The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [111]
"Because you are dying, and you want to die whole. Because that gap in your mind has always plagued you, like a rotted tooth."
Braxiatel smiled briefly. "I have read between the lines of your plays. I know that it bothers you."
Dying. The word should have shocked Shakespeare, provoked him to paroxysms of anger, but he had guessed. He was dying, and he thought he knew who was responsible. "Ralegh," he murmured. "That whoreson Ralegh. He has poisoned me."
Braxiatel nodded. "He was released from the Tower of London five weeks ago. He is here in Stratford under an assumed name and slipped poison into your wine in a tavern."
Shakespeare smiled weakly. His head throbbed with a sick, hot pain. "I drew up my will a month ago," he whispered, "as soon as I was told of his release. I knew that he bore malice against me.
What man would not, after thirteen years of incarceration?" He closed his eyes, intending only to blink, but the call of the darkness almost pulled him in. "Still, a man can die but once," he murmured,
"and we all owe God a death." Forcing his eyes open, he said,
"You talk of a bargain. What have I to offer?"
"You have some manuscripts," Braxiatel replied, "plays that did not find favour with the Monarch. Rather than see them lost with your death, I would like to see them placed on display in a library that I am in the process of building."
"A library? Of my works? Why?" Shakespeare was having to concentrate harder and harder on the conversation.
"The Library of St John the Beheaded," Braxiatel said quietly, "is dedicated to preserving works of science, literature and philosophy that would otherwise be lost. Your plays Love's Labours Won, The Birth of Merlin and Sir John Oldcastle might not survive your death if someone does not act to preserve them now."
"Minor works, they do not deserve to survive." Shakespeare broke off as a shudder ran through his body. Sweat sprang out across his scalp and forehead, and trickled greasily across his skin to the pillow, "But you may have them. You may have all my manuscripts. They are in the bottom drawer of the dresser over there by the window." He tried, but failed, to move his head as Braxiatel walked across to the dresser and bent down. Moments later the man straightened up with an armload of quarto sheets covered with Shakespeare's sprawling handwriting.
"Thank you," he said.
"And now for your side of the bargain," Shakespeare whispered. "I could have counted myself happy these past seven years, were it not that I have had bad dreams. If you have a physic to restore to me that which was lost, I would fain die happy." Braxiatel balanced the pile of papers in the crook of his left arm while his right hand reached into a pocket of his coat. When it emerged it was holding a small metal device with a fleck of green glass in one end. He pointed it at Shakespeare's head and pressed a stud on its side.
"Now cracks a noble heart," he quoted softly. "Good night, sweet Prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Shakespeare did not see him leave. In his mind's eye it was as if a curtain had been drawn back, revealing a stage populated with characters and random fragments of scenery. Here, standing by a window, was an old man with long, white hair; there at a tavern table was an older Kit Marlowe with his devilishly beautiful smile. An Italian with a bushy beard quaffed a flagon of wine while, in the background, an island floated above the towers and gilded domes of Venice.
Demons stalked the stage too; some with scarlet wings and armoured skin, others like bags of bones. And there was more - so much more - places, people, sights and sounds and smells that crowded at the edges of his mind and jostled for position.
Effortlessly he summoned up the remembrance of things past, holding them like pieces of a jigsaw, trying one against another as if to assemble a coherent story