Edward Marston - The Counterfeit Crank

Still in pain, Gregory Sumner rubbed his neck ruefully but he was only biding his time. As Elias stepped back to look at him properly, the man came to life and tried to retrieve his discarded dagger. It was a foolish move. The Welshman was ready for him. Holding him by the scruff of his neck, Elias swung him round with vicious force and threw him against the wall, drawing fresh blood and knocking all the resistance out of him. Sheathing his own dagger, Elias tucked the other weapon into his belt then bent down to remove the shoes of the fallen man. Without ceremony, he tore off Sumner’s hose and used it to tie the prisoner’s hands behind his back.

‘Come, sir,’ said Elias, lifting the man up and putting him over his shoulder. ‘I want you to meet a friend of mine. But I warn you now,’ he added with a growl. ‘Do not dare to bleed over me on the way.’

Edmund Hoode felt so much better in himself that he was able to read A Way to Content All Women once more. Indeed, by the afternoon, he had even made a tentative stab at writing a new scene for it. Doctor John Mordrake was responsible for his recovery. Having identified the poison that had been keeping the patient drowsy and confused for so long, Mordrake concocted his own remedy and administered it in person. As a result, Hoode’s brain was functioning again. His body was still tired, but his mind was racing and eager to make up for lost time.

One of the clearest indications of his improvement was the return of his subdued lust for the landlady’s daughter. When Adele came into his room that evening, Hoode hoped that she had come to change the sheets on his bed and allow him to watch her nubile body as it bent and swayed before him. In fact, the girl was only delivering a message. As she spoke, Hoode stared with idle pleasure at the expressive dimples in her cheeks and at the delicate arches of her eyebrows.

‘There’s someone below who would speak with you, Master Hoode,’ she said.

‘Did he give a name?’

‘Yes, sir. It was Tom Rooke.’

‘Tom Rooke?’ he echoed. ‘But that’s the name of a character from a play of mine called The Faithful Shepherd. Are you sure that is what he is called, Adele?’

‘I am,’ she said. ‘But this fellow is no shepherd. I can vouch for that.’

‘What sort of man is he?’

‘Not one that my mother would let into the house, sir. He’s a scurvy beggar. But he insists that he’s a friend of yours, and will not leave until he has seen you.’

Hoode was mystified. Outside of his play, he knew nobody by the name of Rooke and was not acquainted with any beggars. Curiosity took him down the stairs. When he reached the front door, he opened it to find himself looking at a bedraggled creature with a filthy cap, a patch over one eye and his arm in a sling. Either side of him was an officer but Hoode ignored them. His only interest was in the crooked figure who had sent up the name of Tom Rooke. He was certain that he had never seen the man before.

‘Do you know me, sir?’ croaked the beggar.

‘No,’ said Hoode, turning his head away in disgust, ‘and I’ve no wish to know someone who stinks as much as you. Away with you, man!’

The beggar raised himself to his full height and lifted the eye patch up. Slipping his arm out of the sling, he put both hands on his hips and used his real voice.

‘Will you deny me now?’ asked Nicholas Bracewell.

Hoode was amazed. ‘Nick!’ he gasped. ‘Is that you?’

‘It is, Edmund. I did not think to fool you so easily, but it seems that I did. Had you looked at my companions, you’d have seen that they, too, are old friends.’

‘Frank and James,’ said the playwright, recognising Quilter and Ingram and shaking each by the hand. ‘What mean these disguises?’

‘All will be explained in time,’ said Nicholas. ‘I must be brief. I called simply to see how remarkable a recovery Doctor Mordrake has brought about, and to tell you what happened after I left here last night.’

‘I thought that you went off to see Michael.’

‘And so I did. By the time I’d delivered him and Doctor Zander to a magistrate, it was far too late to call back here. And today has kept me fettered to the Queen’s Head.’

Hoode blinked. ‘What’s this about a magistrate?’

Nicholas gave him an abbreviated account of what had taken place in Cornhill. Hoode was extremely angry at Doctor Zander but, in spite of what had been done to him, managed a vestigial sympathy for Michael Grammaticus.

‘Ambition is a cruel master,’ he said. ‘It drove Michael much farther than he was able to go. I’ve been at the mercy of that ambition myself. I know the overwhelming urge to see your play performed upon a stage. It’s like a madness.’

‘Michael will pay dearly for it,’ said Nicholas. ‘But we must away, Edmund.’

‘Dressed in those rags? Will you beg in the streets?’

‘We’ll not allow that,’ said Quilter sternly, taking Nicholas by the arm.

Hoode laughed. ‘You’d make a good officer, Frank. But do not treat my friend Tom Rooke too harshly. I need him for one of my plays. And when he’s Nick Bracewell again,’ he went on, grinning happily, ‘I need him for all my plays.’

Nicholas slipped his arm back into the sling and replaced the eye patch. After giving the playwright a wave, he twisted his body into a grotesque shape and limped away between the two officers. Hoode went back inside and met Adele on the stairs.

‘No,’ he told her. ‘He was no friend of mine. I’ve never set eyes on that mangy creature before.’

Lawrence Firethorn did not know what sort of reception he would get at home. On the ride back to Shoreditch, he was not certain whether his wife had mellowed or if a night apart from her husband had merely hardened her heart. When he reached the house in Old Street, therefore, he tethered his horse to the gatepost in case he needed to make a swift departure. Finding that the front door was no longer locked, he took it as a good omen and stepped inside.

‘Margery!’ he cooed. ‘Where are you, my sweetness?’

‘In the kitchen,’ she announced in a rasping voice.

‘I’m back early today, as you will see.’

He went into the kitchen where his wife had been talking to her brother-in-law as she mixed some dough in a bowl. Jarrold could see that Margery was throbbing with displeasure. Not wishing to come between the couple at such a delicate moment, he gave a nervous smile and tried to steal away, but Firethorn flung his arms around the man to embrace him.

‘Thank God you came to stay with us, Jonathan!’ he declared. ‘You’ve been our salvation. Westfield’s Men owe you so much.’

‘They owe me nothing, Lawrence,’ said the other man, quailing before the frank display of emotion. ‘If anything is owed, it’s my apology. I hoped to get to the Queen’s Head this afternoon to watch the play, but I was detained by a bookseller with whom I was doing some business. Will you forgive me?’

‘After what you did, I’d forgive you anything.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Margery, suspiciously. ‘You’ve hardly had a word to say to Jonathan since he’s been here, yet now you greet him as if he’s the best friend you have in the world.’

‘I do so on behalf of the whole company,’ said Firethorn. ‘Has your brother-in-law not told you what help he rendered us, Margery?’

‘No, Lawrence.’

‘How could I tell what I did not even know about?’ said Jarrold.

‘Have you ever heard such modesty?’ cried Firethorn, taking him by the cheeks to plant a kiss on his forehead. ‘But for you, Jonathan Jarrold, all would have been lost. But for you, Edmund would have languished in his bed forever. But for you, that wicked doctor would have gone on poisoning him while Michael Grammaticus reaped the benefit of his absence. You exposed their villainy.’