An Ensuing Evil and Others (14 page)

Pentecost Penhallow froze for a moment, and then his shoulders slumped in resignation. “I knew,” he admitted. “But I only knew from last night.”

“Are you a frequent playgoer then, Master Penhallow?”

The innkeeper shook his head. “I never go to playhouses.”

“Yet you paid a penny and went to the Globe last night. Pray, what took you there?”

“To see if I could identify this man Keeling… or whatever his name was.”

“Who told you that he was a player there?”

“Two days ago, one of my customers espied him entering the inn and said, ‘That’s one of the King’s Players at the Globe.’ When I said, nay, he be a gentleman, the man laid a wager of two pence with me. So I went, and there I saw Master Keeling in cavorting pretense upon the stage. God rot his soul!”

“So you realized that he was in debt to you and little wherewithal to honor that debt?”

“Indeed, I did.”

“So when you returned home in the early hours of this morning, you went to his room and had it out with him?”

When Penhallow hesitated, Master Drew went remorsefully on.

“You took a knife and stabbed him in rage at how he had led you and your family on. I gather he gave faked jewels to your daughter and promised marriage. Your rage did wipe all sense from your mind. It was you who killed the man you knew as Will Keeling.”

“I did…,” began Master Penhallow.

“Na! Na, tasyk!”
cried a female voice. It was the young woman the constable had seen on the landing that morning. Penhallows daughter, Tamsyn.

“Cosel, cosel, caradow,”
Penhallow murmured. He turned to Master Drew with a sigh. “This Keeling was an evil man, Constable. You must appreciate that. He used people as if they meant nothing to him. Yet every cock is proud on his own dung heap. He crowed at his vice when I challenged him. He boasted of it. His debt to me is but nothing to the debt that he owed my daughter, seducing her with his glib tongue and winning ways. All was but his fantasy, and he ruined her. No man’s death was so richly deserved.”

The young girl came forward and took her fathers arm.
“Gafeugh dhym, tasyk,”
she whispered.

Penhallow patted her hand as if pacifying her.
“Taw dhym, taw dhym, caradow,”
he murmured.

Master Drew shook his head sadly as he gazed from father to daughter and back to father. Then he said, “You are a good man, Master Penhallow. I doubted it for a while, being imbued with my prejudice against your race.”

Penhallow eyed him nervously. “Good Master Constable, I understand not—”

“Alas, the hand that plunged the dagger into Master Keehan was not your own. Speak English a little to me, Tamsyn, and tell me when you learnt the truth about your false lover?”

The dark-haired girl raised her eyes defiantly to him.

“Gorteugh un pols!”
cried Penhallow to his daughter, but she shook her head.

She spoke slowly and with her soft accent. “I overheard what was said to my father the other night; that Will… that Will was but a penniless player. I took the jewels which he had given to me and went to the Dutchman by the Blackpriars House.”

Master Drew knew of the Dutchman. He was a jeweler who often bought and sold stolen goods but had, so far, avoided conviction for his offenses.

“He laughed when I asked their worth,” went on the girl, “and said they were even bad as faked jewels and not worth a brass farthing.”

“You waited until Will Keehan came in this morning. But he came in with Hal Cavendish.”

“He was in an excess of alcohol. He was arguing with his friend. Then Master Cavendish departed, and I went into his room and told him what I knew.” Her voice was quiet, unemotional. But her face was pale, and it was clear to Master Drew that she had difficulty controlling her emotions. “He laughed—laughed! Called me a Cornish peasant who had been fortunate to be debauched by him. There were no jewels, no estate, and no prospect of marriage. He was laughing at me when—”

“Constable, good Constable, she does not know what she is saying,” interrupted Pentecost Penhallow despairingly.

“That was when you came in,” interrupted Master Drew. “One thing confused me. Why was it left until morning to raise an alarm? I supposed it was in the hope that Keehan would die before dawn. When he did not, good conscience caused you to send for a physician but hoping that he would depart without naming his assailant. That was why you asked me if he had done so. That was your main concern.”

“I have admitted responsibility, Master Constable,” Penhallow said. “I will admit it in whatever form of tale would best please you.”

“You are not a good teller of tales, Master Penhallow. You should bear in mind the line from this new play in which Keehan was to act which says, as I recall it to mind, ‘men of few words are the best men.’ Too many words allow one to find an avenue through them. Instead of saying nothing, your pretense allowed me to discover your untruths.”

“I admit responsibility, good Constable. She is only seventeen and a life ahead of her, please… I did this—”

“Enough words, man! Unless you wish to incriminate yourself and your family,” snapped the constable, “I have had done with this investigation.” He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a purse. “I found this in Master Keehans room. The physician took his fee out of it. There is enough to give Master Keehan a funeral. Perhaps there might be a few pence over, though there is not enough to clear his debt. But I think that debt has now been expunged in a final way.”

Pentecost Penhallow and his daughter were staring at him in bewilderment.

Master Drew hesitated. Words were often snares for folk, but he felt an explanation was needed. “Law and justice sometimes disagree. You have probably never heard of Aristotle but he once wrote, ‘Whereas the law is passionless, passion must ever sway the heart of man.’ Rigorous adherence to the letter of the law is often rigorous injustice.”

“But what of—?”

“What happened here is that a penniless player met his death by the hand of a person or persons unknown. They might have climbed the wall and entered by the open window to rob him. It often happens in this cruel city. Hundreds die by violence, and hundreds more by disease among its teeming populace. The courts give protection to the rich, to the well connected, to gentlemen. But it seems that Master Keehan was not one of these; otherwise, I might have had recourse to pursue this investigation with more rigor.”

He turned for the door, paused, and turned back for a moment.

“Master Penhallow, I know not what conditions now prevail in your country of Cornwall. Do you take advice, and if it be possible, return your family to its protective embrace and leave this warren of iniquity and pestilence that we have created by the banks of this foul-smelling stretch of river. I doubt if health and prosperity will ever be your fortune here.”

The young girl, eyes shining with tears, moved forward and grasped his arm.
“Dursona dhys!”
she cried, leaning forward and kissing the constable on the cheek.
“Durdala-dywy!…
Bless you, Master Constable. Thank you.”

Smiling to himself, Master Drew paused outside the Red Boar Inn before wandering the short distance to the banks of the Thames. The smells were overpowering. Gutted fish and offal. The stench of sewerage. Those odious smells, to which he thought that a near lifetime of living in London had inured him, suddenly seemed an affront to his nostrils. Yet thousands of people were arriving in London year after year, and the city was extending rapidly in all directions. A harsh, unkind city that attracted the weak and the wicked, the hopeful and the cynics, the trusting and the swindler, the credulous and the cheat. Never was there such an assemblage of evil. The Puritan divines did not have to look far if they wished to frighten people with an image of what hell was akin to.

He sighed deeply as he glanced up and down the riverbanks.

A boy came along the embankment path bearing a placard and ringing a handbell. Master Drew peered at the placard.

It was an announcement that the King’s Players would be performing Master Will Shakespeare’s
The Life of King Henry
V at the Globe Theatre that evening.

Master Whelton Keehan would not be playing the role of King Hal.

Master Hardy Drew suddenly found some lines from another of Will Shakespeare’s plays coming into his mind. Where did they come from?
The Tragedy of Macbeth!
The last performance Whelton Keehan had given.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death
.

Out, out brief candle!

Life’s hut a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more
.

THE REVENGE OF THE GUNNER’S DAUGHTER

T
he last French shot had fallen a full quarter-mile aft of the
Deer-hound
as she slipped into the sheltering fog that was rolling down through the Oresund from the Kattegat and across the Kjoge Bight, south of Copenhagen. That had been twenty minutes ago, and since then there had followed an uneasy quiet, free of the noise of battle; the sea’s quiet of creaking wooden spars, the fretful snap of canvas and the whispering waves against the sides of the twenty-two-gun sloop as she became immersed in the thick white mist that now concealed her from her vengeful pursuer.

Captain Richard Roscarrock, captain of His Majesty’s sloop
Deerhound
, stood head to one side, in a listening attitude on the quarterdeck, hands clasped tightly behind him, lips compressed. Finally he raised his head; his shoulders seemed to relax.

“Hands to shorten sail, Mr. Hart.” He turned to the midshipman next to him, a lad scarcely out of his teenage. “Quietly does it,” he snapped hastily as the youngster raised his hand to his mouth to shout the order. “Quietly all! We don’t want Johnny Frenchman to hear us. We’ll take in the tops’ls and mains’l. Pass the word! And have the hands take a care for the damage on the mainmast; the main topgallant mast seems to be badly splintered. And for heaven’s sake, get a couple of hands to secure the mainstay; it’ll cause damage if it swings loose for much longer.”

Midshipman Hart brought his hand to his forehead so that his original motion ended in a cursory salute. He went forward to gather the hands.

Gervaise, the first lieutenant, moved closer to his captain. His voice was quiet. “I don’t think the Frenchman has followed us, sir,” he observed. “He’s probably beating back into the Baltic now that he has discovered we are in these waters.”

Roscarrock agreed mentally but gave a noncommittal grunt by way of response. He had been long enough in command to realize that it was not politic to discuss his thoughts with his juniors.

Unstead, the second officer, joined them. “Did you see the cut of her, sir? I’ll bet ten guineas on that being the
Epervier
of Ram-bert’s squadron.”

“Will we try to rejoin Admiral Gambier, sir?” pressed Gervaise.

Roscarrock sniffed to indicate his irritation. “In good time, Mr. Gervaise. And I am well aware of what ship it was, Mr. Unstead. We’ll haul to and will use the cover of this fog to assess our situation. The French gunners were good, and we have sustained some damage. Look at our mainmast.”

The sloop had encountered the French seventy-four-gun man-o’-war by accident, sailing around the headland of Stevns Klint and running abruptly under her guns before Roscarrock could wear the ship, turning the helm to windward. The Frenchman had opened fire almost immediately on the smaller vessel. The French guns had inflicted a lot of damage on the English sloop before her swifter sailing ability, good seamanship, and the descending fog across the bight had allowed a means of escape.

Roscarrock knew that he must have sustained several casualties. He could see for himself that the main topgallant mast had been splintered, the rigging and spars still hanging dangerously. The last shots the French had fired had been high and chain shot, which had ripped into the rigging. Captain Roscarrock also knew there had been at least one, probably two shots landed on the gun deck. However, his first concern was whether the
Deerhound
had been holed below the waterline, and his second concern was whether the damage to his masts was irreparable and would prevent him returning quickly to the main British fleet of Sir James Gambier to warn him of the presence of the French.

Lieutenant Gervaise had already read his mind and passed word for the masters mate, bosun, purser, cooper, chief gunnery officer, and doctor: all the heads of the various departments that ran a ship-of-war.

The group of men came after in ones and twos and gathered before the captain on the quarterdeck. They were tired but wore that look of relief at finding themselves still alive. Faces were blackened by powder burns; clothes were torn and stained with blood.

“Has the word been passed for the gunnery officer?” Captain Roscarrock asked, looking round and not seeing the third lieutenant who fulfilled this role.

An elderly sailor, with petty officer insignia, touched his forehead briefly. “Beg pardon, sir. Gunnery officers dead. I’ll make his report.”

The first lieutenant blinked a moment. The second officer, Un-stead, whistled tactlessly. Roscarrock broke in harshly as if he had not noticed their reactions.

“And where s the bosun?”

“Dead, sir,” replied the masters mate dryly.

“Then his mate should be here.”

“Dead as well, sir. I’ll attend to the report,” the man replied.

“Very well. Damage?”

“No shots below the waterline. Main topgallant mast splintered and upper rigging tangled and dangerous. There is no way we can replace topmast shrouds nor the futtock shrouds. She should be able to take the mainsl and we can run without tops’ls, though it will slow us down.”