The Medieval Murderers - Hill of Bones

He added, ‘It’s from a lady.’

‘What lady?’

‘Don’t know. She was wearing a hat pulled low and I couldn’t see her face clear.’

There was an outburst of ooh-ing and ah-ing from my fellows at the mention of ‘a lady’. I knew what they were thinking. It was more or less what I was thinking too.

‘I’m not acquainted with any ladies in Bath,’ I said, half apologetic but a bit smug as well. I might have asked more questions of the landlord’s son – could he guess at the mystery woman’s age? what about the style of her voice? – but the lad had already slipped away through the drapes.

‘Your lucky night,’ said Laurence.

‘You dog,’ said Abel.

‘I am jealous, I confess it, Duke Peccato,’ said Michael Donegrace, who had so recently glided across the boards as my half-sister and would-be bride, and on whose behalf I had already killed extensively that night.

I ignored their ribaldry and held the folded paper close to the lantern so as to read the superscription. ‘To him who plays the Duke’, it said in a large but elegant hand. Well, of course, whoever wrote this could not have known my name, only the part I played in A House Divided . There was another line of writing under the address, slightly smaller but in the same hand. No more than three words: ‘A privy message’. I felt my cheeks grow warm and was glad I hadn’t completely wiped off my face-paint because I was being looked at very intently by Laurence Savage and the others. My fingers were itching to tear open this private message – which was sealed with a red blob of wax – but I was not going to give my fellows the satisfaction of reading my expression while I examined its contents.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ I said, folding up the last bit of my ducal costume with exaggerated care and putting it in one of the tire-chests.

‘Will we be seeing you later at Mother Treadwell’s?’ said Laurence.

Most of us King’s Men were lodging at a couple of rooms in a house near the North Gate of the town, where all of us were crammed into too few beds. The place was run by a good-natured, twinkle-eyed widow woman who welcomed travelling players, and more particularly their gossip.

‘Oh, no, we won’t be seeing him later,’ said Abel Glaze, answering for me. ‘Nicholas will be treading well elsewhere tonight, won’t he?’

‘More room in the bed for the rest of us then,’ said Michael Donegrace.

I left them to their envious jokes and made my way out of the changing room and slowly through the inn yard. Most of the audience had watched A House Divided on their feet, like the groundlings at the Globe, although there was a cluster of benches near the front for those who preferred to sit and were willing to pay a bit more. It was a close, warm evening with a little light remaining in the west as well as that provided by the rising moon. There were a few stragglers remaining after the performance, drinking and smoking in corners, the embers of their pipes glowing softly in the near dark. Murmurs of male conversation. No women that I could see, no enticing female strangers with hats pulled low over their brows.

It was not unknown for players to receive messages from, ah, the better class of women who had been present at our performances on stage. Messages that offered favours. Sadly, it had never happened to me or my immediate fellows, but there were tales about a few of the older men in the company, including an amusing one about William Shakespeare and Dick Burbage having planned an assignation at the same time with the same man’s wife. Mind you, they were much younger then, and playing has become more respectable in these latter days.

So it was with hope in my heart, and the enticing words ‘A privy message’ tapping in my brain like a drumbeat, that I exited the yard into Cock Lane and turned down towards a thoroughfare that I think is called Cheap Street. The bulk of the great city church of Bath loomed to my left.

From the first-floor window of a house at the corner of Cheap Street came a gleam of light where the curtain was not completely drawn. That, combined with the beams from the moon, should, I decided, enable me to read the letter. As I stopped under the window, all eager to tear the thing open, I spied a figure carrying a staff and lantern and emerging from the shadows of the great church. A little dog trotted at his heels. It was the bellman on the first leg of his nightly round of the city of Bath. He rang his bell and called out the time – ten o’clock – and gave me a wary look as he passed on down Cheap Street. The dog growled softly before slinking after its master. If the bellman was here, the watch would probably be close at his heels. I did not want to get taken up on suspicion of attempting a house robbery. Being a foreigner in town, and a player as well, would make that all too likely.

I turned back towards the Bear Inn and waited until a pair of watchmen had gone by in the same direction as the bellman. My fingers fumbled impatiently with the wax seal of the ‘privy message’. I returned to the corner house and the window with its crack of light, and raised the unfolded sheet closer to my eyes. Only to understand that I had been played for a fool for the sheet was completely blank. Even by the uncertain light I could see nothing, nothing at all. There was not a single word on the sheet, let alone a place of assignation, or any fond endearments and promises.

My first reaction was irritation, more with myself than the unknown ‘lady’ who had given the letter to the landlord’s boy. I wondered whether one of my friends was playing a joke on me but swiftly discounted the idea. Then I thought that I would have to spend an hour or two drinking ale in a town inn, before slinking back to Mother Treadwell’s and pretending to Laurence Savage and the rest that I had indeed enjoyed the favours of some high-born Bath lady. It would be too humiliating to do anything else. Then it further occurred to me – being primed for the event, as it were – that I should go in search of a house of ill repute and purchase what I was not going to be given tonight for free. Which direction to go, though? In London I’d have known, but in a strange town I was at a loss for a bordello.

There must surely be one or two such places in Bath, which, although not a very large or populous city, is much visited on account of its curative waters. But since our arrival the previous day, all our time had been spent preparing the stage in the yard of the Bear Inn and then rehearsing for this evening’s performance and the other plays that were to follow. Consequently, I had little notion of the city’s more disreputable quarters although I supposed they’d be away from the shadow of the great church and the centre of the town. Most probably close to one of the old gates. The North Gate wasn’t a good prospect. Nearby was both the city lock-up and a proper gaol, as the twinkle-eyed Mrs Treadwell had informed us, ‘very conveniently placed for naughty players’. And the East Gate in the wall, which we had glimpsed on our approach to the city, was not much more than a postern onto the river bank.

I was still standing underneath the lighted window on the corner of Cheap Street, clutching the blank sheet of paper. By now indecisive as well as irritated, I mused on whether I’d be more likely to find what I was looking for down by the South Gate or the West one. Then I wondered how sensible it was to go wandering around unfamiliar streets in a darkened city, no doubt encountering the bellman and the members of his watch. In the process I found my appetite, my itch, subsiding.

It was a surprise when I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder. I hadn’t heard anyone come up behind me. I spun round and there she was! A woman, quite tall and slender from her outline, and wearing a large hat.