Part 57 (1/2)

Jonson shrugged one ma.s.sive shoulder. ”Because it is a good play.”

Useless to ask for sense from a poet. One might as well converse with a tabby cat. Tylney lifted the bell, on the other corner of his desk from the play that ought already to be destroyed, and rang it, a summons to his clerk. ”Go home, Master Jonson.”

”You've not seen the last of me, Sir Edmund,” Jonson said, as the door swung open-not a threat, just a fact.

It wasn't the usual clerk, but a tall soft-bellied fellow with wavy black hair, sweet-breathed, with fine white teeth.

”No,” Tylney said. He waited until the click of the latch before he added, ”I don't imagine I have.”

ANGELL:.

Hast sheared the sheep, Groat?

GROAT:.

Aye, though their fleece be but siluer.

he handeth Angell a purse ANGELL:.

Then thou must be Iason and find the golden fleece: or mayhap needs merely shear a little closer to the skin.

GROAT:.

Will not the sheep grow cold, without their wool?

ANGELL:.

They can grow more. And, loyal Groat, wouldst prefer thy sheep grow cold, or thy master grow hot?

GROAT:.

The sheep may s.h.i.+uer for all I care.

Tylney waited until Jonson's footsteps retreated into silence, then waited a little more. When he was certain neither the clerk nor the playmaker were returning, he came around his table on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet and scooped up the clinking pouch that Jonson had left behind. He bounced it on his hand, a professional gesture, and frowned at its weight. Heavy.

He replaced it where Jonson had laid it, and went to chip sugar from the loaf and mix himself another cup of sack, to drink while he re-read the play. He read faster this time, standing up where the light was better, the cup resting on the sideboard by the inkpot and Jonson's bribe. He shuffled each leaf to the back as he finished. When he was done, so was the sack.

He weighed the playscript in his hand, frowning at it, sucking his aching teeth.

It was August. There was no fire on the grate.

He dropped the playscript on the sideboard, weighted it with the bribe, locked the door behind him, and went to tell the clerk-the cousin, he said, of the usual boy, who was abed with an ague-that he could go.

WITWORTH:.

That's Moll Tuppence. They call her Queene of Dogges.

RIGHTEOUS-IN-THE-CAUSE SAMSON:.

For why?

WITWORTH:.

For that if a man says aught about her which he ought not, she sets her curres to make him say naught in sooth.

Sir Edmund Tylney lay awake in the night. His teeth pained him, and if he'd any sense, he'd have had them pulled that winter. No sense, he thought. No more sense than a tabby cat. Or a poet. And he lay abed and couldn't sleep, haunted by the image of the papers on the sideboard, weighted under Jonson's pouch. He should have burned them that afternoon.

He would go and burn them now. Perhaps read them one more time, just to be certain there was no salvaging this play. Sometimes he would make suggestions, corrections, find ways-through cuts or additions-that a play could be made safe for performance. Sometimes the playmakers acquiesced, and the play was saved.

Though Jonson was a newcomer, Tylney knew already that he did not take kindly to editing. But it was a good play.

Perhaps there was a chance.

Tylney roused himself and paced in the night, in his slippers and s.h.i.+rt, and found himself with candle in hand at the door of his office again. He unlocked it-the tumblers moving silently in the well-oiled catch-and pushed it before him without bothering to lift the candle or, in fact, look up from freeing key from lock.

He knew where everything should be.

The brilliant flash that blinded him came like lightning, like the spark of powder in the pan, and he shouted and threw a warding hand before his eyes, remembering even in his panic not to tip the candle. Someone cursed in a foreign tongue; a heavy hand closed on Tylney's wrist and dragged him into his office, shouldering the door shut behind before he could cry out again.

Whoever clutched him had a powerful grip. Was a big man, young, with soft uncallused hands. ”Jonson,” he gasped, still half-blinded by the silent lightning, pink spots swimming before his eyes. ”You'll hang for this!”

”Sir Edmund,” a gentle voice said over the rattle of metal, ”I am sorry.”

Too gentle to be Jonson, just as those hands, big as they were, were too soft for a soldier's. Not Jonson. The replacement clerk. Tylney shook his head side to side, trying to rattle the dots out of his vision. He blinked, and could almost see, his candle casting a dim glow around the office. If he looked through the edges of his sight, he could make out the lay of the room-and what was disarrayed. The Ile of Dogges had been taken from the sideboard, the drapes drawn close across the windows and weighted at the bottom with Jonson's bribe. Perhaps a quarter of the pages were turned.

”I'll shout and raise the house,” Tylney said.

”You have already,” the clerk said. He released Tylney's wrist once Tylney had steadied himself on the edge of the table, and turned back to the playscript.

”There's only one door out of this room.” And Tylney had his back to it. He could hear people moving, a voice calling out, seeking the source of that cry.

”Sir Edmund, s.h.i.+eld your eyes.” The clerk raised something to his own eye, a flat piece of metal no bigger than a lockplate, and rather like a lockplate, with a round hole in the middle.

Tylney stepped forward instead and grabbed the clerk's arm. ”What are you doing?”

The man paused, obviously on the verge of shoving Tylney to the floor, and stared at him. ”d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l,” he said. ”All right, look. I'm trying to save this play.”

”From the fires?”

”From oblivion,” he said. He dropped his arm and turned the plate so Tylney could see the back of it. His thumb pa.s.sed over a couple of small nubs marked with red sigils, and Tylney gasped. As if through a camera obscura, the image of a page of The Ile of Dogges floated on a bit of gla.s.s imbedded in the back of the plate, as crisp and brightly lit as if by brilliant day. It wasn't the page to which the play lay open. ”My name's Balda.s.sare,” the clerk-the sorcerer-said. ”I'm here to preserve this play. It was lost.”

”Jonson's summoned demons,” Tylney whispered, as someone pounded on the office door. It rattled, and did not open. Balda.s.sare must have claimed the keys when he dragged Tylney inside, and fastened the lock while Tylney was still bedazzled. The light of the candle would show under the door, though. The servants would know he was here.

It was his private office, and Tylney had one of only two keys. Someone would have to wake the steward for the other.