‘Thank you, Nicholas,’ said Mordrake, leaning heavily on his arm. ‘I can cure the plague, the pox and the sweating sickness, but I’ve yet to find a remedy for old age.’
‘Do you think that you can cure Edmund?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Without a doubt.’
Hoode was heartened. ‘That’s cheering news, Doctor Mordrake,’ he said. ‘How long will it take? Doctor Zander said that it would take several weeks, perhaps even longer.’
‘Leave yourself in the hands of that impostor,’ warned Mordrake, raising a long finger, ‘and you may never recover. You suffer from no disease, Master Hoode.’
‘No? Then what is wrong with me?’
‘You are being poisoned.’
Margery Firethorn had run out of apologies. Expecting her husband to return in order to spend time with their guest, she was mortified to be left alone again in Shoreditch with her brother-in-law. They had always had an uneasy relationship. She found Jonathan Jarrold far too mild and self-effacing for her taste whereas he was patently intimidated by her potency. To be left alone in a room with Margery made him feel shy and inadequate, and he was eternally grateful that he had married the quieter of the two sisters. Since she had little interest in books, and even less in this particular bookseller, Margery had little to say to him. Their conversation was punctuated by long silences.
‘Lawrence will be back soon,’ she said for the fifteenth time.
‘I want to congratulate him on his performance at the rehearsal.’
‘As long as you do not mention this afternoon. According to the apprentices, it was a sorry affair. That will have put Lawrence in a choleric mood.’
‘He was not very cheerful this morning,’ he recalled with a diffident smile. ‘How he yelled at his actors! I’d never heard such curses.’
‘He always snaps at their heels,’ said Margery.
‘Putting on a play is more difficult than I imagined. This is the first time I’ve witnessed a rehearsal and it opened my eyes. Lawrence was in fine voice himself, so was Barnaby Gill, the clown. I remember seeing him at Cambridge.’
‘Who else did you meet? Nick Bracewell, I daresay.’
‘Oh, he was most helpful,’ said Jarrold. ‘That was another revelation. I thought that a book holder simply prompted the actors, but this one did so much more than that. He even told people where to move and stand onstage.’
She gave an affectionate smile. ‘Nick is a jewel.’
‘It was he who told me about Michael Grammaticus. I knew him at Cambridge.’
‘Was he any livelier there? Lawrence says that the fellow is so morose.’
‘I think that Michael still mourns the death of his friend.’
There was another strained silence. Margery’s ears pricked up hopefully at the sound of a horse in the street outside, but it trotted past the house. She settled back in her chair with a grunt of annoyance. Jarrold was perched on the edge of his stool, conscious that his presence was irritating her yet unable to find words to win her over. Even at her most quiescent, he was wary of Margery. When she was fuming, as now, with barely contained rage, he found her nothing short of terrifying. The thought of sharing a bed with such a termagant made him shudder. Jarrold sensed that he would be devoured alive.
Feeling that it was his turn to initiate further conversation, he fell back on a sentence that she had already uttered time and again.
‘Lawrence will be back soon,’ he said.
Margery exploded. ‘Where, in the bowels of Christ, is the rogue?’ she howled.
Lawrence Firethorn watched from a corner as Philomen Lavery dealt the cards. Still reeling from the news of Marwood’s return, Firethorn had drunk far too much wine to be able to resist the landlord’s persuasive tongue. Adam Crowmere had taken him up to the room where three guests were playing cards with Lavery. The landlord advised Firethorn to watch while he took the empty chair at the table. It soon became clear that Crowmere’s run of luck had expired. Time after time he lost a game yet somehow maintained his good humour.
‘I’ll withdraw,’ he said with a chuckle, ‘while I still have money enough to feed myself. Take my place, Lawrence,’ he invited. ‘You can do no worse than me.’
Firethorn shook his head. ‘I’ll not play again.’
‘One game,’ suggested Lavery, gathering up the cards. ‘Just one game.’
‘One always leads to another.’
‘Not if your will is strong enough, Master Firethorn.’
‘My will is like iron,’ boasted the other.
‘Then you can play a single game and walk away.’
‘Yes,’ said Firethorn. ‘I could, if I wished.’
‘Prove it,’ coaxed Lavery. ‘Take the empty chair.’
With obvious misgivings, Firethorn lowered himself into the seat. Lavery dealt the cards to all the players. Crowmere stood directly behind Firethorn as the actor studied his cards. Seeing what the actor had been dealt, the landlord chortled.
‘Well done, Lawrence,’ he said, patting him on the back. ‘With those cards, I think you’ll win at last. I told you that your luck would change.’
Michael Grammaticus was still poring over his table when the servant entered the room to tell him that he had a visitor. The playwright was puzzled and disturbed. Few people in London even knew where he lodged. When he heard that the caller was Nicholas Bracewell, he relaxed somewhat but he was far from pleased at the intrusion. He told the servant to bring the visitor up then he glanced down again at the scene on which he had been working for so long. When Nicholas was shown in, Grammaticus gave him a guarded welcome.
‘I know why you’ve come,’ he said, getting up from his chair. ‘Edmund has sent you to chide me for not calling on him today, but I promised to finish this scene for his play first.’
‘How much have you written?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Far too much. Enough to furnish three scenes, in fact, but none of it worthy enough to show to anyone else.’ He gave a gesture of hopelessness. ‘Perhaps I do not have a gift for comedy, after all.’
‘What do you consider to be your strength as an author, Michael?’
‘My sense of drama, Nick. I believe that I have an eye for conflict.’
‘You have an eye for something,’ conceded Nicholas, ‘though I am not yet sure what it is. But forgive me for calling so late in the evening. It was important to see you.’
‘Does it concern The Siege of Troy?’
‘Yes, it does.’
‘I knew that Lawrence would require more changes.’
‘This has nothing to do with Lawrence, but rather with his wife, Margery. Did you know that her sister lives in Cambridge?’
‘No. Why should I?’
‘Because her brother-in-law is an acquaintance of yours, one Jonathan Jarrold.’
‘The bookseller? Yes, I know Master Jarrold well. He keeps a good stock.’
‘He’s visiting London,’ said Nicholas, ‘and chanced to attend our rehearsal this morning. We talked at length. Master Jarrold was surprised to learn that you had turned playwright. That was always the ambition of your friend, Stephen Wragby.’
Grammaticus tensed. ‘Why have you come here, Nick?’
‘To find out who really wrote Caesar’s Fall.’
‘I did!’ said the other, defiantly.
‘What of The Siege of Troy?’
‘Every word of it is mine.’
‘The Epilogue was certainly penned by you,’ agreed Nicholas. ‘That’s why you took so long to finish it, is it not? And why it is such a poor addition to a rich drama. It was the Epilogue that planted the first seed of doubt in my mind, Michael.’
‘If it will not serve,’ said Grammaticus, ‘I’ll write a new and better one.’
‘Do you really have the skill to do that?’
‘You know that I have!’
‘What I know is that The Siege of Troy was first written in Greek by Stephen Wragby. Every word of it may be yours, but only in the sense that you translated it.’