Friday afternoon (continued)
If Toby’s hard-working colleagues thought of Shakespeare’s tomb as the bourn from which no traveler returns, they wouldn’t have been referring just to its occupant. Toby’s truant disposition meant that Oliver and Effie faced another trip to Holy Trinity to return the shoulder bag he’d abandoned in Mormal’s van. The chain ferry across the Avon wasn’t operating, so they were forced to take the much longer route over the bridge. At least Toby’s bag seemed empty.
As they passed the Gower memorial statue, they found their path suddenly blocked by a Shakespearean character. It was a male figure in a tall capotain hat with a dyed-green ostrich feather, a large cartwheel ruff like a gigantic coffee filter, and a tooled, tan leather jerkin worn over a scarlet doublet. Below the waist, it wore yellow and orange pumpkin breeches, saggy purple hose, and high-heeled shoes with oversized silver buckles. The codpiece was pink.
Oliver first thought it was a garish waxwork, dragged out to entice tourists into some sideshow of famous scenes. They began to move around it, when it spoke.
“Oliver!”
Oliver started and looked again, taking in eyes that were staring angrily at him and tightly pressed lips beneath a rakish white moustache.
“Uncle Tim.” Oliver’s heart was thumping. “It must be nice to know the old uniform still fits after all these years.”
“Never mind the funny, what’s this I hear about you getting roughed up?”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, that. I check my phone messages about half an hour ago, and what do I hear? The brigadier exploding with pride because his firstborn, who writes about furry animals, apparently fought off a whole cohort of bashi-bazouks in the dead waste and middle of the night. I eventually got little Angelwine to the phone, who told me where you were.” He took a step closer to Oliver. “Why wasn’t I told about this attack when it happened?”
“It was nothing…”
“Bollocks it was nothing! You wanted to hide it from me, didn’t you? Because you’re still going round the village asking questions about Dennis Breedlove. Well?”
“Well, what?” Oliver replied sullenly.
“Well, are you hurt?”
“Just a few bruises. I’ll live.”
“That’s for me to decide,” Mallard said, masking his relief. He switched his attention to Effie. “And you! This is how you let your own discretion be your tutor, huh? I hope you like moonlighting as a private eye, Frances Erica Strongitharm, because you may need a new job.”
Effie bit her lower lip and stared at the pavement, but she kept hold of Oliver’s hand.
“Look, Uncle Tim, doesn’t this prove there’s something to the case?” Oliver asked. “Somebody’s trying to frighten me off. Isn’t this something more than fantasy?”
Mallard prodded Oliver in the shoulder. “Don’t start all that again. This is the very coinage of your brain. I told you to leave it to Culpepper—”
“What’s this from?” said a voice. Mallard, in full choleric flow, took a second to register that the interruption had not come from his nephew or his shame-faced sergeant. A small crowd was forming around the group.
“What?”
“What play is this from?” the questioner persisted, a balding American tourist in a pastel tracksuit and bright white sneakers.
“It’s not from a play,” said Mallard brusquely.
An American woman spoke up. “I think he’s Henry the Fifth and these two are the little princes in the tower.” She was also wearing a tracksuit and rather a large amount of gold jewelry. She nudged the man. “Harry, get my picture with him. Make him pretend to strangle me.”
Despite the temptation, Mallard remained polite. “Madam, if you don’t mind, this is a private conversation.”
“Then who are you supposed to be?” asked another passerby, in an Australian accent. Mallard sighed.
“If you must know, I’m dressed as Osric, from Hamlet. Now if you’ll excuse me—”
“I’ve never heard of an Osric,” proclaimed a female English tourist, as if her ignorance merited praise, “and I’ve seen all of Shakespeare’s films.” She smiled proudly.
“So why’s he dressed that way?” the Australian asked, still addressing Mallard.
“He’s a fop,” Mallard explained, wondering why he’d been shifted to the third person. More people were stopping to listen to the conversation.
“What’s a fop?”
“A dandy, a popinjay—a man who spends too much time fussing over fashion.” Mallard surveyed the crowd, but there was a marked absence of good examples. Quite the reverse.
“Fashion, you may call it…” muttered the English woman.
“So he’s a poofter, then?” the Australian continued, with growing interest. “Like Shakespeare himself.”
“Osric’s sexual orientation is irrelevant,” Mallard began. “These stereotypes don’t—”
“Now just a moment,” cut in the American woman. “My husband happens to be president of our local school board. I think if Shakespeare were…well…I would have been told.”
“Oh come on, lady,” said a young man with a Scottish accent. “It’s a well-known fact that half of his sonnets were written to a man.”
“Oh yeah? What about ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’” Harry’s wife persisted. “That’s one of the greatest love poems ever written.”
“Colin Firth recited it to Renee Zellwegger in Bridget Jones’s Diary,” said the older English woman conclusively.
“Exactly.” Mrs. Harry leaned toward the young Scotsman. “You can’t tell me that was meant for a man.”
“Actually it was,” said Oliver. “But it’s not a love poem.”
“Huh?”
“On the surface, it’s a poem about poetry, and the way it may confer immortality on someone long after his earthly beauty has faded, and even after his death. But it comes in a sequence of the early sonnets in which Shakespeare is urging his patron to find a wife and start breeding, no doubt because his patron’s mother wants some grandchildren.”
“I can totally relate,” declared Mrs. Harry, nudging her husband again.
“So we have the brilliant ambiguity in the phrase ‘eternal lines to time’ which can mean both lines of poetry but also bloodlines, carrying the patron’s beauty generation-by-generation into the future. But a declaration of romantic love—no.”
Oliver had stepped in to deflect attention from Mallard, but the audience seemed appreciative. He chose not to mention his own literary qualifications, although there was a good chance that more of the crowd had heard of Finsbury the Ferret than of Froth or Fortinbras. Meanwhile, Mallard had slipped away from the center of the group to a more removed ground, tugging Effie with him.
“I have to get back,” he whispered. “We’ve made Ophelia’s grave straight, but we haven’t finished burying the rest of the play. The rehearsal breaks for dinner at five. I’ll meet you in Synne at six. You’re going to tell me everything that’s been going on or you’ll be back in uniform and doing crowd control at Millwall home games. I may be the light relief in Hamlet, but in real life, I’m not joking.”
He strutted back toward the theater, his green ostrich feather bouncing in the sunlight.
“No, I know you’re not,” she said miserably.