Martyr (30 page)

Within three hours it became clear they were not going to find Herrick. But in the main bedchamber they did find a bloodstained rag, which, it seemed to Shakespeare, was probably used to staunch Herrick’s wound from Boltfoot’s shot. More importantly, Shakespeare spotted a small piece of rolled linen, discarded casually beneath the bed. He picked it up and unfurled it. There, poorly painted but easily recognizable, was a portrait of Sir Francis Drake, one of the many such pictures sold throughout England and the rest of Europe since the Vice Admiral’s daring circumnavigation of the globe. “So Herrick has been here,” he said under his breath. “And we have missed him. God in heaven, we have missed him.”

Shakespeare left late in the evening, cursing his fortune and leaving a guard of three men.

A
CROSS THE ROAD
, in the shadows, Herrick stood and watched the activity for a short while. He had arrived back at the house barely a minute after the onset of the raid. Shakespeare could not have known how close he had come to trapping his quarry.

Quietly, Herrick slipped away down the alleys to Southwark. He would have to find an inn tonight, then take horse on the morrow. The question that would not go away was how the pursuivants had found this house. Had the locals become suspicious—or had someone informed on him? His only hope now was to follow Drake before he gathered his fleet and set sail from Plymouth. It was time to kill … and time was running out.

S
TARLING DAY WAS
enjoying life. She had everything she needed. Treasure, a beautiful new house and business in the heart of Southwark, the best food that money could buy, and clothes that would not have looked out of place on a court lady. But behind the happiness, there was a worry. It was a worry shared by Parsimony Field: they had heard from a girl they brought over from the Bel Savage that Richard Topcliffe was looking for them and they feared it was only a matter of time before he found them.

They had changed their names. Starling was now known as Little Bird and Parsimony was Queenie. Their establishment was called Queens and it had one of the best positions of all the Southwark stews. Prices were high, as befitted a bawdy house with good-looking young girls and comfortable rooms, but it was well frequented. Men of money from across the river came here, as did foreigners whose wives were left far behind in France and beyond, ships’ officers and seamen happy to blow a year’s wages and plunder in a night or two of bliss.

Parsimony was in her element. She was able to indulge her passion for the arts of love with whomsoever she pleased. Starling, meanwhile, decided she had had enough of such things and had retired from the game, restricting her role to greeting the customers.

They even had their own strong-armed guard, Jack Butler, to look after them, and kitchen staff to provide sweetmeats and fair drinks for the guests. The worry, of course, was that they were flying too high. Someone would be sure to recognize them and go to Topcliffe with the information.

“Maybe we should go to Bristol or Norwich,” Starling said. They talked about it, but kept putting off a decision. And the longer they did so, the more business boomed and the more settled they became.

Tonight, Starling was dealing cards for some gentlemen in the grand withdrawing room. The house, as always, was winning handsomely, but none of the men seemed to care.

“I’ll be in the Clink before you’re done with me, Little Bird. Up to my ears in debt!” the eldest son of a northern bishop, who seemed intent on disposing of his inheritance before he had inherited it, said with a laugh.

“Never mind, Eddie, I’ll get one of my wenches to bring you broth and a kindly hand every now and then.”

“The devil with it. Deal on, Little Bird, deal on.”

Parsimony was upstairs and unhappy. She liked swiving as much as the next girl. A lot more than the next girl, if truth be told. But she didn’t like this sort of thing. Not one bit.

She stood with her back to the wall, dressed only in a light kirtle, lash in her right hand, and looked down at the man on the bed. He was a strange one all right. He’d come in to Queens pissing money like a conduit of gold and demanded a room and a girl for the night. He took one look at Parsimony and said, “You will do, mistress. I like the look of you.” Parsimony was in the mood and the man seemed presentable, so she readily agreed. But then he started asking for little extras like this: he wanted her to scourge him. And do it proper, so it hurt. Funny thing was, he was already injured, a nasty oozing wound on his side. She had offered to bandage it for him but he didn’t seem interested; just wanted his lashing. So here they were.

“Do it, mistress, do it.”

“Look, I don’t mind a bit of messing about, a few light strokes before a good fuck, but I’m not doing it any harder than I’ve already given you.”

“How much do you want?”

“I don’t need your money, sir. I run a respectable business here and I don’t want no dead bodies on my hands.”

“Then get another girl, who
will
do it.”

Parsimony shrugged her shoulders. This was a difficult one. She needed to have a word with Starling. “All right. Wait here, sweeting.”

She left him on the bed and traipsed downstairs. Starling would know what to do. In some ways she was the cleverer of the two.

Parsimony touched her arm at the card table. “A word if I might, Little Bird.”

“Of course, Queenie.”

They went off to a private room. “Got a cove upstairs wants me to beat him raw like a Bridewell penitent. Thing is, he’s got good money. Shame to turn him away.”

“Then give him what he wants.”

“Don’t like to, Starling. It’s not me.”

“Well, I’d happily give any man a thrashing. All I’d have to do is close my eyes and think of my husband.”

“Would you do this one for me? I’ll owe you.”

“Of course, ducks. You take over the dealing. And give the bishop’s son a break. It’s not good for business to skin customers into the gutter.”

Chapter 34

E
VERY MUSCLE WAS TAUT LIKE A DRAWN-BACK LONGBOW
string. How close had he come to Herrick? The assassin had been there. He had definitely been there at the house by Horsley Down—and recently. Now he was gone, lost in the sea of people of all shades that inhabited this infernal town.

Shakespeare sipped his wine by the fire. On the morrow, he would ride to Windsor and find this Ptolomeus. But he lacked enthusiasm for the task. What purpose could such an outing serve? How could an old, decrepit priest help him find the murderer of Lady Blanche Howard or prevent the murder of Sir Francis Drake?

The good news was that Drake would soon be traveling to Plymouth by sea. Reason told Shakespeare that Drake would be out of harm’s way, yet there was a gnawing pit of worry in his stomach that suggested otherwise. There was something terribly wrong here. For the first time, Shakespeare had a sense of dread; he began to fear he was going to lose this battle.

And then it struck him. He knew, for certain, the identity of the man sent to kill Drake, though he did not know his present name, but this killer had not worked alone in Delft, so why would it follow that he was working alone now? Who was the other man in this conspiracy? A cold foreboding descended. He recalled the story of Balthasar Gérard, the man who fired the shots that killed William the Silent. Gérard had spent weeks, months even, inveigling himself into a position of trust inside Prince William’s household. Could Herrick’s accomplice be doing the same here in England? The sense of dread crept like tentacles of ice through his soul. “
A man called Death is on his way …
”

“You are lost in thought, John.”

He looked up. Catherine was watching him with concern in her eyes. Like him, she held a goblet of claret. She was sitting on the settle close to his wooden chair. The children were in bed asleep, as was Jane. Without thinking, he reached out and touched her dark hair.

She had stayed awake until he returned from the Horsley Down raid and had welcomed him in. There had been something natural about the way she opened the door to him, almost as if she were more to him than a house guest under his protection. A disturbing vision of Mother Davis and her whore Isabella Clermont came to mind; the elder woman’s head was half flesh, half bone, and she was urging on Isabella, naked astride him and riding him like a horse of the apocalypse. He thrust the vision aside. He would have
naught
to do with hexes and spells. Such things were not for Christians of any denomination.

Catherine did not shy away from his touch. Instead, her hand went to his hand and held it to her face, warmed by the fire. His fingers curled through hers and tangled in her hair. Without premeditation, their lips moved toward each other and they kissed. Shakespeare sank onto the settle beside her. His right hand caressed her hair and face, his left moved down the slender length of her body and she did not resist, though she had never been touched like this before.

Their kissing became urgent. Of a sudden he had her in his arms, pulling her down on the settle, devouring her. She pushed him away.

She said, “We can’t stay here. The children might wake. Jane might come down.”

“Will you come to my room?”

She smiled and kissed his lips quickly. “I will.”

As they stood he held her in his arms again and kissed her with ferocity, at once hard and gentle. They stood like that for a minute, fused together, scarce able to consider the possibility of not touching for a few seconds.

They broke apart and went silently to their rooms. Shakespeare lit candles and stood beside the dresser in his shirt and breeches, not knowing what to do next. Would she really come to him? Or was he to be left here like a dying man offered water only to have it snatched away?

The door opened and she stood before him, her skin golden in the candlelight, her hair as lustrous as fine black satin. He went to her and, with unpracticed fingers, tried to negotiate the ties and stays that held her clothes in place. She laughed lightly and helped him until her underskirts fell away and she stood before him naked and unashamed.

His hunger for her was almost unbearable. She moved toward him, to help him disrobe, and the closeness of her bare skin brought him to the hardness of oak. She whispered in his ear, “You seem quite lost for words, sir.”

He kissed her, long and deep, then ripped the clothes from his body and pulled her to the bed, entering her in a hurry born of longing. She cried out from the sharp pain of her torn maidenhead and he froze momentarily. “Don’t stop,” she murmured. “Please, John, don’t stop.”

The joints of the old wooden bed creaked with their movements. He had not used the bed for this purpose before. She kissed the palm of his hand. He kissed the bud of her breast. He moved between her legs as in his dreams. The light of candles flickered their shadows on the ceiling and walls of his plain room. The only sounds were of wood on wood and their breathing.

He arched away from her so that he could see her. Her eyes were closed, her long lashes sweeping like crescent moons beneath. His hands reached down to the inside of her thighs, that tender flesh that draws men in. He caressed and traced patterns across her soft, dark down and up to her belly, holding her pinioned with the whole palm of his hand, pushing himself in, withdrawing, pushing in.

She felt no guilt, just abandonment to her senses. If this made her a sinner, she would face up to it at another time. Not now. Now she was lost in the moment and she
would
reach that ecstasy of which she had heard from friends when she was a girl and which she had practiced on herself in the long nights alone.

He became more urgent. She pushed up immodestly to meet the quickening pulse of his movements. They were so lost in each other now, so frantic in their passion, that pleasure and pain dissolved into one entity. She would part her legs wider and wider still, until they engulfed him and took him into her the more. He would go deeper into her, deeper.

She cried out and he gasped and shuddered and collapsed upon her breasts.

They lay like this, not wishing to move, saying nothing, nowhere near sleep until, soon, their desire awoke again simultaneously and they began once more. This time it was slower, more gentle, and they instinctively found new positions on the small bed. In the candlelight he spotted blood on the white sheets and he wondered vaguely what Jane would make of it when she took the sheets for laundering. She would know, of course. How could she not? But he did not care. Not now, anyway.

S
TARLING DAY AND
Parsimony Field talked a long while about the man upstairs. When Starling first saw him on the bed, she did not recognize him. He was lying facedown, waiting for her, for anyone, to come and flagellate him as he required. And so she beat him, harder and harder, imagining all the time that he was her husband, Edward, getting what he deserved for all the pain he had administered to her. When she had finished, when he called enough, he turned painfully on the bed, sitting on the edge. Even then she could see only the back of his head.

Slowly he turned to face her and bowed his head graciously. Starling fell back two steps, shocked by the face. It was a face carved into her memory like an epitaph on stone, the face of the man who had plunged a thin poniard dagger into the eyes of Gilbert Cogg, one by one, straight through into his brain. The sound of the fat man’s scream and the sight of the spurting gore haunted her still.

“I must have gone as red as a smacked arse when I saw who it was, Parsey. But of course, he had no idea why. He never knew that anyone saw him doing for Cogg.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“How about nothing? I didn’t let on that I recognized him and he gave me two pounds in gold, then and there, like money meant nothing to him. I say we give him a nice sleep, feed him breakfast, and send him on his way as if nothing has happened.”

“We must be able to get something out of this. Cogg’s murder was big. And I liked Cogg. He looked after me.”

“Yeah, but the problem is Topcliffe. He’s after us. Cogg and him were close and he reckons we did for him and took the treasure. Don’t stir up a hornet’s nest, Parsey.”

Parsimony finished her brandy and spread rich butter on some two-day-old bread. She was hungry. It was late at night, but the night would go on a lot longer yet. Cogg deserved some sort of justice. But more to the point, this knowledge could help them protect themselves against Topcliffe. They would have to act fast, though; the killer would be gone within a few hours. It was an opportunity not to be missed. “I’ve got an idea, Little Bird,” she said, her mouth full of bread and butter. “An old friend of mine called Harry. Harry Slide. He works for Walsingham now and then. He’ll know what to do, how to make the best of it. I’m going to send for him.”

“I don’t know, Parsey—”

“I’m going to send for him now. It’s got to be tonight because our man says he’s going in the morning. I know where Harry lodges. I’ll send Jack Butler up there on the mare. Trust me, Little Bird. Trust me. Harry’ll know what to do. He’ll see us right.”

S
HAKESPEARE WAS ASLEEP
when Catherine left his room soon before dawn and returned silently to the chamber she was sharing with Woode’s children.

When they were sated from lovemaking, they had talked. Shake speare’s childhood in Warwickshire, blue-sky days and dreams, friends and relatives with all their peculiarities and eccentricities, Catherine’s strange accent, so different from anything he had heard before. He teased her gently about it, mimicking her short vowels, and she jabbed him with her elbow, a little harder than she intended. He retaliated by tickling her, which made her squirm and ended in them making love yet again, though they scarcely had energy left for it.

Catherine Marvell told him she had come to London from York shire, where her father James was a schoolteacher. “Thomas Woode’s eldest sister, Agnes, was married to a York squire. She died in November last. Her husband knew my family because Father taught her three sons at the grammar school. Three years ago, when Master Woode’s wife died of consumption, Agnes asked me whether I might consider going to London to become governess to Andrew and Grace. She knew me to be a Roman Catholic. And so, aged eighteen, I made the long journey south by palfrey, accompanied by one of Agnes’s retainers. In truth it was a welcome relief to me. I had grown to hate the smallness of my hometown. London offered a wide world and excitement.”

“And how does it measure up now you are here? Exciting enough for you?”

She laughed. “It has its good points, sir.” She recalled that first meeting with Thomas Woode and the children. It was a household of impenetrable gloom. Grace was being looked after by a wet nurse, who was most unsatisfactory. “She smiled ingratiatingly whenever the master was about, but I did not trust her. One day I caught the woman beating the little girl, even though she was but an infant; when I told Master Woode about it, the slattern was immediately dismissed. But the boy, Andrew, was also unhappy. The poor lad sat in a corner the day long, missing his mother. Master Woode himself was lost in melancholy and would spend days alone in his study, planning the building of his house. His plans seemed to remain always as ink drawings on parchment. I encouraged him to start the building. Finally, work began. It is a wondrous modern construction, John, of finest timbers and brickwork. By day there are views across the steelyard and the river, to the bridge.”