“So,” said Godfrey Middleton, standing behind him at the foot of the stairs, “thought you could get away with it, did you?” He held a sword in his right hand. He raised it and held the blade pointed towards Smythe’s chest as he advanced. “You saucy bastard. You thought you could dishonor my daughter and then boast about it to your friends, did you?”
Understanding dawned as Smythe realized that it had been Blanche’s father who had seen him coming out of her room! Aghast, he hastened to explain himself.
“Sir, I assure you, there was nothing-” Smythe began, but Middleton would not let him finish.
“A pox on your assurances, you villain! Do you take me for a fool? I saw you coming out of my daughter’s bedroom! How dare you! And in my own home! Under my very nose!”
“Sir, please,” said Smythe, backing away as the blade came uncomfortably near his throat. The man was much too close. If he tried to draw steel to defend himself, Middleton would run him through on the instant. “Sir, please listen, you do not understand what truly-”
“I understand only too well!” Middleton said, his voice like a whipcrack. Smythe saw that he was breathing hard and his eyes were blazing with a fury akin to madness. And then Smythe suddenly noticed that the blade Middleton held was wet with blood. “I understand that I have taken serpents to my breast! Serpents! Harlots! Sluts! After all that I have done for them, after all those years of toil, this is how they have repayed me! By fornicating with common stable boys and players!”
Smythe was alarmed by the man’s vehemence and filled with horror by the sight of the blood upon his blade, for he now realized what it had to mean. There was a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach and his mouth suddenly felt dry. “Sir, I beg you to hear me out,” he said. “ ‘Tis not at all what you think, I swear it in God’s name!”
“You dare deny the truth to me when I have seen with mine own eyes, you scoundrel?” said Middleton, advancing on him. Smythe began to back away, still vainly trying to get a word in edgewise, but Middleton kept after him, the bloody blade hovering just inches from his throat. “Do you suppose that I shall suffer myself to be made a fool of in front of all these people? Do you think I shall allow myself to be dishonored and disgraced after all of the work that I have done? I shall see you in Hell first, along with both of those ungrateful bitches I have raised! Wanton sluts, just like their mother, may God curse her scarlet, strumpet soul! I sent that damned harlot to the Devil for her wickedness, hoping to spare my daughters from her evil influence, but I see now that they were poisoned within her very womb, for they both grew up just like her! Sluts! Serpents! And there is only one thing to be done with serpents!”
“My God,” said Smythe, as the realization struck him like a thunderbolt. “ ‘Twas you! You killed Catherine!”
“The ungrateful little witch left me no choice! I wept for her, thinking she was dead! I had such high hopes for her! She could have been a real lady, the culmination of everything that I had striven for my whole life long! Do you have any idea what it took to find a suitable husband for her, a nobleman who would consent to marry a common woman with a reputation as a shrew? And yet, at long last, I found a nobleman who would have her and on her very wedding day, to my profound chagrin, she dies! I went back to the tomb to grieve for her and all that might have been, and I stood there, weeping, and asked her why she had to ruin everything and lo! She rose again before my very eyes! In fe
ar, I fell onto my knees, thinking that she was a demon sent from Hell, or else a punishment from God, and I cowered before her and confessed her mother’s murder and begged for her forgiveness! And then she screamed, and railed at me and struck me, and called me vile, unspeakable things, and told me how she had planned to fool me with the potion and run off with that stable boy! A stable boy! I realized then I had been made a fool of and so I struck the treacherous wench and said that I would kill her before I allowed her to disgrace me! ‘Twas then that she produced the dagger, which that cursed stable boy had hidden by her mother’s bier… And so I had no choice, you see. No choice at all. She made me do it, just like her mother, and now her sinful sister…”
“You shall hang for this, Middleton, even if you kill me,” said Smythe, trying to avoid being backed against a wall. If he could only get a bit more room, a bit more space between them… “You have already locked up John Mason, so you cannot put the blame on him. And none of Blanche’s suitors would ever seriously regard me as a rival, nor would they have any reason to kill Blanche. You shall never get away with this.”
“Oh, I think I shall,” Middleton replied, his eyes gleaming. “For ‘twas you who had committed the foul deed! You followed Blanche up to her room and forced yourself upon her, and then you killed her so that she could not reveal what you had done, just like you killed her sister and the others, but I heard the noise, you see, and I pursued you down the stairs and…”
The bolt from the crossbow caught him in the hollow of his throat. He staggered back and dropped his blade, gurgling and gagging horribly and clutching at the wound, then he fell backward onto the floor, where he thrashed for a moment, then lay still.
“What the devil were you waiting for, you idiot?” said Dubois, lowering the crossbow. “He was about to kill you.”
Smythe stared at him, speechless. It was Dubois, and yet… it was not Dubois. His posture and demeanor were completely different. Gone entirely was the French accent and the foppish manner. Even his voice sounded different. More resonant, more manly, more… Irish, of all things!
He expertly rewound the spring on the crossbow as he spoke and quickly fitted another bolt. “Strange how things turned out, eh? The bugger was quite mad, you know. And here I had gone to all that trouble to kill Holland and arrange for Camden ’s speedy dispatch, and now ‘twas all for nothing. No doubt, I shall get the blame for Blanche’s death, as well, unless you feel compelled to speak up on my behalf, seeing as how I saved your life just now. I do not kill women, you know. Not that it makes a great deal of difference, I suppose. They shall want me for murder just the same, seeing as how they saw me kill that fool I had for a partner. He would have spilled everything he knew about me. Couldn’t have that. Anyway, do as you wish. Meanwhile, I would love to stay and chat, but there are a lot of people in pursuit of me right now and I really must run and steal a horse.”
He raised the crossbow, aiming it at Smythe. “Now do stand still and allow me to go by, like a good fellow. And if you could find it in your heart to delay them just a bit, I truly would appreciate it. You might consider it evening the score, eh? Au revoir. Perhaps we shall meet again someday.”
He grinned, gave Smythe a jaunty salute, then turned and ran towards the door. Smythe simply stood there, staring after him with disbelief, then he glanced down at Middleton’s lifeless body. Another instant, and the man would have run him through. He felt a bit unsteady. He leaned back against the wall and took several deep breaths to steady his nerves.
A few moments later, he heard the sounds of running footsteps and men shouting. He stood and waited for them. They all came bursting into the great hall, led by Sir William, with Shakespeare right behind him.
“Tuck!” cried Shakespeare. “Thank Heaven! The Frenchman! Dubois! Have you seen him?”
“Aye, I have.”
“Quickly, man, which way did he go?” asked Worley, and then his eyes widened as he saw Middleton’s body lying on the floor. “Oh, good God! He has slain poor Godfrey!”
“Aye,” said Smythe. “And in so doing, he has saved my life.”
“Dubois?” said Shakespeare.
“Aye, for Godfrey Middleton was about to slay me,” Smythe said. He pointed at Middleton’s body as the hall became crowded with Dubois’s pursuers. “He killed Catherine, for disgracing him with a stable boy, just as he had killed his wife for some like offense, whether real or imagined. He confessed it all to me. I fear that he has also murdered Blanche. That is doubtless her blood on his sword there. He was going to kill me, and then blame me for the deed.”
“What?” said Worley, with astonishment.
“After we spoke in the library, and I told her about Daniel Holland’s murder, Blanche was quite understandably distressed,” Smythe explained. “I had escorted her back to her room, and when Middleton saw me leaving, he thought the worst of it. He followed me back downstairs and accused me of despoiling his daughter. He was enraged. He said… he said vile things that are best not repeated. There was a madness upon him. He told me how he had gone back to the tomb and saw Catherine awake as the effects of the potion wore off. He thought she was a demon or a spirit risen from the dead and so he fell upon his knees and confessed her mother’s murder to her. She was horrified, and screamed at him, and in a rage told him how she had planned to stage her death and run off with young Mason. He struck her and then she produced the dagger Mason left there for her. He got it away from her and killed her with it. And he was about to kill me when Dubois came upon the scene and shot him down.”
There was the sound of galloping hoofbeats outside on the cobbles and someone shouted out, “Stop him! He is getting away!” “After him!” shouted someone else.
“Nay, let him go!” commanded Worley. “I’ll not have men breaking their necks out there in the darkness, chasing after phantoms. ‘Tis not worth the risk. I, for one, have seen quite enough corpses for one day. We shall deal with him another time… whoever he may be.” He glanced at Smythe. “I do not suppose he told you that, did he?”