Nick couldn’t help starting in surprise. So Henry Ashe, the imagined author of The English Brothers, was real after all. To cover his reaction he said, ‘You keep a close eye on the comings and goings in this house, don’t you, Stephen?’
‘I’m not sure what business it is of yours but, yes, I do. My mother is somewhat casual about callers.’
‘And there was another caller, you said?’
‘Yes.’
‘Before or after the well-dressed man? Mr Ashe?’
‘After.’
‘What did this one look like? Was he wearing a broad-brimmed hat as well?’
Stephen shrugged. ‘I did not see him, but I heard him. I heard someone going upstairs, not one of our lodgers, since I recognise them all by their treads. I was aware of steps mounting to the very top floor, therefore I assumed this person was on his way to visit Christopher Dole.’
‘But you did not see who it was, even though you like to know who’s coming and going here?’
‘What I don’t know is why I have to account to you, Mr… er, for what I do or do not do. You have no authority.’
No, I have no authority, thought Nick. No more than you have authority to rain down blows on me and then pretend to forget my name. But he could not think what else to ask. In his grudging way, Stephen had provided quite a lot of information. Nick was curiously relieved that Stephen had not been able to describe the second visitor to the house.
Mrs Atkins returned. She was carrying Nick’s doublet and cloak, which he had left in her bedchamber. Nick was pleased to see her, quite apart from getting relief from her son’s company. Stephen slipped out of the room. Nick promised again to inform Alan Dole of his brother’s death. He didn’t go over his suspicions that Christopher might not have killed himself. He was no longer so sure that he wished to pursue them anyway. Mrs Atkins told him he might return to her house, if he wished, to have more salves and ointments applied to his hurts. Was she saying this because her son had done the damage or because she wanted another visit from him?
Sara helped him on with the rest of his clothing. She was gentle, and she grasped him lightly but slightly longer than was needed. Nick felt warmer, from the fire, from the aqua vitae, from her attentions.
As he trudged back through the streets, which gave off a cold glow on account of the freshly fallen snow, Nick tried to sum up what he’d learned.
Henry Ashe really existed. Therefore Christopher Dole was his agent, presenting The English Brothers to the printer. Had Ashe fallen out with him and killed him? Or was it the second visitor, the one Stephen Atkins claimed he’d heard creeping up the stairs? No, he hadn’t said ‘creeping’, had he? Nick was thoroughly confused. Perhaps it was the result of the blows he’d received to the head.
The real source of the confusion, though, was the four words scrawled on the scrap of paper from Dole’s room.
Those words were: ‘Guilielmus Shakespeare hoc fecit.’ ‘William Shakespeare made this.’
Or as one might say instead: ‘William Shakespeare did this.’
It was a claim of authorship. So WS was the author of The English Brothers, after all? No, that was Henry Ashe, the man who’d called on Dole the previous afternoon. But if the message on the scrap of paper wasn’t a claim of authorship, then perhaps it was the finger of blame. William Shakespeare did this.
Killed Christopher Dole.
The thought crept into Nick’s battered head that maybe WS had called on Dole in the person of Ashe, keeping his face hidden under the hat brim. Shakespeare was a gentleman, he possessed gentlemanly clothes. But you couldn’t claim he spoke in a refined way. He still retained traces of Warwickshire in his voice and he lacked the kind of courtly London tone that would impress a silly young man like Stephen Atkins.
Was WS the second visitor, though, the unseen one?
Nick was reluctant to think of WS in this harsh light but he had to. He could not remember seeing Shakespeare so angry as he was when displaying a copy of the play in the little office behind the Globe stage. Was it just that he was indignant over the feeble imitation of his coat of arms on the title page? Or was he frightened that the Privy Council were going to come calling, on the hunt for seditious satire against King James? Frightened enough to take action against anyone he thought responsible for causing him trouble?
V
‘No, I am not familiar with Henry Ashe,’ said Shakespeare. ‘There is no playwright in London with that name. You are sure of it?’
‘Yes,’ said Nick. ‘The name was given me by George Bruton, the printer in Bride Lane. And then I was told that a gentleman called Ashe visited Christopher Dole before he died.’
‘Poor Dole,’ said WS. ‘For sure, he is the author of The English Brothers. Henry Ashe was just a blind. I always thought it was Dole. It was he whose play I mocked. It was called The Matricide.’
Nick studied him carefully. Once again, they were sitting in the small Globe office but this time it was the early afternoon, and shortly before the day’s play was about to begin. Nick did not make his first entrance until the third act so he could delay going along to the tiring-room to put on his costume. In fact, his attention wasn’t really on that afternoon’s production, which was a drama of bloody revenge, but on the reaction of the man sitting across the table from him.
‘Was your mockery of his play the only reason for his… dislike of you?’
‘There were other causes. He thought I’d taken the idea for my Romeo and Juliet from him.’
‘And did you?’
‘No, Nicholas, I did not,’ said Shakespeare, in a deliberate sort of way as if he were talking to someone whose understanding was slow. ‘I took it from another and older source – several of them, perhaps. But not from Dole. Not poor Christopher Dole. He may have had the notion at the same time, of course. We all drink from the same well but some of us drink deeper than others.’
Shakespeare’s sorrow for Dole was not profound, but Nick thought it was genuine. In fact, WS was showing more grief for the death of the one-time player than his own brother had. When Nick had called on Alan Dole in his St Paul’s bookshop, as he’d promised Mrs Atkins he would, Alan had merely pulled a face as though he expected nothing better or more ambitious from his brother than to go off and die. Then the bookseller had started to complain about the funeral expenses. Then he’d asked whether Nick had seen the Oseney text in Christopher’s room. Then it was Nick’s turn to shrug. The Oseney text? He supposed this was the item that Christopher was meant to be returning to his brother.
By contrast to the brother’s, Shakespeare’s grief looked like the real thing. Shakespeare was an actor, of course, even if he played few parts these days. But he did not put on airs or false attitudes away from the stage. When he saw the marks on Nick’s face and heard how he’d come by them in Mrs Atkins’ lodging house, WS was so full of gratitude and apology that all Nick’s suspicions began to fall away. Nick stuck to the story that Dole had done away with himself.
He said nothing of the scrap of paper that had fluttered to the floor. Guilielmus Shakespeare hoc fecit. William Shakespeare did this. No, it did not mean anything.
Richard Burbage, the principal shareholder and king of the players, now poked his head round the door of the tiny office and his presence brought to Nick’s mind the name he had briefly assumed – Dick Newman. Much use it had been.
Richard Burbage evidently wanted to speak to WS but, seeing Nick, he said: ‘You’ve been in a fight?’
‘On my behalf,’ said WS quickly.
Burbage raised his eyebrows and said, ‘It’s as well you’re playing a villain and not the hero this afternoon. Bruises suit your part, Nicholas.’