Philip Gooden - Sleep of Death

‘A tragic madness,’ said Burbage, and I wondered how much Shakespeare had told him.)

‘Nick, did Lady Alice know?’ said Nell again.

William Eliot had wanted to know the same thing about his mother. ‘Did she know?’ This is the very question that Prince Hamlet asks of Gertrude. Does she know? I had no answer. Robert Mink’s story that he had been tricked or betrayed by a woman who had given him a counterfeit key to the garden but not the key to herself might have been so much fantasy. ‘A castle in Spain,’ as Lady Alice said. It was certain that the player was driven by a queer desire to emulate in reality what he had only seen played on stage. Even as Master WS’s Hamlet was being rehearsed by the Chamberlain’s Men, Robert Mink, the Player King, was enacting the crime that underlies that tragedy, a garden murder. He had secreted himself up the tree, he had scratched the letters WS into the bark, he had slaughtered old Sir William with an arcane mixture (guaiacum paste and mercury) bought of the old apothecary. Remaining in his strange perch to witness the finding of the corpse, he had seen Francis by moonlight wipe his shirt-sleeve across the dead man’s face. In fear of discovery he had disposed of the servant, then of the apothecary, and had given orders that I was to be put to death. Finally he had killed one of the men who had set out to kill me. Ralph Ransom’s fat, deceased self was found in the player’s lodgings in Swan Street.

‘I don’t know whether she knew,’ I said. ‘I have seen her only once since that afternoon.’

‘She may have known and not known.’ said Nell.

I didn’t understand this but let it pass.

‘And what was in the note?’

‘The note?’

‘The piece of paper you picked up at Old Nick’s.’

‘I don’t know that either,’ I said. ‘Or rather I didn’t understand it.’

‘But what did it say?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It could be important.’

I struggled with my memory. I was naturally reluctant to revisit the charcoal burner’s hut where, as the storm crept up outside, I had so nearly lost manhood and life and all. Nevertheless, at Nell’s behest, I strove to recite the words that Adrian had read aloud.

‘Valerian, ipomea, er, ag-something, ag-ag-ag- ’

‘Agrimony?’

‘Yes, agrimony, then gall-bladder, I think. . ratsfoot. . and, er, antimony.’

I was rather pleased with myself for reproducing so exactly what had been written on the apothecary’s note. Then I noticed that Nell was laughing, to herself.

‘What is it? I can tell you, it wasn’t funny out in those woods. You nearly didn’t have me — or this — to toy with any more.’

‘Poor Nick,’ said Nell.

‘That’s better,’ I said.

‘Old Nick, I mean, the apothecary.’

‘Well,’ I said, annoyed, ‘he is in the woods now and will never be out of them again.’

I thought of the rat-like Nub and wondered what he and his tribe of charcoal-burners might have done with the bodies of the aged apothecary and the false steward. They could have been left for forest animals to pick over but somehow I doubted it. There was always the risk of discovery, of investigation, even in those lawless wastes. I thought that Nub would probably know what to do. At any rate, I wasn’t going back to find out.

‘A harmless old man,’ she said.

Not so, I thought. A supplier of poisons. A maker of arrangements.

‘Nell?’

‘Yes.’

‘The arrangement that you had with the apothecary, what was it?’

‘Jealousy?’

‘No, but tell me.’

‘Sometimes, Nick, a man comes to me and he has lost the will and cannot go. You understand?’

‘Of course. Though that is not my case.’

‘No, it is not your case. But for those who cannot go, what striving and misery there is. The cursing and the grief of these men and not all of them old neither. There is a real sorrow. All your repentance is nothing to it. You know what they say, old jades whinny when they cannot wag the tail.’

‘Old Nick, he was one of these?’

‘No, he was ever more of a watcher than a doer. But he asked me to try out certain preparations on the old jades. Those words that you’ve just said, that list, they were a preparation. An infallible preparation to make men go, and go again.’

‘What, valerian and agrimony and the rest?’

‘Yes. When your pistol will not discharge.’

She could hardly speak for laughter.

I was not pleased and by my look must have said so.

‘Nick, you do not reform me with these puritan glances. Where is the harm? These things were for our profit — and pleasure. Old Nick was pleased because he was making money. I was pleased because I too made money out of the old jades and they were pleased, oh how they were pleased, by these preparations and mixtures. Where is the harm?’

‘No harm,’ I said.

‘But you do not really think so,’ she said.

‘Pleasure and profit as you say,’ I said.

‘And it is not your case. For sure, you do not need these preparations, this valerian and agrimony and all,’ she said, grasping me.

‘Oh no,’ I said, feeling the old Adam rouse himself from slumber and stretch and look about himself, ‘it is not my case at all.’