The Point of Death by Peter Tonkin Page A

them all if they fell into his clutches.
    A roar of laughter swept strangely into the suffocating room, recalling the grim occupants to the relentless progress of the play outside in the real world. 'God's life,' swore Alleyn, 'my cue!' and he was gone with a swish of his friar's robes.
    'On with it, all of you,' ordered Tom. 'I will see to this!' And, glad to pass the terrible weights of action, decision and responsibility to the fencing master, even Henslowe slunk away. Tom glanced around the dim, sultry, suddenly deserted little room with its mean window half shuttered. On an impulse, he crossed to this and threw the shutters wide, letting a shaft of sudden sunlight into the room. As he did so, he looked down across the old garden towards Bankside and there, on the corner of Rose Alley, where it ran north through Dead Man's Place to the river, stood a gallant looking up. For a moment more the man stood, still amid the bustle, staring back at the Rose as though expecting some matter of great moment to happen any instant now. Some thing about the man struck Tom. The darkness of his olive skin, perhaps, the glistening of his oiled black curls, the glint of ruby at his ear - a pair to the ruby in Tom's own lobes. As their eyes seemed to meet across the better part of one hundred yards, it was as though a flash of recognition passed between them. Then the man was gone into the crowd towards Bankend and the wherries at St Mary Overie Stairs, leaving nothing but an impression of tobacco doublet slashed with red, black cloak and long, long sword swinging against a broad right thigh.
    Another burst of applause drowned Tom's purposeful tread as he crossed back towards the table with its silent burden. As he stood beside the still form, his eyes narrowed, focussing his thoughts as his mind whirred into action. What was it about poor Julius Morton that bespoke death so clearly? The still, staring, soulless eyes, perhaps. The utter pallor of his face. The stillness of his parted lips and chest, which lay like warm marble beneath Tom's first gentle touch. The stillness at the cooling column of his throat. But more. Even with the absence of blood upon that fine, linen shirt - so excellent a match for his white cheeks now - there was the languor of his limbs. The weight of them. The almost studied carelessness with which his left hand was disposed across the broad boards, its fingers half curled in some final, dying gesture. The hand that had swung wide at the crucial moment, striking one actor and smearing another with bright blood. It was the hand ...
    Tom took a step or two up the table and leaned over to look more closely at the hand. Gently, he folded out the loose grasp of the fingers as though opening the petals of a rose. There, in the centre of the palm, was a tiny pool of blood. Tom remembered the smear that the dying man had left on the shocked Dick Burbage. Frowning, Tom reached into the breast of his jerkin for the Italian lace kerchief he always kept there.
    Three deft dabs revealed a wound – scarcely more than a knife cut - as though the man had stabbed himself while sharpening a quill for a pen.
    Tom's broad forehead folded in a deepening frown as he turned the dead hand over. There, on the back, a pin-prick, scarcely enough to release a ruby drop from the fat vein running along the back of it. Tom tugged at the red-gold point of his beard and thought. Only a poisoned blade could bring death from a wound as small as this - but no poison Tom had heard of would work as swiftly as this one must have done. And Tom knew a great deal about poisons, one way and another. He had learned a good deal more than the science of defence with Maestro Capo Ferro at Siena. He made a mental note to keep a watch on Dick Burbage's face. If there was poison in the blood Morton had wiped upon it then the skin would blister and fester. And Death would enlarge his kingdom by one more actor's soul.
    Deep in thought now, far removed from the howls