Simon Hawke - The Merchant of Vengeance

“Do not go getting yourself drunk,” Shakespeare told him. “Why the hell not?” asked Mayhew with a grimace. Shakespeare opened his mouth, then shut it once again.

“‘Strewth, you have a point. I cannot think of a single reason.”

“Nor could I,” said Mayhew. He quaffed the remainder of the ale in his tankard and poured himself another.

Locke struck his hammer on the table several times. “Master Shakespeare, are you prepared to begin?”

“I am,” Shakespeare replied, rising to his feet.

“Proceed, then.”

“I should like to call for my first witness my good friend Tuck Smythe,” he said.

Tuck got up and walked over to the seat placed before the dais. “Do you swear before God, upon pain of your immortal soul, that what you say before this court shall be the truth?” asked Locke.

“I do,” said Smythe.

“Be seated.”

“Would you please give your full name to this assemblage?” Shakespeare asked him.

“Symington Smythe II,” said Tuck.

Winifred caught her breath and stared at him with astonishment.

“And what is your occupation?”

“I am a player with Lord Strange’s Men, and a sometime smith and farrier.”

“Could you explain to this court how it happened that you met Thomas Locke and what was the nature of your acquaintance?”

“You and I had gone together to the shop of Ben Dickens, the armorer,” said Smythe, “who is a friend of ours. ”Whilst there, we met Thomas Locke, another friend of Ben’s, who had arrived in a state of great agitation because the father of his betrothed, Portia Mayhew, had just withdrawn his consent to the marriage and forbidden him from seeing her again.“

“Did he say why this consent had been withdrawn?” asked Shakespeare.

“Because his mother was a Jew,” said Smythe.

“And how did Thomas respond to this?”

“He was most distressed. He said he loved this girl with all his heart and soul and could not live without her. He could not bear the thought of never seeing her again.”

“And what was your response to this?” asked Shakespeare. Smythe hesitated slightly. “I advised him to elope with her.”

“Indeed?” said Shakespeare. “And did you know him well?” Smythe hesitated yet again. “Nay, we had never before met.”

“And yet you took it upon yourself to advise him to elope?”

“Aye.”

“Were you acquainted at all with his intended, Mistress Mayhew?”

“I was not.”

“You had never met her nor even laid eyes upon her, as it hap pens, is that not so?”

“‘Tis so.”

“And yet you still advised Thomas Locke, whom you had only just met, to elope with this girl whom you had never met?”

Smythe spoke under his breath. “Will, what the devil are you doing?”

“Answer the question, please.”

“I did so advise him, aye,” said Smythe with a grimace.

“Are you ordinarily in the habit of advising strangers to elope?”

“Not ordinarily.”

“So then why in this case?”

“Because.. because I understood how he must have felt, I suppose,” said Smythe.

Elizabeth sat up a little straighter in her seat.

“Because something of a somewhat similar nature, so to speak, had occurred in your own life?”

Smythe gave him a hard look. “Aye,” he said after a moment. Elizabeth looked down.

“And what happened then?” asked Shakespeare.

“Thomas said that he would follow my advice and left.”

Smythe replied. “And then Ben took me to task for not minding my own business. As did you.”

“I did, indeed,” said Shakespeare. “And what happened then?”

“Upon listening to you and Ben, I decided that perhaps I had spoken rashly, and we-that is, you and I, not Ben-went together to seek out Thomas’s parents and inform them of what their son intended.”

“The rest you know,” said Shakespeare, turning to face Locke upon the dais. “But for the benefit of this assemblage, we came to you and told you what had happened, whereupon you requested us to deliver a message to your son, asking him to come and see you. When we tried to do so, we found, much to our profound regret, that young Thomas had been slain.” He turned back to Smythe. “Thank you, Tuck. If it please the court, I am finished with this witness.”

“You may step down,” said Locke to Smythe.

“I would now like to call forth Mistress Elizabeth Darcie.”

Shakespeare said.

Elizabeth stepped up to take the stand and was sworn. “Elizabeth,” said Shakespeare, “would you please tell this court your connection with this sad situation?”

“Portia Mayhew is a friend of mine,” Elizabeth replied. “Our fathers know one another.”

“Would you say that you are very dose friends?” Shakespeare asked.

“I would not say that we were very close,” Elizabech replied, “which is to say, I like Portia, but I have not known her very long.”

“You knew she was betrothed to Thomas Locke?”

“I did.”

“And how did you discover that her father had withdrawn his consent for her to marry?”

“When she came to my home, very upset, and delivered the news to Antonia and myself.”

“And who is Antonia?”

“She is a friend of mine, and the wife of Harry Morrison, one of my father’s business acquaintances. She was visiting with me at the time.”

“And how did you respond to this news?” asked Shakespeare. “Well, we sought to comfort her, of course,” Elizabeth replied. “And was that all!”

“Not entirely.”

“As it happens, ‘twas your suggestion to her that she should elope with Thomas, was it not?”

“It was.”

This brought a reaction from the assemblage, and Locke hammered for silence, or at least some reasonable semblance of it.

“Curious,” said Shakespeare. “‘Twould seem that everyone wanted this young couple to elope, save for their parents. And what did you do then?”

“We took a coach and went in search of Thomas,” Elizabeth replied.

“And by ‘we,’ you mean yourself, Antonia, and Portia, is that not so?”

“‘Tis so.”

“Where did you go?”

“To the shop of Master Leffingwell, where Thomas was employed,” Elizabeth replied.

“And what did you discover when you went there?”

“We discovered that Thomas was not there,” Elizabeth replied.

“Master Leffingwell told us that he had not come in to work that day.”

“And was that all he told you?”

Elizabeth frowned. “I believe so.”

“Allow me to refresh your memory. Did you not know that Thomas had a room just across the street in the cul-de-sac, above the mercer’s shop?”

“Oh. Aye, we did. That is to say, I did not know it, Portia did. But we did not go there, because Master Leffingwell also told us that he had sent one of his apprentices there earlier to see if Thomas was at home, and he was not.”

“And so, not seeing any reason to do otherwise, you took him at his word and returned home, thinking to find Thomas later, perhaps the following day. At what point did you discover he,was dead?”

“The very next day,” Elizabeth replied, “when the sheriff’s men came to my house to question us.”

“And why did they wish to question you?”

“Because Master Leffingwell had told them we were at his shop, seeking Thomas.”

“Portia was with you at the time the sheriff’s men arrived?”

“Aye, she was. She had spent the night with me at my home.”

“And how did she respond to this tragic news?”

“As you may well imagine, she was horrified and struck with grief. She fled the room, sobbing.”

“And the sheriff’s men, of course, did not pursue her to press her any further.”