Edward Marston - The Queen's Head

Benjamin Creech had exchanged blows with Will Fowler.

*

Lady Rosamund Varley draped herself in a window seat and read the sonnet yet again. It was agreeably fulsome and its witty wordplay was very pleasing. The poem was unsigned but the phrase 'Love and Friendship' had been written underneath it in a bold hand. Because the letters 'L' and 'F' had been enlarged and embossed, she had no difficulty in identifying the sender as Lawrence Firethorn. She gave a brittle laugh.

Fortune had smiled on her. A rich and doting husband had made light of a thirty-year age gap for a short while, then he had obligingly succumbed to gout, impetigo and waning desire. Lady Rosamund was free to seek her pleasures elsewhere. She did so without compunction and turned herself into a practised coquette. Her beauty and charm could ensnare any man and she toyed with them unmercifully. A whisper of scandal hung upon her at all times.

The court supplied most of her admirers--earls, lords, knights, even foreign ambassadors on occasion--but she had a special fondness for actors. Their way of life intrigued her. It combined danger and excess to a high degree. They were commoners who could be kings for an afternoon, men of great courage who could strut proudly on a stage for a couple of hours and blaze their way into the hearts of all around them. Lady Rosamund was captivated by the tawdry glamour of the theatre.

She glanced down at the sonnet again. Not for a moment did she imagine that Firethorn had actually composed it himself, but that did not matter. In commissioning and sending it, he had made it his own and she was flattered by the compliment. He was an extraordinary man who was adding to his reputation with each new performance. No role was beyond him, not even the one that she was about to assign to him.

Crossing the chamber to a small table, she opened a drawer in it and put the poem inside. It took its place alongside many other poems, letters, gifts and keepsakes. Lawrence Firethorn was in exalted company.

Lady Rosamund returned to the window to gaze down at the Thames. Her sumptuous abode stood on the stretch of river bank called the Strand. Before the dissolution of the monasteries, it had been the town house of a bishop, and she often imagined how he would have reacted if he saw some of the antics that took place in his former bedchamber. Her impish spirit was such that she felt she was helping to purge the place of Catholicism.

A gentle tap on her door disturbed her reverie.

'Come in,' she called.

The maidservant entered and halted with a token curtsey.

'Your dressmaker is below, Lady Varley.'

'Send him up at once!' she ordered.

He had come at exactly the right time. Lady Rosamund wanted to give order for a very special outfit. She was confident that it would secure Lawrence Firethorn for her without any difficulty.

*

Richard Honeydew was too inexperienced to sense what was coming. When the other apprentices started to be more pleasant to him, he took it as a sign of real friendship rather than as a device to lure him off guard. Notwithstanding all the things they had done to him, he was anxious to get along with them and to put the past behind him. Achieving the signal honour of a role like Gloriana had not made him arrogant or boastful. He was far too conscious of his shortcomings and would have sought the advice of his fellow apprentices if he were on better terms with them. That time looked as if it might soon come. They were making efforts.

'Goodnight, Dick.'

'Goodnight, Martin.'

'Would you like to borrow my candle to light you up the stairs?' offered the older boy.

'No, thank you. I can manage.'

'Sleep well, then.'

'I will.'

'You have another busy day ahead tomorrow.'

Richard went off to say goodnight to Margery Firethorn, who was sitting in her rocking chair beside the open hearth and thinking fondly about her pendant. As soon as the boy had gone, Martin Yeo looked across at the others. John Tallis lowered his lantern jaw in an open-mouthed grin while Stephen Judd gave a knowing wink. They were happy accomplices.

'Are you sure it will work?' asked Tallis.

'Of course,' said Yeo. 'The beauty of it is that no finger will be pointed at us. We will all be sitting here together when it happens.'

'All but me,' added Judd.

'Oh, you were right here all the time,' insisted Yeo.

'Yes, Stephen,' corroborated Tallis. 'We both saw you.'

'We'll swear to it!'

'I've always wanted to be in two places at once.'

'Then so you will be,' promised Yeo.

They fell silent as they heard the tread of Richard's light feet upon the stairs, then they smirked as he creaked his way up to perdition. It was only a question of time now.

Oblivious to their plan, Richard Honeydew went up to his attic room by the light of the moonbeams that peeped in through the windows. Every other night, his first job had been to bolt the door behind him to keep outrage at bay. Lulled into a mood of trust by the others, he did not do so now. He felt safe.

The chill of the night air made him shiver and he got undressed quickly before jumping into bed. Through the narrow window above his head, the moon was drawing intricate patterns on the opposite wall. Richard was able to watch them for only a few minutes before he dozed off to sleep but his slumber was soon disturbed. There was a rustling sound in the thatch and his eyes opened in fear. It would not be the first rat he had heard up in the attic.

He sat up quickly and was just in the nick of time. Something came crashing down on his pillow in a cloud of loam, cobwebs and filth. Richard coughed as the dust got into his throat then he turned around to see what had happened.

The dormer window was set in the steeply pitched roof and small, solid beams formed a rectangle around the frame to keep the thatch away. Richard had often noticed how loose the lower beam was. All four of them had just come falling down with a vengeance. He sat there transfixed by it all.

'What is it, lad! What happened?'

Margery Firethorn was galloping up the stairs to the attic in her nightgown. Her voice preceded her with ease.

'Are you there, Dick? What's amiss?'

Seconds later, she came bursting into the room with a candle in her hand. It illumined a scene of debris. She let out a shriek of horror then clutched Richard to her for safety.

'Lord save us! You might have been killed!'

Martin Yeo, John Tallis and Stephen Yeo now came charging up to the attic to see what had caused the thunderous bang.

'What is it!'

'Has something fallen?'

'Are you all right, Dick?'

The three of them raced into the room and came to a halt. When they saw the extent of the damage, they were all astonished. They looked quickly at Richard to see if he had been hurt.

'Is this your doing?' accused Margery.

'No, mistress!' replied Yeo.

'That beam has always been loose,' added Tallis.

'We will sort this out later,' she warned. 'Meanwhile, I must find this poor creature another place to lay his head. Come, Dick. It is all over now.'

She led the young apprentice out with grave concern.

As soon as the two of them had gone, Martin Yeo bent down to untie the cord that was bound around the lower beam. Fed through a gap in the floorboards, the cord had come down to their own room so that they could create the accident with a sudden jerk, out they had only expected to dislodge the lower beam. A blow on the head from that would have been sufficiently disabling to put Richard out of the play. They had planned nothing more serious.

Stephen Judd examined the dormer with care. Those other beams were quite secure earlier on,' he said. Someone must have loosened them. They would never have come down otherwise.'

'Who would do such a thing?' wondered Tallis.