The True Prince (17 page)

Unescorted females and unoccupied youths are not allowed on the street after dark, unless they can claim pressing business. With a little care taken, though, one can usually avoid the watchmen, and Starling and I covered a quarter of a mile unchallenged. We emerged from dimly lit side streets onto Cheapside, where Londoners bustled about on foot or horse almost as thick as in broad day. Turning east, we proceeded to the three forks. Across from the Royal Exchange, Starling halted under a sign etched with a crowing cock. Warm light stippled her face as she peered through a latticed window. Then she made a nod to herself, threw the shawl back from her head, and beckoned me forward.

The eating house we entered seemed respectable, as she promised: busy but not rowdy, babbling but not loud, full of merchants from the Royal Exchange who carried on their
business over platters of roasted meat or fowl. Starling attracted little notice as she led the way to a table in the back corner. A thick post partly hid the table from view, but as we came nearer, I could make out a hand with spidery fingers lifting a pewter mug and long legs stretched out with one ankle crossed over the other. The hand stopped, as if its owner had heard us. Then it set down the mug with calm deliberation. The legs folded under the table and a joint stool scraped against the rough floor as the fellow stood up. Rounding the post, I saw his hand held out to me. Then my eyes rose to his face.

Next I knew, I was heading in the opposite direction with the force of a charging bull as Starling clung to my arm: “Richard! Richard—believe me, it's all well. He means you no harm. Think—would I have brought you here otherwise? Richard!”

I came to myself in the middle of the room, feeling the pressure on my arm and the curious glances sent our way from nearby tables. “Be reasonable,” Starling pleaded. “You have nothing to fear.”

I could not trust myself to speak, but waited until the leaping tiger in my chest had settled to a discontented purr. Then I squared my shoulders, removed her hand, and marched back to the corner.

The young man who so rumpled my disposition had seated himself and did not bother to rise again. Instead, he peered up with keen hazel eyes from under a rough thatch of copperbright
hair. “Am I so ill-favored that virtuous boys run away in fear?”

Sure he was no beauty, with his thin face and long pimply chin, but I was in no frame for banter. I kicked out the joint stool opposite him and dropped into it, though meeting his eyes took some effort. “Wh—What do you want?”

“You can lower your guard,” drawled Bartholomew Finch, in his low, coarse voice. “I only want some questions answered—and they are not about you.”

This did not reassure me. Master Finch was no older than eighteen, yet he worked for the Queen—indirectly, as the hired man to one John Clement. Their work was the shady kind, conducted in dark corners and whispering dens as they rooted out criminals and traitors. Young Finch had made my acquaintance barely a year before, when he suspected me to be just such a traitor. He had pursued me with the relentlessness of a hound after a hare. And though I was not as guilty as he believed, he had me well near trapped when Kit had unexpectedly provided my alibi and forced the hound to pursue other prey. Seeing this young man again, I could not help but feel cornered.

“On who—” The words choked off, and I took a deep breath. “On whose authority are you asking questions now? Has not your master been masterless, since old Lord Hunsdon died?”

“Not at all. John Clement is now engaged by the new Lord
Chamberlain. William Brooke, Lord Cobham. Perhaps you know him?”

“We've not met.” All I knew of William Brooke was his son's complaint against our portrayal of their noble ancestor. “Is … is this about Sir John Oldcastle?”

“Fat Jack?” he asked quickly. “What has he to do with it?” But Starling, who had pulled up a stool beside me, was shaking her head vigorously.

“Put the theater aside,” she told me. “There are greater things afoot. Bartlemy is on the scent.” I shot her a venomous glance:
Bartlemy
, now, was it? She had as little reason to like him as I did, yet somehow he had laid siege to her confidence and won it completely while I was away. “Go on,” she urged him. “Tell Richard what you told me.”

Just then, a serving man brought a roasted capon on a platter. Bartlemy straightened at once and drew his dagger, then remembered his manners enough to ask, “Have you et?” When we both nodded, he zealously tucked into the bird. During the next half hour, Starling and I watched in growing amazement as he dismembered his dinner and ate it entire, even down to cracking the larger bones and sucking the marrow. In between swallows and wiping his greasy mouth on his sleeve, he told a fascinating tale.

His master, John Clement, was looking into an incident that took place late in May, in which the Lord Chamberlain's son was robbed. Henry Brooke was on his way to London from
his country estate, accompanied only by a manservant. Around sunset, he marked a traveler following him but was not alarmed because his follower appeared to be a gentleman, dressed in a fine black doublet trimmed in gold. Brooke suspected nothing amiss until the “gentleman” closed in, drew a pistol, and pleasantly demanded his money or his life. Brooke recalled his saying, “And since your life is worth more to you than to me, I would liefer have the money.”

Those words sounded familiar. I was about to ask why, but then they rode into memory on the back of a lively tune:
Your money or your life, demanded he/And since your life's no use to me/I'd liefer the coin….

Bartlemy continued, still chewing: Henry Brooke's servant lunged forward, but the highwayman quickly knocked him in the head with the long barrel of his pistol. He drew a short sword next and parried Brooke's stab into a harmless thrust that wounded his clothes, not his person. An expert twist of the sword disarmed the victim, who was finally persuaded to part with his traveling money. The thief, again in most gentlemanly terms, asked for both the rings on his left hand—and got them, without argument this time. Then they parted company, leaving young Brooke to rouse his serving man and skulk to London, hoping that word of the humiliating encounter would never get about.

But soon after, the ballad of “The New Robin Hood” began circulating in the London streets—a tale of a gentleman bandit who
robbed a foppish young nobleman called “Lord Puff” and shared his bounty with the poor. Henry Brooke had never paid much attention to street ballads, but when one of his friends bought a copy and showed it to him, he recognized the particulars. Within days it was all over court, and Brooke's enemies were making up additional, mocking verses. A furious Lord Chamberlain engaged John Clement to bring the culprits to justice.

Three weeks had passed since the robbery and the trail was cold, but in a painstaking search of the pawn shops along Houndsditch Lane, Bartlemy found one of the stolen rings. He traced it back to an old crone who picked rags on Gracechurch Street. All she could say was that a fine gentleman in black and gold had given her the ring near Aldersgate, and she had pawned it for a few sovereigns.

Our narrator paused to stuff all the meat from the capon's thigh into his mouth—I didn't think a mouth could hold that much and still leave room to chew, but he managed it. I was trying to remember when I had first heard the song. It was in May, after a performance of
Henry IV
at the Swan. I had walked with Robin and Master Condell up St. Andrew's Hill and saw an Egyptian girl with scarves in her hair, two musicians … “Who wrote the ballad?”

He swallowed, another amazing feat. “If we could discover that, our fortune's made. A new one began going the rounds early in July, just before the Queen left on her summer progress. It tells of another robbery at dusk, in Greenwich
Park. The victim this time is old ‘Lord Stuff,' who has drawn aside to relieve himself in a corner of the garden. Just as he is lacing up his breeches, Lord Stuff feels a knifepoint in his ribs and a cheerful voice demanding his purse, along with the chain about his neck. The bandit is on foot this time, though still dressed in black and gold. And he makes off with the money. Tra-la.”

Bartlemy paused to strip the meat off a capon leg, and I could not decide if he was prolonging anticipation or if he was truly as hungry as he seemed. Starling pressed her lips together and tapped her fingers on the table, finally bursting out with, “The new song was all over London—I never knew a ballad to get such play. They're still singing it. But wait until you hear: Lord Stuff was really—”

Bartlemy held up his hand and swallowed. “William Brooke. What's good for the son is good for the father, it seems.”

“The Lord Chamberlain?” I gasped. “In Greenwich Park?”

“No; on the grounds at Whitehall Palace, where he had drawn discreetly apart. He has a well-known habit of looking upon the hedge, though the Queen forbids it.”

“You mean, the elder Lord Cobham was robbed while—”

“Watering the roses; aye.”

“Ha!” The laugh escaped from me before I could fight it down. It wasn't seemly to make light of a crime, and I sobered quickly under Bartlemy's frown. “Well, it
is
clever. Perhaps
whoever is carrying out these robberies means it as a jest. No one was hurt, and the money taken was probably no great sum—I mean, nothing such a wealthy family couldn't afford—”

“The money stolen was
theirs
, and I am working for them. Besides, Henry Brooke takes the loss of his rings hard. One of them belonged to his grandfather—a gold signet ring, set with rubies. Not the one I found, sadly. The robber may have kept it for himself, after giving the other to an old gossip who would spread the rumor of him. No doubt all the beggars and ragpickers are cheering on the new Robin Hood and hope to meet with him some day. But I wager he won't be so open-handed from now on.”

I thought of mentioning that the beggars and ragpickers had little enough to cheer about, but it wouldn't have softened his heart, and something else occurred to me. “It sounds as though whoever wrote the ballads knows certain details that no one else but the bandit and the Cobhams would know.”

“Very good.” The way he said this sounded more like mockery than compliment. “But the tale diverges from truth in the second case. For one, William Brooke fought back—he drew his dagger and attempted to defend his goods, even though the thief was too quick for him. But my lord did manage to get a token.” Bartlemy reached inside his shirt and took out a tiny wooden box. Tipping the contents out in his palm, he showed me a single black button.

“That's all?” The button was covered in black satin, with one edge discolored as though someone had tried to rub off a stain.

Bartlemy turned the button over to the shank side, and the stain looked now like something I should recognize—chalky and pinkish with a darker tinge around the edge. “Paint,” he said. “Stage paint. This is what brought me to your door last month, to renew our acquaintance. You were off on tour, but Mistress Shaw was a help.”

I looked to her, suspicious again. “What sort of ‘help'?”

Starling could contain herself no longer. “This button, Richard—this very button—is from our wardrobe. I've mended the garment myself; it's a black quilted satin doublet trimmed with copper lace. 'Twas made for Richard Burbage, and a few of the others have worn it, but not many approach his size.”

The garment was sounding familiar indeed: the same one Master Stewart reported missing just before we left on tour. “That's a long tale to get out of a button,” I said carefully. “How can you be sure it's ours?”

“I showed it to Master Stewart, and he recognized his own work. Then he told me that the doublet had been missing since June!”

Stolen, I thought, as the strands of the tale came together. Stolen, to outfit a robbery. Too late I realized that Bartlemy had been very generous with his information, in a way he would not
have been unless he expected an equal measure from me. “And, Richard—” Starling babbled on, “Do you remember the fine black damask that disappeared for a few days last spring? Remember I told you it had been cut, then mended?” I nodded, and she grabbed my arm. “It must have been used during the first robbery, when Henry Brooke was accosted on the road. The dates agree, and the cut on the side was where Brooke's sword went through!”

I stood up, seizing her hand. “One moment,” I muttered to Bartlemy, then pulled Starling over to the unlit fireplace at the back of the room. “I can't believe this,” I burst out. “I can't believe you gave up Company secrets to an agent of the Lord Chamberlain, who is no friend of ours—”

“What secrets?” she snapped back. “Richard Burbage made no secret that his black damask was missing—Bartlemy had turned up a lot, even before he talked to me—he would have discovered that, too.”

“And that's another sore point:
Bartlemy.
You know what a rough cob he is. Look at him.” I gestured to the table where he was contemplating us, at the same time gnawing a capon leg like a ravenous animal.

She didn't look, but her face set in a stubborn attitude. “There is more to him than meets the eye.”

“Thank God—I would hate to go through life with nothing but a face like that.”

“Stop being so mean, Richard. Your personal feelings matter not a whit. The honor of the Lord Chamberlain's Men is at
stake—I mean, Lord Hunsdon's Men. The Company may be harboring a thief, unbeknownst to them. It's in your interest to help the thief catcher.”

I stood for a moment, biting my thumbnail. Then I turned abruptly and marched back to the table, as Bartlemy looked up from the carcass he had demolished. “What are you after?” I demanded.

“Only answers to my questions. To wit: Has anyone in the Company, or any of the hired men, done or said aught to rouse suspicion? Do you know when this satin garment might have disappeared?” His tone sharpened a little. “Would anyone in your Company have a grudge against the Lord Chamberlain or his kin? Have you heard or seen a conflict—”

“Wait!” I felt that my back was being pushed to the wall.

“You seem convinced that your prey is lurking somewhere in our Company. But I need better proof than a button to believe that one of my fellow players is the companion of highwaymen.”