Free Shakespeare's Spy by Gary Blackwood Page A

concerns as food and fines seemed of little consequence at the moment. I had more weighty matters on my mind—my future, for example.
    Folk who are contented with their lot in life tend not to give much thought to the future. Ever since I joined the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, I had been more or less contented. My thoughts about the future had been limited mostly to wondering what would become of me if I lost my position with them. Now, suddenly, like a sailor who spies some green and welcome land on the horizon, I had been given a glimpse of new and unfamiliarterritory, and I longed to know whether or not I had any hope of reaching it.
    It took me some time to find the cunning woman’s tattered tent, for the sign with the enormous eye no longer stood before it. I paused at the flap, uncertain whether or not to call out to her. To my surprise, a rough voice within said, “You may enter, young lady.” When Sam and Sal and I came here together, she had called us young ladies. Did she know it was me waiting outside, then? Or was it simply that most of her clients were young ladies?
    I ducked through the opening. The interior was even more smoky than I remembered. When my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw why. Instead of coal, she was burning a chunk of the wooden sign in her kettle.
    “Sit,” said La Voisin, and I obeyed. She peered at me from beneath the layers of woolen scarves. “I have already read your future.”
    “Aye. But I—I’d like to know more.”
    “Hmm. It is not wise to try to learn too much of what lies in store.”
    “I don’t wish to know
everything
…”
    She gave a hoarse, humorless laugh. “Only the good things, eh?” When I had placed a penny gingerly in her grimy hand, she unveiled her scrying ball and gazed into it, but only for a few seconds. Then she said matter-of-factly, “I see that you will make a name for yourself.”
    Though I suppose this should have pleased me, I was disappointed. It seemed to me a sort of all-purpose prediction, designed to appeal to anyone and everyone. “That’s all?”
    “It seems quite enough to me.”
    “Can’t you tell me something more … well,
specific?
”
    “Just what did you have in mind?”
    “Perhaps something about …” I had no desire to discuss with this odd old woman anything as awkward and intimate as love. “… about other people?”
    “Other people,” she muttered. “I can try. But I see only what I see.” She held out her hand and I dropped another penny into it. This time she stared into the ball, motionless, for so long that I feared she had drifted into some sort of daze, or fallen asleep with her eyes open. As surreptitiously as I could, I waved the wood smoke away from my face. The motion seemed to bring her out of her trance. When she spoke, it was in a monotone, without inflection, without emotion. “Because of you,” she said, “someone will die.” Before I had quite gotten my mind around this ominous prediction, she made a second that was even more startling: “But another will return to life.”

11
    “ R eturn to life?” I said. “How is that possible?”
    “I do not interpret. I only—”
    “Aye, I ken. You only see.” I leaned forward to get a closer look at the scrying ball. “I don’t suppose you saw aught about someone …” I hesitated, embarrassed. “… someone named Judith?”
    She pulled the cloth protectively over the black ball. “No.” Then on her shrouded, wart-speckled face, I saw something approaching a smile. “But if you were to send this Judith to me, I could tell her future … and perhaps make certain that you appeared in it.”
    “For a price, of course.”
    “Of course.”
    So, not only did she tell her clients what they wished to hear, she would also tell them what someone else wanted them to hear. She was clearly a fake. And yet … and yet she had revealed to each of us one thing that we could not conceivablyhave wished to hear—that Sam would turn traitor, that Sal