‘Stay aboard,’ he said, ‘but keep out of our way.’
‘I will be invisible.’
The boat set sail and Firethorn leaned against the bulwark in its stern. Sea-gulls followed them away from the pier and wheeled around the vessel as the wind filled its canvas. The short journey to Deptford was not wasted by the lone passenger. He drifted across to the hold, which was so shallow that part of its cargo protruded up on to the deck. Firethorn rested against one of the boxes and pretended to survey the teeming life around them on the river. When he was certain he was not being watched, he searched the box for splits or knotholes but its wood was sound.
He needed a surreptitious dagger to gain entry. Inserting it below the lid of the box, he worked it up and down until he felt the timber loosen. A tiny gap had been opened up but it was sufficient. He peered quickly into the box and saw the rapiers lying side by side.
‘Garden implements!’ muttered Firethorn. ‘What will they do with them? Challenge the weeds to a duel?’
Chapter Nine
Edmund Hoode was so reduced by hunger and anxiety that he barely had the strength to move. As the finger of light slowly withdrew from his cell in the Marshalsea, he lay on the floor in a disconsolate heap and mused on his sorry plight. “Disasters come triple-tongued” he wrote in one of his plays and that line now returned to haunt him. The Corrupt Bargain was his first disaster, a mediocre play made far worse by the death of its central character. Ben Skeat, however, was fortunate. The old actor had died while exercising his art. It was more than Hoode would be allowed to do.
Infatuation with Emilia Brinklow presaged his second disaster. Meeting her had swept aside all reservations about The Roaring Boy. It seemed like an exciting challenge and revived his creative urge. Pleased with the result of his reworking of the play, he had seen it felled on the stage at the Queen’s Head before his own eyes. One play stricken by the demise of its main character and another stopped in its tracks by a brawl. These were not unrelated phenomena. Some malign curse had clearly been put upon his work. Whatever his pen touched soon crumbled to dust.
He could have borne the two disasters if a third had not arisen to join them. His name was Richard Topcliffe and he had left the playwright in a state of cold hysteria. The memory of those instruments in the cellar had burned itself into Hoode’s brain. Simply to look at them had been torture enough. To be subjected to their venom would be unendurable. He knew that his heart would burst asunder long before his body was rent apart on the rack.
When he tried to compose his own epitaph, it served only to deepen his melancholy. No words could sum up the agony of his last hours alive, no conceit could describe his self-contempt, no clever rhyme could adequately express the folly of his existence. All was lost. A man whose plays and playing had delighted audiences for a decade or more would give a final, inglorious performance before a lone spectator. Only an excruciating death would draw applause from the watching Topcliffe.
Hope was a cruel illusion. Westfield’s Men were still toiling on his behalf but their efforts were futile. If the influence of their patron could secure no comfort for their doomed playwright, then his situation was beyond recovery. Edmund Hoode was to be a scapegoat, a blood-covered warning to every other author to work more guardedly and to eschew libelous comment on figures in authority. It was a savage injustice. He was being sacrificed for a play he did not write about a man he had never met.
He looked up at the barred window. The last few rays were quitting his cell along with the last strands of belief in his friends. They had let him down signally and the greatest disappointment came from the man in whom he had reposed his highest expectations. A fury rustled deep inside him and slowly built until it burst through his sorrow and made him clamber to his feet to yell with all his might.
‘Nicholas! Where are you!’
***
‘Everyone had something to say about Thomas Brinklow but all comment led in the same direction.’
‘Which was?’
‘He was a recluse. In love with his work.’
‘Why, then, did he marry?’
‘It was a blunder. All agree on that.’
‘Could he have been happy with another woman?’
‘No,’ said Owen Elias. ‘Nobody spoke it outright but their nudges and winks were eloquent enough. Our Master Brinklow was not for marriage with any woman. It is certain that his match fell short of consummation.’
‘Small wonder that his wife looked elsewhere.’
‘She did not need to, Nick.’
‘Why?’
‘Walter Dunne came with her. Or so the rumours would have it. He was the steward of her former household and warmed her bed as part of his duties. When she took a husband, she did not lose a lover.’ Elias chuckled. ‘The common report is that Master Brinklow was cuckolded on his wedding night. What sort of husband would tolerate that?’
‘A man content to be husband in name only.’
Nicholas Bracewell was reminded of the maidservant’s remark that Thomas Brinklow had condoned his wife’s affair. If that was so, it cleared the lovers from even the faintest vestige of suspicion. Why did they need to kill a man who actively promoted their relationship? Instead of being an obstacle that needed to be removed, the husband had been a most effective cover. Aspects of Brinklow’s character were emerging which had not found themselves into the play.
‘What else did you learn, Owen?’
The two men were back at the house in Greenwich at the agreed hour. Lawrence Firethorn’s absence was puzzling but they hoped that he would arrive in due course to pool his findings with theirs. In the meantime, Elias held the floor. The Welshman had been assiduous, visiting all the taverns in the vicinity and soaking up dozens of assorted recollections of Thomas Brinklow.
‘He did employ builders,’ said Elias, ‘he did engage suppliers, he did pay someone to maintain his equipment. But it was only ever under his personal supervision. Nobody ever got into that workshop on his own.’
‘What was he hiding?’
‘It was his way, Nick. That’s what everyone says.’
‘His way.’
Elias retailed a number of anecdotes about Brinklow’s obsessive privacy. He also discovered that the murdered man was an unusually devout Christian, visiting the church every day and often staying an hour alone in prayer. His wife had been far more erratic in her attendance.
‘Even though she had more to confess,’ said Elias.
‘Confess?’
‘Lustful embraces with Walter Dunne.’
‘It seems that she had already confessed those to her husband,’ said Nicholas. ‘To confess them before God would have brought an end to them.’
They were still discussing the idiosyncrasies of the Brinklow household when a dishevelled Lawrence Firethorn was shown into the room. Dust-covered and perspiring, he yet had an air of triumph about him.
‘Where have you been?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Why have you kept us waiting?’ said Elias.
Firethorn sat down beside them. ‘I have been to the very fons et origo of evil. We do not just deal with rogues and murderers here, gentlemen. We fight against treason.’
He checked to ensure that nobody else was listening.
‘Rest easy,’ said Nicholas. ‘That little spy has been disarmed. You may speak freely now. What is this treason?’
‘The most damnable crime I have ever encountered, Nick.’
Firethorn told them about his vigil at the quayside. His brief voyage to Deptford had not only revealed the true nature of the cargo aboard the boat. When he reached the dockyards and saw it unloaded into a larger vessel, he discovered its ultimate port of call.
‘Flushing.’
‘The weapons are going to the Netherlands?’ said Elias.