“So you say. Nevertheless, I fear that I must inflict my company upon you for a while longer, long enough, at least, to see you safely home and perhaps receive the explanation that I came for.”
“An explanation? You ask me for an explanation?” Elizabeth replied, in a tone of outrage. She felt so furious she was trembling.
“You think that an unreasonable request?”
“Unreasonable, unwarranted, and utterly unfathomable!” she replied.
“Understood,” he replied. “Which is to say, I understand that you feel that way. What I do not understand is why.”
“Why?” She rounded on him with astonishment, startling him so that he almost tripped. Involuntarily, he stepped back away from her, apparently genuinely puzzled by the intensity of her response.
“Indeed,” he replied, looking confused. “Why?”
“You dare to ask me why?”
“Apparently, I do,” he said, wryly. “I wonder if you dare to answer.”
She shook her head and took a deep breath, then lit into him like an alley cat pouncing on a rat. “Oh, this is intolerable! This is simply not to be borne! You make me out to be a liar, come to my home and utterly humiliate me, deny the agreement you have made, and pretend that we had never even met, so that even my own mother is convinced that I have made the whole thing up, and then you have the unmitigated gall to act as if I were the one who broke faith with you\ How in God’s name can you stand there and look me in the eye and pretend to be an innocent when ‘twas you all along who set out to undermine my honor and my reputation, to make me out to be some shrewish liar and manipulative prevaricator whom no man in his right mind would wish to marry, so that my father, fearing to see all his efforts come to naught, would then increase the size of my dowry, paying you a small fortune to take me off his hands!”
As she railed at him, she kept advancing, backing the astonished man away from her, until they had approached a narrow alleyway. She didn’t even notice. She simply could not hold her temper anymore and she kept at him relentlessly.
“But, milady… but… Elizabeth!” he kept saying, over and over, vainly trying to get a word in edgewise as he kept backing away from the unexpected onslaught.
“You knave! You worm! You miserable cur dog! You lying… faithless… dishonorable… misbegotten… loathsome guttersnipe! If there were any justice in the world, then by God, you would be struck down where you stand this very instant!”
Gresham gave a sudden, sharp grunt and his eyes went very wide. He gasped and fell forward into her arms, dragging her down. She cried out with alarmed surprise and fell to her knees, unsuccessfully trying to support his weight. Then she noticed the dagger sticking up out of his back, the blade buried to the hilt between his shoulder blades. Shocked, she released him and he dropped lifeless to the ground. Elizabeth screamed.
The insistent hammering on the door and the shouting woke them both from a sound sleep they had only recently fallen into, aided by copious celebratory pints of ale. Shakespeare was the first to rouse himself, though he could not quite manage to raise his body off the bed. It seemed to take a supreme effort just to raise his eyelids.
“God’s wounds,” he moaned, “what is that horrifying row? Tuck? Tuck!”
There was no response from the inert form beside him in the bed.
“Tuck, roast your gizzard! Wake up! Wake up!” He elbowed his roommate fiercely. Just outside their door, the noise was increasing.
“Wha’? Whadizit?” came the slurred and querulous response.
“There is a woman shrieking at the door,” said Shakespeare.
“Tell her we don’ want any,” Smythe said, thickly, without even opening his eyes.
“What?”
Smythe grunted and rolled over. “Tell her t’ go ‘way.”
“You damn well tell her!”
“Wha’? Why the hell should I tell her?”
“Because she is screeching your damned name!”
“Wha’?”
“Get out of bed, you great, lumbering oaf!”
It began to penetrate through Smythe’s consciousness that he was being beaten with something. It took a moment or so longer for him to realize that it was Shakespeare’s shoe, which the poet was bringing down upon his head repeatedly.
“All right, all right, damn you! Stop it!”
He lashed out defensively and felt the satisfying impact of his fist against something soft. There was a sharp wheezing sound, like the whistling of a perforated bellows, followed by a thud.
“Will?”
There was no response. At least, there was no response from Shakespeare. From without, there was all sorts of cacophony. Smythe could hear frenzied hammering on the door, voices, both male and female now, raised in angry shouts, running footsteps, doors slamming open…
“Will?”
He sat up in bed and the room seemed to tilt strangely to one side. “Ohhhhh…” He shut his eyes and brought his hand up to the bridge of his nose. Somewhere right there, between his eyes, someone seemed to have hammered in a spike while he’d been sleeping.
“Tuck! Tuck! Oh, wake up, Tuck, please!“
He recognized the voice. It was Elizabeth Darcie. And she sounded absolutely terrified. He shook off the pain in his head, not entirely successfully, and lurched out of bed.
“I’m coming!” he called out.
“Ruaghhhh!” The growling sound from the floor on the opposite side of the bed scarcely seemed human.
“Be quiet, Will! And get up off the floor!”
“Oh, bollocks! I shall stay right here. ‘Tis safer.”
Smythe unbolted the door and opened it. Elizabeth came rushing into his arms. “Oh, Tuck! You must help me! ‘Twas terrible! Terrible!”
There was a crowd gathered just outside his door. Several members of the company were there, or what little was left of the original company since Alleyn had departed. Dick Burbage was not present, for he did not lodge at The Toad and Badger, but stayed at his father’s house. Will Kemp, however, was there in his nightshirt, as were Robert Speed and several of the hired men who had rooms at the inn.
“What the devil is going on?” asked Kemp, in an affronted tone. “What is all this tumult?”
Elizabeth was sobbing against Smythe’s chest and clutching at him desperately.
“What is this?” demanded the inn’s proprietor, the ursine Courtney Stackpole, elbowing his way through the onlookers. “What is the cause of all this noise?”
“I do not know… yet,” Smythe replied, holding Elizabeth protectively.
“He’s dead!“ Elizabeth sobbed. “Oh, Tuck! He’s dead! Murdered!”
“Who is dead?” asked Speed. “Who was murdered?”
“Murdered?” Kemp drew back. “Good Lord! Who? Where? Here?“
Everyone started talking at once.
“Silence!” Stackpole bellowed. “Go on and get back to your rooms, all of you! We shall determine what has happened here.” He turned to Smythe. “Who is this lady?”
“Her name is Elizabeth Darcie,” Smythe replied. “And I am going to take her inside where she may sit for a moment and compose herself.”
“We still have some wine, I think,” said Shakespeare, from behind him. “A drink might do her good.”
“Darcie?” Speed said. “Not Henry Darcie’s daughter?” He took a closer look. “Good Lord, it is! God save us!”
“Who is Henry Darcie?” Stackpole asked, as Smythe led the distraught Elizabeth back inside the room and shut the door.