The Counterfeit Crank (20 page)

‘And they gave his name as Hywel Rees?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Master Olgrave.’

‘Did they give you their names as well?’

‘I insisted on it,’ said the coroner, fussily. ‘I do not admit strangers to the morgue to view the cadavers. That’s a ghoulish occupation and I’ll not allow it.’

‘So who were they? Was one of them called Nicholas Bracewell?’

‘Yes, I believe that he was.’

‘And the other?’

‘A sturdy Welshman by the name of Owen Elias.’

‘A Welshman?’

Olgrave was unhappy to hear that. It suggested that the dead man had a relative or friend who was searching
for him, someone who would feel obliged to join the hunt for the killer of Hywel Rees. That was worrying. Nicholas Bracewell had an assistant.

‘How would I find these gentlemen?’ said Olgrave.

‘They left no address with me, sir.’

‘Have you any idea where they might have come from?’

‘I cannot answer for the one,’ said the old man, ‘but I could hazard a guess about the other. The Welshman is an actor. There was something about the way he dressed and spoke and held himself. Owen Elias belongs on a stage. If you wish to find him, search the playhouses for that is where he’ll be.’

‘I fancy that Nicholas Bracewell might be there as well,’ said Olgrave to himself, as he remembered their earlier encounter. ‘For he is no mean actor.’

Adversity usually brought out the best in Westfield’s Men but that was not the case with
Love and Fortune.
Dressed in assorted costumes that were visibly the wrong size, shape and colour, the actors were inexplicably tentative in a play that they had performed many times. Entrances were missed, lines forgotten or gabbled too quickly, and properties knocked clumsily over. None of the actors rose above competence. Lawrence Firethorn was uninspired, Barnaby Gill lacklustre and Owen Elias strangely out of sorts. Even the reliable Richard Honeydew, taking the role of the heroine in a wig and a borrowed costume, was unable to lift the play. The audience grew restive.

Some of the unintended humour worked to their advantage. Spectators who were unfamiliar with the play, shook with glee when James Ingram inadvertently dropped a chalice to the floor or when Frank Quilter came onstage too soon and collided with the departing George Dart, sublimely unsuited to all three of the small parts allotted to him. Those who had seen the comedy before, however, found it disappointing fare and several began to drift away long before the performance ended. A tepid round of applause told the company what it already knew. They had failed.

Firethorn was relieved to escape into the safety of the tiring-house. Flinging himself down on a bench, he put his head in his hands. Nicholas came over to him.

‘It might have been worse,’ he observed.

‘Yes,’ moaned Firethorn, ‘Lord Westfield might have been here to witness our shame.’

‘You redeemed yourselves in the last act.’

‘That was fear and not redemption, Nick. We had to get
something
right or they’d have started throwing things at us. As it was, the insults were beginning to fly.’

‘We’ll make amends tomorrow.’

‘How? By playing
The Knights of Malta
in these borrowed costumes?’ He plucked at his doublet. ‘Whoever heard of a proud knight in remnants such as these?’

Elias heard him. ‘Do you mind, Lawrence?’ he said, indignantly. ‘You happen to be wearing my finest apparel.’

‘It was certainly not tailored to fit me, Owen. It ruined my performance.’

‘It’s a poor actor who blames his costume.’

‘And a poor judge of taste who chooses
this
as his best doublet?’

‘I’ll not be insulted,’ warned Elias, pugnaciously.

‘Stand off, Owen,’ said Nicholas, easing him away. ‘He does not mean to upset you. The fault lies not in our wardrobe but in the effect that our losses have had upon us. To lose Edmund was bad enough. To have our takings stolen and our wardrobe plundered has put a strain on all of us. We’ll vindicate our reputation tomorrow.’

‘Our reputation as
what
?’ asked Firethorn. ‘Fools and imbeciles? Did you see what happened out there today? We were all blundering about the stage like so many demented George Darts.’

‘I did my best, Master Firethorn,’ said Dart, meekly.

Nicholas gave him a kind smile. ‘You always do, George. Thank you.’

‘That was the idiot you designated to hold the book today,’ remarked Firethorn. ‘Imagine how much worse it would have been if that had happened. Fire and brimstone! They’d have skinned us alive for our mistakes.’

‘Tomorrow, we’ll improve,’ said Nicholas. ‘Crying over our mistakes achieves nothing. We must strive to put them right.’

‘How can we do that, if our book holder wants to leave us?’

‘I’ll be here. I give you my word.’

‘That’s some relief at least.’

‘You’ll gain some more, if you go home early this
evening,’ advised Nicholas, quietly. ‘Master Jarrold told me how late you returned last night. I think we both know the reason why.’ Firethorn looked guiltily up at him. ‘How can you condemn others for going astray when you take the same path yourself?’

‘But I came so close to
winning
,’ said Firethorn in a whisper.

‘Would that have made it right to set such an example to the others?’

‘No, Nick. I’m justly reproached. The lure of gain blinded me to all else. Margery must never find out, or she’ll ban me from her bed in perpetuity.’

‘She’ll hear nothing from me.’

‘Nor me.’ He pursed his lips in recrimination. ‘Oh, I rue the day that Philomen Lavery came to stay at the Queen’s Head. He corrupted all our judgements.’

‘Put him and his pack of cards behind you. He’ll soon be gone.’

‘So will Margery’s brother-in-law, thank heaven. Dear God! Why did Jonathan have to visit us now when we are at our wits’ end? He’s one more burden on my back. Let him go back to Cambridge and stay there.’

‘I was pleased to meet him at last.’

‘Jonathan Jarrold? The man is tedium made manifest.’

‘Not so,’ said Nicholas, recalling what he had been told about Cambridge. ‘I found his conversation very illuminating.’

He broke away to supervise the dismantling of the stage and the storing of costumes and properties. Since so
many garments had been borrowed, he asked Wegges to take particular care of them. Nicholas was following an established routine but he was impatient, tied to his duties at the Queen’s Head when he wanted to be investigating a murder. While he laboured for Westfield’s Men, his mind was on Bridewell.

Joseph Beechcroft was still perturbed. He and his partner were in the room at Bridewell that they used as an office. Beechcroft drummed his fingers nervously on the table.

‘How do we even know that the fellow was an actor?’ he said. ‘That was only the coroner’s guess. Owen Elias could just as easily have been a weaver or a tailor.’

‘No,’ said Olgrave. ‘Have faith in the coroner. His whole life is spent in making judgements of character. He’ll weigh a man up, whether he be alive or dead. If he picked this one out as an actor, then I trust his word.’

‘But we sent someone to enquire at The Rose and they came back empty-handed. It was so at the two playhouses in Shoreditch. Owen Elias was not there.’

‘That still leaves the company that plays at the Queen’s Head.’

‘No, Ralph,’ said Beechcroft. ‘I think we are following a false trail.’

‘Only because you did not speak to the gatekeeper, as I just did.’

‘The gatekeeper?’

‘Yes,’ replied Olgrave. ‘I reasoned that, if anyone wanted to know more about us, and the way that we run Bridewell,
they’d come knocking at the door. And that’s exactly what a certain Welshman did.’

‘Owen Elias?’

‘He did not give his name, it seems, but claimed to be the cousin of Hywel Rees. When told that the fellow had been discharged, he produced the name of Dorothea Tate.’

Beechcroft was alarmed. ‘They are closing in on us!’

‘The gatekeeper gave nothing away.’

‘He did not need to, Ralph. They know that that troublesome Welshman was killed and hurled into the river, and they have the girl to help them.’

‘Her voice will not convince any court in the land.’

‘It might, if they provide the evidence to back it up.’

‘How can they do that?’ asked Olgrave with a mocking laugh. ‘Take us to the torture chamber and wring confessions out of us, as if we were scheming Papists? For without that, they have nothing.’

‘They have enough to unsettle my stomach, I know that.’

‘The cure is at hand. We simply remove Nicholas Bracewell and the girl.’

‘What of this other man, Owen Elias?’

‘He’s Welsh,’ said Olgrave with a sneer. ‘I’ll send him to join his countryman.’

Nicholas Bracewell was kept waiting at the lawyer’s office until Cleaton had finished talking to a client. The book holder spent the time examining the sketch of Bridewell that Anne Hendrik had drawn under the guidance of someone who had actually been inside the institution. How accurate
Dorothea Tate’s memory had been, Nicholas did not know, but the sketch gave him an idea of the basic design of the building with its three courtyards and its wharf beside the Thames. The girl had marked the position of the room where she had slept, and of the hall where the feast had taken place. A small cross told Nicholas where Ralph Olgrave’s private chamber was located.

Henry Cleaton appeared from his office and shepherded an elderly woman to the front door. After greeting Nicholas, he invited him into the cluttered room and both of them sat down.

‘I still have qualms about this,’ admitted the lawyer.

‘All that you are doing is to give advice, as you would to any client.’

‘I’d never urge them to break the law, Nicholas.’

‘I believe that I’m working strictly within it.’

‘A magistrate might take a contrary view.’

‘Then I’ll make sure I do not come up before one,’ said Nicholas with a grin. ‘What do you have for me, Master Cleaton?’

‘Only this.’ The lawyer handed him a writ. ‘It’s the paper that will commit you to Bridewell, but mark this well: I can simply get you inside the place. You’ll have to get out again yourself.’

‘I accept that.’ Nicholas studied the wording of the writ. ‘Is this a forgery?’

‘I’d never stoop to such a thing. What you hold there is quite authentic. I had it of a friend of mine who sits on the Bench. You’ll see that there is a gap where a name is to be
inserted,’ said Cleaton. ‘Had I filled that in, I
would
have been guilty of forgery and I drew back from that.’

‘In any case, you would not know what name to use for I’ll have to invent a new one. If I’m committed to the workhouse as Nicholas Bracewell, I’m likely to suffer the same fate as Hywel Rees. They must not know who I am.’

‘You go there as a counterfeit.’

‘Only to reveal a much greater counterfeit,’ said Nicholas. ‘Joseph Beechcroft and Ralph Olgrave pretend to be honest men, engaged in a worthy enterprise, but they are guilty of the most dreadful crimes. I mean to rip away their disguises.’

‘I fear for your safety, Nicholas. They are evil men.’

‘Then that evil must be exposed to the world, and I can only do that by getting cheek by jowl with them. Master Olgrave gave me the notion. If I would know how Bridewell is run, he told me, I’ve only to get myself imprisoned there.’

‘That puts you at their mercy.’

‘Only if they discover who I am,’ said Nicholas. ‘By the time that they do that, it will be too late. Now, Master Cleaton, teach me the way of it. What is the correct procedure when a vagrant is convicted in a court?’

With some reluctance, the lawyer told him what he wanted to hear, describing the process from the moment a vagrant was arrested until he or she was committed to Bridewell. Though he warned Nicholas of the dangers, the latter was not deterred in the slightest. He was adamant that, whatever the risks involved, someone had to answer for the murder of Hywel Rees and the rape of Dorothea
Tate. When the instruction was over, Cleaton took him to the front door.

‘Are you a lucky man by nature?’ he said.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because luck is what you’ll need once you are inside Bridewell.’

Nicholas pondered. As he looked back, he could see nothing but a continuous stream of bad luck, culminating in the poor performance at the Queen’s Head that afternoon. Like those who had been enticed to the card table, he was involved in a game of chance. The difference was that he stood to lose far more than his money.

‘I am due some good luck, Master Cleaton,’ he said.

‘Then I hope that you get it, my friend.’

Nicholas took his leave and mounted the horse that he had left tethered outside. He had intended to pay a visit to Edmund Hoode and the most direct way was to ride along Cheapside. But the conversation with Jonathan Jarrold suddenly came into his mind and sparked his curiosity. Since he had the horse at his disposal, he could go by a much longer route without too great a loss of time. Accordingly, he kicked the animal into a trot and headed in the direction of Cornhill, wondering if he might be able to single out the lodging to which Michael Grammaticus somehow never invited visitors.

Cornhill was the highest hill in the city, the site of an ancient grain market that gave it its name, and a place where the pillory and stocks were rarely uninhabited. The early evening had not thinned out the bustle. As Nicholas
trotted along the thoroughfare, he had to pick his way past carriages, carts, mounted riders and the hordes on foot. Moving his head to and fro, he scrutinised the properties on both sides of the road and was impressed by their size and state of upkeep. If the playwright lodged in Cornhill, then he had no need to be embarrassed about his address.

Nicholas rode on until he reached a large house that soared above the buildings all around it with an almost aggressive ease. He decided that it must be the home of a rich merchant or a leading politician. Its owner would not have been popular with those who lived in the cottage immediately opposite because their light was obscured. Indeed, although it was still early evening, candles burnt in the windows of the cottage. As he glanced up at a window on the second floor, Nicholas realised that his journey had not been in vain. Quill pen in hand, a figure was crouched over a table. Though he could only see the man in a fleeting profile, Nicholas recognised him as Michael Grammaticus.