.

13

‘The melancholy god protect thee’

Forman was in his consulting room dispensing physic and advice. A veiled woman left as Will entered. Wealthy, judging by her gloves and her clothes, perhaps even titled.

‘Came to me with pains in her head, pains in her stomach, but what she really wants to know is whether her husband is being unfaithful,’ Forman remarked. ‘They come with one thing, but want to know something other. The secret is to know what they are really about.’ He fixed Will with his hot brown eyes. ‘So what brings you here?’

‘I went to the Hollander today, to fetch Feste the clown, and found the place shut down. I need to find him and the girl. It’s an urgent matter. Do you know where they are?’

‘I do. They are safe at my house in Lambeth. Sir Toby’s in the ice house. Funeral’s tomorrow.’

‘The old man’s dead?’

‘Yes. Yesterday. Bad business, Shakespeare. He didn’t die naturally.’

‘Murdered? But why kill a dying man? To ease his passing?’

‘It happens –’ Forman shrugged – ‘but not, I think, in this case. I saw it in his forecast. That’s the odd thing . . .’

‘Then why?’

‘An act of malice. Pure and simple. I have it from the girl.’

‘Malice?’ Will stared at him. ‘It must run deep to do that.’ He frowned. This was worsening by the minute. He heard Cecil’s quiet voice again: I do not want foreign quarrels and broils brought to our shores . . .

‘I have a feeling it does.’ Simon sat forward in his chair, chin resting on his folded hands. ‘Those two bring their quarrels with them. Why do you need them so urgently? I heard Armin’s back, so it can’t be the need of a clown.’

‘No, it’s something else. I have just come from Whitehall, from an interview with Robert Cecil.’

‘Cecil, eh? You are moving in high circles,’ Forman pulled at the flaps of his doctor’s cap. ‘I treat his niece, you know. Lady Norris –’

‘It wasn’t a social visit,’ Will said, cutting short Forman’s name-dropping. He described his recent interview with Sir Robert: the Secretary’s interest in Violetta and Feste. He wandered the room while he talked, absently examining the various instruments, medical and astrological, that were lying about, noticing the patterns on the painted pottery vessels ranged along the shelves. ‘How could he know?’ Will turned back from the cabinets to face Forman. ‘What can he want with them, Simon? What could his interest possibly be?’

Forman did not answer straight away. His already furrowed forehead set into even more of a frown as he squinted at the charts before him on the desk.

‘Riche could have told him. He’s one of Cecil’s spies. And those two are not exactly unknown. I told you about Doctor Grimaldi. In certain circles, Illyria has gained a notoriety. They say the Duke, her father, overreached himself. Dabbled too deeply in the dark arts. Unleashed forces he couldn’t control. Could be to do with that.’

‘I don’t think it has to do with anything supernatural.’ Will picked up an astrolabe, turning it round in his hands. ‘It has to do with the collapse of the state. That’s why the girl’s here. Everything stems from it.’

‘Leave that alone.’ Forman reached across the desk to take the instrument off him. ‘It is very delicate and carefully adjusted to the exact date and time of birth of my next client. And don’t touch that!’

Will was now toying with a tiny agate pestle and mortar instead.

‘Why not? It is exquisite.’ He held it up, admiring the way the light struck through the semi-translucent green-and-red stone.

‘Because I use it for grinding poison. Don’t lick your fingers. Sit down. Stop roaming about.’

Will set the little pestle and mortar back in its place and sat down opposite Forman.

‘Now, back to the matter in hand.’ Simon leaned forward and picked up the compass he used for measuring charts. ‘Perhaps Cecil doesn’t know any more than we do. Perhaps he just suspects. What happens in one place in the world can have unseen effects elsewhere.’ He began describing circles. ‘Cecil collects information from every country and every city. He has intelligencers everywhere.’ Forman looked up at Will and gave a wheezing laugh. ‘It looks like he’s just recruited you.’ He thought for a moment, his face serious again. ‘Perhaps it is not what those two know, as such, which makes them of interest to him. It might be –’

‘Who they are.’ Will finished his sentence for him.

‘Precisely.’ Forman smiled. ‘She’s not just anyone, is she? She’s a duke’s daughter. Never mind what’s happened to her. There could be reasons we are not privy to that make her important.’

There could be. There could well be. Will had been right to come to Forman.

‘But why choose me?’

‘You already know them.’ Forman spread his hands. ‘You have their trust. She’s a fetching young thing.’ His reddish brown eyes gleamed. ‘Who would not want to help her?’

‘She’s also very young,’ Will said. He did not want the conversation going down that track. ‘I must see her. I have to talk to her.’ He stood up. ‘Tell her to come to the Anchor this evening. I’ll be there after the play.’

‘Wait.’ Forman put up his hand. ‘If I help you, I want something in return.’

Will frowned. This was unexpected.

‘I have some money,’ he said. ‘I can pay you, if that is what you mean.’

‘It is not what I mean.’ Forman walked the compass across his desk.

‘What then?’

‘You must allow me to cast your chart.’

Will hesitated. ‘I’ve told you before, I have no interest in astrology. I do not want to know what the stars hold for me.’

Forman smiled. ‘That is my condition.’

‘Oh, very well.’ Will sighed his impatience. ‘I cannot think why. I come from the country. I am a poet and an actor – one of many. What can the future hold for me that could possibly be of interest or note?’

‘Who knows?’ Forman’s smile widened. ‘That is the point, surely? Anyway, that is my condition.’

Seek not to know . . . Will’s knowledge of the dark arts was not inconsiderable. For a while he had shared a house with a Master Wilhelm Koenig, late of Prague and Bingen, an old alchemist who had been impressed by the young poet’s quickness of mind and had offered to take him on as ’prentice. Will had declined the offer, once he’d found out from the old man all that he wanted to know. To Will, this book magic, that so fascinated Master Wilhelm, Forman, Dee and the others, was dry stuff compared to the wild magic he knew from home: like a dusty old cabinet, sprung at the joints, compared to living willow.

‘Come on, man,’ Forman prompted. ‘What harm can it do?’

‘None, I suppose.’

‘Splendid!’ Forman gave him a gap-toothed grin. ‘I will send a messenger to Lambeth right away. First, a few questions.’ He pulled a scroll of paper to him and dipped the nib of his pen. ‘When were you born?’

‘You are not going to do it now?’

‘No. I’ll take a note or two, that’s all. When were you born?’

‘April.’

‘What day in April?’

‘That’s the difficulty – I’m not certain.’

‘Not certain?’ Forman put down his quill. ‘How so?’

‘I was born betwixt one day and the next, so nobody could quite decide which was right.’

‘A chime child! Born within the sound of midnight’s bells.’

‘It could have been one side or t’other,’ Will protested. ‘It was a hard labour. No one was paying that much attention.’

‘That’s by the by.’ Forman waved aside his objections and picked up his pen again. ‘A chime child is special. Able to see ghosts and fairies. Can you see them, I wonder.’ He looked at Will, his eyes full of questions. ‘Which days?’

‘Twenty-second and twenty-third.’

‘But that was yesterday!’

‘Or the day before.’

‘What year?’

‘1564.’

‘Place?’

‘Stratford-on-Avon.’ Will sighed. ‘You know that!’

‘People lie. You’d be surprised.’ Forman put down his pen and dusted sand over his notes. ‘Thank you, Will. That is all I need to know.’

‘You wanted to see me, Master Shakespeare.’ She appeared at dusk, just as the setting sun was colouring the Thames, turning the water to blood. She had the clown with her.

‘Aye.’ Will had taken a private room in the inn so they might talk without being overheard. ‘Would you like something to eat? Drink?’

She shook her head.

‘Thank you, sir.’ Feste helped himself to wine. ‘I’ll have a little something.’

‘Simon Forman has told me what happened at the Hollander, and about Sir Toby.’

‘Yes, the doctor has been kind,’ she said. ‘I do not know what we would have done without him.’

‘He’s a good man.’

Violetta looked at him. ‘You did not ask me here to talk about Doctor Forman.’

‘No . . .’

Will cleared his throat and took a drink as he wondered where to start. She seemed to have changed in the short while since he last saw her. She looked older, and even more lovely: her skin as pale as ivory; her dark hair glossy as a raven’s wing. He shook his head slightly and looked away from her enquiring violet eyes.

Something about him has changed, she thought. Something has happened to make him afraid.

‘You have come to the attention of someone very powerful,’ he said quietly. ‘It appears that you are of interest to him. You could even be in some danger.’

Violetta laughed. The clown did too.

‘We know that, master,’ he said. ‘Someone wants us dead. Same villains who killed Sir Toby.’

‘Malvolio knows we are here,’ Violetta said. ‘He’d have killed us yesterday, if he could.’

‘And you are not afraid?’ Will frowned. Their laughter might show a genuine lack of concern, or could be brittle bravado, a kind of recklessness. Either one could be dangerous now.

‘Of him? No.’ Violetta gazed out of the window, her eyes following the motion of some craft across the brightened water. ‘Hatred is not the same as fear.’ She looked back at him. ‘I see a change in you. What’s happened?’

‘This afternoon I was summoned to appear before Sir Robert Cecil,’ Will said. ‘Lord Secretary Cecil, the Queen’s First Minister. He is the man I was talking about, not your Malvolio. He is the most powerful man in the land. He can have us all imprisoned, tortured, tried for treason, hanged and quartered. At the very least, he can close the theatres. He can do anything he likes. You might not be afraid –’ he looked at her, his brown eyes no longer mild – ‘but I am.’

‘I didn’t want to bring trouble upon you.’ Violetta looked stricken.

Will sighed. ‘It seems you already have.’

‘We’ll go.’ She stood up. ‘We’ll leave you. You will never see us again.’

‘Leaving will not help matters. Where would you go? Into what danger?’

Will tried to curb his impatience. Despite his anger, he did care about her, and it had nothing to do with her beauty, whatever Forman might think. Will was a father, more absent than present. This girl was of an age with his daughters. They were safe in Stratford, and he prayed they stayed that way, while she was alone and set about with dangers that grew with every day. If he didn’t help her, who would? He had to do what he could. He’d been willing to act out of genuine concern, but since Cecil’s intervention he really had no choice.

‘It appears that we are now in this together,’ he said after a while. ‘If I am to help you, if we are to help each other, I must know everything so I can consider what to do.’

‘Very well.’ Violetta sat down again. ‘I will tell you the rest of my story, Master Shakespeare. I will tell it to the point that brings us to here.’