The Tainted Relic

ACT FIVE

London, 16??

Although the interior of the tent was dim, making it difficult to see clearly, there could be no doubt about it. The man was dead. Ulysses Hatch, publisher and dealer in books, was lying flat on his back. His arms and legs were splayed out and his eyes stared sightlessly at the faded stripes of the tent fabric overhead. He was a large man and the hummock of his belly almost reached to our knees. There wasn’t much doubt either that he’d died by violence. A great splotch spread out like a bloody flag across the incline between his triple chins and his chest.

The dead man and his lumber took up so much space there wasn’t much room for the three of us who were still alive and upright. All around was the clutter of his trade, piles of books, bundles of pamphlets. There were in addition a couple of trunks, stuffed with bolts of cloth, with parcel-gilt plates and goblets and other things, for Ulysses Hatch had not restricted himself to bookselling. I knew this because barely an hour earlier I’d been gazing at the interior of the smaller trunk while Master Hatch carefully withdrew from it a little box that was swaddled in coarse woollen cloth and jumbled, apparently carelessly, among other items. When he told me what the box contained, my vision swam and my legs almost gave way. Moments later, the wooden box was once again tucked among the jumble inside the trunk, which was in turn padlocked by its owner. Now the lid of this same trunk lay open while Ulysses Hatch was spreadeagled on the ground near by. I hadn’t checked yet but I would have bet half a year’s pay that the little box had gone.

The interior of the tent was generously proportioned but a heavy brown curtain almost divided it in two, cutting off the area by the entrance where the book vendor had set out his table and making a private chamber behind. At that moment I was very thankful for that thick fustian curtain. Beyond it, the sounds of the fair proceeded as though nothing had happened. Against the background hum of the crowd, we could hear the cries of ballad singers and confectioners and horse coursers. Within the tent the only sounds were the buzzing of a pair of flies and the slow-drawn breath of three baffled and frightened stage players. The smells that I’d been aware of on my first visit to the tent-the smell of summer’s end and of musty fabric and unwanted paper-were now overlaid by a bitter, burnt odour.

Not one of us had bargained on this development. And it had seemed such a straightforward errand. I was only doing a favour for a man whom I was proud to consider my friend, and the others were here to keep me company. Early that morning we’d been in good spirits. And now look at us, standing over the corpse of a fat publisher and wondering what to do next…

They say that Saint Bartholomew’s Fair is the biggest in the whole world, and who am I to contradict them? Certainly it sometimes seems as though the whole world flocks to the fair for a few days in August, all for the pleasure of being crammed into a couple of acres of land in Smithfield.

It was a hot morning at the back end of summer. Behind us the London walls were visible above a jumble of rooftops while before us the fair was bubbling away like a cooking pot. The hazy air was filled with the cries of the traders and ballad-mongers and the smell of roasting flesh. Smithfield is the place where animals are sold for slaughter, and it’s hard to avoid the idea that the same fate awaits plenty of the Bartholomew visitors. Not slaughter maybe but a good fleecing. At least, that’s what might occur to your average Londoner as he surveys the simple country folk picking their way across the green fields of Hoxton and Islington.

I don’t know whether this thought was in the minds of my two companions as we watched the crowds flowing towards the encampment of stands and booths, each flying their banners and signs like an army before battle. Maybe my friends were preoccupied with less cynical notions: a sort of London pride that we lived in a place that was great enough to bring the world to its door. And a sort of London pity for those unfortunate enough to have to dwell somewhere else.

Needless to say, neither my two friends nor I were Londoners by birth.

A word about the three of us.

We-Abel Glaze, Jack Wilson and I, Nicholas Revill-are members of the King’s Men, formerly the Chamberlain’s Men, based at the Globe theatre in Southwark. We are players, at your service. Or at the service of King James I, to be precise. Jack Wilson was the longest-serving player among us three and Abel Glaze the most recent, but we’d all notched up a good few years by now with London’s premier acting company.

Jack and I had set our hearts on playing from quite early days, but Abel had joined us by an odd route. He had once made a good living-a very good living, much better than the wages he earned on the stage of the Globe playhouse-by trickery. As a counterfeit crank, he had regularly tumbled down in the public highway, foaming at the mouth (the foam produced by a sliver of soap tucked into his gob) and with eyeballs rolling upward in his head. The outskirts of a town were the best place, he said. Abel would wait until the road was clear and a well-dressed party was picking its way along. Younger women were the softest marks and sometimes middle-aged men, he claimed, because girls were naturally tender hearted (unless they were very well dressed) and prosperous middle-aged men generally had something to atone for. Abel once defended this practice to me by saying that, when he’d succeeded in parting these gullible spirits from their money, he was sure that they went on their way with a lighter heart than his own. His practices were an incentive to charity, weren’t they? But now Abel Glaze had gone straight, or as straight as a life in the playhouse would permit.

At the moment I could see Abel’s tapering nose almost quivering while he gazed across the crowd milling round the stalls of Bartholomew Fair.

‘Looking for likely marks, Abel?’ I said.

‘Those days are well behind me, Nick.’

‘Smell that,’ said Jack Wilson. ‘That is Ursula’s smell if I’m not mistaken.’

He sniffed appreciatively and gestured towards the source of the smell, a nearby stall which was advertising its wares with a pig’s head stuck on a pole. I couldn’t help recalling the traitors’ heads which are displayed at the southern end of London Bridge. But those blackened, wizened objects looked less human than that of the pig on the pole, which to my eyes had something beseeching about it. Beneath it was a sign saying: ‘HERE BE THE BEST PIGS. THE PIG’S HEAD SPEAKS IT’.

I’d had breakfast not so many hours earlier but I felt a sudden hunger at the sweet, crisp aroma of roasting pig. Later, I promised myself, we would visit Ursula’s stall for a taste of her wares. Later, after we’d concluded our business at Bartholomew Fair.

‘And look there,’ said Abel. ‘You mentioned marks, Nick…there’s a whole crowd of ’em.’

From our position by the railings that edged the fair, I looked. On an open patch of ground was standing a handsome ballad singer with fair, curled hair surmounted by a red cap. He’d just finished a song and was nodding and smiling at a little gaggle of spectators who, by their own smiling and scattered applause, showed that they appreciated him almost as much as he appreciated himself. He raised his hands placatingly as if they were compelling him to offer one more number. Oh, very well…if you insist. He tossed his red-capped head like a frisky colt before bending once more over the lute that was strung round his neck.

‘I’ve seen him before,’ said Abel. ‘He calls himself Ben Nightingale. You could say it’s his stage name. But Ben Magpie would be more fitting.’

After a few moments’ fiddling with his instrument, all done to heighten audience expectation, the singer called Nightingale struck up to his own accompaniment. He had a pleasant voice which carried clearly through the other shouts and cries in the area. The words were distinct.

My masters and ladies, good people draw near,

And take to your hearts these words you do hear,

Look well to your purses, of robbers beware,

At ’tholomew Fair, Bartholomew Fair.

Cling fast to your goods and tight hold your purse,

Or else you had better been starved by your nurse.

Here are bad men a-plenty, all worthy the noose,

But none, say I, worse than Master Cutpurse.

And so he wound on with his execrable verses. But the bystanders seemed to be enjoying it, nodding in agreement with the sentiments or laughing at the foolishness of those who allowed themselves to become victims of ‘Master Cutpurse’.

‘He should be hanged…’ I said.

‘A bit severe,’ said Jack.

‘…for rhyming “noose” and “purse”.’

‘This piece of his is called “A Warning against Cutpurses”,’ said Abel.

‘Very public spirited of the singer,’ said Jack.

‘Oh, very,’ said Abel. ‘But see the individual at the edge. That one there. His name is Peter Perkin.’

Slightly to one side of the group there stood a short man, his head bent sideways to scoop up the singer’s words. He was squinting as if to concentrate the better on the sound. But I noticed that, beneath half-closed lids, his eyes were darting to and fro. He was dressed as though he’d just come in from the country for the day. There were even a few stems of straw sticking to his rustic hat. Aha, I thought, I bet I know what those straws are for…

All the time the red-capped singer was running through half a dozen stanzas, each of them reflecting on the iniquity of cutpurses and the need for honest citizens to be on their guard, Perkin kept his head down. And as the singer thrummed on the lute strings to signal the end of his piece and the audience’s hands hovered over their pockets and pouches, the short fellow’s eyes flickered ever more rapidly. When Nightingale concluded with a flourish, this bystander was foremost in the applause. I noticed, however, that he didn’t dive for his own purse.

The singer removed his cap and moved among the audience, smiling in the way that all performers smile at the end of the show. To judge by his expression, each coin dropped into the upturned cap appeared to come as a genuine surprise. Why, it seemed to say, you mean that I am to be paid for what is purely my pleasure! As the little audience began to disperse and he was tipping the coins with a practised movement into his own purse, I saw him motion very slightly with his head to his confederate, Peter Perkin. You wouldn’t have guessed that there was anything to connect the two of them if it hadn’t been for that briefest of gestures. This second gentleman casually took himself off in pursuit of a couple of well-padded dames. No doubt, once he’d relieved them of what they were carrying, he would track down others whose fat purses he’d noted while he was pretending to listen to Nightingale.

You had to admire the slickness of the operation. The singer drew the crowds and took their honest tribute once he had rounded off his session with a song against the cutting of purses. Meantime his associate kept watch on where those purses were stashed. It saved time later on if he knew exactly which part of the body to target. Even some bumpkin clinging for dear life to his wordly wealth wouldn’t be secure. It’s wonderful how a straw gently tickled in the ear will cause anyone to let go of what they’re clutching, and our friend in the rustic hat had his armoury of straws.

A cruder pair of thieves would have robbed the spectators there and then while they were listening. But there was a double disadvantage to this: the singer wouldn’t have been paid for his pains if their purses had gone missing and so a little profit would have been forfeit, and-perhaps more important-some suspicion might have been directed at him for distracting the crowd. This way, Ben Nightingale was free to set himself up in another quarter of the fair. It was a trick which he and his accomplice might play two or three times that day, depending on how greedy they were.

There was a court of justice which sat within the precincts of Bartholomew Fair for the duration. It was called Pie-Powder Court. Even though its business was mostly restricted to trading matters (short measures in the ale-tents, coltsfoot mixed in with the tobacco), common thievery and cutpursing certainly fell within its jurisdiction. So we might have marched boldly up to the justices in Pie-Powder and alerted them to these rogues who had the temerity to sing a warning about the very crimes they were about to commit. And yet not one of us-not Jack nor Abel nor I-was going to do anything about it. Every man (and woman) is responsible for his own property. As the old proverb has it: ‘Fast bind, fast find’. And hadn’t Ben Nightingale sung an explicit warning to his patrons, Look well to your purses, of robbers beware? We had quite enough to do to look to ourselves. Besides, we had other business at Bartholomew Fair.

We were searching for a relic.

At least, that was how WS had described it to me. A ‘relic’.

I liked to think of William Shakespeare as my friend. He’d shown kindness to me from the moment I joined the King’s Men when they were still called the Chamberlain’s. Some of the other Globe shareholders held themselves a little apart from the run-of-the-mill members of the company. Whether it was because of their age or their temperaments or the heavy responsibilities they bore, the Burbage brothers, John Heminges and the others tended to be aloof. But WS had been ready to talk from the first, to give advice and even to make confidences. Or so it seemed at the time to this junior player. And there had been occasions when he had rescued me from the consequences of my own folly or rashness.

Because I’d been grateful to him and because I had a high esteem for the man, I was always prepared to listen when WS asked me to do something, even regarding any request as a privilege. But this was an especially odd request.

At the end of the play the previous day, WS and I had fallen into conversation. We’d been performing in a piece called Love’s Triumph by the playwright William Hordle. The Triumph had lived up to its name and the audience at the Globe clapped and cheered at the end while we did our jig. When we came offstage we were running with sweat-it was a muggy afternoon-but more than content with our reception. I was looking forward to a drink in the Goat and Monkey once I’d got out of my costume in the tiring-house.

Our costume man is Bartholomew Ridd, a fussy fellow as those in charge of stage clothes tend to be, I’ve noticed. Like others of his trade, he seems to think that the purpose of plays is to display his finery. Actors are no more than clothes-horses. He’s very hot on damage, ready to rebuke anybody whose outfit catches on a nail or is accidentally sullied with a spillage of beer. For some reason Master Ridd is particularly suspicious of me and always takes a personal interest in the condition of my costume when I’ve come offstage. I used to get annoyed with this but now I try to humour him. Anyway, all this meant that, as usual, I was one of the last to leave the tiring-house.

In the dim passageway outside I almost collided with William Shakespeare. We walked together towards the side door that gave on to the alley known as Brend’s Rents. I couldn’t have explained why, but I had the sense that he’d been waiting for me.

‘Off to the Goat and Monkey, Nick?’ he said when we were outside in the alley.

‘Just for a quick one-or a quick two,’ I said, wondering whether he wanted to accompany me there. The Goat, not a very salubrious alehouse perhaps but the players’ local, wasn’t the sort of place usually frequented by the shareholders. We walked in its direction. There were a few other people around. It was that stage of the day when business is more or less done but the evening’s pleasures have yet to begin.

William Shakespeare and I had to proceed carefully at certain points in the walk. This area of Southwark around the Globe playhouse and the bear garden is criss-crossed by channels and ditches that feed into the river. Bridges carry one over the dirty streams. They are often little more than a single warped plank, and to cross them requires concentration.

‘Hot work onstage this afternoon,’ said Shakespeare.

‘But enjoyable.’

‘Oh yes, enjoyable.’

I glanced at my companion. He hadn’t taken a part in Love’s Triumph-indeed, WS took little part in playing these days-but he generally spent his mornings and afternoons at the Globe. The mornings were given over to rehearsals and (for the shareholders) business matters while the afternoons were for performances. Even though his acting days were mostly done with, WS liked to be in attendance at performances, ready to offer a word of advice or encouragement. I sometimes wondered when WS actually wrote his plays. I visualized him sitting up late into the night in his lodgings in Mugwell Street north of the river, covering the paper by candlelight, his hand flowing smoothly across the blank sheets. Unlike some other writers I’ve known he never came to work with inky hands.

‘A good writer is that William Hordle,’ said WS.

‘We’ve already done his…let me see, his Love’s Diversion and Love’s Despair and now there’s been his Love’s Triumph,’ I said, asking myself where this conversation was headed.

‘With every play he grows better-and William Hordle was good to begin with,’ said WS, who was generous in his assessment of other men’s work. ‘He skipped the rough apprentice stage. Hordle jumped over that hurdle, you might say.’

Experience had taught me to ignore WS’s puns, which varied from the passable to the terrible. Instead I said, ‘Like you, William? You never were an apprentice?’

‘Why do you say so?’

‘It is reported that you never blotched a line.’

Now it was WS’s turn to glance at me. The sun was in our faces. His eyes were shaded by his hat and I couldn’t read his expression. But then, he was a man who was always hard to read. We came to one of the narrow bridges spanning a channel which we had to cross single file. The smell of the river is never agreeable in high summer but the aroma of a Southwark ditch is enough to flatten a fishwife. If you fell in-and people did fall in from time to time on their way to the bear pit or from the tavern-you’d be unlucky to drown in the couple of inches of sludge that adhered to the bottom but you’d quite likely be smothered by the stench.

When we were safely across, WS stopped and took me by the arm.

‘Those reports are wrong,’ he said. ‘I had my rough apprenticeship, when I bodged and blotched with the best of them.’

This talk of apprenticeship was interesting. I’d always been curious about Shakespeare’s early life in London. But WS wasn’t talking now to satisfy my curiosity. Just as I’d sensed that our encounter outside the tiring-house hadn’t been accidental, so I realized that we had now come to the nub of the matter. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted to tell me, though. That Shakespeare could have made mistakes like any other tyro playwright was hardly surprising, for all his reputation now. But what did this have to do with the man who was famed as the creator of Falstaff and Prince Hamlet?

‘Nick, enough of this beating about the bush. I have a request to make. You’ve been to St Bartholomew’s Fair?’

‘Not this season.’

‘Maybe you are intending to go?’

‘Maybe,’ I said. I had been meaning to wander through the fair, as it happened, but was slightly reluctant to confess this to WS for fear that he might consider me a gawping provincial. The traders at Bartholomew are Londoners while those who come to buy (or to be fleeced) tend to come from outside town, for this is a fair that draws people from all over the kingdom.

‘Well, if you should happen to find yourself in the region of Smithfield…’

He paused, waiting to see whether I would flat out deny this possibility. When I said nothing, Shakespeare continued, ‘If you were to visit Smithfield, I say, I would be most obliged if you could call on a certain gentleman who is set up at the fair. A book vendor.’

‘Of course, but why?’ I said this with genuine curiosity. I’d no objection to being asked to do my friend a favour but was unable to see why he couldn’t cross the short distance to Smithfield and call on the bookseller himself. In addition, there was a trace of discomfort in his voice, something very unusual in WS.

‘I want you to recover what one might call a-ah-relic,’ said the playwright.

‘A relic?’

‘I shall explain.’

And so he did, as we paced slowly in the direction of the Goat and Monkey alehouse.

It turned out that in his very early days in London, William Shakespeare had penned a journeyman drama about Domitian, one of the mad emperors of the Romans. Not liking the work-which was packed with rape and dismembered limbs and written in three days to catch a public fashion for sensational drama-he’d put it to one side and forgotten about it.

‘Don’t mistake me, Nick,’ said WS. ‘It wasn’t the subject matter of my Domitian which I rejected. Shortly afterwards I wrote a thing called Titus Andronicus. That had more than its fair share of horrors and was accounted a success.’

‘I’ve heard of Titus,’ I said.

‘It was simply that the piece about Domitian was rough in the wrong way. Crude, crude…I should have destroyed it there and then. Put it in the fire. Sometimes flame is the author’s best friend. But I didn’t destroy it. And at some point in my shift from one set of lodgings to another, Domitian went missing. I don’t suppose I’ve thought of it more than twice in the last fifteen years. You see why I call it a relic of my early days. Now I hear that a book vendor has somehow acquired my foul papers.’

(Don’t get the wrong idea about ‘foul papers’, by the way. This is simply the earliest stage of the writer’s finished composition before the material is sent to a scrivener to make fair copies. As the expression suggests, a foul paper is likely to be full of blotches and crossings-out.)

‘Are you sure that it’s in the hands of this book dealer?’ I said. ‘After all, if you haven’t seen it for the past fifteen years…’

‘I have it on good authority,’ said WS. ‘Yes, I’m sure he has my Domitian.’

‘I suppose he’s going to sell it,’ I said.

‘Sell it to you, I hope,’ said WS, quickly adding, ‘I want you to buy it, Nick. I don’t want this thing falling into the wrong hands, one of our rival companies, for example, like Henslowe’s. Hatch would go a long way to embarrass me.’

‘Hatch?’

‘This book vendor rejoices in the name of Ulysses Hatch. For the most part he’s a dealer in scurrilous ballads and scald rhymes rather than books. In fact, he will trade in anything that turns a profit. A long time ago he and I had a falling-out over…something. Even after all these years he wouldn’t miss an opportunity to get back at me.’

I didn’t ask WS why this oddly named gent wanted to get back at him. Instead I said, ‘Does it matter if this piece of yours is sold elsewhere? After all, you have such a reputation…’

An eavesdropper might have thought that I was flattering Shakespeare but I was speaking no more than the truth. Nor did he waste our time with false modesty. ‘Yes, I have a reputation now,’ he said, ‘yet I might be struck down tomorrow. No man can see the future. I would be unhappy if I knew that a ragged piece about a mad emperor was resurrected after my death to be staged and laughed at-for the wrong reasons. It was journeyman work, I tell you. Would you like to be remembered for your earliest, halting attempts to speak verse on the stage?’

‘Well, no, I wouldn’t…’

I was about to say that there was no comparison between an obscure actor and the most famous playwright in London. But I stayed silent, slightly surprised-but also touched-that even so notable a man as WS should be concerned about his posthumous reputation. Until quite recently, he’d been seemingly indifferent, and given to statements such as ‘Let them sort it out after we are all dead’. Maybe it was age which was causing him to change his tune.

By this time we’d arrived at the Goat and Monkey. Absorbed in listening to Shakespeare’s story I’d almost forgotten my thirst. But not quite. We paused by the door of the alehouse.

‘I cannot go and see Master Ulysses Hatch myself,’ said WS. ‘We know each other too well, fat Hatch and I. He would most likely refuse to sell it to me out of sheer spite.’

‘But the foul papers are yours,’ I said. ‘You never sold them but mislaid them.’

‘Proving title to a piece is very difficult,’ said WS. ‘He could claim to have come by them honestly, and for all I know he did. Bought them from a landlord perhaps.’

‘What about sending one of the shareholders?’ I said, instinctively reluctant to undertake this task.

‘He would recognize any of my fellows. He is familiar with the stage world.’

‘But he wouldn’t recognize an obscure player?’

‘Obscure? Do not say so. Bitterness isn’t in your repertoire, Nick, for all that you’re a good player. One day, perhaps, a fine player.’

‘Then why me?’ I said. ‘Why are you asking me to recover your old play?’

‘Because you are a straightforward person,’ said WS. ‘No one will suspect you of double dealing.’

In another man one might have suspected flattery, but with WS I chose not to. Instead I strove to hide my smile in the glaring sun of early evening and, almost before I knew it, agreed to visit St Bartholomew’s Fair the following morning. Agreed to track down Ulysses Hatch and, without revealing who had sent me, to obtain the foul-paper manuscript of a play entitled Domitian, if it was in his possession. WS authorized me to offer up to to five pounds for the play. This was a hefty price and, if questioned, I was to insinuate that I was a member of a rival company to the King’s Men-one of Henslowe’s men, say-interested in getting hold of an early work by the tyro Shakespeare.

So it was that on this fine morning I found myself at St Bartholomew’s Fair with Jack Wilson and Abel Glaze. I’d met my friends in the Goat and Monkey the previous evening and outlined Shakespeare’s request. I’d no hesitation in doing this since WS himself had suggested I might take some company to give ‘colour’ to the enterprise, as he put it. He gave no other instructions on how to go about getting hold of his Domitian foul papers, merely leaving it to my ‘discretion’ and ‘good sense’. Perhaps he was a flatterer after all.

The three of us threaded among the crowds and between the confectioners and horse dealers, the barbers and the pin-makers. At one point Abel said, ‘Isn’t that Tom Gally?’

Crossing the path ahead of us was an individual with unkempt black hair. The man certainly looked like Gally, who acted as a kind of unofficial agent for Philip Henslowe, the owner and promoter of playhouses, bear pits and much else besides. I knew Tom Gally and distrusted him. His long, soft hair was reminiscent of a sheep’s fleece but there was a wolf beneath. I wondered what was his business at St Bartholomew’s Fair and whether he was after the Domitian foul papers too.

We came to a relatively quiet little quarter of the fairground, one given over to the vendors of books and pamphlets and printed ballads. We weren’t long in finding our objective. Among the stalls was a more elaborate yellow-and-white-striped tent with its flaps folded back on one side. Hanging from a crossbar above a trestle table scattered with sheets and tatty volumes was a sign announcing the presence of Ulysses Hatch, Publisher. Many booksellers are also publishers and prefer to advertise themselves as such. There was no one to be seen at the mouth of the tent.

Like the browsers we were, we idly cast our eyes over Master Hatch’s wares on the table-top. I glanced into the interior of the tent. The sunlight made it difficult to see much of the inside. In any case, there was a curtain slung near the entrance which shielded the interior. The curtain quivered and I had the feeling that we were being observed, probably through some small slit or spyhole. Confirmation that the tent was occupied came from indistinct sounds of talking within.

‘This seller seems to specialize in cony-catching and thief detection,’ said Abel Glaze, picking up a handful of the pamphlets. They were headed by titles such as A Manifest Detection of Dice-play or A Notable Discovery of Cozenage, this latter adorned with a picture of a rabbit or cony holding up a playing card in each paw.

‘Not altogether,’ said Jack Wilson, pointing to a pile whose topmost title read The Quickest Way to Heaven. ‘This should be more up Nick’s street, eh?’

Jack was in the habit of pretending that, since I was a parson’s son, I must have devout tastes. I ignored him and picked up a volume I recognized. It was by a playwright I’d once known, a man called Richard Milford, and this was a piece of his entitled The World’s Diseas’d, a play that was performed and published posthumously, as it happened. I knew it well, for I had played the character of Vindice the revenger. Now this book, which couldn’t have been more than three or four years old, looked forlorn and dusty in the summer sun. I already owned a copy but, if I hadn’t, I might have bought it for the sake of Milford’s memory. I hefted the book in my hand. Who else would remember him in a few years’ time? Before I could start on a melancholy train of thought about memory and reputation (the thing that William Shakespeare was so concerned with), my attention was caught by a definite stirring behind the curtain in the tent’s interior.

A man came out from the shadows. If anyone, I expected it to be Ulysses Hatch, proprietor, publisher and bookseller. I’d never seen him before and knew nothing about him, except that he’d once had a falling-out with WS and that he was fat. But the individual who came into the space by the mouth of the tent was small and slight. Furthermore I did recognize him. So did Abel and Jack, for it was the nip or cutpurse who’d been standing near Ben Nightingale the ballad singer. Peter Perkin was still wearing his rustic hat with the tickling straws. With the merest glance at us and the tiniest inclination of his head, he edged round the trestle table and walked off into the crowd.

I was surprised to encounter him. What was he doing inside a bookseller’s tent? The last we’d seen of this gent, only a few minutes earlier, he’d been in pursuit of a couple of the more prosperous-looking members of Nightingale’s audience. True, he might have carried out a fistful of thefts in that time (nips can be as quick as lightning), but surely his place was at the ballad singer’s heels, prospecting for new victims? Abel and Jack and I looked at each other, queries on our faces. I put down the volume I was holding.

‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’

Distracted by the appearance of the cutpurse, we hadn’t noticed another man emerging from the tent. He stood behind the table. Or rather he leaned against it, his belly flopping on to the surface as though it was a further object for sale. Ulysses Hatch was one of the fattest men I’d ever seen. Just as the pig’s head on a stake had reminded me of the traitors’ heads on London Bridge, so now Hatch’s visage reminded me of the pig’s. His cheeks bulged, his chin drooped and his eyes were small and reddened. There was a fringe of white hair round his head like a garland of dirty snow. He breathed heavily and there was sweat on his brow as though he’d been running to get to his present position behind the trestle table.

‘Only looking,’ said Jack.

‘I’ve got something stronger back there,’ said the pig-faced seller, peering at the three of us and indicating the inside of the tent with a plump hand. ‘Spicier wares. The Widow’s Solace, you know the ballad? Or Venus Pleasure? It tells you what Mars did with Venus. There are pictures with that one. I publish them myself so quality is guaranteed.’

We all shrugged or grimaced as if to say ‘no thanks’, but I suspect that if any of us had been by himself he might have permitted the bookseller to show off some of his spicier wares. From the sounds of conversation emanating from the tent, there were others already in there.

‘Shut your gob!’

I started. The voice came from the tent. Ulysses Hatch smiled and jerked his head.

‘Hark at him,’ he said, then, seeing my expression, added ‘Don’t worry, sir. That wasn’t directed at you.’

As if to prove his words, a woman’s voice said something in altercation only to be answered with another ‘Shut your gob!’ in the same tone as before.

Jack was perusing a pamphlet called Kemp’s Nine Days’ Wonder. On the front was a picture of a dancing man in motley, with a drummer in the background. Like The World’s Diseas’d, this item I was also familiar with, since Will Kemp had been a clown in the Chamberlain’s Men, though before my time. Kemp’s career had dwindled after he’d quit the company, and his most notable feat had been to jig all the way from London to Norwich in nine days. Afterwards he wrote an account of his journey.

‘Ah, Will Kemp,’ said Ulysses Hatch. ‘Those were the glory days. He was a man of rare parts.’

Now, I’m pretty sure that Jack Wilson had known Kemp personally, since he’d been playing onstage longer than either of us. And indeed, both Abel Glaze and I had met the clown once when he was retired, and sick and listless in lodgings in Dow-gate. Nevertheless, our faces gave nothing away. For some reason, we were all on our guard.

‘They were fools to replace Kemp with Bob Armin,’ said Hatch.

Robert Armin was the current clown of the company and they were the King’s Men-us, or the shareholders to be precise. I had the sense that this fat man was probing us, testing us. Certainly he was familiar with the big names of the playing companies. None of us responded to his comment about the clowns.

‘Now our stage grows refined,’ continued the bookseller. ‘Audiences want a roof over their heads and carriages to convey them to the playhouse. They want polite clowns. They want cushions under their bums.’

‘You’re in the right there,’ said Abel.

‘You gentlemen are connected to the theatre, then?’ said Hatch, shifting his piggy head from side to side.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ I said.

‘And what manner might that be?’

I shrugged. This wasn’t going how I’d planned it. Or rather I hadn’t planned anything, relying instead on the ‘discretion’ and ‘good sense’ that WS had credited me with. He’d also called me ‘straightforward’, so now I decided that an honest approach might be best. Nevertheless, I paused before I spoke and glanced around. The business and pleasure of Bartholomew Fair trickled past us, rather sluggish in this backwater. No one was paying attention to three men standing at the door of a bookseller’s tent. If anyone had noticed us, they’d most likely assume we were in search of Hatch’s spicy wares.

‘You have found us out, sir,’ I said. ‘We are to do with the playhouse.’

‘Which playhouse?’

‘Any one that will have us,’ I said.

‘Not Shakespeare’s.’

I shook my head almost imperceptibly, no spoken lie. The others said nothing.

‘As long as you’re not from Shakeshaft’s lot,’ said Hatch. ‘But I thought you were players. I can smell you over a distance.’

‘Then I hope we smell sweet,’ said Abel.

Hatch’s expression suggested otherwise. Once more he looked from one to the other of us. A kind of calculation entered his gaze. He seemed to come to some decision. If his face was easy enough to read, his next words were obscure. ‘I was not expecting three of you.’

Not expecting three of us? How could he be expecting us at all, since he didn’t know we were visiting Bartholomew Fair, did he? And Shakespeare certainly wouldn’t have gone about broadcasting our mission. But Hatch’s remark indicated that he was expecting someone. I thought of the cutpurse man with the straws in his hat, but it couldn’t be him because he’d already been and gone.

I blundered forward, feeling more and more unsure of my ground. After denying that we were part of WS’s playing company, I now tried relative honesty. ‘I have been, ah, commissioned to come to your stall, Master Hatch, to retrieve something…to pay a fair price for a…for an…’

I dithered. What was I to say? A journeyman play by Shakespeare? A piece about a mad Roman emperor? Then the author’s own phrase floated into my head. ‘You might say we’re looking for a relic,’ I said.

‘Not so loud,’ said Ulysses Hatch, although I had been speaking quietly enough and there was no one in our immediate neighbourhood. He reached across with a plump hand and gripped me hard by the shoulder.

‘What is your name?’

‘Nick Revill.’

No recognition at all showed on his face and for once I could be glad. Hadn’t I described myself to WS as an obscure player? Here was the proof of that.

‘You alone can see the item,’ he said. ‘Your friends must remain outside.’

I felt baffled. It was as if this fat man had divined straight away what I was searching for. And, more than baffled, I felt a little alarmed. Still, what was there to fear from this large, sweating individual? Or the others who were in his tent? I raised my eyebrows at Abel Glaze and Jack Wilson and, skirting the table, followed Hatch into his striped tent. He pulled aside the hanging curtain and ushered me into his inner sanctum.

After the brightness of the day outside, the interior was dim. Flies buzzed and Hatch wheezed. The place smelt musty, as if shut up for years, yet Hatch’s tent could have stood on this spot only for a couple of days. There were books and pamphlets stacked in casual piles and scattered on the ground, as well as a couple of trunks. A woman was sitting on one of the trunks. She looked me up and down. She might have been handsome not so long ago but the features in her large face were on the point of melting, as if she’d been left out in the sun too long. Her hair, which was unbonneted, straggled over dark shiny eyes. She had a leathern flask in one hand. She raised it to her lips, after giving me the once-over.

‘Shut your gob!’

I jumped. The voice came from over my shoulder. I looked up to see a raven sitting on a perch. It repeated itself and then cocked its head on one side as if to estimate the effect of its words on me. There was an unpleasant glint in its diamond eye.

‘Master Revill,’ said Ulysses Hatch, ‘let me introduce you to Hold-fast. I call him that because once’s he’s got something in his grip he doesn’t let go. Oh no, he doesn’t let go.’

‘Oh no. Hold-fast doesn’t let go,’ said the raven. ‘Jump to it. Shut your gob!’

‘You wouldn’t think it but he’s an old boy,’ said Hatch. ‘He was old when he adopted me for his own.’

The raven looked ageless to me. It seemed odd to talk about an animal, a bird, adopting a man rather than the other way about, but perhaps that’s how it is with ravens. I glanced at the woman sitting on the trunk.

‘What about me?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to this nice young man?’

Master Hatch made a little bow, or at least bent as far as his bulk would allow.

‘May I also present Wapping Doll.’

‘I used to live south of the river,’ I said.

‘Oh, good for you,’ said the woman, her speech slightly slurred. ‘But what’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Ha ha. He thinks you come from Wapping,’ said Ulysses Hatch. ‘But let me tell you, Nick Revill, that for this good lady Wapping isn’t a place-it’s what she used to do with her time. It’s what she did for a living. You know. She wapped, she knocked and she banged.’

‘Still do, for a living,’ said Doll, rolling her eyes. They were like ripe blackberries, glossy, squashy.

‘Alas, sir, her price has fallen of late. Who’d have her?’

‘You can shog off, Ulysses Hatch,’ said the woman, lifting up her flask once more but pausing before she stuffed it in her mouth. ‘Who’d have you anyway, you great bag of guts?’

‘You would. You did have me, yesterday morning,’ said Hatch.

‘Apart from me nobody’d touch you, you bombard of sack.’

‘Go ask at the pig stall,’ said Hatch with what sounded like genuine indignation.

‘Shog off,’ said the raven.

I coughed to remind them all of my presence and the bookseller seemed to remember why he’d summoned me inside his tent.

‘Get your fat arse off that chest,’ said Ulysses Hatch to his doxy. ‘Come to think of it, get your fat arse out of this place altogether.’

The woman hoisted herself to her feet.

‘Oh, Ulysses, oh, Yew-lee, you’d not banish your Doll, would you? Banish your Wapping Doll?’

She spoke somewhere between earnest and jest, and pouted her lips in a similar spirit. She winked at me.

‘This gentleman and I have a matter to discuss. You know, the item.’

Hatch gestured towards the other trunk. I didn’t know what he was talking about but from the expression on Wapping Doll’s face, she did. Her good humour disappeared and she said, ‘Not again, Ulysses. That item brings me out all over goose bumps.’

Hatch swung one of his hands and whacked her on the arse, but it was an affectionate blow as far as I could see, and she exited from the tent, still clutching her leathern flask.

Then he got down on his hams, an awkward manoeuvre given his size, and retrieved a key from his doublet. He fiddled with the padlock of the trunk, not the one recently vacated by Wapping Doll but the other. Suddenly he looked up at me. The raven’s coal-black head flicked with deep suspicion between his kneeling master and me, yet any time I looked at the bird he pretended indifference.

‘What are you after, Master Revill?’

‘I…have already said it,’ I said, uncertain what reply he wanted, for I had not yet named the item that I was in pursuit of, the foul papers of Shakespeare’s unperformed play, Domitian.

‘You spoke of a relic.’

‘I did,’ I said, wondering why he fastened on this word so.

‘Then behold,’ he said.

Hatch pushed at the lid of the trunk. It swung open. Inside, I glimpsed bolts of cloth and what looked like items of plate. Quite delicately he moved these objects aside. In the middle of the collection was something wrapped up in a dark, coarse cloth. With what seemed to me exaggerated care, Ulysses Hatch lifted it from the trunk and laid it on a clear patch of ground. He knelt in front of this anonymous little bundle, then began to unfold the woollen wrapping.

I was abruptly conscious of my surrounding. The dusty light that filtered through the yellow fabric of the tent. The buzz of the flies, lazy, as if they knew that summer was near its end. The heavy breathing of the bookseller. The raven shuffling on his perch.

I was curious and puzzled, and not a little apprehensive. Whatever was going to emerge from this dumb-show would not be WS’s manuscript-for one thing, the shape of the bundle was wrong-but something altogether different.

What did emerge was, at first sight, disappointing. A small oblong wooden box with a hinged lid that had an inlaid pattern of a star. Hatch opened it. Without raising the box from the ground, he beckoned me to look more closely. Inside was a glass vial, a little more than a finger’s length, with a faded gilt stopper. Treating the vial as warily as he might the contents of Pandora’s box, Ulysses Hatch lifted it out and cradled it in a pudgy palm.

‘Look near,’ he said. ‘What do you see inside?’

‘I see a bit of wood.’

‘Yes, and…?’

‘Jump to it,’ said the raven.

‘The wood is grey and stained in places,’ I said, attempting to ignore the bird.

‘Just so.’

I made to reach out my hand to take the glass vial with its unremarkable contents for a closer examination, but Hatch snatched it towards him and began wrapping it up once more inside the woollen cloth.

‘You would not want to touch what’s in here, master,’ he said. ‘This is what gives Wapping Doll the goose bumps.’

What in God’s name was he talking about? I was on the point of saying that this was not the item I’d come in search of when Hatch raised a hand to silence me. He was still kneeling on the ground, and when he looked up again there was an odd mixture of fear and calculation on his sweaty face.

‘You are working for Philip Henslowe, aren’t you?’ he said.

Just as I’d earlier nodded to deny that we were with ‘Shakespeare’s lot’, so I now gave a rueful smile to indicate that he’d got this right too. I felt happier not delivering an outright lie, yet not altogether happy.

‘I knew it!’ said the bookseller. ‘That man has got his hand in plenty of plackets. Playhouses, bear pits, pick-hatches, you name it, and Philip Henslowe will be there, turning a penny. But let me tell you, Nicholas Revill, your employer should beware of this item.’

He gestured at the wooden box. Now it was his turn to read my face. What he read was confusion.

‘You don’t know what it is, do you? Old Henslowe’s sent you to purchase something without telling you what it is.’

‘No, I don’t know what it is,’ I said, ‘and that’s no more than the truth.’

‘Why, man, this object which is secure in its glass case…is a fragment of the True Cross. It is marked with the blood of Our Lord.’

At first I thought I’d misheard him or that he was joking. Then I studied Ulysses Hatch’s expression more carefully and understood that it was no jest. My eyes swam and my legs almost gave way beneath me.

Of course, like everyone, I have a glancing acquaintance with the business of relics. I’ve heard of the vial of Christ’s blood which they keep in Walsingham, and of saints’ bones that are stored elsewhere. Yet in these latter days such items are somewhat discredited as being associated with the old religion. My parson father, for example, would refer to them as popish gewgaws. He’d say that those who looked for salvation from old bones would do better to seek God’s grace directly rather than gawp at what were most likely the remains of sheep and swine. But it’s one thing to hear this from the pulpit and quite another to be confronted with such an object in the flesh, as it were.

Perhaps the bookseller didn’t believe he had done enough to convince me, for he once again unwrapped the wooden box, opened it and extracted not the glass vial but a strip of folded parchment. This he handed to me, telling me to take care.

There was some lettering on the parchment, but very faded. The skin was also so torn and frayed that I feared it might crumble in my hand. In the uncertain light of the tent I struggled to read the words but was able to make out only a handful, which appeared to be in Latin, among them sanguis and sancta. There was what looked to be a signature underneath, although I could not decipher any more than isolated letters, together with a small raised area like a scab, the remains of a seal perhaps. All this time Hold-fast the raven paid close attention to what we were doing, as if he were capable of reading better than either of us.

After a moment I returned the parchment to Hatch.

‘I have this in English,’ said the publisher and bookseller. ‘It confirms the wood in the vial to be a piece of the True Cross, rescued from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It is signed and sealed by Geoffrey Mappestone, Knight. It is very old.’

‘How…how did you come by it?’

‘They say that a friar had it in the old days. It passed from his hands to others-and so to mine.’

He made it sound like a natural process, but I would bet a week’s wages that he had acquired it less than honestly.

‘You are willing to sell this thing?’

‘It is not to the seller’s advantage to say it, but I will be glad to be rid of this “thing”, as you call it,’ said Hatch. ‘What Master Henslowe does with it is his business, but I’ve had enough of it. Good fortune does not follow the possessor, though I did not know that until after I’d…obtained it. They say that to touch it is death.’

This might have been so much seller’s talk, perversely heightening the attraction of something by drawing attention to its dangers, but I felt the nape of my neck crawl.

‘You might give it away.’ I paused and chose my next words with care. ‘There must be many who would be glad to receive such an object.’

‘Give it away? I have a living to make, Master Revill. Why shouldn’t I turn an honest penny? No one will get their hands on this unless they have first paid me an honest price.’

And also from the trunk he produced a battered pistol. It was a rusty old gun, with a bulbous handle and a blunt muzzle.

‘I keep this primed and ready,’ said Ulysses Hatch, toying with the flint-arm. ‘The world is full of rogues.’

‘Master Hatch,’ I said, tired of this and not a little frightened by the sight of the pistol. ‘It’s time to get one or two things straight. It’s true that I have been sent here to obtain something from you but not…whatever is contained in that vial. I know nothing of any cross, true or otherwise.’

At this Hatch replaced the box inside the trunk, which he fastened with the padlock. The pistol, however, he did not replace, but positioned it carefully on top of the chest, as though he might want to use it at any moment. Everything he did, he did slowly, but I had the impression that he was taking even longer over this sequence of small actions so as to give himself time to think. I glanced at the bird on the perch. Hold-fast was now so interested in the proceedings that he was pretending to be looking in the opposite direction.

‘Then you’re not a player?’ said Hatch eventually.

‘I’m a player all right. And I’m here about playing matters. In brief, I have heard that you possess the foul papers of a play by William Shakespeare which is called Domitian. I have been commissioned to buy them off you.’

By now Ulysses Hatch had struggled to his feet. The mixture of expressions that had played across his fat features while we were discussing the relic-fear and calculation-had been replaced by a guarded look.

‘By Henslowe?’

‘I never said so, whatever you may have thought,’ I said, growing hotter and more uncomfortable, then moving rapidly on before he could rebuke me for misleading him. ‘I can offer a fair price for these foul papers of WS. William Shakespeare, I mean.’

‘Shakespeare, pah!’ He almost spat out the word. Then added, more calmly, ‘The foul papers of Domitian? I may have what you are after. What do you mean by a fair price?’

‘Three pounds, shall we say?’

‘Let us say six pounds.’

‘Four.’

‘Five.’

‘Done,’ I said.

For the first time a smile broke out across Hatch’s face. ‘You’ll never make a buyer and seller, Master Revill, agreeing so quick. Come back in an hour. The item you require I have somewhere among other papers but I need time to hunt it down. Five pounds, now. No going back.’

‘No going back,’ I said.

‘You may give me a pound now as an earnest of your good intentions.’

I reached for my purse and extracted two angels, part of the money that WS had given me when we’d talked the previous evening. Altogether it was a large sum-I don’t think I’d ever had so much in my purse at one time-and it was a mark of his trust that he should hand it over. Still, I told myself, the Globe shareholders were prosperous men (certainly in comparison to mere players). When the bookseller had hold of the money, his attitude changed. He smiled again. I took advantage of his change of mood.

‘Give me one thing in exchange for the coins, an earnest of your good intentions,’ I said. ‘A piece of information.’

‘That depends.’

‘Why do you dislike Shakespeare so?’

‘Jump to it!’ said Hold-fast the raven.

Ulysses Hatch sighed. Then he glanced at the trunk where Wapping Doll had been seated.

‘We had a falling-out over her once.’

‘Over her?’

‘Why so amazed, Master Revill? She was a fine piece of goods in her day, even if she’s somewhat price-fallen now.’

There must have been some surprise still showing on my face for Hatch said, ‘Oh, you regard Master William Shakespeare now as a fine upstanding fellow, ever so respectable. But let me tell you, when he first came to this city of ours, he was young and hardy and full of fire. That was a long time ago. Why, I was thin in those days. It was just the time when Hold-fast adopted me. The raven looks no older but I have grown somewhat.’

‘And after all these years, Master Hatch, why do you still…?’ I said.

‘Still what?’

‘Feel resentful?’

‘Some things that happen in youth you don’t forget-or forgive,’ said Hatch. ‘Shakespeare won my Doll with words. She opened her ears to him and his words.’

‘So now you are in possession of some of his words,’ I said, guessing at the hidden truth. ‘You like having hold of his foul papers.’

‘You may be right.’

‘Yet you are willing to sell them.’

‘I’ll sell anything to anyone at the right price.’

‘Even a piece of the cross?’

‘Our first talk you should forget,’ said Hatch, looking uneasy and gesturing over his shoulder at the other trunk and its strange contents. ‘Tell no one of that item.’

‘Shut your gob!’ said Hold-fast.

‘The bird knows best,’ said Hatch. ‘I expect it’s a fake. There are many such sham objects.’

This was absolutely at odds with his tone and manner while he’d been describing the cross fragment, but I said nothing, only too glad to have the chance to escape from the stuffy tent, and glad above all to escape the company of the raven.

When I was outside, I looked around for Abel and Jack but there was no sign of them. No doubt they’d grown tired of waiting and gone off to taste the other delights of Bartholomew Fair. As I went in search of them, I debated whether to tell them about what Hatch had shown me, despite his warning. And other questions came to mind too. Was that a real fragment of Christ’s cross? With the instinct of the canny salesman, Hatch had permitted only the briefest glimpse of the thing. I was not so gullible as to trust Ulysses Hatch without some additional proof, and it was quite likely he didn’t believe his own words either. Why, there must be enough pieces of the ‘true’ cross in existence to rebuild Noah’s Ark!

But Hatch was evidently expecting someone to come and purchase the item, and so had assumed I was that person. I suddenly remembered the glimpse of Tom Gally just after we’d arrived at the fair. Now, it was well known that Philip Henslowe employed Gally as a go-between for enterprises that were dubious or underhand. Wasn’t it possible that Henslowe had dispatched his agent to collect the relic? If so, what could he possibly want with it? Even as I asked myself this, Hatch’s own description of Henslowe suggested an answer. Henslowe had his finger in many pies. He put money into playhouses and bear-baiting and, less respectably, into houses of pleasure. He was a businessman, none too scrupulous about how and where he made his wealth. It might well be that he’d regard the relic as a good investment, perhaps a long-term investment to be sold on when the market was right. Or perhaps he would treat it as a kind of talisman, to give him power or bring him luck. Yet hadn’t the bookseller claimed that the fragment brought ill fortune?

Anyway, it was nothing to do with me. All that was necessary for me was to return to Hatch’s tent in an hour, collect the Domitian foul papers, and hand over the rest of the money.

I felt rather than saw someone keeping company with me on my left hand. I looked round. It was Tom Gally. When he saw I’d observed him, he screwed his head sideways and smiled. His black hair hung unkempt and tangled. I didn’t particularly want to talk to him and so walked faster.

‘Master Revill, I hope I find you in good health,’ said Gally, keeping pace with me.

‘Well enough,’ I said. I nearly added that I would be even better without his company.

‘You have business at Bartholomew Fair?’

‘Just looking.’

‘I noticed you visiting Master Hatch’s emporium.’

‘That’s a grand word for a tent,’ I said, wondering what the man was after.

‘He has some…interesting wares,’ said Tom Gally. He had a disconcerting habit of pointing with his forefinger at the person he was addressing and squinting down the finger as if taking aim with a pistol. Even as we were walking side by side, he sighted at me when he said ‘interesting wares’.

‘I dare say,’ I said.

‘Odds and ends he has. Books and papers…’

‘Well, he’s a bookseller.’

‘…and other stuff.’

I stopped and faced Tom Gally. I had learned from experience that the best way to deal with him was to be direct.

‘Master Gally, if you have anything to say to me then say it straight out. Otherwise, I have business to pursue at the fair.’

‘Business? I thought you were “just looking”, Master Revill.’

Seeing the expression on my face, he quickly added, ‘I was merely going to ask if you had seen some of Master Hatch’s more, ah, specialized wares.’ He pointed his finger-gun at me and smirked. ‘Hatch has a book called Venus Pleasure-with pictures. Or The Wanton Wife. That’s a good one. And another called Rape of the Sabine Women. I thought that a youngish man like you might appreciate such salty items.’

‘I expect I am less in need of them than you are, Master Gally.’

‘As you please. I will leave you to your business at the fair, or to your pleasure.’

He walked off. Feeling a bit priggish, I watched his black fleece bouncing on his shoulders. He’d obviously been concerned to discover what I was doing with Ulysses Hatch, the comment about the bookseller’s salty items being a blind. I remembered WS saying that Henslowe would be glad to get his hands on the Domitian foul papers. Was it those which Gally was after? Or was he interested in the relic of the True Cross, as I’d thought a moment before?

Only half aware of the direction I was going in, I found myself heading towards the stall selling roasted pork. Perhaps I was following my nose. But as I drew closer I saw that there was more exciting fare on offer than cooked meat. A crowd of people was gathering to watch an argument that was threatening-or promising-to tip into a fight. Furthermore it was between two women, always an attraction. They were standing close to the roast-pig stall. The pig’s head was looking on discreetly. I recognized one of the women, since it was Wapping Doll, the person from Hatch’s tent. The other woman was her equal for size. Were all the inhabitants of St Bartholomew’s Fair so large? She was brandishing a greasy roasting-spit like a sword. This fact, together with her red, greasy countenance, caused me to think that she might be Ursula the pig woman. This was no great deduction. From her look, she was a cook, and it is well known that all those who work in kitchens are short tempered and usually foul mouthed. It’s the fires which do it, you know.

On the other side, Wapping Doll had no weapon, although she held out the leathern drinking flask as if she might do damage with it. But my money was on the roasting-spit.

At that moment the women were happy enough exchanging insults and gestures. ‘Turd in your teeth’ and the Spanish fig and so on. The crowd was split between urging them on to better things and glancing round to see whether any constable from the Pie-Powder Court was about to intervene. I might have known that Abel Glaze and Jack Wilson would be among the watchers.

‘What’s this all about, lads?’ I asked.

‘What do women ever fight about?’ said Jack. ‘They are as ready to go to blows over men as we are to go to blows over women.’

‘I wish someone would fight over me,’ said Abel, who was not lucky in love.

And suddenly it came to me. Hadn’t Ulysses Hatch said to his doxy when they were bantering in the tent, Go ask at the pig stall? Was it possible that these two were scrapping over the publisher of spicy wares?

Wapping Doll and Ursula-if it was indeed the pig woman-circled each other like two dogs, one jabbing with the roasting-spit and the other flapping her flask, but each reluctant to make the first move. The crowd kept quiet, unwilling to break the spell. But before the women could get down to fighting, a pair of constables pushed their way through the throng and, in a practised manoeuvre, placed their staffs of office on the ground. These were long heavy poles, intimidating in appearance and tough enough to break an arm or crack a skull. If they’d been dealing with men they might have employed the staffs. But, with women, they preferred a more personal touch.

They laid hands on the pair. They were big fellows with beetling brows, a regular Gog and Magog. One wrapped his arms round Ursula while the other seized hold of Wapping Doll’s flask. For an instant it looked as though the women were going to turn their fury on the constables, but I also sensed a kind of relief in the pair, as though they’d been honourably relieved of the requirement to fight it out.

Then, as a late arrival on the scene, there appeared a diminutive man with a trim beard. By chance I recognized him. He was an alderman and a justice, Walter Farnaby by name. A year or more earlier I’d witnessed him sealing up a plague house in Kentish Street. He was a precise individual, not to be gainsaid. He was evidently acting as the St Bartholomew’s Fair Justice. A number of the crowd recognized him too, to judge by their groans and whispers. At Farnaby’s gesture, the two constables released their charges. The men obeyed but they looked as though they might have enjoyed grappling with the women for a few moments longer. I don’t know what the Justice said to the two women-he went to each and spoke softly in her ear-but it was enough to cause them to turn round and go off in separate directions, Ursula back to her pig stall and Wapping Doll towards the area of the fair where I’d just come from.

There was general disappointment at the Justice’s intervention. I heard some comment about the authorities interfering with people’s innocent amusements while proper criminals roamed free about the place. Thinking of Nightingale the ballad singer and his accomplice, I couldn’t help agreeing.

Jack and Abel were curious to know what had happened with the bookseller. I stayed quiet about the relic, saying only that Ulysses Hatch claimed to be in possession of Shakespeare’s foul papers but that he’d needed time to search for them. I added that there was some old enmity between Shakespeare and Hatch and that the bookseller kept some odd company, which included, as well as the woman we’d just seen, a talking raven called Hold-fast. I also told them of my encounter with Tom Gally.

While we were waiting to return to Ulysses Hatch’s lair we occupied the period wandering round the fair, stopping to sample some ale and being propositioned by the sellers of horseflesh, human flesh and other gewgaws. As smart Londoners, however, we were resistant to pretty well every temptation.

Eventually, after we’d judged that enough time had passed, we found ourselves once more at the mouth of the bookseller’s tent in that quiet quarter of the fair. It was odd that Master Hatch should set up here out of the run of things. Maybe his customers liked to visit him discreet and unseen on account of his spicy wares. The books and pamphlets lay undisturbed on the trestle table. The flaps of the tent were open and, once again, I had the sense of being spied on through the curtain that hung across the interior. Perhaps it was the raven with his diamond eye. I’d have preferred a human gaze.

I called out for Master Hatch. No reply. Called more loudly. Half expected Hold-fast to tell me to jump to it. Or shut my gob. I glanced at the others and indicated that we should go inside. Hatch could have no objection, surely. A simple transaction, no more. Hand over the four pounds and depart with the Domitian papers. And, on a future occasion, show myself a little less ready to undertake errands on behalf of William Shakespeare.

We filed into the tent. I slipped round the curtain.

Inside, it was dim and stuffy and smelly. But the smell was different this time, burnt and bitter.

You know what we found next.

‘My God, Nick, what shall we do?’ said Abel Glaze.

‘I don’t know.’

‘We should go to the Justice,’ said Jack Wilson. ‘This is murder plain and simple.’

‘He’s been shot,’ said Abel, looking at the dark hole in the man’s upper chest and the bloody flag surrounding it. In his very young days, before he turned to confidence trickery, Abel had served time in the Netherlands campaign, and so knew more about war and wounds than I ever hoped to know.

‘With his own pistol, it must have been,’ I said. ‘He showed it me when he was showing me…something else.’

Jack and Abel looked at me. Perhaps they were wondering what the ‘something else’ was. I pointed to the murder weapon, which lay in a corner of the tent, as if the perpetrator had flung it there in panic before his exit. Or her exit. For a pistol can be discharged by a man or a woman.

‘That’s a snaphaunce,’ said Abel. ‘They were much used in the Low Countries.’

Neither of us responded to this piece of professional information.

‘We can just walk out,’ said Abel after a moment. ‘We don’t have to report this to anyone. Not a soul knows we’ve been here.’

‘You can walk out,’ I said. ‘But I’ve been seen already in this place.’

I was remembering Wapping Doll. I also recalled the individual with the straws in his hat who’d slipped out as we arrived at the tent for the first time.

‘Then we must go to the Pie-Powder Court,’ said Jack. ‘This isn’t some case of a cutpurse and a ballad singer.’

‘Yes, you’re right, we must go to the court,’ I said, looking round. ‘Where’s the bird?’

‘Bird?’

‘Hold-fast, the raven I told you of.’

‘Blast the raven,’ said Jack. ‘We have a dead man on our hands.’

‘Wait a moment,’ I said, bending down to examine a pile of paper which I’d just noticed lodged beneath Ulysses Hatch’s bulk. I eased it from under the body. The sheets were old and crumpled and blood-smeared but a glance was sufficient to show that they were WS’s unperformed play of Domitian. It said as much on a handwritten title page. Hatch had found it after all. The last thing he did, perhaps. Well, I thought, as I tucked the creased sheets into my doublet, I’ve saved my master four whole pounds. It’s odd how these trivial thoughts come at the direst moments.

Seeing that I’d obtained what we’d come for, the others made to leave, but I lingered for an instant, curiosity overcoming fear and revulsion. I glanced inside the open trunk then rummaged among the cloth and plate. I’d been right. There was no little box, nestling among folds of cloth. No glass vial, no sacred fragment of wood.

‘He said it was cursed,’ I said.

‘Who said it was cursed? What was cursed?’

‘What are you talking about, Nick?’

There was exasperation as well as alarm in my friends’ voices.

‘It’ll take too long to tell now,’ I said.

‘Then tell it to the Justice,’ said Jack. ‘Let’s get out of here, for Christ’s sake.’

But it was too late. We should have quit the tent the moment that we’d seen what it contained. All at once the crowded space-three living players in the company of one dead publisher and bookseller-was filled with two more figures. Big fellows they were, the ones with beetling brows. Justice Farnaby’s constables. We’d seen the easy way they dealt with large Ursula the pig woman and the equally large Wapping Doll. Three slender players were no match for them.

They indicated in their rough-and-ready fashion that they’d been alerted by reports of a pistol shot. Now we were to accompany them to Justice Farnaby. Obviously, we stammered out our innocence and ignorance. But equally obviously we had questions to answer. Jack and Abel and I were left with no choice but to go quietly to the Pie-Powder Court. We exited the tent, leaving the body on the ground. The constables hadn’t quite placed us under arrest. Yet, if we had tried to flee, not only would it have suggested guilt but we would most certainly have been brought down by their long staffs of office.

The only crumb of comfort in all this was that the makeshift court was situated in part of what had once been St Bartholomew’s Priory-a tent or stall obviously being an undignified place for the administration of justice-and that the old monastic buildings lay in this quarter of the fair. As I’ve already mentioned, it was a comparatively quiet spot, and so we didn’t attract too many gawpers while we were being escorted there. We tried to put on an air of innocence, as though we were simply out for a stroll with this pair of hulking figures. But then innocence is the air assumed by every guilty man, isn’t it?

The grounds and buildings of Bartholomew Fair are owned by the Rich family (never was a family better named) and, at some time in the past, one of them had caused parts of the priory to be restored, not for pious reasons but so that he could swell his coffers by leasing them out. So we found ourselves shoved into a room that might once have been a monk’s cell and was now used for holding malefactors caught at the fair. The constables searched us in a rudimentary fashion. We had nothing of interest about our persons. The pile of paper that I’d retrieved from under Hatch’s body and tucked into my shirt, the foul papers of Shakespeare’s Domitian, were riffled through. I doubted that either man could read, and even if he could, what was there to see? A load of paper which its creator considered worthless and wished to see destroyed.

It crossed my mind to attempt to bribe our gaolers with the money that WS had given me, and indeed they were reluctant to hand back the coins once they’d tipped them out of my purse. But the very fact that they did return them indicated that they were principled. Either that or they were more fearful of Justice Farnaby than they were eager to be corrupted into letting us go. Our search over, they turned the key in the door. There was nowhere to sit in the cell. A small barred window let in a few dusty strings of light and the distant sounds of people enjoying themselves.

Jack Wilson and Abel Glaze looked at me. They didn’t have to say a word. This was my fault, wasn’t it? What had I got them into? Nevertheless we were innocent. Cling to that fact. Rely on English justice and fair play. A few words with Justice Farnaby should be enough to clear up the confusion. Or so I thought.

‘Nick,’ said Abel, ‘have you told us everything?’

‘Yes. No. Not exactly,’ I said.

‘Maybe you had better tell us everything,’ said Jack, ‘before we find ourselves going to Heaven in a string.’

Jack’s reference to a Tyburn execution was casual enough, but it made me feel cold in spite of the stuffy cell.

‘There’s not much to say,’ I said. ‘But Ulysses Hatch wasn’t only in the business of selling Shakespeare’s foul papers…’

And so I explained how the bookseller had mistakenly assumed I’d come in quest of the relic, how he’d shown it to me and how-when it was evident that I knew nothing of it-he had hastily hidden it away again in the chest, with instructions to keep mum. The revelation about the relic took them aback, but I could see that they believed me. If I was going to invent a story it wouldn’t have been as far fetched as this one.

‘That’s what you were looking in the trunk for?’ said Abel. ‘A fragment of the True Cross? Can it really be so?’

‘Real or sham, the item has gone.’

‘Taken by whoever murdered Hatch?’ said Jack.

‘It looks like it.’

‘Then it’s easy,’ said Abel. ‘We find the person who’s in possession of this so-called fragment and get him arrested.’

‘And how are we going to find this individual when we’re locked up in here?’ said Jack. ‘Besides, if he’s any sense he’ll be miles away by now.’

‘It may be that we’re looking for a dead man,’ I said. ‘Ulysses Hatch told me that to touch the relic was death. It seems to have worked in his case.’

Like the remark about the Tyburn string, this added to the general discomfort of the cell.

‘Tom Gally is at the fair,’ said Jack. ‘From what you said, Nick, he was after something.’

‘It might have been the foul papers or the piece of the cross-but perhaps he wasn’t after anything particular. Gally’s the kind of person who sniffs around by instinct. Like a dog. Though it may be that he…’

‘What?’

‘He noticed me leaving Hatch’s tent. Perhaps he’d already arranged to buy the relic-or the foul papers-and got worried when he saw me. Thought I was trying to get my hands on them and stepped in to prevent it.’

‘But why should he kill Hatch?’ said Jack. ‘He’d simply offer him more money than you did. Henslowe’s got deep pockets.’

This was true enough and I could think of no reply. After a time, Abel said,

‘There were those two women about to fight over Hatch, weren’t there? The pig woman and what’s her name…?’

‘Wapping Doll.’

‘Either of them looks as though she’d be capable of felling a man with her bare hands. Where did Wapping Doll go after the Justice broke up the fight? Back to the tent to confront Master Hatch?’

Abel was so excited by this possibility that he couldn’t resist throwing us another suspect. ‘And don’t forget we saw Nightingale’s accomplice-that nip called Peter Perkin-coming out of Hatch’s tent just as we got there.’

‘Hatch was alive then,’ I said. ‘And afterwards.’

‘Perkin could have gone back later.’

‘Someone went back later.’

‘You said that there was bad feeling between William Shakespeare and Ulysses Hatch?’ said Abel.

‘Yes. It’s one reason why he wasn’t willing to deal with the bookseller himself,’ I confirmed. ‘And before you go any further, Abel, I don’t think WS slipped into Hatch’s tent and killed him with his own pistol. Have you seen him around this fair? I haven’t.’

‘Master Shakespeare is good at passing unnoticed,’ said Jack.

It was true that WS had the knack of slipping into places and out again without drawing attention to himself, but for some reason the comment irritated me.

‘Don’t forget he’s killed many-in his imagination,’ said Abel.

This irritated me even more and I said, ‘Well, so have I killed many, and so has everyone, apart from the purest nun.’

‘Leaving aside William, we have at least three people who might have done this murder,’ said Jack. ‘Two of them possibly because they wished to get their hands on the relic, that’s Tom Gally and Peter Perkin. And then we have this Wapping Doll, who is apparently jealous of Hatch’s success with the pig woman. Perhaps she headed back to the tent when the fight was stopped. Her blood was up and she decided to have it out with him.’

I recalled the scene between Wapping Doll and Ulysses Hatch in the tent. There’d been a kind of ribald affection there. They might strike each other, just as she might swap blows with a woman. But to seize a pistol and shoot him…? And why should she take the so-called relic away with her? She was frightened of it. I didn’t think so. I shook my head, and noticed that the others were shaking theirs at the same time.

‘It doesn’t work, Nick,’ said Jack. ‘I know Tom Gally a little better than either of you since I’ve been with the playhouses longer. He’s a nasty piece of work, ready to spread lies and slander and not above a spot of pilfering. But that’s a distance away from being a murderer.’

‘It’s the same with Peter Perkin,’ said Abel. ‘I don’t know him or Ben Nightingale except by reputation. But nips and foists rely on their wits and the speed of their hands. I have kept company with a few of them in the past. They don’t kill people. Why, their proudest boast is to rob you without you noticing it for the next five hours.’

‘I was thinking the same about Wapping Doll,’ I said. ‘She’s not a murderer surely. So…if we exclude them, who does that leave?’

‘It leaves us,’ said Abel.

‘You mean, it leaves me,’ I said.

My friends didn’t reply but I realized that this was exactly what they did mean. I had been summoned into the tent by Ulysses Hatch while they had been left outside, only to drift out of earshot after a few minutes. The bookseller and I had been talking for half an hour perhaps. In all probability, I had been the last person to see him alive apart from his murderer. Of course, Jack and Abel couldn’t really think I was guilty of shooting him, could they? If so, why would I have urged them to accompany me on my second visit to Hatch’s tent? Besides, if I’d really killed Hatch I would be halfway across the Surrey Downs by now.

These were gloomy thoughts. We lapsed into silence, slouching against the cell walls or sitting with our backs to them. The dusty rays of sunlight inched up the far wall. For all that there was nothing so alarming about our present predicament, my confidence that this was a simple confusion which would be cleared up after a few words with Justice Farnaby began to dwindle. I’d been in gaol before, under a false accusation. So had Jack Wilson, come to that, since he’d served a few days in one of the Clink prisons following a youthful affray. And I didn’t doubt that Abel was familiar with the inside of a cell or two. Nevertheless, it is not pleasant to be locked up, even for an hour or so. And there’s something incongruous about being confined in the midst of a fair while everyone else is so free and easy. When the noises of it-the shouts and the cries and songs-come distantly to your ears you feel like a child, punished and shut out from some treat.

I may have been quietly fearful but, sitting against the rough-cast wall, I fell into a kind of daydream in which the figure of Tom Gally pursued me, trying to sell copies of a pamphlet called The Wanton Wife complete with salty pictures. Over Gally’s head hovered a raven shrieking ‘Jump to it!’ Then I visualized a youthful William Shakespeare-more hair in those days-whispering compliments into the ear of an equally youthful Wapping Doll, as fine a piece of goods as Ulysses Hatch had claimed. Suddenly I was woken by the sound of the key turning in the cell door. Jack and Abel also jerked to attention.

The beetle-browed constables stood at the door. By gestures rather than words they indicated that we were to follow them. They escorted us down a flagged passage and into a pillared chamber that had probably been the monks’ refectory. At the far end, seated in an oak chair that could have belonged to a prior, was Justice Walter Farnaby, neatly bearded and precise. There were a handful of other individuals standing or sitting near by, including a couple more constables and an elderly clerk positioned behind a table with pen and paper. This was Pie-Powder Court. I don’t know the origins of this strange name but I do know that it’s not empowered to hear serious cases, only instances of trading without licence or cheating or petty theft. Nevertheless, Justice Farnaby had the authority to arraign any man and to cause him to be taken before a more severe court. We lined up before him, flanked by the constables. To judge by the way he was looking at us, if we weren’t quite prisoners we were definitely not free men.

There was a sudden shriek of ‘That’s him!’ from one of the bystanders. This was unnerving. More unnerving still was to discover that it was Wapping Doll. She was pointing at me. Her face was distorted with rage or grief. ‘I saw him with my Yew-lee. I left them alone together. He killed Ulysses Hatch!’

‘Be silent, woman,’ said Justice Farnaby. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

His voice was low but commanding. Wapping Doll gaped but said nothing more. Farnaby requested that we identify ourselves by name and occupation. It was for the record only, since I’d have bet a week’s wages he already knew who we were.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Justice Farnaby to us when this process was complete, ‘a man has been murdered. This is too grave a matter for Pie-Powder Court. I have given orders that Hatch’s tent is to be guarded before the body is removed. Nevertheless, preliminary statements will be taken here and, if the evidence is persuasive, indictments will follow. I have already heard accounts from several of those who recently saw Master Hatch alive, like that lady there. But you were the first to find him dead. Your stories, if you please.’

Jack and Abel turned to me. This public hearing seemed a slightly irregular way of going about evidence-gathering but I supposed that the Bartholomew Fair court was a more provisional affair, one in which matters had to be settled quickly. As briefly as I could, I outlined the circumstances that had brought the three of us to the fair, my commission from WS, the conversation with the bookseller, the arrangement to return when he’d found the item in question, our discovery of Hatch’s body. The elderly clerk took notes of all this, snuffling and clearing his throat in a distracting way.

The only details I omitted were probably the most important ones, to do with the relic. Even though the theft of the fragment provided a motive for murder I didn’t want to complicate matters. As it turned out, not mentioning this was a mistake since Farnaby already knew of it.

‘Master Hatch showed you nothing else?’ he said.

‘I am not sure what you mean, sir,’ I replied.

‘There was no other item of value?’

‘I do not recall so.’

‘Yet you are carrying four pounds in your purse, are you not? As if you came here with the where-withal to purchase something of value.’

‘That was the sum which Master Shakespeare had given me to buy back his foul papers.’

‘The money was not to buy a piece of wood which purported to come from the cross of our Lord and which is no longer to be found anywhere on Master Hatch’s premises?’

There was a gasp from someone in the makeshift court at this. I felt myself grow red like a child.

‘Wood from the cross?’

‘Just so. Did Master Hatch mention such an item?’

‘He may have done. I do not take much account of such popish gewgaws but yes, I think he did mention it-now I come to think of it, sir.’

‘…now you come to think of it, Master Revill. Yet we have testimony that Ulysses Hatch intended to sell this “popish gewgaw”, as you call it, and sell it to the players.’

‘Not to us, sir,’ I said, realizing that such testimony could only have come from Wapping Doll. ‘As I said, my business at the fair was simply to buy the foul papers of an early play by William Shakespeare. My friends can confirm this.’

Jack and Abel nodded away but Farnaby no longer seemed very interested.

I became conscious of the wad of papers stowed under my shirt. I rather wished now that I had let them lie under Hatch’s body. The Justice’s words also cleared up the mystery of why Tom Gally was at the fair. Hatch had intended to sell the ‘item’ to the players, as reported to Farnaby by Wapping Doll. So Gally had not come in pursuit of the Domitian text after all, was perhaps unaware of it. Instead he was on commission from Henslowe to purchase the fragment of the cross. I was considering whether I should name Master Gally when Farnaby put another question to me.

‘Did Master Hatch show you a pistol when you were in his tent on the first occasion?’

‘Yes, sir. He kept it primed…’

‘Why?’

‘Because the world is full of rogues. They were his words.’

‘He’s right enough there,’ said Justice Farnaby. ‘This is the pistol?’

With a flourish he produced the weapon from the ground beside his chair. It had a bulbous handle and a blunt muzzle. I hadn’t noticed it before. Perhaps Farnaby was intending to shock me into a display of guilt.

‘I…I think so, sir,’ I said. ‘It’s a snaphaunce.’

‘Ah, you know your weapons, Master Revill,’ said the Justice.

Never handled one, I wanted to say, but it was too late now. I realized that, while the three of us had been stuck in our cell, there’d been plenty of coming and going between the court and the dead man’s tent, as well as the taking of witness statements. None of this put us in a good light.

‘What happened to the bird?’ said Farnaby.

The question, coming abruptly, took me by surprise.

‘You mean the raven?’

‘Yes. I have testimony that Hatch kept a bird which went by the name of Hold-fast.’

‘I do not know what happened to it, sir. The raven was in the tent earlier. When I returned with my friends he had gone. Perhaps he took fright, with his master dead.’

There was a sob from the sidelines. Wapping Doll had her hands to her face in grief.

‘Very well,’ said Farnaby. ‘Have you two associates of Master Revill anything to add to his story?’

When Jack and Abel indicated that they hadn’t, Farnaby said, ‘This is enough for the present. You may go.’

This sudden dismissal was surprising, but I caught a glance that passed from the Justice to one of the constables. I wondered just how far we would be permitted to go. Outside St Bartholomew’s Priory, we debated what to do next. It was afternoon by now. The sun hung in the sky, hot and heavy. Earlier I’d felt hungry, but now I had no appetite left. Abel was for quitting St Bartholomew’s Fair and the Smithfield neighbourhood straight away, but Jack said doing that would make us look like guilty men. Out of the corner of my vision I caught sight of one of the beetle-browed constables, undoubtedly ordered by Farnaby to keep an eye on us.

I gestured over my shoulder.

‘We’ve got Gog or Magog on our tail,’ I said.

‘Gog? Magog?’ said Jack.

‘My name for the constables,’ I said. ‘Those hulking fellows who took us in just now. They look like the wooden statues outside the Guildhall, big and ugly brutes.’

Jack looked dubiously at me.

‘They didn’t find the box or the glass vial or the piece of the cross when they searched us, so they think we must have deposited them somewhere about the fair. They’re waiting to see if we go in search of them.’

‘As I said, we should get out now,’ said Abel.

‘No we shouldn’t,’ I said. ‘Look over there. On second thoughts, don’t look. Pretend to talk instead.’

In the shadow of the priory, half hidden behind a crumbling buttress, stood two men. Like the seasoned professionals they were, my friends didn’t falter but at once entered into an energetic ‘conversation’ of the sort we often pretended to have on the Globe stage. Meanwhile, between their shoulders, I watched Ben Nightingale the ballad singer and his accomplice, the little man with the rustic hat who went by the name of Peter Perkin. They must have thought themselves quite unobserved for they were occupied with their business. Their real business, which was the lifting of purses and the division of the spoils. I’d no doubt that was what they were doing now.

The ballad singer had laid aside his lute in favour of his loot, you might say. In his outspread palm he was counting out some items that Perkin had just spilled into it, coins or trinkets presumably, the fruit of the latter’s nipping and foisting. Meantime Perkin had picked up Nightingale’s lute and was fiddling with it. I wondered that they were so bold to do this out in the open and close to Pie-Powder Court, but they were in a secluded spot and the day’s successful labour had perhaps made them careless.

But it wasn’t the sight of a couple of thieves counting out their money which interested me. Rather, it was the fact that Perkin, having put down the singer’s lute, had suddenly produced from somewhere about his person the wooden box that I’d last seen in Ulysses Hatch’s tent. The box with the lid and the star-shaped pattern. The box that had contained the fragment of the cross. So Peter Perkin had been the thief all along! And not just the thief but the murderer too, for whoever had stolen the cross fragment had surely shot Hatch into the bargain. Despite Abel’s earlier claim, Perkin the cutpurse was capable of murder after all.

As I watched surreptitiously, Perkin drew the box out into the open and showed it to Nightingale, at the same time shaking his head. As if to prove the honesty of his gesture, he opened the box and held it upside down. Nothing fell out. It was truly empty. Perkin said something else and Nightingale replied. The stiff postures of each man indicated an imminent argument.

If the two men hadn’t been so wrapped up in their dialogue they might have noticed me. As it was, Nightingale uttered some more sharp words-which weren’t audible-and shook his head so violently that his little red cap almost fell off. For answer Perkin passed him the box. Go on, his whole manner said, if you don’t believe me, take a look for yourself. There’s nothing inside, it’s truly empty.

The ballad singer seized the box and raised it to his eyes as if to give it further scrutiny. Perkin grew more determined to make his point, and he gesticulated and flapped his arms about. Nightingale’s mouth gaped, giving a good impression of surprise or disbelief. I couldn’t understand what they were on about. Once again the singer examined the interior of the box. Then he looked over the rim and saw me staring at him. And immediately his eyes flicked over my shoulder and I saw them widen in surprise or fear. I glanced round. Approaching us was the constable whom I’d christened Gog (or maybe it was Magog).

After that a couple of things happened simultaneously.

I decided that the only way to prove my-or our-absolute innocence in the matter of Hatch’s murder was to lay hands on Peter Perkin the cutpurse and Ben Nightingale the ballad singer and on the box, which, empty or not, would be proof of their complicity in theft. I say ‘decided’ but of course it was an instinctive move. Yelling something to my friends, I started off towards the shadowy spot where the two men were standing.

But, already alarmed by the appearance of Magog (or Gog), Nightingale snatched up his lute with one hand and, still holding on to the wooden box with the other, slipped round the buttress and took to his heels. His accomplice was a second or so behind him, but he too was away before I got within twenty yards.

Nightingale and Perkin would have done better to have stood still and tried to brazen it out. Running was a sign of guilt. And even someone as dense as the constable could react to a running man, as a hound reacts to a hare. I sensed rather than saw him lumbering after us.

The ballad singer and the cutpurse would also have done better to separate so as to divide pursuit, but Perkin stuck close to Nightingale’s track. The priory lay on the north side of Smithfield and the edge of the Bartholomew ground. Indeed, this point really marked the ragged fringe of London. There were a few people about but most of the crowd was still at the heart of the fair.

Given their head start and likely practice in running, it was quite possible that the thieves might have outpaced us and made their getaway among the lanes and ditches that fanned out into the open fields of Hoxton or Islington. But suddenly, from behind the wall of an outbuilding, there sprang the other constable, Gog (or Magog). Whether he acted by instinct or whether he was more quick-thinking than I’d credited either of them with being, he stuck out his long staff so that it tangled up in Ben Nightingale’s legs. The singer, impeded by what he was carrying, stumbled and fell. His red cap flew off while his lute somersaulted into the air before crashing to the ground with an unmusical clatter. Then the constable gave him a clout over the head.

Perkin the cutpurse almost collided with his fallen companion, although he jumped to one side at the last moment and drew off to the left. But he’d lost precious seconds by the manoeuvre and, with four individuals on his tail, he didn’t stand much of a chance. Small fellow that he was, he was soon overwhelmed by all our attentions.

I left it to the others to deal with Perkin and went in search of the box, which Nightingale had also dropped as he fell. I found it on its side a few yards off. It wasn’t quite empty for, wedged in a corner, was the strip of parchment that Ulysses Hatch had claimed showed the authenticity of the fragment of the cross. The parchment was so faded, however, and the words so hard to decipher, that, by itself, this would prove little. Nevertheless, I carefully nestled the box under my arm and joined the others. Ben Nightingale was on his feet but looked as though he scarcely knew where he was-or indeed who he was. He was holding his bare head where the constable had thwacked it.

Gog and Magog looked gratified to have apprehended two more villains who had demonstrated their turpitude by fleeing. When I indicated that we should all return to Pie-Powder Court and Justice Farnaby, they seemed happy enough to fall in with the idea. On our way there, I noticed Abel pick up Nightingale’s fractured lute. For his part, the singer was still not sure what was going on and staggered forward clutching his head. Peter Perkin, meanwhile, looked crestfallen.

‘This is the singer’s means of trade,’ said Abel, cradling the lute in his arms. The neck of the instrument was splintered and the strings tangled.

‘Singer? He’s a thief-or worse,’ I said, full of righteousness that we had tracked down the individuals responsible for Hatch’s demise.

‘It will be a long time before he makes enough money to buy another of these,’ said Abel, gazing on the lute as though it were a sickly baby.

‘Then he can always steal one,’ I said, wondering at Abel’s softness. I suppose it was because he had once earned his living by trickery that he had a sneaking sympathy with unreformed cony-catchers.

We returned to the priory and to the hall where Justice Farnaby was still sitting on his oak chair, as if waiting for more malefactors to be produced. I was eager to explain that we’d come back with proof, of a sort, as to the real identity of the thieves and probable murderers of Ulysses Hatch. Wapping Doll was still there. To her especially I was eager to show that I was no murderer. I handed over the box to the Justice, describing how this was the very object I’d first seen in Hatch’s hands and then in Perkin’s possession before it was seized by Nightingale. The cutpurse looked indignant but it was for form’s sake only. Gog and Magog could add their testimony to the effect that I was telling the truth, I said, appealing to the constables.

Farnaby opened the box and took out the fragile strip of parchment. He glanced at it for an instant then shut the box once more. He looked at Nightingale, who was still clutching his battered noddle, and at Perkin. He considered, for a long period he considered.

‘Wait in there with your friends, Master Revill,’ he said, gesturing towards a door at the side of the hall. ‘Let me hear what these individuals have to say for themselves.’

Jack and Abel and I filed into a room that must have been the kitchen to the refectory. There was an open fireplace with a roasting-spit operated by a small treadmill. A dog would have turned the treadmill in the monks’ time. The equipment was old and rusted. The kitchen door was firmly closed on us. Again, if we weren’t quite prisoners we weren’t free men either. My confidence that justice was about to be done dwindled slightly.

‘Where’s this bit of the “true” cross, then?’ said Jack. ‘All that Perkin had was the box which you said it was in.’

‘That’s only what he showed Nightingale, the empty box,’ I said. ‘Most likely he’d already taken it for himself. Maybe he was planning to sell it on his own account.’

‘If it ever existed,’ said Jack. In his irritation he tried to spin the treadmill, which was connected to the spit by a sagging chain. It creaked like some ancient implement of torture.

‘I saw it, I tell you, I saw it in Ulysses Hatch’s own hands.’

‘Well, he can’t testify any longer, can he? And now it’s vanished into thin air.’

‘Nick’s not the only one to know of it,’ said Abel, coming to my rescue. ‘Justice Farnaby mentioned it. Someone must have informed him.’

‘Wapping Doll,’ I said. ‘She knew about the cross, said it brought her out in goose bumps.’

‘Then her bumps can be brought in evidence,’ said Jack. ‘Until such time we shall have to say that the cross has gone.’

‘Perhaps this can be repaired,’ said Abel, changing the subject. ‘I’m not an expert, mind…’

Abel was still holding Nightingale’s damaged lute. And, watching him, an ingenious idea flashed into my mind. I recalled the scene of the two thieves standing in the shadow of the buttress. The way in which Perkin had been fiddling with the instrument while his friend was counting out the coins in his hand. Suppose that Perkin had got the bit of sacred wood after all and did plan to keep it for himself. Suppose the plan had come to him at the very instant the two men were counting out their money in the shade of the buttress. Perkin is holding the wooden box containing the item. He’s about to surrender it to the singer when greed gets the better of him. He palms the glass vial and, almost before he’s aware of what he’s doing, slips it into a convenient hiding place instead of handing it over. Then he shows Nightingale the empty box, pretending ignorance of its contents. Meantime the glass vial and the relic are somewhere else altogether.

‘Give me the lute, Abel. I’ve got an idea.’

Abel passed me the broken instrument. The neck was cracked and splintered and some of the strings had snapped. I shook the thing. Something rattled within. I dug my hand through the sound-hole and rummaged about the interior of the lute. With mounting certainty, I grasped hold of an elongated object. It didn’t feel like glass but wood. Too late I remembered Ulysses Hatch’s warning, They say that to touch it is death. But I’d already seized the wooden piece and was easing it out of the sound-hole. The thrill of being proved right banished fears of an old wives’ curse. Like a magician, I uncurled my palm and showed Jack and Abel what it contained.

‘See! I told you!’

‘Yes, I see it,’ said Jack. ‘So what?’

Only now did I glance down at the item in my palm. It was a shaped sliver of wood all right, but it wasn’t a piece of the True Cross. For one thing, the wood was new and unscarred.

‘That is a sound-post, Nick,’ said Abel. ‘Every lute has them. They’re put inside to strengthen the frame.’

‘So what exactly was your idea, Nicholas?’ said Jack. ‘That the cutpurse might have slipped what you’re searching for inside the lute?’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ I said.

I could see from the expression on Jack’s face that he was undecided whether to laugh or curl his lip in scorn. Abel merely looked baffled.

Luckily, at that moment the kitchen door opened and once again Gog (or Magog) ushered us into Justice Farnaby’s presence. The scene was much as we’d left it. Peter Perkin, still crestfallen, stood before the oak chair. Ben Nightingale was sitting on a bench, looking dazed. The aged clerk’s pen was poised above a pile of paper. The only change was in the expression on Farnaby’s face. Instead of looking grave and precise, he looked rather as Jack had done just now, somewhere between amused and scornful.

‘They say truth will out, don’t they,’ he said, half to himself. ‘Well, Master Revill, it appears as though you at least were telling the truth. The trouble is that a grain of truth is wrapped up in a tissue of lies.’

I nodded, though I hadn’t the slightest notion what he was talking about.

‘This person here,’ continued Farnaby, indicating Perkin the cutpurse, ‘has made a deposition to Pie-Powder Court. My clerk here will read out the salient features of it.’

The clerk, elderly, with grey hair straggling from under his cap, bent his head to the topmost sheet of paper and cleared his throat in a way that might have been thought excessive onstage.

‘Witness Perkin deposes…let me see…deposes that he is in the habit of attending Bartholomew Fair, sometimes in company with his good friend Benjamin Nightingale, ballad singer of Tooley Street…because he enjoys the honey tones of his friend’s voice when he sings…witness deposes that his mother, that is Ben Nightingale’s mother, knew what she was about when she married a man called Nightingale and that she must have had foreknowledge that her son would grow into a fine-’

‘Never mind all that nonsense,’ said Farnaby. ‘Get to the quick of the matter.’

Put out, the clerk snuffled. He coughed to clear his throat and moved his pen down the page.

‘…er…witness Perkin acknowledges that he is a dealer in small items…he calls himself a, er, “snapper-up of trifles”…this is his sole trade…Perkin says that he went to the tent of one Ulysses Hatch, publisher and bookseller, because he had purchased items from the aforesaid Hatch on other occasions. Once in the tent, Perkin was shown a box which contained a glass tube which contained, in turn, a piece of wood which the aforesaid Hatch claimed to be a fragment from the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Witness states that he enquired as to the price of the item but then left the tent because his pockets were not deep enough for the item in question. Asked to explain this, he said that he didn’t have the cash. Furthermore, he said, he was somewhat alarmed by the presence of a talking raven in the tent. Outside the tent witness saw three gentlemen who from their shifty expressions he judged to be players…’

We stiffened at this but Justice Farnaby shot us a warning glance.

‘Perkin deposes that he later thought better of his rejection of the item and, after consulting with his good friend Nightingale, returned to the tent to make another offer to Ulysses Hatch, publisher and bookseller…’

At this point the clerk was overcome by a fit of coughing and lost his place in the text. Farnaby looked on with pursed lips. Presumably what we were listening to was what the Justice had recently referred to as a tissue of lies. Perkin as a snapper-up of trifles, eh? Well, that was one way of describing a cutpurse. The only accurate parts of the statement related to Perkin’s account of his two visits to Hatch’s tent. Whether he was there by chance on the first occasion or whether he was on the lookout for what he could filch, he’d been shown the glass vial. Hatch had obviously been as prepared to sell it to the cutpurse as to Tom Gally. Hadn’t he said he’d sell to anyone if the price was right? Perkin had left the tent, bumping into us on the way out. With or without consulting Nightingale, he’d gone back in an attempt to steal the relic. Perhaps he’d sneaked into the tent somehow, been surprised by Hatch and a struggle had followed. Perkin had wrested the pistol from Hatch’s grasp…so that it detonated at close quarters…but if that was so, surely he’d be covered in burns or scorch marks?

The clerk gave a final cough, expelling a bolus of phlegm into a filthy handkerchief. Then he resumed his, or rather Perkin’s, account.

‘…witness deposes that he entered Master Hatch’s tent to negotiate over the sale of the relic. There was a pistol lying to one side on top of a chest. Witness says he does not know whether he was more alarmed by the sight of the pistol or by the presence of the raven which told him to, er, jump to it. For a second time, the aforesaid Hatch produced the box which contained the glass vial which contained, in turn, a piece-’

‘Oh, get on with it, man,’ said Farnaby. ‘We know what it contained. To the quick of the matter.’

‘Yes, sir…witness Perkin states that the next thing which happened was…was that…’

But we were never destined to learn what happened next from the clerk’s own mouth for he was again seized by a coughing fit. His thin frame shook and he unfolded the filthy handkerchief again preparatory to expelling whole flights of phlegm.

Justice Farnaby, despairing of his clerk, had to speak up loudly to drown out the sounds of hawking and spitting. ‘In short, witness Perkin here claims that he is quite innocent of the murder of Ulysses Hatch, publisher and bookseller. He says that the real killler is-’

‘Shut your gob!’

As it happened, the clerk’s titanic throat-clearing ceased at the very moment that these heretical words rang out in Pie-Powder Court. Or rather, the words didn’t so much ring out as squawk out. Another oddity was that the words were delivered not from ground level, where a man might have been standing, but from many feet above our heads. The refectory was criss-crossed by beams.

We all looked up. On a beam almost directly above Justice Farnaby was perched a bird that I recognized. So did Peter Perkin. He held out a trembling arm.

‘That’s him,’ he said. ‘That’s the bird that killed his master. He jumped on the pistol as it was lying there and the thing fell sideways and got discharged somehow and shot Master Hatch in the throat.’

‘Shut your gob!’ said Hold-fast, and then for good measure, ‘Jump to it!’

The raven bent his head downward, assessing the effect of his instructions to the court. Nobody spoke. The Justice was silent. Even the clerk stopped examining the contents of his handkerchief to raise his head.

For some reason I straight away believed what Perkin had said. It was too ridiculous not to be true. Who could make up such a tale? I’d seen for myself the primed pistol and the way in which Hatch laid it carelessly to one side when we were talking. It was quite plausible that the bird had landed-clumsily, accidentally, even intentionally perhaps (for who can tell what was going on inside that dark little head)-on the thing and had set it off. Men are always shooting at birds. Why shouldn’t it happen the other way about, and a bird shoot a man? Even with a bird that had adopted a man and might be presumed to be his special friend.

Hold-fast wasn’t planning to submit to questions from anybody. He seemed to duck out of sight. But he was only gone for an instant. Next, with a flap of his black wings, he was down at ground level, although careful to keep out of the reach of all of us. He paraded up and down a stretch of flagstoned floor, more cocksure than any Justice you’ve ever seen. Mind you, he looked a bit ragged. Even at a distance his plumage did not seem as glossy as it had earlier in the day. His feathers were, literally, ruffled. There were smudges around his head. Exactly the sort of marks you might expect to see if a pistol had exploded somewhere in his vicinity.

What gave added credence to Perkin’s tale was the fact that Hold-fast was not talking now. No commands to ‘shut up’ or to ‘jump to it’ issued from his mouth. He wasn’t speaking because he couldn’t. Tucked athwart his beak was a glass tube, which he must have temporarily deposited up aloft so as to give us the benefit of his voice. It was, for certain, the vial, which contained a piece of…well, you know what it contained. It was as if he’d brought this item to Pie-Powder Court for proof and waited up in the roof until the right moment came. Then he’d flown down from the beam to show us precisely what he’d done.

And, having shown us, Hold-fast flapped aloft once more and resumed his perch on the crossbeam. Still clutching the vial, he waddled sideways towards the point where the beam joined the wall. Being a monastic building, the refectory was well supplied with windows. In the old days, before the suppression, they were probably filled with fine coloured glass. Now they were mostly unglazed so that the winter winds and the airs of summer could come and go freely through them. On a hot August day it was pleasant to have unglazed windows. Useful too for Hold-fast, who wanted to make his exit as easily as he must have made his entrance. Reaching the end of the beam, and with one final cock of his head in the direction of his human audience, he slipped over the lintel of a window and apparently vanished into the afternoon. I’ve seen well-known players, especially the clowns among us, make their exits in just that way. With a knowing nod towards the crowd and a kind of aren’t-I-the-very-Devil air to their departure.

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved for an instant. I’m not sure that everyone understood what had just happened. Gog and Magog and the other constables stared as if the appearance of a guilty raven was an everyday occurrence in Pie-Powder Court. Poor old Ben Nightingale was still recovering from being struck by a constable’s staff. The aged clerk resumed his throat-clearing. But the quicker-witted among us-Perkin, Justice Farnaby, us players and even Wapping Doll-realized that we’d witnessed something very peculiar.

‘Well, go after it,’ said Walter Farnaby to no one in particular.

And, as if that was our cue, we rushed out of St Bartholomew’s Priory in the forlorn hope of laying hands on Hold-fast. Outside, the sun had slipped down a notch or two. The sounds of the fair-the cries and the songs and the raucous laughter-filled the heavy air.

Instinctively I looked up at the flank of the building, where we’d seen the raven make his exit. It was as if he’d been waiting for us to emerge, I swear, because at that moment Hold-fast lifted off from the window ledge. He must have been wanting one last glimpse of his pursuers, to taunt them finally. As he extended his wings, I observed a certain raggedness to one of them. Perhaps it was just his age (he’s an old boy, Hatch had said) or perhaps it was the result of standing too close to an exploding pistol. And as Hold-fast flapped away, the sun glinted off what he held in his beak. Hold-fast was a good name for him. He’d not let go of that object before he had good cause.

‘And you followed him?’ said WS.

‘Not so much followed him,’ I said, ‘but we saw the general direction he was going in. He was heading for the river, flying south. Perhaps he was going to deliver it to Henslowe.’

‘A raven won’t deliver anything to anyone,’ said WS. ‘He is his own man.’

I was sitting in Shakespeare’s lodgings in Mugwell Street. They were good lodgings. We were drinking wine. It was good wine, fitting for one of the Globe shareholders. WS was all concern and solicitousness. He’d been appalled to hear of the trouble and to-do which Jack and Abel and I had tumbled into the previous day on his behalf and in pursuit of his Domitian foul papers. Although some of his concern was purely rhetorical, I knew WS well enough to recognize that he was being sincere, mostly.

The rescued foul papers now lay on a table beside their creator, an untidy little pile. He’d hardly glanced at them. The paper was old and yellow. The sheets were streaked red with Hatch’s blood, and they were creased from where they’d been nestling under my shirt the previous day. Nevertheless, all’s well that ends well…as it says somewhere.

‘According to Ulysses Hatch, there was a legend attached to the cross fragment,’ I said. ‘It was cursed. Whoever touched it would die. It seemed to work in his case.’

‘I’ve heard such stories before,’ said WS. ‘Also that the last person to possess such an item will perish when he parts from it. I wonder if the raven will let it drop from his beak now…?’

I visualized Hold-fast letting go of the glass vial, perhaps because (bright and shiny though it was) he could see no ultimate purpose for it. I visualized him dropping it somewhere on the remote wastes of the Thames foreshore, the vial landing in the soft mud or in the water.

‘So you think that Tom Gally was out to purchase the relic on Henslowe’s behalf?’ said WS.

‘That’s what it looked like. The story was that Hatch intended to sell it to some “players”. Gally made himself pretty scarce. There was no sign of him at the fair later on.’

‘He probably got wind of what happened to Hatch. And as for those other two, Nightingale and-’

‘Peter Perkin. I think they just blundered into the situation by chance. In fact, I don’t believe the ballad singer had much to do with it. He was the singing attraction, he just stood there and warbled while Perkin picked out the marks. Perkin was the cutpurse. He’d probably gone to Hatch’s tent to purchase some of his spicy wares. While he was there Hatch saw a selling opportunity. He told me he’d sell anything if the price was right. It wouldn’t matter if he’d already promised the item to Henslowe. And when Perkin glimpsed the relic, he must have thought he was going to make some easy money. His story was true enough. He was negotiating with Hatch for a second time when the bird hopped down and dislodged the gun, setting it off.’

‘Can that happen?’ said WS.

‘Abel Glaze has some knowledge of these things,’ I said. ‘Once when he was in the Low Countries he saw a fellow whose pistol dropped from his belt by accident. It hit the ground and went off, killing him stone dead.’

‘And so Ulysses Hatch died by his own weapon.’

‘Perkin claimed he was deafened and terrified. He fled from the tent, clutching the empty box. Later on he met up with Nightingale and they divided the day’s takings. He was showing him the empty box and telling him the story of what happened, flapping his arms like a bird. I don’t think Nightgingale believed him. Who would?’

‘Until the bird himself appeared to give evidence,’ said WS. ‘Naturally the raven picked up the glass vial. Bright and shiny and valuable.’

‘Then he must have waddled out of the tent,’ I said.

‘Did Justice Farnaby bring the humans to account for their thieving?’

‘He did not, William. I think that he was so…surprised by the turn of events that he had no appetite for relatively trivial offences. Besides, there wasn’t any evidence against Perkin or Nightingale. No one saw them stealing anything. The money they had could have been their own, honestly earned. No, they got off scot-free. And Hatch’s death is accounted a strange misadventure.’

WS turned to one side and picked up the sheaf of paper from the table. He crossed to the fireplace and deposited the sheets there. He struck a flint and set the flame to the paper.

‘There,’ he said as he watched the fire catch hold and the sheets curl and blacken. ‘Sometimes flame is the author’s best friend. No one will ever see or hear of my Domitian again. You have done me no small favour, Nick.’

‘In return, I shall ask for some information.’

‘If I can give it.’

‘You were once familiar with someone called Doll. Wapping Doll?’

WS had been crouching on his hams supervising the destruction of his script. Now he levered himself to his feet once more, groaning slightly and making some time-filling comment about old bones.

‘Wapping Doll? No, I don’t think so.’

‘Ulysses Hatch said differently.’

‘Did he now?’

‘Said that you and he had once had a falling-out over her.’

‘Never contradict a dead man,’ said WS.

‘Was he right?’

‘Why so insistent, Nick?’

Now it was my turn to feel uncomfortable.

‘Do you mean to ask,’ said WS, ‘whether I was once young and energetic and far from home in this great city, as you were yourself not so long ago? And glad of company?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

‘Young ravens must have food, you know. However, your question is a fair one, considering what you’ve done for me. I’ve never told you of my early years in London, have I?’

‘Not much,’ I said.

‘Then I shall tell you now.’

And he did.