Chapter Two

With the growing conviction that Margaret was right, I straightened my doublet and slipped through the door and away from all the questions and conflicts in my house.

Morning in Stratford was always filled with a comforting blend of sounds and smells—greetings and grumblings. I could walk down Henley Street with my eyes closed and tell you which house I was passing from the smell. Goody Anne Badger made an excellent roasted joint of mutton, even if she and her husband could never eat it all, and Mistress Smith changed her rosewater every day.

When Will and I were young, Henley was more prosperous, the houses filled with some of the most influential families in the borough, like my father’s and John Shakespeare’s. But now most of the wealthier families had moved on, and the upper storeys of the half-timbered homes sagged from lack of upkeep. Will had inherited the two adjoining houses upon his father’s death, and when his mother died several years later, he had let the larger of the two dwellings to Lewis Hiccox for an inn. And just the week before, he had moved his widowed sister, Joan, into the other. Peg had importuned me for years to move us closer to my cousin Hamnet on the High Street.

I spoke to a couple of friends as I passed the High Cross, asking the whereabouts of one or two of their kinsmen, men I had warrants on at the Guild Hall. Hamnet lived further down, near the corner with Sheep Street, where most of my competitors lived and worked. In the distance, down by the river, I could hear the pleasant bleating of sheep.

“Master Simon!” Matthew, the young man I hired to take care of my business, stayed ever agitated it seemed. “It’s the broggers again,” he proclaimed breathlessly as I entered the shop.

I sighed. In the wool business, it was always the broggers causing trouble. Though the practice was illegal, broggers traveled the countryside freely, buying wool from sheep farmers and selling it to cloth manufacturers. I did both legally. As a licensed wool merchant, I had my own herd of sheep, but I also bought from other shepherds.

“Which one?”

“Ned Grayson. He’s mixing moss into his cloves.”

Poor Ned. His wife had died the month before and left him with six children to care for. He was an ugly man and stuttered, lacking in self-confidence, so his prospects for remarriage were not good. But moss in his cloves of wool! Instead of buying a full seven pounds of wool, the weight of a clove, the cloth manufacturer would get perhaps two-thirds that much. Of course, Ned would claim it was an accident, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t remember the last person who tried that.

Wait.

Yes, I could.

John Shakespeare, in the wake of his financial downfall.

It happened not long after I met Will. I was no more than seven or eight years old, and I remembered my father in a rage one night. That by itself was worthy of note as he rarely ever became angry. But that night, he was furious. My mother tried to calm him, but even as young as I was, I understood that there was more to his wrath than some brogging. And I saw that my new friend’s father was at the heart of the matter.

But back then, I didn’t understand the pain of trust violated, the agony of friendship betrayed. I just knew that John Shakespeare had hurt my father.

“Master Simon?”

Matthew’s voice shook me from my memories.

“I will see the bailiff this morning and secure a warrant,” I reassured him. A few moments later, after a detailed accounting of the shop’s business, I was back outside, seeing that the laws of England and the corporation were followed. But as I served papers and tracked down recusants, two voices occupied my thoughts—Margaret’s plea to let go of Will Shakespeare and his betrayal finally and forever, and my oldest and dearest friend saying, “I think someone is trying to kill me.”

———

As night began to fall about me on what had become one of the longest days of my life, I found myself walking back towards town from Holy Trinity Church. No one else was in the lane. The old college on my left was dark, and on my right the Dower House and the Reynolds farm were dimly lit. Only the singing of the robins joined me. In the solitude, I again found myself troubled by Margaret’s pleas and Will’s suspicions. So, rather than turn my feet towards home as I should, I found myself at Hall’s Croft, the home of John and Susanna Hall, Will’s daughter, and the silence was quickly shattered.

———

“Simon!” John Hall raged when I related what Will had told me. “This is ridiculous!”

“Were it anyone but Will, you would not be that certain,” I challenged.

“Were it anyone but Will, I would not have followed his case so closely.” John was fiddling with one of his notebooks. He was forever writing in one. They chronicled each of his cases; I doubted not that Will’s death was described in one.

“It is a simple question, John. Could Will have been killed by some sort of poison?”

John Hall was a handsome man, and clever, just the sort of fellow to win the heart of Susanna Shakespeare, though that had not always been clear. “Your entire question, Simon, presupposes that someone wanted Will dead. Besides you, that is,” he added. As a member of Will’s family, he knew of Peg, and her ill-fated dalliance. John was also one of those who found me at fault for Peg’s adultery. In a town like Stratford, personal affairs all too often became town affairs. Our ties with each other were often closer than those between blood relatives. Hence our custom of calling dear friends “cousin” even if they were not, actually, kin.

“Could he?” I persisted.

Grimacing, he snatched up one of his notebooks and peered at the pages. “Yes, the symptoms are consistent with several different, known poisons.” John spun around again. “But I ask you again, ‘who’ and ‘why?’ ”

“Why are you fussing at Master Simon?”

The voice was unexpected but welcome. Little Elizabeth Hall, Will’s granddaughter and only eight that year. Her blond hair framed her delicate features, more Hall than Shakespeare, but Will had adored her, and so did I. She stood beside her father, next to his workbench. John just shook his head at her sudden appearance.

“I am not fussing. We are discussing. Now, run along and help your mother.”

She spun about and ran from the room, her hair flying behind her. “It sounded like fussing to me.”

“She is her grandfather,” I noted.

John, a little grey already marking his temples, shook his head. “Too much so sometimes. She has quite the saucy tongue, and Will encouraged her beyond all reason.”

The doctor was considered stuffy by most in town. Will had once told me that he truly believed that Susanna’s acceptance of Hall’s proposal was simply a bad joke. But the two seemed happy: Hall and his serious approach to life complemented Susanna’s wit, as sharp and biting as her father’s. And she was quite willing to let that wit out in the light of day, something that most women just did not dare to do.

I suspected that much of the ill feeling that I sensed from everyone in this matter came from a confluence of events. Just days before, aye, even as Will lay ill, his sister Joan’s husband, Will Hart, had died. Hart was a likable man, a good father and spouse.

“Could his body yet tell us anything?”

“You would violate his mortal remains to chase this fantasy of yours?” John was not my strongest admirer.

“I would do what is necessary to arrive at the truth in the matter. Will called me to his bedside a week before his death, and he claimed that he was being poisoned. We were friends once, best friends, and I owe him this much if nothing else.”

“Bah! He was delirious in the final days.”

“He was lucid enough to apologize for bedding Peg!”

John drew back as if struck. “What day did this happen?”

“On Thursday last.”

He fumbled through his notebook until he found the page he wanted. After a few seconds, he looked at me, a far more troubled man than he had been just moments before.

“What is wrong, John?”

“ ’Twas on Thursday last, late in the evening, that his condition unexpectedly became very much worse. He did not regain his senses again.”

I sat stunned. I had only mentioned Will’s words for me to one person, Anne Shakespeare. Well, I intimated as much to Hamnet, but murder was not in him. But Anne? No. Anne was a Puritan to the marrow, and Will Shakespeare represented everything that Puritans hated, but she was no murderess. At least I hoped against hope that she wasn’t.

“Simon…” John began. “Mistress Shakespeare did not kill her husband.”

“I pray that you are right, but can I easily dismiss his warnings?”

“What, exactly, did he say?”

I did not respond at first, casting about in my memory for that moment. “He said that he had been in perfect health and then suddenly fell ill. And that despite everything you did to help him, he grew more and more feeble.”

“Well, at least that much was true. It was a very puzzling case, Simon. But I had assumed that the stories of Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton coming to visit were true.”

“Anne says they were not.”

“Oh, Jonson and Drayton were here in Stratford, and I assumed Will did go drinking with them; he simply kept them away from New Place and avoided telling Anne of their visit.”

My friend had a complicated social life, of that there was no doubt. Beside his frequent dalliances, since his return to Stratford some five years before, he became immersed in town affairs, involving himself in two important areas—the enclosure controversy and the tithes.

The Stratford tithes should have filled Will’s purse. But those citizens required to pay ignored their responsibilities, which was nothing new, but Will was very particular when it came to legalities. He demanded that the law be followed in all cases, which was somewhat humourous as he so often lay with women other than his wife. And while that may not have been criminal, it certainly broke church law.

“Simon!”

I realized then that John was calling to me. Looking over at him, I saw that he had donned his cloak.

“Come, we must to Holy Trinity. Will’s body has been laid out, but we might learn something by looking at his internal organs.”

———

The spireless Holy Trinity Church was barely visible in the daytime, set back against the river as it was. But at night, were it not for the two lamps at the front door, it would be impossible to discern. And yet again I was struck by the great stone college building, sitting dark and empty since Henry, the old king, reformed the church. For some reason, it sent my thoughts to Will and my eyes to John. We had not spoken since we left his house; his anger was still too palpable. But there were questions that needed asking.

“What will you look for?”

John glanced sharply at me, as if I were an idiot. “Anything that is not normal.”

“Did you not assist in preparing his body?” It was the practice then to wash and clean the body, being careful to close the eyes and the mouth and straighten the limbs, remove the internal organs and pack the empty spaces with herbs and spices. The organs would be placed in another container and buried with the body. I knew that Anne, Susanna and Judith would have helped with the washing, but I assumed that Hall had taken care of the other chores.

He shook his head, though. “I was busy with other patients, and Will was dead. There was no other service that I could offer him. Anyone can remove the organs.”

Despite the grimness of our task, a grin slipped across my face. John Hall had no medical degree. Indeed, his father, himself a physician, did not leave his library to John. Our John was a practical man, who eschewed alchemy and such other occult fields as “stuff and nonsense,” although the study of these things was a prominent part of a medical education. For John, anything that did not directly benefit his patients had no place in the medical profession.

A young priest stood in the doorway at the church. I had seen him but did not really know him. My family and I attended church, as was expected, but I rarely paid much attention. All my prayers had done nothing to keep Peg from straying, and all of her prayers had failed to secure my forgiveness.

“Master Hall, Master Saddler, why do you come so late?”

I stayed behind John and let him fend off the inevitable questions.

“We need to examine Master Shakespeare’s body.”

Aye, I thought, keep it simple.

The boy, for that is what he really was, drew back as if struck. “But, master, he is already prepared for burial.”

“We will do nothing to disturb those preparations. This is important or I would not ask it.”

Then an older man’s voice came to the boy’s rescue. “These men mean Master Shakespeare no harm.” The vicar. He was new, like the boy priest, and I had not yet met him. “This way, Master Hall, Constable.”

I elbowed John in the side. “Do you suppose that he will avoid the fate of Master Rogers?” I whispered.

The stuffy physician allowed a little smile to mark his face. “I pray for that every night.”

John Rogers, the previous vicar, had proven unable to avoid the strong beer. And he had also proven to have a quite unvicarlike attitude in general. Will and the other tithe holders had done their best to redeem him, but he had proven too much for their efforts. Two years past, he had been stripped of the vicarage, although he remained in Stratford.

We followed the new vicar down the main aisle to the chancel. Will’s coffin was a plain wooden affair, not at all what I would have expected. Just beyond, in the chancel itself, a grave had already been prepared. But this honored place came not because of his writing, more as the result of it. When he bought a portion of the Stratford Corporation’s tithes, the management and administration of the church came with it, and the right to be buried in the chancel.

“This is what he wanted,” John said, apparently reading my mind.

“I did not know that you had studied under Simon Forman, John.” I could not resist the opportunity to tease him. Forman had been some sort of occultist who had predicted his own death some years before. Will had once told me that he thought Forman one of the most despicable men in London. “And considering some of the lords at court,” Will had laughed, “that is saying a great deal.” Forman was infamous for using his position to bed his “clients.”

The good doctor just grunted. He pulled his cloak off and laid it on the floor. The coffin lid had not been put in place, and I took the chance to gaze once more at my childhood friend, wrapped now in a simple sheet, while John spoke in hushed tones to the vicar. After a few seconds, they disappeared into the nave.

Will’s illness had cost him much of the weight he had put on in his last years. He seemed younger, more like the boy I remembered so fondly than the man I had come to hate. Whatever the cause of his death, he had suffered for his sins. If his Puritan wife needed evidence, she merely had to look at the empty shell before me, lying in this box.

John, appearing suddenly at my shoulder, shoved me abruptly out of the way. He leaned over Will and studied his face closely. Then, he swiftly pulled each of Will’s hands up and held them close to his eyes.

After a few moments, he replaced the hands carefully and backed away from the coffin. “I failed him,” John said, softly. “I should have seen it.”

“What?” I whispered. The vicar and the young priest were approaching us up the main aisle.

“Will was right. He was being poisoned.”

———

“Verily?” I asked, after we had taken our leave of the church and had some privacy in the darkness.

“Without question,” John confirmed. “I suspect it was ar­senic. His organs looked as if acid had been poured on them. Did you not see the blackened sores on his hands? His face held some as well, though not as prominent as those on his hands.”

“Do you know how it might have been administered?”

John shrugged. “Any number of ways. It could have been given to him in a broth, or as a purgative, an enema. I gave him several, hoping to flush the illness from him.”

“Did you not prepare them yourself?”

“Not usually. Most often I had one of the women mix such a solution. My notes might say, but I don’t always record such details, as what was administered is far more important than who administered it. The same would be even more true in terms of a soup or broth.”

“You will look tomorrow and see if there is aught of value there?”

“Of course,” he answered after a moment. “Simon,” John said suddenly, “do not pursue this thing. Will is dead, and if this person was willing to kill him, he will think nothing of killing you.”

“I appreciate your concern, John. But I am the constable of Stratford-upon-Avon, and this surely seems like a murder to me.”

“You may be renowned at solving local matters, but this is beyond your abilities, Simon.”

Something in the severity of his tone bothered me. “You have fought me every step of this path, John. You did not want to believe anything I said until it appeared that you had missed something in treating Will. Now that you have confirmed what Will himself said, you are eager to scare me away. You know that it falls within my duties to investigate such things. You know that I have done so successfully before. Yet you try to diminish my office in order to persuade me to turn away from this matter. Why?”

John Hall turned and took me by the shoulders. “Think, Simon! William Shakespeare was not an ordinary man. His poetry and plays have been the toast of London for more than twenty years. In his retirement, he has become the first citizen of his birthplace. God’s blood, Simon! His patron was the earl of Southampton, a man Queen Elizabeth thought important enough to imprison for his part in the Essex Affair. Why, Will’s own theatre company was called to task for even their small part in that doomed rebellion. He was friends with Kit Marlowe, and whisperings from here to London have spoken of Marlowe’s being a spy for Burghley. Will Shakespeare held many secrets, and many and far more powerful men than you would have paid handsomely to shut his mouth forever!”

He paused, suddenly realized he held my shoulders and released them. “You are not the only man that Will wronged. Those stories are legion too. You are a good constable, Simon, and I think you do this parish a service. But the crooked turns and false exits that were Will’s life could swallow you up, and I would not have that happen. Promise me that you will forget this. Go home and kiss your wife, love your children, and do not risk your life on a man already dead.”

“Your warnings are not without merit, and I will be careful. But I can do nothing other than to move forward.” I stopped. A cooler breeze had stirred along Mill Lane. “You should go home, John, before you catch a fever yourself.”

“Simon, I mean only the best for you.”

“I certainly hope so, John.”

“Come with me, if you are intent on pursuing this folly. You will want to speak with Susanna, and I would have that finished before her father’s funeral.”

We returned to Hall’s Croft. Susanna was just coming down the stairs, from putting Elizabeth to bed, I suspected. She was yet clothed in her black mourning dress, and she greeted me with a frown.

“Simon, I am not certain that I wish to see you.”

“Susanna, I am sorry for your father’s passing, but I think if you will listen to your husband for a moment, you will understand the reason for my visit.”

At that she looked at John who nodded. It took but a moment to let Will’s daughter know what we had found, and the disbelief was as clear on her face as letters on a slate.

“Are you certain?”

“As certain as I can be,” John answered. “The symptoms were all there, and I failed him.”

“John, you did not fail him. ’Twas I that failed him,” I consoled. “He told me that he was being poisoned, not you. You had no reason to believe it was other than a fever gone bad.”

Susanna crossed the room to her husband and touched him lightly on the arm. “John, would you allow me to speak to Simon alone?”

The physician jerked his head back in surprise. He looked from me to her and back again. He did not understand her request, but he could find no reason to deny it. John nodded curtly and started to climb the stairs, each riser seeming a herculean effort.

“Sit down, Simon.”

She sat as well and for a moment said nothing, just stared at her hands in her lap. I could see Will in her face and her manner. “You should know that Father told me the same thing that he told you, and I ignored him just as you did. So, you should not feel remorse. He was very ill towards the end, and he did not always speak true.”

I shook my head. “It is different, Susanna. He summoned me in my role as constable. I should have taken him seriously for that reason if no other.”

She pursed her lips at me. “And I was his eldest child and should have listened to him no matter what. We are both at fault, and neither of us is at fault.”

“You did not mention it to John?”

“I saw no purpose. Father would speak one moment of some nonsense about love letters, and the next he would swear that someone was poisoning him. How was I to give credence to any of it?”

Susanna was right. We had all been with those stricken with a fever, who talked without reason, caught in the delirium of their illness. “He seemed lucid to me when he made these accusations.” I paused. “But, as you say, he quickly lapsed into random sentences that made no real sense.”

“What will you do? How will you proceed?”

I paused before answering. These were questions I had not fully resolved myself. “I will speak frankly to you, Susanna, because I know that you were your father’s confidante as well as his daughter. I will first question your new brother-in-law Thomas Quiney. As I am sure you are aware, your father was able to change his will to ensure that Judith’s inheritance was safe from her husband’s grasping fingers.”

The grimace on Susanna’s face did not hide her feelings. “My sister is a fool. I yet believe that she married Quiney to strike back at my father.”

“Why?”

“Understand that I love my mother with all my heart, but she is a strict Puritan. That did not mix well with the children of William Shakespeare. Puritans do not believe in frivolity, but Father taught us that life is to be enjoyed, that laughter is no sin.”

“But you championed the Puritan vicar, Wilson.”

Susanna nodded. “I did because he was unfairly accused. Yes, I am a Puritan, but that does not mean that I agree with everything they teach.” She was her father’s daughter. That was certain.

“Where, then, was the conflict?”

“Father lived in London. He refused to overrule Mother when it came to disciplining us. I understood and saved my rebellions for when Father was home. Judith was not as ‘restrained’ as I was. It embittered her.”

Could Judith have killed her father in revenge? I kept the question to myself.

“Did he have any strange visitors during his illness? Anyone unfamiliar?”

“Not really. A man from London came twice, but I do not know his name. He was a very large man. Otherwise, it was simply John, myself, Judith, Mother, oh, and Peg and Margaret helped out a few times, when Father needed to be moved so that we might change his linens.”

I nodded. This was usual. That Peg helped might seem odd to some, but Anne Shakespeare was very understanding of her husband’s wandering eye. I suspect that she did not care where he found his pleasure as long as it was not in her bed.

“This large man, was it Ben Jonson? What did he look like?”

“I have never met Ben Jonson.”

“But surely he visited New Place,” I protested.

Susanna smiled. “Mother always locked us away when Jonson visited Father. She was afraid his sins would taint us as well.

“Beyond the man’s size, he looked ordinary enough. Something like a tavernkeeper. Good clothes. Not expensive, but well made.” Susanna, much like her father, had a discerning eye.

It could easily have been Jonson. “And you say he came twice?”

“Aye. Both times he left with some documents. I asked Father, but he said it was of no consequence. ‘A debt paid,’ he told me.”

What could that have meant? From my admittedly limited acquaintance with poets, I found that they often spoke in riddles, and Will had been no different. Still, it may simply have been connected with Will’s London affairs. He owned several properties there, the Blackfriars gatehouse among them. But it had been some time since I had talked to Will about such things, and he might have divested himself of some, if not all, of his London property.

Before I could think of another question, Susanna reached over and clasped my hand. “Simon, John will counsel you to leave this be. He is a good man, but overly cautious. I would have you find my father’s killer. My daughter adored Father, as did I. To have him ripped away from us before his time is the definition of cruelty. I know that Father wronged you, and I know that you have borne a grudge against him ever since. But I have never done you harm, and so I ask you to do this for me if for no other reason.”

Moisture grew in the corners of my eyes. “I will do this for three reasons, Susanna—for you, for the friend Will once was to me, and because it is my duty.”

I left without speaking further to John.

———

I turned away from Hall’s Croft then and followed Southern Lane, on my way to Bridge Street and then my house on Henley Street, just a few doors away from where Will was born.

But before I could reach my home, an idea struck me. It had been but a few minutes since I had heard the bells tolling the ninth hour. This, I knew, would be an ideal time to beard the lions, or at least one of them.

———

I was not certain where I would find my quarry but I suspected he would be at Atwood’s, a tavern he himself owned; if not there then I would find him at Perrott’s. Reputation was a good predictor of actions.

But there he was at my first choice, young Thomas Quiney, vintner and, in my estimation, common ruffian. In my duties as constable, I had come to know him well. He was a disgrace to a respectable family. Indeed, in the months prior to Will’s death, I had dealt with him many times.

“Master Saddler,” Quiney greeted me. He was a tall, thin scarecrow of a man, with greasy brown locks. I had never fathomed why he was so popular with women. Just a few weeks before, he had been charged with bastardy for impregnating Martha Wheeler. The poor woman proved to be doubly unfortunate. She died in childbirth, along with Quiney’s bastard child. Or perhaps she was the fortunate one.

Only two or three other men graced Quiney’s tavern. They looked as if they had crawled from the same cess pit as their host.

“What brings you here, Constable? To drag me before the Consistory Court again? I have already been excommunicated.” Quiney’s voice rasped roughly against my ear.

I sat at one table. “A beaker of your best cider, Thomas.”

The son-in-law of Will Shakespeare retreated behind his bar and filled a beaker. He brought it back to me and sat. “I will ask you again, Master Saddler. Why are you here? Your kind usually does their drinking at Perrott’s.”

“I am enquiring into the murder of William Shakespeare,” I said, keeping my eye on him.

He just nodded. “I heard.”

“You heard that he had been murdered?”

“Think you that I do not speak to my wife’s relatives? For many weeks I have been the most hated man in the Shakespeare household. But overnight you have stolen the crown from me, and I was glad to relinquish it.”

“I doubt that my fall from grace has been partnered with a rise in respect for you.”

Quiney chuckled, a bit nervously I thought. “Perhaps not. But when you are so universally reviled as I, any relief is a blessing. So, Simon, am I now your chief suspect?”

“You are,” I confirmed with a smile.

“Well,” he replied, “if I killed him, I made a mess of it. He changed his will to keep me from profiting from my marriage.”

I did not like Quiney. I had never liked him. “How did you manage to convince Judith to marry you?”

Quiney grinned, revealing crooked teeth. “I taught her what a man and a woman can do for each other.”

“Please, Quiney. You come from a fine family, but you yourself are disgusting. You are a rogue and a scoundrel. Judith is the daughter of Stratford’s leading citizen. Where is the attraction?”

He did not answer immediately. First, he refilled his own beaker, draining it as if it were water. “You are a constable, Simon. Have you not observed that it is the children of the best families who cause the most trouble?”

I could not argue with that. Judith Shakespeare had been a problem to her parents since her twin, Hamnet, died. The boy’s death was a tragic accident; he had fallen into the River Avon and drowned before anyone could reach him.

Hamnet had been very much his father’s son. Bright, active, he was beloved in Stratford. And Judith had been his constant companion. Will once told me that he believed that Judith blamed herself for her twin’s death. “I can see it in her eyes, Simon,” he said. “And I fear she will never believe otherwise.”

It was after Hamnet’s death that Will began preparing for his eventual return to Stratford.

Pushing the death of young Hamnet from my mind, I answered Quiney’s question. “Yes, I have noted that in the past. But Judith Shakespeare is a young woman of intelligence. You are a worthless piece of—”

I slapped away Quiney’s pathetic attempt to strike me, without even rising from my seat or spilling my drink. The other patrons chuckled at his discomfiture. And embarrassed he was. “The next time, Quiney, come at me with something more than a drunken punch.”

Standing, I threw a halfpenny on the table, which he snatched up. Quiney might have poisoned Will, but he had help if he did. And that realization led me down a path that I had been avoiding. Could Judith have poisoned her own father? Could a rogue as disgusting as Quiney have persuaded her to kill William Shakespeare?

———

Anne Shakespeare very nearly slammed the door of New Place in my face. “Are you here to cause more trouble?”

“I am here, Mistress Shakespeare, to speak with your daughter, Judith.”

“You are not welcome.”

“I am here on official business. It seems that your husband was murdered.”

Anne Shakespeare, the lines in her face growing even more severe, narrowed her eyes. “Is that your judgement?”

“No, Mistress. It is the judgement of your son-in-law, John Hall.”

For the first time in my acquaintance with her, Anne Shakespeare was without words. She stepped aside and hung her head as I entered.

Judith was in the kitchen, sitting silently at a table. She looked up at my entry and attempted a smile. Though she had given Will her share of trouble, I had never doubted that she loved him. But the sparkle in her eye could flash to anger in a moment, and she often turned the full fury on her father.

“I am sorry for your father’s passing, Mistress Quiney.”

“He loved you, you know,” she said, turning away from me. “I understand the pain he caused you, but he did love you.”

“You know of that?”

“We spoke often of you. We spoke often, once.”

“But not later?”

She smiled wistfully. “No. As I grew older, the limits that Mother set upon me grated against my soul. I went to Father for relief, but he would not entertain my suit.”

“He supported your mother?”

“He told me that as he lived in London, it was not his place to overrule her. That surprises you?” She read my face well, just as her father once had.

“I would think that, given Will’s disposition, he would have encouraged you.”

Judith shook her head. “Father felt sorry, I think, for Mother. He was not a man without feeling, Simon, though I know you might disagree.” She paused. “I even begged him to take me to London with him.”

“And he refused?”

“I think I would have been more burden than help. If only Hamnet…” But her voice trailed off before she could finish the thought.

I had no need to ask further questions. This girl was no murderess. I saw quickly that while her twin lived, they had found solace in each other’s company. But her spirit was much like her father’s, and when Hamnet died, she was left adrift.

I would not ask her why she had married Quiney. That act of rebellion, and rebellion it was, had been directed at her mother, not Will. I feared that she faced a lonely and unhappy life, a product of her own nature and making.

I found Anne sitting before a fire in their front room. She was sewing and barely glanced up when I entered.

“Mistress Shakespeare?”

“I suppose you wish to ask me if I killed my husband?” she answered without looking at me.

“I wish to ask you several questions. Of which that is one.”

She stopped her sewing and finally looked at me. “Why can you not leave well enough alone? William is dead. Let him stay in the grave where he can do no more harm.”

“Harm?”

“I need hardly tell you of his proclivities, but far more than that, he has corrupted an entire generation with his plays and his poetry. We are not meant to enjoy life, but to use it to prove our worth for Heaven. Yet, his plays preach a false gospel, one that will condemn those corrupted by it to eternity in Hell. Is that harm enough for you?”

I realized that I had recoiled at her assault. “Yes, Mistress, so you have told me, but I am not here to debate religion with you, nor what influence Will might have had. I am concerned only with the manner in which he died. Susanna has already told me some of the details, but you live here. Other than this man from London, who came twice, did Will have any other visitors from outside Stratford?”

“Just one other. That brute Ben Jonson showed up on our door about a week after William fell ill. I did not wish to let him in, but he was sober and seemed very concerned.”

“Did he act suspiciously?”

“Ben Jonson always acts suspiciously, but I saw nothing nefarious in his visit.”

I knew Jonson, in some ways better than Will. He was capable of murder, but I saw no reason he would want Will dead. “You had no wisewomen in to see to him?”

“I had John Hall. Several women of the town helped me care for him.”

Which was exactly what Susanna had told me. This line of enquiry was getting me nowhere. Anne may have hated all that Will symbolized, but she would not have killed him.

I took my leave as Anne returned to her sewing.

———

My stubbornness in this affair would come back to haunt me, I knew. Susanna would tell Peg. They were great friends. Or Anne or Judith might. I had not told John truly why I felt so certain about my path in this affair. It was indeed my duty as constable, and I did owe it to my old friend. But more than that, more than all of that, I wanted to find out who Will Shakespeare had been, what had made him the destructive soul that he was. I needed to know what manner of man could destroy the marriage of a dear and trusting friend without a hint of regret, unless I was to believe Judith. But what bothered me most right then had nothing to do with such deeply guarded secrets. No, what troubled my heart as I hurried along the streets was the passion with which John Hall had attempted to dissuade me from my course. For it carried less concern and more warning, and that was out of character for Shakespeare’s son-in-law.