Chapter 35
THE MASTIFF SNARLED, ITS TEETH BARED, SALIVA dripping from its gums into the dust. Crouching low, it inched nearer the bull, then dashed in from the side and snapped at the bull’s hind legs. Despite its immense strength and size, the bull was quick and nimble and spun round, its head lowered. The beast met the dog full-on. One of its horns thrust upward into the smaller animal’s soft underbelly and tossed it into the air.
The dog yelped in pain as it flew upward, a deep gash in its belly raining blood, before smacking down clumsily onto the ground. Snorting and trampling the dog under its hooves, the bull spiked it once more on its horns and tossed it again. The bull tried another charge, but was brought up short by the eight-foot rope that tethered it to a post in the center of the dusty ring. The crowd roared approval, and another mastiff was brought in to try its luck.
All eyes were on the bloody spectacle. All eyes but those of John Shakespeare. He was watching Essex, who was just taking his leave of Her Majesty in the royal viewing box, bowing low to her before strolling off to meet up with a group of a dozen or so spectators. Among them were the Earl’s closest associates: Henry Danvers, Gelli Meyrick, and the Earls of Southampton and Rutland.
The word conspirators came to Shakespeare’s mind. Were these men all in on the deadly game on which Essex was embarked? There could be little doubt of it. He took a deep breath and strode toward them.
It was a muggy afternoon. For the first time in weeks, there were dark clouds on the horizon. There would be rain before the three-day celebration was done.
The aging Queen fanned herself as she watched the entertainment beneath a canopy of green and gold stripes. She was as enthusiastic as any of her subjects in her applause. After the bulls, there would be bears, horses, and monkeys to delight her with their flowing blood. As he studied her animated face, it occurred to Shakespeare that the Queen looked mighty healthy and spirited for a woman supposedly destined to die within a few days.
A beautiful black woman in fanciful Roman battledress—gold breastplate and helmet and short fringed war-skirt—strolled past, her hands straining to contain two chain-link leashes with a large spotted wild cat at the end of each. Shakespeare stepped aside.
All around, refreshments were to be had. A fountain rained Rhenish wine; a hogshead hidden in a bush of roses had a faucet to dispense claret. Waiters offered trays of little delicacies—pastries with the breasts of peewits, sugar cakes with saffron, salted potato from the New World. Shakespeare helped himself to a portion of finest tobacco leaves and placed them in a pouch.
At the welcoming pageant, dozens of the most artful jesters and tumblers of England had clowned and bounded about. In the fields all around, there were fairground stalls with oxen roasting and casks of free ale for the commoners and townsfolk.
It was a perfect setting. This castle, Sudeley, had been Elizabeth’s own home when, as a girl in her teen years, she was cared for by her stepmother Katherine Parr, the last of Great Henry’s six wives. Elizabeth had memories of happy days in these gardens with her young cousin Jane Grey. But those days were too short-lived, for Katherine Parr had died soon afterwards, in childbirth, and Sudeley had passed into other hands. Poor Lady Jane’s own fate had been no happier, ending on the block at the age of sixteen after ambitious men had thrust her unwillingly onto the throne in a vain attempt to keep it from Catholic Mary.
Shakespeare bowed to Essex. “My lord.”
“Mr. Shakespeare, you have arrived.”
“Your sister was most persuasive, my lord.”
Essex laughed loud and waved away his companions. “The idle wench is irresistible, is she not? She can certainly rule me, and I am her own little brother.”
Shakespeare breathed a sigh of relief. His welcome indicated that Essex—at least for now—knew nothing of Shakespeare’s secret dealings. “I am delighted to be of service to you.”
“And that you shall.” His voice lowered a tone or two. “Did my sister give you an inkling of the great matter on which we are engaged, Mr. Shakespeare?”
“An inkling, sir, yes.”
“And were you daunted by the enormity of our momentous task?”
“No, my lord. I was not daunted.”
“Then we must set you to work, Mr. Shakespeare, for there is naught more vital than the safety of our realm. It is by winning the war of secrets that we shall be kept safe.”
“That is why I am here.”
“Do you have lodgings? I fear there is little space at Sudeley.”
“I will look around.”
“Be patient. I will call on you soon enough. Know that when you perform a task for me, you do it as a true and loyal Englishman. Do you see that proud bull in the ring, how mastiff after mastiff launches itself at the beast, and yet it impales them all? I am that bull. I shall repel the Spaniard and the Scotchman and every other foreign potentate that covets the throne of England. Be ready, John, for I shall call on you at a moment’s notice. We must seize the day—carpe diem!”
“And the case of Eleanor Dare, my lord?”
Essex brushed the topic aside. “Think no more of Roanoke for the moment, John; we have great affairs of state at hand.” He patted Shakespeare’s arms and was gone with a sweep of his white, gold, and tangerine cape, a group of friends and followers trailing in his wake.
Shakespeare watched them a moment, then his eyes strayed across the bullring to the royal box, where he saw that Elizabeth’s eyes were following the perambulations of her handsome favorite. Essex made her feel a girl again with his flattery and fluttering and swooning. Did she have any idea what treachery he was embarked upon? At her side now was the small, insignificant figure of Sir Robert Cecil. He caught Shakespeare’s eye and acknowledged him with an almost imperceptible nod of the head.
Starling Day hove into view on the arm of John Watts, London’s richest merchant. Watts was weighed down with jewelry and gold: diamond earrings, brooches, neck-chains, and enormous pearls. Starling’s attire was magnificent in its awfulness, a vast and garish confection of silver and blue satin and silk, with a ruff the size of an October moon. Her hair was piled on her head beneath a silver-thread caul that almost obscured her face. She continually tugged at the caul with her plump, heavily ringed fingers so that she could look about her properly.
“Mr. Shakespeare, see, I am at court! And at the finest merriment the world has ever seen. For lunch I ate cygnet and snipe, subtleties of jelly dressed as great roaring lions, oyster pies, dotterels, godwits, and every manner of songbird, marchpane meats, figs, and little sweet things from the far lands of Turkey. I really don’t know what else, Mr. Shakespeare. There were foods the like of which I have never seen. Am I not come a long way, sir?”
“Indeed, you have taken a remarkable journey, Mistress Day.”
She introduced him to Watts, who nodded in bored acknowledgment, then took advantage of Shakespeare’s presence to leave his mistress and go off in search of better entertainment.
“Have you found good rooms, Mr. Shakespeare?”
“I shall sleep beneath a hedgerow, Mistress Day.”
“Mr. Watts has procured one of the best apartments for us, here in the castle itself. Can you imagine, Starling Day will sleep in a royal castle this night? Of course, that assumes Mr. Watts allows me any sleep. But you cannot sleep beneath a hedge! There is a room with our luggage a little way from our bedchamber that would suit you well. It overlooks the main courtyard and is in a prime spot.”
“That is very gracious of you, mistress.”
“Then that is settled.”
BOLTFOOT LIMPED through the streets of London down toward the Thames and Dowgate. He had his caliver primed and loaded, slung loosely in his arms.
He slowed to a crawl, looking about him all the while as he neared the school. There was a man, in leather jerkin and leather cap, on watch, close to the main entrance. He was gazing elsewhere and did not spot Boltfoot, who immediately stepped back and went around to the rear of the house to the stables, where he found the groom, Sidesman, bringing nosebags to the horses.
Sidesman looked as if he had seen an apparition. He stood back from Boltfoot and stared at him, his gaze shifting uneasily toward the house, then back to Boltfoot and his caliver.
Boltfoot lunged forward and put the muzzle of the weapon to the groom’s throat. “Where is Jane?” he whispered in a raw, low voice. “Is she here or gone?”
“She’s gone, Mr. Cooper. With a troop of militia to the north. A place called Masham, to the family of Mistress Shakespeare, by York.”
“Someone is watching for me, yes?”
Sidesman froze and did not speak.
“Is it McGunn?” Boltfoot demanded. “Tell me, Mr. Sidesman, or die now.”
The groom’s eyes slid sideways. His body was rigid with fear. An explosion rang out and Sidesman fell, half his face ripped off by a volley of balls. Boltfoot ducked down and scrabbled on hands and knees from the stable forecourt. He looked back at the bloody pulp that had been Sidesman’s head. Something told Boltfoot the shot had hit its intended target. He, Boltfoot, was wanted alive. He was the route to Eleanor Dare.
Another shot rent the air close to Boltfoot’s body. He was up now, caliver in hand, shielded by the edge of the wall. He loosed off a shot of his own, but it was unaimed and without hope of hitting home.
Boltfoot scuttled off up Dowgate. He was not the fastest of movers at the best of times, but now he was weaker than usual. His heavy foot scraped through the dust as he ran. As he crossed over the road eastward, he stumbled in the stinking sewage kennel that ran down the center of the thoroughfare. Scrabbling clumsily to his feet, he heard the sound of running footsteps behind him. He stopped and knelt down on one knee, quickly reloading the caliver with expert speed, dropping none of the powder corns he poured from the horn that hung at his belt. McGunn was no more than thirty yards away from him, coming on fast. Boltfoot lifted the caliver and pointed its intricately engraved octagonal muzzle directly at the oncoming pursuer.
McGunn stopped and dived to the left, behind a cart.
Boltfoot cursed his luck. Too slow. He did not fire, but rose to both feet and backed away, his weapon trained on the cart. A young woman in a barley-colored dress walked by with two small children, one at each hand. When she saw Boltfoot with the weapon clutched in front of him, backing past her, she screamed and huddled down, cradling the children close to her breast. There was a puff of smoke from the side of the cart, then balls tore past Boltfoot’s ear and slammed into the brick wall of the long hall that fronted the road. Boltfoot dodged into a small alleyway at the side of the northern end building; he could hear the woman still screaming, accompanied by the wailing of her children.
He turned and lurched on down the alley into Cousin Lane, then heard another sound behind him. Looking over his left shoulder, he saw McGunn and another man, the one in the leather jerkin and cap from outside the school. They each had a pair of heavy petronel pistols, slung on straps about their chests, with one held out in front like a monstrous funnel of fire. He was hopelessly outgunned.
Boltfoot stopped in a doorway and dropped again to his knee. McGunn was the man. He lined up his caliver on McGunn. They were twenty yards from him now and he knew he could get McGunn, even if the other one took him.
“We don’t want to kill you, Cooper.”
“Then put up your weapons.”
“We want the woman. Give us the whore’s arse of a woman and you’re a free man.”
Boltfoot ignored them and kept his caliver trained on McGunn.
“There’s no way out for you, Cooper. Drop your weapon and I pledge you will be safe. We can follow you all day, if needs must.”
The door behind Boltfoot swung open. A woman with an empty basket, all done up in her pynner and light worsted cape as if she was going to market, stepped out and stopped, looking with astonishment at Boltfoot.
He struggled up and, bent double, pushed past her into the house. A shot exploded behind him and took the basket clean from the woman’s hand, tossing it thirty feet along the street. She stood frozen, mouth agape. Behind her, the door was slammed shut by Boltfoot. He pushed home the heavy bolt, locking her outside.
Boltfoot found himself in the spacious stone-flagged anteroom of a solidly built new-brick merchant’s house. He took in his options at a glance. There were two doors leading further into the building. Take the wrong one and he might be trapped. He took the one on the left and found himself in a kitchen. A young, scar-faced malkin dropped the copper pot she was scouring and it clattered to the floor at her feet. Boltfoot sidestepped past her.
“Is there a postern door?”
Wide-eyed, she pointed behind her to another door from the kitchen. Boltfoot went toward it. From the front of the building, he could hear the smashing of glass. They were stoving in a window to get into the house.
He pushed on through the door into a buttery. There were shelves of preserved fruits, baskets of eggs, kegs of ale, and a churn for butter. There was another door, wide open, leading to a large backyard. He plunged through it without hesitation.
The yard was enclosed by a brick wall. At one end there was a chicken coop, where half a dozen fowl clucked and pecked at seeds. A goat was tethered in the middle of a grassy area in the center of the yard; it looked up at Boltfoot with soulful, disinterested eyes, then returned to munching grass. It seemed to Boltfoot he was trapped.
He went back inside. The malkin cowered in terror, holding the copper pot in front of her as a weapon of defense.
“Is there a way out?”
He heard a loud crash from the front of the house. Through the open doorway to the anteroom, he could see that they had a mallet and were beating down the mullion and transom of the window.
The malkin could not—or would not—speak. With the copper pot, she gestured once more to the yard, as though desperate to get this man out of her kitchen at any cost. Boltfoot went out into the yard once more. His eyes lighted on the chicken coop again. It might just take his weight.
He slung his caliver across his back, then dragged himself over the low picket fence that kept the birds enclosed. They scattered in a wild panic of feathers and clucking. Awkwardly he clambered onto the roof of the coop. It was rickety and certainly not built to take a man’s weight, but it held and gave him enough height to reach the top of the brick wall. Sweat poured from his bandaged head into his eyes. His hands were slippery, yet he managed to get a grip at the top of the wall and, with every remaining ounce of strength, pulled himself up and swung his good leg, his right leg, over the top. For a moment, he hung there precariously, trying to get back his breath. Then, with a mighty effort, he pulled his left foot up and over and fell in a clatter of weapons on the far side of the wall, suppressing a yelp of pain as the hilt of his sheathed cutlass dug into his hip bone.
He was in the great court of the Steelyard Hall. Above him, a hundred feet or more high, was the stone-built tower where a constant watch was kept for returning trade ships as they made their slow tack up the Thames from all the distant shores of the world, bringing with them fortunes or disappointment.
“Here, you!” an artisan called out to him, anger in his voice.
Boltfoot rose painfully to his feet, unslung his caliver, and leveled it at the man in warning. The man took one look at it and hurried away, around the side of the hall. Boltfoot limped on across the court, past the great watchtower and toward the Windgoose Lane gateway. He heard a noise and turned to see that his pursuers were clambering over the wall from the hen coop, the man from outside the school first. Boltfoot loosed off a shot from his caliver. The man screamed and fell, clutching at his shattered shinbone.
Smoke rose lazily from the weapon. Boltfoot slung it over his back and slipped through the gateway, looking about him. At the northern end of the street, he saw her at the prearranged spot: Eleanor Dare, mounted on a bay gelding, holding the reins of a second horse at her side. Boltfoot called to her and she saw him and urged the horses into a trot toward him.
“Quick,” he said. “He is right behind me.”
With supreme effort, he launched himself at his mount and pulled himself into the saddle. They wheeled, kicked their heels into the animals’ sides, and broke into a canter northward. A volley of shots broke the silence behind them, but by then they were beyond the range of McGunn’s petronels and were gone, into the maze of alleyways that crowded this part of London city.
IN THE EARLY EVENING LULL, Shakespeare retired to the room that Starling had offered him. It was small but convenient, being in the main part of the house—at great expense to Mr. Watts, no doubt—where Shakespeare would not be far from Essex, and could monitor his movements closely.
On his way to the room, he had tried to see Sir Robert Cecil, but Clarkson had told him the meeting would have to wait; Sir Robert was in a session of Privy Council and would then attend upon the Queen.
In Shakespeare’s little chamber, which was cluttered with luggage boxes and rails of gowns, Starling had had a mattress and blankets put out for him on the floor beneath the window. He lay down, intending to steal an hour’s rest before the evening madness began, but fell into a deep sleep.
It was dark when he awoke. From below the window came the roar of laughter, the din of loud music, wild cheering and stamping of feet. Quickly he dressed in his ancient court attire and made his way down to the teeming central courtyard, which was alight with pitch torches and blazing cressets of oil against all the walls. More light, from hundreds of candles, spilled out through the tall windows of the great hall, where revelers drank heavily and danced the volta with abandon.
Weaving his way through the crowd and into the hall, he felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see the smiling face of Frances, the Countess of Essex. “Mr. Shakespeare, I thought that was you. I saw you at the baiting this afternoon.”
He bowed. “My lady.”
“Oh, don’t be so formal, Mr. Shakespeare. And before you ask, I am feeling quite myself again, thank you. The Queen’s own physicians have been treating me for my little illness. They are so attentive to me. I believe Sir Robert Cecil has even forbidden me to depart from court, so careful is he of my health.”
“I am delighted to hear it.” More delighted, Shakespeare thought, than she would ever know. “And have the tiny flying things gone?”
She frowned. “What flying things, Mr. Shakespeare?”
He laughed. “Pay me no heed, my lady. I have supped too much claret.”
As he spoke, his gaze drifted off across the hall to where her husband, Essex, was talking to McGunn’s man Slyguff. As he watched, Slyguff took a paper from his doublet and showed it to Essex. The Earl broke the seal and read it, then looked up. Slyguff indicated Shakespeare with an incline of his thin face. Essex followed his gaze.
Shakespeare felt a chill in his bones.
“Ah, look, there is my husband,” the Countess said, as if spotting an old friend she had not seen in months. Her voice turned more melancholy. “You know, Mr. Shakespeare, although Sir Robert keeps me at court, still my lord of Essex seems very distant. He has not spoken more than ten words to me these past days.”
Shakespeare did not know what to say; he could think of no crumb of comfort to offer this woman, who had wed two of the greatest heroes of England—first the tragic warrior-poet Sir Philip Sidney and now Essex—but had never won either of their hearts. The world knew that Sidney’s great love had been Penelope Rich—the Stella of his poem Astrophel and Stella—and that, on Sidney’s death, Essex had married Frances merely for the heroic associations in taking on a brother officer’s widow.
“He is with Mr. Slyguff,” she continued. “Do you not think that Irishman a most curious, cold fellow, Mr. Shakespeare? He never seems to speak a word. Perchance he is dumb.”
The Countess drifted off into the throng, then a drum roll, like distant thunder, silenced the talk and laughter in the hall. The Master of the Revels took to the stage and clapped hands for attention. Shakespeare saw that the Queen had taken the prime seat up in the gallery. She was surrounded by her favorites—Heneage, old Burghley, Drake, Howard of Effingham. Essex walked away from Slyguff and ascended the gallery steps to join the royal party, kissing the Queen’s hand with an excessive show of ardor. He took the seat on her right. Sir Robert Cecil was on the other side, at the far end of the row, small and unassuming in his dark and sober attire. The contrast between him and the flamboyant, domineering Essex could not have been more marked.
On stage, an entertainment with mock ships-of-war reconstructed the sinking of the Armada and made jest of King Philip of Spain. At one point, Sir Francis Drake himself jumped onto the platform and grabbed a wooden sword from one of the players and made much ado about running the King through, to great applause.
John Dowland, the lutenist, played a ballad about a shepherd and his sheep. Players dressed in shepherds’ smocks entered the stage, driving a flock of six Cotswold sheep before them. The Master of the Revels then introduced Lord Chandos, the owner of Sudeley Castle, who bowed and offered the sheep as a gift to Her Majesty, describing them as the finest wool-bearers in the county.
The Queen accepted the gift with good grace and said she would take care to protect her new pets from she-wolves, at which the audience roared with laughter. As if on cue, a player dressed as a huntsman came on stage, with a wolf straining at a leash. The wolf had been put into fine lady’s clothes, with gold and silver threads, emeralds and sapphires. It also bore a fine ruff around its collar and a lawn coif about its narrow gray head, with its ears pointing up through two slits. It panted and drooled heavily, revealing its long teeth.
The crowd gasped. Shakespeare looked toward Essex. How would he react to this undisguised mockery of his mother? Everyone in the room knew it to be a calculated insult.
His face was as dark as a storm-laden sky. He seemed to hesitate a moment, then made his decision. Without taking his leave or even bowing to his sovereign, he rose to his feet and stalked from the royal gallery. The Queen feigned indifference and continued talking with Lord Burghley on her left, but none present could have failed to note the disrespect, even contempt, that Essex had shown her by turning his back and walking away from her so. If anyone else had done such a thing, they would have been dispatched to the Tower without delay. Only Essex, with his tempestuous, hot-and-cold relationship with the monarch, could get away with such insolence.
“Well, well, well.”
Shakespeare swung around and found himself face-to-face with Richard Topcliffe.
“That should sort the sheep from the wolves.”
“Have you run short of women, children, and priests to persecute, Topcliffe?”
Topcliffe was in court clothes: a black doublet with slashed arms, showing a gold inlay, yellow-gold breeches, and black netherstocks. He exuded an unholy stink.
He sneered at Shakespeare. “And whose side are you on? Whom do you favor in the battle that lies ahead?”
“You are more the mooncalf than ever I had imagined.”
Topcliffe eyed him a moment with overt loathing, then pushed him in the chest, forcefully, with the palm of his right hand. Shakespeare reeled but kept his feet.
“I look forward to the day that I drain your blood, you son of a Papist. And I will see your dog-daughter drab of a wife and her runt in the grave before the year is out. You can all join your good friend Father Southwell at Paddington Green.”
Shakespeare was unarmed—no sidearms were allowed here, so close to the Queen—or he might well have killed Topcliffe. Instead he turned away, with Topcliffe’s foul laughter ringing in his ears.
He was still shaking with fury ten minutes later when Clarkson found him. The old retainer quietly ushered him toward the White Garden beneath the royal apartments, where a covered passage extended from the private chambers of the castle to the chapel. It was in this concealed space that they found Sir Robert Cecil, standing in the shadows, lit only by a single candle in a wall sconce.
Clarkson retreated to the entrance to make sure none should enter and disturb them. Shakespeare bowed. “I bring you grave news, Sir Robert,” he said. He told him of Forman’s horoscopes—the death chart that claimed Elizabeth would die on September the eighteenth and the wedding chart that suggested a suitable date for the marriage of Essex and the lady Arbella Stuart to be on the fourteenth, less than three days from now.
“Then you must stay close to Essex. Do you have his trust?”
Shakespeare thought of the look Essex had given him when he read Slyguff’s missive. McGunn and the intelligencers in the turret room must have learned all they needed to know of Shakespeare’s loyalties when Jack Butler broke under torture. He shook his head. “I think not, Sir Robert. I am no longer sure what game he plays with me.”
“What of the correspondence between the Earl and the lady Arbella?”
Shakespeare spoke carefully. “I have discovered that there was, indeed, correspondence. Love letters and odes from the Earl to the lady.”
“And who composed these verses? Essex is no Sidney or Ralegh. He is not a poet.”
“I cannot say, Sir Robert.”
“Cannot—or will not?”
Shakespeare ignored the question. “I can tell you, however, that the go-between is one Morley, Christopher Morley, tutor to the lady Arbella. I believe he was placed there as an intelligencer by Mr. Secretary Walsingham, but has now passed into the hands of Essex.”
Cecil continued as though Shakespeare had not spoken. “Because you do understand why I ask you this, I hope. It is because we must find the evidence. We must have it to hold over the parties to this illegal marriage even though we stop the wedding. Essex and those who sponsor him must know that we have the wherewithal to put their heads on the block. Bring me the verses. I will settle for nothing less.”
Shakespeare understood that all too well. Most of all, he understood that it was his own brother’s neck that was in danger. He bowed to Cecil. “Indeed, Sir Robert, I will bring you evidence.”
But how, he wondered as he walked slowly back to the celebrations, would he do that and save Will? He wondered, too, why Cecil had not displayed more interest in the name Morley.
The sky was suddenly lit up by a dazzling display of fireworks, bursting above the castle like the onset of war between gods. Shakespeare stopped and looked up in awe and wonder; he had never seen their like before—specks of red and gold and silver fire, exploding like flowers in bloom, then fading and dying as they fell to earth. He shivered and wrapped his arms tight around his body. For the first time in many weeks, he felt a chill in the night air.
Out in the fields where the common people had their fairground stalls, bonfires were lit for miles around and minstrel music was played, all mixing in the night air with the finer melodies played here at the castle.
More fireworks flared up and lit the castle with their brilliance. They also lit the face of Slyguff twenty yards away, watching him unblinking with his one good eye, the other, the left one, dead and opaque.
SHAKESPEARE DID NOT sleep. He paced his room, glancing every few moments from the window, not knowing what to expect, but certain something must happen this night.
The room was bathed in shadows from the single candle he burned, casting eerie glimmers on the boxes and chests that belonged to Starling Day and the merchant venturer John Watts. For a long time, he was alert, every muscle and fiber tensed for the noise or sight that would propel him into action. But by three of the clock, he was weary and sat down on the mattress with his back to the sill. He began to feel drowsy, his eyes heavy-lidded. At first he thought the noise he heard was part of a dream, but then he was suddenly wide awake. Somewhere, not far away, he could hear the sound of hooves and horses whinnying. He looked out of the window. It was raining, for the first time in God knew how many weeks. Cool rain, at last.
Shakespeare picked up his sword and dagger and slipped from the room and down the side staircase to the courtyard. A guard stiffened at his approach.
“Can’t sleep. Need a walk.”
The guard eyed his sword.
“There are a lot of common revelers and vagabonds out there, guardsman.”
The guard nodded sullenly, hunched against the rain, hood pulled over his head, rubbing his hands before his brazier.
Shakespeare walked quickly through the main yard toward the lesser court. He could hear what sounded like a large group of horsemen to the west, somewhere in the direction of the little Isbourne River and the town of Winchcombe. Halberdiers, wearing tangerine tabards that denoted them as Essex men, were on guard at the gatehouse. They blocked his way, but he could see past them. A band of twenty or more horsemen was saddled up, ready to ride. Their mounts trampled the ground. The rain came down in torrents.
At their head was Essex, tall and arrogant on a black stallion. He was surrounded by his closest supporters and retainers—Southampton, Danvers, Meyrick, and the rest. They carried a deadly array of armaments: wheel-locks, swords, lances, poleaxes, all glittering wet in the light of burning pitch cressets and torches. Sir Toby Le Neve was there, too; Le Neve, wanted for the murder of his own daughter and Joe Jaggard. Well, there would be no way of plucking him from this group tonight.
Essex saw Shakespeare and their eyes met through the teeming rain. The Earl held the intelligencer’s gaze for no more than two seconds, then tugged sharply at the reins and spun his mount. All his men turned their horses, too, lining up beside or behind him. Then, at a hand signal from Essex, they spurred their animals and trotted forward in a disciplined knot, kicking up splashes of mud and quickly disappearing into the darkness of the night.
Shakespeare watched until they had gone. They were heading vaguely north. So this was it; the plot was under way. Shakespeare ran back toward the state apartments. He had to get a message to Cecil, then take a horse and pray he reached Derbyshire—and Arbella—first.
Something caught his eye. Through the downpour, he saw a movement by a doorway into a side staircase of the state apartments. Even in the darkness of night, lit only by the guard’s sizzling brazier, he recognized Slyguff. He would know that cruel-hearted, unblinking stoat of a man anywhere. Where in God’s name was he going? Of course. Clarkson had told him all he needed to know about who among the nobility had the prime living quarters. Lady Frances, the Countess of Essex, was billeted in these apartments, on the second floor. A killing to legitimize a wedding.
In the shadows of the banqueting hall, Shakespeare could just make out Slyguff as he handed something to the guard. He had a curled length of rope slung over his shoulder. As the Irishman slipped in through the doorway, Shakespeare emerged from the shadows and followed him. The guard moved away from the brazier to bar his path.
“I saw the bribe you took,” Shakespeare said in a low, hard voice. “I am an officer of Sir Robert Cecil, and if you do not let me pass, you will hang before dawn.”
The guard scuttled out of his path.
Shakespeare went on through the door. He listened for the sound of footfalls, but he knew how softly Slyguff trod from his encounter with him in the turret room at Essex House on the night of the summer revel. He could hear nothing.
He waited a few moments. Then, silently, he stepped forward and walked up the circular stone stairway. His way was lit by beeswax candles in wall sconces, guttering in the cool, rainy draft. Drawing his sword from its scabbard, he held it in front of him. He reached the top step and looked along the corridor. There was no one there.
The rope came out of nowhere. A noose around his neck, the moment he stepped out from the stairwell. His assailant was behind him, twisting the rope with unreasoning ferocity, pushing him down toward the ground with a foot in his lower back. It would be a quick kill.
Shakespeare kept his footing, just, and swung around, desperately trying to stay upright. He was a tall man, but Slyguff’s wiry body had the tight, ungiving strength of twisted cable. Shakespeare shouldered his attacker into a wall, pulling a tapestry down about his head. Slyguff’s grasp slipped for a moment, just long enough for Shakespeare to push two fingers of his left hand under the noose to save his windpipe from being crushed.
But he was already choking for air and knew he had little time left. Dimly, he saw a figure in a doorway further along the hall, in the light of a sconce. It was Topcliffe. Richard Topcliffe, standing there, pipe in his mouth exhaling fumes, a smile on his wicked face as he watched Shakespeare going down to his death.
Shakespeare could not die, would not die. It was not merely his own life that counted now. Death was nothing. The thought of Topcliffe’s satisfied smirk gave Shakespeare the rage he needed. With the desperation of a wounded animal just as the predator closes in for the kill, he found Slyguff’s balls with his right hand and crushed them as if squeezing every drop of juice from a lemon.
A guttural sound came from the back of Slyguff’s throat, but he wrenched frantically at the rope even as he curled into himself. Shakespeare knew this was his last hope. He slid his fingers out from under the rope constricting his neck. He barely noticed they were rubbed raw by the rough hemp, or the injuries inflicted on his throat that threatened to do for him. He needed this arm free. With a stab of desperation, he elbowed back into Slyguff’s face. Again and again, beating his temple against the wall, he elbowed the man, bearing down on him with all his remaining power and weight.
At last the rope loosened. Shakespeare fell away, panting. He picked up his sword. Topcliffe was coming his way, his blackthorn in his right hand. The grin had not left his face all the while. Shakespeare pointed the sword in Topcliffe’s direction, but he did not have the energy to rise and run him through. Topcliffe pushed the blade away with the silver tip of his blackthorn, then knelt down beside Shakespeare and the silent, writhing figure of Slyguff. He put his left hand over Slyguff’s face and pushed him down into the ground. Carefully, he put the blackthorn to one side and picked up the discarded rope, twisting it once, twice, around the Irishman’s neck, then turned the ends in his fist, so that the rope creaked. Shakespeare heard a sudden crack as Topcliffe pulled Slyguff’s head back by his hair, snapping his neck.
The body went limp, save for the occasional jerking of the legs and arms. Slyguff was dead. Topcliffe released the rope, then picked up his stick and held it to the raised weal circling Shakespeare’s throat.
“I was enjoying that,” he said, deliberately blowing smoke into Shakespeare’s eyes. “Better than the bull-baiting, I fancy.”
Shakespeare expected to be killed at any moment. The blackthorn had a heavy head, like a cudgel, and one blow to the temple would do for him. Yet he had no strength left to defend himself; he had expended all against Slyguff. All he could do was put his hands to his own bruised throat and gasp for breath. He was coughing, choking, his lungs were heaving, and his head was pounding as if he had been struck with a six-pound hammer, but he no longer cared.
Topcliffe withdrew the stick. “You’re soaked through, Shakespeare. Mustn’t go out in weather like this without a cape and hat or you’ll catch your death.” Topcliffe laughed at his own black humor. “Come on, you Papist-loving milksop turd, I need your help to carry this dead weight.”
Shakespeare’s breathing began to ease.
“I’m protecting her, you slow-witted worm,” Topcliffe said, as if reading Shakespeare’s thoughts. “You don’t think Cecil would have left the Countess’s safety in your hands?”
Shakespeare struggled to his feet and twisted his head from side to side, all the while rubbing his neck. He knew how near he had come to death.
“Take the legs,” Topcliffe ordered, sliding his hands under Slyguff’s shoulders. “Come on.”
“Why did you kill him?” Shakespeare demanded, his voice rasping and sore. “We could have questioned him.”
Topcliffe snorted scornfully and blew a cloud of smoke from between his lips. He dropped the body and wrenched open the dead man’s mouth. “Look in there,” he said.
Shakespeare looked into a gaping, tongue-less hole.
“Cut out at the root. You could have questioned him, but he would never have answered you. His silence was assured. Come, Shakespeare, you sniveling boy, pick him up and get him away from here. Sir Robert will not want her ladyship’s peace disturbed by the discovery of a dead Irishman outside her chamber.”