A Mystery Of Errors Read online

  A Mystery Of Errors

  Simon Hawke

  Symington Smythe and Will Shakespeare meet at a tavern on the road to London and become travel companions and fast friends. They wheedle their way into a compnay of players and wind up in the middle of romance, mystery and intrigue.

  Simon Hawke

  A Mystery Of Errors

  The first book in the Shakespeare and Smythe series, 2000

  To

  Deborah and Josh,

  my family,

  with special thanks to

  Brian Thomsen,

  Cindy Davis,

  and Dr. Jo Ann Buck

  1

  THERE WAS NOTHING QUITE SO invigorating to the senses, Smythe decided, as ending a long and dusty day by being robbed.

  The mounted highwayman came plunging out of the thick underbrush at the side of the road like a specter rising from the mist as he reined in with one hand and drew his wheel-lock with the other. His black courser reared and neighed loudly as the masked man shouted out, “Stand and deliver!”

  Even under such startling and intimidating circumstances, Smythe could not help an instinctual assessment of the brigand’s mount. A powerful and heavily muscled Hungarian with a proud carriage and admirable conformation, the courser pawed at the ground and pranced in place, responding to the knee pressure of its rider. The hooked head and bushy tail were characteristic of the breed, as was the long, thick mane that reached below the knees and would require a good deal of loving curry-combing to look so splendid and silky. A magnificent animal, thought Smythe, well-schooled and obviously well cared for. And the horse’s master had a sense of the dramatic, too, something else Smythe could not help appreciating, despite the pistol aimed squarely at his chest.

  The brigand was clad from head to toe in black, with a silk mask that covered the entire lower portion of his face. He wore a black quilted leather doublet, tight breeches, high boots, and a long black riding cloak that billowed out behind him. No ordinary road agent this, thought Smythe, but a man with a true sense of style. And apparently some substance, judging by his steed and his apparel. A flamboyant highwayman who was evidently successful at his trade and clearly understood the impact made by a good entrance.

  “Did you hear me, man, or are you deaf? I said, stand and deliver!”

  “Deliver what, my friend?” asked Smythe, with a shrug. “I haven’t a brass farthing to my name.”

  “What, nothing?” said the highwayman through the black silk scarf covering most of his face. “Come, come, let’s see your purse!”

  Smythe took hold of the small brown leather pouch at his belt and gave it a shake, to demonstrate that it was empty. “You may dismount and search me if you like,” he said, “but you shall find that I haven’t a tuppence or ha’penny anywhere about my person.”

  “Dismount and search a strapping young drayhorse like yourself? Methinks not. You look like you could pose some difficulty if I gave you half a chance.”

  “Spoken with a pistol in your hand and a rapier and main gauche at your belt,” said Smythe, wryly. “And me with nothing but a staff and poor man’s bodkin.”

  “Aye, well, one cannot take too many chances,” said the highwayman. “The roads are not very safe these days.” He chuckled and looked Smythe over, then tucked his pistol in his belt. “So, no money, eh?”

  “None, sir.”

  “And how will you be paying for your next meal?” “If I shan’t be catching it tonight with a snare or hook and line, then I fear that I shall not be eating,” Smythe said.

  “Oh, well, we cannot have that,” the highwayman replied.

  “Here’s a silver crown for you. Buy yourself an ordinary and a night’s rest at the next crossroads.”

  Surprised, Smythe almost missed catching the coin the robber tossed to him. “You are a strange sort of highwayman, indeed,” he said, perplexed. “You demand money and end up giving it away, instead!”

  “Ah, you look as if you need it more than I do. No matter. I shall make it up and then some with the next fat merchantman who comes along.”

  “However that may be, I am nevertheless grateful,” Smythe replied. “I shall be sure to say a prayer tonight that they do not catch and hang you very soon.”

  “Most kind of you. What a splendid young fellow you are. I take it you are bound for London?”

  “I am,” said Smythe, nodding.

  “In search of work.” It was less a question than a statement. More than half the travelers on the road were starving beggars, making their way toward London in hopes of finding a better life. Or any kind of life at all.

  “Aye,” said Smythe. “And God willing, I shall I find it.”

  “You have a trade? You have the look of a blacksmith, with those shoulders.”

  “My uncle is a farrier and a smith,” said Smythe. “I apprenticed at his forge. But I hope to be an actor on the stage.”

  “An actor?” The man snorted. “You had best stick to shoeing horses, lad. ‘Tis a much more respectable profession.”

  “So says the brigand.”

  “Indeed, it takes one mountebank to know another,” the highwayman replied. “But then, each to the devil after his own fashion. I wish you good fortune, young man. And if you care to, you can remember Black Billy in your prayers tonight. A word from an innocent like you might do some good, you never know. The Almighty bloody well stopped listening to me long since.”

  The highwayman touched the brim of his black hat in salute and then spurred off into the woods. The sound of his mount’s hoofbeats quickly receded in the distance. Smythe decided that he probably wouldn’t need to worry about hanging, riding through the thickets like that. He’d likely break his neck long before some magistrate could stretch it for him.

  It was certainly an interesting conclusion to a rather dreary and otherwise uneventful day, although it was his fourth time being robbed in as many days since he had left the midlands. Well, attempt at being robbed, in any event, he thought. The first three had been unsuccessful and this last one hardly seemed to count, seeing as how the highwayman had left him better off than he had been before. That was certainly a switch. He had never heard the like of it.

  The first attempted robbery had taken place shortly after sundown on his first day out, as he had made his way toward London. Two men brandishing clubs had leaped out at him from under the cover of the woods. They had been more desperate than dangerous and he had made short work of them with his staff and left them both insensible in the middle of the road, or what passed for a road, at any rate, in that part of the country. It was little more than a pair of muddy ruts running side by side through the forest, tracks made by peddlers’ carts as they made their way from one small village to another, passing news and trying to sell their wares.,

  The second attempt took place the very next day, but in broad daylight. Well, not quite daylight, perhaps, for little daylight had actually penetrated the thick canopy of branches overhead. This time, three surly and bedraggled men had accosted him, looking a bit more competent, armed with staves and daggers and demanding that he surrender all his money. The trouble was, he didn’t have any. He had tried explaining that to them, in a reasonable fashion, but for some reason, highwaymen seemed a rather skeptical lot. They had insisted on searching him. Smythe had complied with their demand, seeing no harm in proving his point by demonstration and taking no unnecessary risks. On seeing that he was, in fact, as penniless as they, without even any decent clothes or weapons worth stealing, the disgusted robbers had let him go his way.

  The third attempt had taken place early in the morning, proving to Smythe that there was actually no safe time to travel at all. He had been walking through the woods when an arrow from a longbow thudd
ed into a tree trunk just to his left, passing so closely that he had felt its breeze. Immediately, he ducked behind that very tree trunk, so as not to give the unseen archer a target for a second shot, then wasted no time in slipping back further into the woods and putting some distance between himself and the bowman. He had left the unseen archer behind him, the sound of his cursing receding in the distance, and took his time before he ventured out upon the road again. He then continued on his way without further incident, until the mounted highwayman accosted him… only instead of robbing him or trying to kill him, the brigand had given him a silver crown. It was a singular occurrence, indeed. All in all, Smythe had to admit that he had met more interesting people in the past four days on the road than he had during all the years that he had spent in the village of his birth… save for the time the actors had come through.

  The Queen’s Players, featuring the famous Dick Tarleton, had put on a performance in the courtyard of The Goose and Gander. With the open sky above them, they had erected a small stage in the courtyard of the inn, with several screens behind the stage to make a tiring-room where costumes could be changed, and the entire village had attended their performance. Smythe had never seen anything like it. Somehow, that little group of men had managed to turn a small wooden platform supported by several barrels into another world, another place and time. Tarleton and Will Kemp, the two comedians of the troupe, had everyone helpless with laughter at their jigs and capers and from that moment on, Smythe had wanted nothing more than to be among those men and on that stage himself.

  His father disapproved, of course. A life as a player was totally unsuitable and utterly out of the question. While working at his uncle’s forge was no more a fit occupation for a gentleman, his father had believed that it could do a lad no harm to learn a bit of industry and develop an eye for iron, steel, and horseflesh. Those would certainly be useful things to know for a man of standing and position. But acting? The very mention of it had driven his father to apoplexy. Actors were nothing but immoral vagabonds whose careers were built on lies and fancy. He had stormed and thundered and threatened to disown him. The dream of acting, it had seemed, was destined to wither on the vine. Instead, it was his father’s dream which had died before ever bearing fruit.

  Symington Smythe’s great, ambitious dream had been the -achievement of a peerage. To this end, he had worked ceaselessly for most of his adult life. He had inherited and married well, but it was not enough to be a man of means and property. That property needed to be increased and increase in the means, in turn, begat more property. An improved estate could bring improved position and, these days, an improved position could bring a state of knighthood.

  In the old days, titled blood had needed to be blue and preferably spilt in the name of king and country over several generations. But though the glory days of armor had, except for tournaments of sport, largely passed away, arms were still in very great demand. It was not unheard of for a prosperous merchant or a privateer to attain a peerage through some service to the Crown, or someone close to it. And becoming a gentleman with a claim to an established lineage was a necessary first step. Nowadays, every successful glover, stationer, and vintner who fancied himself a gentleman applied to Derby House for an escutcheon with which to grace his mantelpiece.

  Even a man with blood less venous than venial could petition the offices of arms for the design of a device he could engrave on silver bowls to grace his dining room or have glazed into the leaded windows to lend an air of stature to his home. He could have a local glover embroider the arms upon his gauntlets and commission a goldsmith to craft a handsome seal ring to be worn upon the thumb as a sigil of importance. And if the fees were promptly paid and embellished with a few gratuities, then the heralds’ inquiries into oft exaggerated claims to bear the port and charge and countenance of rank were not particularly scrupulous.

  Thus, Symington Smythe II had applied for and received a coat of arms, so elaborate as to be positively tasteless, with engrailed crosses, lions passant, sable this and purpure that and argent every which way, which device he had then proceeded to emblazon on everything from the arched entryway over the front doorway of their country house to the handkerchiefs he had elaborately embroidered, apparently not seeing the irony of blowing his nose into his prized, dearly bought escutcheon.

  A coat of arms, however, did not yet a knighthood make, so much more had needed to be done to curry influence and favor and prove merit. And in his rashly injudicious pursuit of that vainglorious ambition, Symington Smythe II had thoroughly bankrupted himself. In the process, he had denied his son any inheritance at all save for his name, to which he could append a lofty “III,” if he so wished.

  He did not wish. The appellation was, in his consideration, a bit too grand for a young man whose menial skills so far surpassed his means. Symington Smythe alone was cumbersome enough for a man with an uncertain future. He could, in all likelihood, secure an apprenticeship with some smith or farrier in London, for he had some good experience of those crafts, thanks to his uncle, who had taught him well. Thomas Smythe had not, by virtue of his later birth, inherited any part of the family estate, save for what his brother chose to settle on him. However, if he bore any resentment for his older brother’s preferment, then he had never shown it.

  As loathe as his would-be aristocratic brother was to get his hands dirty, Thomas Smythe was never quite so happy as when he labored at his forge. He loved working with his hands, and while he was kept busy as a smith and farrier, on occasion he would pursue his true love, which was the forging of a blade. He alone had lent support to his nephew’s dream of acting, even if he had not entirely understood it. It seemed to him much too intangible and frivolous a way to make a living. Nevertheless, he had not opposed the notion.

  “Your father has ruined your future in pursuit of his ambition,” Uncle Tom had said, “so it would only serve him right if you lent rancor to his future in pursuit of yours. His threats to disown you have no weight now, for he has squandered his estate. He will count himself lucky to avoid the debtor’s prison. He is my brother, and I will help to what extent I can, even if he is a thoroughgoing ass. But as for you, if what you truly want to do is act, lad, why then go and be an actor. Odds blood, life is short enough. Go live it as you like it.”

  It seemed like sound advice, so Smythe had taken it. And it was all that he had taken, for he’d left home with nothing more than the clothing on his back, a wooden staff, and a plain-handled, serviceable, if unpolished bodkin that his Uncle Tom had made and given to him as a present on his fifteenth birthday. The thieves who had accosted him had not even deemed the sturdy blade worth stealing. But though there were prettier daggers, to be sure, there were none so strong or sharp. And it was the only thing Smythe had that truly meant anything to him. He would have defended that ugly dagger to the death.

  His mother had died shortly after he was born, so he had never known her, and though he had spent his childhood years in the same house with his father and his stepmother, he had never truly known them, either. He had known his wet nurse, Nan, much better. While still a boy, he had been sent to his Uncle Tom’s to be raised and educated and taught the value of hard work while his father chased his lofty dreams. But he felt that it was not as if his father and stepmother were alone or even necessarily at fault for being so distant. Smythe knew that it was not unusual for children to be sent away to live with other families. Children often did not survive and convention held that if parents became overly attached, then the grief over a dead child would be too difficult to bear. In his case, there had been no siblings, either alive or dead, because his father’s second marriage had not been blessed with offspring. He would have been the heir, therefore, had his father left him something to inherit. Now there was nothing to hold him to the life he’d lived before, nothing to stop him from seeking the life that he so earnestly desired. The question was, how to make the transition from the one life to the other?

  He was not
even sure how one went about trying to join an acting company. Was there a waiting list for openings? He imagined there probably had to be, for he knew that most companies had only a few regular players who were shareholders and the rest were hired men who might be taken on for no more than one production, or even one performance. There would likely be apprentices that the senior actors would take into their homes and train in stagecraft, just as was done with apprentices in every craft and guild, but these would be young boys who would play the female roles in the productions until their voices changed or until they grew too big. And he was already too old for such consideration, to say nothing of his being much too large of frame to play a woman, and too deep of voice.

  So what if there were no openings, he wondered as he proceeded on his way. What then? It was not as if there were an unlimited number of opportunities. There were only a few acting companies in London. Much like his father, the London city council did not look very favorably upon actors. The Act for the Punishment of Vagabonds, passed in 1572, stipulated that all fencers, bear-wards, common players in interludes, and minstrels not belonging to any baron of the realm or other honorable personage of greater degree would be taken, adjudged, and deemed rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars. And the punishments were harsh.

  A man so charged and then found guilty would be whipped and then burned through the ear with a hot poker. This was done in order to discourage gypsies and others of their ilk from wandering the countryside and making their living dishonestly at the expense of others, or cozenage, as it was known. And such idlers and masterless men were not tolerated within the London city limits, where they could at best make a nuisance of themselves or, at worst, instigate a riot that could cause damage to property and loss of life.

  What the law meant for actors was that they had to be members of a company that had a noble for a patron, so they would then be “in service” to that lord, rather than masterless men. Thus, Lord Strange had his own company of players who bore his name, and then there were the Admiral’s Men, under the patronage of Lord Howard of Effingham, as well as Lord Worcester’s Men, and the Queen’s Players, under Her Majesty’s Master of the Revels. But there were not many more established companies than that and taking up with some itinerant band that merely claimed a noble’s patronage was only courting trouble.