Read Online License to Quill by Jacopo della Quercia - Free Book Online Page B

and several clumps of dead rats. The bard was unsure what Bacon’s plans were after their recent row over Aston, but he had neither the time nor the energy to protest the mad wizard. The blue skies outside the Tower’s arrow slits were darkening, and Shakespeare was very much looking forward to fleeing the fortress before someone locked him inside it. Since the only way out of this quandary was up the castle’s twisting steps, up, up he climbed to the top of the Tower of London.
    â€œDo you always feed them like this?” the bard put to the scientist.
    â€œNo, but this is how we train them.”
    â€œTrain them for what?”
    Bacon paused mid-step. He turned with his lamp raised so that he could clearly see Shakespeare’s face. “What I am about to tell you does not leave this castle. It’s a secret to everybody.”
    The amused playwright smiled and acquiesced with a bow. “Please proceed, Master Bacon.”
    Placated, the man of science continued his climb while speaking over his shoulder. “Several years ago, I began testing the limits of animal intellect in the interest of training birds superior to carrier pigeons. * My research brought me to Aesop’s fable about the crow and the pitcher, † and from there to Pliny’s writings on the remarkable interactions Romans enjoyed with their ravens. ‡ I determined that if ravens could learn names and faces, solve puzzles, and even serve as lookouts in antiquity, we could train them to serve the realm far more effectively than as mere messengers.”
    â€œHow so?” Shakespeare asked. “Can you make them sing for the king on his birthday?”
    Bacon hitched his lamp onto a hook, silhouetting the scientist as he looked down at the playwright. “Imagine powers greater than Saint George commands, master bard. Imagine observing the Scottish Highlands and the Cliffs of Dover in one blink; being able to distinguish all your friends from all your foes in an instant; never failing your allies, and never forgetting your enemies. Imagine all this from a creature with eight thousand claws, two thousand eyes, and one thousand hearts. In all your years, master bard, and with all your proud faculties, tell me: Can you imagine that?”
    Shakespeare took a long look at the philosopher eclipsing him with his shadow. Although he could not see his face, the bard could feel the intensity coursing through the man’s veins. “I have a good imagination,” the playwright acknowledged, “but imagining is not the same thing as believing.”
    Behind his silhouette, Sir Francis Bacon was smiling. “That, master bard, is why you lack imagination.” The shadowy scientist pushed a door open and disappeared onto the White Tower’s rooftop. As Shakespeare followed, an unusual noise filled his ears: a deep, sustained cacophony that almost sounded like gasping, or gurgling. No … groaning.
    The bard froze. His gray eyes widened.
    Atop the White Tower, William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon stood ninety feet in the air, offering both men a spectacular view of London and its surroundings. To the bard’s left, the River Thames snaked left and right, north and south, past St. Katherine’s Docks and Says Court, around the Isle of Dogs, along Greenwich and the Palace of Placentia, and then off into the east. Straight ahead of the bard was the castle’s southwestern turret, which bisected his view of Southwark into Barnes Street on the left and the Globe’s own Bankside on the right. Connecting Southwark to London proper, Shakespeare could see the full expanse of London Bridge stretching more than eight hundred feet across the Thames with twenty arches and four clusters of tenements squeezed together like bellows. About two miles beyond the bridge, the River Thames bent southward, past the royal Palace of Whitehall and the larger Westminster complex. Guy Fawkes was down there, the bard