The Player's Boy is Dead Read online

  The Player's Boy is Dead

  An Elizabethan Mystery

  Leonard Tourney

  Ballantine Books

  1988

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  About the Author

  One

  BEFORE the first crow of the cock the scullery maid at the Triple Crown awoke to the rustle of mice in the thatch and the moon flowing through the cracks in the timbers like strands of golden wire. She lay motionless, savoring the warmth of the straw and the solace of a half-remembered dream; then she rose stolidly. There were no windows in the shed, and the tiny room was close and retained the fetid odor of its previous occupants: a brace of fine geese, since sold to the butcher. It would have been as black as the devil's heart had it not been for the moon. She pulled her shawl around her shoulders, brushed the loose straw from her hair, and crossed herself twice before going out into the empty yard.

  The moon was indeed full, sailing in its pride, filling the yard with somber yellow light. The inn itself was still dark, for as usual she had been the first one to rise. She walked over to the well, drew water, and doused her face and neck. She would have liked to return to her warm place in the straw, to the intense, almost physical pleasure of her dream. But there would be none of that. Master Rowley had beaten her twice for lingering abed.

  It was time to wake Simon the hostler, to slop the pigs, and to join Tabitha and May in the kitchen before the innkeeper awoke. She thought of the long day ahead and sighed heavily, forgetting the desolation of the moon-filled yard, the chill of late October, and her dream.

  She had been a child when she had first come to the inn two years before, sparrow-timid and tearful. Tom, the innkeeper's son had teased her mercilessly, ridiculing her slow, languid movements and her halting speech, and playing all manner of tricks on her. He had once put a dead rat in her cap so that when she had reached for it her fingers grasped the creature's tail and she had screamed, bringing Tabitha the cook on the run with a meat cleaver in her hand and a fearsome oath on her lips that had stopped Tom cold. "Leave the girl be," Tabitha had stormed.

  "I done her no harm," the large raw-boned youth had sputtered, visibly shaken by this sudden burst of female violence.

  After that Tom had left her alone, and sometime later he had died of the fever.

  The girl had grown taller now, looked less the boy. She would be fourteen soon, and already her breasts were fuller than her mother's. She was proud of her black hair, how it glistened long and thick upon her shoulders, and of the blush of her fair, clear skin. She took delight in the wistful stares of the inn's gentleman patrons, and even in the mute envy of Tabitha and May, plain girls with raw red hands, mottled complexions, and close-set quizzical eyes.

  When the cock crowed at last, she hurried across the yard to the stable. Simon the hostler was old, blind in one eye, and lame. He had been a soldier by his own account, had fought at Zutphen, where poor Sir Philip Sidney died. But that had been fifteen years before. Now his breath always reeked of garlic and his voice creaked like two branches rubbing each other in a storm. She pulled open the door and ventured in. The stable was pitch black, but she could smell animals and men and hear someone snoring and tossing fitfully in the first stall. She called Simon's name softly—she did not want to wake the players, who also made their beds in the stable. The night before she had heard their laughter as they had returned from the great house. They would not soon be rising, full as they were of Sir Henry's cheer and master Marlowe's poetry.

  The horses were already awake and moving restlessly as she felt her way to the first stall. Beneath her feet a human body stirred. She whispered Simon's name again. A shapeless thing in the straw mumbled and coughed. It rose before her, stooped, and cursed her beneath its breath.

  "Damn the master who orders me to wake you," she said, holding her voice steady, not wanting to show fear. "The master's saddle must be mended by noon and Lady shoed, and the gentleman merchant from London and his wife will be abroad before breakfast and their horses must be readied."

  "The master's saddle must be mended," Simon said, mimicking her. "Why, I wonder that the master should want aught at all, being so fortunate as he is to have thee, girl." The hostler lurched toward her, reached out, and pinched her cheek.

  She drew back in alarm and disgust. "He'll beat you soundly if he finds out you've touched me," she said, her voice quivering.

  Simon chuckled to himself. "Do you believe in the devil?" he said.

  But the hostler did not wait for an answer, nor did the girl give one. He fumbled around for his coat and cap, snatched them up violently from where they lay in the straw, and thrust her aside.

  She stood for a moment in the darkness watching the hostler stumble across the moonlit yard, then touched her cheek tenderly and fought to hold back tears of anger and pain. She hated Simon, even more than she hated the master. She had felt no pity when the players had called the old man into the firelight and Samuel Peacham had poured the hot candle wax down his shirt. It was a rough jest, and Simon had screamed like a wounded animal, like a stuck pig. The players had roared with laughter, Will Shipman's great chest heaving beneath his russet jerkin and his black beard still wet with the wine, while Richard had sat pensively in the corner, his face strangely sad.

  Her cheek hurt less now and she peered curiously into the darkness of the stable. Somewhere beyond, the players were sleeping. How queer players were, she reflected as she moved down the line of dark stalls—like the fairies in which she half believed and sometimes spied peeking from behind the ferns at the pool's edge. The players had brought into her life music and laughter and a vision of things as they might be. And more, for Will Shipman had said that being a player was as good as being a scholar, for while a scholar might know Latin, yet a player must know the heart. Richard knew the heart; he knew hers, she was sure. And a player who knew hearts might end well with proper land, a fair house, and a comely wife. Will Shipman had said all of that, and winked at her and at Richard too. She had laughed at his words, as though to dismiss them as a bauble, but inside she had felt inexpressible joy.

  The stable was long and low-ceilinged, and most of the stalls were empty or full of trash. She heard the sound of the men before she could see them, their bodies scattered in the straw of the rear stalls like piles of rags. There was no mistaking Will Shipman. The chief player lay on his back, his chest rising and falling rhythmically, his full beard indistinguishable in the half light from the thick mat of hair on his chest. His muscular arms were stretched out to each side, and his head was cocked toward one shoulder like the picture of Our Lord she had once seen in the priest's book.

  She stepped over the bodies carefully, looking for Richard now. She did not wish to wake him; she only wanted a glimpse of him asleep. It was a girl's longing she had, something that made her suddenly forget Simon's viciousness and the dreariness of the day

  Richard Mull was the players' boy. He was fourteen and he acted the women's parts because he was slender and fair and his voice had the soft treble of a woman's. In the week the company had been in the town, Richard had shown the girl some small courtesies. He had spoken gently to her, kissed and fondled her by the firelight, allowed her, when Will Shipman wasn't looking, to dress herself in the rich velvet gowns Richard wore on the stage. He had given her reason to hope, and she had given her heart to him even though he had not asked for it. Fearful of ridicule, she had confided her
love to no one, although perhaps Will Shipman sensed it.

  Her father had long ago run off to sea and had probably drowned by now; her mother, had she known the way her daughter's heart was leaning, would have beaten her soundly. But she would have beaten her in vain. The Triple Crown was a luckless place, half empty even in travelers' season, and yet it had broadened the girl's horizon. Now the names of the great towns—and especially London— rang in her head like church bells on Sunday. There, to London, Richard Mull would take her, and Simon the hostler might sleep until the Judgment and the innkeeper's rushes go unchanged until Easter. But until she should be delivered from this place, the girl resolved to keep Richard hidden in the secret places of her heart. Even the old priest would not know, he who nodded quietly and wisely at her confession as though half asleep and spoke her penance without rancor.

  Now in the gathering light she moved more confidently. Big Tod and Little Tod lay side by side. She could see the pockmarks on Little Tod's face, how his brows turned upward at the ends and how his nostrils bristled with hairs. His sharp pointed nose twitched nervously and his whole body gave little jerks, like a hanged man dancing on a rope. And there was Samuel Peacham curled up against the wall, his knees brought up protectively against his chest.

  But she did not see Richard.

  She counted the bodies again. Will Shipman, the brothers Tod, and Samuel Peacham—four, leaving only Richard Mull missing.

  The men were beginning to stir, and she was about to turn when her eye caught something white and glistening in the last stall. As she approached it, she saw that it was the players' boy. He was sitting with his back to a bale of hay, his arms and chest bare; and as she drew closer still, she could see that his eyes were open, rolled upward, as though he were watching something in the beams of the ceiling or caught up in some ecstasy.

  Two

  AN HOUR after the scullery maid at the inn had found the players' boy dead, Matthew Stock unbolted the door of his new shop on High Street for the day's business. From the several floors above occupied by Master Stock, his wife, and various household servants and apprentices he could hear Dame Joan directing Alice and Betty to the airing of the beds, while in the back parts of the shop the weavers were already at their looms and the place humming with industry. Outside, young Tom the apprentice, having swept the threshold, was preparing to wash down the cobblestone pavement.

  Like its owner, the shop had a distinct look of prosperity. Trestle tables groaned under the load of bolt upon bolt of newly woven cloth with which their owner did a brisk business both in town and country, indeed carrying his goods as far as London. The little clothier himself dressed plainly, in an old-fashioned way. A dark, thickset man in his early forties, Matthew was blessed with an industrious wife who ordered her household with the same managerial competence as did her husband his shop. Like her husband, she was dark and plump, though her face had a fine oval shape. She wore her hair in a bun, after the Spanish fashion. They had a daughter named Elizabeth, who had recently married well and who, the couple expected, would any day announce herself with child.

  The Stocks, man and wife for twenty years, were devoted to one another. Their weekdays were given to what each considered the serious business of life, putting bread on the table for themselves and those whom God had placed in their charge and living decently and loyally as was no more than to be expected of subjects of the Queen of England and the King of Heaven. On Sundays they heard Master Whittington preach, and after service would sometimes walk to the end of High Street and into the country for several miles before returning to a shoulder of lamb and March beer. Both could read; and Matthew was a musician with a richly resonant tenor voice that gave his neighbors on the street much pleasure.

  Matthew Stock had begun in a modest way, as apprentice to an older and distant cousin. From him Matthew had learned the clothier's trade, to keep accounts, and to treat his customers courteously. For twenty-five years he had kept shop in the older section of the town in a building much too small for either his goods or his ambitions; and having prospered, he had in recent months built a handsome house of four stories and a spacious attic, reserving the ground floor for his shop.

  High Street was narrow and crooked, running generally east to west except where the river ran through the town and the street made an abrupt curve to accommodate a stone bridge. From there the street wound its way a half mile toward a hill, and then into the open country. Matthew's house shared the end of the street with several others of stout oak timber and plaster, facing each other stolidly across a passage of such narrowness that it was locally held that friendly neighbors might shake each other by the hand from the upper story. To the rear of Matthew's house was a small pasture and several outbuildings: a privy, barn, and warehouse. In a corner of the pasture, Joan kept a clamorous flock of geese, ducks, and hens, which, as she had explained to her husband, were better than a brace of hounds at warning of sturdy beggars or runaway apprentices on moonless nights.

  Matthew ran his fingers over the smoothly woven fabric, the Coggeshall whites for which the clothiers of Essex had become known throughout England, stacked in bolts so near to the low ceiling that despite the large casement window at the front of the shop he often found it necessary to light lamps at noonday. He heard the clatter of William and Mark at the looms, and the voices of Tom and Peter Bench as they prepared goods for next market day.

  The bell at the door tinkled frantically. Behind him he heard the thud of footfalls over bare planking.

  The young, slender man with pale pockmarked face and colorless close-set eyes did not wait for Matthew to greet him. "You keep shop early, Master Stock."

  "I am no sooner about my business than you, Master Varnell, it would seem."

  The young man cleared his throat, balancing himself upon the balls of his feet as though he had just stepped ashore after a month at sea.

  "May I interest you in a bolt of cloth, for a suit perhaps?" Matthew ventured.

  "I am here in an official way, not for goods."

  "In an official way?"

  "Sir Henry has sent me to call you to your duty as constable. There has been a murder at the Triple Crown. One of the players was found dead this morning."

  "At the inn, you say, one of the players?" the clothier echoed with astonishment. "Why, how did the man die?"

  "Disemboweled," the secretary replied matter-of-factry, admiring his own hands, which were white and clean in the dim light of the shop. "His body was left naked in the stable, found by a maid and the chief player, a Master Shipman. The murderer and his motives are left to you to discover, if you can."

  "I pray God I may," the little clothier declared with amazement, "for such a death falls heavily upon us, though he that was murdered was not of this place."

  The younger man appraised the older one coolly. "Well," he said, sighing skeptically, "Sir Henry trusts you competent in this business, and your townsmen have called you to your office. You may report to the Hall later in the day what you find."

  "Indeed I will," Matthew said as the other man turned on his heels and abruptly departed.

  The bell tinkled again. "A queer sort, he. Who was he?" his wife asked as she descended the stairs.

  "His lordship's new secretary, Peter Varnell."

  "In faith," she said brusquely, "he has an unseemly pinched face and womanish manner. What was his business?"

  Matthew shared the news with his wife, upon which she crossed herself and exclaimed, "God help us!"

  "You," she continued once she had caught her breath, "are to inquire into the murder?"

  "I am," he replied.

  "Well," she said, as though she had made up her own mind to ask Matthew to do it, "I'll fetch your cloak. Look you dress warm against the cold, for one death to this town this day is enough."

  When she returned with his cloak and hat, she said, "And how long may this business keep you, Master Constable?"

  "I know not, but since Sir Henry Saltmarsh is mag
istrate, his business may keep me as long as it might please him. Today therefore you must run the shop. If Martin Simpson should ask for his goods, you may give him what credit he desires. I know him to be honest."

  "I trust you do not fear my management," she said with that particular sharpness of tongue Matthew recognized as more than half jest.

  "I think, on the contrary, that I shall be the richer," he replied, smiling.

  She laughed and embraced her husband affectionately. "Godspeed, Master Constable, and look that while you lead the hue and cry that you watch for your own safety. I should be much sorrowed if I had to replace you."

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her hard upon the Yips. "And l should be sorry if anything but a good old age were to take me from your side, Joan. Pray God we have many good years left together before our story be done."

  A gray sky threatened rain. He secured the fastenings of his cloak and pressed his hat firmly upon his head against the damp air. Through the crooked street he walked briskly, past the silversmith's, the grocer and bondsman, the scrivener's shop with the new sign. In a corner of the street a gaggle of tardy schoolboys clustered in a ring chanting an old song of the country. At his approach the boys fled, laughing all the while. Mistress Blount, who sold her penny wares from a rickety wooden cart, bid him good day; and her son, crippled, blind, and his face florid with eczema, blessed him as the constable dug into his pocket for a penny.

  At the rise he paused to catch his breath and look behind him over the town, the rooftops of the houses, church ^tee-pie, and the indolent serpentine river. There were some three hundred households in Chelmsford, not counting outlying farms or Dutchmen newly arrived to work in the clothing trade. The town was prospering, there was no doubt of it. In such times as these, he reflected happily, a man willing to work, of thrifty habits and settled mind, might make something of himself and leave his sons more than a good name. Such was now being done by others. Arthur Stokes of Epping, a clothier like himself, was already possessed of more land than a hardy man could walk from sunrise to dusk.