The Scottish Play Murder by Anne Rutherford Page B

London?”
    Arturo relaxed some, and wiped his face some more, slowly. He picked up a shard of an old mirror from the table before him, its edges filed down and dipped in wax to dull them, to see what he could of his face in it as he rubbed off a bit of dirt invisible to Suzanne. “Well, I know he hadn’t been here terribly long. I’d never seen him before that night. I’m certain it was his first time at the Goat and Boar, and there might not be many to know much about him.”
    “I won’t know until I ask. Who else did you see there? Any of the other Players?”
    Arturo shook his head. “I was the only one from the theatre that night. I believe the lot of them had gone to see the bullbaiting. ’Twas Matthew, I think, who was aquiver at the prospect of it.” He thought a moment, and slowly wiped his face some more, though it was quite clean now. Finally he said, staring into the middle distance as if gazing at a painting depicting the scene, “Angus. He was at their table. Or near it, at least. Sitting near Ramsay, as I remember. More than likely for the sake of passing time with another Scot. He would have been one to speak to Ramsay, and would have heard what passed between the two before their voices were raised.”
    “I see. Has Angus told you anything about Ramsay since then?”
    Arturo shook his head. “I wouldn’t expect him to. ’Tis none of my business what’s between himself and his countryman.”
    “The Spaniard wasn’t his countryman.”
    “And so all the more odd he should have sat at that table. In any case, although I like Angus, I don’t know him the way his fellow musicians do. I couldn’t tell you what business he could have had with a Spanish pirate.”
    “Do you remember anyone else who might have been there that night?”
    Arturo shook his head. “I was, after all, minding my own business and not attending to the others in the room until their conversation grew loud enough I couldn’t ignore it. I couldn’t say why Angus was there, only that he was, and I don’t remember any other faces.”
    “Very well, then, Arturo. Thank you.” With that, Suzanne went to have a look for Angus.
    But he wasn’t there that night, for that night’s play did not require him. So first thing the next morning she set out to visit him at home. Suzanne knew Angus only by his first name, as she did many of her longtime friends in Southwark. Nicknames were common among entertainers, and that was why she didn’t know Horatio’s real name at all. Angus was a musician from Glasgow who sometimes played for the performances at the Globe, and she thought him quite good. Most people did, she’d heard. He played the Scottish pipes, both
mór
and
beg
, and was proficient with timbrel and tabor as well. She’d seen him play both pipes and drum at once, attracting a crowd with Big Willie and his fiddle on a corner in Bank Side, which was their occupation when not busy playing their medieval repertoire for the Globe performances. She knew where he lived, and donned her cloak against the sharpening fall air to go there.
    The streets in Southwark teemed always with folks of little means, intruded upon occasionally by carriages passing through, belonging to the wealthier classes from the western end of London across the river. There had been some truth to Daniel’s claim of sending away his carriage to prevent damage to it by gangs of boys out to do mischief, for the streets were thick with idlers and becoming worse every year. Street vendors competed with each other for the attention of anyone who appeared to have cash in their possession, a cacophony quite unlike the genteel quiet of the new neighborhoods closer to Whitehall. Those places had servants to cook, clean, and shop for the household, and no need to buy prepared foods cooked with someone else’s wood on someone else’s fire and eaten from someone else’s container. No need to haggle with a too-savvy child over the price of a used pair of shoes or a