Martyr (31 page)

She was silent a while, thinking of Master Woode and the torments he was now enduring. She did not tell Shakespeare more; not her feelings for Thomas Woode, which had grown fonder day by day while she had lived with him, for she had no wish to engender jealousy in his breast. Nor did she mention the decision to allow Jesuit priests to lodge in their home.

Such things had no place in this bed. Not once did they talk of Woode’s plight, the threat from Topcliffe, the death of Lady Blanche, the looming Spanish invasion, or the severing of Mary Stuart’s head; they took care to avoid all the subjects that divided them. Instead, they concentrated on what they shared.

It was well after dawn when Shakespeare awoke. He was alone and panicked when he found she was not there on the pillow beside him. He could still smell her earthy scent on the sheets and see the telltale sign of her lost virginity.

Jane was already downstairs making breakfast. The children were running around but there was no sign of Catherine. If Jane suspected anything of the night’s events, she did not signify it by look or word. But she had news for him. “Harry Slide called in, about four of the clock. I could have murdered him. He woke me up with his hammering on the door, and he was so insistent that I had to go down and see who it was.”

“What did he want?”

“To leave a message for you. Said he had found Starling and Parsimony, whatever that means. Gave an address in Southwark. He was going there and might have some important news for you later.”

Chapter 35

S
HAKESPEARE DID NOT WAIT FOR BREAKFAST. HE THREW
his bear cloak over his shoulders and rode for Southwark. The wind was howling off the river, billowing his cloak like demonic wings. He reined in his mare beneath a sign that swung vigorously in the gale tunneling through the narrow street. The sign was fresh-painted in black and white, with a picture of two women in coronets and the word
Queens
. A bawdy house, and a very pleasantly appointed one at that. He dismounted and knocked at the great door. Almost immediately, it was opened by a strong-armed man of forty or so years who towered over Shakespeare by at least six inches. He looked most discontented, and a mite intimidating, too.

Shakespeare got straight to the point. “I am here on royal business. Where is your master?”

“I have no master.”

“Then this is
your
stew? Who are you?”

“I am Jack Butler, sir. This house is not mine. I have no master, but for a while, anyway, I do have two mistresses.”

“Take me to them.”

Parsimony and Starling had not slept. They had been chasing around the house gathering their things together in any bags or boxes they could find. The treasure had mostly gone days ago, sold off cheap to a fence to raise money to pay off the lease on this brothel and the furnishings inside. Now, Starling and Parsimony were in the parlor arguing feverishly. They had drunk too much and were befuddled. What seemed clear to them, though, was that they must say nothing and leave immediately for one of the great cities such as Bristol or Norwich with the remnants of their treasure.

The door to the parlor was thrown open. Butler stood back to let Shakespeare through and followed him in. The two women turned sharply and glared at him.

Parsimony looked with venom at Shakespeare, then at Butler. “Who’s this, Jack? We don’t want any visitors. Get rid of him.”

Butler looked straight back at Parsimony and raised an eyebrow insolently. “He can speak for himself. You deal with him.”

“You’re going to be out of a job if you don’t watch yourself, Jack Butler.”

“Don’t worry. You can stuff your job up your pox-rotten cunnies. I don’t want no more of you. Think you can just walk away on this, don’t you? I heard you and your plans. Bristol! Norwich! Filthy, cautelous whores. You are drawn foxes and will hang for it.”

Shakespeare stepped forward. “I am John Shakespeare and I am here on behalf of Sir Francis Walsingham. Royal business, madam. And I will
not
be got rid of.”

“We got nothing to say to you,” Parsimony spat.

“Ask them what happened upstairs, Mr. Shakespeare,” said Butler. “That’s why they’re in a hurry. That’s why they got plans to fetch off from Southwark.”

Shakespeare had no idea what he was talking about. These two women must be Starling Day and Parsimony Field, but where was Harry? “You two are not going anywhere. One of my men, Harry Slide, came here. Where is he?”

Parsimony and Starling looked at each other with something akin to panic. They rose at the same time and tried to get to the door. They didn’t stand a hope. Awash with strong drink, they stumbled. Shakespeare and Butler stopped them and restrained them easily in a couple of steps.

“I was sent to bring Mr. Slide here, sir,” Butler said. “And these two purveyors of the French pox have stabbed him through the gulf, by the look of him, poor sod. Blood all over the place. I was just going to fetch the constable when you turned up. Fine gentleman he was, Mr. Slide, sir.”

“Harry dead?” Shakespeare said. “Harry Slide?”

“We didn’t kill him!” Parsimony shouted. “He was a friend of mine. That’s why I called him here. My lovely, fine-dressed Harry. I can’t bear to think of him dead. The flagellant done for him, not us.”

“Flagellant? What flagellant? Where’s Harry?”

“The one that murdered Gilbert Cogg. Now he’s knifed Harry in the neck and run.”

“Where is Harry? Take me to him.”

“He’s up in one of the whores’ chambers. I’ll show you.” Butler pushed Parsimony and Starling toward the staircase, with Shakespeare following.

T
HE SCENE
in the bedroom was horrible to behold. Shakespeare immediately went down on one knee beside Harry’s body. It was obvious he was dead, an hour or two maybe; his body was cold.

A gash, no wider than an inch, had opened up the right side of Harry’s throat. Blood had poured out in a flood, spraying across a wide area of the floor at the foot of the bed. Shakespeare touched Harry’s cheek and pulled back from the coolness of his skin. His eyes were wide open in horror; his beautiful clothes splattered red.

How had poor Harry come to this? Shakespeare put his hands together to pray for Harry’s soul, but it did nothing to ease the pain and anger. He turned furiously to the women. “Tell me again, who did this to him?”

Parsimony looked at Starling. This man seemed to be a friend of Harry Slide, so perhaps he was all right. “We had better tell him everything, Starling.”

Starling nodded and Parsimony turned back to Shakespeare. “But you got to protect us from Topcliffe. He won’t listen to reason. We’ll be gibbeted at Tyburn tree before he gives us a hearing.”

“I promise nothing, but if you do
not
tell me the truth it will be the worse for you. In the meantime, you,” he nodded to Butler, “consider yourself my deputy. Go now and fetch the constable, then arrange for Mr. Slide’s body to be consigned to the coroner.” Shakespeare turned back to the women. “Who else is in this house?”

“Some whores, that’s all,” replied Butler. “They’ll all be swiving or sleeping.”

“They’re good girls,” Starling put in. “They don’t know anything about any of this.”

“Right then.
You
tell me everything.”

They went downstairs, out of sight of the body. Jack Butler went off to fetch in the constable, while Starling told Shakespeare her story.

“The killer. Tell me about the killer.” Shakespeare was insistent.

She described Herrick in great detail. She told Shakespeare that he took a bag with an implement from Cogg after bundling his body into the barrel. She told, too, of the nature of his wound—as well as the new weals received from her beating. “His back was red with scars. I reckon he must have been one of them religious mad-pikes. His hair was short and he didn’t have a beard. I think he
couldn’t
grow a beard. No sign of stubble. And he was scornful,” she went on. “He paid good money, but he looked at me like I was dog turd. He was tall and well muscled, too. Didn’t laugh or smile. Didn’t say nothing good, but then again, he didn’t say nothing bad neither.”

“Did he say anything religious? Did he have any religious symbols? Crosses, beads, that kind of thing?”

“If he did, I didn’t see them.”

“And what did he talk about?”

Starling was getting bored. She was also sobering up. “This and that. He asked me questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like where I came from. I told him Strelley. A pit village full of men like my husband. Mr. Flagellant asked me if I knew Devonshire and Plymouth. Now, why would I know fucking Plymouth?”

“Did you get the idea he was going there?”

“Well, what do you think? You’re supposed to be the cunning man around here. I tell you this, though: he kept asking about post horses and suchlike.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“Nothing. What could I tell him? I don’t know nothing about post horses. Why should I? I’ve never been on a nag in my life. Shank’s mare does for me. I
walked
to London.”

So Herrick was making for Plymouth. And sooner rather than later. But would he get there by horse or try Drake’s own route: by horse to Dover and take ship from there? The Dover route might be quicker, but that would depend on the winds. If the weather was inclement, he could be holed up in Dover for days. Shakespeare reckoned he would have gone the more certain overland route. Whichever way he went, the highways were likely to be bogs of mud at this time of year, but Shakespeare decided he would have to follow him, riding fast across country. He had to leave immediately; there was not even time to go home. Herrick probably had two or three hours start on him, but with good fortune, he could be caught.

Jack Butler arrived back with the constable, a lumbering oaf with the dead eyes of a cod.

“I want this place closed down with immediate effect,” Shakespeare told the constable. “These two women will be held in custody while I decide what to do with them. Keep them in the Clink, but tell no one they are there. And I mean no one. I promise that you will answer to Mr. Secretary Walsingham himself and suffer for it if a single word of this gets out. And when you remove Mr. Slide’s body to the coroner, you will treat it with honor. Do you understand? You, Mr. Butler, find me a quill, ink, and some pieces of paper, for I must write urgent messages which you will deliver, in person. The one to Mr. Secretary at his home in Seething Lane, the other to my own home in the same street. There is to be no delay.”

Chapter 36

D
RAKE WAS IN AN EBULLIENT MOOD AS HIS SMALL
party took the barge from Greenwich Palace to Gravesend early in the morning. The Queen had wished him God speed during a short private meeting in the presence chamber. Now, with a salty cry as if he were weighing anchor and setting sail for the Indies, he waved his hat and urged the rowers forward like a knight spurring his destrier at the tilt.

At Gravesend they took horse and settled into a goodly trot on the well-trodden road that would take them south and east through Kent toward the Channel port of Dover. Diego took the lead on his bay, followed by a band comprising Drake; his wife, Elizabeth—sidesaddle on a beautiful gray palfrey—her maidservant May Willow; Captain Harper Stanley—his mustaches bristling—two servants of Drake; and the deputy lieutenant of Devon, Sir William Courtenay, returning home to Powderham Castle. The group was accompanied by two of Drake’s most trusted mariners, men known to be handy with wheel-lock and sword. The rear guard was taken by Boltfoot Cooper, his caliver primed and his hand ever close to the hilt of his cutlass.

Drake settled in the middle of the group, between his wife on the right and Courtenay, whom he knew to be a Roman Catholic, on his left. “Well, sir,” Drake said, “have you said confession today for all your manifold sins?”

Courtenay laughed wearily. He was used to jibes at the expense of his religion. “I am afraid, Sir Francis, they are too many for the priest to reckon with at one sitting. I have a seven-week rotation: lust one week, gluttony the next, then greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride, in that order.”

“And which is it this week? Lust?”

“Of course, Sir Francis. I could not possibly travel without a goodly helping of lust to boost my spirits.” Courtenay was a dark-haired man in his mid-thirties, of exceptional good looks, fit and strong. While he made mockery of his sins, he had a reputation as one of the court’s most ardent ladies’ men. He was said to have brought two serving girls with child before he was fourteen years old and had scattered several other children around Devon since then.

“Hah! What do you make of it, Lady Elizabeth? Will Sir William go to heaven? Or hell?”

Elizabeth looked across at Courtenay and smiled at him. She looked sweet and demure, her face glowing beneath a fashionable French hood of black velvet that controlled her hair in the mighty wind that assailed them. “Possibly hell, and most certainly Devon. I would not hazard gold on heaven, though.”

“By God’s faith, Sir William, I think I shall have to look out for my wife in your company! I fear she does hold a little piece of her heart in store for you.”

“Indeed, Sir Francis. But how will you keep me from her when you are at sea? And tell me this, as a land-shanks, how do you sailor men care for your requirements in the middle of the ocean, sans ladies, sans whores, sans pleasure itself?”

Drake scowled. He glanced at his wife irritably, then at Courte nay. “There are other pleasures, sir. Putting Catholics to the sword foremost among them. And oft they deserve it for their base cruelty. Your list of sins, Sir William—where does cruelty fit into that? Or does your church not require you to confess it? Perhaps cruelty is considered a virtue by the apostolic Antichrist. For certain, you do belong to the cruelest religion in the world.”

The banter, half in jest, half meant with severe intent, continued along the miles down into Kent. At times Drake fell back to talk with Captain Stanley about provisioning and naval strategies; at those times he watched in silence as his wife moved closer to Courtenay and engaged him in conversation.

Boltfoot’s eyes were constantly moving, watching Drake one second, scouring the countryside for dangers the next. This road was known for its banditry, though he could not imagine anyone would dare attack a group this well armed. Hunger, however, could make men do desperate things. And there was much poverty in England.

They had taken an early lunch at Gravesend and did not stop again until they came to a halt soon before six of the clock at a post inn close to Rochester. Boltfoot stayed with Sir Francis and Elizabeth while the servants organized the horses and Harper Stanley and Diego ordered some supper and wine for them all in a private room.

They ate well and Drake regaled the company with tales of his adventures when he lived within two or three miles of this inn as a child. The family had come here from Devon, he said, because his father, a Protestant preacher, had been persecuted during the burnings of Queen Mary’s reign. The Drakes had ended up living poverty-stricken in a rotting hulk stranded on a Medway mudbank. “Back then, I foraged for oysters and blackberries to stay alive. And look at me now, as rich as a Musselman potentate, with the world and all its seas at my feet! And all thanks to gold supplied by that same King Philip who shared the bed of murdering Mary.”

Boltfoot Cooper snorted loudly. He didn’t believe a word of the story of religious persecution of Drake’s father any more than had anyone else around their hometown of Tavistock. The word there was that Drake’s father, Edmund, had left in a hurry having been convicted of horse theft and assault and robbery on the highway.

“Something wrong with your nose, Mr. Cooper? Can someone lend him a kerchief?” Drake clapped his hands, then smacked them down with a thud on the table. “And now, let us drink our fill that God give health and long life to our sovereign majesty Elizabeth. Long live the Queen!”

They ate and drank too much, as travelers will. As the serving wenches cleared away the last of the dishes and brought more flagons of wine, Drake picked up a book that was on the table at his side. “Charge your cups, for I shall now read to you, as I have read to my officers and gentlemen aboard ship on many a long night in the great Pacific Ocean, which, I must tell you, is the worst-named sea that ever mariner sailed; there was nothing pacific or tranquil about her or her depths when we did enter her. We were wracked by tempests for weeks without end. But all waters are stormy and I would have it no other way. Soon we shall be at sea again. Soon I shall have the salt spray in my face and, beneath my feet, six hundred tons of English oak and blazing cannon.”

He tapped the book and continued. “With that thought, it seems apt that I should read ‘The Shipman’s Tale’ of Geoffrey Chaucer, for we do go the pilgrim’s way through Canterbury, then down to the sea. And in the instance that any of you do not understand, I shall first explain it to you, for the well-loved Mr. Chaucer did not write English as now we know it. It is right that I do commend this tale to my good lady wife, Elizabeth, for her pleasure and nothing more. For I know her to be nothing in the way of the faithless goodwife of Mr. Chaucer’s tale. And I trust that none here present shall think her otherwise than a chaste companion to me.”

Drake raised his golden-pointed chin to his wife.

She smiled back at him guilelessly. “Why, my lord, I cannot think you even need to defend me so. For certain, none here could think me other than a loyal and loving bride.”

“Quite so, by God’s faith! But perhaps Sir William Courtenay might look out for himself in this sorry tale. It is the tale of an adulterous wife and of a cunning monk who pretends friendship of her husband—and then beds his lady. Do you see anyone you know in there, Sir William?”

Boltfoot Cooper was not listening. His eyes were fastened on the face of Sir William Courtenay, which was a mask of rage.

“But enough!” Drake continued. “It is naught but a story. I cannot believe any man would betray another like that, for they would surely be gelded and run through the heart for such foul dealing. That is nothing less than any husband would do, would you not agree, Sir William? You are a married man, I believe?”

Courtenay hesitated. His eyes strayed to Elizabeth’s, then back to Drake. “You must know it, Sir Francis.” He had not an ounce of humor in his voice.

“You would not allow any man to make a monkey of you, would you, sir?”

Suddenly Courtenay rose from the table, his sword already half-drawn. “Of what do you accuse me?” He lunged forward, scattering goblets and flagons and knocking the large table to one side. “You insult my religion, sir, and now you insult me.”

The room was immediately in an uproar. The armed mariners leapt forward but were slow off the mark. Both Boltfoot, from one side, and Diego, from the other, were on Courtenay in an instant. Boltfoot had his cutlass at Courtenay’s neck. Diego had the point of his dagger beneath the young courtier’s rib cage, ready to thrust upward into the heart. Courtenay looked wildly around those present in the room.

“Will no one take my part? I have suffered calumny here.” He looked again at Elizabeth Drake. “Madam, will you not call your husband to order, for I think he does accuse us of some liaison, of which I know nothing.”

Elizabeth laughed lightly. “Oh, Sir William, it is just my master’s way. Pay him no heed. I think he likes to make merry with men’s sensibilities. It helps to pass the long days and nights at sea when the breeze has dropped and the sails will not billow.”

Diego and Boltfoot took Courtenay by the arms and pushed him back down into his chair.

“More drink for Sir William Courtenay!” Drake roared. He had not retreated an inch in the face of the onslaught, and his broad chest was puffed up like a fighting cock’s. “God’s faith, make the man mellow before he slaughters us all.” And then he reached into his doublet pocket and took out a piece of blue velvet, all wrapped like a present. “Here, madam,” he said, offering it to his wife with a flourish. “A necklace of gold, pearl, and ruby, each one harvested from the great continents and oceans of the world. Please do me the honor of accepting this humble offering as a mark of my respect for your fidelity and loving goodness.”

Elizabeth put her hand to her mouth in mock surprise, as if she had not already received a hundred such rich trinkets from her besotted husband.

“Well, that’s one way to keep her from going off with any carnal monks,” Diego muttered into Boltfoot’s ear.

Boltfoot smiled grimly. There was something that interested him rather more: for he had noted just which men among the assembled company had leapt to the defense of Drake, and which had not.

S
HAKESPEARE’S RIDE WEST
was dogged by ill chance from the outset. Riding along a highway rutted with holes that a man could fall into and mud deep enough to drown in, his gray mare went lame ten miles into the county of Surrey. He left the animal with a peasant farmhand, with the promise of sixpence if he took good care of it, then walked on toward the nearest village to find another mount. He had come in the clothes he wore that morning: bearskin cloak, doublet, breeches, hose, and a fur hat. He had no baggage or panniers to carry, just a purse with more than enough coinage for the journey. Trudging alone, he knew he was vulnerable to attack by highway thieves. Even spattered with mud, his clothes were clearly of a fine cut. With so much hunger in the land, there were bands of vagabonds and robbers roaming everywhere.

The walk to the village took two hours. His boots became clogged and the dampness soaked through to his skin. Wind howled around him and every now and then he was forced to clamber over fallen trees that had come down in places across the road. By the time he arrived at a ford across a river, just to the east of the village, he was hungry, weary, short-tempered, and keenly aware that he was losing time in the pursuit of his elusive quarry.

The ferryman was in his riverside hut eating lunch and did not bother to look up as Shakespeare approached. Without any preliminaries, Shakespeare snapped, “God’s blood, ferryman, I am on Queen’s business and must cross this river straightway and find a horse.”

The ferryman looked up languidly from his meal, then raised a tankard of ale to his mouth and drank slowly, sieving the ale through a hedge of whiskers.

“Well, sir, get a move on!”

Putting down his ale, the ferryman looked around as if Shakespeare were not there. “Did someone say something? Or did my old dog just fart?”

“This is Queen’s business!”

The ferryman at last met his eyes. “And I am on the business of my luncheon, which I consider of much greater import than your business or that of the Queen or anyone else you may wish to mention. You can either wait until I have finished or you can swim.”