The Queen's Cipher (18 page)

The rest of her sentence was lost as she choked on the cream puff she had begun to eat.

Torn between a sudden urge to rush forward and perform the Heimlich Manoeuvre and his natural reserve, Freddie got up and slapped her on the back.

This ended the coughing fit but did little for their budding relationship. Sam obviously felt she had drawn unflattering attention to herself and blamed him for making it worse.

“Why do you play with fire?”  There was a sharp edge to the question which took him by surprise.

“S-sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”

“You seem to court trouble. Instead of keeping your head down after the Cartwright business you accuse Professor Dawkins of academic dishonesty and now look what’s happened. Cartwright has written to the TLS editor claiming you are ‘a destroyer of reputations.’ The rest of his letter is a thinly veiled trailer for a TV documentary which will offer, what he calls, startling new evidence about the Oxford plagiarism case. Doesn’t this bother you?”

“Not really, he’s got nothing new to say.”

“But that won’t stop him from saying it. He’s coming after you, isn’t he?”

He smiled weakly. “I suppose so. I am a brother of jackals and a companion of the ostriches.”

Sam put a dollop of strawberry jam on a scone, wondering how the Book of Job had got into their conversation. “What are we doing here in Stratford, Freddie?” she asked. “We’re letting Donald Strachan dictate our movements. We’re puppets on a string.”

“You’re right of course,” he mumbled, “but I want to get to the bottom of this Shakespeare business. It’s vital I do so.”

“With Cartwright and Dawkins on the warpath, it’s the last thing you should be doing.”

“Not at all, I need all the ammunition I can get if I’m to fight Dawkins in court. The case hinges on what is or is not honest scholarship.”

She fixed him with her sharp blue eyes. “But how much confidence can you have in Strachan. You said it yourself; he’s a washed-up actor with an axe to grind.”

“That’s a snobbish thing to say. He’s a bright chap and we’ve learned a lot from him.”

“Come on, Freddie, what has he really given us. A couple of Elizabethan satirists who thought Bacon had a hand in writing Venus and Adonis and an emblematic title page showing two figures that may or may not be Bacon and Shakespeare. That’s not much to go on, is it?”

Freddie pulled out his iPhone. “I’ve had another email from Strachan. Here, you read it.”

I offer you further proof of the use of gematria by Bacon’s inner circle. After his death a book of memorial verses was rushed out entitled Manes Verulamiani. It consisted of thirty two laments and a foreword by his chaplain Rawley – yes, Dr Brett, thirty three eulogies! These verses were written by poets, dramatists and Oxbridge types holding high office in church and state and they praised him not as a great statesman, jurist or visionary scientist but as a supreme poet who had renovated philosophy in ‘the socks of comedy’ and ‘the buskin of tragedy.’ They also suggested he stood at the centre of a mystery that would one day be unravelled. That day has come, don’t you think?

“I got
Manes
out of the library and what Strachan says is perfectly true. Quite a few well-connected people seemed to think Bacon had been writing plays in his spare time.”

“Renovating isn’t necessarily writing, is it? I see Bacon providing the serious purpose and Shakespeare the poetry and the staging.”

If only there was a rewind button to the past, Freddie thought. “So we are agreed that Shakespeare was a natural genius who needed pointing in the right direction.”

Sam wiped the crumbs from her mouth with a paper serviette. “I’m leaning towards that, yes. I think Francis Beaumont was right when he told Ben Jonson that Shakespeare showed how far ‘a mortal man may go by the dim light of nature.’”

“Are you sure it was Beaumont? The verse-letter was only signed F.B.”

“But the poem rhymes ‘me’ and ‘free’ which is a pun on Francis, a name that means free.”

He gave her a challenging smile. “There’s more than one Francis whose surname begins with B.”

“You’re not suggesting that Bacon wrote this tribute to Shakespeare?”

Freddie looked around the cafe conspiratorially before speaking in whisper.  The verse-letter talked about Shakespeare in the past tense as if he was dead at the time of its writing which posed an interesting problem. Beaumont died on 6 March 1616, six weeks
before
Shakespeare!

He watched the penny drop. “I merely raise the point to illustrate the rocky foundations on which Shakespearean scholarship has been built, particularly here in Stratford.”

Sam looked exasperated. “Oh, we’re back to that are we? You’re itching to tell me about this place’s guilty secrets.”

Freddie nodded ruefully. “Directors of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust call the house we’ve just seen the ‘authentic’ birthplace. There are different definitions of the word ‘authentic.’ It can mean ‘genuine’ or ‘made in the original way’ and the second of these is far closer to the truth.”

It was the usual problem with Shakespeare - lack of direct evidence. The family entered the history books in 1552 when William’s father John was fined for keeping an illegal dunghill outside the shop he was renting in Henley Street. Four years later, before his marriage to Mary Arden, he bought two places in Stratford. One was the malodorous shop in Henley Street and the other a house in Greenhill Street which had a garden and croft. In 1575 he acquired another cottage in Henley Street but what the record didn’t show was where the family was living when William was born in 1564. The actual birthplace was a matter of guesswork.

“So why is Henley Street said to be his birthplace?”

“They needed somewhere to show the tourists.”

In 1769 Stratford staged a jubilee in Shakespeare’s honour and asked the famous actor David Garrick to preside over it. Before lending his name to this festival, the great man felt he should visit the place and was shocked by its appearance. Not only was Stratford the ‘most wretched looking town in all Britain,’ there was no apparent birthplace to act as a focal point for the celebrations. Something had to be done and quick. The house in Greenhill Street had vanished by then so the choice was limited to the two tenements John had purchased in Henley Street. Stratford’s citizens opted for the western one which hadn’t belonged to the Shakespeare family when William was born.

“So they got the wrong cottage in the right street.”

“Possibly, but even that’s uncertain,” Freddie responded evenly. “We know John Shakespeare ran into financial difficulties in the early 1580s. Sometime around then, he sells the house in Greenhill Street but retains the properties in Henley Street, presumably running his business from one of them. Doesn’t that suggest downsizing to you – moving out of the family home, the one with the garden and croft, and living over the shop or next to it.”

“Are you telling me the Birthplace Trust rewrote history? I can’t believe that.”

He had wondered about this himself. Generations of distinguished scholars from Halliwell-Phillips to Wells had vouched for the authenticity of the Shakespeare birthplace.

“I think the Birthplace Trust was hamstrung by history; stuck with the decision taken in 1769 when Garrick demanded a ‘birthroom’ and Stratford’s citizens made their choice.”

“Let’s hear it for democracy.” Sam drank more tea, a very un-American activity.

“This is driving me crazy,” she said putting down her cup. “I’m genuinely shocked there is so little proof that Shakespeare saw the light of day in Henley Street. It’s more of a legend than a fact.”

“That’s right. Forty years ago a man called Francis Carr issued a summons under the Trade Description Act claiming the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust was defrauding the public by showing them around a largely Victorian built house in which Shakespeare probably hadn’t been born.”

“I guess he lost his legal action.”

“Oh yes, the magistrates ruled against Carr on the grounds that the Trade Description Act, which forbids false claims in advertising, didn’t apply to the Birthplace Trust  because, strictly speaking, it was an educational charity, not a business.”

“But that’s bunkum! If it isn’t a commercial undertaking, what is it?”

“You tell me. Six hundred thousand people will pay more than three million pounds to wander around the building this year.”

Sam waved her American Express card to summon the waitress. “This one’s on me.”

Freddie noticed how her denim skirt delineated the curve of her thighs. To his acute embarrassment, he realised she had followed the movement of his eyes.

As she entered her pin number he began to gabble. “W-would you like to see the grammar school where William may have been educated?”

Sam gave him a dazzling smile. “I guess I’ll pass on that. What about Anne Hathaway’s Cottage? I love all those English flowers; the hollyhocks, honeysuckle and lupins.”

“They won’t be out yet but we’ll go if you like. Although I have to say it’s not entirely clear she was Shakespeare’s wife or that she grew up in the cottage that carries her name.  You know about the two entries in the Episcopal register. One day William is marrying ‘Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton,’ the next he gets hitched to ‘Anne Hathwey of Stratford’ with a couple of burly farmers entering a huge marriage bond for what sounds suspiciously like a shotgun wedding. As for the Shottery cottage, it was discovered by a notorious forger …”

Sam cut him off. “Enough already, I’m beginning to think Stratford should be remembered for its snake oil salesmen rather than Shakespeare.”

They went to the church instead, with Sam complaining about having to walk in high heels.

At the lych-gate she pointed to an avenue of pollarded limes. “Are they standing guard?”

The rector’s son came into his own. “Planting lime trees in a churchyard is an old religious tradition. They represent the biblical tribes and apostles.”

Bending low at the porch door, he stopped to study the interior. “This is a weeping chancel. Do you see how the choir stalls are angled to mirror the position of Christ’s head on the cross?”

The chancel was roped off and those wanting to inspect Shakespeare’s grave and monument had to pay an entrance fee and push their way to the sanctuary rail in order to read the words carved into the flagstone.

Blese be ye man yt spares thes stones and curst be he yt moves my bones.

A guide was translating the couplet into a highly inflected German for his tour party.

“Hard to believe this awful doggerel comes from the same pen that wrote Hamlet’s soliloquy,” Sam murmured.

Freddie gave her a little nudge. “Everyone’s so reverential these days. When this was new no one cared a damn. The vicar let his chickens and pigs root around the chancel area crapping and pissing on the gravestone.”

Turning to the north wall Sam studied Shakespeare’s monumental effigy in silence. The bust was of a balding, well-fed man with close-set eyes, an upturned moustache, and a goatee beard who, but for the quill and paper, looked more like a butcher than a bard.

Her ironic laugh silenced the German guide. “We say Shakespeare is the greatest writer who ever lived and here he is - the supreme intellect, as lifeless as a tailor’s dummy.”

“That’s if this is the original sculpture. It may have …”

“…looked different,” she completed Freddie’s sentence. “You mean the Dugdale engraving.”

The Warwickshire antiquary Sir William Dugdale had unwittingly stirred up a hornet’s nest by sketching the Shakespeare monument in 1636. His drawing was of a gaunt, gloomy looking man with a drooping moustache clutching what looked like a large woolsack. There was no pen or paper.

“Isn’t the simplest explanation that Dugdale’s sketch was inaccurate?”

“It’s
an
explanation,” Freddie agreed. “Another would be that the bust was changed to make it more tourist-friendly.” He raced through the facts. In 1746
Othello
was performed in Stratford to raise funds to restore the ‘curious original monument and bust of the incomparable poet’ which was ‘much impaired and decayed.’ Two years later, a parish meeting considered the best way of ‘repairing and beautifying’ the monument and a local stonemason hired to remake its architraves in marble.

A Dutch tour party had moved into the chapel and the guide, a rugged Nordic type in a long belted raincoat, was ogling Sam who seemed to be enjoying it.

“However you look at it,” Freddie said in an artificially loud voice, “this is another dodgy Shakespeare relic and people ought to recognize that.”

His ringing words provoked a ripple of applause from the English-speaking Dutch who prided themselves on being a fair-minded race.

“We’d better get out of here before we’re thrown out,” Sam said grimly, marching him towards the church door.

He still hadn’t explained his outburst when, hours later, they sat down for an after-theatre dinner in Stratford’s oldest restaurant. Oak beams and a paving stone floor added to the heritage value of this Sheep Street diner. At a candlelit table for two, Freddie felt more at ease. His partner was looking at him and no one else. Not that he was entirely free from competition, judging by the number of heads that had turned in hormonal response when she slipped out of her trench coat to reveal a slinky cerulean blue sheath dress that left little to the imagination.

After a brief conversation about French wines, a subject on which she spoke with far greater authority than him, they got round to discussing the play they had just seen.

“Judging by the way you were fidgeting, you didn’t much care for it,” Sam suggested.

That was putting it mildly. It was the worst
Merchant of Venice
he had seen in a long while but, after his behaviour in the church, he didn’t want to put a damper on the evening.

“No, you first,” he replied gallantly. “What did you make of it?”

Sam forked a piece of Thai fishcake into her mouth. “I really liked it. A new stage, a minimal set, simple costume design with smart black suits instead of doublet and hose, and a production with clarity of diction and narrative fluency that concentrated on Shakespeare’s words rather than trying to be clever by setting the play in Mussolini’s Italy or a Wall Street concentration camp. Also, it was nice to see a performance free of Jewish stereotypes. All in all, a fresh approach to the play.”