Edward Marston - The Fair Maid of Bohemia

The familiar bickering began again and Nicholas left them to it. Stealing away from the table, he walked towards the figure he had noticed on his own in the far corner. It was Edmund Hoode, crouched over a sheet of parchment with a quill in his hand. The pen was hovering indecisively.

‘How now, Edmund?’ said his friend, lowering himself onto the stool opposite. ‘Is your teeming brain at work on The Fair Maid of Bohemia? ’

‘If only it were, Nick!’ sighed the other.

‘What is amiss?’

‘My Muse has deserted me.’

‘You always say that.’

‘This time, it is true. My mind is empty. The storehouse of my imagination is bare. The mice scamper around in there, unable to find even the tiniest crumbs.’

‘You are tired, that is all,’ reassured Nicholas. ‘The journey has taxed each one of us. A good night’s sleep will soon revive you and fill that storehouse until it bursts apart with fresh ideas.’

‘No, Nick. I have written my last play.’

‘Those words, too, have often been on your lips.’

‘Never with more conviction.’ He lifted both hands up in a gesture of despair. ‘I have nothing new to say.’

‘Novelty is not expected. All you have to do is to take an old play by Edmund Hoode and dress it in a clever disguise. You have fashioned such costumes a hundred times.’

‘I have lost my needle and thread. Look,’ he said, lifting the sheet of parchment in front of him, ‘this is the fruit of two hours’ work. All I have contrived to write is the title and the name of its misbegotten author. The chaste maid refuses to leave Wapping. She’ll have none of Bohemia!’

He tossed the sheet over his shoulder with disgust and buried his face in his hands. Nicholas consoled him gently. It was a service he had often rendered and his touch was delicate. Hoode was slowly weaned away from his crippling melancholy. Nicholas waited until he had coaxed the first faint smile out of his friend before he made his offer.

‘Let me help you,’ he suggested.

‘How?’

‘Not as your co-author, that would be far too great a presumption on my part. I only wish to be a servant, who fetches and carries things for my master. I bring the bones of ideas, you put flesh upon them.’

‘You do not know The Chaste Maid of Wapping well enough.’

‘I know it as well as its author,’ said Nicholas. ‘Better than he at this moment. You forget how often I have seen it rehearsed and played. The first scene, for instance, could be transported to Bohemia with one simple device.’

‘One?’

‘If you are bold enough to use it.’

‘What is it?’ asked Hoode, interested at last.

‘Pick up your pen and I will tell you.’

The drooping playwright took up his quill and dipped it into the inkwell before him. Once he began to write, his hand never paused for a second as a stream of ideas, images and daring concepts poured from Nicholas. Though not an author in his own right, he had a grasp of narrative and of theatrical effect that was the equal of any. Hoode’s enthusiasm was brought quickly back to life again. Instead of simply listing his friend’s comments about the play, he started to challenge, to criticise, to amend, to refine.

It was only a matter of time before his own creative juices flowed freely again. When he replaced the first page with a second, it was his imagination which made the pen dance across it. Nicholas was no longer needed. Hoode was talking to himself and hearing nobody else. The book-holder retrieved the discarded sheet of parchment from the floor and gazed around the room. Firethorn and Gill were still squabbling cheerfully, Elias was still carousing with the others, George Dart was slumbering over his beer again and the resident poet with Westfield’s Men had been rescued from a pit of misery and filled with brimming confidence. It was once more the company he knew and loved. Nicholas was content.

***

When the actors eventually tumbled into their beds, they needed no lullaby to ease them asleep. They had spent several hours celebrating their arrival in Cologne and collapsed instantly beneath the joyous weight of their over-indulgence. As he lay awake in the darkness, Nicholas heard their individual snores merging into a general drone. While his companions sank into oblivion, he had too much to keep him awake.

Adrian Smallwood remained at the forefront of his mind. He had not only lost a staunch friend, he had seen a highly talented actor cut down in his prime. The sense of waste was overpowering. Nicholas was also distressed by his inability to do anything by way of recompense. Back in England, he could at least attempt to trace Smallwood’s family in York and pass on the sad tidings, but it might be months before he was home in London again. Finding the killer was the only thing which would assuage his feelings of guilt and helplessness. That would take time, patience and a degree of sheer luck.

Anne Hendrik was another source of anxiety. She was an able woman with a good working knowledge of Dutch, but she was still a foreigner in a land not wholly amicable towards the English. Nicholas was certain that she would be welcomed in Amsterdam by the family into which she had been married, but how and with whom would she return to Flushing? What sort of return voyage would she have? Was she missing him as painfully as he was now missing her? Where was she?

Nicholas was still asking that question when his eyelids finally closed for the night. He dozed peacefully but lightly. Sharing a bedchamber with seven of his fellows did not make him feel totally secure. Smallwood had been murdered while scores of people were at hand. The same killer would not be deterred by the presence of two apprentices and five snoring actors. Nicholas kept the dagger in his hand throughout the night. But it was not needed.

He awoke at dawn to the sound of carts and wagons rattling past in the street on their way to market. Cologne was a noisy city. Bells were soon ringing, voices were raised, dogs were barking and yelping. His companions slept untroubled through the morning’s pandemonium but Nicholas was wide awake. He grappled with his concerns over the death of Adrian Smallwood and the safety of Anne Hendrik until a third person glided gently into his thoughts.

Doctor John Mordrake had entrusted him with a curious commission. Nicholas was employed to deliver a small wooden box to the very man to whom the secret documents were being sent. What connection did Mordrake have with the mysterious Talbot Royden? Why was he prepared to pay so handsomely to have his gift put into the latter’s hands in Prague? Nicholas sat up with a start as a new consideration arose. He believed that Smallwood had been murdered in error by a man in search of the documents that he himself was carrying. Balthasar Davey shared that belief.

Supposing that they were both wrong? What if the killer was really after the wooden box? Mordrake’s gift was also a form of secret document. Would someone commit a murder in order to seize it? Nicholas reached into his purse for the object and examined it in the half-dark. It looked so small and innocuous. Did it really have the power to kill one man and put the life of another in danger? Were its contents so lethal? The box suddenly felt like a lead weight in his palm. He put it quickly away.

With a performance due that afternoon, there was an immense amount of work for the book-holder to do. Fair weather was a crucial factor in an outdoor performance. Light was poking its fingers in through the cracks in the shutters, but that told him little about their chances of a fine day. Taking care not to disturb the others, he dressed in silence and crept out of the chamber. When he stepped into the stableyard, he saw that they had been blessed with dry weather. The sky was clear and only a faint breeze was trying to brush the wisps of straw across the ground.