The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross (15 page)

So, back to London I went. I pushed the rental car as fast as I could and I hit the city’s outskirts in under an hour. I remember when the trip would have been an overnight one and involved sleeping in a stable. I don’t know if they were better times or worse times, but they were certainly simpler.

I wasn’t about to try driving in the city core—some tasks are too much, even for me—so I left the car in a parking lot and took the train the rest of the way in. It was late afternoon by the time I found myself on the steps of Westminster Abbey, in a lineup of more American tourists. They seemed to be everywhere these days. But that was all right. I had a plan for them.

We all went inside and the Americans immediately brought out their cameras, which brought the abbey staff over to lecture them about photography not being allowed. Americans never really understood that. I used the distraction to move through the nave and directly to Poets’ Corner without anyone noticing I wasn’t gawking at the marvellous aged stone and sculptures on the walls. I’d gawked at them plenty of times before, when I’d stood in this very space for the weddings of kings and queens. And their funerals. Like I said, back in simpler times.

Poets’ Corner is the part of the abbey that has all the memorial statues and busts and plaques and such of dead poets, with the poets’ remains hidden away behind the walls and under the floorboards, so to speak. I sometimes joke that no one else wanted them, so the abbey took them, but the truth is the abbey is the best equipped to deal with them. Many poets of the past have been magicians with more than words.

I went straight to Spenser’s memorial in one of the walls and tried not to laugh at the inscription.

Heare Lyes (Expecting the Second Comminge of our Saviovr Christ Jesus) the body of Edmond Spencer the prince of poets in his tyme,
etc.

Sorry, Edmund, but not this tyme.

The memorial wasn’t Spenser’s grave. Nobody knew exactly which of the graves in Poets’ Corner was his. The bodies in the abbey are all a bit mixed up. Most people think it’s because the abbey staff weren’t exactly keen on record keeping in the old days. But the fact is the locations of the bodies were kept deliberately confusing. It’s a good way to prevent them from being stolen by grave robbers and things best not mentioned in religious places. And some of the graves just contain dirt because the people that were supposed to be buried in them had ideas of their own when it came to the everlasting slumber.

The truth is Spenser wasn’t in any of the graves in Westminster Abbey. I was one of the few people left who knew his burial site, and once again the last one living. Not because I’d been there when he’d been laid to rest—I was on the outs with the Royals by then. But because sometimes it’s good to trade favours for that kind of information. Case in point.

So, here I was at Edmund Spenser’s tomb. Now I needed a distraction.

Thank you, American tourists.

I breathed a few words in their direction and waited. It only took a minute. One second they were arguing with the priests about their God-given right to take photographs, the next they were shrieking in tongues and ripping their clothing from their bodies. A parlour trick, really, but better than setting the place on fire.

The people wandering the nearby parts of the abbey rushed back to the nave to see what was happening, as did the priests stationed here and there throughout the place, more guards than spiritual advisers. Now I was alone in Poets’ Corner, for a few seconds at least. But a few seconds was all I needed. I touched Spenser’s memorial and let the grace flow through my fingertips. The memorial separated from the wall with a crack, the sound barely audible over the shrieking and wailing from the nave. I pulled the stone out farther, until I could see the dark hole in the wall behind it. I slid through the hole, into the burial chamber hidden in the wall behind the memorial.

Given that it was a tomb, I was expecting bones, and maybe some clothing and ritual remains. A bible, a cross, that sort of thing. But there was nothing. The chamber was empty.

Well, not exactly empty. There was a scrap of parchment on the ground with writing on it. I picked it up and studied it. I recognized the handwriting, as I’d seen it enough back in the day. Shakespeare’s. It was a sonnet.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn

The living record of your memory.

’Gainst death and all oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So, till the judgment that yourself arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

I rolled up it carefully but the paper wasn’t as brittle as I expected. It was as if it had been put there yesterday. I tucked it into one of my pockets and took another look around, but that was it. Even I had to admit it was anticlimactic. I shrugged and stepped back into the abbey.

I headed away from the commotion in the nave, toward the gift shop and the exit. The charm I’d worked on the tourists would wear off in another minute or so, and then everyone would try to figure out what happened. Some of them would believe it was a divine seizure, and that’s the story the media would run with. How could they not? There’d be no proof, though, so the story would die in a few days, and the tourists would be free to make what they would of their memories.

But I knew the church officials wouldn’t let it go at that. They’d look for other explanations, for signs of an attack. And when they noticed the memorial had been moved, exposing the secret tomb behind it, they’d start checking their security cameras. Which meant it was only a matter of time before the Black Guard would be hot on my trail. And this time it wouldn’t be just Anubis I’d have to deal with.

I couldn’t get back to Marlowe quick enough.

It was evening by the time I returned to the theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon. The tour groups were gone and now the lineup was an audience waiting to get in for a production of
Twelfth Night
. I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t
Hamlet
. I just had to find a way back into the prop room without attracting attention.

It was simple enough. Theatres aren’t exactly the places you imagine when you think high security. I bought a ticket and went inside and mingled in the lobby along with everyone else. When one of the ushers stepped away from her post to direct someone to the washroom, I slipped through the door behind her and into the auditorium, which was still empty at this point in the evening. I went down the aisle, hopped up onto the stage and carried on into the wings. There were actors and stagehands getting ready for the show back there, but they only glanced at me before going about their business. I grabbed a clipboard off a table and moved through them. If you look like you belong, you don’t even need to cast a sleight to appear invisible.

I made it out of the backstage area and into the hallways beyond. There were more people running around back here, wearing headsets and harried expressions. I held up the clipboard like a ward and they went past me like I was just another extra in their drama. Perfect.

I slipped into the props room and locked the door behind me. I found Marlowe’s skull sitting on the throne now. I didn’t bother asking how he’d got there. Like I said earlier, he’d learned a few tricks in his time. I took out the parchment and showed it to him.

“If you’d wanted a sonnet, I could have recited you one from memory,” I told him.

“I didn’t want any sonnet,” he said. “I wanted that one.” I swear he leaned toward it.

“I was expecting something else,” I said. “Magic bones, maybe, or a forgotten gift from the faerie to Spenser.” I looked down at the poem. “But this?”

“Give it to me,” Marlowe said. “Make haste now.”

I eyed him sitting there on the throne. “How exactly should I give it to you?” I asked.

“Must I still spell everything out for you?” he said. “Place it in my mouth.”

I shrugged but did as he asked. I set the parchment in his jaw and waited to see what happened.

It wasn’t what I expected.

As soon as I put the poem in Marlowe’s mouth, the ink started flowing on the paper. The lines dissolved and moved into each other, then across the parchment. When the ink reached the edge of the sheet it kept going, flowing into Marlowe’s skull.

“That’s the stuff of life,” he said.

Then the ink was all gone and only the parchment was left. The paper crumbled into dust and was gone.

“What, perchance, was that?” I asked.

“Some of Will’s original ink,” Marlowe said. “It grants immortality to that which it touches, which is why so many of his plays have survived this long instead of being lost to the ages. I stole the poem from him and left it with a friend to hide away for me in case a day like this ever happened.”

“You always were a rogue,” I said.

“I am but true to my nature,” he said. “Alas, I don’t know where Will kept his supply of ink, or where it came from in the first place. Believe me when I tell you I did my best to discover his secrets.”

“This is well and good,” I said, “but what does it have to do with the
Hamlet
haunting?”

“Nothing at all,” Marlowe said with a laugh. “I just wanted a second wind for myself in case you decided to withdraw your grace from me. And now I have it, thanks to the ink.”

I picked him up. “I don’t imagine you will enjoy your life so much if you are in pieces on the floor,” I said.

“The ghost you seek isn’t Shakespeare’s,” Marlowe said. “It is far older than that.”

I put him back on the throne and leaned against the shelf that, until recently, had been his resting place. “You have my attention,” I said.

“Yes, I thought I might,” he said. “You know, of course, that Will was carefree in borrowing material for his plays.”

I nodded. Everyone knew that the great Shakespeare had lifted from other works to flesh out his own. All the writers did it back then. It was before the age of copyright and lawsuits. Well, copyright anyway.

“There was an earlier version of
Hamlet
written by another,” Marlowe said. “Lost to time and this world, until Will stumbled across its grave in the Forgotten Library. He took the words from that play and made them his own. But he left the original to rot in obscurity.”

“He stole
Hamlet
,” I said. I could scarcely believe it. Then again, it was Will we were talking about.

“He copied the text there in the Forgotten Library,” Marlowe said. “He used that special ink of his to ensure his play would live on. But it granted life to more than
Hamlet
. Will told me he felt a presence there in the library and he fled in great haste.”

“He brought the ghost to life,” I said, understanding.

“There you have it,” Marlowe said. “When he wrote
Hamlet
in that place with his special ink, he meant to give it eternal life. And so he did. But he also gave life to the ghost from that other text.”

“And now it haunts Will’s
Hamlet
,” I said.

“Tis a tale fit for a play,” Marlowe said.

Things were beginning to make sense. It wasn’t the first time I’d encountered a haunted work of art, after all. Although it was the first time I could remember a ghost from one work haunting another work. Well, there were no rules for things like this, at least not any rules I knew about.

“A terrible waste of that ink,” Marlowe sighed. “For all the world knows, it may have been the last of Will’s supply.”

“I think he left it behind in the Forgotten Library,” I said. “There’s an inkpot still sitting there.”

“Do not taunt me so!” Marlowe cried.

“Keep it down,” I said. “I don’t want anyone walking in on this particular conversation.”

“You tell the truth, then?” he said.

“I think so,” I said. “But I can’t really vouch for my sanity at the moment. You know what dying can do to a person.”

“And what of Will’s quill?” Marlowe said. “Was it there, too?”

I shook my head. “There was a quill, but it was white,” I said. “He must have taken the Black Quill to the grave with him.”

Marlowe fell silent, as if thinking things over. That made two of us. I had some answers, but not enough.

“Why the faerie?” I wondered. “Why does it haunt them?”

“Who knows the minds of ghosts?” Marlowe said after a moment. “Perhaps the glamour is nearer the Forgotten Library than our own world. It is a somewhat impossible place, after all. Perhaps the faerie unwittingly made a blood sacrifice that summoned it to their realm during one of their shows. It wouldn’t be the first time some poor fey has given his life for the art.”