The Merchant of Vengeance (Shakespeare & Smythe 4)

The churchyard was a bustle of activity, as usual. Still an impressive edifice, even after its tall spire had been destroyed by lightning, the cathedral of St. Paul had nevertheless seen better days. Since the Dissolution, no incense was permitted, organ music was prohibited, and candles could not be used at all except at Christmas. What statuary had not been removed was broken. Overall, the majestic cathedral was in a sad state of disrepair.

Morning prayer service was usually held between seven and eight o'clock, with evening prayer held from two to three. Following the separation from the Church of Rome during King Henry's time, the Act of Uniformity had decreed that the Book of Common Prayer was to be used for services, and all recusants were severely punished. The harbouring of priests had been declared high treason, punishable by death. It was unlawful for shops to be open during the time of common prayer, on Sundays, or on holy days, though the enforcement of these laws was entirely another matter. Wednesdays had been set aside for abstaining from meat, although it was said that this was less for spiritual reasons than to help the fishing industry. And in a similar manner, there was a great admixture of the sacred with the profane in the cathedral of St. Paul.

There was much demand among the citizens of London for "good books," such as the Geneva Bible and the Bishop’s Bible, of course, as well as collections of prayers, sermons, aphorisms, and religious stories, such as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, or translations from the French of Calvin's commentaries, or the popular devotional works of Thomas Bacon. All of these and more were for sale in the bookstalls, along with more prosaic and sensational matter, not only outside in the churchyard, but inside the cathedral itself, as well.

St. Paul's School had been established on the grounds to give a grammar school education to young boys, but if they happened to venture out of the school and down the main aisle of the cathedral, known commonly to one and all in London as Paul's Walk., then they could quickly receive a different sort of education altogether. Since the Dissolution, Paul's Walk. was less a quiet and sombre aisle in a church than it was a busy thoroughfare, where the citizens of London came to hear the latest news, as well as meet with lawyers, many of whom kept more or less permanent stations at certain pillars in the cathedral where they could conduct business with their clients. Men in search of work often loitered in the Walk., hoping to find someone who would hire them for endeavours either legal or illegal. Merchants set up their stalls at the tombs and at the font, where they sold such commodities as ale and beer, bread and fruit, and even fish.

For a time, there were even horses ridden through the cathedral, as well as carts drawn along the Walk by either mules or oxen, though a law was finally passed prohibiting such traffic. Nevertheless, from time to time, some young bravo on a prancer would still take a trot along the Walk, enjoying the sound his horse's hoof-beats made as they echoed above the general din. Paul's Walk was also known as a place of assignations, and Londo

n's lovers, either married or unmarried, often met there. And related activities, although of a considerably less romantic nature, were also conducted at the pillars and in shadowed corners. Many religious houses had been taken over following the Dissolution and converted to other uses, but perhaps none served quite as many or as varied uses as St. Paul's.

For Smythe, once he overcame his initial shock at the spectacle of what St. Paul's had become, Paul's Walk served two primary purposes. It was a place he often came to purchase books and pamphlets, and it was also where he came to meet Elizabeth Darcie now and then.

His friendship with Elizabeth — for it was truly little more than that—was a source of both joy and misery to him. He was hopelessly in love with her, and had been ever since the day he met her at the Burbage Theatre, where he and Will had gained employment as ostlers upon first coming to London. From the very beginning, there had seemed to be a spark between them, but she had arrived in a fine black coach to meet a gentleman to whom she was betrothed. And, he had thought at the time, even if she were not already spoken for, she was still too far above him for him to entertain any serious thoughts of courtship.

She was the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant who was also a partner in the Burbage Theatre, while he was a lowly working-class ostler whose greatest hope in life was to become a player. With such a daughter, a wealthy man like Henry Darcie could easily arrange a marriage that would advance his family both socially and financially. Shakespeare, who had quickly realised his friend was smitten, had vainly pointed out to him that someone like himself had about as much chance of courting Elisabeth Darcie as a player had of being knighted. And it might have ended there had fate not brought Elizabeth to seek his help in freeing herself from a betrothal to a man who turned out in the end to have been an impostor, a murderer, and a spy.

The situation had served to bring them closer, and a grateful Henry Darcie, as a way of acknowledging his debt, had allowed their friendship to continue. He could still not countenance any sort of formal relationship or courtship, but because he owed a debt to Smythe and trusted both him and his daughter to behave honourably, he could at least, somewhat grudgingly, look the other way. And in that Smythe found both relief and frustration.

He enjoyed his meetings with Elizabeth immensely and looked forward to them, but at the same time he often found them agonising. He could not simply come out and tell her how he felt about her. He had no right to do so, nor did she encourage him —at least, not in any direct way —either because she could not or would not. He was never really certain which. Maybe it was both.

They had long conversations every time they met, but there was often another sort of conversation that took place between them, one that went unspoken. He was convinced, despite Shakespeare's repeated assertions that he was only deluding himself, that Elizabeth cared for him more than merely as a friend. And a number of times, she had come close to saying it outright.

She was at an age when many young women of her class would have already been married. Yet she had obstinately resisted every attempt by her father to arrange a suitable match for her, insisting that she would not marry for any reason save for love, an attitude her father found maddeningly unreasonable. To his way of thinking, she had at most another five years of opportunity to find a suitable husband, one that would advance Henry Darcie's own position as well as hers. Much past the age of twenty-five or-six and she would be considered a spinster.

Given her beauty, there had certainly been no shortage of suitors. However, her fiery and assertive nature had given her the reputation of a shrew, a term that she wryly defined as "a woman who does not do all that a man wishes." At times, that same strong sense of independence led to arguments between them, but no argument, however passionate, was ever enough to break the bond they had. Quite the opposite, in fact.

They met most frequently in Paul's Walk, a crowded place where people of all classes mingled, where, if necessary, the convenient fiction of a chance encounter could explain their being together. Yet, in Antonia's case, that had not been quite enough. She had seemed suspicious of them from the start, although Smythe had the feeling that she suspected a great deal more than she had reason to suspect. It was in the way that she had looked at him, with a sort of smug and knowing glance. It had irritated him and at the same time, curiously, made him feel guilty, like a small boy caught doing something wrong.

He soon spotted Elizabeth’s familiar long, dark green velvet cloak and hastened toward her. As usual, she was at the bookstalls, perusing the titles. It was not merely for the sake of appearances, however. She was a great reader, although their tastes were not the same. He liked to read pamphlets about London's criminal underworld and about the adventures of sailors and soldiers and such, while Elizabeth was much more interested in poetry. Nevertheless, their love of reading was something that they had in common.

"Elizabeth, I received your message and came as soon as I could," he said.

She turned toward him and, once again, as every time, he was so struck by her beauty that he was rendered speechless for a moment. Like most unmarried women, she did not wear a coif and her blond hair fell out in a thick braid from beneath the hood of her cloak and hung down the side of her chest to her waist, which was naturally narrow even without the aid of a boned, stiff-pointed bodice and stomacher. Much co her mother's chagrin, since turning twenty, she had obstinately refused to wear the latest fashions, claiming that they were too confining and would not let her breathe. She preferred much simpler clothing, such as gowns cut in the kirtle style, similar to those worn by working-class women. However, so as not to utterly scandalize her parents, she had hers made from silks and three-piled velvets, the better, very costly kind that was cut into three heights and imported from Italy or France. And, unlike most women of the upper and middle classes, she did not dye her hair or paint her face, because she claimed that it was too much trouble and made her face feel as if it were caked with grease.

This was her rebellion against having been dressed in fashionable, adult clothing from an early age and dragged around her father's ever widening social circles, "paraded before the gentry and the aristocrats like a Judas goat staked out for bait," as she described it. For, having realized early on that he had a daughter of surpassing beauty, with soft, flaxen hair, deep blue eyes, high cheekbones, and creamy, nearly translucent skin, Henry Darcie had seen an opportunity that might otherwise have been denied him, regardless of how hard he worked and how successful he became.

He knew that an alliance through marriage to a family of rank and longstanding position might allow him to overcome the handicap of his common birth and become a gentleman. Unfortunately for Henry Darcie, his own pride and overreaching ambition had ultimately kept him from achieving his goal. He could easily have married off Elizabeth a dozen times over when she was younger and more tractable, but none of her suitors had ever seemed quite good enough. He had always believed he could do better. Why settle for a gentleman when he might net himself a knight? And then why settle for a knight when his daughter's charms might snare a nobleman?

Yet as Elizabeth grew older and her intelligent, wilful personality became more and more assertive, she became more and more difficult to handle. Potential suitors whom her father now found quite suitable enough were often quickly discouraged by her independent disposition and by her refusal to subordinate her will or her intelligence to theirs.

Quite impractically, she had announced that she would marry only if she were in love, an idea her father blamed upon a tutor who had instructed her in poetry and who had been summarily dismissed for putting such foolish notions into her head. Sadly for Henry Darcie, once that notion had taken root, it was not so easily dislodged. He believed the day would come when Elizabeth would finally come to her senses and realize that her own future, as well as that of her family, depended upon making a good marriage. However, since his last attempt at arranging a marriage for her had nearly ended in disaster, he had, at least for the present, given up trying to make a match for her. Perhaps, he thought, having tried everything else, if he left Elizabeth alone for a time and allowed her at least some of the freedom that she seemed to crave so much, she might eventually become more settled in her disposition and more amenable to practical decisions.

Meanwhile, so long as her attention seemed to be occupied by books, her women friends, and a rather loutish but honourable and good-hearted young player, she would probably keep out of trouble. She had enough sense that she could not possibly consider anything more than friendship with him, and he, in turn, had proven himself trustworthy, even if he was insufferably working class. Remove the reasons for her rebellion, Henry Darcie thought, and her rebellious spirit might dissipate in time. At least, this was his fondest hope.

Smythe both knew and understood this. What Elizabeth had not explained to him, he could easily surmise from his acquaintance with her father, who was, for all his pomposity and ambition, basically a good and decent man. He trusted them both to behave properly, something Smythe found flattering and frustrating at the same time. There were men, he knew, who would not hesitate to take advantage of such a situation, but he could not. And he did not think Elizabeth could… or would. Therein lay the exquisite agony of their relationship.

'You look as if you have been running, Tuck," Elizabeth said to him. "You are all flushed and out of breath. Are you unwell?"

"Nay… well, perhaps only a little. I fear I drank too much last night and overslept, and when I awoke, my head was fit to burst."

She raised her eyebrows. "You were drunk? 'Tis not very like you, Tuck. Is your friend Shakespeare becoming a bad influence upon your Or is it that something causes you distress?"

"The latter, I confess, although 'tis still a poor excuse for such behaviour, and I have learned my lesson painfully," Smythe replied, rubbing his still-aching head. "My father came to visit me last night at the Toad and Badger. Our conversation was exceedingly unpleasant, but 'tis a matter of no consequence at present. I am more concerned to learn that the sheriff’s men came to your house this morning. What happened?"

"Methinks that you already know," she replied. "They wanted to know about poor Thomas."

"Leffingwell told