Much Ado About Murder

“I would not say that to his face,” Smythe said. “His arm is still twice the size of mine, and I do not yet see him entering his dotage. Not without a fight.”

“He’s a cantankerous old kite, sure enough. But though ‘tis pleasant to stand here and pass the time, we still have unfinished business, you and I. What were you doing following me tonight?”

“Well, ‘twas not you I was following so much as Molly,” Smythe replied.

“Molly, is it? Are you her lover, then?”

“What, I? Nay, nothing like,” said Smythe, a bit taken aback. “In truth, I love another. But Molly… well, we all… that is, all the players… we are all quite fond of her, you know. And when I saw a strange man… well, what I thought was a man, anyway… approach her in the street tonight and then go off with her, well… I was curious and merely wanted to be sure that naught would go amiss.”

“I see.” Moll stared at him thoughtfully for a moment. “Well, that has the ring of truth to it, I suppose. And you did seem surprised when you learned I was woman. What is your name, laddie?”

“I am called Tuck Smythe.”

She held out her hand. “Moll Cutpurse is me canting name,” she said, as he took it. “Someday, if I should get to know you better, I may give you me Christian one. And then again, I may not. But I shall keep an eye on you, Tuck Smythe. For me own sake and for Molly’s… just to make sure that naught will go amiss,” she added, giving him his own words back with a smile.

She reached out her hand and one of her men returned her sword to her. As she put it back into its scabbard, another man picked up her hat and gave it back to her. She put it back on, touched her brim to Smythe, and then one by one, they all melted away into the darkness without a sound.

“Hmpf. Now I know why they call them ‘footpads,’ “ Smythe said to himself. He looked around.

The streets were dark and foggy, and it was difficult to see much more than a few paces ahead. However, despite that, and despite the lateness of the hour, he was nevertheless struck by the fact that on a street crowded with buildings, in a part of the city where rooms were often shared by as many as a dozen people crowded in together and sleeping on the floor, apparently no one had even opened a window and looked out during his encounter with Moll Cutpurse and her men.

He was also struck by how quickly she had been able to summon those men. Surely, she could not have had the time to do so in the brief interval between leaving Molly at her doorstep and accosting him only a few blocks later.

She had known that he had followed her and Molly from the Toad and Badger. She had said as much, though he did not know how she could have noticed him. He had never once seen her look around. But she must have known somehow that he was there, just the same, for she had to have sent word to those men, through some sort of signal… but to whom? And how? Once again, he felt out of his depth, a country bumpkin from the Midlands wandering through London like a perfect gull, ignorant and clueless.

He had never considered himself gullible or foolish, but then, he reminded himself, gullible and foolish people never do, do they? That is one of the things that makes them so. London truly is a different world, he thought. More than one, in fact. The worlds of London society were like layers. Begin to unearth and discover one, and soon another became revealed underneath it… an “underworld,” so to speak.

He needed to obtain more of those pamphlets of Robert Greene’s. He felt as if what he had learned from them had merely scratched the surface of London ’s underworld of thieves. How was it, he wondered, that Greene came by all his knowledge of the world of London ’s criminals? He was a poet, a university man who, one would think, would be much more accustomed to the ways and customs of the Inns of Court rather than the “stews” or brothels and “boozing kens” or alehouses of Cheapside and Southwark. He wondered if it would be possible to meet Greene somehow and ask him questions.

“Were I in your place, I should not bother,” Shakespeare said, when Smythe returned home and put the question to him.

“Why not?”

Still at his writing desk when Smythe returned, Shakespeare had managed to get a number of pages written and felt pleased enough with his progress to retire for the night. They both prepared for bed, stripping down to their white linen shirts.