‘A sudden death within the royal verge is a task for the queen’s coroner,’ Nicholas reminds him – as if Cecil didn’t know. ‘Why call upon me?’
‘Because before anyone else lays a hand on Edmund Spenser, I want you to tell me if he was murdered.’
‘Do you think that’s likely?’
‘After our meeting with him at your lodgings on Bankside, what do you think?’
‘Murdered by who?’
Cecil adopts a speculative air, as though he were a philosopher debating some arcane argument. ‘Let us imagine for a moment that Spenser’s fears had been realized: that the Earl of Essex had learned of his communications with Spain…’
‘Then he would have had Spenser arrested.’
‘Perhaps the perpetrator was from beyond these shores – one of the rebellious Tyrone’s assassins.’ Cecil’s smile is one of superiority, not mirth. His little mouth purses with a wry sharpness. ‘As you well know, Nicholas, Master Spenser had certain… shall we say “harsh” views on how the rebellion in Ireland should be put down.’
‘You think he was murdered because of his pamphlet?’
‘Men have lost their lives for writing words far less contentious,’ Cecil says, indicating the body on the bed as though it were an exhibit in a cabinet of curiosities.
‘They could have killed Spenser in Ireland. It would have been easier.’
‘But there are some in England, Nicholas, who would have happily done it for them.’
‘You mean Catholics?’
‘You should know, Nicholas. You married one.’
‘Yes, I did,’ says Nicholas, as though he’s only just remembered. ‘That must be it: Bianca laid a charm upon Master Spenser and he died of induced melancholy. There is an alternative.’
‘Is there?’
‘Perhaps it was someone from court. Perhaps they’d had to sit through his Faerie Queen or his Shepheardes Calendar once too often.’
‘This is not the time for flippancy, Nicholas.’
Nicholas moves closer to the bed, beckoning the holder of the lamp to do the same.
‘Does Essex know?’ he asks.
Cecil shakes his head. ‘Not yet. The noble earl will likely be abed, in the arms of Bacchus. Or more likely one of his poets – a living one.’
First Nicholas makes a general study of the place of death, a narrow tester bed unfurnished with any hangings. He sees no sign of a struggle. The bolster bears only a single indentation, a little to the left of centre, presumably made ante-mortem by Spenser’s head. The body itself lies at a slight angle on the rumpled coverlet. Spenser’s yellow-soled upturned feet hang over the end of the frame.
Enlisting the aid of one of Cecil’s men, Nicholas drags the nightshirt over the dead man’s shoulders and discards it. Then he arranges the corpse so that it is lying on its back, the empty eyes fixed on the sagging ceiling beams. The slight resistance in the cold limbs tells him Spenser hasn’t been dead more than a couple of hours.
Now Nicholas inspects the neck. He finds no bruises below the neatly trimmed beard, no weals or scratches made by fingers tightening about the windpipe. A single goose feather has lodged beneath the lobe of the right ear. He pulls it from the chilled skin and holds it up to the lantern. It appears undamaged. Observing the absence of a pillow, Nicholas examines the bolster for signs of feathers working their way out through the fabric. He finds none.
He places the feather gently on the coverlet and peers into the gape of the mouth, searching for evidence of smothering: other feathers caught between the teeth or on the tongue. There is not enough light for him to be sure, so he is forced to explore the inside of the dead man’s mouth with his fingers. He finds none.
Next, he carries out a careful inspection of the eyes and the face. He searches for broken blood vessels and blotches, signs that might suggest suffocation. It is no easy task in the lantern light, but he thinks he sees a partial reddening of the right eye, and a few purple marks under the skin.
Although there are no bloodstains visible, Nicholas inspects the torso for punctures, on the remote possibility that Spenser was run through elsewhere, cleaned up and brought here to be so arranged as to suggest that he died in his sleep. A close inspection tells him that Edmund Spenser’s body bears nothing more sinister than the blemishes any man might accumulate over almost five decades of life.
‘He could have been poisoned, I suppose,’ Nicholas says, returning his attention to Spenser’s dead face. ‘There’s a little dried spume at the corner of the mouth. It might mean something. There again, it might be merely the residue of the death-rattle.’ He sniffs the area around the nostrils and the sagging jaws. ‘Some venomous substances leave a noxious scent after being ingested,’ he explains. Then, glancing at Cecil, ‘In the case of sulphur, for instance, residue can be expelled from the nose.’
He moves to inspect first one side of the head and then the other. ‘There’s no discharge from the ears, so we might discount poisoning by arsenic.’
‘It’s extraordinary what you physicians have to learn,’ Cecil says.
Nicholas thinks it best not to tell him that he’s gained most of his understanding of the art of poisoning from Bianca. Her mother was a Caporetti, and in the Veneto the Caporetti line is said to have begun with the woman who mixed the poison that Agrippina used to dispatch her husband, the Emperor Claudius. There again, he thinks, it would be a sure-fire way of avoiding any further summons to court.
Stepping back, he says, ‘Some venoms inflame or discolour the internal organs. We could have the body moved to the barber-surgeons’ hall on Monkswell Street. I’m not a member of that guild, but I’m sure they’d accede to an order from you and let me open it up, just to be sure.’
‘Christ’s sweet wounds!’ gasps Robert Cecil in an expiration of horror. ‘You’re speaking of England’s foremost poet. We can’t cut him up like a mutton carcass at the shambles.’
Satisfied that he has done his best in trying circumstances, Nicholas thanks the keeper of the lantern for his assistance and says to Cecil, ‘There are a few signs this might not be a natural death. But I fear that, at present, I cannot in all honesty tell you Edmund Spenser was murdered.’ A reflective pause. ‘But knowing as I do his history, neither can I say for sure that he was not.’
Cecil nods gravely, as though he is about to read Spenser’s eulogy right here in this humble little chamber. ‘Well, we can be sure that the queen’s coroner will say he died of natural causes.’
‘How can you be certain of that?’
‘Because I have every expectation that he will wish to remain the royal coroner.’
‘So what will happen now?’ Nicholas asks.
Cecil gives him a courtier’s practised smile. ‘You and I shall depart. When it is light, a clerk from the Office of the Revels – a very junior clerk, I imagine – will attempt to visit Master Spenser on some matter of business about his dreadful versifying. He will have instructions to insist, should Master Spenser be asleep. He will notice the door is unlocked–’
‘And you and I shall never have been here?’
Cecil’s smile has a chilling confidence about it. ‘No more so than fleeting wraiths in a graveyard.’
As they descend the stairs, he calls back over his shoulder, ‘No doubt there will be a great wailing and a general gnashing of teeth. You know how esteemed these poet fellows are. We shall all be invited to mourn the loss of another Virgil, another Ovid. My money’s on Westminster Abbey.’
‘You told me that it was the night-watch who found the street door ajar,’ Nicholas says to the bustling, uneven shoulders below him.