The fugitives sword, p.20
The Fugitive's Sword, page 20
part #1 of Lord's Learning Series
Kate struggled to see why this was a problem to do with the production of the masque, let alone anything to do with Lucy and herself unless…
“Was this item something crucial to the performance?” she asked. “Something Lady Bedford could provide instead?”
Jonson stood up and started pacing in the limited space available, ducking his head each time he passed the low beam which extended from one of the wooden structures leaning against the wall.
“No. No. Not at all. If it had been important to the masque I might have kept a closer eye on it. In all truth I only accepted it to please Lady—” He cut himself off sharply and spun on his heel to face them, his expression now profoundly troubled. “I cannot tell you how serious this is. But, please believe me, lives might be at stake.”
Lucy was frowning now.
“I am sure you exaggerate, but I don’t see what you think I could—”
Ben Jonson dropped to his knees before the two of them and bowed his head like a penitent.
“I need your discretion. I need your eyes and ears and your sharp, sharp wits. If you would but lend them to me.”
Lucy shook her head. “My dear Ben, I still have not the faintest notion what it is you are asking of me. Can you not speak plainly?”
It seemed to Kate that another tack might work since clearly Ben Jonson was disturbingly close to being distraught.
“Perhaps, Mr Jonson,” she said quickly, “you could tell us what exactly it is that has gone missing, that you need some help to find.”
His head came up at that and he stared at Kate as if seeing her for the first time. Then he got back on his feet and gave her a gracious bow.
“You have said it, Lady Catherine. I need your help to find that which has been stolen.” He retreated to his previous perch on the table and sighed heavily. Kate decided that it would be wise not to point out that she had not said any such thing. Lucy shot her a sideways glance with eyebrows raised.
“And that is?” Kate asked again.
“When Lady—I mean to say, when one of my noble patrons heard that the masque was to be about the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, she brought me a book which she said had been in her husband’s library and had something to do with Dr John Dee. It had a very curious design on the binding—an engrailed gilt cross upon which sat an eagle, holding a rose in its claws, wings lifted as if about to take flight. As the symbol was large enough to be discerned from a distance, she thought it a fitting item to be carried by Merefool to show his aspiring allegiance.”
Kate was on the verge of asking why this lady had thought to use such a valuable book in the performance, but then she recalled that this was a masque after all. A masque was an entertainment put on by the court for its own specific delight. Just as the jewels on the costumes worn by the masquers themselves would be real, having such a vividly genuine touch as a real and rare book on Rosicrucians being carried by Merefool would be in keeping.
“But you say you had no intention of using this book in the masque?”
Ben Jonson shook his head. “It was simply too unwieldy and besides had loose leaves in it which might have come free.”
“I think that would be quite comical,” Lucy said. “The thought of our poor deluded student labouring along with an unwieldy tome and trying in vain to catch the pages as they fell.” She laughed. “That might be quite a metaphor in the case of these would-be aspirants of wisdom.”
But whereas Kate had to smile at that, Ben Jonson’s brows pulled together, and he shook his head vehemently.
“No. No. No. Lady Bedford.” His hands came up in front of his face as if she was assaulting him. Then he drew a breath and lowered them again. “Please, my dear lady, you must understand the spirit of the masque is in the words. The words are the pivot and the rest - the costumes, the mechanical contrivances, the settings, all these things…” He spread his arms out as if to embrace all that was in the room. “These are just accoutrements to give the eye something to hold its gaze whilst the ear revels in the words.”
“Well, I’m not sure too many would wish to attend a masque if all it was were a few people on an empty stage talking to each other.” Lucy retorted. “Personally, I always thought a masque was about the dancing and the rest like the setting provided for a jewel.”
Seeing Jonson draw breath for another defence, Kate spoke quickly.
“So, if you decided this book was not appropriate for the masque, Mr Jonson, why did you not simply return it to the lady who was kind enough to offer it to you in the first place?”
The question deflated him, and his breath escaped in a heavy sigh instead.
“If only I had. If only things were that simple.” He lowered his head and looked so unhappy that Lucy reached over to pat his arm.
“I am sure things are not that bad, it is just a book after all. Perhaps we can find another copy of it for you. What was it called?”
He lifted his shoulders in a shrug and shook his head.
“I do not know. I did not more than glance at the thing and that only to consider the design upon the cover. It is just that Lady—” He had to catch himself again and Kate decided this would not be someone she would willingly trust with a secret. “The lady who brought it was so insistent that it should be suitable—she wanted, I think, to be able to point it out to her friends as having been something of hers. I only saw the peculiar and marked design on it—which she was at pains to point out—and that, when the cover lifted, a few pages were loose inside. At the time I was very preoccupied. She arrived with the book just as Mr Inigo Jones was suggesting I rewrote a part to make his stage contrivances fit the work better. So, I told the lady I would most certainly consider it and set it aside. Then I scarce gave it another thought until yesterday when she came back close to tears, demanding I return it to her at once.”
“Are you sure you have not simply misplaced the book?” Lucy asked and nodded to the semi-organised chaos around them. “It would not be so difficult in all this.”
“If only that was so, my dear, dear lady.” He heaved another sigh, and a small moan escaped his lips. Kate was quite convinced he was going to burst into tears, but he managed to collect himself after a moment. “You see I locked it in the coffer where I keep all the more precious items. I had intended to return it to the lady upon the next occasion of our meeting together with much gratitude and an explanation of why it was not suitable. But when I went to retrieve it, the book was gone.”
The memory was clearly too much because he buried his face in both his hands and his shoulders shook as if he was sobbing.
Lucy sent Kate a brief look of exasperation and rolled her eyes to heaven then patted the distraught man gently on the arm.
“I can put enquiries in train for you to try and find another copy of the book—after all from your description it is most distinctive and surely a specialist bookseller would know of such a tome, but beyond that, Mr Jonson, I have to say I am at a loss as to how I can assist you.”
“I presume you have made some enquiries about the book?” Kate asked, thinking the pragmatic approach was surely the best to take. “Questioned all who might have had access to the coffer?”
Ben Jonson lifted his face, which showed no sign of tears but looked a little red in the cheeks.
“You see, that is the problem. I cannot advertise that the book is missing. The lady was most insistent. She said if I did, she would claim I was the one who persuaded her to take it from her husband’s library, and her husband is a most violent and vindictive man. She says it is only a matter of time before he suspects that she was involved with the disappearance of the book and when he does…” He trailed off.
Kate could think of several gentlemen of the court for whom a description of ‘violent and vindictive’ would be most fitting, and whereas Lady Whoever was, hopefully, protected by her status, Ben Jonson would be unlikely to be spared the consequences. It seemed he was not exaggerating to claim lives were at stake—his own at the very least.
Lucy had reached the same conclusion because her face paled. For all she clearly found the poet vexing, he was still someone she held dear—her Ben, she called him—and Kate knew Lucy to be ferociously loyal to those she cared about.
“So, what is it you would have us do?” Kate asked. “I am sure you have some kind of plan since you asked Lady Bedford to come here today.”
On the instant he seemed to perk up and nodded enthusiastically, head bobbing like a moorhen. “I do, Lady Catherine, I do indeed. You see, if I start asking about what has happened to the book then the world will know that I had it in my keeping and that it is gone. But perhaps if another, who has the respect of all, were to take an interest in such a book, it might be possible to discover what has happened to it. Or at least one who seems to know about it. The thief might well be tempted to bring it out if Lady Bedford were expressing an interest in buying such a volume. Do you see how that could be?”
Kate saw all too well.
“Or they might think it passing strange that Lady Bedford happens to by chance be interested in the book they have just stolen,” she said. “I think we need to come up with a better idea.” The other two looked at her. Lucy with a raised eyebrow and Ben Jonson with a frown.
“A better idea?” he echoed. “I am sure we would be delighted to hear any notion you might come up with but—”
Lucy saved him from planting both his feet in his mouth.
“Lady Catherine has a very astute mind. She is not as other young women of her age with her head distracted by fashion and gossip.” Then before Ben Jonson could say anything to that she gestured encouragingly to Kate. “So, what would you suggest?”
Kate folded her hands demurely in her lap.
“I did not say that I had a better plan, merely that we need one. I suggest we begin by looking at where the book was stolen from. Perhaps there is something there that might offer us a notion as to what happened. Could you show us this coffer? I would see where it is kept and what else is kept in it.” She thought, but did not say, that from Jonson’s level of distraction it would not surprise her in the least to find the book was still there, just pushed under something else. Her suggestion clearly took him by surprise.
“Oh?” He seemed to find the idea disquieting. “Are you sure that is necessary? I mean—”
“Of course, we need to see where the book was stolen from,” Lucy said and got to her feet. “Can you show us now?”
Ben Jonson wore the expression of a man overmastered by force majeure and did the only possible thing he could do, smile and then bow graciously. “As you wish, Lady Bedford.”
It was immediately clear to Kate why he had no wish to show them. The side room, which was at the back of the room they had been sitting in, was secure enough. It had a solid wooden door and Ben Jonson produced a key from a selection he wore on his belt to open it. But the coffer itself was old and battered, which was perhaps a better disguised place to conceal precious items than one that gleamed with inlays or new paint, but the lock on it was one Kate was sure she could have jiggled open without a key.
“The thief forced the lock?” Kate surmised, studying the coffer.
Jonson nodded miserably as he opened it.
Within were a large number of pages with notes and diagrams, clearly relating to the production of the masque and several books with titles such as Speculum Sophicum Rhodostauroticum and Artis Kabbalisticae Sive Sapientiae Divinae Academia and, looking oddly out of place, all three parts of Honoré d’Urfé’s romantic tale L’Astrée. But none of the books had a design on the front such as Jonson had described.
There was also a rather ornate box of the kind that might be used to hold jewellery. Lucy picked it up and opened it, her eyes widening as she looked inside. Then she turned the box around so Kate could see a chain made from golden seashells and hanging pearls.
“Your thief was not very discerning,” Lucy observed. “They take a book but leave this.”
Kate could only agree. Even if the book was a valuable one, any thief would surely have seized the opportunity to take something like this as well.
“Was the book on top of all these papers with the others?” she asked.
“Why no,” Jonson said. “I had it at the bottom of the chest. Most of these papers were not in here at the time I put the book in, but they were on top of it soon after.”
Following Lucy’s example Kate lifted the papers out and cleared aside a miniver and velvet gold embroidered collar with matching gloves, a pair of jewel studded buckles in the same seashell design as the chain and two more jewellery boxes, until she had reached the bottom of the coffer. There was no sign of any book there. She carefully restored all she had moved and straightened up.
“Does anyone else have a key to this room?” she asked. “Because it seems to me that whoever removed it from the coffer was not seeking financial gain, as that chain and the jewels would be much easier to break up and sell than such a highly distinctive book. I think they were interested only in that one particular item, and they must have known it was in here.”
“But if not for its value, who would want to steal such a book?” Lucy asked.
“I would rather imagine,” Kate said prosaically, “that a Rosicrucian might.”
Chapter Thirteen
Kate was not happy.
She tried hard to persuade Lucy that with the best will in the world there was nothing they could do to help Ben Jonson.
“We can hardly go around to everyone involved in the masque and slip mention of such a specific looking book into every conversation,” she pointed out, very reasonably in her opinion, as the coach took them back to Harington House. “Besides, even if we did, the thief is hardly going to admit their guilt. All it would do is ensure he or she took care to dispose of the book quickly.”
But that was not anything Lucy was willing to hear.
“We need to do something,” she insisted. “I truly cannot bear to see poor Ben so distressed. It will affect the performance of the masque too.”
And that was the challenge Kate took to bed with her—what ‘something’ could be done? In the absence of Xenie and having little inclination for the company of the girl Lucy had lent her, a quiet little thing called Deborah, she sat brushing her own hair. Her view was that, whether he be a wonderful writer or not, Mr Ben Jonson had dug himself into a pit and would just have to dig himself out of it. It was not so much that she was entirely unwilling to help him. She would for Lucy’s sake if it were at all possible, but she simply could see no way at all to do so.
From what Ben Jonson had shown them, it seemed that, far from being a secure storage place, the little side chamber where the coffer was kept was often left unlocked. Even when locked, the key was often lent out upon request as a number of tools and stage items were also stored there. Making a list of who might have had access would have been pointless as it would have included all the masquers and most of those working in the banqueting house to prepare the performance.
Sighing, Kate set aside her brush and quickly braided her hair before reaching for the brush again only to find she had picked up her hand mirror. Irritated, she put it down again. A mistake she sometimes made since both the brush and the mirror had identical embroidered backs. Both were the same oval shape and both…
The sudden surge of excitement almost had her heading to Lucy’s room, barefoot and clad in no more than her night smock and mantle. But common sense prevailed, and instead she took the germ of a plan to bed with her and spent a wakeful hour or so thinking it through before finally falling asleep.
Lucy was not as impressed with the idea as she had hoped. Mostly, Kate decided, because it involved spending money and that was something Lucy was never pleased to do. But in the end, she agreed, and they went again to the banqueting house in Whitehall.
If on the previous day it had seemed busy, today it was approaching frenetic. The stage had been fully assembled and what Kate first took to be clouds, but then realised were crested waves, hung suspended above it whilst a small forest was visible in the background. But currently it was the setting for a very different sort of drama to the one for which it was intended.
Ben Jonson stood with his hands on his hips snarling at the man in front of him who seemed to be of a similar age and tending to the same portly figure. But whereas Ben Jonson had a fuller, more florid face, this other man as yet retained sharper features. As they approached the stage, the cause of the argument became apparent.
“…and no, I will not change so much as a word. Be reasonable, man. Your contrivances must work within the masque, not the masque work to suit your contrivances.” Ben Jonson’s face looked redder than usual with outrage.
“My ‘contrivances’ as you call them, are not like your writing,” the other man shouted back, from which Kate assumed he must be Mr Inigo Jones, the man responsible for the staging of the masque. He stood with his arms folded tightly over his chest and wore an expression of determination that was easily the equal of Jonson’s outrage. “I can’t cross out a piece of scenery or have another suddenly in the right place. It has to be planned and constructed. It would be the work of a moment for you to change your script. For me to change this will take a day. You are the one who must be reasonable.”
It was hard to know where things might have gone between the two of them, but just as Ben Jonson drew a breath to give fire with his next cannonade, he caught sight of Lucy and Kate and underwent an instant transformation. He turned towards them and made a deep bow, one hand reaching out and gripping his opponent’s elbow to turn him in their direction too.
“Lady Bedford, Lady Catherine, I cannot tell you how delighted I am to see you both.” He sounded as if their arrival was a complete surprise.
“We are keen and eager to speak with you regarding the masque,” Lucy told him. “Lady Catherine is very excited at the notion of dancing in the revels.”
