‘You bleed, young sir,’ he said.
‘In the service of love!’
‘Who gave you these wounds?’
‘The mistress of the bedchamber.’
‘What is her name?’
‘Perfection, sir …’
The youth gave a loud belch then staggered across to a group of friends who caught him as he pitched forward into their hands. He had taken his pleasures and was now dead to the world for a long time. Nicholas would get no more from him but the Pickt-hatch had yielded vital confirmation. He was very close to the murderer of Sebastian Carrick. She lay in a bed in one of the rooms upstairs. Peg came over to embrace him and to drag him towards the stairs so Nicholas pretended to retch violently. The girl pushed him away in disgust and strong male hands soon ejected him into the lane outside. His visit to the establishment was over but he was now completely convinced.
The mad courtesan was there.
It was a difficult labour. Agnes Jarrold struggled hard and suffered greatly. The little house in Cambridge echoed with her cries of pain for several hours. Though the child was anxious to come before its time, the mother seemed strangely reluctant to bear it. Stark memories of two previous births held her back. While it remained inside and part of her, the baby was patently alive and safe. In delivering it to the outside world, Agnes felt, she would be consigning it to the grave alongside its two predecessors. In the marital bed in Trinity Street, the battle between mind and body raged on. There was no anaesthetic to ease her torment, no medicine to take away the phantoms that haunted her. Caught up in the eternal mystery of childbirth, a fond housewife was racked by the eternal pangs. What made the crucial difference for her on this occasion was the presence of her elder sister.
‘Hold me tight, Agnes.’
‘I have no strength left.’
‘Push hard, push hard!’
‘I faint, I fail …’
‘Now, Agnes! Be a mother and fight for the child!’
Margery Firethorn was there throughout, encouraging her sister, sharing her travail, stilling her fears, bossing the surgeon, bullying the midwife and keeping the anguished husband on the other side of the bedroom door with a series of abusive yells. When the exhausted mother found one last burst of energy to give birth, it was Margery who talked her through it and who told her she was now the mother of a fine son. Agnes Jarrold gave her a smile of thanks before lapsing into unconsciousness. The surgeon looked to his patient, the midwife wrapped the yowling infant in swaddling clothes and Margery was able to recall the existence of a husband.
When she went downstairs, she found Jonathan Jarrold trying to read a Greek lexicon to occupy his mind. After issuing a reprimand, Margery told him that he was a father once more and that mother and baby were in good health. The bookseller went weak at the knees with sheer relief and jabbered his gratitude in English, Latin and Greek. His sister-in-law cut through his trilingual hysteria.
‘What will the boy be called?’ she said.
‘The boy?’
‘Your son, you dolt! Children need names.’
‘We have not settled on one as yet.’
‘Then do so now, sir,’ insisted Margery, determined to wrest some contribution from him. ‘Your wife has risked her life to deliver a third child. This infant Jarrold should be dignified with a name. Pronounce it, sir!’
‘You have done so yourself, Margery,’ he said.
‘Have I?’
‘This is indeed a third child. Therein lies its name.’
‘Stop talking in Greek.’
‘I favour Latin.’
‘What?’
‘Richardus Tertius.’
‘An innocent babe called after a tedious play!’
‘No, Margery. Our son will be called Richard Jarrold.’
‘Richard III.’
‘Fortune favours us.’
‘A third time pays for all.’
Chapter Eight
Nicholas Bracewell strolled into the yard at the Queen’s Head to find that he was not, for once, the first member of the Westfield’s Men to arrive. Two figures stepped out of the morning mist to waylay him. Before he could even begin to defend himself, he was belaboured by their demands.
‘Stop him, Nick!’
‘Prevent this lunacy!’
‘Intercede on our behalf!’
‘Use your influence!’
‘Acquaint him with reason!’
‘Insist on Cupid’s Folly!’
‘Save our reputations!’
‘Save our company!’
‘Save our lives!’
Edmund Hoode and Barnaby Gill seldom agreed on anything so wholeheartedly. Again, though the playwright was a trusted friend of the book holder, the comedian most assuredly was not. To get either man there so early and so articulate was a wonder in itself. For the pair of them to be acting in concert — with Gill suppressing his dislike of Nicholas in order to appeal for his help — was a mark of real desperation. He let them rehearse their grievances without interruption and learnt of the fatal letter from Mistress Beatrice Capaldi. Convinced that conquest was now in the offing, Lawrence Firethorn had drawn the resident poet into his fledgling love affair.
‘He orders verses for his dark Italian!’ said Hoode with disgust. ‘I have plays to write for Westfield’s Men and he would have me charm his lady’s clothes off with rhyming couplets. My love poems will not serve his lust!’
‘Nor will I suffer for her sake!’ asserted Gill. ‘We chose my Rigormortis for The Theatre and that is what all London wishes to see. Are we to let some powdered female dictate our performances? I’ll not bear it, sirs!’
‘Lawrence must be told, Nick.’
‘If necessary, he must be threatened.’
‘He is sacrificing the whole company here.’
Nicholas was seriously disquieted. He shared their resistance to the intrusion of Beatrice Capaldi and was alarmed by the latest development. It came at a time when Westfield’s Men had to look to their laurels. Their rivals were winning applause on all sides as a dynastic tussle was replicated in the competition between the theatre companies. If Lawrence Firethorn were to lead his troupe on into a new reign, he needed to concentrate all his efforts to that end. There was no place in the scheme of things for a distraction like Beatrice Capaldi.
Barnaby Gill offered one solution to the problem.
‘Ride to Cambridge. Bring back Margery.’
‘Yes,’ said Hoode. ‘She would soon dampen his ardour.’
‘Wives do have their uses sometimes.’
‘She would tear him to pieces for his folly.’
‘Send word to her at once.’
‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘Mistress Firethorn journeyed to Cambridge on an important errand and may be gone for weeks. She will not be prised away from her duty.’
Hoode shrugged helplessly. ‘What, then, is the answer?’
Nicholas calmed them down and agreed to tackle the actor-manager in due course. Whether she was ignoring him or tempting him, Beatrice Capaldi was having a detrimental effect on his company and it had to be pointed out to him. One more thankless task had been added to the book holder’s already long list. His approach needed careful thought.
It was an hour or more before Lawrence Firethorn came riding into the yard on his horse. He was a new man. Gone was the morose individual of the previous day who had been smarting at his rejection. In his place was a buoyant creature who overflowed with such geniality that he could even bestow a kindly smile upon Alexander Marwood, the doom-laden innkeeper of the Queen’s Head. Nicholas held back while the rehearsal was on, letting Firethorn expend some of his manic energy on the makeshift stage. When the book holder finally made his move, the actor was ready for him.
‘You waste your breath, Nick,’ he said. ‘Whatever vile arguments Edmund and Barnaby have thrust upon you, I’ll not hear them. We play Love’s Sacrifice at The Theatre. Aye, and Westfield’s Men will stage the piece three times a week if that is the only way to see my beloved Beatrice.’