‘I hear no sound of the old religion in all this.’
‘The Clink.’
‘What of it?’
‘You spent a day imprisoned there.’
‘Yes,’ said Hay. ‘I made no secret of that.’
‘It is a place where religious dissidents are held,’ said Nicholas. ‘Even a short stay there is recorded by the prison serjeant in his ledger. I found a way to peep into its pages. Master Caleb Hay was taken to the Clink but three months ago, his name and offence duly entered in the ledger.’ He took a step forward. ‘Documents favouring the old religion were found in your possession. You were held there as a Roman Catholic dissident.’
‘Held but soon discharged.’
‘On the word of the Master of the Chapel.’
‘Yes!’ said Hay, rising to his feet. ‘I am a historian. Those documents were at my house so that I might copy them. They are a legitimate part of my work. Go search my study. You will find papers relating to John Wycliffe and others touching on the Jewish settlements in London. Does that mean I am a Lollard or a member of the Chosen People?’
‘Cyril Fulbeck was deceived.’
‘And so are you, sir.’
‘He later came to see that deception.’
‘Wild surmise!’
‘Blackfriars,’ said Nicholas calmly. ‘The wheel has come full circle, Master Hay. This is where it started and must perforce end. Blackfriars was a symbol of the old religion to you. I recall how lovingly you talked of its past. Your father-in-law, Andrew Mompesson, only fought to keep a public playhouse out of the precinct because its noise would offend his ears. You had a deeper objection still. To turn a monastery into a theatre was sacrilege to you!’
‘It was!’ admitted Hay, stung into honesty.
‘Vulgar plays on consecrated ground.’
‘Anathema!’
‘The Children of the Chapel mocking the Pope.’
‘I could never forgive Cyril for that!’
‘And then came Jonas Applegarth,’ continued Nicholas. ‘The scourge of Rome. A man whose wit lacerated the old religion in every play.’
‘I saw them all,’ said Hay, bitterly. ‘Each one more full of venom and blasphemy. I thought Friar Francis was his worst abomination until you staged The Misfortunes of Marriage. What a piece of desecration was that! He stabbed away at everything I hold dear.’
‘You made him pay a terrible price for his impudence.’
‘It was downright wickedness!’
Caleb Hay took a few moments to compose himself. When he looked down at Nicholas again, he gave an amused chuckle.
‘You have done your research well.’
‘It was needful.’
‘You would make an astute historian.’
‘My study was the life of Caleb Hay.’
‘How will that story be written?’
‘With sadness, sir.’
‘But my whole existence has been a joy!’
‘It was not a joy you shared with your wife,’ reminded Nicholas. ‘She knew nothing of your inner life. You kept her on the outer fringes as your drudge. It was she who first made me wonder about the genius to whom she was married.’
‘Why was that?’
‘The fear in her eyes. The terror with which she climbed those stairs to call you. What kind of man locks out his wife from his room? What does he keep hidden from her behind that bolted door?’
‘You have divined the answer, Nicholas Bracewell.’
‘I think that I was not the only one to do so.’
‘No,’ confessed Hay. ‘Cyril Fulbeck got there before you. That is why he had to die. Not only because of this abomination in which we stand. He threatened to denounce me, and my bones are far too old for a bed at the Clink.’
He picked up the candelabra and held it high to light up a wider area of the stage. He shook his head ruefully.
‘Centuries of worship wiped uncaringly away!’ he mused. ‘A religious house turned into a seat of devilry. Innocent children schooled in corruption. A heritage ruinously scorned.’
The elegiac mood faded as he began to chuckle quietly to himself. His mirth increased until he was almost shaking. Then it burst forth in a full-throated laugh that Nicholas recognised at once. He had heard it at Blackfriars before and also at the Queen’s Head. The difference was that it now lacked a note of celebration. As the laughter built and raced around the whole theatre, it had a kind of valedictory joy as if it were some kind of manic farewell.
Nicholas was thrown off his guard. There was a calculation in Caleb Hay’s mirth. The laughter came to a sudden end, the flames were blown out, and the candelabra was hurled at the book holder by a strong arm. It came out of the gloom to strike him in the chest and knock him backwards. Nicholas recovered and pulled out his dagger. He felt for the edge of the stage and vaulted up onto it. All that he could pick out in the darkness were vague shapes. When he tried to move forward, he collided with a bench.
He was convinced that Hay would try to make his escape through the rear exit and groped his way towards the tiring-house. A sound from above made him stop. Light feet were tapping on the rungs of a ladder. Hay was climbing high above the stage. When Nicholas tried to follow him, a missile came hurtling down to miss him by inches. It was a heavy iron weight which was used to counterbalance one of the ropes on the pulleys. Nicholas moved to safety and considered his choices.
As long as he was trapped in the dark, he was at a severe disadvantage. Caleb Hay knew where to hide and how to defend himself. With no means of igniting the candles, Nicholas sought the one alternative source of light. He felt his way downstage, jumped into the auditorium and made for the nearest casement. Sliding back the bolt, he flung back the shutters to admit the last dying rays of a summer evening. One window enabled him to see the others more clearly and he ran down one side of the theatre to open all the shutters. When he turned back, he could see the stage quite clearly. He approached it with his dagger still drawn.
‘There is no way out, Master Hay!’ he called.
The familiar chuckle could be heard high above him.
‘Come down, sir.’
‘I’ll be with you directly,’ said Hay.
‘It is all over now.’
‘I know it well.’
‘Come down!’
‘I do, sir. Adieu, Nicholas Bracewell!’
Caleb Hay tightened the noose and jumped into space. The long drop had been measured with care. The rope arrested his descent with such vicious force that there was an awesome crack as his neck snapped. Six feet above the stage that he despised, he spun lifelessly until Nicholas stood on the table to cut him down.
The Laughing Hangman had chosen his own gallows.
***
‘I regard this as a noble act of self-sacrifice, Edmund.’
‘It was the least I could do to assuage my guilt.’
‘Guilt?’
‘Yes, Lawrence. I was too envious of Jonas.’
‘That is not crime.’
‘I sought to oust his work from our repertoire.’
‘Only because we gave him precedence over you.’
‘That rankled with me.’
‘The fault was mine for riding roughshod over you.’
‘All faults are mended this afternoon.’
‘Amen!’
Lawrence Firethorn and Edmund Hoode were putting on their costumes in the tiring-house at The Rose. In view of the circumstances, Hoode had insisted that the privilege of performance at a proper theatre should go to The Misfortunes of Marriage. It would act as a fitting epitaph to the rumbustious talent of Jonas Applegarth and meet the upsurge of interest in the play which the murder of its author had created. The Bankside playhouse was packed to capacity for the occasion. Hoode was the first to concede that The Faithful Shepherd would not have provoked the same curiosity.