By any other name, p.13
By Any Other Name, page 13
After the afternoon repast, Lady Bloomsbury claims she has a headache and goes to lie in her chamber. “You should join me, Catherine,” she calls to her daughter as she leaves. “Rest improves one’s complexion, and we are hosting guests tonight.”
“Yes, Mother, I’ll be there soon,” Catherine says obediently. But when her mother disappears, the girl turns to James breathlessly. “Now we may be merry!”
“Is merrymaking an activity your mother would not approve of?” I say.
Lady Catherine looks between me and her brother, brow puckered.
“Will is a friend,” Bloomsbury says simply.
“Then yes, Mother never lets me do anything!” The confession bursts from Catherine as though she has been keeping it in for quite some time. “And James has gone and left me with her for ages. He’s been an absolute monster to me.” She crosses her arms and jabs her brother with her elbow.
Lady Catherine is all of fifteen years old. I do not have much experience with women, much less if they also happen to be nobles. My eyes slide over to Bloomsbury, as though he’ll help me, but instead he just shoots me a wicked smile and says, “Catherine, what would you like to do this afternoon?”
She pivots to me, hands clasped eagerly. “Lord Hughes, where is your favorite place in all of London?”
There are several answers to this question. Often, it is whoever’s mouth my tongue happens to be in. Sometimes, ’tis at the bottom of an ale tankard. But it unexpectedly occurs to me that the Bloomsbury town house is far from the absolute worst place to be. In truth, if I factor in the plum preserves which the servants leave out for me every morning with sly smiles, then yes, this place makes my list. How mortifying! I must never let Bloomsbury know. “The Rose Theatre.”
Lady Catherine’s eyes become wide as saucers. Then they keep widening, and I am afraid they may plummet from their sockets. “Oh! Isn’t that where Master Marlowe puts on his plays?” she says in this soft, reverent voice that punches the air from my chest.
Hearing Marlowe’s name in this unexpected context bowls me over, and I can’t bring myself to say he’s dead. I square my jaw and look away. Unearthing Kit’s connection to the Pirate Queen is what I ought to be doing—not larking about with nobles.
However… Catherine’s expression is so sincere, her brow pinching with worry as she realizes she’s said something that upset me. She can’t be any older than my own sister.
I push a hand through my hair and blow out a hard breath. “Kit—I mean Marlowe—would be delighted to know a lady such as yourself enjoyed his work.” There was little Marlowe loved more than the corruption of young minds. I wonder if he had any inkling that somewhere in the countryside a noble lass was making a study of his mischief? My resolve strengthens. “We should go to the Rose. Marlowe would have wanted you to see it, my lady.”
Lady Catherine squeals and claps her hands. Bloomsbury whips toward me with an anxious look. “But the theaters are still closed for the plague,” he says.
“Not if you know how to break in,” I say with a grin.
An hour later, I’ve picked the lock to the Rose Theatre’s double doors.
Lady Catherine bursts past us, hefts her skirts, and climbs onstage. There she spins in slow circles, her eyes filled with wonder as she takes in the towering timber-and-lath walls, the soaring balconies. “Why, it’s gorgeous!”
Even though a noisy flock of rooks has taken up residence in the tiered seats and did Henslowe the help of carpeting the stage in shit, the Rose’s quiet majesty remains untouched. I can picture the crowds, thick as cream, as I performed Cleopatra’s and Bel-imperia’s passions. Zounds, the missing of it all makes my throat swell! Two months ago the Rose was my entire world, and now I’m here in clothes that cost more than I ever made as a player, pretending to be a man that I am not, all in a desperate gamble that shall change my life or snatch away what little there is left to be taken from me.
Lady Catherine hugs one of the support beams and sighs, looking longingly at the wings where the players would gather. “Oh, it would be a dream to have one of my plays performed here!”
My head snaps toward her. “Do you write too? Your brother didn’t mention his family had two playwrights.”
Lady Catherine bursts out with a peal of laughter. “James, writing? Why, he can barely string a sentence together! Did you know he had me write all his letters to his betrothed?”
Wait.
Bloomsbury does not write?
If this is true—and judging from the burgundy flush creeping across Bloomsbury’s neck, it’s very much true—then whose play was I managing before Marlowe’s murder?
I fold my arms and level a sharp stare at the blushing lord. “Is that so? How interesting. He told me witnessing one of his plays performed before his wedding night was his dearest wish.”
Lady Catherine is perfectly oblivious to our tiff. “I’ve always written, but Mother says I should take up the pin and not the quill, because no man would want a woman who writes. One day I shall prove her wrong.”
Though I have only just met Lady Catherine, I find myself liking her already. She may be noble, but she has not let that capture and crush her spirit yet. I take her hand and plant a courtier’s kiss upon her knuckles. “When you do, allow me to be the first to buy a ticket to your show, my lady.”
She giggles and grins.
Bloomsbury clears his throat awkwardly. “We should go. Mother will wake up soon, and I’ll have an earful of it if we’re both missing.” He pops over my shoulder as I lock the doors behind us, hands twisting nervously. “Could you… not tell Catherine about the rehearsals? It is one thing for me to risk my own reputation, but if word got out—”
“I shall not say anything. I promise.”
His body relaxes. “Thank you.” He wipes his brow and sighs. “You must truly think me a fool now.”
“Whatever for?”
“For courting the queen’s punishment and my family’s ruin to make my sister smile.”
“No,” I say, the word slipping out before I’m aware of what I am saying. “I mean, yes it was daft. But it is also sweet.” And it fills me to the brim with aching. Does my sister enjoy words like Lady Catherine? What of my brother? Though they are my closest kin in the entire world, they are also strangers to me. I haven’t seen them for nine years.
The sound of scuffling breaks out, followed by a gleeful shriek. Bloomsbury and I look at each other and then sprint down the alley where Catherine has disappeared. The rankness of decay and piss grows so pungent, my eyes begin to water. But there, at the end, is Catherine, squatting upon the ground, heedless of all the filth seeping into her skirts. She turns at Bloomsbury’s shout, clutching something dark and muddy in her arms. And—oh God, whatever it is, it’s wriggling.
“I heard whimpering!” Catherine hoists up a droopy-faced puppy. It licks her face, and she coos. “Where are your mother and siblings, little one?”
Bloomsbury and I share another look. The breeze changes, carrying with it a strong whiff of carrion. Likely this pup is the offspring of one of the bandogs used in the bear-baiting pits. They’ve been closed like the theaters, and I know the pit keepers don’t take good care of their animals.
“I am sure he can fend for himself,” Bloomsbury says.
Catherine clutches the fetid animal closer. “James, this is a baby! Can’t you see? He’ll die out here.”
The result of this, of course, is that the puppy returns with us, and we arrive back home irredeemably and inexcusably late.
Lady Bloomsbury herself waits in the stable yard. Were she not so committed to the ridiculous rules of propriety which govern the sexes, I believe she would pull Bloomsbury’s sword from its scabbard and behead us herself.
“Inside. Now,” she spits through clenched teeth. When she takes in Catherine, with her wind-swept hair and ruined gown, I swear the temperature drops and hoarfrost creeps out beneath her hem. “And you. How dare you do this now. Tell me, does it please you to make a mockery of our family’s name?”
Catherine takes a step behind her brother. “Mother, I—”
“The Middlemores are already here!” Lady Bloomsbury hisses so venomously, the chickens scatter. “I need you to go upstairs now and—”
“My lady?” Lord Middlemore is silhouetted at the door. Since last I saw him, some manservant has valiantly lost the battle to shape his great gray beard into something which resembles fashion. “There you are!” the lord croons, coming into the yard.
I glance over my shoulder—certain some new, nightmarish person has arrived—but no, instead Middlemore draws before Catherine, who seems utterly determined to never look at anything except the spot of the earth beneath her feet ever again. Though she is the one who ought to curtsy to Middlemore, because he outranks her, the lord drops to his knees before the girl and takes one of her dirty hands within his own. “I have missed you so, my dearest betrothed.”
And then the man old enough to be Catherine’s father tugs the puppy from her arms and presses a kiss against her clenched fist.
* * *
Inside, I pace beneath the wall of Bloomsbury’s miserable-looking ancestors and try to make sense of what I have just witnessed. “Catherine is—”
“Engaged to Lord Middlemore, yes—”
“Who is also—”
“My betrothed Anne’s father, yes—”
“So when you said you wanted to perform The Most Lamentable Tragedy of Abelard and Heloise before your wedding—”
“It was always about Catherine and her wedding, yes.” Bloomsbury throws himself against the wall with a thump that sets the gilded portraits trembling and drags both hands down his face.
I walk back and forth across the polished floor, hands on hips. While I knew the business of marriage was little more than the transaction of livestock among nobles, it’s another thing entirely to witness it. ’Tis a hard thing to be a woman in this world: everyone is a pawn or a plaything or both. Which one is it, I wonder, for Lord Middlemore, who aims to marry a girl younger than his own daughter? A wave of revulsion rises within me. I cease pacing and pivot to Bloomsbury. “This is why you want to discover the answers to Marlowe’s plot as soon as possible. So you can spare your sister from marrying Middlemore.”
A tendon cords in his neck. “Yes. If I could restore my family’s standing with the queen, then—yes—Catherine would no longer be forced to wed this toad.”
I shake my head. “I don’t understand. Why did your parents agree to have both you and your sister marry into this family?”
“Those were Middlemore’s conditions. If my family was to receive his daughter’s dowry, then my parents had to agree to the betrothal for my sister. Middlemore thinks… he thinks it’ll make me more obedient to go along with his plans in the New World.” He laughs helplessly at the absurdity of it all. “And he’s right, because I’ll do anything for Catherine! But if I can do the queen this service, if I can unravel this plot for her and prove that I’m a better person than my father is, then I shall ask her to intervene and stop my sister’s marriage. I do not think she relishes the idea of Middlemore wedded to such a young girl, because she told me as much when she approved of my engagement. If the queen revokes her approval, Middlemore will have no choice but to listen to her. He’ll have to find another bride.”
I fight a cold shudder and thank God once more for not making me a member of the creepy nobility. “When is the marriage supposed to take place?”
His shoulders slump. “A fortnight from today.”
So much of Bloomsbury’s strangeness makes sense now. His urgency, his willingness to pay me so extravagantly. He’s just a lad scheming desperately to save his sister. This is the secret he’s been keeping cradled close. I suck in a soft breath, the hairs rising on my arms.
I’ve been drawn to him because our innermost selves are knapped from the same stone.
“Why didn’t you say so sooner?” My whisper is swallowed by the huge high ceiling. “I would’ve understood. I could’ve done more.”
Bloomsbury looks up at me from the curtain of his hair. Something unreadable flickers across his face. “I didn’t think you’d care.”
I duck my head, shame roiling over me. The noise of the household preparing for dinner grows so distant, it might as well come from another land.
“You were right before.” The edge of my smallest finger traces down his, a feather-light plea. “But I care now.”
The words linger between us like a physical thing. I can’t take them back.
But when his mouth goes soft with surprise, I don’t want to.
I want him to know I mean every one of them.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE NIGHT OF the Pirate Queen’s play arrives.
’Tis also the day of Queen Elizabeth’s midsummer feast.
As a guest of the Bloomsbury household, I am expected to attend the royal festivities with the family. But as a bloke in the throes of food poisoning sent from the devil himself, I am excused from the odious event.
In my chambers, I groan again and pour a slop of oats into the chamber pot. They make a chunky splat. I pour a bit of water in afterward for an extra tinkle.
Someone knocks. “Hughes? Is everything all right?”
I toss more slop into the pot and follow it up by blowing a tremendous raspberry. “Bloomsbury, I fear I have been taken ill!”
I can feel his sigh through the door. A wicked grin splits my lips. I saved this last bit especially for him.
“Does this mean you’re, ah, indisposed for the night?” he says.
I blow another raspberry. “Oh my, I am afraid so! Do give all of court my apologies!”
Having overheard my illness, none of the servants dare bother me. Once the rattle of carriage wheels fades, I change into the servant clothes stashed beneath my bed and rifle through the smallclothes drawer until my fingers caress something smooth and cold. The bottle of poison from Marlowe’s pocket.
The liquid sloshes thickly, like congealing blood. Bloomsbury has insisted I take it along, hoping that the Pirate Queen’s plundering will have acquainted her with whatever lies within the glass. I wrap the bottle in a scrap of linen and tuck it in my breast pocket alongside my cross. I steal through the house and exit out the scullery door, none of the servants any the wiser.
London has already begun its midsummer revels. Screams of laughter burst from the alehouses, and the street corners come alive with music and mischief. The whistle and pop of fireworks rend the air, and smudgy clouds of brimstone billow beneath the eaves. Shut up by the plague for weeks, now the entire city quivers like a starving bandog at the end of its lead, and I know not what would happen should the lead snap.
The jumble only grows wilder as I make my way to Gráinne Ní Mháille’s ship. Even from the quay I can hear the roar of merriment and smell the funk of strong drink and the spice of roasted meat. I flash a wooden coin etched with the Pirate Queen’s insignia to the pirate standing guard at the gangplank, and he lets me pass. The coin came tucked in a folded-up sonnet stuffed in the groove of the front door. Shakespeare came through after all. I wish he’d stop leaving me awful poems, but I suppose I can’t complain about a free invitation to a private party.
Lanterns wink at the ship’s sides like tethered stars as I climb on board. On the deck there are games and stories all spilling over one another in a dozen languages: ones I expect and speak snippets of after all my time in London, like Gaelic and Welsh and Cornish, but also stranger ones like German and Breton. I spot Réamonn, the pirate lad I met before, three tankards of ale around him, deep in conversation with Shakespeare.
“And it had ten arms and a beak like an eagle, and, I swear, when it looked at me with its eye, I saw Satan himself in there.” The boy thumps his chest and takes a solemn swallow of beer.
“Interesting,” Shakespeare murmurs, a dreamy cast to his eyes. Doubtlessly, he’s already made it a plot device in some play. “How many legs did it have again?”
“At least a score,” the boy says.
I skirt along the crowd—which is no small feat, considering how many people have forced themselves onto this blasted ship—until I spot the doors leading to its forbidden lower decks. My pulse quickens. I haven’t seen the Pirate Queen yet, so she must be there.
I ease the door open. Just as I’m about to slip inside, a giant of a man bursts out from nowhere and seizes my shirt, lifting me to my toes. “Where do you think yer going? Trying to worm yer way inside, eh?”
I lie limp as a dishrag in the pirate’s meaty paw. “The ale’s all gone! Where do you lot keep the kegs?”
The sailor rolls his eyes and tosses me back into the crowd, roaring, “Oy! Can somebody get this lad a drink?”
Several tankards are thrust beneath my nose. Above them a scarred hand emerges from the shadows and shoos the offerings away. Out from the ship’s hold prowls the Pirate Queen. She’s dressed like her men, and feral red curls shot through with silver cascade over her shoulders. She’s far older than I thought—old enough to be a grandmother—but there’s nothing matronly about the smirk she shoots me. “Here, pretty lad, take this.” She presses her own tankard into my hands.
And then she winks at me.
I stare, flabbergasted, as she steps past.
“Shakespeare!” she bellows. “You promised us a play!”
The crowd scrambles as the players are pulled from their games, cups, and whatever else they’re into. I press through the people until I’m as close to the queen as I dare to be and sit through Shakespeare’s play for once as an audience member and not a performer, thank God. ’Tis something about twins and pirates and mistaken identities. I want to loathe it on principle, but its jests make me laugh. Shakespeare is a fine writer. With practice, he could likely be one day as good as Marlowe. Or—and at this thought my hands tighten—rather, with Marlowe gone, Shakespeare is the best playwright in all of England. I sorely hope no one has informed him of this fact, as it’ll go straight to his head. Knowing Shakespeare, he’s already thought of it himself and is telling anyone who will listen.
