SHAKESPEARE’ SECRET (14 page)

As Danny came through the front gate, Hero felt a resurgence of the week's misery. She couldn't help glaring at him, thinking about everything that might be written on a metal stall in the boys' bathroom.

But Mrs. Roth called out warmly. “Hello, Daniel! How are you? Come join us.”

Danny strode toward them, dropping the skateboard with a clatter on the walkway. He stretched out comfortably on the bottom step of the porch.

“Hey, Miriam,” he said. “Did Netherfield tell you we tried to check the police file on the Murphys?”

Mrs. Roth looked at Hero in surprise.

Hero said reluctantly “Danny knows about the diamond. He pretty much figured it out.” She paused, racked with guilt.
But I didn't tell him about the necklace,
she wanted to say. I
didn't tell him anything we

talked about.
She knew how she would have felt if Mrs. Roth had shared their secret. But Mrs. Roth only nodded at her, her blue eyes clear and kind.

“So, anyway,” Hero continued, “Danny had the brilliant idea of sneaking into his dad's office to see the police report. Only guess what—we got caught.”

Mrs. Roth turned to Danny. “Oh my. Whatever did you tell your father?”

“We made something up,” Danny answered promptly. “About a school project. We said Netherfield needed to interview him. He went for it hook, line, and sinker.”

Mrs. Roth shook her head. “You shouldn't lie to the people you care about,” she said gently. “Especially if you think you might get away with it.” She tilted her glass of lemonade so the ice clinked and settled. “That's why I never told you anything myself, Daniel, last summer when you worked on the garden. I didn't want you to have to lie to your father. Or to have to conceal something from him.”

Danny rested one foot on his skateboard and pushed it back and forth over the uneven flagstones. “That's what I figured,” he said. “But, you know, I wouldn't have told him. That diamond doesn't belong to the police.”

Hero wondered if he was right about that. If the
diamond was stolen property, it probably did belong to the police, at least until the insurance company could claim it. She watched Danny swivel the skateboard with his heel. He looked up at Mrs. Roth.

“So where do you think it is? Really. If it's in the house, it's got to be in a good hiding place.”

“A good finding place,” Mrs. Roth corrected, then smiled. She turned to Hero. “What my daughter used to say about hide-and-seek. She was always looking for a good finding place.”

Danny looked at her strangely. “What did you say?”

Hero turned to him. “I know, it's weird, isn't it? Mrs. Roth has a daughter, a girl she adopted when she was married to Mr. Murphy. She ran away a long time ago.”

Danny looked at Mrs. Roth in surprise. “Really? You have a kid? How come you never said anything about her?”

“I suppose I think of her as part of that other life, my life with Arthur.”

They sat in silence together. Hero thought about all the things that were lost: not just the diamond, but Anna as well as Mrs. Roth's old life as a wife and mother. She noticed that even Danny seemed preoccupied.

“What would you do with the diamond if you found it?” he asked suddenly.

Mrs. Roth smiled. “Put it back where it belongs. Look at it. Remember Eleanor.”

Hero shrugged. “I never thought that far.”

“Oh, come on,” Danny protested. “It's worth almost a million dollars. What would you do with a ton of money like that?”

“Ah, the money,” Mrs. Roth said teasingly. “What would I do with that kind of money? Travel, perhaps. I'd love to go to Australia. I've always wanted to visit the desert there.”

“Me too,” Hero said enthusiastically. “I'd travel, too. I'd love to go someplace really different. Any place. I'd get as far away from here as I could.”

Mrs. Roth studied her. “More dog jokes?”

Hero shot a glance at Danny. “Sort of.”

“Oh, yeah,” Danny said. “I heard Aaron talking about it. You're famous.”

Hero looked away. “Thanks to you,” she muttered.

“Oh, come on, don't let them bug you. It doesn't mean anything. I'll get rid of it if you want me to.”

Mrs. Roth looked at them in bewilderment. “What happened, Hero?”

Hero scuffed her sneakers on the edge of the step.

“One of the girls in my class saw me with Danny on Saturday, when we were going to the police station. When I got to school on Monday, she was asking me about it, and then everybody started making fun of me.” She paused, embarrassed. “Some of the boys wrote things about me in the bathroom.”

Mrs. Roth pursed her lips. “What kind of things?”

Hero twisted one of her shoelaces. “I don't know. But I can guess.”

Danny touched her arm. When she turned to him, he said coaxingly, “Listen, I can get rid of it. Really. I'll do it tonight. The window on that bathroom doesn't latch. We used to sneak in there after school all the time to—” He stopped, grinning at Mrs. Roth. “Anyway, my dad has cans of black spray paint in the garage. The cops use it to get rid of graffiti. I'll cover up whatever they wrote.”

Hero felt a flicker of hope, but Mrs. Roth shook her head firmly. “No, no. You mustn't do anything like that, Daniel. Breaking and entering, defacing public property. It's wrong. You're a policeman's son, for heaven's sake. What if you get caught?” She turned to Hero. “You should speak to your teacher, Hero. However deplorable, I'm sure this isn't the first time such a thing has happened.”

Hero glanced at her doubtfully.

“Who's your teacher?” Danny asked.

“Mrs. Vanderley.”

He looked skeptical.

Hero sighed, standing up. “I have homework.”

“May I keep the book here?” Mrs. Roth asked, lifting
Tudor England
from the porch step. “I'd like to look at it.”

“Sure,” said Hero. “And I'll talk to my dad about”—she glanced at Danny—“you know, the other things.”

“Good.” Mrs. Roth patted her shoulder. “Don't worry, Hero. I know you've had a hard time, but you mustn't lose faith. Remember your namesake. 'Who can blot that name with any just reproach?' Think of Shakespeare. He puts everything in perspective. It will be all right.”

Danny gave the skateboard a hard kick. “Yeah, it will,” he said with conviction. He looked at Hero, and at that moment she recognized his father in his face. Beneath the easy smile and the laughing blue eyes there was something unyielding, a kind of determination. As she walked home, she shivered, dreading the thought of school on Monday.

That night, after dinner, Hero found her father in his study, reading. “Dad, can I ask you something?”

He slid the book aside and turned to her. “Of course. What is it?”

“Well, I've been looking at that history book you gave me, and I just wondered, do you know of any connection between Edward de Vere and Anne Boleyn?”

Her father tilted back in his chair. “No. Why do you ask? Anne Boleyn was executed in 1536, and Edward de Vere was born later. Let's see. ...” He reached for the bookshelf and pulled out a slim volume. “This is another one you should look at. It's a collection of papers about the theory that Edward de Vere was the real Shakespeare.” He opened the book and flipped through it. “Here. Edward de Vere was
born in 1550 or thereabouts. The dating from that era is notoriously inaccurate. But that's fourteen years after Anne Boleyn's death. I don't know of any link between those two.” He handed the book to Hero. “The connection was with Queen Elizabeth.”

Hero turned the pages. “What connection?” she asked. She found a portrait of Elizabeth I, with her red curls and white face, sitting stiffly in an elaborate jeweled gown.

“Well,” her father began, clasping his hands behind his head. “It's unclear, actually. There's much speculation, even that he might have been her lover. But what's known is that, from the time he was small, de Vere—Oxford, as we call him—was a great favorite of Queen Elizabeth's. His father died and he was raised by one of her top advisors. When Oxford was an adult, Elizabeth gave him an allowance of a thousand pounds a year.”

“A thousand pounds?” Hero asked. “That doesn't sound like a lot.”

“Not in today's currency.” Her father smiled. “But at the time, it was a small fortune, the equivalent of around $700,000 dollars now.”

“Oh!” Hero said. “That is a lot. Why did she give him so much money?”

Her father ruffled his hair so that it puffed in a wiry cloud around his face. “The Oxford theorists believe that the allowance is another piece of the puzzle. That Elizabeth was paying him to write the plays but not take credit for them.”

“To keep it a secret?”

“It's a theory. Again, it's intriguing, but there's no proof.”

“But why would she care?” Hero asked. “Why would she care if Edward de Vere wrote the plays under his own name?”

Her father nodded. “Exactly. If there were some connection between Oxford and Elizabeth that meant the royal name would be besmirched by his ambitions as a playwright—but no one has ever uncovered that kind of connection.” He reached out and tugged her ponytail. “It's fascinating, isn't it? Elizabethan history.”

Hero had never thought so before. But she could see it now, what her father loved about Shakespeare, about that entire, mysterious time, with its pomp and majesty, secrets and betrayals. She nodded slowly, looking down at the portrait of Elizabeth and thinking again of poor Anne Boleyn, facing her death on Tower Green.

“Dad—” Hero hesitated.

“What is it, ladybird?”

“Anne Boleyn . . . they told those terrible lies about her. But I was reading what she said right before she died, and she didn't defend herself. She didn't say it wasn't true. Why?”

Her father rubbed one hand over his rough beard. “It wouldn't have made any difference. There was no escaping her fate at that point. The king wanted her gone, and remember, her enemies had tortured her own brother and four other men to get confessions. Those poor fellows were sentenced to be drawn and quartered.”

“What's that?” Hero asked.

“Medieval torture. They tied each leg and arm of the victim to separate horses, and sent the four horses running in different directions. The person was literally torn apart.”

“Ugh!” Hero cried, wincing. “Really?”

Her father looked sheepish suddenly. “Well, the king changed the sentence. They were beheaded just like Anne in the end. But your mother probably wouldn't appreciate my telling you all this. Don't repeat it, all right?”

“I won't,” Hero promised. “But Dad,” she persisted, “even if it wouldn't have changed anything,
why wouldn't Anne Boleyn want people to know the truth?”

Her father ran his hands through his hair again, this time raking it smooth. “I remember her speech on Tower Green very well,” he said thoughtfully. “The first time I read it, it gave me chills. It was elegant, but so full of courage. Don't you think people knew the truth from that speech, Hero? Sometimes the best way to defend one's honor is simply to behave honorably.”

Hero was quiet for a minute. “Still?” she asked finally. “Even today?”

Her father smiled at her. “Even today.” He gestured toward the book. “Have a look at that. See what you think about the Oxford theory.”

Hero climbed the stairs, slowly turning the pages. The portrait of Edward de Vere showed a pale man with dark eyes. A frilly lace ruff framed his jaw, and a velvet cap angled jauntily over his forehead. The portrait of William Shakespeare was one that Hero had seen before: a balding sober-looking man with a broad, plain collar. Their faces gave away nothing. Who could tell which man was the true author of the
plays? Shakespeare's secret was safe. Maybe it would always be safe.