Chapter 44

SHAKESPEARE HAD FOLLOWED CATHERINE THROUGH the window but ran away from her to divide McGunn’s fire. He had barely gone five yards when the musket-ball hit him. He fell heavily to the ground, grunting with shock. His right hand went to his left shoulder. The ball had sheared a groove of flesh, on the outside of the upper arm, just beneath the shoulder blade.

Ignoring the injury as best he could, he dived for cover behind a broken old wain. The ancient wagon sat on its overgrown undercarriage, its four wheels fallen away and splayed out. He heard horses whinnying away to his right. He touched his shoulder again. It was sticky with blood and rain. He still clutched the caliver in his left hand. He tried to cover it beneath his cape. If he could loose off one shot at close range, it might be crucial.

He heard a voice, not more than thirty yards away. McGunn. Taunting him. Threatening to kill his wife. Gloating that Boltfoot was dead.

Shakespeare crawled away to his left. No musket-balls followed him. There was a low dry-stone wall, and he sped the last three steps until he was behind it. For a moment, he caught his breath. Hunching low so that only the curve of his back was visible above the wall, he began running—away from McGunn, but also around him. He would come at him from the other side, to the south of the abbey ruins.

He stopped and peered over the wall. He had a clear view now. The area in front of the abbey was lit by torches. He saw the rope slung high and he saw Eleanor Dare about to die. The man behind her pushed her roughly and she climbed another rung up the ladder. Apart from him and a man who looked from behind very like McGunn, there was one other visible. But there could be any number of armed men concealed.

In the darkness behind the high wall with the noose, he saw a movement in the stones. He peered closer and saw, with horror, that it was Catherine. Shakespeare had to do something, and fast. He took aim with the caliver, pointing at the back of the man he took to be McGunn, and fired.

Nothing happened. The powder was damp. He looked at the weapon in dismay, flung it down and picked up a rock the size of a small cannonball, and hurled it at the man by the abbey wall.

It caught the man’s heel. He jumped and swiveled around, glaring in Shakespeare’s direction.

It was McGunn. Shakespeare ducked down below the wall.

“Get him!”

McGunn had a short sword drawn. He advanced on the wall with the man closest to him, leaving the hangman halfway up the ladder behind Eleanor.

Shakespeare crouched down and began to lope away southward in the darkness, hoping to draw the men away from Catherine. His approach scattered a group of startled sheep, then he stumbled on a rock and fell awkwardly on his injured shoulder in the muddy grass. He stifled a cry of pain.

He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and tried to stand. But he was too slow. McGunn’s man had his arms in a grip as tight as a torturer’s screw and wrenched him up and backwards.

“Well, well, Mr. Shakespeare,” McGunn said, striding up to him, the naked Toledo steel blade of his sword slung nonchalantly over his right shoulder. “You’re just in time for the hangings.”

The man laughed as he marched Shakespeare back toward the abbey. Shakespeare looked at the body on the ground. His captor kicked it as he walked past. Shakespeare looked more closely. It wasn’t Boltfoot.

“On with the show, Mr. O’Regan,” McGunn shouted to the man on the ladder. “Kick her away and let her swing.”

Shakespeare watched in horror as the man on the ladder looped the end of the rope around a jutting rock and then knotted it so that the rope was tight.

He pushed Eleanor off the ladder, then leapt down, pulling the ladder away, leaving her unbound legs scrabbling for a foothold that was no longer there. The rope lurched tight around her neck, choking the life from her. For a few moments, time seemed to stand still as Shakespeare and the three men watched her hanging there, struggling for life.

“See how she dances, Mr. Sh—” McGunn began. He was cut short by an explosion. The hangman fell forward, the top of his head sheared away. A mist of blood seemed to hang in the air, then fell with the rain.

McGunn’s sword was in front of him now. He reached into his belt and pulled out a loaded wheel-lock.

With every bit of power at his command, Shakespeare pitched himself backwards, knocking his captor onto the rocky ground. The man screamed as he fell against a boulder, cracking the center of his spine against the sharp stone. Shakespeare, winded, pulled himself away from the man’s arms. He turned and, reaching out behind him, closed his hand around a large stone, battering at the man’s head.

The rain-soaked night was lit by the flickering flames of three covered pitch torches. McGunn was looking from left to right, his mastiff-like face eerily brutish in the weird light and rain. He could not see where the shot had come from, so he aimed the wheel-lock at Shakespeare and fired. The ball hit the writhing figure of his own man in the side of the chest. A stream of thick blood washed over Shakespeare and he felt the man go limp.

As Shakespeare rolled away, he saw Boltfoot stride out from the darkness like some monster from the depths of the dripping forest, his left foot dragging behind him. He had a pistol in his left hand, and in his right, he held his cutlass, the bright blade glistening.

Dropping his expended wheel-lock, McGunn pulled another one from his belt. As he raised it to aim at Boltfoot, Shakespeare launched himself at the Irishman. McGunn tried to twist around to shoot Shakespeare instead, but the ball flew harmlessly between the two men.

McGunn tried slashing down at Shakespeare’s neck with his sword, but he stepped away easily, then McGunn thrust forward at his stomach. Once more he slid aside, but felt the blade cutting into his doublet.

“You are going to hell in pain, Shakespeare,” McGunn growled as he pulled the sword back and tried to thrust again. From behind him, Boltfoot hacked down with his cutlass and McGunn’s sword clattered from his hand onto the sodden earth and rocks.

Boltfoot had him now. He was shorter than the bull-muscled McGunn but he was strong. He grasped the scalp above the nape of the Irishman’s neck and pulled back his head, while Shakespeare tried to wrestle him to the ground.

McGunn emitted a low roar, like a wildcat at bay, but he could not stand under this onslaught and slid and collapsed to the ground. Shakespeare pinioned his left arm, while Boltfoot struggled to control the right hand, which had grasped the jeweled hilt of a dagger and was attempting to pull the long blade from its sheath.

Twisting, Boltfoot dug his elbow hard into McGunn’s mouth, then pulled his dagger hand back and cracked the man’s forearm down against his knee. The force was so great it was like bre king a dry, dead branch over a farm gate. The forearm snapped. McGunn did not cry out, but just growled deeper. He was practically helpless now, yet still he fought on as Shakespeare and Boltfoot struggled to turn him over onto his face.

“For pity’s sake, one of you help me!”

Shakespeare looked up startled at the sound of Catherine’s anguished voice. She had the ladder against the wall and was almost at the top of it, holding the body of Eleanor Dare, taking her weight.

Shakespeare heaved himself to his feet and ran to the ladder. He shinned up, first encircling his arms around Catherine, then pulling himself higher and taking the weight of Eleanor, whose body hung as limp as a slaughtered pig.

“Ease yourself down,” he commanded Catherine. “And reach for my knife.”

Releasing her grip on Eleanor, Catherine slid down under her husband’s body. She found his dagger in its sheath and handed it to him. Taking Eleanor’s full weight in his right arm, he reached up with his left hand and sliced and slashed at the hemp rope. Fiber by agonizing fiber, he cut through the taut cable until suddenly she slumped away from it, the noose and a foot of rope still about her neck. Clumsily he slipped down the rungs, holding her over his shoulder.

He laid her out on the ground and fought to loosen the rough noose from about her neck. Finally it was free. He put his ear to her chest. A heartbeat. He was sure he could hear a heartbeat. Pulling her lean young body up into his arms so that she sat upright against him, her head over his shoulder, he smacked her back as he would a baby that needed winding.

Of a sudden, she was coughing, her rib cage beating against his chest in spasms. She was sucking in air, gasping. She was alive.

CATHERINE WATCHED Eleanor return to life and crossed herself. Her thoughts had been in the Gatehouse Prison, where she had held Father Southwell’s limp, dead-weight body, tormented against Topcliffe’s wall. Please let me save this woman where I could do nothing to save Robert, she had prayed as she held Eleanor’s hanging weight at the top of the ladder. O Lord, show your mercy.

“Thank God,” she said now. “Thank you, God.”

SHAKESPEARE AND Boltfoot bound McGunn hand and foot with the length of rope used to hang Eleanor. They knew it must cause him immense pain to have his broken arm so restrained, but they did not care much. While life still flickered in this man’s breast, he was a danger.

They examined the three dead bodies. Shakespeare thought they might be among the Irish beggars that congregated around Essex House. He recalled the words McGunn had used when first they saw them: “They may be only beggars, but they are our beggars.” Men he paid so that he might call on them whenever he had some dirty work to be done. They were his men, and now they had died for him. But who was the squat one whose body McGunn had held aloft in triumph, mistaking him for Boltfoot? They studied his face closely. “All I can think is that he was one of those vagabonds we encountered as we turned from the road, come scavenging for food,” Shakespeare suggested.

Boltfoot nodded toward the woods. “There’s another one in there. I clubbed him and took the pistol from him. He might be still alive. We’d better get him. The one who came first, in front of the cottage, is dead, though. I’m certain of that.”

They dragged McGunn to the little house while Catherine tended to Eleanor. In the larger of the two rooms, they tethered the wrist of his uninjured arm to a ring embedded into the wall and made a rough splint, which they fixed to the broken forearm. He sat there sullenly, his eyes full of malice and no remorse.

Boltfoot went out to find his caliver and take the firearms, swords, and daggers of the dead men. In the woods, he found the man he had clubbed. He was still breathing but unconscious. Boltfoot tied his inert body to a tree and left him there to soak in the unceasing rain. As to the dead men, they would deal with them in the morning.

Helped by Shakespeare, Catherine had brought Eleanor to the shepherd’s cottage. She had her hand to her fiercely swollen throat, and though she was weak and faltering, she was conscious and able to walk slowly. They sat her down in the other room and gave her sips of ale to try to soothe her. Catherine gathered up capes and blankets and made a palliasse for her to lie on.

“Sleep, if you can,” Catherine said gently. “You are safe now. I will stay with you.”

In the other room, Boltfoot had his caliver, now dried and primed with fresh gunpowder, trained on McGunn. Shakespeare ignored the blood seeping from his own wounded shoulder and took over. “It were best if you ride for Masham, Boltfoot, to the constable.”

Boltfoot nodded obediently and handed the weapon to his master.

McGunn looked at his captor with eyes that seemed strangely resigned. “Would you have a sup of ale for me, Mr. Shakespeare?”

Shakespeare had a flagon at his side. He held it to McGunn’s lips. He drank thirstily.

“Thank you,” he said. “You can stop pointing that thing at me, you know. I’m not going anywhere.” He nodded his close-shaved, pulpy head at the caliver.

Warily, Shakespeare placed the caliver on the dirt floor, well away from his captive but close enough to his own right hand.

“I will be dead soon. I wanted to tell you a thing or two. Explain, perhaps, though I don’t expect anything from you in return. I have no remorse and I seek no redemption. But someone should know what this was about. You might think I am going to hell, but I know that hell is here, in this world.”

“Tell it to the justice.”

“No. I’m going to tell you. It was the autumn of 1580. I was a farrier in those days. I had never picked up anything more lethal than a hammer and never struck anything but an iron shoe on the anvil in anger. I had a wife and was about to have a child. My wife—my beautiful fine girl—was called Maggie Maeve and I loved her more than life itself. You’d know about that, Shakespeare. You have a beautiful fine girl yourself.

“We lived a little inland, in a farm village. Maggie Maeve’s widowed mother lived at the coast, at Smerwick, or St. Mary Wick—well, that’s its English name. It is a lovely harbor village, a little way north of Dingle Bay on the southwest coast of Ireland. Maggie Maeve was heavy with child when she went to visit her mother that October. She had no idea—how could we—that a Catholic force of a few hundred Spaniards and Italians had landed and that the English were coming for them, in force. Four thousand blood-hungry savages from this monstrous island, who had no cause to be in my country.

“Maggie Maeve found herself trapped, along with the Spanish and Italian soldiers and two hundred Irish men and women who had joined them to fight the English. She had no way back to me, for the English laid siege to their makeshift fort with artillery. All escape was blocked off. After three days of bombardment, it was clear the situation was hopeless and so the besieged Spaniards and their Irish allies hung out the white flag of misericordia. They then surrendered, believing their lives were to be spared.”

“What happened?”

“What do you think happened, Mr. Shakespeare? The English slaughtered them. Every man—excepting the few Spanish nobles that might raise a ransom—was disarmed, bound, and cut to pieces one by one by the English soldiery. Butchered like oxen: a hack of the sword to the neck, sometimes severing the head, sometimes not, then a thrust to the stomach to make certain. Hew and punch. That was what they did to the men. First, though, they saw to the few women that they had caught. Nor was Maggie Maeve the only one with child. They hanged them by the neck until they were dead. They strung up Maggie Maeve like a common criminal, though she was nothing of the sort. She was a beautiful fine girl with a smile and laugh that would light a room brighter than a thousand beeswax candles. They strung her up and killed her and my unborn child. She looked a lot like your wife, Shakespeare. Long dark hair, blue eyes.”

“I’m sorry,” Shakespeare said.

“Well, it’s a grand thing to be sorry. But I didn’t want your apology or your pity. I wanted your blood, and your wife’s blood, and I wanted it to flow and flow until the whole world was washed red. Because nothing you can do or say can bring Maggie Maeve back to me. Mr. Slyguff was the same as I, an honest tanner, until the English took his tongue and cut it from him with his own shears, then set about snipping his brother’s fingers as if they were manicuring his nails.”

Shakespeare’s stomach turned. “But what had the Roanoke colonists to do with all this? I recognize King Philip’s thirst for vengeance for the defeat of his Armada. But what were those people to you?”

“Ah, now, that’s the story, isn’t it? Let me tell you this. The English force was commanded by one Arthur Grey of Wilton. I care nothing for him. He is a mere stain on the world. The one I wanted was the one that oversaw the killing field, who took delight in kicking away the ladder from beneath Maggie Maeve’s feet and who watched her die, though she was heavy with child. The man who waded in the blood of men who had surrendered in good faith that they would be shown English mercy. He is the man I have pursued all these years. He is a man revered by your stinking nation, Mr. Shakespeare, and you know him.”