“This is bigger.” Roz’s words. I realized that, even as I said them.
His eyebrows bristled. “Bigger than safeguarding seventy-nine First Folios?”
“A manuscript.”
His eyes narrowed. “What kind of manuscript?”
“One of Shakespeare’s.”
Silence cut between us. “That’s a pretty tall claim, Dr. Stanley.” His eyes flicked past me. “You look like her, you know.” He gestured behind me, and I glanced back to see Queen Elizabeth. “A great queen,” he continued, “but she could lie through her teeth to get what she wanted.”
“I’ve walked into a trap to ask for your help, Dr. Sanderson.”
“I expect that’s not quite true, and that your brooding Mr. Hall here has a weapon. In any case, if, as you say, you’re not the culprit, the trap’s not set for you. Though I take it your search has something to do with the burning—or stealing—of the Folios.”
“I’m not the one burning and stealing. But I’m on the same trail as the thief. I want to reach the end of it before he does. I’m not asking you to do anything dangerous or wrong. All I need is some help picking up the trail of one woman.”
He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, folding his hands atop the catalog. “What do you have to offer in exchange?”
I remained standing. “Part credit, when I find it.”
“And the manuscript?” His voice tightened with hunger and curiosity.
“It belongs in a library.”
“Such as the Folger?” He made no move, but the air between us quivered with tension.
Slowly, I nodded.
He pushed the catalog across the table. “What is it you want?”
“The woman in question wrote to the Bacon estate in 1881 and was given permission to research Delia’s papers. I’m hoping to find a lead to her.”
Dr. Sanderson shook his head. “I’m afraid our records for that will only be as good as the family’s were.”
Ben had picked up the catalog, leafing through. “She’s not here,” he said, returning it to the table.
“What was her name?” asked Dr. Sanderson.
“Ophelia,” I answered.
“Apropos, for someone researching a madwoman.”
“Ophelia Fayrer Granville.”
Dr. Sanderson let out a hoot. “You’re after the Granville letter.”
“You know it?” I asked.
“I know of one letter by Ophelia Granville in our collection, but you won’t find it in the Bacon catalog. She wrote it to Emily Folger, one of our founders, in the early thirties. Mrs. Granville was the daughter of Delia Bacon’s doctor, the man who first committed Delia. He ran a private asylum in Henley-in-Arden. Near Stratford.”
“Upon Avon?”
“Of course ‘upon Avon.’ If I meant Ontario, I’d say so. You’ll want to see the brooch, too, I expect.”
“Brooch?”
“The one she sent to Emily Folger with the letter. You’re wearing a copy of it there on your shoulder. Museum-quality reproduction, exclusive to our gift shop. You didn’t know that?”
Pinned to my blouse, the brooch felt suddenly heavy. A brooch had come with the letter? And had been copied? I tried not to sound as startled as I felt. “Roz gave it to me.”
“Not surprising,” said Dr. Sanderson. “It was her idea that we should copy it.” Rising, he set the chair back exactly where it had been and retrieved the Bacon catalog. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have seventy-nine Folios to count and one letter to pull. It will take some time, but I’ll be back as soon as I finish. Meanwhile, so long as you remain in this room, the FBI will not hear of your presence from me.” He turned for the door through which he’d come.
“One more thing,” I said.
His shoulders set with impatience. “On top of everything else, I also have a major conference opening in twenty minutes. I can only do so much.”
“This thief. He doesn’t just steal and burn. He kills.”
“Professor Howard,” he said softly.
I nodded. “He killed again last night. Maxine Tom, at the Preston Archive in Utah. And he’s tried once for me.”
Dr. Sanderson grimaced. “Thank you. Perhaps you will let me give you a warning in return. I was told it was Mrs. Preston who wished to see this catalog. Are you in league with her?”
“I’m not sure that’s—”
“Be careful, Dr. Stanley.”
“About Athenaide?”
His eyebrows furled in a single foreboding line. “Reputation, my dear, reputation. Lose it, and you have lost the immortal part of yourself. What remains is no more than bestial.” Abruptly, he darted out the corner door. It closed, and I heard the lock click into place.
A moment later, a knock came at the main door. “It’s Athenaide,” she said. “Open up.”
Motioning me behind him, Ben drew his gun, unlocking the door with his other hand.
“No luck with the Howards,” said Athenaide as she stepped inside, carrying a pile of books. “And now the Reading Room’s closed.”
Ben was shutting the door after her, when someone outside said, “Athenaide, wait!” and barreled in after her.
It was Matthew Morris.
“I thought I made it clear I was not to be disturbed,” said Athenaide icily.
“Why do you think I’m playing errand boy?” Matthew retorted. “Everyone else is quaking in their—Kate!” Then he caught sight of Ben’s gun and went still. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Really.”
Ben shut the door.
“Of course she’s fine,” said Athenaide.
“Who’s the cowboy, then?” asked Matthew.
“Protection,” said Athenaide. “Now, what was it you so urgently needed to tell me?”
Matthew looked askance at Ben’s gun and then faced Athenaide. “At the moment, it looks as if I’ll go unopposed at the debate tonight. Your protégé hasn’t shown.”
Dropping the books on the table, Athenaide pulled a phone from her purse. “Wait, please,” she said curtly, walking off to a corner as she dialed.
“Protégé?” I asked Matthew.
“Wesley North,” he said with a grin.
I did a double take. “The Wesley North? Author of Truer Than Truth?” It was the first major book to argue the case for the earl of Oxford as Shakespeare, and argue it well, in a bona fide academic style, as opposed to the style and tone of a querulous amateur.
“One and the same,” said Matthew. “I’m to debate him as part of the opening festivities of this blasted conference. Dr. Sanderson fingered me to uphold orthodoxy, and I agreed mostly because I couldn’t turn down the chance to see Mr. Mystery.”
“You’ve never met him?”
“Never laid eyes on him. Neither has anyone else. Not even Athenaide, I’ll bet. He teaches at an online university, and he’s never come to a conference before. Unfortunately, it looks like that streak might continue unbroken.”
“What kind of conference is this?”
“You haven’t heard?” From his computer bag, he pulled a program and set it in my hands. Ben leaned in to look over my shoulder.
Red letters blazoned the title across the top of a glossy brochure: WHO WAS SHAKESPEARE?
I looked up quickly. “You’re kidding.”
“Dead serious,” answered Matthew. “Though it has potential for being pretty entertaining. There are papers on all the major candidates: the earl of Oxford, Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Queen Elizabeth—”
“Queen Elizabeth?” asked Ben in disbelief.
“Oh, it gets better than that frigid old bat,” said Matthew with a dismissive wave at the queen’s portrait. “Henry Howard, the earl of Surrey, for example, who died forty years before Shakespeare’s first play hit the stage. And Daniel Defoe, who was born forty years after. Or my personal favorite, the otherwise unknown Frenchman named Jacques Pierre.”
I caught Matthew’s name on the schedule for Saturday
morning. “‘Shakespeare and the Fires of Secret Catholicism’?”
“Going head to head with the Archmage Wayland Smith on ‘Shakespeare, the Brethren of the Rosy Cross, and the Knights Templar,’” said Ben. “Tough competition.”
“The archmage has a vivid fantasy life,” Matthew said archly. “I have evidence. And in any case, I’ve been reslotted.” He looked at me with eyes full of pity. “I’m the new keynote speaker.”
“Find him,” I heard Athenaide say. She hung up and came back toward us. “You’re not off the hook yet,” she said to Matthew. “Tell the fussbudgets in the office that we’ll find him.” When Matthew didn’t move, she added, “Please.”
He hesitated. “You’re sure you’re okay?” he asked me.
“As long as the police don’t find me.”
The color drained from his face. “I’m so sorry. I thought—”
“It’s all right.”
He fished out a card. Jotting his cell number on it, he thrust it into my hand. “Just promise that you’ll call if you need help.”
I pocketed the card. “I’ll be fine, Matthew.”
“Meanwhile,” prompted Athenaide, “I’ve asked for your help.”
Cautiously, Ben opened the door, and Matthew left.
“Wesley North,” I said accusingly, as the door closed.
She ignored me. “How did your chat with Nicholas go?”
Nicholas? Nobody called Dr. Sanderson Nicholas. Not even Roz. Quickly, I told Athenaide about Ophelia, her connection with Delia, and the letter that was not in the Bacon papers. I kept the brooch, however, to myself. That had been Roz’s gift to me, and I saw no reason, yet, to share it. “We’re waiting for Dr. Sanderson to come back with the letter,” I said. “Meanwhile, we can stick to my point. You’re an Oxfordian, Athenaide.”
“Vero nihil verius,” she said, spreading her hands.
I knew that phrase. Latin for “Nothing truer than truth.” But it was no random platitude. It was the earl of Oxford’s motto. A password of sorts, belonging to the Shakespearean demimonde. A fringe world filled with all kinds of madness.
Athenaide smiled ruefully. “She does not compliment me, Mr. Pearl, on having attended the University of Oxford, which in any case would make me an Oxonian, not an Oxfordian. Nor does she point to familial roots in Oxford, either in England or in Mississippi.” Taking the brochure, she folded it back to show the portrait of a man in a white high-collared doublet, his ruff edged with black lace. Dark hair and a close-clipped beard edged a heart-shaped face; his nose was long and supercilious. He fingered a golden boar suspended around his neck on a black ribbon.
“By Oxfordian,” continued Athenaide, “she means that I believe that the plays we call Shakespeare’s were actually written by the man you see pictured before you. Edward de Vere, the seventeenth earl of Oxford.” She shifted her gaze to me, her eyes bright and defiant. “She means that I am a heretic.”
26
“I NEVER USED that word.”
“You used that tone,” she admonished. “How quickly we fall from praise to damnation where faith is concerned.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but Athenaide cut me off. “Shakespeare, Mr. Pearl, is not just art. It’s a religion.”
“It’s also a science,” I retorted. “Based on evidence.”
“And you have sifted the evidence? All the evidence?” She turned to Ben. “The Stratfordians own the universities and institutions like this one. And the universities own the Truth. They do not teach the loopholes, the competing evidence. Only what they have decided is true.”
“That’s unfair.”
“Is it?”
I groaned. “I should have known. Your fascination with Hamlet should have tipped me off. And Elsinore.”
“Thus Elsinore,” she echoed, pleased with herself. “Oxford—the real Hamlet, inside Elsinore, inside Shakespeare.”
Ben was looking back and forth between us. “The real Hamlet?”
“Oxfordians read Hamlet as Oxford’s undercover autobiography,” I explained.
“You disappoint me,” clucked Athenaide. “Who was it that wrote ‘Hamlet certainly echoes Oxford’s life with enough weird correspondence to merit further study’?”
I recoiled. She’d just quoted my dissertation. I’d thought when she said that she knew my work that she meant my theater work. Nobody knows dissertations, not even doting mothers. “I said the plot echoes Oxford’s life, Athenaide. That’s a far cry from saying it’s autobiography.”
“How would a groom, a glove-maker’s son from Stratford, have dared to shadow one of the most august persons of the kingdom? How would he have known the details?”
“Everybody knew the details. Same as everybody knows the sordid details of Michael Jackson’s life today. The rich and the famous have always lived in a spotlight, and some of them have always flaunted it. What I want to know is why? Why should you—or anyone—substitute Oxford for the man whose name appears on the title pages?”
“Because I rate what’s in the plays higher than what’s on their title pages,” she said simply. “The man who wrote the plays had a broad and deep classical education, and he had easy access to fine books. He had an aristocratic outlook and aristocratic habits like hunting and hawking; he knew the English countryside in the manner of a landowner. He distrusted women, adored music, and despised grasping after money. He knew intricacies of English law and of navigation and sailing; he knew Italy and spoke French and Latin. Above all, he lived and breathed poetry. So far as can be proven—not assumed from the plays, but proven from the records of his life—William Shakespeare of Stratford exhibited none of these characteristics. Ergo, he did not write the plays.”
She seated herself triumphantly, in an armchair under a bank of blind windows. “Oxford, on the other hand, fits every one of the criteria.”
“Except one,” I retorted. “He died a decade too early, Athenaide. We’ve been hunting Cardenio, for Christ’s sake. A play written in 1612. How could a man who died—when? In 1605?”
“In 1604.”
“Fine, 1604. How could a man who died in 1604 have written a play in 1612? And it’s not just Cardenio you have to give up either. Macbeth, Othello, Lear, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Antony and Cleopatra—pretty much all the Jacobean plays go out the window. That’s a lot of greatness to exchange for one authorial earl.”
“Dates,” said Athenaide with a dismissive shrug. “It would be a flimsy theory if it had to cave in to dates. Especially such rickety dates as those built by the ivory tower. Cardenio, as you say, was first performed late in 1612. But that’s not the same thing as being written in that year. Here’s another possibility. In 1604, Oxford could have either commissioned the translation of Quixote, or made it himself. He then wrote half the play—and died. A few years later, the translation is published. Later still, his friends and his son have the play finished by John Fletcher and put on the stage at just the right moment to cause maximum embarrassment to Oxford’s old enemies, the Howards.” Her voice shifted to silky challenge. “You do recall that they were enemies?”
She turned to Ben. “The paterfamilias, the old earl of Northampton, was Oxford’s friend and first cousin, but when it served to save his Howard skin, he accused Oxford of buggering boys.”
“Athenaide,” I burst out, “that’s crazy. Built on ‘maybes’ and ‘might-have-beens.’ You’re following the tangled meanderings of a drunken june bug, when you could just draw a straight line between two points.”
She sniffed. “You’d rather believe that an ill-educated, possibly illiterate provincial lout, the poor son of an illiterate glover, wrote Shakespeare’s plays, somehow divining law, theology, court etiquette, history, botany, falconry, and hunting in the process?”
She stood and began wandering around the room, looking closely at the portraits of courtiers hanging on the walls. “Ver- is the Latin root for ‘True.’ Close enough to ‘Vere’—the family name of the earls of Oxford—to produc
e one of those childish puns that Renaissance men were so fond of. So the earls adopted ‘Vero nihil verius’ as their motto. It is also, as it happens, my motto, my maiden name being Dever. A bastardization of de Vere: not inappropriate for a branch of the family marooned on the wrong side of the blanket.
“My father drove the point home with my given name. Athenaide. A version of bright-eyed Athena, the shield-bearer, the spear-shaker.” She spoke the last phrase with relish, directing it at Ben. “The earl of Oxford, as a champion in the lists, was celebrated as being under Athena’s protection—and resembling her. ‘His eye flashing, his glance shaking spears.’”
“That’s a mistranslation, and you know it,” I snapped. “Vultus tela vibrat: ‘Your eye flashes, your glance tosses darts.’”
“You do know the evidence,” she said with admiration. “Though you mistranslate as well. ‘Shooting arrows,’ perhaps. But not ‘tossing darts.’ You make it sound more like a pub than an Elizabethan joust.”
“Fine. But not ‘shaking spears’ either.”
She shrugged. “So telum is a generic word for ‘missile,’ not the specific word for ‘spear.’ But vibrat means ‘shake.’ It’s the same word that gives us vibrate. May I point out that one does not shake arrows? Or darts? Or even javelins? One shakes spears. Specifically, Athena shakes her spear, and has been doing so since someone sang the first Homeric hymns, almost three thousand years ago, in which the gray-eyed goddess springs from Zeus’s head, shaking her sharp spear until all Olympus trembles, the earth groans, and waves toss wildly on the wine-dark sea.”
“Demanding infant,” said Ben, and I had to smother a giggle.
Athenaide ignored us both. “On top of that,” she went on, “in Renaissance Latin-English dictionaries vultus could mean ‘will’ as well as ‘glance’ or ‘expression.’ Which makes Vultus tela vibrat translate, you will note, as ‘will shakes spears.’” She looked about triumphantly.
“Really?” asked Ben.
“Truly,” she said with a wicked little smile. “A little Latin pun, spoken in honor of a man whose family motto is a pun.”