"I was not."
"You had never met her nor even laid eyes upon her, as it hap pens, is that not so?"
"'Tis so."
"And yet you still advised Thomas Locke, whom you had only just met, to elope with this girl whom you had never met?"
Smythe spoke under his breath. "Will, what the devil are you doing?"
"Answer the question, please."
"I did so advise him, aye," said Smythe with a grimace.
"Are you ordinarily in the habit of advising strangers to elope?"
"Not ordinarily."
"So then why in this case?"
"Because .. because I understood how he must have felt, I suppose," said Smythe.
Elizabeth sat up a little straighter in her seat.
"Because something of a somewhat similar nature, so to speak, had occurred in your own life?"
Smythe gave him a hard look. "Aye," he said after a moment. Elizabeth looked down.
"And what happened then?" asked Shakespeare.
"Thomas said that he would follow my advice and left."
Smythe replied. "And then Ben took me to task for not minding my own business. As did you."
"I did, indeed," said Shakespeare. "And what happened then?"
"Upon listening to you and Ben, I decided that perhaps I had spoken rashly, and we—that is, you and I, not Ben—went together to seek out Thomas's parents and inform them of what their son intended."
"The rest you know," said Shakespeare, turning to face Locke upon the dais. "But for the benefit of this assemblage, we came to you and told you what had happened, whereupon you requested us to deliver a message to your son, asking him to come and see you. When we tried to do so, we found, much to our profound regret, that young Thomas had been slain." He turned back to Smythe. "Thank you, Tuck. If it please the court, I am finished with this witness."
"You may step down," said Locke to Smythe.
"I would now like to call forth Mistress Elizabeth Darcie."
Shakespeare said.
Elizabeth stepped up to take the stand and was sworn. "Elizabeth," said Shakespeare, "would you please tell this court your connection with this sad situation?"
"Portia Mayhew is a friend of mine," Elizabeth replied. "Our fathers know one another."
"Would you say that you are very dose friends?" Shakespeare asked.
"I would not say that we were very close," Elizabech replied, "which is to say, I like Portia, but I have not known her very long."
"You knew she was betrothed to Thomas Locke?"
"I did."
"And how did you discover that her father had withdrawn his consent for her to marry?"