The Opening Night Murder (7 page)

However, today the place was less stuffy than usual, for Young Dent had thrown open its two tiny windows at the back and propped open the door onto the alley. The cooking fire at the far end of the room near the staircase had a haunch merrily roasting and dripping grease every so often, making the flame leap and lick for more. Only two other patrons sat at a table, and that left the rest of the room to Suzanne and Daniel. They chose the table at the back next to the little windows to catch
whatever breeze might come from the south. One of the other patrons was a former client of Suzanne’s who frequented the pub, whose name was Alfred. Most men in this neighborhood had been clients during the years before William, and though none were clients these days, they were all quite friendly. Suzanne was like an old hunting dog that had outlived its usefulness but was too well liked to shoot.

Alfred nodded to Daniel and smiled. “Ah! I see you found her, my lord!”

“Right where you said she’d be,” Daniel replied as he guided Suzanne toward the empty table at the back.

Suzanne didn’t question how Daniel knew Alfred. Sometimes it seemed as if everyone knew everyone else in London, or at least all the men did. She was no longer surprised to learn that clients knew each other.

Suzanne gestured to Old Dent’s son for an ale. He was a young man and had grown up in this pub, and so knew everyone and everyone knew him. There was very little about the city of London he didn’t know.

Daniel enquired after some Scottish whisky, but at Young Dent’s blank look quickly changed his mind and asked for an ale as Suzanne had. They settled into chairs, and Suzanne said to Daniel, “It’s good to see you survived the war.”

“Yes, a good thing. I tend to agree. Though I did come close to dying once, with a ball through my arm that brought fever.” He touched the outside of his left arm as if feeling for the scar.”

“We had no idea whether we’d ever see you again.”

“We?”

“Piers and I.” Could he have forgotten Piers?

“Ah. I must say it’s also good to see you’ve prospered.”

The last thing she wanted was to explain to Daniel how William had abandoned her. Humiliating enough that she was talking to Daniel at all after he’d abandoned her and Piers; she didn’t care to whine and appear a weak ninny. But neither did she want Daniel to think his treatment of her hadn’t been callous and hurtful. She said, “After you left, I had no choice but to sell what I had. I became a tart.”

“While you were pregnant?”

“There’s a market for everything, Daniel. Surely you understand that. I had my clientele.” He said nothing in reply, and she continued. “After Piers was born, I worked for Maddie near the tannery and he stayed with me.” She nodded in the direction of where Maddie’s house had stood on the Bank Side before it was torn down. Daniel nodded, and she realized he’d probably known Maddie and her girls as well as any other man did with money to pay for whores. And many without money as well.

“Did she treat you well?”

She took a sip of her ale and considered her reply. It had been years since she’d let herself remember her time in the brothel, and she’d never thought much about Maddie herself, even back then. It had always been the clientele she’d hated, and the knowledge the men she’d serviced thought her no better than an animal. Again, she didn’t want to whine about her fate to Daniel, so she told him, “As well as could be expected. We didn’t starve. Piers grew up with a dozen aunties who all cared for him, and there were other children for company. But we had to find a way out of that place so he wouldn’t grow up to be a cutpurse. Or worse.”

“I’m sorry. I wish I could have helped.”

She shrugged, irritated to hear lip service, and so long after the fact. “Well, if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, wouldn’t they?”

“Seriously—”

“A letter now and again would have been help enough.” The anger blossomed in her breast, and though she struggled to swallow it she only choked on it as if it were a too-large bit of bread she’d bitten off by mistake. She coughed to clear it, and continued. “It would have helped for Piers to believe his father had some regard for him.” It would have helped her own peace of mind to believe he loved her and she hadn’t been a complete fool when she’d thrown her life away on him. Her cheeks warmed, and she sat back in her chair with her arms crossed over her chest to calm down.

Daniel lowered his head just enough to appear chastised. He knew he was wrong, and she knew this was as close to an apology as she would ever get. He said, “You let him hate me.”

“He has the same regard for you as you did for him. I had no reason to change his mind, particularly when the truth was so very undeniable. You deserve that he hates you.”

Daniel picked at a chip in his cup and there was silence. Finally Suzanne’s anger abated and she sat forward again, picked up her drink, and said, “In reply to your question, I joined a theatre troupe for a while, just for the sake of getting Piers away from the criminal element at Maddie’s.”

Daniel’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Out of the frying pan, I’d say.”

“The actors weren’t so very bad. We’d set up a performance in a street or alley, run the play for a penny a head, then tear down and move on the instant it was done. Another alleyway, another performance, and we rarely had to go far from London. Unlike with Maddie’s patrons, there were few fights among the actors and almost never any blood. They stole from the audience, but nobody boasted about it much. The fellow who ran things became something of a father to Piers, or uncle, as he was to all
of us. He called me ‘niece,’ and I rather liked him. He taught Piers some things about business. Kept us all safe. The troupe became like a home, and more hospitable toward us women now that we’re sometimes accepted on the stage without a terrible amount of fuss.”

Daniel sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “I wasn’t aware Cromwell allowed actors at all, never mind female ones.”

Suzanne made a face and waved away the thought as if it were a bad smell. “Of course he didn’t. We were ever on the run, just like any criminal, and that made for some very exciting times.”

S
UZANNE
’
S
son was nine years old when she joined the troupe that moved in and around London and the surrounding towns. The war was nearly over, and dark Puritanism had been the law of the land long enough that some had become accustomed to life under Cromwell. Most, though, found ways to circumvent the new laws. Or they ignored them completely. Men who dressed in Puritan black, who professed morality and purity of thought and body, nevertheless took mistresses they hid much as children would hide forbidden sweets. Musicians and tumblers performed in closes and alleys. To some it was a form of polite protest, but for people like Suzanne it was simple survival and an inability to be anything other than what God had made them.

Suzanne, wanting a better life for Piers than that offered in a bawd house, ran off from Maddie’s brothel on Bank Side with a man everyone called “Horatio.” He told it around he called himself that because “Horatio
is a friend of Hamlet,” and for him the world revolved around William Shakespeare. Nobody knew his real name, and some wondered whether he remembered it himself. He had certainly not forgotten life before Cromwell, and had dedicated his life to living the way he always had, with the joy of the theatre as practiced by Shakespeare.

Suzanne first met Horatio as a client. He’d frequented Maddie’s for some months, and she’d seen him sitting in the public room on the ground floor once or twice. He was a large man, and his wig was nearly always slightly askew, which happened often with men who were entirely bald and had nothing to keep a wig from skidding. His voice was as large and impressive as his form, and whenever Horatio spoke, the entire room stopped to listen. Even when he whispered it was with a force and authority that commanded attention. He always sat quietly and patiently, waiting for his favorite girl, Betsy. She was an older whore, nearly thirty. He liked to talk, and she had a talent for listening.

“Strange one, that Horatio,” Betsy would say at supper with the other girls. “Always wantin’ to talk.” She shredded her meat and let it fall to the plate as she chewed. Then she picked up a shred to fold it into her mouth in between sentences as she talked.

Suzanne nodded. “Right. I’ve several who never do anything but talk. Mostly they complain about their wives or their mothers. Sometimes about the Lord Protector, but those are rare.”

“But never so much talk as to be treasonous, and don’t you never say anything suchlike in return,” said Maddie.

“Yes, Maddie,” Suzanne allowed. “Wouldn’t want the Roundheads battering the door to round up us rabble-rousing tarts.”

A general snicker rounded the table, and even Maddie had to chuckle.

Betsy said, “Well, this one does his business all right, doesn’t dawdle none and never takes but a minute or so, and before and after he’s talking on and on about his acting troupe. And that Shakespeare fellow from a hundred years ago.”

Another girl asked, “Who’s that, then?”

Betsy shrugged. “Some old play writer. Back when Elizabeth was busy bein’ all virginal and such.”

Everyone snickered again at that. Betsy continued, “I seen one of his plays once. Before they shut down the Globe.”

“Was it good?” asked Suzanne.

“It made me laugh. It wasn’t boring. I like a good play, and I wish they’d kept the theatres open. Crying shame they’ve been closed.”

“A good play is worth a penny, I suppose.”

Betsy leaned her head back, dropped a long sliver of beef into her mouth, and chewed thoughtfully on it. She said, “Yeah, that Horatio is an odd sort.”

So when Betsy died of a cough that winter and Horatio was orphaned as a client, on his next visit Suzanne stepped forward to offer her services in Betsy’s place. She liked the idea of having a regular client who didn’t take long with his business and liked to talk instead. As soon as he walked into the public room downstairs she went to him and offered her condolences at the loss of Betsy.

His unhappiness at Betsy’s death was plain on his face as she led him up the stairs. She would have to do something to take his mind off Betsy, or spend the entire afternoon urging him to finish his business, so she encouraged him to talk about himself. All men loved to talk about themselves, and most were accustomed to being allowed to do so frequently.

“What’s your name?” She shut the door behind them and began to undress. All she wore was a frayed silk robe, so stripping was accomplished in but a second. She draped the robe over a chair, draped herself over the blanket on her bed, and spread her knees. All the girls did their business atop the blanket, for it helped keep vermin from the mattresses. Coyness was not Suzanne’s style, and her customers appreciated that with her there was no fuss and no folderol.

“I’m called Horatio, for I am a friend of Hamlet. I’m an actor, you know. My troupe…”

That was all it took, and he was off and running. In his big, booming voice, probably heard as far as downstairs, he told her all about the troupe he directed, and his history as an interpreter of Shakespeare’s work. As he dropped his breeches and climbed onto her, he continued on about his talented performers and how they all understood The Bard, Shakespeare. Once finished with his business, he buttoned himself and sat on the edge of the bed to explain some of the finer points of Shakespeare’s work.

Oddly, as Suzanne rose from the bed, cleaned herself at the washstand, and drew her robe back on, she found herself listening to him. Not the way she did with clients, but as if he were her friend and she cared about what he was saying. The way Betsy probably never had. Any other client might have gone on for hours and she would never hear a word. But this theatre talk interested her. It sounded like fun, and though she’d never heard of a woman acting on a stage, she thought she might like to do it if she could talk someone into letting her try.

When he wound down some and she could get a word in, she said, “Have you ever had a girl actor?”

Horatio clapped his mouth shut, thinking for a moment.
Then he said, thoughtfully, “Of course we have not. But now that you mention it, I can’t think of why we shouldn’t, other than that no woman has ever asked me before. I’m not certain whether any woman would want to be on the stage.”

“I think perhaps you should have them onstage.”

“Of course, only a whorish sort would be interested.”

“That would be me, I expect.”

He looked at her now, as if seeing her for the first time. “You?”

She sat on the bed next to him and leaned toward him, insistent. “Of course me. I think I’d be perfect for your Shakespeare plays, don’t you?” She had no idea whether she would even be adequate, but there was no harm in encouraging him in this train of thought.

He now peered hard at her, and she let him do so without interruption. He was the one paying for the time, so it was certainly no skin off her nose if he spent it thinking. Finally he said, “Yes. I think possibly yes. A Juliet whose voice won’t crack. A Viola one can suspect is female. A Lady Macbeth played as an ambitious woman rather than a weak man.” As he warmed to the idea, his voice rose to a trumpet sound. “Yes. You might do very well.”

“Then when can we leave?”

“Leave?” That startled him.

“I can pack my bags in a trice. My son and I—”

“Son?” Even more surprised, he laid a hand over his heart.

“Piers. He’s nine years old and a hard worker. He’ll be no trouble at all.”

Horatio’s mouth worked, but nothing came out.

Suzanne rose from the bed, threw off the robe once more, and began to dress in street clothes as she continued, speaking
rapidly in order to not be interrupted and told no. “You said it yourself. Juliet. Viola. Lady Macbeth. You need me.”

He shut his mouth and appeared to warm to the idea. “Have you acted before?”

“Every day of my life, I vow.”

That made him smile, a wide, crooked-lipped grin, showing a row of very small teeth. “Very well, then.” He stood and straightened his clothes, checking to be sure his breeches were securely tied. “Come to the Goat and Boar. I’ll wait for you there.”