The Silent Woman

Chapter Three

A harrowing afternoon shaded into a long evening then turned imperceptibly into a restive night. Anne Hendrik was sorely perplexed. The home that she prized so much, and within whose walls she felt so secure, had been invaded. A dying girl, who refused to divulge her message, had splintered the ordered calm of her life in Bankside and the assumptions on which it was based. Anne had been taught just how much she loved Nicholas Bracewell but just how little she knew of him. What she had always admired as restraint and discretion she now saw as secretiveness. He had been hiding something from her all this while and it had now emerged into the light of day like a long-buried mole to threaten the whole future of their friendship. Pleasant memories have no need of suppression. Only murkier secrets have to be concealed.

Anne paced anxiously up and down, at once longing for his return and praying that he would not come back. Her heart wanted Nicholas to sweep into the house and smother all her hostile thoughts beneath a pillow of explanation, but her head knew that he could never do that. His behaviour had been an open admission of guilt. What dread secret had he tried to outrun when he left his home in Barnstaple? What fearful consignment was the girl carrying to him? Who had sent the grim message and why was it transported in such a strange manner? She speculated on the possibilities and found none that brought comfort. As the night wore on, her nerves became even more frayed, and she was thoroughly jangled by the time she heard him arrive back and stable the horse. Anne quickly took a seat and tried to muster her composure. When Nicholas let himself into the house, he moved with a wary fatigue. Clearly, he did not expect his usual hospitable welcome.

‘You are late,’ she said crisply.

‘There was much to do, Anne.’

‘It draws toward midnight.’

‘You should have retired to your bed.’

‘I feared that you might join me there.’

She blurted it out before she could stop herself and the force of the rebuff made him flinch. A mutual code of conduct was immediately ruptured. Whenever Nicholas and Anne had serious disagreements — and they arose often between two strong-willed personalities — they always resolved them as soon as possible in each other’s arms. That source of reconciliation had been summarily closed off to him.

‘We leave for Oxford in the morning.’

She stiffened. ‘I had thought you would ride post haste to Barnstaple,’ she said sharply. ‘Someone has sent for you. Do not let me detain you here.’

‘Anne-’

‘More important business calls you away.’

‘Do but hear me-’

‘I listened to that girl instead. Her silence was all too eloquent. It spoke of another Nicholas Bracewell, of a man with whom I have never been acquainted, of a hunted creature who has been using my house as a hiding place.’

‘That is not so!’ he insisted.

‘Then why have you lied to me?’

‘I have always told you the truth.’

‘No, Nick,’ she said, rising to confront him, ‘you have told me only enough to content me and held back the rest. The face that you wear in London is only a mask and I took it for the real man. It is a cruel deception. Who are you!’

‘I am yours, my love.’

He reached out for her but her eyes flashed so angrily that he retracted his arms at once. Her rejection of him was doubly painful. Westfield’s Men were due to leave London the next day on a lengthy tour. On the eve of previous departures, Nicholas invariably took a fond farewell in the comfort of her bed but this custom was also being breached.

‘You do me wrong,’ he said softly.

‘Then I repay you in kind, Nick.’

‘The situation is not as it may seem.’

‘Enlighten me.’

An awkward pause. ‘I may not do that.’

‘Because you do not care enough about me.’

‘I care too much, Anne, and would not wish to hurt.’

‘Is that your ruse, sir?’ she said tartly. ‘You beguile me freely until your past begins to overtake you, then you pretend it was all done in order to protect my feelings. I have been misled here. I have been abused. Why?’

‘I do not know the bottom of it myself.’

‘Go back to the beginning,’ she suggested. ‘Why did you flee from Devon?’

‘I have told you before, Anne,’ he argued. ‘I sought adventure. I did what thousands of young men do when they hear the call of the sea. Drake was leaving on his voyage around the world and it was too great a temptation for my questing spirit. I left Plymouth in the Pelican. When we sailed back into the same harbour three years later, our ship had been renamed The Golden Hind.’

‘That was not the only change you suffered,’ she said levelly. ‘It was Nicholas Bracewell, the son of a Barnstaple merchant, who set sail. He came back to be the book holder with a theatre company in London.’

He nodded soulfully. ‘You are right, Anne. The voyage wrought many alterations. I saw and endured things I do not care even to think upon now. Anybody would have been changed by such an experience.’

‘Why did you never go back home?’

‘I chose to remain here.’

‘Who is now sending for you from Barnstaple?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Is it a man or a woman?’ His hesitation was all the proof that she required. ‘Even so! It is a woman and one who still has much power over you that you race to obey, even though her call has brought murder in its wake.’ Anne was now glowing with indignation. ‘And this is the man I have allowed to share my house and — God pardon me! — my bed! Well, ride out of London tomorrow but do not expect to lay your head here when you return.’

‘Anne, wait!’ he implored as she turned on her heel. ‘We must not part like this. You judge me too harshly.’

‘Then where is your denial?’ she said, rounding on him once more. ‘Tell me all and put my mind at rest.’

‘That is beyond my power,’ he admitted sadly, ‘but I will not have you believe that all that has passed between us has been a pretence on my part. It is not so! Some of the happiest moments of my life have been with you. And if you wish to know the true reason I prefer to stay in London rather than return to Barnstaple, then it stands before me.’

His plea was so heartfelt and genuine that her anger cooled for a second and she saw once more the man to whom she had ineluctably been drawn. Nicholas Bracewell was indeed a loving friend to whom she had willingly yielded herself. He had many sterling qualities but contemplation of them only served to embitter her again. As a result of an undelivered message from Devon, she lost an honest man and gained a duplicitous one. While enjoying her favours, he always had an invisible lover lying beside him. Anne Hendrik had merely shared him.

Nicholas resumed softly. ‘What has happened between us under this roof has been very dear to me, Anne, and I treasure those memories. I did not dissemble. You saw me for the man I really was.’ He offered a tentative hand. ‘I would not be exiled from you for all the world.’

‘Then I will put you to the test,’ she said, ignoring the outstretched palm. ‘Remain here.’

‘How so?’

‘When the company leaves tomorrow, stay with me.’

‘But I am bound to Westfield’s Men.’

‘A second ago you were bound to me.’

‘I have given my word to Master Firethorn.’

‘You gave it just as easily to me even now.’

‘He and I came to composition.’

‘We have done that, too, often enough.’

‘I travel with the company as far as Bristol and then strike on alone to Barnstaple to … to …’

‘Go on, go on,’ she said. ‘State your true purpose.’

‘To settle my affairs.’

‘While I sit here like patient Griseld to await my lord’s return. Is that your hope?’

‘Anne,’ he soothed, ‘please hear me out. Imagination plays tricks on you. Be steadfast as before. Do but trust me until I return and I will-’

‘No!’ she snapped. ‘This house is barred to you from this day forth. I ask you to account for yourself and you cannot. I ask you to stay in London and you will not. There is only one thing for it.’ Her tone was icily dismissive. ‘Go to her, Nick.’

‘Who?’

‘That creature who lies with you in my bed.’

‘You talk in riddles.’

‘The silent woman. Run back to her.’

Nicholas felt a stab of pain that made him reel. At a time when he desperately needed Anne’s love and support, it was being withdrawn completely from him. He stood rooted to the floor as she mounted the stairs, and he suffered another spasm when he heard the door of her bedchamber slam behind her with an air of finality. It was minutes before he found the will to creep furtively up to his own room, to gather up his belongings, to take one last valedictory glance around and then to slip out into the black wilderness of a life without her.

Midnight approached rapidly and Edmund Hoode quivered with anticipatory joy. It was the appointed hour when he and his beloved would come together at last and drown the weeks of enforced separation in the turbulent water of passion. He felt truly elated for the first time in years. At this stage in most of his romantic attachments, he would be suffering the cumulative humiliations that afflict those who are perennially unlucky in love and who are singled out by fate as objects of scorn and mockery. Jane Diamond had redeemed his earlier miseries. In encouraging his advances, she had given him a confidence he would not have believed possible, and in succumbing to his desires — nay, replicating them with her own frank yearnings — she had lent a touch of arrogance to his manner. He was a new man.

Hoode deserved her. He had earned his good fortune by the sustained fervour of his devotions. Letters, verses and gifts had been showered upon his mistress. Every time she watched him perform at the Queen’s Head, he wrote additional lines for himself in a code that only she could comprehend. Every time they saw each other in public, she replied with secret gestures that were meaningless to anyone but him. Jane Diamond was not simply a vision of loveliness with a disposition to match. She was the finest creation of Edmund Hoode, poet and playwright, the character he had delineated for himself in his robuster fantasies, as near to perfection as a human being could be and with one quality that outshone all the others. She was his.

He lurked in a doorway opposite her house and listened for the midnight bell. Only one minute now kept them apart and he used it to reflect on his newly acquired strength of mind. That very afternoon, Lawrence Firethorn and Barnaby Gill had launched a two-pronged attack on it, but his defences held. In the evening, it was the turn of Nicholas Bracewell to remind him of his commitments to Westfield’s Men, but not even his friend’s promptings could turn him aside. Hoode refused to struggle his way around the provinces. London could offer him a far more exciting tour for he sought no other stage on which to perform than the pillowed scaffold of Jane Diamond’s bed.

The bell chimed, the lighted candle appeared and Hoode went skipping across the dusty street to tap lightly on the door. It was inched open by a whispering maidservant.

‘Is that you, sir?’

‘It is.’

‘My mistress awaits you.’

‘You serve us well.’

He dropped two coins into her waiting palm then the door swung back to admit him before creaking back into position again. She turned a key in the lock. By the light of her taper, he could just make out the thick iron bolts. Before he could ask why she did not bolt the door, she led him off towards the stairs. Once the ascent began, all thought of security left him. He was inside her house and inside her heart. The sweetest penetration of all now awaited him. He would be able to drink his fill from the finest wine in the vintner’s cellar.

They reached the landing and made their way along the undulating oak boards of a corridor. Pausing at a door, the maidservant knocked then indicated that he should enter. She herself curtseyed and withdrew towards the stairs. Edmund Hoode took a deep breath. The door was the gate to heaven and he stroked it with reverence before pushing it gently open to reveal her bedchamber.

‘Come in, Edmund,’ she called.

‘I am here, my love.’

He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him then inhaled the bewitching perfume of her presence. He had painted this scene in his mind a hundred times but reality beggared his invention. She looked and sounded far lovelier than he had dared to imagine and the bedchamber was a most appropriate setting for her. In the subtle and calculating light of a dozen small candles, she reclined on the bed amid a flurry of white pillows. Her face was a flower, her hair a waterfall of brown silk. She wore a long satin nightgown with a drawstring at the neck, and the contours of her body were at once displayed and concealed. Jane Diamond was the answer to a much overused prayer, and she lay ready for him on the altar of Venus.

He took a faltering step towards her.

‘I have missed you cruelly, Jane.’

‘Come closer that you may tell me how much.’

‘I thought this moment would never come.’

‘Patience and constancy have their due reward.’

‘No man is more patient than I,’ he declared, moving nearer to her. ‘And as for constancy, the Tower of London will crumble sooner than my devotion to you.’

‘I know it well, Edmund.’

Now he had come into the circle of light, she was able to inspect him more closely and she was pleased with her examination. Edmund Hoode looked immaculate. He wore a blue velvet doublet with green satin sleeves, and embroidered paned hose scaled with yellow damask. The lawn ruff at his neck held up the big, white, willing plate of a face. When he saw her look up at his blue velvet hat with its trembling ostrich feather, he doffed it at once and gave an apologetic bow. She crooked a finger to bring him to her, took his hat and put it aside, then raised her lips for him.

The first tremulous kiss dissolved all inhibition and he took her in his arms with unrestrained ardour. They had waited a long time for this supreme moment and both intended to savour it to the full. Jane was soon plucking at the fastenings on his doublet while he used his teeth to pull at the drawstring on her nightgown. This was no sordid act of adultery. The purity of their love lifted them on to a more ethereal plain. Their senses were immeasurably heightened. Their lips found a rich honey with each kiss, their hands found warmer flesh with each caress. The aroma of pleasure made them almost giddy and this was their undoing for they did not hear the knock of the real world on the door of their fantasy. Only when the maidservant burst into the room did they come down from their clouds of bliss.

‘Make haste, mistress!’ cried the intruder. ‘The master has returned.’

‘That cannot be!’ cried Jane in alarm.

‘He’s here below. I wonder you did not hear him open the door, it creaks so loud.’ The maidservant hissed at Edmund Hoode. ‘Fly, sir! He will surely kill you if he finds you in his bed.’

The maidservant rushed out again and the lovers leapt up. Jane pulled down her nightgown and sped on tiptoe into the corridor in time to hear the heavy tread of boots upon the stairs. She waited long enough to see her husband’s hat and cloak come out of the gloom then she darted back into the bedchamber and closed the door. Two bolts were slid into place and she flung her back against it for extra fortification.

‘Run, Edmund!’ she advised ‘Run!’

‘I try!’ wailed the stricken wooer, attempting to gather up his clothing from the floor. Valour flickered. ‘Should I not stay to defend you, my love?’

‘He will murder us both if he sees you. Go!’

A thunderous banging on the door convinced Hoode that a speedy exit was his only hope of salvation. Opening the window, he hurled his clothing out then dived madly after it without any concessions to self-respect. A forgotten ruff trailed down disconsolately after him then the window was closed tight. The interrupted swain grabbed his apparel and sprinted off through the streets as if a pack of hounds were on his tail. Jane Diamond might have turned London into an enchanted garden but her husband had just made a tour with Westfield’s Men seem infinitely more appealing. He did not stop running until he reached the comparative safety of his lodging and even there he barricaded himself in.

The lady herself was covered in distress but spared the ultimate horror of being interrogated by her husband. In response to his pounding, she told him that she was already in bed and that he was disturbing her slumbers. Accepting her word, he mumbled an apology and trudged off to spend the night in another chamber. Jane Diamond was so relieved by her narrow escape that she flung herself down and buried her head among the pillows. She was still rehearsing the excuse she would use next morning when she eventually fell asleep.

The real beneficiary of the night’s work was the maidservant. In addition to gratitude from her mistress and money from Edmund Hoode, she was given a much more generous payment by Lawrence Firethorn. In the cloak and hat provided by the maidservant, any man could have looked like a returning husband who is only glimpsed once on a dark staircase, but the portrayal had been given real authenticity by a master of his craft. The absent spouse had cause to be eternally thankful to Lawrence Firethorn. Not only had the finest actor of the day deigned to impersonate him, he had also saved him by a hair’s breadth from certain cuckoldry.

Firethorn collected his horse and rode off towards Shoreditch in a mood of self-congratulation. Once he had found out the address of Hoode’s inamorata, he had won over the maidservant with a combination of charm and bribery, and been informed of the tryst. It had been simple to set up his performance and to achieve the desired response. A much-needed member of the company had been forcibly returned to its bosom and a wandering wife had been frightened into fidelity for at least a fortnight. Firethorn could now play the returning husband at home and while away his last night there in connubial delights. His wife, Margery, was made of sterner stuff than Jane Diamond. When she took her man into her bed, nothing and nobody would be allowed to interrupt her until she had wrung the last ounce of pleasure out of him. Firethorn’s heels jabbed the horse into a gallop.

Catastrophe had been averted at the Queen’s Head but the fire there had still been sufficiently destructive to merit a ballad on the subject. It was being sung in the taproom by a dishevelled old pedlar with a once-melodious voice that was thickened by drink and cracked by age. Leonard was among the crowd who listened to the ballad.

Five verses were allotted to a description of how Nicholas Bracewell had helped to prevent the fire from spreading across the roof. The pedlar had not witnessed the event but he had picked up enough details from those who had to be able to compose his ballad with confidence. Using the licence of his trade, he embellished the facts wildly but nobody complained except Alexander Marwood. The landlord sang a woeful descant until he was cowed into silence by the reproach of the final verse.

‘Be warned now you stage strutters all

Lest you again be catched

And such a burning do befall

As to them whose house is thatched

Forbear your whoring breeding biles

And lay up that expense for tiles

Oh sorrow pitiful sorrow and yet all this is true.’

Leonard clapped his huge palms together to lead the applause then lumbered forward to buy one of the copies of the ballad. Though he could not read, he stared at it in utter fascination and let out a rumbling laugh.

‘I’ll give this to Master Bracewell himself,’ he said proudly. ‘It will send him on his way in good humour.’

‘Where does he travel?’ asked a neighbour.

‘With Westfield’s Men, sir. Our yard is so damaged that they have no theatre and needs must make shift. They are forced to go on tour.’ Leonard enjoyed being the holder of privileged information from his friend. ‘The company makes for Oxford and Marlborough, I hear, but they will lose their book holder at Bristol.’

‘Why so?’

‘Because he must go on to Barnstaple.’

The other man blenched. ‘Barnstaple?’ he exclaimed, his West Country accent breaking through his London vowels.

‘He has been called back home. And your voice tells me that you may be from those parts yourself.’ The gravity of his news made Leonard speak in a respectful whisper. ‘We have had strange portents. A message was sent to him but the messenger was poisoned here in this taproom.’

‘How then was it delivered?’ asked the man.

‘The murder was message enough for Master Bracewell. He knows that he is needed in Barnstaple and he will be there when time and Westfield’s Men allow him.’

The listener stroked his raven-black beard and cursed himself for not killing his victim more promptly with the thrust of a dagger. The poison had only done its worst after the messenger had reached the intended recipient. Hired for his ruthless proficiency, the man had for once failed, and dangerous loose ends now trailed from his botched work. Those loose ends would have to be severed before he could collect his reward. He turned back to Leonard, who was still perusing the ballad with a childlike delight.

‘When do Westfield’s Men leave London?’ said the man.

‘At noon, sir.’

‘From the Queen’s Head?’

‘No,’ said Leonard, ‘they would not show themselves here while our landlord still burns so brightly about their fire. I’ll be taking this ballad to the Bel Savage Inn on Ludgate Hill. That is where they set forth upon their adventure.’

‘What manner of man is this Nicholas Bracewell?’

‘A hero, sir.’ He waved the ballad. ‘Here’s warranty.’

‘How would you pick him out from his fellows?’

‘’Tis no great art,’ said Leonard. ‘He is a proper man in every aspect with fair hair and a beard of like description. And though he lives among players who are practised at catching the eye, he is the tallest and the best of them.’ He beamed with nostalgia. ‘Master Bracewell is my friend. I know him by his kindness and good fellowship.’

His companion thanked him and drifted away. He had heard enough to identify his target. Preparations had to be made. There must be no margin of error this time.

Nicholas Bracewell was the first to arrive at Ludgate Hill. Having spent the night at a friend’s lodging in Southwark, he was up early to make the last arrangements for the departure of Westfield’s Men. Taking a company out on the open highway was always a hazardous enterprise and it obliged them to travel armed and ready to repel attacks from one of the many bands of robbers, outlaws and masterless men who roved the countryside. The quality of their venues would fluctuate drastically, and their audiences would be neither as large nor as well tuned to their work as those in London. Bad weather would only hinder a performance at the Queen’s Head. It could cause the company far more inconvenience if it struck them suddenly on some lonely road, soaking their costumes and sapping their morale. Nicholas Bracewell knew that wet, unhappy actors are far more inclined to friction than those who are dry and content.

‘Good morrow, Nick!’

‘Welcome!’

‘A plague on this damnable tour!’

‘Yes, Owen,’ said Nicholas, ‘and yet it is the one tour that is not forced upon us by the plague. London is having a healthy summer and there is no cause to close the theatres and throw us out of our occupation. Fire drives us away.’

‘And it may keep us there in perpetuity.’

‘The Queen’s Head will be restored when we return.’

‘But will that miserable maggot of a landlord allow us near the place? Diu! It gives me the sweating sickness just to look upon Marwood, yet for all that, I’d sooner endure his woebegone hospitality than drag my talent the length and breadth of England.’

Nicholas smiled. ‘What about Wales?’

‘That is different. I would gladly lead Westfield’s Men across the border to the land of my ancestors.’

Owen Elias was an exuberant Welshman, who was becoming one of the mainstays of the company. Dark and manic, he was a gifted actor whose career had been held back by a quickness of temper and a fatal readiness to acquaint people with his true opinion of them. Wearied by his lack of progress, Elias had defected to his company’s arch-rivals, Banbury’s Men, and he was only brought back by the promise of promotion to the rank of sharer. Now that he had a real stake in Westfield’s Men, his forthrightness was slightly diminished, but he still enjoyed a rancorous dispute when he felt — as he did without fail — that he had right on his side. Nicholas Bracewell was very fond of the Welshman and knew that his talent was strong enough to bear the extra weight that a tour placed upon it. A sturdy, fearless character of middle height, Owen Elias was also an extremely useful man to have at your side in a brawl or a swordfight.

‘How now, gentlemen!’

‘Hail, sirs!’

‘I am glad to see your worships so well.’

‘God save you all!’

‘A thousand welcomes.’

‘Farewell, dear London!’

‘Owen, you rogue!’

‘Nick, dear heart!’

Greetings assailed them as the company arrived, singly or in pairs, many with tearful wives or sweethearts clinging to their arms and a few, like Lawrence Firethorn, with their entire family. It would be a poignant leave-taking. The Bel Savage was an apposite location. Standing outside Ludgate itself, it was a big, sprawling, cavernous building that had been in existence for over a hundred and forty years and which occupied its site with half-timbered familiarity. Savage’s Inn, as it had initially been called, was also known as the Bell on the Hoop, and the names had made common cause to give the property a clear title. Long before the first custom-built theatre in London was opened in 1576, the Bel Savage had been staging plays in its courtyard, and it was in this evocative arena that Westfield’s Men now met. Countless prizefights, fencing displays and other entertainments had been held there as well, but the actors saw it solely as part of their heritage. When they gazed up at the three levels of galleries that jutted out at them on every side, they saw cheering spectators and heard the ghost of some dear departed speech. It was only when they glanced across at their leader that they realised the ghost had come back to life because Lawrence Firethorn was declaiming one of the soliloquies he had spoken when he played Hector at that same venue in his younger days.

Nicholas Bracewell had chosen the meeting place as the closest alternative to the Queen’s Head, but he might have been less ready to nominate it if he had known that it overlooked the very spot where the messenger from Devon had first been marked out by her killer. The yard continued to fill and servingmen brought out ale to whet the appetite of the travellers. All but one of the company had now appeared, and Nicholas was touched to see how many of its discarded members had also made the effort to get there in order to wave off their fellows. Thomas Skillen stood nearby, alternately chiding and hugging George Dart, the smallest and youngest of his assistant stagekeepers, clipping his ear as he warned him to discharge his duties correctly and enfolding him in his old arms lest it be the last time they might ever meet. It was a moving sight and it epitomised the true spirit of theatre. Tradition was handing over the torch to innovation.

George Dart would have quailed to hear that such a construction was being placed on his separation from a loved but feared mentor. The hired man occupied the most menial station in the company and it obliged him to be the butt and scapegoat with depressing regularity, yet at least he was still employed. A tour would double the already heavy workload that was thrust upon him and condemn him to play a string of minor parts in the plays, but even these guarantees of additional pain and humiliation were preferable to being cast out with Thomas Skillen and the others.

It was the scurrying legs of George Dart that Nicholas Bracewell used on the previous evening to notify the chosen company of the time and place of departure. The tiny stagekeeper had been given good news to spread while Nicholas reserved for himself the more onerous and saddening task of telling the rest of his fellows that they had been set aside. Knowing their haunts and their habits, he had spent long hours in tracking them down to pass on the bad tidings as gently as he could. It now struck him as a harsh irony that a man enjoined to oust so many others had then himself been ejected from a cherished home.

Emotions were running high in the yard and sobbing was breaking out among the women. When Nicholas saw husbands reassure their wives and lovers embrace their mistresses, his sense of desolation grew. The only person he wanted to see at that moment in time was not there. At the start of any previous tour, Anne Hendrik had always sent him on his way with love and best wishes, but there would be no farewell kiss this time. It emphasised the anomaly of his position. Nicholas was in limbo. He was making a journey between past lives, between a woman who had turned him out and a family he had disowned. It was a dispiriting itinerary because it left him without a final destination.

Someone else took note of his condition and intervened.

‘Come here, Nicholas!’

‘Gladly, mistress.’

‘Where is your good lady?’

‘Detained elsewhere, I fear.’

‘Then I shall give you her due of kisses as well.’

Margery Firethorn fell on him with unashamed affection and planted her lips firmly on his. A handsome woman with a vivacity that tilted towards excess, she had always been fond of the book holder and sensed his dismay at Anne Hendrik’s absence. Relationships within the theatrical world explored all the extremes of human behaviour, and Margery had learnt to accommodate the caprices and eccentricities of her husband’s colleagues. Nicholas Bracewell was the most stable man in the company in every way. If he had parted from a lover, it would not have been done lightly.

‘Write to her, Nick,’ she purred in his ear.

‘What do you say?’

‘Absence can soften even the hardest heart.’

She gave him another kiss then went across to snatch her children away from the arms of Lawrence Firethorn so that she could take a wifely leave of him. Like everything that the actor did, it was a performance in itself and he might have been playing a scene from a tragedy of love. Margery was an ideal soulmate, matching him in passion and tenderness, yet able to summon up reserves of fury that made even his tirades seems mild by comparison. Whether she was caressing or quarrelling with her husband, she was a most formidable woman. Husband and wife now reached down to lift up the children again into communal embrace. When it was over, the actor-manager leapt into his saddle, pulled out his rapier and held it high as he delivered a short speech to give inspiration to his company.

It was time to leave. Nicholas rode up beside him.

‘We must tarry, master. Edmund is not yet here.’

‘He was amongst the first to appear.’

‘I do not see him.’

‘That is because he does not wish to be seen.’

‘He is hidden in the waggon?’

‘Our poet has found another disguise. Mark this.’

Firethorn nudged his friend and indicated the crooked figure of an old parson who sat on a horse near the gateway. He was completely detached from the others and seemed to be deep in solemn contemplation. Firethorn brought him out of it with a clarion call.

‘Edmund!’ he cautioned, ‘there’s one Master Matthew Diamond here to seek a word with you.’

The parson came alive, the horse neighed and the pair of them went cantering out into the street. Westfield’s Men took their cue and rolled out after him. The tour had begun.

Waving his hat in farewell, Lawrence Firethorn led his company away on his bay stallion, a prancing animal with a mettle commensurate with that of its rider. Barnaby Gill rode beside him on a striking grey mare, dressed in his finery and revelling in the opportunity to parade it through the streets. True to prediction, no money was forthcoming from their patron, but Lord Westfield did lend a bevy of horses from his stables so that most of the sharers could make the journey in the saddle. One who did not was Owen Elias, self-appointed driver of the waggon that carried the company’s costumes, properties and scenic devices. The two mighty animals between the shafts were also pulling along the four apprentices and a couple of hired men. George Dart and two other unfortunates trotted at the waggon’s tail with the weary resignation of convicted criminals being dragged to the place of execution. Only when the procession left London and needed to pick up speed would they be allowed to ride aloft with the others.

Nicholas Bracewell brought up the rear on the roan that he had inherited from the dead girl. This not only enabled him to make sure that the pedestrian members of the company did not straggle, it also gave him the opportunity for a last, long, hopeful gaze around the yard as he left it but there was still no sign of her. Leonard trotted beside him and thrust the ballad into his hand.

‘You are famous, Master Bracewell.’

‘That is not how your employer would speak of me.’

‘Forget his hot words,’ said Leonard. ‘I will work on him in your absence and change his mind completely.’

‘Thank you, my friend.’

‘Come back to us one day.’

‘We will, Leonard.’

‘God be with you!’

Leonard had more to say but no breath with which to say it. He staggered to a halt and let his smile and his wave convey his message. Clustered around him were the other well-wishers, calling out their farewells and their encouragement. When the waggon and its cargo were swallowed up in the seething morass of people in the Bailey, a sudden grief descended on the watching group. Touring had its hardships but it was preferable to being left behind. As the company now headed west along Holborn, it left unemployed men and weeping women in its wake. Set apart from the former by virtue of his occupation, Leonard sided instead with the latter and copious tears trickled down his face. Westfield’s Men made the Queen’s Head an exciting place to work. It would seem dull and lifeless without them.

One observer was impervious to the general melancholy. The man with the trim attire and the well-barbered black beard was pleased with what he had witnessed. He had singled out Nicholas Bracewell at once and studied him intently. All that he needed to know was the route the company had taken out of the city and that was now clear. They had followed the line of the city wall as far as Newgate then swung left to take the Uxbridge Road. There was no hurry to follow them. He could judge their pace and how far it was likely to take them by nightfall. His pursuit needed to be stealthy. Their progress would be remarked by all whom they passed on the way, so it would be easy to pick up their trail by enquiry. Westfield’s Men were a memorable spectacle.

He estimated that their first day on the road would take them into the Chilterns. Beaconsfield was probably too close a destination and Stokenchurch too far, so they would find some intermediate spot to spend the night. That was when he would strike. He carried dagger, rapier and club, but it was the knotted cord in his capcase that elected itself as the murder weapon. Putting his foot in the stirrup, he hauled himself up into the saddle and patted the leather bag, which held the cord. It would lie quietly in there like a snake in its lair until it was allowed out to strike with its deadly fangs. Nicholas Bracewell was evidently a strong and alert man who would need to be taken unawares. He was a far worthier target than the innocent girl whose life he had so casually snuffed out. She had been no match for him but Nicholas was a quarry he could be proud to hunt.

He would enjoy killing him.