The Silent Woman Read online

  ‘That was not the only change you suffered,’ she said levelly. ‘It was Nicholas Bracewell, the son of a Barnstaple merchant, who set sail. He came back to be the book holder with a theatre company in London.’

  He nodded soulfully. ‘You are right, Anne. The voyage wrought many alterations. I saw and endured things I do not care even to think upon now. Anybody would have been changed by such an experience.’

  ‘Why did you never go back home?’

  ‘I chose to remain here.’

  ‘Who is now sending for you from Barnstaple?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Is it a man or a woman?’ His hesitation was all the proof that she required. ‘Even so! It is a woman and one who still has much power over you that you race to obey, even though her call has brought murder in its wake.’ Anne was now glowing with indignation. ‘And this is the man I have allowed to share my house and – God pardon me! – my bed! Well, ride out of London tomorrow but do not expect to lay your head here when you return.’

  ‘Anne, wait!’ he implored as she turned on her heel. ‘We must not part like this. You judge me too harshly.’

  ‘Then where is your denial?’ she said, rounding on him once more. ‘Tell me all and put my mind at rest.’

  ‘That is beyond my power,’ he admitted sadly, ‘but I will not have you believe that all that has passed between us has been a pretence on my part. It is not so! Some of the happiest moments of my life have been with you. And if you wish to know the true reason I prefer to stay in London rather than return to Barnstaple, then it stands before me.’

  His plea was so heartfelt and genuine that her anger cooled for a second and she saw once more the man to whom she had ineluctably been drawn. Nicholas Bracewell was indeed a loving friend to whom she had willingly yielded herself. He had many sterling qualities but contemplation of them only served to embitter her again. As a result of an undelivered message from Devon, she lost an honest man and gained a duplicitous one. While enjoying her favours, he always had an invisible lover lying beside him. Anne Hendrik had merely shared him.

  Nicholas resumed softly. ‘What has happened between us under this roof has been very dear to me, Anne, and I treasure those memories. I did not dissemble. You saw me for the man I really was.’ He offered a tentative hand. ‘I would not be exiled from you for all the world.’

  ‘Then I will put you to the test,’ she said, ignoring the outstretched palm. ‘Remain here.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘When the company leaves tomorrow, stay with me.’

  ‘But I am bound to Westfield’s Men.’

  ‘A second ago you were bound to me.’

  ‘I have given my word to Master Firethorn.’

  ‘You gave it just as easily to me even now.’

  ‘He and I came to composition.’

  ‘We have done that, too, often enough.’

  ‘I travel with the company as far as Bristol and then strike on alone to Barnstaple to … to …’

  ‘Go on, go on,’ she said. ‘State your true purpose.’

  ‘To settle my affairs.’

  ‘While I sit here like patient Griseld to await my lord’s return. Is that your hope?’

  ‘Anne,’ he soothed, ‘please hear me out. Imagination plays tricks on you. Be steadfast as before. Do but trust me until I return and I will—’

  ‘No!’ she snapped. ‘This house is barred to you from this day forth. I ask you to account for yourself and you cannot. I ask you to stay in London and you will not. There is only one thing for it.’ Her tone was icily dismissive. ‘Go to her, Nick.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That creature who lies with you in my bed.’

  ‘You talk in riddles.’

  ‘The silent woman. Run back to her.’

  Nicholas felt a stab of pain that made him reel. At a time when he desperately needed Anne’s love and support, it was being withdrawn completely from him. He stood rooted to the floor as she mounted the stairs, and he suffered another spasm when he heard the door of her bedchamber slam behind her with an air of finality. It was minutes before he found the will to creep furtively up to his own room, to gather up his belongings, to take one last valedictory glance around and then to slip out into the black wilderness of a life without her.

  Midnight approached rapidly and Edmund Hoode quivered with anticipatory joy. It was the appointed hour when he and his beloved would come together at last and drown the weeks of enforced separation in the turbulent water of passion. He felt truly elated for the first time in years. At this stage in most of his romantic attachments, he would be suffering the cumulative humiliations that afflict those who are perennially unlucky in love and who are singled out by fate as objects of scorn and mockery. Jane Diamond had redeemed his earlier miseries. In encouraging his advances, she had given him a confidence he would not have believed possible, and in succumbing to his desires – nay, replicating them with her own frank yearnings – she had lent a touch of arrogance to his manner. He was a new man.

  Hoode deserved her. He had earned his good fortune by the sustained fervour of his devotions. Letters, verses and gifts had been showered upon his mistress. Every time she watched him perform at the Queen’s Head, he wrote additional lines for himself in a code that only she could comprehend. Every time they saw each other in public, she replied with secret gestures that were meaningless to anyone but him. Jane Diamond was not simply a vision of loveliness with a disposition to match. She was the finest creation of Edmund Hoode, poet and playwright, the character he had delineated for himself in his robuster fantasies, as near to perfection as a human being could be and with one quality that outshone all the others. She was his.

  He lurked in a doorway opposite her house and listened for the midnight bell. Only one minute now kept them apart and he used it to reflect on his newly acquired strength of mind. That very afternoon, Lawrence Firethorn and Barnaby Gill had launched a two-pronged attack on it, but his defences held. In the evening, it was the turn of Nicholas Bracewell to remind him of his commitments to Westfield’s Men, but not even his friend’s promptings could turn him aside. Hoode refused to struggle his way around the provinces. London could offer him a far more exciting tour for he sought no other stage on which to perform than the pillowed scaffold of Jane Diamond’s bed.

  The bell chimed, the lighted candle appeared and Hoode went skipping across the dusty street to tap lightly on the door. It was inched open by a whispering maidservant.

  ‘Is that you, sir?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘My mistress awaits you.’

  ‘You serve us well.’

  He dropped two coins into her waiting palm then the door swung back to admit him before creaking back into position again. She turned a key in the lock. By the light of her taper, he could just make out the thick iron bolts. Before he could ask why she did not bolt the door, she led him off towards the stairs. Once the ascent began, all thought of security left him. He was inside her house and inside her heart. The sweetest penetration of all now awaited him. He would be able to drink his fill from the finest wine in the vintner’s cellar.

  They reached the landing and made their way along the undulating oak boards of a corridor. Pausing at a door, the maidservant knocked then indicated that he should enter. She herself curtseyed and withdrew towards the stairs. Edmund Hoode took a deep breath. The door was the gate to heaven and he stroked it with reverence before pushing it gently open to reveal her bedchamber.

  ‘Come in, Edmund,’ she called.

  ‘I am here, my love.’

  He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him then inhaled the bewitching perfume of her presence. He had painted this scene in his mind a hundred times but reality beggared his invention. She looked and sounded far lovelier than he had dared to imagine and the bedchamber was a most appropriate setting for her. In the subtle and calculating light of a dozen small candles, she reclined on the bed amid a flurry of white pillows. Her face
was a flower, her hair a waterfall of brown silk. She wore a long satin nightgown with a drawstring at the neck, and the contours of her body were at once displayed and concealed. Jane Diamond was the answer to a much overused prayer, and she lay ready for him on the altar of Venus.

  He took a faltering step towards her.

  ‘I have missed you cruelly, Jane.’

  ‘Come closer that you may tell me how much.’

  ‘I thought this moment would never come.’

  ‘Patience and constancy have their due reward.’

  ‘No man is more patient than I,’ he declared, moving nearer to her. ‘And as for constancy, the Tower of London will crumble sooner than my devotion to you.’

  ‘I know it well, Edmund.’

  Now he had come into the circle of light, she was able to inspect him more closely and she was pleased with her examination. Edmund Hoode looked immaculate. He wore a blue velvet doublet with green satin sleeves, and embroidered paned hose scaled with yellow damask. The lawn ruff at his neck held up the big, white, willing plate of a face. When he saw her look up at his blue velvet hat with its trembling ostrich feather, he doffed it at once and gave an apologetic bow. She crooked a finger to bring him to her, took his hat and put it aside, then raised her lips for him.

  The first tremulous kiss dissolved all inhibition and he took her in his arms with unrestrained ardour. They had waited a long time for this supreme moment and both intended to savour it to the full. Jane was soon plucking at the fastenings on his doublet while he used his teeth to pull at the drawstring on her nightgown. This was no sordid act of adultery. The purity of their love lifted them on to a more ethereal plain. Their senses were immeasurably heightened. Their lips found a rich honey with each kiss, their hands found warmer flesh with each caress. The aroma of pleasure made them almost giddy and this was their undoing for they did not hear the knock of the real world on the door of their fantasy. Only when the maidservant burst into the room did they come down from their clouds of bliss.

  ‘Make haste, mistress!’ cried the intruder. ‘The master has returned.’

  ‘That cannot be!’ cried Jane in alarm.

  ‘He’s here below. I wonder you did not hear him open the door, it creaks so loud.’ The maidservant hissed at Edmund Hoode. ‘Fly, sir! He will surely kill you if he finds you in his bed.’

  The maidservant rushed out again and the lovers leapt up. Jane pulled down her nightgown and sped on tiptoe into the corridor in time to hear the heavy tread of boots upon the stairs. She waited long enough to see her husband’s hat and cloak come out of the gloom then she darted back into the bedchamber and closed the door. Two bolts were slid into place and she flung her back against it for extra fortification.

  ‘Run, Edmund!’ she advised ‘Run!’

  ‘I try!’ wailed the stricken wooer, attempting to gather up his clothing from the floor. Valour flickered. ‘Should I not stay to defend you, my love?’

  ‘He will murder us both if he sees you. Go!’

  A thunderous banging on the door convinced Hoode that a speedy exit was his only hope of salvation. Opening the window, he hurled his clothing out then dived madly after it without any concessions to self-respect. A forgotten ruff trailed down disconsolately after him then the window was closed tight. The interrupted swain grabbed his apparel and sprinted off through the streets as if a pack of hounds were on his tail. Jane Diamond might have turned London into an enchanted garden but her husband had just made a tour with Westfield’s Men seem infinitely more appealing. He did not stop running until he reached the comparative safety of his lodging and even there he barricaded himself in.

  The lady herself was covered in distress but spared the ultimate horror of being interrogated by her husband. In response to his pounding, she told him that she was already in bed and that he was disturbing her slumbers. Accepting her word, he mumbled an apology and trudged off to spend the night in another chamber. Jane Diamond was so relieved by her narrow escape that she flung herself down and buried her head among the pillows. She was still rehearsing the excuse she would use next morning when she eventually fell asleep.

  The real beneficiary of the night’s work was the maidservant. In addition to gratitude from her mistress and money from Edmund Hoode, she was given a much more generous payment by Lawrence Firethorn. In the cloak and hat provided by the maidservant, any man could have looked like a returning husband who is only glimpsed once on a dark staircase, but the portrayal had been given real authenticity by a master of his craft. The absent spouse had cause to be eternally thankful to Lawrence Firethorn. Not only had the finest actor of the day deigned to impersonate him, he had also saved him by a hair’s breadth from certain cuckoldry.

  Firethorn collected his horse and rode off towards Shoreditch in a mood of self-congratulation. Once he had found out the address of Hoode’s inamorata, he had won over the maidservant with a combination of charm and bribery, and been informed of the tryst. It had been simple to set up his performance and to achieve the desired response. A much-needed member of the company had been forcibly returned to its bosom and a wandering wife had been frightened into fidelity for at least a fortnight. Firethorn could now play the returning husband at home and while away his last night there in connubial delights. His wife, Margery, was made of sterner stuff than Jane Diamond. When she took her man into her bed, nothing and nobody would be allowed to interrupt her until she had wrung the last ounce of pleasure out of him. Firethorn’s heels jabbed the horse into a gallop.

  Catastrophe had been averted at the Queen’s Head but the fire there had still been sufficiently destructive to merit a ballad on the subject. It was being sung in the taproom by a dishevelled old pedlar with a once-melodious voice that was thickened by drink and cracked by age. Leonard was among the crowd who listened to the ballad.

  ‘The fearful fire began below

  A wonder strange and true

  And to the tiring-house did go

  Where loitered Westfield’s crew

  It burnt down both beam and snag

  And did not spare the silken flag.

  Oh sorrow pitiful sorrow yet all this is true!

  ‘Out run the ladies, out run the lords

  And there was great ado

  Some lost their hats and some their swords

  Then out runs Firethorn too

  The Queen’s Head, sirs, was blazing away

  Till our brave book holder had his say

  Oh courage wonderful courage yet all this is true!’

  Five verses were allotted to a description of how Nicholas Bracewell had helped to prevent the fire from spreading across the roof. The pedlar had not witnessed the event but he had picked up enough details from those who had to be able to compose his ballad with confidence. Using the licence of his trade, he embellished the facts wildly but nobody complained except Alexander Marwood. The landlord sang a woeful descant until he was cowed into silence by the reproach of the final verse.

  ‘Be warned now you stage strutters all

  Lest you again be catched

  And such a burning do befall

  As to them whose house is thatched

  Forbear your whoring breeding biles

  And lay up that expense for tiles

  Oh sorrow pitiful sorrow and yet all this is true.’

  Leonard clapped his huge palms together to lead the applause then lumbered forward to buy one of the copies of the ballad. Though he could not read, he stared at it in utter fascination and let out a rumbling laugh.

  ‘I’ll give this to Master Bracewell himself,’ he said proudly. ‘It will send him on his way in good humour.’

  ‘Where does he travel?’ asked a neighbour.

  ‘With Westfield’s Men, sir. Our yard is so damaged that they have no theatre and needs must make shift. They are forced to go on tour.’ Leonard enjoyed being the holder of privileged information from his friend. ‘The company makes for Oxford and Marlborough, I hear, but they will lose their book holde
r at Bristol.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘Because he must go on to Barnstaple.’

  The other man blenched. ‘Barnstaple?’ he exclaimed, his West Country accent breaking through his London vowels.

  ‘He has been called back home. And your voice tells me that you may be from those parts yourself.’ The gravity of his news made Leonard speak in a respectful whisper. ‘We have had strange portents. A message was sent to him but the messenger was poisoned here in this taproom.’

  ‘How then was it delivered?’ asked the man.

  ‘The murder was message enough for Master Bracewell. He knows that he is needed in Barnstaple and he will be there when time and Westfield’s Men allow him.’

  The listener stroked his raven-black beard and cursed himself for not killing his victim more promptly with the thrust of a dagger. The poison had only done its worst after the messenger had reached the intended recipient. Hired for his ruthless proficiency, the man had for once failed, and dangerous loose ends now trailed from his botched work. Those loose ends would have to be severed before he could collect his reward. He turned back to Leonard, who was still perusing the ballad with a childlike delight.

  ‘When do Westfield’s Men leave London?’ said the man.

  ‘At noon, sir.’

  ‘From the Queen’s Head?’

  ‘No,’ said Leonard, ‘they would not show themselves here while our landlord still burns so brightly about their fire. I’ll be taking this ballad to the Bel Savage Inn on Ludgate Hill. That is where they set forth upon their adventure.’

  ‘What manner of man is this Nicholas Bracewell?’

  ‘A hero, sir.’ He waved the ballad. ‘Here’s warranty.’

  ‘How would you pick him out from his fellows?’