‘Yes, Nick,’ said Elias, shifting his feet. ‘I did my share.’
‘And I, mine,’ said Hoode, ‘until I went into the taproom.’
‘What then?’ asked Nicholas.
‘I thought that Owen would take over from me.’
‘Nick asked you to stand guard, Edmund,’ said Elias.
‘Only while Giddy was asleep.’
‘Yet you came into the taproom with him.’
‘And you should have done your share of the work then, Owen.’
‘Wait,’ said Nicholas, interrupting them. ‘Are you telling me that one or both of you allowed Giddy out of your sight?’
‘It was Edmund’s fault,’ said Elias.
Hoode flared up. ‘Owen is to blame.’
‘They’re both at fault, Nick,’ said Firethorn, ‘and so am I, for all three of us shared a cup of wine together. One minute, Giddy was there; the next, he was gone.’
‘For how long?’ wondered Nicholas.
‘It’s difficult to say.’
‘Did no one search for him?’
‘I did,’ said Elias, jabbing his chest. ‘No sooner did I step outside the taproom than I saw Giddy coming towards me. He might only have been away for a moment.’
Nicholas turned to the clown. ‘Where did you go?’
‘Nature called,’ replied Mussett.
‘How long were you away?’
‘How long do such things take you, Nick?’
‘Do not jest with me, Giddy.’
‘It was no jest. I am in deadly earnest.’
‘Can you swear that you did not go to Barnaby’s room?’
‘On the biggest Bible in Christendom.’
‘You’ve lied to us before,’ said Nicholas. ‘Why should we believe you now?’
‘I’m not asking you to believe me,’ replied Mussett, ‘because I know that my word will be doubted but you may believe someone else. I have a witness.’
‘A member of the company?’
‘No, Nick. Yet someone who will prove my innocence.’
‘Can you produce this person?’
‘Instantly,’ said Mussett, moving to the door. ‘Have I your permission?’
‘Let me go with him,’ suggested Elias, trying to make up for his earlier lack of vigilance. ‘We want no more of his trickery.’
‘He can go alone,’ said Nicholas. ‘Be quick about it, Giddy.’
Mussett left the room and closed the door behind him. Firethorn was worried.
‘I think he’s guilty,’ he decided.
‘Let’s hear his witness first.’
‘I doubt if there is such a person, Nick. This has to be Giddy’s doing. He and Barnaby were jousting earlier on. I had to part them. Barnaby’s tongue was dagger-sharp enough to draw Giddy’s blood. It may have goaded him to take revenge.’
‘Even Giddy would surely not go that far,’ reasoned Nicholas. ‘He would never expect to get away with it. If he wheeled Barnaby down to that boat, he would certainly have been seen. There were people around the creek.’
‘Do you feel that he’s innocent?’ asked Hoode, ‘or do you hope that it is so?’
‘Both, Edmund.’
‘Then you have to answer another question.’
‘I know,’ said Nicholas. ‘If Giddy was not guilty of this, then who was?’
Elias sighed. ‘He was the only one who left the taproom.’
‘That does not put the halter of blame around his neck, Owen. He was accused of locking Barnaby in that privy, of hurling a cat in through his window. I was with Giddy when both those things occurred. He did neither.’
‘No,’ said Firethorn. ‘He was saving himself for a more serious assault.’
‘I wonder. Giddy was himself the victim of assault on the road here. Back at the Queen’s Head, it was the whole company who suffered. Do you not see a pattern here?’ asked Nicholas, thinking it through. ‘Someone is trying to destroy our work. First, they have us turned out of our home. Then they ambush our clown. And now, they try to dispatch Barnaby to a watery grave. We have an unseen enemy.’
‘Tobias Fitzgeoffrey?’
‘Someone connected with Conway’s Men, perhaps.’
‘How would they know when to attack Barnaby?’ said Elias.
‘Because they were more alert as sentries, Owen. They watched Giddy more carefully than you and seized their chance when he left the room. There’s craft at work here,’ concluded Nicholas. ‘Suspicion was thrown on to Giddy.’
‘I still hold that he did the deed,’ declared Firethorn.
Elias nodded. ‘And I side with you, Lawrence.’
‘I prefer to reserve my judgement,’ said Hoode. ‘Nick could be right.’
‘For Giddy’s sake,’ said Nicholas, ‘I hope that I am.’ There was a tap on the door. ‘Here comes the witness. Now we’ll hear the truth.’
The door opened and Mussett entered with a tall, stringy woman in her thirties with a roguish look in her eye. Over a plain, crumpled, food-stained dress, she wore a large apron. Mussett had his arm wrapped around her shoulders.
‘This is Kate,’ he announced. ‘We met last year when I visited Faversham with Rutland’s Men. Kate worked at the Ship then, in the kitchen. To my delight, she now works at the Blue Anchor.’
‘Gentlemen,’ she said, dropping what she took to be a curtsey.
‘I understand that you can help us, Kate,’ said Nicholas pleasantly.
‘Yes, sir. I believe that I can.’
‘What have you to say?’
‘Well,’ she replied, licking her lips before continuing. ‘When Giddy left the taproom earlier, it was to see me. We are old friends, as he says. One look between us was all it took, sirs. We met in the storeroom to …’ She giggled with undisguised glee. ‘To talk to each other alone.’
Mussett savoured the look of surprise on the faces of his interrogators.
‘As I told you,’ he reminded them. ‘Nature called.’
It took Firethorn an hour to placate Barnaby Gill and a further hour to persuade him that Mussett was not responsible for his ordeal. When he heard about the tryst with Kate, he was thoroughly disgusted, finding yet another reason to detest his rival. Fearing a second attack, Gill insisted on an armed guard and Firethorn had him carried to a room upstairs so that George Dart could sit beside him with a sword across his lap. When news of the arrangement reached the others, they burst into laughter, wondering if the sword was for Gill’s protection or that of Dart. Oddly, Mussett did not join in the fun.
Nicholas, meanwhile, had searched the creek for anyone who might have seen the wheelbarrow leaving the inn. Most of those who had been there earlier had drifted away but he did find one old man who remembered the incident. Mending a net as he talked, the fisherman had the weathered face of a sailor and the cold eyes of someone who had seen too many unusual sights in his time to be surprised by one more.
‘Yes,’ he croaked. ‘I see them both.’
‘Both?’ repeated Nicholas. ‘There were two men wheeling him?’
‘No, sir. One in the wheelbarrow, one pushing him along.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘He were covered by a sack.’
‘Not the man in the wheelbarrow,’ said Nicholas patiently. ‘The other one.’
‘Oh, ah, I remember him.’
‘Well?’
The fisherman spat on the ground. ‘It were some distance away, mark you.’
‘Just tell me what you saw.’
‘A servingman, pushing someone down to the jetty in a wheelbarrow. When he got them in the boat, he cast off and set it adrift. Then he ran back to the Blue Anchor.’
‘And you think he was a servingman?’
‘He must have been, sir. He wore a cap and a leather apron.’
‘Was he tall or short? Young or old?’
‘All I know is what I’ve told you,’ said the fisherman. ‘Except that he could run fast. Look for him in the Blue Anchor. That’s where he went.’
Night passed without incident but Nicholas Bracewell achieved only a few hours sleep. The events of the previous day preyed on his mind. Both clowns belonging to Westfield’s Men had been attacked and he was convinced that it was no mere coincidence. Barnaby Gill had earlier been the target at the Queen’s Head, singled out on purpose. Those who interrupted the performance could have done so at any point in the afternoon but they chose to strike when Gill was alone on stage. During the ensuing affray, others in the company had received cuts and bruises but only the clown sustained serious injury. Nicholas wondered why Gill had been picked out. Another name also kept floating into his mind, that of Fortunatus Hope. Gill had survived, albeit with a broken leg. Hope had perished. For what reason, it was not yet clear. Nicholas explored every possible motive in his mind but none seemed entirely satisfactory.