INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES
ALSO BY JENNIFER LEE CARRELL
The Speckled Monster
INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES
Jennifer Lee Carrell
DUTTON
DUTTON
Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © 2007 by Jennifer Lee Carrell
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Carrell, Jennifer Lee.
Interred with their bones: a novel / Jennifer Lee Carrell.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-1012-1384-1
1. Murder—Fiction. 2. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Influence—Fiction. 3. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Authorship—Fiction. 4. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Dramatic production—Fiction. 5. Globe Theatre (London, England: 1996–)—Fiction. I. Title
PS3603.A77438167 2007
813'.6—dc22 2007016157
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For
Johnny
Kristen
Mom & Dad
All the titles of good fellowship come to you
INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones….
—William Shakespeare
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
ACT I
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
INTERLUDE
ACT II
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
INTERLUDE
ACT III
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
INTERLUDE
ACT IV
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
INTERLUDE
ACT V
CHAPTER 46
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
June 29, 1613
FROM THE RIVER, it looked as if two suns were setting over London.
One was sinking in the west, streaming ribbons of glory in pink and melon and gold. It was the second sun, though, that had conjured an unruly flotilla of boats and barges, skiffs and wherries, onto the dark surface of the Thames: Across from the broken tower of St. Paul’s, a sullen orange sphere looked to have missed the horizon altogether and rammed itself into the southern bank. Hunkering down amid the taverns and brothels of Southwark, it spiked vicious blades of flame at the night.
It wasn’t, of course, another sun, though men who fancied themselves poets sent that conceit rippling from boat to boat. It was—or had been—a building. The most famous of London’s famed theaters—the hollow wooden O, round seat of the city’s dreams, the great Globe itself—was burning. And all of London had turned out on the water to watch.
The earl of Suffolk included. “Upon Sodom and Gomorrah, the Lord rained down fire from heaven,” purred the earl, gazing south from the floating palace of his private barge. In his office of lord chamberlain of England, Suffolk ran the king’s court. Such a disaster befalling the King’s Men—His Majesty’s own beloved company of actors who not only played at the Globe when they weren’t playing at court, but who owned the place—might have been expected to disturb him. To scuff, at the very least, the sheen of his pleasure. But the two men sitting with him beneath the silken awning gave no sign of surprise as they sipped wine, contemplating the catastrophe.
Their silence left Suffolk unsatisfied. “Gorgeous, isn’t it?” he prompted.
“Gaudy,” snapped his white-haired uncle, the earl of Northampton, still lean and elegant in his mid-seventies.
The youngest of the three, Suffolk’s son and heir, Theophilus, Lord Howard de Walden, leaned forward with the intensity of a young lion eyeing prey. “Our revenge will burn even brighter in the morning, when Mr. Shakespeare and company learn the truth.”
Northampton fixed his great-nephew with hooded eyes. “Mr. Shakespeare and his company, as you put it, will learn nothing of the kind.”
For a heartbeat, Theo sat frozen in his great-uncle’s stare. Then he rose and hurled his goblet forward into the bottom of the barge, splattering servants’ saffron-yellow liveries with dark leopard spots of wine. “They have mocked my sister on the public stage,” he cried. “No amount of conniving by old men shall deprive my honor of satisfaction.”
“My lord nephew,” said Northampton over his shoulder to Suffolk. “With remarkable consistency, your offspring exhibit an unfortunate strain of rashness. I do not know whence it comes. It is not a Howard trait.”
His attention flicked back to Theo, whose right hand was closing and opening convulsively over the hilt of his sword. “Gloating over one’s enemies is a simpleton’s revenge,” said the old earl. “Any peasant can achieve it.” At his nod, a servant offered another goblet
to Theo, who took it with poor grace. “Far more enthralling,” continued Northampton, “to commiserate with your foe and force him to offer you thanks—even as he suspects you, but cannot say why.”
As he spoke, a small skiff drew up alongside the barge. A man slid over the rail and glided toward Northampton, shunning the light like a wayward shadow slinking home to its body. “Anything worth doing at all, as Seyton here will tell you,” continued Northampton, “is worth doing exquisitely. Who does it is of little consequence. Who knows who did it is of no consequence at all.” Seyton knelt before the old earl, who put a hand on his shoulder. “My lord of Suffolk and my sulking great-nephew are as curious as I am to hear your report.”
The man cleared his throat softly. His voice, like the rest of his clothing and even his eyes, was of an indeterminate hue between gray and black. “It began, my lord, when the players’ gunner took sick unexpected this morning. His substitute seems to have loaded the cannon with loose wadding. One might even suspect it had been soaked in pitch.” His mouth curved in what might have been a sly smile.
“Go on,” said Northampton with a wave.
“The play this afternoon was a relatively new one, called All Is True. About King Henry the Eighth.”
“Great Harry,” murmured Suffolk, trailing one hand in the water. “The old queen’s father. Dangerous territory.”
“In more ways than one, my lord,” answered Seyton. “The play calls for a masque and parade, including a cannon salute. The gun duly fired, but the audience was so taken with the flummery onstage that no one noticed sparks landing on the roof. By the time someone smelled smoke, the roof thatch was ringed with fire, and there was nothing to do but flee.”
“Casualties?”
“Two injured.” His eyes flickered toward Theo. “A man called Shelton.”
Theo started. “How?” he stammered. “Hurt how?”
“Burned. Not badly. But spectacularly. From my perch—a fine one, if I may say so—I saw him take control of the scene, organizing the retreat from the building. Just when it seemed everyone had got out, a young girl appeared at an upper window. A pretty thing, with wild dark hair and mad eyes. A witch child, if ever I saw one.
“Before anyone could stop him, Mr. Shelton ran back inside. Minutes passed, and the crowd began to weep, when he leapt through a curtain of fire with the girl in his arms, his backside aflame. One of the Southwark queens tossed a barrel of ale at him, and he disappeared again, this time in a cloud of steam. It turned out that his breeches had caught fire, but he was, miraculously, little more than scorched.”
“Where is he?” cried Theo. “Why have you not brought him back with you?”
“I hardly know the man, my lord,” demurred Seyton. “And besides, he’s the hero of the hour. I could not disentangle him from the crowd with any sort of discretion.”
With a glance of distaste at his great-nephew, Northampton leaned forward. “The child?”
“Unconscious,” said Seyton.
“Pity,” said the old earl. “But children can prove surprisingly strong.” Something wordless passed between the old earl and his servant. “Perhaps she’ll survive.”
“Perhaps,” said Seyton.
Northampton sat back. “And the gunner?”
Once again, Seyton’s mouth curved in the ghost of a smile. “Nowhere to be found.”
Nothing visibly altered in Northampton’s face; all the same, he radiated dark satisfaction.
“It’s the Globe that matters,” fretted Suffolk.
Seyton sighed. “A total loss, my lord. The building is engulfed, the tiring-house behind it, with the company’s store of gowns and cloaks, foil jewels, wooden swords and shields…all gone. John Heminges stood in the street, blubbering for his sweet palace of a playhouse, his accounts, and most of all, his playbooks. The King’s Men, my lords, are without a home.”
Across the water, a great roar shot skyward. What was left of the building imploded, collapsing into a pile of ash and glimmering embers. A sudden hot gust eddied across the water, swirling with a black snowfall of soot.
Theo howled in triumph. Beside him, his father ran a fastidious hand over his hair and beard. “Mr. Shakespeare will never again so much as jest at the name of Howard.”
“Not in my lifetime, or in yours,” said Northampton. Silhouetted by the fire, heavy eyelids drooping over inscrutable eyes, his nose sharpened by age, he looked the very essence of a demonic god carved from dark marble. “But never is an infinite long time.”
ACT I
1
June 29, 2004
WE ARE ALL haunted. Not by unexplained rappings or spectral auras, much less headless horsemen and weeping queens—real ghosts pace the battlements of memory, endlessly whispering, Remember me. I began to learn this sitting alone at sunset on a hill high above London. At my feet, Hampstead Heath spilled into the silver-gray sea of the city below. On my knees glimmered a small box wrapped in gold tissue and ribbon. In the last rays of daylight, a pattern of vines and leaves, or maybe moons and stars, swam beneath the surface of the paper.
I cupped the box in both palms and held it up. “What’s this?” I’d asked earlier that day, my voice carving through the shadows of the lower gallery at the Globe Theatre, where I was directing Hamlet. “An apology? A bribe?”
Rosalind Howard, flamboyantly eccentric Harvard Professor of Shakespeare—part Amazon, part earth mother, part gypsy queen—had leaned forward intently. “An adventure. Also, as it happens, a secret.”
I’d slipped my fingers under the ribbon, but Roz reached out and stopped me, her green eyes searching my face. She was fiftyish, with dark hair cut so short as to be boyish; long, shimmering earrings dangled from her ears. In one hand, she held a wide-brimmed white hat set with peonies in lush crimson silk—an outrageous affair that seemed to have been plucked from the glamour days of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly. “If you open it, you must follow where it leads.”
Once, she’d been both my mentor and my idol, and then almost a second mother. While she’d played the matriarch, I’d played the dutiful disciple—until I’d decided to leave academics for the theater three years before. Our relationship had frayed and soured even before I left, but my departure had shorn it asunder. Roz made it clear that she regarded my flight from the ivory tower as a betrayal. Escape was how I thought of it; absconded was the term I’d heard that she favored. But that remained hearsay. In all that time, I’d heard no word of either regret or reconciliation from her, until she’d shown up at the theater without warning that afternoon demanding an audience. Grudgingly, I’d cut a fifteen-minute break from rehearsal. Fifteen minutes more, I told myself, than the woman had any right to expect.
“You’ve been reading too many fairy tales,” I’d answered aloud, sliding the box back across the table. “Unless it leads straight back into rehearsal, I can’t accept.”
“Quicksilver Kate,” she’d said with a rueful smile. “Can’t or won’t?”
I remained stubbornly mute.
Roz sighed. “Open or closed, I want you to have it.”
“No.”
She cocked her head, watching me. “I’ve found something, sweetheart. Something big.”
“So have I.”
Her gaze swept around the theater, its plain oak galleries stacked three stories high, curving around the jutting platform of the stage so extravagantly set into gilt and marble backing at the opposite end of the courtyard. “Quite a coup, of course, to direct Hamlet at the Globe. Especially for a young American—and a woman to boot. Snobbiest crowd on the planet, the British theater. Can’t think of anyone I’d rather see shake up their insular little world.” Her eyes slid back toward me, flickering briefly over the gift perched between us. “But this is bigger.”
I stared at her in disbelief. Was she really asking me to shake the dust of the Globe from my feet and follow her, based on nothing more than a few teasing hints and the faint gravitational pull of a small gold-wrapped box?
&n
bsp; “What is it?” I asked.
She shook her head. “’Tis in my memory locked, and you yourself shall keep the key of it.”
Ophelia, I’d groaned to myself. From her, I’d have expected Hamlet, the lead role, and center stage every time. “Can you stop speaking in riddles for two minutes strung together?”
She motioned toward the door with a small jerk of her head. “Come with me.”
“I’m in the middle of rehearsal.”
“Trust me,” she said, leaning forward. “You won’t want to miss being in on this.”
Rage flared through me; I rose so quickly I knocked several books off the table.
The coy teasing drained from her eyes. “I need help, Kate.”
“Ask someone else.”
“Your help.”
Mine? I frowned. Roz had any number of friends in the theater; she would not need to come to me for questions about Shakespeare on the stage. The only other subject she cared about and that I knew better than she did stretched between us like a minefield: my dissertation. I had written on occult Shakespeare. The old meaning of the word occult, I always hastened to add. Not so much darkly magical, as hidden, obscured, secret. In particular, I’d studied the many strange quests, mostly from the nineteenth century, to find secret wisdom encoded in the works of the Bard. Roz had found the topic as quirky and fascinating as I did—or so she had claimed in public. In private, I’d been told, she had torpedoed it, dismissing it as beneath true scholarship. And now she wanted my help?