on the side of the head. The boy yelped like a dog when you tread on its tail.

‘That’ll learn you to show some respect for your betters, Davey,’ said the man. ‘I heard every word about noses.’

It was easy to see that the man was the lad’s dad. For one thing they had the same protuberant ears. Still angry, he spun Davey round and made to boot him in the rear. Without thinking, I put out a hand to restrain him. The man looked at me but lowered his foot. Rounce grew uneasy and started shifting behind me. I was growing uneasy too. What was this place? A madhouse, a Cambridgeshire bedlam, where people were obsessed with noses?

‘Leave him be. The boy meant no harm, I’m sure,’ I said, slightly fearful of what the man might do next and wondering how I might make my excuses and leave this place. In fact, if the snow hadn’t been coming down more heavily now and if Rounce hadn’t been limping, I might have turned tail with my horse and made my way back to Cambridge, mission unaccomplished. If only I had done just that thing, I would have saved myself from a great deal of discomfort-to say nothing of danger.

‘Meant no harm? You don’t know him,’ said the man, watching as his son slunk inside the little gatehouse with a puzzled glance in my direction.

‘I don’t know him, true, but then I don’t know anyone here,’ I said.

The man-the porter or lodge-keeper, I suppose-looked slightly askance at this, as if I ought to be familiar with at least some of the inhabitants of Valence House. He didn’t ask my business, though.

‘My horse needs attention,’ I said. ‘He has a stone in his hoof.’

‘Girl’ll take you to the stables.’

He turned his head and bellowed into the interior. A large girl emerged, another of this man’s brood, I guessed, although she had a pig-like cast to her countenance with little red eyes and a narrow mouth. The smell of cooking clung to her ample frame. She went up to Rounce, stroked his nose and took the reins from me.

Without a word, she led me and the hobbling horse into the large quadrangle that fronted the house. There were low-lying thatched outbuildings on either side. The impression of neglect hung over the whole place. The gusting snow stung my face and my shoes were leaking.

‘What’s your name?’ I said.

‘What’s yours instead?’

‘Nick Revill. I’m a player.’

‘Do you play the fool?’

‘I’ve never played the Fool-never on stage, I mean.’

‘They are all fools that come here.’

The conversation was more than I’d bargained for. By this time we’d reached a broken-down outbuilding to one side of the house. The girl gave a shrill whistle and a shambling young man emerged from the dilapidated structure. A hank of pale hair hung over one eye like the forelock on a horse. He grinned vacuously, before saying, ‘Why, it’s Meg.’

‘Horse, Andrew. Take care of him.’

‘I’d rather take care of you.’

Meg giggled.

‘My horse has a-’ I started to say, but the shambling youth took Rounce by the reins and led him inside the stables, looking over his shoulder at the girl. Meg hesitated, then indicated with a wave of a podgy hand that I should go to the main entrance of the house. She followed the stable-hand inside.

I felt at a distinct disadvantage, having been put in my place in different ways by the lodge-keeper and by his boy and his girl, and now by the stable-hand who’d scarcely so much as glanced at me. So much for hoping to impress these people with my provenance as one of the King’s Men. If the retainers of the Maskell household were able to treat visitors like this, then what would the actual residents be capable of? And my business here was, or should be, so straightforward. It was merely to establish that the house would provide a suitable playing area for the King’s Men next summer. But my most immediate concern now was to get out of the cold.

I walked back to the main door which was sheltered by an ornate porch that looked more recent than the rest of this section of the house. I half expected my approach to have been spied on and the door to be flung open before I could rap on it. But nobody was watching or waiting on the other side. There was a great knocker on the door, but it was swathed in cloth to muffle its sound, the usual sign of sickness in a dwelling. I raised the knocker and let it fall with a dull clack. After a time the door opened to reveal a stoutish, middle-aged man wearing a grey-white cap.

‘Come in,’ he said.

He spoke wearily. Was he a servant too? He didn’t look like one. I went in and he shut the door firmly behind me.

Inside, it wasn’t quite as I’d visualized it. A sizeable, old-fashioned chamber, panelled, yes, but with a high ceiling and a gallery at one end, reached by a flight of stairs. From the actor’s point of view, and at first glance, it would do well. A large dining table was set to one side of the hall. There was a welcoming fire in a chimney-piece opposite to the front door and a few tapers had been lit to ward off the growing gloom of the afternoon. Another man was standing by the fire, leaning against the carved chimney-piece. There was a woman sitting in a chair nearby. None of them said anything but all three looked at me with curiosity and, I thought, a touch of wariness. Back in London I’d been told that the head of the household was called Roger Maskell-and one of the Globe shareholders added that he had the reputation of being a jovial old fellow. Neither of the two men here fitted that description. For one thing, they didn’t have enough years on them.

‘Nicholas Revill at your service,’ I said, dipping my head slightly and feeling that they needed a lesson in manners. ‘I’m the player.’

‘Player? The player?’ said the woman in the chair. She did not speak with recognition but rather with bemusement.

‘From the King’s Men. Of London.’ I put a tiny emphasis on King’s but to no effect. To look at the expressions on the faces of these three I might as well have dropped down from the moon.

‘You’re here to see Elias?’ said the one who’d opened the door to me. He had moved across to stand by the woman, holding the back of the chair where she sat. Now my eyes were more accustomed to the light indoors, I noticed that what I’d taken for a greyish cap was in fact his natural hair but cut very short and fitting as snugly to his head as a baby’s caul. While I was wondering who Elias was-for he certainly couldn’t be the Roger Maskell I’d been told of-the individual by the chair said, ‘You’re here to see the old man?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

As if this was a cue in a play, it was an old man that now entered the room by a side door. He was clutching a stick and shuffling along with an odd sideways gait. Somehow sensing a newcomer, he steered himself in my direction. The others watched as he approached. When he was a few feet away, he halted and peered at me through the spectacles perched on the tip of his long nose. He was very thin and stringy, as if he was already rehearsing himself for death. Presumably this was old Elias. I did my best to smile. I went through the motions of introducing myself all over again although without adding the ‘King’s Men’ bit. In response the old man cupped his hand to his ear and said, ‘Revill?’ as if I was some strange species of animal.

‘You won’t get anywhere with him,’ said the man standing by the fire. It was the first time he’d spoken. I wasn’t sure whether he was addressing me or the old man. The remark would have fitted either of us. The bespectacled individual continued to stare at me, like the boy at the gate. I decided that this wasn’t Elias after all. For two pence, I would have turned on my heels and made my way back to Cambridge, leaving my horse behind and going on foot if necessary. But a growing impatience-even anger-at the manner in which I was being treated made me stay. And say what I said next.

‘Look, I don’t know what you imagine my business to be. But I have been given a task to do on behalf of my company of players and I would like to talk to the head of this household. Then I’ll leave you to your own devices. Happily leave you.’

Now it was the woman’s turn to intervene. She got up from her seat near the fire. ‘I’ll take you to Elias,’ she said.

As she rose I saw that she was younger than I’d first thought. I followed her to the foot of the stairs that led to the gallery, assuming we were going to go up there. Instead she picked up a taper from a small table and made to turn a corner that led into the depths of the house. I put out a hand to detain her.

‘Madam, I…’ I began.

‘Not yet.’

She nodded in the direction of the hall. I looked back. The three men were in the same positions: one leaning against the chimney-piece, the stout individual still clutching the back of the chair even though it was empty, and the old one with the stick and spectacles stooped in the middle of the hall. The stout one said something like ‘Give our greetings to Master Grant’, but since the remark made no sense to me and I was unsure whether I’d heard him properly, I didn’t respond.

The woman and I walked down a passage and came to a kind of lobby where the taper’s uncertain light showed a couple of doors.

‘Elias is in that room,’ she said, gesturing with the hand that held the candle. She spoke in a whisper. I lowered my head in case she was going to say anything else but she remained silent. I remembered the muffled knocker on the door.

‘Is he sick?’ I said.

‘Sick enough,’ she said, then added under her breath, ‘And like to die, they hope.’

They? She must have meant the three men out in the hall. I grew even more uncomfortable.

‘Then there’s not much point in seeing him…’ I said, ‘…if he is so ill…I really wouldn’t want to disturb him…I have come only to convey my shareholders’ respects and to enquire if the master of the house has any preference for the play which he would like us to perform here next summer.’

‘Play?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Play. The King’s Men can do things at the last moment of course. We’re very good at last moment things. Though all in all, and taking the rough with the smooth, it’s best to know in advance what the patron requires. That way we can ensure we have everything we need before we set off from London.’

I was babbling away like this, in a half whisper and scarcely aware of what I was saying, because I had a growing sense that something was terribly wrong.

‘Elias likes plays,’ she said after a pause, ‘but I do not know of any performance next summer. Indeed I am surprised that he should be thinking so far ahead. A performance in this house?’

‘Madam,’ I said, ‘you have me altogether at a disadvantage. I have come here on the understanding that Mr Maskell wants us to stage a drama for himself and his, er, family next summer. Mr Roger Maskell. For a wedding perhaps. A private performance is often desired at a wedding.’

‘Maskell?’

‘Yes, Maskell.’

She laughed, a low sound, quite an attractive one, but my guts did a little dance to hear it.

‘Why, we are all Haskells in Valence House. I am a Haskell too. There are no Maskells here though I believe there is a family of that name on the other side of Cambridge. You have taken a wrong turning. You have come to the wrong house, Master Revill.’

Somehow the fact that she’d got my name right after hearing it only once made my blunder even more humiliating. Of little use to complain that I’d been directed here by that helpful fellow from one of the university colleges. Too late I remembered that he’d been somewhat hard of hearing and that I’d had to bellow the name in his ear. He must have misheard me when I asked for the whereabouts of the house and family. Had picked up Haskell and not Maskell. Told me they lived in Ickleton, south of Cambridge. Even drew a chart of how to get here, which I followed faithfully. Nobody’s fault but my own. I was glad of the near-darkness of this lobby. I went red in the face and started to sweat.

Fool, Revill! Twenty times over, fool!

How my company would laugh if they ever got to hear of this misadventure (which they wouldn’t, I determined there and then). I must leave the Haskell home straightaway, ride or walk back to Cambridge through the dark and snow, find the whereabouts of the Maskell dwelling and conclude my business there tomorrow.

But my business here was by no means done.

I don’t know whether it was the conspiratorial way we’d been keeping our voices down, or the fact that the Haskell woman was quite a lot younger and more attractive than I’d first taken her for, or the general strangeness of the whole situation, but the next thing I found myself saying was: ‘What do you mean, they hope he’s like to die? Who are they? Who is Elias? Who are you?’

These questions were a bit direct, perhaps. But then I’d blundered in so deeply by now that a bit of outright curiosity hardly counted.

‘I am Martha Haskell,’ she said. ‘Elias is my uncle and the head of this house. My father was his younger brother. The men downstairs are part of the family too, distant cousins.’

‘They are here because they think your uncle is…dying?’

Again she laughed that low, fetching laugh. Was she heartless? I didn’t think so, instinctively I didn’t think so.

‘Elias has always been a mischievous man. My uncle is not well, there is no doubt about it. But he has played this game before. About three years ago, it was put abroad that he was on his death-bed and the cousins flocked here like so many carrion birds. He wanted to see who came to curry favour and was pleased at the expressions on their faces when he recovered. They brought gifts as tokens-of course they couldn’t ask for them to be returned afterwards. Some of them even altered their wills in his favour, hoping to outlive him by many years.’

‘Has the gentleman no wife?’

‘She is long since dead.’

‘No children?’

‘No children,’ she repeated.

‘You mentioned your father just now. What about him?’

‘All dead and gone. I am the closest in blood to Elias.’

‘Well then…?’

What I meant was that she should surely be the one to inherit this ramshackle estate when Elias Haskell decided to stop his games and die for good. But considering that Martha and I had only met a few minutes earlier and that I’d already shown a deal of curiosity, this might be a step too far even though we were still talking by conspiratorial candlelight.

At once there came a voice from within the chamber which she’d identified as Elias’s. The voice was thin and querulous but penetrating.

‘You’ve been whispering out there long enough. I can recognize your tones, Martha, but who’s that with you?’

‘You’ll have to go in and see him now, Nicholas Revill,’ she said. ‘Explain how you confused your Maskells and your Haskells. He might be amused.’

She didn’t sound very hopeful of this last proposition. But it was the least I could do, for her if not for the individual who lay beyond the door. Besides I was curious to meet this mischievous person who exaggerated his illness in order to tease his would-be heirs. It was the kind of far-fetched thing which might happen in a play.

She put her free hand on my arm and directed me to open the door. I crossed the threshold. The first thing that struck me about the room was the smell, a kind of warm, musty smell, as of a place which has been long occupied and rarely aired. By now my eyes were adjusted to the indoor gloom, even though there was little light inside the chamber.

A fire slumbered under another ornate chimney-piece. The chamber was full of furniture: chests, tables, an old coffer-seat, and other items piled into dark corners. There must have been a window in the facing wall but heavy curtains shut out the winter evening. Everything looked old and fusty. The largest and fustiest item was a great bed with bulbous foot-posts supporting the tester overhead. Under an ornate coverlet was a figure half sitting, half lying, propped against a mound of pillows. A large woman wearing a brown overdress was leaning in a familiar manner against the bed, wrestling with the pillows. I was surprised to see two people in the room, since I hadn’t hear any sound of conversation from outside. I halted some way from the bed, the momentary sense of conspiracy which Martha and I had enjoyed now gone.

Elias Haskell waved a stringy arm at the woman, who was kneading his pillows with her powerful hands. ‘That’s enough, Abigail. I am quite comfortable.’

‘Thank you, Abigail,’ said Martha.

The woman did not go immediately but delayed to fiddle with some items, a bowl and a few stoppered bottles, which were disposed on a table by the side of the bed. She scowled at me as she passed.

When the servant had left the room, Martha Haskell said, ‘Uncle, here is someone come to see you,’

Elias was wearing a white night-cap. His eyes were dark pools in a long-nosed face. All of this was fairly plain to see, for a pair of candles were burning in the recesses at either side of an intricately carved head-board. The whole scene made me think of a shrine or a tomb.

‘What have you brought me?’ he said.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing will come of nothing.’

‘I expect nothing, sir,’ I said, ‘since I find myself here under…false pretences.’

‘At least you admit it.’

The voice might have been thin but the mind behind it was sharp. Elias Haskell looked unwell but he did not have the appearance of someone on the verge of death.

‘This is Nicholas Revill, uncle,’ said Martha. ‘He’s a player. He took the wrong turning.’

Swiftly she explained the circumstances by which I’d arrived at the Haskell rather than the Maskell household. It made me appear foolish all over again, but I suppose I deserved it at least once more. I looked around the room in my discomfiture and moved nearer to the fireplace. I noticed that a large H, wreathed with fruits and foliage, was the central ornament in the chimney carvings. H for Haskell, presumably. Above the fireplace a great sword was displayed, while on either side of it there hung a tapestry. One tapestry depicted Judith holding up the decapitated head of Holofernes, while the other showed St Christopher carrying the Christ child on his back across the river. I looked towards the bed to see Elias smiling slightly.

‘A player, eh?’ he said. ‘I remember the old London playhouses. I remember the Red Lion.’

‘Before my time, sir,’ I said, but warming to him on account of his knowledge.

‘A player makes a change from the usual visitors.’

His tone was more welcoming than that of the other men in the household. Now I smiled back, in gratitude and to show that I bore him no ill will because he knew of my blunder. I felt more at ease. Someone touched my right knee. For an instant I thought it was Martha and wondered why she was stooping. I looked down. And almost threw myself into the open fire, in fear and surprise. As it was I found myself jammed up against the chimney-piece and holding out my hands to ward off any attack.

Crouched on the floor nearby and looking up at me was a wrinkled child. No, not a child, but a horrible, diminutive old man, with long arms and a bare head and great eyes.

But it was neither a child nor an old man. Rather it was a creature, one of which I had often heard but seen on only a single occasion. The beast wasn’t in the menagerie of the Tower, as you might expect, but in the company of a sailor on one of London’s wharfs. They’d appeared to be good friends, the sailor and his creature. So, after the first shock had subsided, I instinctively recognized this specimen for what it was.

‘You’ve taken his place by the fire,’ said Elias Haskell.

I couldn’t reply straightaway, I was still shaken, but I noticed that he was smiling more broadly now. Even Martha seemed amused.

‘Grant does not like the fire,’ she said, ‘because he singed his fur one day. But he thinks that the place in front of the fire is rightfully his. He resents anyone who stands where you’re standing.’

Grant? Hadn’t the stout man in the hall told me to convey their greetings to just such an individual? Who would have thought that Master Grant would turn out to be a monkey. I’d wondered at the gatehouse whether I was entering some private bedlam. It had been an idle thought. Now I began to consider whether I really had wandered into a madhouse. Either that or I was dreaming.

‘Where does he come from?’ I said for the sake of saying something. I continued to eye the monkey while he continued to gaze on me with his large eyes. He was crouched on his hind legs and with his forelegs-or arms, I suppose-scraping the floor. I was afraid that he might take it into his large, furrowed brow to leap up at me and fling his hairy arms around my neck. That was how I’d seen the sailor carrying his monkey on the London wharf, the man striding along, his face all brown and creased, with the beast clinging round his neck like a wizened child. They’d looked alike, the sailor-man and the monkey. I realized now where the musty smell in the room came from. It wasn’t so much the sick man in his bed or the unaired state of the chamber. It was this brown creature that crouched underfoot.

‘Grant came from Africa,’ said Elias. ‘He belonged to one of the fellows at a college in Cambridge, though I do not know how he came by him. The fellow was called Grant too. When the man died he left me the monkey.’

‘In God’s name, why?’ I said.

‘Because I once said to him that the creature had more sense in his head than a whole tribe of humans. Not just more sense but he is better-natured too. Grant the man was glad that I approved of Grant the monkey, while I was glad to take the monkey when his owner died. See what he can do.’

I turned aside to look, relieved that the monkey had shifted his ground. He was waving his arms above a pair of upturned pots set in a clear space on the rush-and herb-strewn floor. The pots were small, such as you might keep trinkets in. When he was sure I was watching him, he lifted up one of the pots. Nothing there. He lifted the other. Something glinted dully. I craned forward. It looked familiar. It was familiar. My hand flew to my doublet pocket. The copper buckle I’d removed from my shoe in case it was lost in the snow, the buckle in the shape of a love-knot, was gone. Whether it had fallen out or whether this monkey had somehow picked my pocket, I didn’t know, or care. I made to retrieve my property. At once, Grant started gibbering angrily and shifting on his haunches.

‘It’s his game,’ said Elias Haskell. ‘Let him be.’

I stood back, in a state that wasn’t amusement or anger or amazement, but some mixture of all three.

The monkey lumbered round so that he was hunched between me and the two pots. His long arms fiddled with the pots, sliding them around the floor. I knew what he was doing of course. I’ve seen similar tricks played by the coney-catchers on the London streets. So have you, I expect. Admittedly, the tricks are usually played out with three containers rather than two, but we must give the monkey some leeway. The coney-catcher waits for a country bumpkin to come along. He bets the bumpkin that he won’t be able to locate some small item hidden under one of three upturned goblets or coconut shells which are then shifted rapidly around. The bumpkin wins on the first couple of occasions and that encourages him to wager heavily on the third. Surprisingly, that’s the time he loses.

I’ve seen this trick performed on the Southwark streets by all manner of humans but I’ve never seen it carried out by a monkey. As it happened, the monkey wasn’t quite as adept as his human counterparts and I was able to glimpse which pot my buckle was secreted under as he shuffled them about. When he’d finished I pointed to that one. The mischievous beast deliberately lifted the other. Martha laughed. I felt annoyed, with her, with Grant the monkey, with myself. Fearing this might go on all night, I looked in despair at Elias Haskell.

The old man said, ‘I know what you’re thinking, player. But Grant does not outstay his welcome, unlike human beings. See.’

Elias snapped his thin fingers. The monkey swivelled his head towards the sound and then abandoned his upturned pots. He moved across the room with a queer, lolloping gait, like a man who can’t quite decide whether he’s going to walk or to crawl. In a dark corner on the far side of the chamber, I now saw, there stood a kind of large cage made out of wooden slats. The monkey called Grant entered the cage and pulled the door to after him. It was like a prisoner returning to his cell. Before he could think better of it, I picked up my copper buckle and put it back in my doublet.

‘Have you had any refreshment since you arrived?’ said the man in the bed, and then without waiting for a reply, ‘I thought not. Those carrion in the hall are too busy watching and waiting to be hospitable. Martha, bring our player-guest a beer.’

The girl had all this while been watching the monkey and his tricks with indulgence. Now, uncomplaining, she left the room. Elias Haskell indicated a covered chest which was positioned near the bed. I sat down on it. No longer caring whether I appeared inquisitive, I cast my eyes over the sick man.

‘Well, player, do I look the part?’

‘I am not sure what part you mean, Mr Haskell.’

‘I heard you and my niece talking outside the door. She doesn’t approve of my little games, as she calls them. I expect she told you I was shamming illness to torment the carrion in the other room.’

By carrion, he meant the three men whom I’d encountered in the hall. It seemed strange that he should refer to his cousins as carrion birds. But I suppose that a man who keeps a monkey as a pet may well regard his fellow men strangely, whether they are kin or not.

‘Your niece said nothing about shamming.’

And, indeed, now that I was looking at him more closely there was something hectic about the old man’s face. The skin on his high forehead was as wrinkled as parchment or the monkey’s brow. His eyes were murky pools but with a glint of mischief-or malice-at the bottom of them.

‘Nor am I altogether shamming, Nicholas Revill. Even so my death is not to be as imminent as they hope. I’ll send them home with their tails between their legs, like whipped curs!’

From carrion to curs. I suppose I must have looked baffled or taken aback at the force of his words, despite the thin tones in which they were delivered, for he went on: ‘You wonder why I bother to torment the carrion. But I don’t torment them, player. They torment themselves, the crow and the raven and the vulture. They come flocking here because they fear that they will miss out on all the juicy pickings. They’re almost more frightened of each other than they are greedy for themselves. That’s my name for them, crow, raven and vulture-it suits their function, you see. Oh, I almost forgot the woodcock. Mustn’t forget the woodcock. They are very stupid birds, woodcocks.’

He watched to see how I was taking this information. The light from the candles in the recesses of the head-board glinted off Elias’s parchment-skin and now I wondered whether he was actually sicker than he supposed, sicker in mind rather than in body. But he followed this with a remark that showed he was in full possession of his faculties.

‘Don’t look at me so askance, Nicholas. You have your audience as a player just as I have mine. Both audiences must be tantalized.’

‘Our audiences are tantalized by arrangement,’ I said, stung by the comparison. ‘And they don’t go home with their tails between their legs. They go home cheerful, or thoughtful-or both.’

‘The Haskells are a very old family,’ said Elias, ignoring my words. ‘It is generally believed that old families must be rich, especially when they’ve been reduced to the nub. Martha and I are the nub. Crow and vulture and so on, the carrion cousins, certainly believe it is so. Rich, ha!’

There was the sound of the door opening and Martha Haskell returned, bearing a mug of beer which she handed to me. Gratefully I took a draught from the mug. It was the first drink I’d had since setting out from Cambridge that morning.

‘Master Revill will have to stay the night, uncle,’ said Martha. ‘The snow is coming down good and hard now. The road to town would be difficult enough to find by day.’

‘Then he shall stay,’ said Elias. ‘He can be entertained by our guests. I’ll be interested to know what he makes of them. Come and talk to me again after supper, Nicholas. Let him have a room on the upper floor of the house, Martha. Go now. I am tired. No doubt I shall have a parade of cousins coming to bid me goodnight.’

Elias fell back on the pillows and shut his eyes. Martha led the way from the chamber, taper in hand. The large servant woman who’d been struggling with the pillows was standing outside.

‘My uncle is very tired, Abigail,’ said Martha. ‘I do not think anyone else should be admitted to see him for the time being.’

The woman was like a sentry. I said as much to Martha when we were out of earshot.

‘Abigail is fierce in guarding Elias. We have few servants in this house, in fact only Abigail as housekeeper and one of the Parsons in the kitchen.’

‘Parsons?’

‘Oh, that is the family in the gate-house.’

We went down another passage and turned a corner.

‘You are thinking this is a large house for so few people?’ said Martha, reading my mind over her shoulder.

‘It’s like being in a maze,’ I said.

‘The Haskells were a great family once, with many limbs and branches. But now only my uncle and I are left. And all our cousins.’

We came to a cramped flight of stairs. We climbed them and arrived at a low door. Martha lifted the latch and it opened with a creak. Inside was a small and stoop-ceilinged room. She held the taper up. There was a plain bed in a corner and a squinty little casement window.

‘I will tell the housekeeper to bring some more blankets,’ said Martha. She bent down and touched the taper to another candle which was set in a grease-pan on the floor.

‘I’m used enough to the cold,’ I said.

‘Cambridgeshire has its own special cold,’ she said. ‘The wind and snow come straight from Muscovy, they say.’

‘You should see my lodgings in London-feel them rather-for a taste of true cold and damp.’

‘You are not a householder, Master Revill?’ she said.

‘Why no, a lodger still.’

She seemed to be about to ask something further, perhaps whether I was married and had children (the answer was no to both), but instead she said, ‘I’ve never been to London.’

‘You ought to visit us. It is a great city.’

‘My uncle needs me here. He gets fretful if I am away even for half a day. I have lived here since my father died.’

‘You’re a very devoted niece.’

‘He has his odd ways but he is a good man,’ she said. ‘You have no bags with you, Master Revill?’

‘Do not be so formal but call me Nicholas. I didn’t expect to be staying the night, whether with the Maskells or the Haskells. I set out before the snow came down, thinking to get here and back in a day. All I have with me is a letter of introduction from the shareholders. My gear is at an inn in Cambridge.’

‘I shall ask Abigail to find you a night-gown also. There is everything hidden in this place if you know where to look.’

‘Is that why the cousins are here? Do they believe there is hidden treasure?’

‘Probably,’ she said. ‘I must go attend to the supper arrangements, Nicholas. Come downstairs when it pleases you.’

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘What reason are we to give for my visit here? You’re not going to tell the story of my…blunder, are you? How I mistook the Haskells for the Maskells.’

It was strange but if she’d said that she was going to repeat my foolishness once more round the supper table, then I think I’d have taken my chances with the snow and the darkness and the fens and the rhines beyond the door. Death before humiliation.

‘Don’t worry, Nicholas,’ she said. ‘I shall think up some excuse for your presence. After all, everyone else is here on false pretences.’

And with that she exited the room. I moved a couple of paces to the window (those two paces being about the width of the room) and wiped at one of the panes to peer outside. The glass was thick and distorted the view. As far as I could see we’d come in a circuit in our journey through the house, and I was now peering out of a room somewhere above the front door. The snow was coming down so thickly that it was impossible to discern much but I was looking at the courtyard and the little gate-house by which I’d entered. I hoped that Rounce was being well cared for in the stables, assuming that Meg and the stable-hand Andrew had been able to keep their hands off each other long enough to tend to him. Considering the foolish error I’d made, I had been quite kindly received, at least by Martha and Elias Haskell. It was a strange place, though, this Haskell household. I remembered the words of the podgy Meg in the courtyard: ‘They are all fools that come here.’

As I’d said to Martha, I had nothing with me apart from the clothes I stood up in. There wasn’t much to detain me in this little room either. So, picking up the grease-pan which held the candle, I made my way back down the stairs and along the passageways which Martha and I had threaded moments earlier. I passed the kitchen. A woman was standing over the table, working a pestle and mortar. I stopped. She glanced up. It was Abigail, the housekeeper. Evidently she had abandoned her sentry-duty outside Elias’s door. The light was stronger in the kitchen, a combination of fire and candles, and I could see surprise, even suspicion, on her face before she recognized me.

‘You are staying the night, master?’

‘It seems so.’

‘You need more blankets?’

‘I’ll manage,’ I said. ‘Don’t trouble yourself.’

She snorted and returned to her work. Over her shoulder I could see a girl struggling with pots and pans.

I walked on and after a couple of false turnings reached the entrance hall where there was a table which had been laid for supper and which was already occupied.

It took me a little time to work it out but eventually I understood that the carrion bird names which Elias had bestowed on his cousins-crow, vulture and so on-were not only linked to the way that they came flocking to the house at the first whisper of his illness. The names were also suggested by the appearance of these men. By the better light around the supper table I had a chance to study my fellow-guests. This was a beaky, big-nosed family-undoubtedly it was the lack of this feature which had caused the disrespectful Davey Parsons at the gate to tell me that I hadn’t got the nose-and it made them look bird-like. Elias too was long-nosed and even Martha’s was slightly too large for her face.

The three men whom I’d first encountered on my arrival were at table. The old man, with stick and spectacles, was called Valentine. He was stooped with age and mumbled his words and his food together in one spittly stream. Fortunately, he didn’t say much but he was sharp enough when he wanted to be. He looked closer to death than Elias Haskell lying in bed at the other end of the house. From some remark, I learned Valentine lived in Cambridge. I doubt that he’d have been able to travel any more than a handful of miles to visit his ‘dying’ cousin, and marvelled that he’d come as far as he had. He had no occupation-the old are exempt from all that. The stoutish, middle-aged individual with the close-fitting cap of grey hair was Cuthbert. He was a lawyer hailing from, I think, Peterborough. The third man, the one who’d been standing by the chimney-piece when I arrived, was called Rowland. He was a merchant from Huntingdon. They were Haskells by name, every one of them. This simplified matters, I suppose.

Elias Haskell had mentioned four carrion birds, though. An empty place at the table indicated that someone was still expected. I wondered who this person was. It seemed unlikely that he would arrive now, in the darkness of a winter evening and through the perils of a snow-storm. Meantime I was glad enough of the food, which was plain and wholesome-beef and barley bread, brawn soused in beer, and so on. The service was plain too, at the hands of the other servant I’d glimpsed in the kitchen and who, judging by her narrow mouth, was sister to the porcine girl in the lodge. The guests at the table kept darting wary glances at me, and from one or two remarks dropped by Martha I guessed that she’d spun them some story about Elias’s interest in the playhouse to account for my presence in Valence. Perhaps they had jumped to the conclusion that the old man was going to leave his money to a troupe of players.

They made a couple of perfunctory enquiries about the health-or more precisely the sickness-of the man in the neighbour room and I noticed that Martha made Elias out to be rather worse than he had seemed to be. I wasn’t sure whether she was doing this on her own initiative or because he had instructed her to give a bad report. I noticed also in the three men a kind of satisfaction, which they scarcely bothered to conceal, that their cousin continued in his apparent decline. They were curious to know what we’d talked about.

‘This and that,’ I said. ‘He showed me Grant the monkey.’

‘And did he show you the sword?’ said Rowland Haskell.

‘That rusty old thing,’ said Cuthbert.

‘I saw a sword over the chimney-piece,’ I said.

‘Elias believes it can sprout wings,’ said Rowland.

‘Pah! Superstition!’ said Cuthbert.

‘Stranger things have happened,’ said old Valentine.

Rowland the merchant turned to me at another point during the meal and said, ‘That William Shakespeare is one of your fellows, isn’t he?’

‘He is a shareholder in the Globe. Sometimes he’s a player but mostly he’s a writer.’

‘I saw his play about the mad Dane who murdered his uncle.’

‘That is Hamlet,’ I said. ‘But the Prince was provoked and it was not altogether murder. The uncle had killed his father first.’

‘There was a deal of killing anyway,’ said Rowland. ‘And a lot of silly talk about hawks and handsaws and crabs going backwards.’

‘I saw one of his plays in London,’ said Cuthbert the lawyer, narrowing his eyes as if he were examining me in court. ‘I chiefly remember a single line in it. Do you know what it was?’

‘No, but you are about to tell me, sir.’

‘The line was “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”.’

‘Kill all the lawyers,’ I repeated.

I must say that, in the present company, I rather relished the words and perhaps I didn’t much bother to conceal the fact.

‘Good, good,’ said Valentine, ‘Kill all the lawyers. That would be a start.’ The old man’s spectacles glinted sightlessly in the candlelight.

‘Is that Master Shakespeare’s true opinion, do you think, Master Revill?’ said Cuthbert. ‘That the world would be a better place if we lawyers were all…no more?’

This might be quite close to William’s opinion-certainly it is the view of plenty of other people in this island of ours-but I said, ‘I do not think so, sir. Words only, from a character in a play.’

‘I deal in words,’ said Cuthbert.

‘You’re no better than a tanner,’ said Valentine to his cousin. ‘You deal in skins. In the sheep-skins and calf-skins which you write your double words on.’

‘You dislike lawyers, sir?’ I said.

‘My father was a lawyer, sir,’ said Valentine, though he looked too old to have any father apart from Adam.

Cuthbert ignored all this, perhaps putting it down as the bitter ramblings of an old man. Instead he simply grunted and levered another slice of brawn from the dish on the table. Now it was the turn of Rowland the merchant to accuse me and my kind.

‘But you can’t deny that you players are against authority, can you? That is why audiences are drawn to you. The people who attend your performances are not respectable people.’

‘Then you’d have to say that the King and Queen of England are not respectable,’ I said. ‘King James is our patron while Queen Anne has even performed in a masque.’

‘Oh, he is Scottish…’ said Cuthbert.

‘…and she is Danish,’ said Rowland. ‘Foreigners both.’

Cuthbert and Rowland Haskell looked slightly uneasy at this point as if a government agent might be about to sneak out of the wainscot and arrest them for treason. For my part, I would have welcomed one.

‘Uncle Elias likes plays,’ said Martha. ‘He remembers the old playhouses in London.’

What else she would have said to bring a bit of goodwill back to the conversation I don’t know because at that moment we were interrupted by a figure who swept into the hall and took her place at the table with a great fuss and bother. The missing guest was no man, as I’d expected, but a formidable-looking woman. I was startled because she bore more than a passing resemblance to our late queen-I mean, the great Elizabeth. This person had the same pinched face and aquiline nose and haughty manner. (And I should know because I was once in personal conversation with Queen Elizabeth for at least a quarter of an hour.) But the nose alone revealed this newcomer to the dining table to be yet another Haskell cousin. Also the way in which the three men reacted with impatience to her presence.

‘Why did no one wake me?’ she demanded. At the same time, she stabbed with her knife at the beef and brawn and other dishes, using the implement as if it was a weapon rather than an eating tool. When her plate was piled high, she looked round. ‘Well? Why did no one wake me?’

‘You must have been tired after your journey, cousin Elizabeth,’ said Martha.

I almost jumped to hear that this woman was even named for our late queen, but then I suppose many women of the older generation must have been baptized in the sovereign’s honour.

‘True, I have travelled in the dead of winter and over terrible roads all the way from Saffron Walden to be at the bedside of dear Elias,’ she said. ‘True, a lady of my age is permitted to be exhausted after such a journey. True, she may be allowed to lie down on her bed for a few minutes to recover from her travels. But it was light when I arrived and now it is dark. I should have been woken. You must speak to your servants, Martha dear, and to that housekeeper in particular. Naturally the first thing I did when I awoke was to go in quest of poor Elias. But, on reaching his door, I was refused admittance. I was told that he was asleep.’

‘He is very ill,’ said Martha.

‘He would have been pleased to be woken to see his cousin Elizabeth. I have a gift to give him. Yet the woman-what’s her name, Abigail is it?-barred me from the door, and said that I must wait until he asked to see me. Who are you?’

This last remark was directed at me. Whether she really hadn’t observed a stranger at supper or whether she’d wanted to unburden herself of her complaints first, I don’t know. Swiftly I introduced myself, adding for the third or fourth time that day that I was a player with the King’s Men.

‘So what are you doing here?’ said Dame Elizabeth.

‘Master Revill is here by appointment. He has brought a letter of introduction from his employers in London,’ said Martha. ‘You know how much uncle Elias enjoys plays.’

Elizabeth humphed at this as if she couldn’t see how anyone might enjoy plays, but she asked no further questions. I was grateful for the deft way in which Martha had dealt with her. She had not lied-I was carrying a letter of introduction, after all-but she had left out the fact that I’d come to the wrong house.

The conversation wore on, fuelled by drink. Cuthbert the lawyer boasted of how much money he was making from his cases. Rowland the merchant boasted of how much he was earning from his deals. They were well-to-do, you could see that from the quantity of rings they wore on their fingers. Valentine nodded away at all this, occasionally interjecting some crabbed comment. Dame Elizabeth looked ready to be offended. Towards the end of the meal, the housekeeper called Abigail appeared. She came across to me and whispered, a little too loudly, that the master of the house would like to see me now. This provoked glances between Cuthbert and Rowland, while Dame Elizabeth objected, ‘But he hasn’t even seen me yet!’

‘Those are my orders, my lady,’ said Abigail.

Reluctantly I got up from the table. The reluctance wasn’t altogether put on. I felt as if I was taking part in a play where I knew neither my lines nor how things would unfold. I didn’t even know whether I was participating in a comedy or a tragedy or something in between. Nevertheless, I had little choice but to follow Abigail and once more go down the passage to the sick man’s chamber.

I knocked and entered. Elias Haskell was lying almost flat on his back, his head propped up on a bolster. I glanced towards the corner which was occupied by Grant the monkey. The door of the wooden cage remained closed, as if he’d shut himself away for the night. Elias motioned for me to sit down once more on the chest near the bed.

‘Well, what did you make of them, my carrion birds?’

Elias’s voice seemed to have grown weaker. Only his eyes remained lively, with that glint of malice or mischief at the bottom of them.

‘They are very much as you described them.’

‘That’s disappointing. Can’t you say anything further?’

‘The two, er, younger men are so prosperous by their own account that you wonder they need to come sniffing round someone else’s fortune.’

‘Fortune, ha! Yet it’s true they are well-to-do. Cuthbert in particular thrives as a lawyer with his twists and turns. But it’s a wise man, Nicholas, who knows when his plate is full. Some are never satisfied. I can see that you are one of those wise men, you would not go grasping when your hands were already full.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ I said. ‘I have never had what you call full hands.’

‘Of course not, you’re a player.’

This was halfway to being a compliment, perhaps, yet it made me uncomfortable. I changed the subject.

‘It seemed to me that the old man-Valentine-might be better occupied in thinking about his own end instead of…’

‘Instead of dwelling on mine. But the prospect of gold is a great preservative. It makes people think they will live forever.’

‘Is there gold here?’ I said. The question made me feel that I was playing his game.

‘All rumours,’ Elias said vaguely. ‘My cousins are like chameleons. They can eat the air, it is so full of promises. In return they give me gifts. Their tribute. Over there. Plate from the lawyer, a goblet from the merchant, and a mirror from the old man. He’d have done better to examine his own visage for signs of decay.’

I glanced towards the area of the room which he was indicating. A little mound of objects was heaped there although I could not distinguish one from another. This was the tribute of the heirs, little gifts given in expectation of a greater return.

‘Shall I show you my most precious object, player?’

I nodded, almost beyond caring at the next twist in this peculiar evening yet at the same time thinking that here I was sitting inside a sick man’s chamber, in the presence of a monkey called Grant, within a ramshackle, snow-bound house in Cambridgeshire. A few hours ago I had never heard of the Haskells. Yet now I had been thrust into the heart of this strange family, and already knew more about them than was perhaps proper or prudent.

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Let me see your most precious object.’

‘Then go and take that sword from its resting place,’ said Elias Haskell, nodding in the direction of the chimney-piece.

I walked over to the fire. The sword rested on a couple of iron brackets. This was what had been talked of briefly at supper.

‘Lift it up, Nicholas,’ said the man in the bed.

It was heavy and cumbersome but there was nothing to prevent anyone taking it. Elias wasn’t concerned about thieves, I assumed, otherwise this item would be locked up in a chest if it was really valuable.

I cradled the sword in both arms for fear of dropping it, and also because I was curiously unwilling to wield it like an old-time soldier.

‘Lay it on the bed near me,’ said Elias.

I did so and, half sitting up, he reached forward to grasp the circular pommel and raise the sword. The blade shook with his effort. The man had strength, old and sick as he was. The sinews stood out and his arm quivered as he lifted the dead weight a couple of feet into the air. The weapon gleamed dully in the candlelight. Despite its age and battered condition, there was still a bluish sheen to the blade. I am not particularly knowledgeable or comfortable with weapons but even I could see that in its own way this was an object of beauty, one forged with a craftsman’s care and, more important, a craftsman’s love. At the same time it gave me the goose-bumps to see the old man half sitting up in bed and raising aloft this antique weapon.

‘It is ancient,’ I said.

‘Centuries old. They say that it was used against the Normans who first came to this island. It has been with my family alone for more than a hundred years. That is why I call it precious.’

‘How did you come by it?’

‘It was discovered in that very chimney,’ said Elias, obviously unwilling to say more. ‘Try it for yourself. Hold it properly.’

I took the sword from his grasp again. The blade was long and straight, tapering only near the point. The cross was like a down-turned mouth. Studying it more closely, I saw that each end had been carved into the shape of a dog’s head. Elias waited until I’d had a good look before saying, ‘There are strange stories attached to that weapon, shameful ones too. Sometimes it almost seems to have a life of its own. As if it had a mind to think with, or wings to fly through the air with. That’s the legend of it. Also that it brings bad fortune.’

‘Why do you keep it then?’

‘In the hope that it will bring bad fortune to my enemies,’ said Elias.

Whether it was the nonsensical words about flying and fortune, or whether it was something within the sword itself (but how could that have been?), it seemed to me that the weapon gave a little start in my hand and I nearly dropped it. I took a firmer grasp on the hilt and banished these foolish thoughts. The sword was weighty. Only an expert would be capable of wielding it to good effect. I wondered how many lives this blade was responsible for finishing. How many fatal slashes and stabbings it had delivered down the years. Many, no doubt, many slashes and stabbings. This was a foolish thought in its way, since it was not the blade but the men who had hefted it that were responsible. Even so, I shivered without knowing why. Perhaps to disguise these feelings I made one or two experimental sweeps through the air, holding the hilt two-handed. I glanced in the direction of the cage in the corner. If Grant the monkey had chosen to reappear at this moment I would have shown him who was master.

The door opened and Martha entered the room. She was carrying a small bowl. She almost dropped it, I thought, perhaps under the impression that I was about to attack her uncle. I lowered the sword-point to the floor and grinned sheepishly. Martha took the bowl across to Elias and cradled his head in her hand so that he might drink from it. After a couple of sips, he said, ‘That’s enough. I’ll finish it later.’

‘You must drink it, uncle. It is a soporific,’ she said, more to me than to Elias, then turning to him once again, ‘You will have a restless night otherwise. And I cannot sleep if I know that you are not sleeping.’

Nevertheless she did not compel him to drink any more but placed the bowl on the floor beside the bed.

‘Is cousin Elizabeth here?’ he said.

‘She tried to see you before supper but Abigail would not admit her,’ said Martha.

‘Send her to me now.’

‘But you are tired, uncle.’

‘Now,’ he repeated. His voice was unexpectedly firm.

As she turned away with a hurt expression, Elias took her wrist. I was surprised at the speed of the gesture. Also, I could see he was grasping her hard. But his tone was gentle.

‘Dear girl,’ he said. ‘You are always concerned for my welfare…unlike those carrion.’

She bent forward and kissed him on the brow. Then she straightened up and, with a nod, indicated that it was time to leave Elias. He told me to replace the sword on the brackets above the chimney-piece. I did so and then returned to the dining hall with Martha. In my brief absence, the diners had drunk deeper. Now it was cousin Elizabeth’s turn to be informed that she was required and she bustled her way to Elias’s room.

Cousin Cuthbert rounded on me. ‘Well, Master Revill, what success did you have with the old man?’

‘Did you squeeze anything out of him?’ said Rowland.

‘Did you creep into his confidence?’ said Valentine.

These were such objectionable questions that I didn’t dignify them with an answer. From the words being bandied round the table I gathered that they each of them planned to visit Elias once more before turning in for the night, no doubt to try and impress on him their love and devotion to his welfare.

For myself, I was too tired to stay up any longer after the day spent riding from Cambridge and the dispiriting sense that the journey had been futile anyway since I’d come to the wrong house. To be frank, the company at table was not altogether to my taste either. Martha, once again bearing a taper, escorted me to the foot of the narrow stairs that led to the next floor. She seemed more attentive to me than she was to her cousins.

‘Goodnight, Nicholas. I hope you sleep well.’

‘Perhaps I should have swallowed some of your concoction. Your uncle’s, that is. The soporific.’

‘Mine?’ She looked confused. ‘No, Abigail makes them to his specifications.’

The point hardly seemed to matter and, taking the offered taper, I climbed the stairs to my little room. It was only when I was inside that it occurred to me I should have thanked her again for the night’s hospitality. I would never have made it back to Cambridge. There was no denying that this was a strange household, though. The little casement window was fogged up but I wiped at it with my sleeve and gazed out. The snow had stopped sometime while we were at supper and it lay, smooth and unmarked, across the courtyard. There was no light from the gatehouse and a dead, blank silence reigned over all.

A night-gown had been thrown across the bed. I suppose I had Abigail to thank for that. It smelled musty. Apart from removing my shoes, I didn’t undress or change. It was too cold. I should have insisted on more blankets after all. I lay down on the narrow bed but without snuffing the taper. Having felt sleepy downstairs, I now discovered that, within reach of a bed and without anything else to distract me, my tiredness had departed. Failing a soporific, perhaps I should have drunk more at supper like the other guests. I wondered again exactly what pleasure or satisfaction Elias Haskell could hope to gain from the presence in Valence House of his would-be heirs, when he so despised them. Surely there must be limits to his fondness for mischief. He was a sick man, even if not in quite such a bad state as he pretended to be for the others. What did he expect to gain? A few trinkets, goblets and mirrors and suchlike? Even if, as Martha had claimed, some of those round the table had altered their wills in his favour-as a hypocritical sign of good faith, presumably-what use would that be to a man on the edge of his grave?

Yet, looking at things from the other side, what fortune could any or all of the Haskell cousins hope to come by in this place? Even to my unpractised eye, the house and its outbuildings were in a state of disrepair. Wasn’t that evidence of a lack of fortune? Not necessarily of course. Some would say that the less there was on display the more must be hidden away. ‘All rumours,’ Elias had said, but he hadn’t denied them. And he’d also claimed that it was a general belief that old families must be rich, especially when they’d been reduced to the nub. Neverthless, I didn’t quite see it. The cousins were prosperous, even if they weren’t wealthy. It must be as the old man had said, that some people were never satisfied, always wishing to pile their plates higher.

And this made me think of my own situation. Nicholas Revill of the King’s Men, the finest and grandest company of players in London. But Revill’s circumstances were neither fine nor grand. I was still a lodger in other men’s houses and without any place to call my own. With hands not full but more or less empty. I retrieved out of my doublet pocket the buckle from my shoe, the one in the shape of a love-knot. I looked at its copper burnish in the taper’s feeble light. Somehow all this confirmed me in my impression of myself as a poor player. Perhaps there’s something about lying on a bed in a strange house during a silent and snow-filled night which encourages introspection and self-pity. I blew out the taper and settled down to a wakeful few hours.

But I must have slept because I woke with a start. At least I think that I woke, since everything which followed seemed to take place in a kind of dream-or nightmare. There was a noise from outside, a panting sound. As I’ve said, there was a little window in my room overlooking the courtyard which lay between the main building and the gatehouse. To peer outside, I had only to swing my legs to the floor and crane forward. The panes in the window were rimed over. I rubbed at one of them and the cold burned my fingertips. I put my eye to the little circle I’d created.

Outside all seemed as before. There was no moon but the stars overhead were blazing fiercely and the snow cast a chill glow of its own in response. The outline of the gatehouse, wearing a new thatch of snow, stood in front of me. Beyond it the skeletal shapes of trees were just visible. Almost immediately my breath fogged up the window again. I wiped at it once more. What was I looking for? I didn’t know. Then I heard that strange panting sound again. It came from below. I peered down. The angle was awkward and it was difficult to see clearly because the porch blocked the view. But there was definitely someone down there, a person standing a few paces in front of the main entrance to the house. I could just glimpse the top of a head. I had the impression of height, unusual height. More than that, the figure seemed to cast a kind of elongated shadow on the snow. Then the pane of glass filmed over once more. Shivering, I wiped at it a third time. When I tried to peer down again, the figure had vanished.

It was cold up here, as I crouched at the narrow window, attempting to keep clear a little circle of glass that gave a glimpse of the night. I told myself that whatever was happening outside was no concern of mine. I was only in this house because of an absurd error, though admittedly one of my own devising. I lay back on the bed. No more sounds came up from outdoors but I heard a subdued shrieking from somewhere within the house which caused my hair to prickle. And then I remembered Grant the monkey and breathed deep and promised myself that I would quit this place on the next morning.

I fell into a shallow sleep and dreamed I was escaping somewhere on a horse which was floundering in the snow. A monkey was clinging round my neck. I didn’t know what-or who-I was trying to escape. Perhaps it was the monkey. Eventually the horse stumbled and I was pitched headlong into a bank of snow. The monkey released its grip and ran off. I thought I might hide from whatever was pursuing me under the snow-blanket but another voice told me I would be suffocated there.

I woke up aching and unrested. The little chamber was bathed in a lurid light. The memory of suffocating in the snow was still in my head and the room felt airless. This time I opened the casement window. It creaked on unwilling hinges and let in a draught of cold morning air. After the stuffy fears of the night, this was refreshing. The sun was just rising, a tight red ball, beyond the fringe of trees that fenced the house. The arrow-shaped spire of the church was dyed red. The sun’s rays struck the upper storey of the house. My first thought was that, provided there was no more snow, the road from Ickleton back to Cambridge might be passable. With luck I could get away from this strange spot. If I set off straightaway, with the minimum of farewells and assuming Rounce was fit to ride…

Without thinking, I gazed down into the snow-filled courtyard. It was still in shadow at ground level and my eyes were full of red dazzle from squinting at the sun. Even so I could make out a darker shadow lying at full length in the snow and almost jumped back from the casement in shock. A second glance confirmed what instinct had already told me. There was a body down there. Whose I did not know.

Pausing only to put on my shoes, I was out of the room and down the narrow back stairs almost before I knew what I was doing. Past the kitchen from which clattering sounds and cooking smells were emanating. I should have stopped there and then to summon help. Got the housekeeper Abigail or the other servant to accompany me. I wish I had now. It would have saved me a deal of trouble later on. Instead, like the fool I was, I half ran down the passage which led to the dining hall. The large chamber was empty. Evidently no one in Valence believed in early rising. The remains of last night’s fire smouldered in the great chimney.

At the main door, I halted for an instant. Even now I might have called out for help. There were at least a couple of able-bodied individuals in the house who would respond. I ought to leave it to them. This was none of my business after all. Yet there is an urge in some of us to be first on the scene of a disaster, a foolish urge. I unbolted the main door and tugged it open. By now the sun had risen a fraction higher so that its first rays were slanting right into the courtyard, glaring off the snow. I shaded my eyes and, standing in the porch, gazed outside.

There was a body perhaps a half dozen paces away and lying in a direct line from the front door. I could not identify him, but he was showing me a clean pair of slippered heels, half buried in the snow. The upper part of the body was pitched forward so that the head was face down and almost completely sunk in the snow. His arms were flung out. It was as if he had set out to leave Valence and stumbled in the snow and not troubled to raise himself again. I recalled my suffocating dream.

But this was real and no dream. I made to step forward, away from the shelter of the house. Not that I could do anything to help the poor fellow-for it was certainly a man (and I had a fairly good idea which man it was by now)-since his whole posture showed that he was long past help. His posture, and the blood which spattered the snow in the area of his sunken head. Even at this point, I did not take fright for myself. After all, what had the goings-on in the Haskell household to do with Nicholas Revill? I was merely an accidental player who’d stumbled onto the wrong stage.

I stepped through the snow, which rose above my ankles. I skirted the body until I came level with the man’s head. He wasn’t wearing a hat nor even a night-cap. Not the kind of weather to go out bare-headed. Not that he would ever care about such matters again, I thought. And felt an unexpected pang and wiped away some water from my eyes. It was Elias Haskell, the old man, the owner of Valence House. His hair, now revealed, was long and white and flecked with blood and snow. There was more blood spilled in the snow beside him although not in great quantity.

My guts did a little turn as my eyes confirmed what instinct had already told me. Even then I didn’t have the wit to be properly alarmed. Instead I examined the scene as if it was going to tell me something or other of interest.

I was facing the body. On my left hand was the little gatehouse. A curl of fresh smoke issued from the chimney, showing that the lodge-keeper or one of his brood was up and about. There was a single small window on this side of the gatehouse, looking into the yard, but evidently no one had yet observed Elias’s corpse. This was not surprising since the whole yard had been in shadow until moments before. As for the main house, most of the rooms lay in the rear area. In fact the only one, apart from the dining hall, that appeared to have a direct view of the courtyard was the chamber I’d been sleeping in. The outbuildings, their roofs newly covered with snow, looked more dilapidated by the bright light of the morning than they’d appeared in the gloom of the previous afternoon. There was no sound or sight of anyone else. Just the dead man and I.

I wondered how long Elias had been lying out here. I was reluctant to touch the body, which would have long since turned cold anyhow. Presumably it had been he whom I’d heard-and glimpsed-last night, the panting sound some sort of death-rattle. What time had that been? For no good reason, it had seemed during the earlier rather than the later part of the night. Why had he been out here at all, the old man, when his proper place was tight asleep in his bed?

And had he been alone, Elias Haskell?

Why, yes, he must have been alone. Because there was only one set of footprints leading from the porch and they belonged to the slippers which protruded, heels uppermost, from the snow.

Or rather there had been one set of footprints. Now they had been joined by another pair belonging to a witless player from London. And something else was nagging at the edge of my mind. Something which suggested that the dead man might not have been altogether alone when he met his end, footprints or no footprints. Something to do with an action I’d performed only moments earlier. What was it?

Yet even then, looking at my own tracks and knowing that something was amiss, I did not grasp my danger.

What I did grasp instead was an object lying in the snow at some distance from Elias’s outflung left arm. I hadn’t seen it at first because it was half buried in the snow and because the sight of the dead man was more pressing. There were no tracks or other marks around the sword, indicating that it had been thrown there rather than dropped on the spot. I bent down and once again gripped the sword which I had originally lifted from the wall-brackets in Elias Haskell’s bedchamber. The sword which was hundreds of years old and had been discovered up the chimney. The sword which seemed to possess-how had Elias put it?-a mind to think with or wings to fly with. And now, in an easy action considering its weight, the sword seemed to rise free of the snow in which it was embedded. The hilt and pommel were cold to the touch. When I’d handled the thing before it had been by firelight and candlelight. But even in the dazzling sun, the blade was dull as if tainted with those bluish patches and other stains which I didn’t care to examine too closely. I noticed what I hadn’t noticed in the chamber, that an inscription ran the length of the blade down the centre. Two inscriptions, for there was another on the reverse. They were in Latin. I made out the words as best as I could but they did not seem to be much help or use in this present situation. How had the sword come to be out here? Had someone taken it from Elias’s room while the old man slept? Was the blood in the snow the result of wounds caused by the sword?

Well, there was a mystery here but it was nothing to do with me.

I was wrong, of course. It was everything to do with me.

Something else about the sword drew my attention but before I could do anything further a movement in the corner of my eye made me look up. There was a cluster of people standing in the entrance to the house. With that clarity which sometimes comes with great danger, I saw myself as they must be seeing me. Here is an old man lying dead and bloodied in the snow. Has he been unlawfully killed? It seems so. Two sets of footprints, and two only, are linked with the body. One of them belongs to the corpse. The other belongs to an interfering player, who has most definitely stumbled onto the wrong stage. To make matters worse, the player is brandishing a sword which, to all appearances, could be the murder weapon. That he now lets fall the weapon, so that it drops with a dull thud into the packed snow, makes no difference. In fact the panicky gesture only makes him look the more guilty.

I was sitting on the chest in the bedchamber, the third time I’d attended on Elias Haskell in less than twenty-four hours. As before the old man was lying on his great bed with its bulbous foot-posts. The only difference now was that he was dead. When I first saw him, his long face illuminated by the candles which glimmered in the recesses of the head-board, I’d been reminded of a shrine or tomb. Now it was that, almost literally.

But, otherwise, being in Elias’s chamber was like being in a cell. I was a prisoner or near enough, confined and unable to make my escape without violence. The heavy curtains remained drawn as a mark of respect but a gap between them admitted a shaft of winter sun which provided enough light. By now it was mid-morning. Lounging near the door-and preventing my exit should I have attempted to make one-was the young, hulking fellow from the stables, the one called Andrew. He smelled of horses. Sometimes I caught his eye, the one that wasn’t covered by his forelock of straw-coloured hair. When I did catch his eye he grinned, vacuously. He obviously did not share in the general mourning for Elias Haskell. Whenever I got up from the chest to stretch my legs he stiffened by the door as though as I was going to attack him. He hadn’t said a word in the couple of hours or so we’d been penned up together in the dead man’s chamber. If I hadn’t heard him wooing Meg the previous afternoon-‘I’d rather take care of you’ he’d said-I might have wondered whether he could actually speak at all. It hardly mattered anyway, since I didn’t feel much like talking.

The members of the household, clustered in the doorway, had witnessed me standing over the corpse of Elias Haskell, sword in hand. They’d observed my footprints in the snow alongside those of the dead man. They had come to the obvious conclusion, which was the very one I would have arrived at, had I been in their shoes. I had killed the old man outside in the snow in the morning just as the sun was rising. I had killed him for reasons best known to myself. And I’d been caught red-handed.

Scarcely had I let fall the sword to the snow-covered ground than the individuals in the doorway began advancing on me in a timorous fashion as if they were approaching a dangerous dog. There was the furious-looking Abigail, the tottering Valentine, the shocked-seeming Martha, the dapper Rowland, the imperious Elizabeth, the lawyerly Cuthbert. The bad-tempered gatekeeper came from the other side while the hulking lad with the forelock of hair emerged from the stable-block.

I might have made a run for it but something kept me rooted to the spot. Was it fear? Anger? Disbelief? All of these, perhaps, but the main thought in my confused head was: this is absurd! I haven’t done anything. I’m not even meant to be in this house. It’s all a mistake. A moment or two of explanation will clear matters up. Besides, if I had run, it would have confirmed my guilt in the eyes of the others. Protesting that I’d done nothing, knew nothing, I allowed myself to be led inside. For a time we all stood around in the great hall, while singly or in twos and threes the rest of the household went out to examine the corpse of Elias, some of them several times. Martha Haskell returned with a frozen expression, but the others, such as Cuthbert or Dame Elizabeth, put on long faces like paid mourners. Not wishing to view the body again, I remained where I was, standing by the chimney-piece as far as possible from the entrance. The servants-Abigail and the kitchen-girl and her sister, in company with the shambling stable-hand-came clustering into the hall. I heard speculation about the ill-fated ‘flying’ sword, and all the time they darted glances at me and I felt their suspicions hardening into certainties.

When the cousins had done with their viewing of the corpse, a short conversation ensued between them. The purpose of this was clear. They had all gone to bid goodnight to Elias after I’d gone to bed the previous evening. They were all eager to assure each other-and possibly to assure me as well-that he’d been alive when they left. Tired, yes, on the verge of sleep, yes, but living and breathing still. As far as I could tell, they had entered the chamber in the following order: Elizabeth Haskell first, because she had actually been summoned by Elias and hadn’t yet seen him on this visit to Valence House; then Cuthbert, followed by Valentine and, after him, Rowland. To hear them talk, everything had been easy and natural between these loving cousins, all of them. Inevitably, some slight suspicion attached to Rowland, as the last of his kin to visit him, but Abigail butted in at this point to say that she had entered the chamber shortly afterwards to ensure that her master had drunk his soporific. And, she stated categorically, he was alive when she’d been there.

All this seemed to point the guilty finger even more clearly at me. I had the sense that the household, whatever their differences, whether visitors or permanent members, was uniting in the face of an outsider. I shifted uncomfortably under their gaze and looked down at my feet. As I’ve said, I was standing by the chimney-piece which contained the remains of last night’s fire. A little heat still emanated from the remains. Because of the turmoil in the house, nobody had cleared them out or laid any fresh logs. The area in front of the fire-bare oak boards rather than the rushes which were strewn around much of the hall-was covered in a thin grey veil of ash. A backdraft must have blown the ash out of the fire. But what was most interesting to me was the image of a footprint, no a pair of footprints, in the dust. I squatted down for a closer look. They were small prints, like a child’s. The outline of a long toe was visible. Not only a child’s footprint but a barefoot child! There were no children in the house as far as I knew. There was Mr Grant the monkey, however. He had been out of his wooden cage at some point during the night. It was a cold enough morning but, even so, I felt colder within.

After a time, I was shut up in Elias’s chamber, with Andrew in attendance. A little while later, the gatekeeper, assisted by his jug-eared son and Cuthbert and Rowland Haskell, carried in the corpse and deposited it on the bed. It was the natural and inevitable place for the old man to be laid out but perhaps there was some idea of making me confront what I’d done, or what they believed I’d done. I was regarded with hostile looks. Davey was the only exception. The boy gazed at me with frank curiosity. Most likely it was first time that he’d clapped eyes on a supposed murderer.

When they left, I had the opportunity to examine Elias carefully for the first time, although this did not reveal much. There was a severe gash in his forehead, which would probably have been the blow to kill him. It was the kind of wound which should surely have bled heavily, yet there had only been spatterings of blood on the snow outside.

The three of us-Andrew, Elias and I-weren’t the only occupants of the chamber, of course. I haven’t forgotten about Grant the monkey. But one could have overlooked the fact that he was here, so quiet was he inside his cage in the far corner of the room. It was only by his smell that you’d have known he was still present. When the body of his owner had been brought in he had lumbered across and pawed at the dead man’s arm. But he had done nothing else, had uttered no cries or gibbers, had not attempted to climb up on the bed. I sensed that the others were impatient or fearful of the animal and were glad when he slunk back to his cage. For my part I was quite glad of his presence. His silence in the matter of Elias’s death seemed more eloquent than the probably hypocritical words of the Haskell cousins.

If not exactly a prisoner, I was no longer a guest. Accompanied by Abigail the housekeeper, Martha brought me some bread and ale and told me that, if the road to Cambridge was clear enough, the coroner or magistrate would be summoned to Ickleton to take charge. She had been weeping for her uncle and cast frequent glances at his corpse. Abigail divided her gaze between me and the dead man, looking with disapproval on both. As a mark of respect for her dead master she had changed into a black overdress. I looked to Martha for some indication that the young woman, at least, did not think me guilty of murder but she gave none. She would scarcely meet my eyes. This, and the fact that it might take a day or more for a magistrate to reach Valence, caused a black cloud to drift over my spirits. I knew that I was innocent, certainly, but to judge by the wary manner which even Martha was showing no one else did. I realized that you can be as innocent as the day is long and yet still be accused and tried and…

I’m well aware that this is not exactly a fresh revelation, that the innocent are sometimes accused and…all the rest of it. I should know. I’ve even been imprisoned, on false charges, before now. I know the way the world wags. This time I had the creeping sensation that things might turn out badly. With a hostile coroner or magistrate, or an incompetent one, things might turn out very badly indeed. Particularly as none of the individuals in Valence House, with the exception of Martha and Elias Haskell, had been well disposed towards me in the first place. And now one of the two was dead and the other must suspect me of having a hand in her uncle’s demise. As for the rest of the occupants, they either had some rank or they were local. How would a strange player from London be regarded? With suspicion even in the best of circumstances.

If I was going to be saved I would have to save myself. I cudgelled my wits to think of a way out of this predicament. I went over in my mind all the details to do with my discovery of Elias’s body. I thought back over the previous night when I’d been woken by that odd panting noise. I’d had no more than a glimpse of the figure standing in the yard but it had surely been Elias. Why was he outside? He was meant to have taken a soporific. Presumably he had not drunk it or it had been ineffective. Yet this was a minor point which didn’t explain his presence in the courtyard on a very cold night.

I’d assumed he was bed-ridden, but no one had actually said as much. It was evident from the way he’d held the sword or gripped his niece by the wrist that he still possessed considerable strength. So he must have risen from his bed and struggled outside. Yet he had been wounded in the head, plainly wounded. He could not have received the injury out of doors, otherwise there would have been signs of a scuffle, more footprints besides his. And more blood on the ground perhaps, although it was likely that the snow had had the effect of stanching the flow. So did Elias stagger outside, mortally wounded as he was? Was it possible, that an old, sick man could move even a few yards with such an injury? I knew from a good friend of mine who was also a member of the King’s Men and who had seen service many years ago in the Netherlands war that wounded men are capable of extraordinary feats in the heat of battle, even if they fall and die straight afterwards. So it must be that Elias had run out of the house to escape from someone. But that someone had not come after him, since there were no other tracks in the snow (apart from mine).

But somebody else had been down there in the hall. I knew this because I’d had to unbar the door in order to get outside. Which meant that a second person had barred it after Elias had left the house in the night. Had it been Abigail or Martha, making sure the house was secure and unaware that the body was lying in the snow, dying or already dead? But I’d heard sounds outside in the early hours of the morning, long after the rest of the household should have retired to bed, all doors and windows secured.

Or-and this seemed the more likely event-had the person who’d had a hand in Elias’s death stood by the entrance long enough to make sure the old man was good and dead before closing the door once again and barring it for the night? To leave a body lying on the ground was hardly satisfactory but to have attempted to remove it would have left even more traces in the snow. Perhaps the person, whoever it was, hoped that the death of Elias might be seen as accidental. And, except for the presence of the cursed sword (and a few blood stains), it might have been an accident. Men and women and children have died of cold on the London streets in winter. Why should it be any different in the wilds of Cambridgeshire?

But this looked like an unnatural death. How had it happened? I tried to think it through clearly.

There were some highly unnatural explanations. The sword had a legend attached to it suggesting that it could fly through the air of its own accord. Also, it was said to bring bad fortune in its wake. So maybe the sword had lifted itself clear of its brackets above the fire and attacked Elias. Divine-or demonic-intervention? Pah, superstition! (in Cuthbert’s words) would be my rejoinder to that. Another freakish thought which passed through my head was that Elias might have inflicted the wound on himself prior to staggering out of doors. An even more freakish idea was that Grant the monkey might have had a hand in all of this. He had certainly been present in the hall during the early hours of the morning. His footprint was in the ash which had blown out from the dying fire as the door had been opened. It was very likely, therefore, that Grant had witnessed his master’s last moments, or some of them. Of course, this was knowledge that the monkey could not impart. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that no one could have interpreted his gibberings.

So much for clear thinking.

No, leaving aside flying swords and the testimony of monkeys, this was murder through a human agency and the finger was pointing towards one N. Revill. Now, it wasn’t me, presently moping on a chest in the dead man’s chamber. So who was it? Who had a motive to do away with Elias Haskell? The answer to this was obvious, any of his would-be heirs, frustrated by his game-playing, hoping to lay hands on his supposed fortune.

Clear thinking once again.

I rose from the chest where I was sitting, uncomfortably. Andrew shifted from his slouching posture but I paid him no attention. I wandered across to where Grant the monkey was moping in his cage. ‘Cage’ was really a misnomer since he was free to come and go as he wanted, and there was no catch or hasp on the door. At the moment Grant didn’t want to go anywhere. He crouched in the corner, head hanging down, his brow wrinkled in perplexity. It struck me that his grief at Elias’s death was probably deeper than that of anybody else in the house apart from Martha. However, he hadn’t completely quit his old habits for there was something gleaming on the floor inside the cage. I opened the door and reached for it but the beast let out a great shrieking and I withdrew my hand quickly. Nevertheless I had a fairly good idea what it was. I moved away from Grant and ambled across the room. I moved casually so as not to alarm Andrew, who continued to lounge by the door.

I was looking for signs of struggle or some disturbance in the chamber. There was nothing evident. Some of the furniture might have been shifted slightly but because the room was packed with stuff it was hard to tell. Nor could I see any evidence of blood, although the floorboards were already old and stained, and covered in a haphazard mixture of rushes and herbs, some of which had been freshly laid to dispel the scent of death. I glanced towards the chimney-piece. Above it were the iron brackets in which the sword had lain. A ghost image of the weapon seemed to be imprinted on the wall. It must have hung there for many years. But unlike Elias’s body, the sword hadn’t been restored to its resting place.

I recalled holding the implement out in the open air and looking at the inscriptions on the blade. They were in Latin and hard to read after so much age and wear and tear. But my Latin is good-my father, a parson, saw to that (with his rod if necessary)-and my eyesight is keen. I hadn’t paid much attention when I was outside but I recalled the gist of the words now. One said something about the false speaker forfeiting his honour while the other side of the sword offered a different quotation to do with God loving a cheerful giver and everybody hating a miser. Who was the miser in this case? Elias Haskell, hoarding his tributes and playing games with his heirs? Who were the lessons on the sword for, I wondered. The man wielding the weapon or the unfortunate individual on the receiving end of it? Did they mitigate the act of killing or salve the wound?

Another aspect of the sword occurred to me too. It had been damaged. The end of one of the cross-pieces, depicting a dog’s head, had been broken off. Now, this might have been its condition on the previous evening when I’d first examined the blade and hilt in this very chamber but I was almost certain that the cross-piece was whole and undamaged then. If that was the case, the dog-end must have been snapped off during the night. Not surprising, considering that the weapon had seen action before being discovered next to Elias’s corpse. But, in that case, what was the missing piece, the dog’s-head, doing in the monkey’s cage?

At that moment I heard a noise behind me and a hand brushed at my knee. Fortunately I wasn’t altogether unprepared and, unlike the last occasion, didn’t leap back in shock. Grant was hunched behind me, his arms dangling along the floor, his furrowed brow raised expectantly. I noticed Andrew watching us. When Grant was sure he had my full attention he started to bounce up and down, and to gesture and gibber.

What was he trying to tell me? I was standing near the fire (which was not lit). Perhaps the monkey was outraged that I was stationed in his favourite spot. But, no, it wasn’t that. He was trying to tell me something else. I looked behind me. There was the chimney-piece with the great capital H in its centre. There were the tapestries on either side of-ah, I had it! Or I thought I had it. One of the pictures depicted Judith in the act of holding the severed head of Holofernes. A bloody story it is too, when the beautiful widow insinuates her way into the camp of Nebuchadnezzar’s general so as to to take him by surprise and deprive him of his noddle. The tapestry showed her grasping the general’s head in her left hand. She held it by the hair. The other hand gripped a sword which she held erect. There was fresh blood on the blade. Judith was wearing a red hat, the same shade as the blood. This was undoubtedly what Grant was trying to draw my attention to. Someone had killed his master, old Elias, with a sword like the one depicted in the tapestry. Elias hadn’t been decapitated but he had certainly been struck around the head. The only trouble was that Grant wasn’t telling me any more than I already knew. Still, never let anyone say that monkeys are dull-witted or unfeeling creatures.

And then another idea occurred to me. What if…

The door opened and Martha Haskell entered the room. This time she looked full at me.

‘It is all right, Nicholas.’

‘All right? What’s all right?’

‘You were seen.’

She nodded to Andrew that he should go, and the stable-hand grinned his empty grin and slipped from the room.

‘Before you were seen standing by my uncle’s body-’ she swallowed hard then had control of herself once again-‘you were seen in the courtyard coming out of the house.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Swiftly she explained. It was my good fortune that the lodge-keeper’s boy Davey Parsons, the one with jug ears, had been gazing out of the little window which gave onto the courtyard at the very moment when I’d emerged to examine Elias’s body. He had seen me pick up the sword and then discard it as the rest of the household appeared at the door. Davey had gone not to his father, who would most likely have cuffed him about the head or booted him in the rear, but to his sister in the kitchen who had, in turn, reported to her mistress. I could only suppose that Davey was grateful to me for having saved him from a kicking on the previous afternoon. Or perhaps he had a disinterested regard for justice. Whatever the reason, his testimony, haltingly delivered to Martha and then repeated to Cuthbert Haskell and the others was sufficient to exonerate me from blame. Davey had particularly noticed that I’d shed a tear over the cold corpse of Elias Haskell. He had seen it glittering on my cheek. Perhaps he wasn’t used to the sight of tears. I did remember wiping an eye which had watered at the sharpness of the winter morning. But it might have been watering for Elias also.

In addition there was another reason why I was being permitted to leave this place of confinement, Martha said. Cooler heads had prevailed. Although my guilt seemed to speak loud and clear when I’d been discovered clutching the sword over the body of the master of the house, a short period of reflection had been enough to convince the Haskell cousins that there could be no strong cause for me to do away with Elias. No cause at all, in fact. I was a stranger to the house, I had no interest in whether the old man lived or died, he was not going to leave me any portion in his will. This, combined with the jug-eared boy’s witness, was enough to set me free.

‘You should leave here, Nicholas,’ said Martha. ‘There is no reason for you to stay the arrival of Mr Fortescue.’

‘Mr Fortescue?’

‘The magistrate from Cambridge.’

‘The road is clear then?’

‘It is passable now. Parsons in the lodge has been despatched to request his presence. Even if you don’t get as far as Cambridge there is an inn on the road. You could put up there. Get on with your business. Leave now. Visit the Maskells.’

‘I’d almost forgotten about the Maskells. Forgotten I was in the wrong house.’

‘If you don’t go now, Nicholas, you may be stranded at Valence House for longer, much longer.’

‘You’d like me to go, Martha?’

‘This is a family matter.’

‘Don’t you need me as a witness?’

‘You said yourself you know nothing.’

‘That was earlier. I know now.’

‘Know what?’

‘Who it was who murdered your uncle.’

She took a bit of persuasion but I eventually convinced Martha that she should call all the cousins into the hall so that I could explain things to them. I hinted that I had seen something from my window during the night, something which would throw light on the death of Elias and unmask the perpetrator. I was by no means as sure of my ground as I appeared. But I had a good idea or two, and I was depending on that-and my skill as a player-to see me through the next stage.

There was a risk, I knew that. But I felt as though this household owed me something for having falsely imprisoned me in the first place. The finger of guilt had been pointed in my direction, and now I would point it at…someone else. Besides, I’ve always enjoyed that moment when the villain is revealed at the end of the story. It happens at the close of the play of Hamlet, for example. And it was, in part, this same Hamlet which had given me a notion as to how this strange crime could have been committed.

However long it might have seemed, only a handful of hours had passed while I was shut up in Elias’s chamber and it was late morning. Motes of dust danced in the sun-beams that shot through the hall windows and, outside, the snow was turning into slush. On the dining table the sword had been laid out on a fusty blanket, perhaps as evidence for the magistrate to see. Taking care not to touch it, I established that the end of one of the cross-pieces was indeed broken off.

There was a mixture of resentment and curiosity as the Haskell family gathered in the hall at Martha’s urging. She told them that I had something to impart about the death of Elias. Even Grant the monkey put in an appearance before being shooed away by the housekeeper Abigail. For my part I was rather sorry to see him go, regarding him as an ally. Meanwhile Cuthbert watched me with his lawyer’s gaze while Rowland seemed affronted with the world in general. Old Valentine’s glasses glinted in my direction and Elizabeth stuck her nose in the air. Nothing seemed to link them except their noses and a mutual dislike. Martha hovered on the edge of the scene and Abigail provided ale and wine. The sword remained where it was on the table, the spectre at the feast. I think that no one was willing to lay hands on it, as if it carried the taint of guilt, otherwise it might have been removed.

‘If you’ve something to say, Master Revill,’ said Cuthbert, mindful of the law, ‘then it would be best to save it until the magistrate arrives.’

‘I agree,’ said Rowland. ‘We should wait for the proper authorities.’

‘The trail might be cold by then,’ I said, and that silenced them for a moment even though I wasn’t exactly sure what I was talking about. Nevertheless it was plain from the way they were sitting around the table that they were waiting for me to deliver, to make good on my promise to clear up a mystery. All except one of those present (or that’s what I assumed).

So I started.

‘I know that Elias Haskell was murdered, and I know how. Each of you went to see him last night and…’

‘Yes,’ said Dame Elizabeth, ‘and my dear cousin was alive when I left him.’

‘He was alive when you all left him,’ I said. ‘We know that because Abigail here was the very last in his chamber-and her master was on the verge of sleep then.’

Somewhere in the background I was aware of the housekeeper nodding her head vigorously.

‘But,’ I continued, ‘there’s nothing and no one to say that one of you didn’t return to Elias’s chamber later.’

‘Why should any of us do that?’ said Cuthbert. ‘Be careful, Revill. There is a penalty in law for those who make false accusations.’

‘I haven’t accused anyone yet,’ I said, feeling increasingly uncomfortable and doing my best to conceal it. ‘But it stands to reason that one of the Haskell cousins has the best of motives for wanting to get rid of old Elias-certainly a better motive than a player who happened to have wandered into Valence House by chance.’

‘By chance? I thought you were here by appointment, young man,’ said Dame Elizabeth.

‘So I was but never mind that. I don’t know whether it was exasperation or greed or despair, or a mixture of all three, but one of the people in this room was driven to assail Elias with the sword-the very one that lies before you on the table. Elias was mortally wounded by the blow, perhaps already dead. Then this…individual…decided that it would be safer if the body was to be found outside, perhaps at some distance from the house.’

‘Oh yes, Master Revill,’ said Rowland, not bothering to keep the sneer out of his voice. ‘And how was that done? Did the dead man walk? There was only one set of footprints outside, remember, and those footprints were only going in one direction. One set of footprints apart from yours. We saw that clearly this morning.’

‘That’s because Elias was carried outside the house. When I looked out of the window last night I saw a tall figure standing in the snow, taller than anyone here. The reason was that old Elias was being lifted on another’s shoulders. He was already a tall man, but this way he was a good head higher.’

Carried like St Christopher bore the Christ child across the river. It was that image which Grant the monkey had been trying to draw my attention to in the tapestry depicting a man carrying someone on his shoulders, and not the tapestry showing Judith with the severed head of Holofernes. This was what the monkey had seen as he stood in the hall last night. His master, dead, being shifted out of doors and into the snowy night. The door swung open, causing the ash from the dying fire to blow across the hall like a grey veil, and the monkey left his imprint. And he gibbered. I heard him from my little room upstairs.

‘But there was only one set of tracks, going out,’ said Valentine. ‘Nothing coming back.’

The gentleman might have been old but he had his wits about him.

‘Ah, I have worked out how that was done,’ I said. ‘Hamlet.’

I had their attention now, even though some of them were regarding me as if I’d lost my wits, rather like Prince Hamlet himself.

‘It was you,’ I said, nodding in the direction of Rowland Haskell, ‘who said at supper that you’d seen Master Shakespeare’s play about the mad Dane. You said there was a lot of silly talk in it, talk about hawks and handsaws and crabs going backwards.’

‘I remember,’ said Rowland, ‘but what has this to do with the death of our cousin?’

‘Because the person who carried the body out of the house took it only a few yards before depositing it on the ground. That was far enough to achieve the right effect.’

‘What effect?’ said Martha.

‘That Elias had been by himself when he died. That perhaps his death was the result of divine intervention-or demonic intervention I should say.’

I waited for someone to object but none of those seated round the table said a word.

‘Then, once the body had been tumbled onto the snowy ground, that same person was careful to retrace their steps-by walking backwards like a crab and treading in the imprints already left in the snow. That way it would appear that Elias was alone when he died.’

‘And the sword?’ said Cuthbert. ‘How do you explain that?’

‘I believe it was thrown from the doorway after Elias had been left on the ground. I remember thinking it odd that the sword was some distance from the body. Most likely it would have been too difficult for the individual who killed the old man to carry body and sword together. I suspect that he came back inside, and threw the sword from here.’

I gestured over my shoulder towards the door.

‘In God’s name, why?’ said Rowland. I noticed that the sneer had gone from his tones.

‘Because of that story about the sword being cursed and flying through the air of its own accord, and so on. I know it sounds unlikely, the kind of thing you might read in a story or fable. But this killing was not planned, I believe. It occurred on the spur of the moment. This was the best the murderer could come up with to give a kind of superstitious gloss to the whole business.’

‘Superstition!’ said Cuthbert, but not so dismissively as he had on the previous evening.

‘Well, you can stop looking in my direction,’ said Dame Elizabeth. ‘I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, you know, and could certainly not have carried my cousin on my shoulders and then thrown a massy sword out into the night. It’s preposterous.’

I wasn’t sure whether she was referring to the whole story I’d spun or only to the idea that she might have been the perpetrator. I admired the way in which she’d brought in our late, great Queen Elizabeth, who had described herself as a weak and feeble woman (but one having the stomach of a king) during the Spanish Armada of ’88. For all her protestations, though, I reckoned that this Elizabeth might have done it, for Elias was all skin and bone and there is no limit to what a determined woman may accomplish.

Now it was Valentine’s turn to pipe up.

‘You may leave me out of the reckoning too, Master Revill. Like my dear cousin Elizabeth I am far too old for all this. I have enough trouble lugging my own bones around.’

I was inclined to agree with him. He was quicker-witted than he looked and might be more robust too, but I doubted that that would extend to his cutting down his cousin and carrying him out of doors. So that left just the two of them, the lawyer Cuthbert and the merchant Rowland. It was interesting that no one had yet disputed this version of events, but I had been relying on my account to flush the guilty party from cover. Yet both Cuthbert and Rowland continued to look baffled. The silence lengthened.

There was a sudden crash from beyond the table. Abigail the housekeeper had dropped the jug of ale which she had been holding all this time. The jug shattered. This was no great disaster but a trifling household accident. Yet Abigail flung her hands to her face and rushed from the room, wailing. Nobody spoke. I looked down at the floor where what was left of the drink from the jug was being speedily absorbed by the rushes that were laid there. And I recalled the fresh rushes in Elias’s room, put down to dispel the scent of death-but laid even before Elias’s body had been returned to his chamber, before I’d been imprisoned there. Very meticulous the house-keeping in this place.

Unless, of course, the rushes were laid down by someone who perhaps wished to cover up fresh, bloody marks on the floor. And who was in a better position to put down a new covering of rushes and herbs, and to know where the stores of such things were kept, than the housekeeper of Valence?

Abigail.

Abigail, who had not merely renewed a floor covering but had changed her clothing as well. She was the sole member of the household to appear in a different outfit this morning. I’d taken her black smock for a mark of respect for her late master but suppose that the real reason for the change was that the old oatmeal-coloured smock was stained with blood, Elias’s blood? And, if we were looking now for someone who had the sinews to carry the old man outside and then to toss the sword into the snow after him, then Abigail certainly had the strength.

All this flashed through my mind much more quickly than it takes to put it down here. Indeed, my mind was still racing as I took off in pursuit of the housekeeper, followed by Martha and the others. We reached the door of the kitchen. It was shut. Meg’s sister was outside, looking confused and fearful. Abigail had ordered her out of the kitchen, and when the girl seemed to hesitate had seized her by the hair and dragged her to the door and pushed her to the far side of it. She’d then bolted it.

We listened at the door but could hear nothing. There was a window, Martha said, which gave onto the yard. We tore through the house and into the yard. The snow had turned slushy and the place where Elias’s body had lain was already no more than a vaguely darker shape on the ground. Round the wing of the house, and towards the back quarters where the kitchen was. The casement window was open, Abigail had not thought to secure herself that way.

But then she hadn’t needed to. All she wanted was to buy herself a few moments, enough to swallow the concoction that she must have had stored away for just such a terrible pass, to use either on herself or on another. By the time I’d climbed over the sill and entered the kitchen and unbarred the door to admit the others, it was too late.

Or almost too late. The housekeeper was dying but not quite dead. Perhaps she had misjudged the poison dose (which I think was aconite but am not absolutely sure) and so condemned herself to a few hours of life rather than a few minutes. She was carried, in great distress, to her private room which was scarcely larger than a cupboard. She lay on her trestle bed, shaking and sweating and bringing up terrible-smelling bile. The kitchen girl, Meg’s sister, attempted to give her an emetic but Abigail gestured her away. It was too late. We took it in turns to keep watch on her, for if she was a murderess she was also a dying woman, and afterwards the story was pieced together from our rags of testimony.

Abigail’s dying words were the most potent witness to her guilt that there could have been. Her dying words and her despairing choice of suicide, and one other thing which I’ll come to in a moment. But we heard-those of us clustered about her poor, wracked body-we heard that it had been she who had killed Elias with the sword. She hadn’t intended to kill him in that way, although she had been a long time killing him another way, by feeding him soporifics mixed with traces of belladonna. He had promised her part of his estate, as he had promised the cousins, and she was trying to hasten his demise. Otherwise he might never have gone, she said, he was a tough old bugger who’d’ve outlived them all.

But he had grown suspicious of the nightly soporifics and other remedies (which were perhaps the reason for his latest bout of illness) and, after many hints, had openly accused her when she was in his chamber the previous night following the visits of the Haskell cousins. An argument ensued, then a fight when Elias had struggled up from his bed, his bony arms flailing. As the dying Abigail told it, to defend herself, she had seized the sword from its place over the chimney-piece and struck her master a single blow on his forehead. He straightaway expired.

In a panic, she disposed of the body and the sword in the way that I had described (though without ever imagining that it was the housekeeper who’d done it). She wanted to remove the body and sword from the house, from her domain. Perhaps she thought that his death would be seen as a queer form of suicide, perhaps she was trusting to the superstition surrounding the sword to divert the blame from her. Perhaps her thinking was a strange mixture of sense and nonsense. She returned to clean up the bloodstains from the chamber as best she could, laying fresh rushes to obscure the marks. Of course she had had to change into a different over-dress as well because her clothes were stained. She had chosen a mourning black. Widow’s weeds.

And indeed from the strangled comments Abigail let fall it was apparent that she had once entertained hopes of marrying Elias Haskell herself but that the old man’s interest and favour had transferred to Martha on the death of the girl’s father. So the housekeeper had seen her chances of becoming mistress of Valence fade. Resentment had turned to slow-burning anger and the determination to salvage something from the wreckage. She knew her master’s habit of toying with his cousins in the matter of promises and bequests, but it did not seem to have occurred to her that he might be doing the same with her.

Whether there was any treasure or anything of real value in the house I did not discover. The next morning, after the death of the housekeeper, I rode away from Valence on Rounce. I was pleased to quit this strange house for good and intended to return to Cambridge before calling on the Maskells, who dwelt north of the city. I did, however, make Martha promise that she would visit me, should she ever come to London. She thanked me for my part in solving the mystery of her uncle’s death. I asked her what she was going to do with the sword.

‘I shall keep it,’ she said. ‘It was not the sword but Abigail killed him.’

‘And you will take care of Grant?’ I said.

‘I am fond of the monkey. I did not care for him at first but my uncle liked him and I believe he liked my uncle.’

‘Yes, I think so,’ I said. ‘The monkey did him good service at the end.’ Martha looked baffled but just then Mr Fortescue arrived at her side with some questions and I took advantage of her distraction to clamber onto my hired mount and ride out of the gatehouse.

In the latter stages of the housekeeper’s confession, Mr Fortescue the magistrate had appeared, in time to to hear her final self-incrimination before she expired. Her mode of death was terrible enough but perhaps preferable to the punishment visited on poisoners, whose crime is so heinous that they may be burnt as heretics are burnt. And it was not only her dying words, and her chosen suicide, which gave force to her testimony but also an item that was discovered in a pocket of her black mourning smock. It was the end of the sword’s cross-piece, the image of a dog’s head. It was generally assumed that she had picked it up when it had been broken off the sword during the tussle between her and Elias, and put it in her pocket. But I knew better. I’d seen this very object in the monkey’s cage the previous morning. I recalled the way in which the monkey had clamoured for admission to our session in the hallway and the way in which Abigail had shooed him impatiently off the scene. While that had been going on, I reckoned, Mr Grant had slipped the piece of the sword into her garment, a kind of pick-pocketing in reverse. It was his way of linking the housekeeper to the death of his master.

Nor did the genius of Grant stop there. I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps he had been trying to alert me to both of the tapestries which hung by the chimney-piece in old Elias’s room. Not only the image of St Christopher but also the picture of the murderous Judith, holding her upright sword. Abigail had enacted both parts, killing a man with a single blow from the ancient weapon and then carrying his body out of doors, in the attempt to sow confusion about the cause of Elias’s death. Yet Grant had witnessed all this and then done his best to tell me about it, as well as to provide evidence against the wrong-doer. Never let anyone say that monkeys are unfeeling creatures-or dull-witted ones.