7

TUCK FOUND OUT WHAT HAD happened over breakfast downstairs in the tavern. Or at least, once he got past all the speculation, he found out as much as anybody knew, which was not a very great deal. When he came down in the morning, after sleeping fitfully through most of an entire day, everyone solicitously asked him how he felt. He replied with gratitude that he still hurt in at least a dozen places, yet in the main, he was very much improved. But despite their genuine concern about his welfare, it was nevertheless obvious that what had happened to him was no longer the primary topic of interest. Everyone seemed anxious to move on quickly past the question of how he felt in order to discuss the news of Master Leonardo’s murder.

It did not take Smythe very long to piece together the details. From the general conversation in the tavern, he learned that sometime during the previous afternoon or evening, Master Leonardo, the wealthy Genoan merchant whom they had all met briefly only a day earlier, had been viciously murdered at his residence. His young and beautiful daughter, Hera, had not been at home, fortunately, but was away visiting her new friend, Elizabeth Darcie, who had taken the shy foreign girl under her wing and was helping her become acclimated to her new life in London. Regrettably, it had been Hera who had discovered her own father’s body when she arrived back home that night.

“Dear God! The poor girl!” Smythe said. “How terrible for her!”

“Terrible is not the word,” George Bryan replied. “Horrible would be more like. They say the man was sliced to ribbons. Slashed more deeply than a fop’s silk shirt.”

“Aye, there was blood everywhere,” added Tom Pope, one of the newest members of their company, as he busily ladled porridge into his mouth.

“There is going to be porridge everywhere if you persist in trying to speak and gorge at the same time, you odiferous hog,” said Kemp with contempt. “S’trewth, watching you eat is enough to put a starving beggar off his food. I know it puts me off mine.”

“Well then, since I have put you off your food, ‘tis only meet that I should put some food on you,” retorted Pope, and with that, he flipped a generous ladleful of hot porridge right into Will Kemp’s face.

“Aaarghh! You misbegotten Philistine!” roared Kemp, leaping to his feet as he wiped the porridge from his eyes. “How dare you!”

“Never say I gave you naught, Kemp,” Pope replied with a grin, “for I daresay you have just had breakfast on me.”

“Well then, allow me to return the kindness!” Kemp said through gritted teeth, and with that, he picked up his own bowl of steaming porridge and upended it over Pope’s head.

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen! We were speaking of murder, for God’s sake!” said Smythe.

“Aye, and that is just what I am going to do to that miserable, mincing old goat!” snarled Pope, wiping the dripping gobs of porridge from his face and shaking his hands off. The flung-off gobs of porridge made wet, smacking sounds as they landed on the wood-planked floor. Pope reached for the clay pitcher in the center of the table.

“Oh, no, Tom!” Speed cried out. “Not the beer!”

Too late.

Pope dashed the beer into Kemp’s face, neatly rinsing off the porridge Kemp had not fully succeeded in wiping away.

Smythe rolled his eyes and gave up on them. He turned to Phillips. “The devil with those two. Tell me, what happened after Hera found her father?”

“Well, from what I hear, she very nearly lost her mind,” Gus Phillips replied, as Kemp grabbed his ladle and launched himself at Pope, knocking him off his bench. They both fell backwards in a tangled, flailing heap. “I mean,” continued Phillips, “can you imagine, walking into your own home and finding your own father sliced up like an Easter ham and lying on the floor in a spreading pool of his own blood?”

“You need not be quite so lurid,” Smythe replied dryly, as Kemp shrieked and hammered away at Pope with his wooden ladle, while the latter desperately tried to dislodge the smaller man, who had clamped his legs around him like an octopus and hung on like grim death. “What about the servants?” Smythe continued.

“What about them?” Speed asked. “You do not think they did it, do you? You think they did the foreigner in for all his gold?”

“I honestly do not know,” Smythe said, as Pope finally succeeded in dislodging Kemp, throwing him off, and then rolling over on top of him with his not inconsiderable bulk, squeezing the wind right out of him. “But I very much doubt that a canny merchant would have been careless enough to keep all of his gold inside his house,” Smythe went on, ignoring the combatants. “ ‘Twas not what I intended to suggest, though I suppose ‘tis possible. I meant to ask if Master Leonardo’s servents had not heard anything amiss? After all, does it not seem odd to have a man killed in his own house, and in so violent a manner as you describe, and yet none of the servents knew of it, so that the body was not even found until the daughter arrived home that night?”

Phillips frowned. “Hmm. I must admit that thought never even occurred to me. An excellent question, Tuck. However, I must confess ‘tis one I cannot answer.”

“There were servants in the house, surely?” Smythe said.

“I assume so,” Phillips replied, with a shrug, as Kemp tried in vain to escape from underneath Pope’s bulk. He squirmed and yelped as the larger man took hold of his nose and began twisting it painfully.

“You mean you do not know for certain?” Smythe asked.

“How am I know a thing like that for certain?” Phillips asked. “I have never been in the man’s house, now have I?”

“And yet you know that he was found all cut to ribbons, with blood spilled everywhere?” Smythe asked.

“Well, that was how I heard it,” Phillips said.

“From whom did you hear this?”

“S’trewth, I cannot say for certain,” replied Phillips, with a shrug. “Everyone has been talking about it, it seems.”

“Amazing,” Smythe said. “The man was only killed last night, and this morning, everyone in London seems to know all the details of the crime. If Sir Francis Walsingham had intelligence this good, then the Armada would have been destroyed before it ever even sailed from Spain.”

“What are you picking on me for?” Phillips asked, with an aggrieved air. “I was merely telling you what I had heard. You asked me, after all!”

“Aamaahhhhh! Let me go, you stinking pile of offal!” Kemp wailed.

“ ‘Allo, ‘allo, what’s all this then?” Stackpole demanded, as he came out from the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron. “Get off him, you great, slobbering dungheap!” He gave Pope a kick that sent him sprawling with a yelp.

“Thank heavens, Stackpole!” Kemp said, clutching at his chest. “The big oaf nearly crushed me! You are a godsend!”

“You’ll not think so when I start mopping up all this mess with your face,” said Stackpole, grabbing him by the shirtfront and glowering at him as he pulled him to his feet. “Who is going to clean this up then?”

“He started it!” cried Kemp, pointing an accusatory finger at Pope.

“I never did, you lying pustule!” protested Pope. “You berated me!”

“Enough!” Stackpole thundered. “I have had my fill of you both! Now clean up this mess or so help me I shall hang you both from the rafters and have Molly beat you with a stick!”

“Have a care now, Stackpole, Kemp might like that,” Bryan said.

“And you be quiet, else I shall have you helping them!” said Stackpole, glaring at him. “I shall have peace in my own house or I shall have you all in pieces! Players! I would have done better to open up my inn to a gang of wandering gypsies!”

The door opened at that moment and Shakespeare came bustling in. “They have taken Corwin!” he announced. “He has been arrested for the murder of Master Leonardo!”