She weighed the two of them up for a few moments, then spoke with soft urgency.
‘The play will be performed, will it not?’
‘They have sworn that it will, my dear,’ said Chaloner.
‘Let me hear it from them.’
‘Westfield’s Men will present it,’ croaked Hoode.
‘When it is ready for the stage,’ said Nicholas. ‘And that can only be when we have plumbed its full depth. There is still much that we do not understand.’
She met his gaze. ‘I will help you in any way I can.’
‘Within reason,’ said Chaloner. ‘Let us begin.’
Nicholas turned to Hoode. ‘Edmund is our playwright. He it is who must put words into the mouths of the characters and flesh on the bones of the plot. Hear him speak first.’
Hoode’s voice faltered as he gazed on Emilia Brinklow.
‘The Roaring Boy is an uncommonly good play.’
‘Your high opinion is very gratifying,’ she said.
‘Who wrote the piece?’
‘A friend.’
‘May we know his name?’
‘He prefers to hand over his work to Westfield’s Men.’
‘And take no credit?’
‘None, sir.’
‘Then he is a most peculiar author.’
‘These are most peculiar circumstances.’
‘In what way?’
‘I have explained all this to Nicholas,’ said Chaloner with some asperity. ‘We do not have to go over old ground again. I gathered the material from which the playwright wove the fabric of The Roaring Boy. Neither of us seeks public acknowledgement. Take the piece and make it work.’
‘It is not as simple as that,’ observed Hoode. ‘I can match the style of any author when I am acquainted with him. If he is anonymous, my task is far more difficult. Tell me at least something about my co-author. Is this, for instance, a first play or has he written others for the stage?’
‘A first play,’ said Emilia crisply.
‘A worthy effort indeed for any novice.’
‘He has always loved the theatre,’ said Chaloner, ‘and has sat on the benches at the Queen’s Head many a time.’
‘Then why miss the performance of his own play?’
‘He has his reasons.’
Hoode turned back to Emilia. ‘He knew your brother?’
‘As well as anyone alive,’ she said.
‘That play was written by someone who admired him.’
‘Admired and loved him.’
‘Everyone loved Thomas Brinklow,’ said Chaloner, cutting in once more. ‘He was the most civilised and personable man on God’s earth. Kindness itself to those fortunate enough to be his friends. It was impossible not to love him.’ His face darkened. ‘Yet he inspired hatred in someone and it cost him his life. That is what has brought all of us here today.’
Nicholas Bracewell disagreed. The murder had bonded them together but it was Simon Chaloner himself who had organised the interview with Emilia Brinklow in Greenwich and who was presiding over it with such vigilance. Nicholas waited patiently as Edmund Hoode tried to prise further information out of her but the interrogation was woefully half-hearted. The playwright was so manifestly in awe of Emilia that he was quite unable to pursue any line of questioning with the polite tenacity required. Whenever Hoode did ask something of real importance, Simon Chaloner jumped in to deflect him.
It was a skillful performance but it did not deceive Nicholas Bracewell. He recognised stage management. As long as Chaloner was at her side, there was no hope of gaining vital new facts from Emilia Brinklow. Nicholas somehow had to speak with her alone. He, too, was acutely aware of her charms, noting with surprise how the deep sadness in her eyes only served to enhance her beauty. Though Chaloner’s love for her was open, she was too locked up in her distress to show him any real affection. Behind her quiet dignity, however, Nicholas saw flashes of a keen intelligence.
Conscious of his scrutiny, she responded with a smile.
‘You are strangely silent, sir.’
‘Edmund speaks for both of us.’
‘Do you have nothing to say for yourself?’
‘Nicholas has already questioned me a dozen times,’ said Chaloner with a laugh. ‘Do not unleash him on us again, Emilia. He is a terrier for the truth.’
‘What does he wish to ask?’ she wondered.
‘How word of this play leaked out to others,’ said Nicholas. ‘You and Master Chaloner are patently discreet and we have been careful to divulge nothing of our association with The Roaring Boy. Yet the secrecy has been breached. How?’
Her face clouded. ‘In all honesty, we do not know.’
‘But it is one of the reasons that we have met out here in this arbour,’ said Chaloner. ‘Walls have ears. The house itself listens to all that we say.’
‘You have a spy in the camp?’ said Nicholas.
‘No!’ denied Emilia hotly. ‘I will not conceive of such an idea. The entire household is loyal. Thomas engaged most of the staff himself. They would not betray us.’
‘Someone did,’ noted Chaloner, ‘and that enforces the utmost caution on our part. At least, we are safe out here. Nobody will be able to eavesdrop on us in this isolated part of the garden.’
A mere six yards away, Valentine laughed silently to himself. He had merged his ugliness with floral abundance to become part of nature itself. Deep in his lair, the gardener could hear every word that they spoke. He was intrigued.
Chapter Five
After lying dormant for some days the, raging toothache awoke to turn breakfast at the Firethorn household into an ordeal for everyone concerned. Apart from his wife and children, the four apprentices from Westfield’s Men also lived with the actor-manager so they, too, sat around the table as mute witnesses to his suffering, deprived of any appetite themselves by his blood-curdling howls of anguish. Lawrence Firethorn’s bad tooth was a burden that they all shared. Margery once again advocated extraction but her husband would not even countenance the notion, preferring to endure intermittent torture rather than submit himself to the pincers of a surgeon. When she pressed him hard on the matter, he insisted that he suddenly felt much better and that his mouth would even permit the introduction of a little moistened food. The first bite had him roaring louder than ever.
At the Queen’s Head later that day, Firethorn wisely restricted himself to a cup of Canary wine. It soothed his swollen gum and calmed his throbbing tooth. Owen Elias was on hand to activate the pain in both once more.
‘A lighted candle,’ he recalled.
‘Candle?’ repeated Firethorn.
‘He held the palm of my hand over it.’
‘Who did?’
‘The surgeon.’
‘Why?’
‘So that he burned my skin.’
‘You went to a surgeon to be set alight?’
‘No, Lawrence,’ said the Welshman with a chuckle. ‘I needed to have a bad tooth pulled. That rogue of a surgeon distracted my attention. I was so taken up with the injury to my hand that I hardly noticed him pulling out the tooth until it was too late. One sharp pain disguised another.’
Firethorn’s mouth felt as if a hundred candles had just been lit inside it to be carried in procession by a choir of chanting surgeons. A sip of Canary wine only seemed to make the flames burn brighter. It was at this point, when the actor-manager most needed sympathy and succour, that Barnaby Gill joined his colleagues at their table in the taproom. Lowering himself on to the settle, he dispensed with the civilities and came straight to the point.
‘I will not act in this lunatic venture,’ he said.
‘We do not expect you to act, Barnaby,’ teased Owen Elias. ‘Simply stand there as usual and say what few lines you can remember. We act in the play-you merely appear.’
‘Cease this levity. I speak in earnest.’
‘Lower your voice, man.’