The Twelfth Night Murder (17 page)

The information you have requested is: February 21, 1649, London, England, shortly after the noon hour.

Suzanne smiled. “Come, Diarmid. We’ve an errand to accomplish.” She rose from the bed and took his hand to draw him with her.

*   *   *

S
HE
didn’t bother to change clothing for this trip, possibly because she balked at removing it with Ramsay anywhere in her quarters. The night had been long and her nap short; she preferred to do her errand and return to sleep some good, long hours.

However, at the top of the stairs she heard a voice in the green room near the upstage entrances that reminded her she had other business to attend to that was equally important. Liza was chattering away to someone, gossiping about one of the other whores who frequented the Goat and Boar. The subject didn’t interest Suzanne, but she separated herself from Ramsay for the moment with one raised palm and ducked into the green room.

Liza was talking to Matthew, the both of them having just arrived for the morning’s rehearsal. Suzanne gave them each a gracious smile.

“Good morning to you both. You look well.”

Matthew chuckled as if she’d made a joke. Liza said, “We are well. We’d be more well, did I not have an entire guinea disappear from my earnings last night. ’Twere stolen from my table at the public house, and I know by who.” Anger flushed her face and her lips pressed together.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps you might consider giving up the whoring and attend to your acting, then?”

“Whatever for? I earn nearly as much banging the drunkards at the Goat and Boar as I do acting in plays.”

Matthew kept singularly silent. It was widely known he wished to marry Liza, and it was up in the air as to whether she would continue to sell herself if he did.

Suzanne sat on a chair near the large table at the end of the room. “I think you’ve a far better future as an actress than as a tart.” Liza’s tongue was much too sharp to be overly pleasing to her patrons. “And I speak as one who has gone from one to the other. In fact, Little Wally was telling me just yesterday—”

“Little Wally’s got naught to say ’bout me.” Liza looked to Matthew for confirmation, and he nodded to Suzanne. They’d apparently discussed Little Wally between them. “I won’t hear naught from him.”

“Well, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want a compliment from him.”

“He’s a sod,” said Matthew, as if that explained everything.

But Liza’s brow crumpled. “Wait. A compliment, it was? What sort?”

“Why, he told me he envies your beauty. He knows he’s not the fairest actress in the troupe, and he wishes he had your fine appearance.”

“He says I move like a pig.”

“That’s not what he tells me.” He’d never said “pig” to Suzanne, so technically it wasn’t a lie. But the next was entirely falsehood. “He says he wishes you would help him move like a real woman.”

Liza gawped at her as if she’d told her the moon was made of green cheese. “Do you mean that for true, or are you having me on?”

“’Tis true. Every word.” Suzanne knew she would burn in hell for this, but hoped God might understand her good intentions. “He knows he moves in imitation of a genuine lady, and would like to know how best to appear like one. What with so many women ascending the stage these days, he fears the audience will expect him to be indistinguishable. Really, he believes his career is in the balance.”

“He should, because it is. It won’t be very long before he’ll not have any roles for being too male to play women and too female to play men. In a way, I feel a mite sorry for him, I do.”

Good. Suzanne was making progress. “Then you won’t mind helping him. Give him some advice regarding his portrayal. I’m sure he’d be ever so thankful for it.”

Liza thought about that for a moment, but Matthew broke into the talk. “I think it would be best to just leave him be and cast women in those roles as soon as the king makes that decree his lordship has been saying he would.”

Liza said, “What decree?”

“His lordship Throckmorton says the king keeps promising to make a decree that female roles should be played by women. ’Tis what they do in France, and he thinks them French is all better than us English. Throckmorton says it’ll be all women in them roles by Christmas.”

Liza said, “Poor Wally, then. He’ll be on the streets.”

“Like the rest of us when things go against us. Better him than us.”

“But he doesn’t deserve it. Nobody deserves that. He can’t help it.”

“He’s a sod. He makes his own choices, and lives with ’em just like the rest of us.”

Suzanne addressed Liza, hoping to cut Matthew and his negativity out of the discussion. “You could help him. Perhaps if he were more convincing as a woman, he could continue to play the women’s roles. For a while, at least.” She knew it would be quite a while before the Players would be able to find enough skilled women to fill all those roles, and there would be work for Wally in her troupe until then. However, it appeared there was a chance Liza would have enough pity on him to stop fighting him.

Liza opened her mouth to reply, but Suzanne added, “But we don’t wish to hurt his feelings. I hope you’ll tread lightly with your advice. Don’t let him think you’re correcting him. Let him know you think he’s a skilled actor.”

“I don’t think he’s a skilled actor. I think he’s the most false—”

“To be sure, you’re free to think what you like. But hurting his feelings is counter to what you would be trying to do. Let him think you admire his work, and that you would give him secrets to how women really are. He would be pleased to learn what you could tell him.”

“Would he really?”

“I think so.” She rose to leave. “Give it a try. I think we’d all benefit from whatever you could show Wally. The better he does, the better we all look. Consider it.”

The look on Liza’s face made Suzanne hopeful as she left the room and returned to Ramsay, who awaited her just inside the upstage entrances.

“What was that about?” he queried.

“Well, either things will calm down between Liza and Wally, or else they’ll murder each other.”

He chuckled. “Then you’ll know who did it and can dispatch the investigation in no time at all.”

She laughed also as they left the building.

The day was not as cold as had been others recently. Certainly not warm, but there was no wind and for the moment it seemed a thaw might be in the air. Of course it was still January and winter would have them in its grip for another two months or so, but for today the walk across the bridge was not particularly unpleasant.

Suzanne rapped on the door of the astrologer’s rooms near the Royal Exchange, as Ramsay ducked his head to keep it from bumping the plain wooden brace overhead that held up part of the building overhang. There was no answer, and so Suzanne banged longer and harder.

Finally, the voice of Esmeralda came from the other side, promising she was on her way, a bolt was drawn back, and the door creaked open. “What . . . oh.” She drew the door open further and stepped back. “Do come in, Suzanne. And your friend.” She nodded to Ramsay as he followed Suzanne inside. “What might I do for you so very . . .
very
early this morning?” She had a glance outside before closing the door, then went to stir her hearth so to catch alight a twist of paper for lighting a candle. The dawn was still more of a promise than a fact, so the room was nearly as dark as if the night were still pitch-black. Once there was light to see by, Suzanne spoke.

“Esmeralda, I have another request to make of you. And here is a half crown for your trouble.” She handed over a coin, which the astrologer deposited without hesitation in a tin cup that sat atop her mantel.

“Very well. What is it you require? Another reading?”

“I wish another reading. Not of my own chart, but of someone else’s.”

She held up her palms and shook her head. “Not the king. I won’t tell you anything about the king’s horoscope, for it would mean my neck. I’m the only woman in the kingdom entitled to read his chart, and that is only for his own sake. ’Tis the one confidentiality that is sacrosanct, and I absolutely will not say a word to you or anyone else on it.”

Suzanne shook her head. “Not the king. We’ve seen what happens to those who meddle in the king’s fate, and I value my neck as well as you do yours. There have been too many heads perched on the bridge belonging to men who thought they had something to say about the fate of a king for me to have any interest there. No, I need a reading for the boy we spoke of some days ago.”

A skeptical eyebrow raised. “The one whose name has eluded you, and never mind his birth date?”

Suzanne smiled and drew the duchess’s letter from inside her doublet. She’d not taken the time to change her clothing that morning, and still wore the man’s outfit from last night. “I have not only learned the poor victim’s name, thanks to your last reading and a suggestion from my friend Throckmorton, but I also have from his mother the exact time and place of his birth.”

Esmeralda’s face brightened and she lost the sleepiness in her eyes. “Oh! You’ve found him!” She began to reach for the letter.

“Lord Paul Worthington, son of the Duke of Cawthorne. I wish you to tell me his indications just before he died.”

Now the astrologer’s face took on the darkness of alarm and she retrieved her hand rather than touch the letter. “Oh. Yes. The victim, who is now dead. That could be troublesome.”

“Why?”

She looked at Suzanne as if she’d gone mad. Or stupid. “’Tis terrible bad luck to tell the horoscope of a dead person. One takes an awful risk to meddle in such as that.”

“Not even to learn the name of a murderer?”

Esmeralda, frowning deeply, gazed off into the middle distance for a moment as she thought that over. Slowly she said, “Well, you understand that there’s good and evil in everything. Nothing on God’s earth is pure in either. And those of us who study the stars must consider that we’re entrusted by God with information that may or may not be ours to know. Or tell.”

“You’re telling me you’re afraid of your own power?”

Now Esmeralda looked into Suzanne’s face. “All who wield power should respect it, no matter what that power is or how ’tis given to them. Every king, and every sorcerer, should respect the power in them. I do no less.”

“So you won’t do the reading? I should have back my coin, then.”

Esmeralda snorted, frowned some more, then said, “No, I never said I wouldn’t do it. But we must be careful.”

“Of course.”

A good rummage through the papers and books on her table, and the astrologer was ready to begin, with an ephemeris in her lap and a large piece of paper on the table at her elbow. A quill stood in an inkwell next to it, barely visible amongst the stacks of books, papers, and a plate of poultry bones that appeared left from last night’s supper. Suzanne told her the date and time in question, then sat to wait. Ramsay stood near the door like a statue depicting Patience. He hadn’t said a word since their arrival.

It seemed to take a very long time to construct the chart of Lord Paul, and there was much frowning and grunting in it. At one point the astrologer muttered, “Oh . . . not good. Not good at all.” But when Suzanne opened her mouth to ask why, she raised a finger for silence and continued on with her work. The sun rose and a sliver of light crept onto the wall opposite the small window at the front. The astrologer worked on.

Finally she sighed and looked up at Suzanne, then at Ramsay. To Suzanne she said, “That poor boy.”

“What, then?”

She gestured to the paper before her, and said, “Betrayal. ’Tis all betrayal in his life. I see nothing here but evil for him, and the most profound
betrayal
. Had I read this chart before he died, I could have predicted it. The poor boy never had a chance at a long life, nor a prosperous one.”

Ramsay said, “You’re saying he’s better off dead?”

Esmeralda shrugged. “‘Better off’ would be a judgment I couldn’t make. But I see his death was inevitable.”

“And what does the chart say about how he died? Where should we look for his killer?”

The astrologer closed her eyes to think, as if trying to picture something. “Home.”

“He wasn’t at home when he died. He hadn’t been there for months.”

A shrug, and Esmeralda’s expression was apologetic. “I cannot say why, but home and betrayal are connected with strong indications of death.”

Ramsay said, “That could simply mean he was abducted from his home, and that you already know.”

Suzanne’s heart sank. “There must be something more, for the indication to be so strong. We must be missing something.”

He replied, “Perhaps what we need is to talk to someone who may know something other than where Mars is in the sky.”

Esmeralda turned to frown at him. “You doubt the stars?”

“No, ’tis you I doubt. You’ve only told us what we already know.”

“And how, then, did I know it? I’ve not heard a word about this since your mistress was here asking about her own chart several days ago. I never knew the name of the victim until just this morning.”

Ramsay didn’t seem to have a reply to that, and only pressed his lips together.

Suzanne said, “There must be something else we can learn.”

Again Esmeralda shrugged. “All I might tell you is to look to the boy’s home. That is where you’ll find the answer to your question. But tread lightly. This chart has such strong indications of death, there might be danger to others.”

Suzanne then remembered her own chart, and how it had brought Esmeralda to her in the first place. Suddenly she was uncomfortable with this, and she said to Ramsay, “Come. Let us return to the Globe.”

“Surely you won’t quit the chase, mistress,” said the astrologer.

“I don’t know for certain what I’ll do at the moment. Thank you for your effort and expertise.” With that, she left in a hurry, with Ramsay behind her.

Outside in the street, Ramsay said as he hurried along beside Suzanne, “Are you afraid now?”

She walked head down, her legs scissoring quickly along. “I can’t tell what I am. But I’ve got a disquieted feeling about all this. Suddenly it’s all too shadowy. Too hidden.”