The Scholars of Night by John M. Ford

Author:John M. Ford [Ford, John M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250269171
Google: ZDktEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2021-09-20T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

Hansard’s wristwatch alarm woke him from uncomfortable dreams. He stood up, then sat back down again hard on the bed, feeling dizzy and ill, unsure if it was mild flu, mild hangover, or mild depression, but certain he didn’t want to go anywhere just yet.

He phoned the Museum to cancel his research time today, then crawled back into bed and darkness and sleep.

He woke again a little before noon, feeling less misused. He dressed, packed up his notes, and went out to a pub a few blocks from the hotel. He sat down in a moderately well-lit corner with a pint of dry cider and a ham and tomato sandwich, and contemplated killers and clowns.

Suppose, Hansard thought, the play was about a real assassin?

It was a perfectly reasonable idea. Marlowe’s other plays had all been dramatized history, except for Doctor Faustus, and it was based on the actions of real wizards such as John Dee. Elizabethan theatre generally drew its plots from at least legend, if not life: stories the audience would be expected to know.

More importantly, it made sense. There had been a whole series of plots against Elizabeth the First, and through the efforts of Francis Walsingham’s private spy network, a whole series of exposures. And executions. It was what a free press would have called a hot issue.

The press wasn’t free at all, of course. One of Marlowe’s contemporaries had gone to jail for a play that fictionalized the now-cold, now-hot war with Spain.

If The Assassin’s Tragedy had found its way into the wall of Skene House because it steered too close to the truth, there was a whole new angle on this issue of its authorship. Authenticating it meant discovering what that truth was.

It also explained why Raphael, who was anything but an academic, had hold of a copy of the play; it pointed in the direction of why Raphael wanted Assassin analyzed.

It seemed more than a little ridiculous that a murder plot four hundred years old could weigh on the present; but when Major Montrose had come out of the river, and Allan had died, Hansard had been forced to recalibrate his sense of the ridiculous.

He sipped the crackling strong cider, started on his second sandwich, and drifted through his notes into the time of Elizabeth.

POLYDORUS. He has borne the weight of secrecy too long,

Sick-swollen with his thought, unable to

Release himself into another’s heart;

Such celibacy maketh all men mad.

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