Rory Clements - Revenger

T HE STREETS OF LONDON were overgrown with weeds. Flies buzzed around the dogs that lay dead on every corner. Rats scuttled unhindered along the clogged drainage kennels. Rosemary and other herbs had been scattered about in a pathetic attempt to cleanse the air of the plague miasma. The pestilence was doing its foul work regardless. People still went about their daily business, but in fewer numbers. Those who did not have to leave their homes didn’t. Those who had enough gold had left for their country estates long ago. And each day the plague men dragged more cartloads of corpses to the mass graves.

Shakespeare found Simon Forman in remarkably good spirits at Stone House in Fylpot Street. He seemed tired, but otherwise healthy. The astrologer-physician welcomed his visitor with a warm shake of the hand.

“It is good to see someone who does not have the pestilence, Mr. Marvell. I spend all day every day tending to them and dispensing my miraculous tinctures.”

“Indeed, Dr. Forman. I trust they are more miraculous than your charts, for you were certainly wrong about the death of a certain person of high rank-and you could not have chosen a more inauspicious day for a wedding.”

Forman grinned broadly, his generous red lips creasing apart in the small gap between his bushy golden red beard and mustache. “And I am the happiest man in England that my chart erred concerning the great lady, but nor am I surprised-for is she not the sun itself, and do not the very stars trace their paths about her elegant and stately progress?”

“Admit it, Forman. Your charts are as worthless as your potions and ointments. Ash of little green frogs? You prey on gulls, sir.”

Forman shrugged his wide shoulders, still grinning. “I had taken you to be a skeptic, Mr. Marvell. But I tell you this: I was right about my plague cure-for, see, I am hale and my heart is strong. Not only that, but the French welcome is gone, too.” In truth, he felt himself not only healthy but never happier; women flocked to him for haleking, deciding they must make the most of this world today, for tomorrow they might be in the hereafter. He was also proving himself a real physician who could bring comfort and the occasional cure to the sick. “I am not like those coney-hunters at the College of Physicians who have hounded me without mercy for so many years and are nowhere to be seen now that the people need them. I cured myself and now I take my electuaries to the sick and suffering, be they drabs or gong farmers, and, with God’s grace, I heal many. Only one in five survives, they say, but I do better than that.”

“I am pleased to hear it. I will be even more pleased when you give me what I have come for. And my name is not Marvell but Shakespeare. Strange, is it not, that your charts were unable to reveal that? Now, give me the charts I require and I promise you that you will have immunity from prosecution and all the protection you need from the College of Physicians.”

Forman hesitated. “I wonder,” he asked tentatively, “would you be able to supply me with a letter of patent from Sir Robert? He is not the only powerful man in the land and nor is he immune to the ravages of disease or accidental death. If I take his part in this, I will surely be most unpopular with others. I must think of the future and what would become of me if anything were to happen to him, Mr. Shakespeare.”

“You will have no such letter. But I say again-if you do not supply the charts, you will be in Newgate before this day is done. And the pursuivants I send will destroy every last book, vial, and instrument that you own.”

“Mr. Shakespeare, please…”

“And I will require an affidavit with your mark upon it to show that you did cast these charts, and for whom you cast them.”

“No, you cannot ask me to do that!”

“Then good-day to you, Dr. Forman. Mr. Topcliffe will be here with a squadron before day’s end.” Much as he loathed Topcliffe, Shakespeare knew the power of his name. Where once men spoke of the rack or the manacles or the branding iron, now they simply referred to “Topcliffean practices.”

Shakespeare saw the fear burning bright in Forman’s eyes. “I wonder, Dr. Forman, about the tinctures you supplied for the sickness lately endured by my lord of Essex’s wife, the lady Frances? She said you supplied her with potions to rid her of the little flying things she saw. What, exactly, were they? Wing of sparrow, toe of faerie?”

“Mr. Shakespeare, please. I beg you…”

“Or were they, perhaps, essence of wolfsbane, Dr. Forman?”

Forman held his hand to his chest as though his heart would seize. “Never, sir. Never. I would never be party to such a thing. My mission is to heal, not kill.”

“What, then? We know of your alliance with enemies who tried to poison her, Dr. Forman. You dabble in alchemy-you had the means to acquire whatever they desired. And that thing was wolfsbane. I do believe she was being poisoned with the foul root and you gave it to her.”

Forman sat down. “Mr. Shakespeare,” he said, his voice hoarse and riven with panic. “This is all wicked fancy. I promise you by God’s holy name, I have done no such thing, nor ever would. I talked to the lady and quickly realized she had an affliction of the mind, some languishing sickness. I gave her nothing but a hypocon water of Hypericum perforatum -commonly called St. John’s wort-which I know will cure the sadness in some melancholics.”

“It is too much of a coincidence. No court in England would believe the tinctures weren’t poisoned.”

Dr. Forman nodded his head, his shoulders slumped in defeat. “I will do everything you ask, sir. I have the charts prepared already, and you shall have your affidavit before you go.”

Shakespeare smiled and clapped Forman about the back. “Good man. Then we shall be the best of friends and I pledge that Sir Robert Cecil will look after your interests and save you from the dread attentions of the College of Physicians.”

“And I swear to you that I have never supplied poisons, nor used them, though I have been asked.”

On the way out, with the charts and affidavit tucked safely within his doublet, it felt to Shakespeare as though a hundredweight burden had fallen off his back. At last he had evidence that, he prayed, would satisfy Cecil and save his brother Will.

His thoughts turned to McGunn’s last words, and his pace quickened as he hurried through the echoing, half-deserted streets of London…

T HE HOUSE AT THE CORNER OF BEER LANE AND Thames Street was boarded and nailed shut. A cross was painted on the door. It was a plague house. Anyone incarcerated there must stay until death took them.

Shakespeare looked about him. Across the street, two men in tattered jerkins sat on a hay bale, tankards of ale and pipes of tobacco in their hands, playing cards. They wore herb-filled plague masks-pointed, beaklike protuberances that made them look like hellish birds of prey.

“Who lives there?” Shakespeare demanded as he approached them, gesturing toward the plague house.

The men looked at each other and laughed. The taller of the two, a rangy, balding fellow, stood up from the hay bale and pulled off his mask to reveal a sour, gaunt face.

“Who wants to know?”

“My name is Shakespeare. I am here on Queen’s business.”

“Well, no one lives there. It’s a plague house. They’ll all be dead.”

Shakespeare noted the man’s voice. His accent was Irish, like McGunn’s.

The men were laughing again.