Twisted

executioner.” Hal waved his arm in disgust. “Pox . . . at best thou would end up like Jonson.”
    Ben Jonson, the actor and playwright, had killeda man in a duel several years ago and barely escaped execution. He saved himself only by reciting the neck verse—Psalm 50, verse 1—and pleading the benefit of clergy. But his punishment was hard: to be branded with a hot iron.
    “I will find some way to kill Murtaugh.”
    Hal persisted in his dissuasion. “But what advantage can his death gain thee?”
    “It can gain me justice.”
    Hal’s face curled into an ironic smile. “Justice in London town? That be like the fabled unicorn, of which everyone speaks but no one can find.”
    Stout took a clay pipe, small in his massive woodworker’s hands, and packed it with aromatic weed from the Americas, which was currently very much in style. He touched a burning straw to the bowl and inhaled deeply. Soon smoke wafted to the ceiling. He slowly said to Hal, “Thy mockery is not entirely misplaced, my friend, but my simple mind tells me that justice is not altogether alien to us, even among the denizens of London. What of the plays we see? Ofttimes they abound with justice. The tragedy of Faustus . . . and that which we saw at the Globe a fortnight ago, inked by our friend Will Shakespeare: the story of Richard the Third. The characters therein are awash with evil—but right prevails, as Henry Tudor doth prove by slaying the ‘bloody dog.’ ”
    “Exactly,” Charles whispered.
    “But they be make-believe, my friends,” Hal countered. “They are of no more substance than the ink with which Kit Marlowe and Will penned those entertainments.”
    Charles would not, however, be diverted. “What know thou of this Murtaugh? Hath he any interests?”
    Hal answered, “Other men’s wives and other men’s money.”
    “What else know thou?”
    “As I said, he is a swordsman or so fancies himself. And he rides with the hounds whenever he quits London for the country. He is intoxicated with pride. One cannot flatter him too much. He strives constantly to impress members of the Court.”
    “Where lives he?”
    Stout and Hal remained silent, clearly troubled by their friend’s deadly intent.
    “Where?” Charles persisted.
    Hal sighed and waved his hand to usher away a cloud of smoke from Stout’s pipe. “That weed is most foul.”
    “Faith, sir, I find it calming.”
    Finally Hal turned to Charles. “Murtaugh hath but an apartment fit for a man of no station higher than journeyman and far smaller than he boasts. But it is near the Strand and the locale puts him in the regular company of men more powerful and richer than he. Thou will find it in Whitefriars, near the embankment.”
    “And where doth he spend his days?”
    “I know not for certain but I would speculate that, being a dog beneath the table of Court, he goes daily to the palace at Whitehall to pick through whatever sundry scraps of gossip and schemes he might find and doth so even now, when the queen is in Greenwich.”
    “And therefore what route would he take on theway from his apartment to the palace?” Charles asked Stout, who through his trade knew most of the labyrinthine streets of London.
    “Charles,” Stout began. “I like not what thou suggest.”
    “What route?”
    Reluctantly the man answered, “On horse he would follow the embankment west then south, when the river turns, to Whitehall.”
    “Of the piers along that route, know thou the most deserted?” Charles inquired.
    Stout said, “The one in most disuse would be Temple wharf. As the Inns of Court have grown in number and size, the area hath fewer wares houses than once it did.” He added pointedly, “It also be near to the place where prisoners are chained at water level and made to endure the tides. Perchance thou ought shackle thyself there following thy felony, Charles, and, in doing, save the Crown’s prosecutor a day’s work.”
    “Dear friend,” Hal began, “I pray thee, put whatever foul plans are in thy heart aside. Thou cannot—”
    But his words were stopped by the staunch gaze of their friend, who looked from one of his comrades to the other and said, “As when fire in one small house doth leap to the thatch of its neighbors and continue its rampaging journey till all the row be destroyed, so it did happen that many lives were burned to ash with the single death of my father.” Charles held his hand up, displaying the signet ring that Marr had