Holy Spy (24 page)

‘I think you have said too much, Goodfellow.’

Savage was not to be stopped. ‘You are the only man in England whose opinion I trust and respect, John Shakespeare. If I cannot talk with you, then I am alone.’

Shakespeare put his finger to his lips. ‘Say nothing.’ The street was busy, as always, but they were cocooned in their own private world. Their voices were low. It was safer here than in the tavern. The Silver Grayling could wait.

And then it came out, unstoppable like a flood. ‘I have made a vow to kill her. I made it in church, on my knees, before the cross, before God himself. It is a vow I cannot escape – and yet I cannot bring myself . . .’ Savage seemed to struggle for breath again. Then he pulled out his sword and held it by the hilt in his huge hands. ‘See how my hands shake? Never in the heat of battle did they quiver so. This thought, this unbreakable pledge, turns me to jelly.’

By now bystanders were starting to look. Shakespeare’s hand tightened on Savage’s arm and he pulled him into a narrow alleyway. ‘You will get us both hanged if you speak so publicly!’ he hissed.

‘I had to tell you, John.’

‘Why are you sacrificing your life? What made you promise this?’

‘We are all risking our lives – you included, John Shakespeare.’

‘But your death is
certain
.’

Savage’s smile was the saddest thing Shakespeare had ever seen. ‘My life is already done,’ he said quietly. ‘I surrendered it to God on the fields of Flanders. It was only His will that I should survive when others died in battle. He spared me for this greater purpose.’

Who had told him that? Was it Gilbert Gifford, or others at the seminary in Rheims? There were many men of God who were happy to tell others that the Lord wished them to sacrifice their lives, without once hazarding their own.

‘Who else knows of this?’

‘Babington, Gilbert Gifford, two fathers in Rheims, Ballard

– Captain Fortescue, that is.’

‘God’s blood, Goodfellow! How do you know you can trust these men? You are in so deep.’ Shakespeare groaned. ‘I would rather your lips had been sealed and your tongue cut out than that you should have spoken these words to me, for now when I see you, you are in your winding sheet.’

‘I will never utter your name. You will never be named accessory.’

‘It is your life I am thinking of, not mine.’

‘My day is almost done. But you will live.’

‘Will I? Do you think any man living can keep his mouth closed on the rack?’

‘You are safe. I swear to you, John Shakespeare.’

‘So what will you do now?’

‘My vow is made. I await only word from Rome. They told me at Rheims that it was lawful if done for God’s glory, just as you said. But I must have confirmation from the Holy Father.’

‘And who will bring this word to you?’

‘I await letters from Morgan in Paris. Gifford says he will bring them, elsewise I must go there myself.’

‘And the vision?’

‘It has made me unsure . . . bewildered. What do you think

it meant?’ Shakespeare shook his head. What was to be done? Savage was on a course of self-destruction that no one could prevent. For a few moments they stood looking at each other, then Shakespeare took a grip of himself. ‘I think I had better get you roaring drunk, Goodfellow. Come, let us drink the Silver Grayling dry.’

‘And you are paying?’

‘My purse is full. But I must ask you one more thing. The young fellow you brought to Mane’s . . .’

‘Dominic?’

‘That’s it. Dominic de Warre. You said he was one of us. But what more do you know of him?’

‘He is pleasant enough, but hotheaded. Why, what is your interest?’

‘I know his stepfather, Severin Tort. I had not realised the link between them until I saw him at home. It gave me pause for thought. He is only a boy. You and I are men, Goodfellow. If we risk death, that is our choice. But young Dominic . . .’

Chapter 20

Just before the tide turned, when the race through the stanchions of London Bridge was at its tamest, Boltfoot took a boat downriver from the Custom House water stairs. He had his caliver slung over his back and his cutlass at his belt. He was not going unarmed again. Disembarking at St Katharine’s Dock, a mile downstream from the bridge, he made his way slowly and carefully along the narrow lanes to the Burning Prow. At the end of the street, not fifty yards from the bawdy house, he found a spot in the shade of a tree where he sat down and lit his pipe of tobacco. The smoke was rich and heady and went some way to ease the aches of his beating.

He had a good view of the entrance to the whorehouse, but the evening was still early and business was quiet. A few men came and either stayed to carouse or left with a woman to one of the rooms they used for their work. He was hoping the one called Em would turn up, but by nine o’clock there was no sign of her.

The other whore – Aggy, the scabby, ill-favoured one he had tried to engage in conversation – came out from the alehouse on the arm of a grizzled mariner. They sauntered northwards. Boltfoot put away his pipe, rose slowly from his place by the tree and followed them. Every few steps the couple stopped to kiss and fumble. The man’s eager hands lifted her skirts and stroked her inner thigh, while her hands went into his hose, accompanied by a great deal of grunting and slurping.

The next street was an alley of poor tenements and crumbling hovels where children in rags played in the dust and toothless gossips stood with their arms folded passing the time of day. Many of the houses were nothing but a tangled skeleton of blackened timbers, a commonplace hazard in this part of the city where half a dozen families might squeeze into a house and one accident with a knocked-over rushlight could lead to disaster. Aggy led her client into a leaning house that was isolated between two such burnt-out ruins.

Boltfoot found a spot where he could watch the doorway. The residents of the alley took one glance at his caliver and cutlass and decided not to interfere with business that did not concern them.

Half an hour later the mariner emerged, reeling as though he still had the rolling deck of a ship beneath his feet. Boltfoot smiled as the man strode away. He’d have no money left in his purse by night’s end. Boltfoot had seen it a thousand times. He unslung his caliver, loaded it and stepped through the doorway with the muzzle pointing ahead of him. He halted and listened, allowing his eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. He heard a sigh and a scuffing of feet. She was in the room at the back of the house, behind the half-open door.

He pushed through, his gun at his chest. She screamed. The room was bare save a filthy mattress of straw. She was squatting over a tin basin, her skirts pulled up to her chest so that her bare legs and nether parts were obscenely visible.

Boltfoot ranged the caliver at her and tilted his chin. ‘I want to ask you a few questions, Aggy.’

She scrabbled backwards, grabbing the pisspot from beneath her as she did so, flinging it in Boltfoot’s direction. He ducked sideways, but the pot hit his left arm and sprayed him with her pungent urine, soaking his sleeve and splashing his cheek.

She cackled. ‘Ah yes, the dirty cripple. Come to play, have you?’

‘Back against the wall.’

She emitted another foul laugh. ‘Is that how you want me? Front or back?’

Boltfoot limped forward and pushed the muzzle of his weapon into her belly. ‘Move.’

She stayed where she was, pushing out her chest, defiance in her eyes. ‘How much you got, cripple? Shilling for a fuck, sixpence for a frigging. Told you before, didn’t I.’ She opened her mouth in a roundel. ‘Or this for nine pence. That’s a favourite with my sailor friends. Reminds them of the cabin boys, so they do say.’

‘Comely as you are, Aggy, I want nothing like that from you. What I want is information and I’ll pay you more than a shilling for it. Be straight and helpful and I’ll make it more than worth your while.’

‘Put up your evil-looking weapon and I’ll think about it.’

Boltfoot lowered the stock of his caliver to the rubble-strewn floor, dried his face with his unsoaked sleeve, and fished a handful of coins from his purse. ‘What’s there to think about?’ He proffered a few shillings to her. ‘That’s all you’re after.’

‘I’ve got to think about my lovely throat, which I don’t want slit.’

‘Who’d do that to you, Aggy?’

‘Em. Who else.’

‘So that’s why you wouldn’t talk to me back at the Burning Prow.’

She nodded, brushing down her stained skirts and pushing them between her legs to dry herself.

‘What’s she to Cutting Ball? She’s kin, isn’t she?’

‘Em Ball? She’s his sister. Everyone knows that. Where you been living all these years? Now hand over your purse if you want anything out of me.’

‘You’ll have half-a-crown if you tell me where – and with whom – Will Cane lived. And you’ll have another if you can tell me who paid him to kill Nicholas Giltspur. And don’t say his wife, because I won’t believe you.’

‘How do I know you won’t tell Em?’

‘She’s no friend of mine. See this?’ He pointed out the bruises on his face. ‘Her brother’s men did that to me. All I want to know is who killed Giltspur.’

‘Well, if it weren’t the widow, I don’t know who done it. But I’ll tell you where Will Cane lived for a sovereign.’

‘No. A crown. That’s my limit.’

She thrust out her grubby hand. ‘Give it to me, then.’

‘First tell me where he lived.’

‘I’ll do better than that. I’ll lead you there and you can pay your respects to Will Cane’s widow.’

Boltfoot followed Aggy through the grim streets. This burgeoning city of dirt and squalor almost made Boltfoot wish he was at sea again. On second thoughts, anything but that.

She turned southwards towards the Thames and the wharfs. Finally she stopped outside a small house at the end of a wood-frame, in a street a little way back from the riverside. She nodded her head to indicate the place, then walked on, turning westward to retrace her steps back to the Burning Prow. Boltfoot had already paid her five shillings under the threat that he would return and shoot her dead if he discovered that she had betrayed him. She hadn’t looked as though she believed him.

Will Cane’s house was a surprise. It was not the house of a rich man, but nor was it the sort of hovel occupied by the very lowest. Perhaps he had been a man of some importance to Cutting Ball, a lieutenant who took a good share of their ill-gotten spoils and had set himself up. For a few minutes Boltfoot watched the front door. Then he walked down the small alley at the eastern end of the wood-frame, hoping to be able to see into the house from the rear. He cursed silently; the backyards were all walled and he had no view into the house. He was just pondering his next move when a water-bearer walked past and stopped, setting down his three-gallon cone-shaped barrel to stretch his aching back. Boltfoot noted the fine carving of the staves and the neatness of the hoops. He leant forward and ran a hand down the smooth surface appreciatively. Perfectly dry.

‘Fine cooperage. Not a leak on it.’

‘You a cooper then?’

‘Aye. Ship’s cooper.’

‘What’s the hagbut for then?’ The man thrust his sparsely bearded chin towards Boltfoot’s caliver. ‘Won’t be making casks with that.’

‘It’s for the shooting of Spaniards and Frenchies. I served my time aboard ships-of-war.’

The water-bearer laughed. ‘You’re a pirate then.’ He was a small man – too small to be carrying such a heavy load.

‘Some have called me that. Others call me a true son of England.’ He touched the water butt again. ‘Got far to go with that?’

‘No, just round the corner. The Cane widow.’

‘Will Cane’s widow?’

The water-bearer’s expression suddenly changed from open and cheery to nervous and guarded. ‘Why would you be interested, Mister Cooper? A man could die for inquiring into Will Cane hereabouts.’

‘So I believe.’ He picked up the water butt. ‘What say I deliver this to the widow Cane for you?’

‘No.’