Murder by Misrule

  ***

  Later that week, Stephen commandeered the benchers' dais after supper to conduct a review of the men he had chosen for his embassy to the Inner Temple. He sat in the center seat, with his privy council on his left and his new toadies on his right. Each would-be retainer was obliged to array himself in the costume he proposed to wear and present himself for the Prince's approval.

  "Cross garters? In 1586?" Stephen scoffed. "What's next, a codpiece? Are you perchance on your way to the annual dinner of the Fishmonger's Guild? Away with you! Your ensemble pains my eyes even by candlelight."

  The hall was lively that evening. Half of the room had been cleared for dancing. Flutes and tambors wove a musical thread through the general tapestry of noise. The other half of the hall was devoted to gaming: dice, tables, and primero. Tom preferred to spend his money on things that he could keep, like gloves and buttons, but the house took a percentage of every bet. Another cut went into the pockets of the butler and under butler. The rest was used to fund the revelries; so, in a sense, all losses were gains.

  Stephen judged costumes with the zeal other men gave to Parliamentarian debate. He ought to have been born a tailor. He had an impeccable eye for line and color and an intuitive sense of when a man had gone too far with his embellishments. "A ruff should frame the face, not block the doorway," he pronounced. Tom quite agreed.

  Many men were eager to receive his advice. The season of Misrule was a welcome opportunity to shed the gloomy hues legislated by the benchers. A man could scarcely cover his naked frame without perforce dropping a shilling in the box. Were they monks? They were not. They were men of the world. Tom was grateful for Stephen's tutelage in this area. Knowing how to dress for every occasion was likely to be more useful to him in the long run than the forms of action or Aristotle's rhetoric.

  Tom, Trumpet, and Ben contributed to the judging by tossing dried peas at the worst sartorial offenders and whistling and stamping their feet for costumes of exceptional artistry.

  Bacon and a group of barristers sat at the ancients' table working on the Christmas Eve masque. Trumpet's uncle, Nathaniel Welbeck, kept waddling over and quacking insults. Humphries pattered behind him as usual, bleating short laughs. He'd gotten bolder lately; he even dared a few jibes of his own. Bacon treated them both with supercilious disdain, but Tom detected a tremor of effort in the display.

  "He doesn't seem to be having much fun," Tom said. "I thought he wanted to be Reader. You said it was a huge honor."

  "It is," Ben said, "but it's also a huge amount of work. And it's stirring up all the old resentments with the other ancients. I'm honestly worried about his health. But he insists on driving himself to write this masque on top of everything else."

  "He should have turned down the Readership," Trumpet said. "My uncle says —"

  "Your uncle is the chief offender," Ben retorted. "He and Humphries will drive poor Mr. Bacon into an early grave."

  Tom tuned them out. He didn't care a fig about politics at Gray's. He wanted to think about Clara, to invoke her beauty in his mind's eye and remember the shivery thrill of her muted consonants and voluptuous vowels. He felt full of thrumming energies, straining to be unleashed.

  "Her lips are too big." Trumpet broke into his reverie. He sounded like he'd been pondering the topic for some time and had reached a final ruling. "They seem unwholesome, like overripe fruit."

  "Her lips are magnificent," Tom said.

  "Her eyes are too deeply set," Trumpet said. "They look secretive, ill-tempered. That type doesn't age well. Trust me, in a few years, she'll look like a hag."

  "Angels never age." Tom's love was imperturbable.

  "The thing that bothered me," Ben said, leaning across Trumpet, "was that she never answered the question about her marital status."

  Tom shrugged. "Stephen frightened her. And you confused her, barging in with your questions. English is not her native tongue, may I remind you. If it were, she couldn't say Tom in that delightful way." He pronounced it again, softening his voice and rounding his lips: "Tom."

  Trumpet groaned. "I need more wine." He waved at the under butler who was monitoring a boisterous game of dice. The man raised a questioning hand and Trumpet mimed filling a cup from a pitcher. The under butler nodded and drifted off toward the buttery.

  "She was evasive," Ben said, unconvinced. "Something isn't right. And what of that last?" He looked at Trumpet.

  "I wondered about that too." Trumpet met his gaze. "I thought she said, 'But he was neither.'"

  "That's what I heard," Ben said. "Meaning that the second barrister was neither tall nor redheaded. Meaning it couldn't have been Mr. Shiveley. Didn't you hear it that way, Tom?"

  "No. And if I did, why would I care? It's over. Case closed."

  Trumpet and Ben traded dour looks. "It isn't over," Ben said. "Shiveley may have been the Catholic conspirator, but I don't think he was the murderer."

  "I don't think so either," Trumpet said. "Not the murderer, I mean. He was probably the conspirator."

  "Mr. Bacon said the matter was closed and we were free to enjoy the revels." Tom shot a sly grin at Ben. "Are you disputing the foremost legal mind of his generation?"

  Ben frowned. "No, of course not. But —"

  "Cheer up," Tom said. "Maybe someone else will die mysteriously and we'll get to investigate again. I'll be the first to volunteer. However —" He held up his index finger. "Dead men do not love."

  "Oh, spare us!" Trumpet pretended to be choking on Tom's rhetoric. The pretense turned into a real cough. Luckily, the under butler arrived with a fresh pitcher of wine. Trumpet opened his purse and drew out a few coins to pay for it.

  "Those are nice and shiny." Tom plucked one out of Trumpet's hand to examine it. "Like the ones in Shiveley's box. Where'd you get them?"

  "From my uncle."

  Tom turned to Stephen. "Look, Your Grace, what do think of these? Nice, no?"

  "Very nice." Stephen took the coin and turned it over and over, admiring its silvery sheen. He said to the under butler, "Let's hold back a supply of these, as you find them. I'll use them for special tips."

  "Very good, my lord." The under butler held his palm out to receive the coin. Stephen made him wait; he loved to make people wait these days.

  Tom snatched it from him and dropped it in the servant's hand. "Let the man get back to the tables, Your Grand Purpoolishness. You need the revenues."

  Stephen treated him to a display of earlish disdain. Tom marveled at how little it impressed him. Once upon a time, it would have had him scrambling to make up.

  Now all he wanted was to gaze endlessly into a pair of sapphire eyes. He murmured to himself, rounding his lips in a kissable pucker, "Welwet welts."

  Ben chuckled. Trumpet groaned. "Here we go again."

  "He can't understand anything but poetry," Ben said. "We'll have to speak his own language. Let's see . . ." He thought a moment and began a verse. "Not Cupid's arrows cause my heart to melt, nor— uh—" He waved his hand in a circle as if summoning a line. "Nor Cupid's footsies tread my wool to felt?"

  Trumpet, giggling in short spurts, added, "Nor Cupid's farts which here we've surely smelt."

  Stephen laughed in genuine mirth for the first time that evening. He intoned the final line: "Nought sears my soul like Clara's welwet welt."

  Tom sat in silence for a full half minute, staring into his cup of wine, nodding his head with a half smile playing about his lips. Then he said, in a mock Italian accent, "I will draw and quarter each and every one of you and stake your heads over the Temple Bar."