Martyr (4 page)

All in England knew that no single man was more important than Drake to the survival of the realm. If anything could prevent an invasion by the rumored armada, it was the fighting skills and strategic brilliance of the Vice Admiral. During twenty years at sea, he had proved his courage and seacraft time and again, capturing scores of Spanish galleons and storming ports with irresistible ferocity.

No one was in any doubt that Spain’s invasion fleet must be beaten at sea—for if it disgorged its battle-hardened troops on English soil, all would be lost.

England’s land forces were woefully ill-prepared. They would be swept aside and slaughtered within days. And then the terror would begin: the dread Inquisition.

Soon, villages, towns, and cities would be ablaze with the burning bodies of tens of thousands of Protestant heretics. No one would be safe from torture and execution.

Shakespeare shuddered at the prospect. He knew what was at stake from his own experience.

As a junior intelligencer in Walsingham’s service five years earlier, he had helped break another Spanish plot against Drake. The money on offer to kill him then was twenty thousand ducats. Shakespeare had worked to identify the conspirators. It was a simple and amateurish plot: Pedro de Zubiaur, the Spanish agent in London, had recruited a merchant named Patrick Mason to persuade an old enemy of Drake’s to kill him. This enemy was named John Doughty, the vengeful half-brother of Thomas Doughty, who had been executed before his very eyes by Drake on his round-world voyage. A little judicial torture and Mason had named names. As far as Shakespeare knew, Doughty was still rotting in the Marshalsea prison.

And now King Philip was raising the stakes. Seventy thousand ducats would tempt desperate men.

Walsingham continued: Philip plods with feet of lead across the world’s great stage. It is easy to make merry at his expense when he complains like a girl child about Drake and Hawkins and the rest plundering his treasure. But though he plods, he does have weight behind him, thanks to his riches from the New World. And he can crush. I would say that, at sea, my good friend Drake is more likely to die of scurvy than fall to the sword or pistol of a hired killer, but now that he is on land, fitting and supplying the fleets in the reaches of the Thames, he is an easy target. In the shipyards by day he is
vulnerable
, John, and at court by night he can scarcely be safer. He’s in danger, just when we need him most. Santa Cruz, King Philip’s admiral, is like to sail with his fleet this spring or summer. My spies tell me he conspires to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s armies in the lowlands and carry and protect them as they cross the sea to England. With Drake out of the way, their passage would be a thousand times easier.

Shakespeare hesitated. Everything he knew of Drake by repute suggested he would not need anyone’s help to survive. He had been fighting and defeating Spanish fleets for nigh on twenty years now. Surely Drake can look after himself, he said at last.

Can he, John? At sea, yes, of course. But on land, in the teeming shipyards, full of foreigners of every hue and creed? Who will spot one man with an arquebus or crossbow among the hundreds at work? Drake needs protection—and
you
will provide it.

Shakespeare ran a finger around his ruff He felt hot, despite the lack of warmth in this cheerless room. And Lady Blanche Howard?

And Lady Blanche. And all your other duties. We are all stretched like bowstrings. That is the way it is. Anyway, it seems to me you have the perfect servant to assign to Drake—your former sailor, Mr. Boltfoot Cooper. I believe he already knows Sir Francis rather well.

Shakespeare almost laughed. There was nothing to be gained from arguing. Walsingham must know that Boltfoot had parted on bad terms with Drake, having protested that he had been cheated of his fair share of the colossal plunder taken aboard the
Golden Hind
from the Spanish treasure ship
Cacafuego
. He had also said that after three years at sea in Drake’s company he would never board a ship again and certainly not one of Drake’s. No, Boltfoot would not be happy to be in the Dragon’s company once more.

Chapter 4

N
IGHT HAD COME AND GONE WHEN ROSE DOWNIE
was startled awake. Topcliffe was standing over her, prodding at her with his blackthorn. She scrabbled to her feet, heart pounding. Her hands were stiff with cold, clutching the baby. The child chose that moment to wail; its piercing, monotonous cry, like the howl of a cat, sent shivers down her spine, but Topcliffe merely smiled.

Is it baptized in our church? he asked, and touched its strange face, with its curious, un-human eyes.

Rose Downie felt fear in her heart but she needed this man. Her friend had told her that he knew everything about everyone in the city, that he would help her as he had helped others, but that he would demand much in return. My own baby was baptized, sir, by the Bishop of London himself, but this is not my baby.

Then you have stolen this one.

No, sir,
mine
has been stolen. This …
creature
… was left in its place.

Let me see its face by the light. Topcliffe bent down toward the face of the child in the gloom. He pulled back the swaddling bands from its head and looked intently at it. The child’s face was small and round, its eyes spaced widely. Too widely. There seemed to be no chin to speak of and the ears were curiously low. Any mother, Topcliffe thought, would want to disown such a thing. Come in with me. My boy Nicholas tells me you have had a long vigil here. I’ll beat his arse raw for leaving you out in weather like this.

He pushed back the oak door to his home. Rose hesitated, fearing to enter. The hallway was lit by the flame from a candle, which cast strange shadows in the breeze from the open door. She stepped forward into the unholy gloom.

On a dark-stained coffer lay a large gilt-bound book, which, though she could not read, she recognized as a Bible. Topcliffe took Rose Downie’s right hand from the baby and held it down hard on the book, as if to ensure there was solid contact. Do you swear by Almighty God that the baby you are holding is not yours?

Rose felt colder inside the house than outside in the winter wind. There were strange smells in this place; it held the chill and smell of a slaughterhouse. I do swear, sir; it is not my baby. My baby, William Edmund Downie, has been taken from me. Please help me, sir. I believe that only you can help.

Where is your husband, Mistress Downie?

He died, sir. He was out with the trainband at Mile End Green by Clement’s Inn after church a month past, and his hagbut did explode.

Topcliffe touched her arm with seeming compassion. His hand remained there, keeping her close to him. I am sorry to hear that, Mistress Downie. England has need of such men. Such a thing should not befall a pretty wife.

Tears welled up in Rose’s eyes at the memory but she refused to weep. She had been heavy with child and he was late home from practicing firing his arquebus and wielding his pike. He, like thousands of other good men, had been doing his duty, she knew, training week after week out in the open countryside or within the brick walls of Artillery Yard. He had volunteered himself for service as part of the Carpenters Company contingent. It was men like her husband who would stop the Spaniard. That day, she had waited for him on the road, but instead of his jaunty step and broad smile coming toward her, she saw six other members of the trainband approaching, pulling a handcart with what, at first, she took to be a dead animal. Then she saw that it was his bloody remains and she collapsed fainting. Later, they told her his arquebus had misfired and exploded in pieces, ripping open his throat. They had been wed less than a year, by the Bishop who would later baptize their child. Her husband’s name was Edmund and she called him Mund. He was such a fine man, a yeoman carpenter with shoulders as wide as his smile. On the day of their wedding, they had scarcely been able to wait for the Bishop to give his blessing before retiring to their room to tear the clothes from each other’s backs. When Mund died, she felt that her life was over. She hungered each night for his body over hers. But instead of the joy of him, she had nothing but tears. And then the baby came a week after his death and she began to find a little life again. He was a boy and he was perfect in every way. His name was William Edmund, but she called him Mund, like his father. He would be the new man in her life.

Come further into my home, Topcliffe said, his arm moving around her shoulder, and have a draft of beer, for you must have a thirst to slake.

If she had been asked to tread through the portals of hell, she could not have been more scared, yet she could not say no to this man. She knew his repute as a brute, but she also knew that he had power. Her friend Ellie May from the market had told her she must go to him, for he was reputed to know all there was to know in London; he could see into souls and was privy to dark secrets that no one else could know, Ellie had told her.

In his teeth, stained mottled amber, Topcliffe clenched a long wooden stick, which he drew on every so often, and then blew out smoke. She looked at it astonished, as if he were breathing sulfur from the fires of Satan, for she had never seen such a thing. He laughed at her bewilderment. It is a pipe of sotweed, from the New World. He called in a servant to bring drink, then another to stoke the fire in the hearth and—as the man crouched to the grate with bellows and logs—cursed him for letting it go so low.

He asked her questions. How she survived, where she lived. She told him she was a malkin—a kitchen drudge—in the buttery of a great lady. She had left service when she married Edmund, but on his death she had been received back into the household in her old serving job.

As she talked, Topcliffe smiled at her with his hard, dark teeth. Eventually he put down the sotweed pipe. Well, Rose, I should like to help you if I can. We must find the mother of this changeling you have brought us.

Again he put his arm around Rose Downie’s shoulders, drawing her to him. We must look after Her Majesty’s subjects, must we not, especially the widow of a fine young man who died for his sovereign. Tell me, Rose, where was your baby stolen?

She recalled the day precisely. It was a week past, when the child was just twelve days old. She had gone to the market for cheeses and salt pork. Her son was swaddled and she held him in her arms. But there was a disagreement with the stallholder and she had put the baby down for just a short moment because her arms were full of groceries and she was counting out the farthings to pay for them. The argument became heated and the short moment of leaving little Mund in a basket by the stall became a minute or two. She was still angry when she went to pick him up, but then her anger turned to horror, for her baby was no longer there. In his place was this monster, this creature, this Devil’s spawn.

Well, we must find little William Edmund, Topcliffe said. But first, let us become better acquainted, Rose.

His arm was strong around her now, and he pulled her down. She did not resist, as if she half expected this as part of the price. In one movement, he lifted her kirtle and smock, turned her with a strength she could not defy, and, without a word, entered her with the casual indifference with which a bull takes a cow.

Chapter 5

I
N THE CRYPT OF ST. PAUL’S, THE SEARCHER OF THE DEAD
stood in his bloodstained apron over the unclothed carcass of Lady Blanche Howard. For a long while he was silent. With his strong hands he moved her poor head this way and that with practiced gentleness, examining her wounds; he did the same with her paps and with her woman’s parts; he held up the scarce-formed baby, still attached to her womb by its cord, and looked at it from all sides. He ran his fingers through the woman’s flaxen hair and he explored inside the pits of her arms, the backs of her legs, and the soles of her feet.

The stone walls of the crypt glistened with trickles of water. The Searcher parted the legs of the cold body and examined further. He removed objects and put them to one side dispassionately. He moved his face near the fair V of her womanhood and sniffed.

Above them, in the nave of the great cathedral, the throngs of people went about their business, dealing, conspiring, laughing, fighting, robbing each other, or simply passing the time of day. But down here, the only sound was the shuffling of soft leather soles on stone and the occasional drip of water from the walls and ceiling. Shakespeare stood back and watched. The Searcher, Joshua Peace, was so intent on his work that he seemed unaware of his presence. Shakespeare liked Peace; he was a man of knowledge, like himself, the type of man to shape the new England now they were almost rid of the superstitions of the Roman church.

Peace was of indeterminate age, perhaps late thirties but he looked younger. He was slim but strong and his head was bald on top, like a monk’s tonsure. He sniffed some more, around her mouth and nostrils, then stood back from his work and met the eye of John Shakespeare. There is the smell of fire on her, and also the lust of a man, he said. And not just that smell, Mr. Shakespeare-there is the three-day smell of death.

Three days?

Yes. Three days at this time of year, the same as a day and a half in summer. Where did you find her?

In a house that had been burned out, toward Shoreditch.

Well, that explains the smell of fire. From the smell of her skin and mouth, I can detect no poison. I take the cause of death to be the slash of a butcher’s blade or some such to the throat. Tell me, was there a great deal of blood around the body?

Shakespeare thought back to the horror of the scene he had encountered, then shook his head, surprised. No. She was on a bed and there was some blood staining on the sheets, but very little.

Then she was killed somewhere else, or in another part of the house, and taken there. She would have lost a lot of blood with these injuries. The Searcher held up two objects—a piece of bone and a silver crucifix. These were inside her, thrust in most unkindly. I think the bone is a relic, a monkey’s bone passed off as the finger of a saint, for all I know.

What was it doing there?

You will have to ask her killer that, Mr. Shakespeare. All I can tell you is that the girl was about eighteen, certainly no older, and in good health. As to the child, it was twelve weeks gone, a boy. From the spread of blood about her person, I feel certain that the wound which ripped it from her belly was inflicted after death, which may be some small comfort to her family.

Peace pushed his arms underneath the body and lifted it so that the bare back was visible. Look at this, Mr. Shakespeare.

Shakespeare moved closer. Her slender back, from nape to lower back, had two red raw lines, which made the shape of a cross. At the house in Shoreditch, where she lay with her front exposed to the sky, he had not seen this.

What is it? What has caused this?

Peace ran a finger down the bloody stripes. It seems to be a crucifix, crudely cut after death.

Shakespeare stared at the wounds as if by staring he would go back in time to when they were inflicted. Is there some religious significance?

That is for
you
to answer, Mr. Shakespeare. There is something else, too…

As Peace spoke, carefully laying the body back on the slab so that her wounded back was no longer visible, the ancient door to the crypt was flung open. Two pikemen marched in, taking up positions either side of the doorway. They were followed by a man of later years, probably in his fifties. His hair and beard were as white as the snow outside, and his eyes were keen. He was tall and lean, with the languid air and fine clothes of the nobility. Shakespeare recognized him immediately as Charles Howard, second Baron of Effingham and Lord Admiral of England. Howard looked first at Shakespeare, then at Peace, without saying a word. He stalked forward to the body of his beloved adopted daughter, Blanche, lying on the Searcher’s stone slab, for all the world like a carving on a sarcophagus. For two minutes he stared at her face, then nodded slowly before turning on his heel. In a moment he was gone, closely attended by his pikemen.

Shakespeare caught Peace’s eye. I suppose there really was nothing to say.

No. Nothing. Now let me show you this one other thing. Peace lifted her hands and showed Shakespeare the wrists. They were marked with a raised weal. That is a rope mark, Mr. Shakespeare. Whichever brute did this to her tied her up most cruelly.

Shakespeare looked closely at the marks, then winced with the thought of the suffering this poor girl had endured before death. He shook Joshua Peace by the hand. Thank you, my friend. Consign her body to the coroner. You know, in quieter times it would be a fine thing to pass an hour or two with you and a flagon of Gascon wine at The Three Tuns.

Yes, said Peace. And let us drink heartily to quieter times.

Outside, up in the daylight, Shakespeare was surprised to find the Lord Admiral and his pikemen waiting for him. It was snowing properly now, dropping a carpet of white around St. Paul’s, but if Howard of Effingham felt the cold he did not show it. He stood stock-still, like a soldier, his colorless face set and hard.

My lord …

She was with child?

Shakespeare said nothing. There was a sadness in the old man’s voice that needed no response.

Who did this thing to her?

I intend to discover that, my lord. Could I ask you about the people she knew? Do you have any idea who the father of her child might be?

Howard breathed deeply. You are Shakespeare, Mr. Secretary’s man, I believe.

I am.

This is a tragic business. Tragic. I loved Blanche as if she were my own child. She was part of me. But it is also delicate, Mr. Shakespeare. There is the family to think about.

I understand. But you must want to find her killer.

I do, I do. The Lord Admiral hesitated. Let me just say, there were people in her life of late of whom I did not approve…. He stopped.

Shakespeare needed to probe deeper. He needed every crumb of information this man could provide, but he began to realize it was not going to be forthcoming.

These people …

The admiral looked distraught. Momentarily he reminded Shake speare of a lost puppy he once chanced upon in his schooldays, which he had taken in, much to his mother’s disapproval. I really can say no more.

Do you, at least, know anything of the house in Hog Lane by Shoreditch where her body was found?

I am sorry. I know nothing of such things.

My man Boltfoot Cooper has made inquiries but he failed to discover the landlord or tenant of the building.

Howard said nothing. He stood like a rock.

Perchance, in a day or two you might talk with me, my lord?

Perchance, Mr. Shakespeare. I can promise no more.

One last question. Was she a Roman Catholic?

It seemed to Shakespeare that Howard of Effingham clenched his teeth. He did not answer the question but nodded to his pikemen, then turned and walked to his horse, which was tethered nearby. To Shakespeare, his reaction spoke more than a printed volume could.

As Howard rode away eastward, some apprentices threw snowballs at Shakespeare and one hit him. He laughed and gathered up some snow, crunching it hard together in his gloved hands before flinging it back at the boy.

It was Friday, a fish day. Many days were fish days, as a means of boosting the fortunes of the fishing fleets, but that was no hardship for Shakespeare, who enjoyed fish in all its forms. Soon it would be Lent and then every day would be a fish day. Jane, his maidservant and housekeeper, had given him smoked pike instead of flesh for his breakfast this morning, and he would have some eel and oyster pie before bed.

The trees were decorated white as Shakespeare walked through the streets of high houses, their shutters thrown back to let in the air. Thick wood smoke belched from their chimneys, adding to the permanent city stench of ordure until the mixture clogged the nostrils and the lungs. Summer was the worst, particularly here, near the confluence of the Fleet and the Thames and close to the Fleet and Newgate prisons, where the rotting flesh of dead convicts might be left uncollected for weeks on end; at this time of year, thankfully, the stink retreated to a background whiff.

An endless procession of carts, drays, and wagons, laden with farm produce, barrels, and building materials, trundled nose to tail in both directions, their horses’ ironclad hooves turning the new snow to slush, slipping and stumbling in the endless potholes. There was barely room for them to pass on the narrow streets, and they often ground to a halt, setting the carters to shouting and swearing. At times, blows were exchanged before a beadle interposed and brought some order.

In a few minutes, Shakespeare had followed the road out of the city, over the Fleet river (if such a putrid ditch was deserving of the name river, he thought), soon turning left toward the high, forbidding walls of Bridewell. Every time he came here, he found it difficult to believe that such a dark fortress could ever have been a royal palace, yet barely sixty years ago, Henry—the great Henry—had entertained his Spanish Queen at dinner behind these walls. His son, Edward the Sixth, had handed the dreary place over to the city fathers for the housing of the poor. And now it was little more than a prison for the city’s harlots, gypsies, and vagrants.

A squadron of eight armed men, pursuivants, marched past him with a prisoner, their boots stamping through the snow. They came to a halt, throwing their prisoner to the ground, and their sergeant, whom Shakespeare recognized as one of Topcliffe’s men, hammered on the massive Bridewell door. Almost instantly it was opened by the gaoler, clutching his clanking keys.

A priest of Rome for you, gaoler, the sergeant said.

The gaoler grinned, revealing a couple of brown, broken teeth, but mostly diseased gum. And very welcome he is, too, Master Newall, for his friends will pay well to feed him and keep him alive. They are all welcome here, all your Popish priests.

Well, don’t forget our agreement.

A mark for each, catchpole. Bring them on! Never have I fared so well. Last month they brought me a vicar of the English Church. He starved because no one brought him a crust of bread, and why should I feed him? The Anglicans are like vermin here. Bring me Romans, catchpole, for they do garnish my table.

Newall pulled the priest to his feet and handed him, manacled and shackled, to the gaoler. Mind you work him hard. Get him making nails or stripping oakum to caulk Her Majesty’s ships. And flog him soundly, gaoler, or I shall take him off to the Marshalsea or the Clink, where he should be by rights. The sergeant spotted Shakespeare and grinned. I’m sure Mr. Topcliffe wishes you good cheer, Mr. Shakespeare.

Shakespeare ignored Newall, whom he knew to be of small wit and too close-coupled to Topcliffe for comfort, and walked past the squadron. He nodded to the gaoler, who knew him well, and went through the doorway. He was immediately knocked back by the stink of human dung and sweat. Before him in the first large courtyard and in the cloisters was a swarming mass of the lowliest of humankind. Here were hundreds of beggars, whores, doxies, and orphans. Many had come to London in search of a better life and had been brought here by way of punishment and hoped-for redemption. It was a vain hope. Shakespeare saw their dull eyes as they toiled on the treadmill or performed one or another of a dozen unpleasant tasks set them by the gaoler to pay for whatever food he might consent to give them. The gaoler pushed the newly acquired priest forward into the crowd, where he was seized by a taskmaster.

Some vagabonds were brought here yesterday by Boltfoot Cooper, Shakespeare said at last, when the sergeant and his squadron had gone. I will see them.

The gaoler’s brow creased in puzzlement. Of course, I do remember them, Mr. Shakespeare; they were Irish beggars or some such, I believe. But they were taken away this morning on your orders, sir.

I gave no such orders, turnkey.

But, Mr. Shakespeare, I saw the warrant that the two men brought. It had your mark on it.

My mark? Can you read, turnkey?

Why, yes, sir, enough. Your men said the vagabonds were to be taken to some other gaol as criminals, as I do recall. They had your mittimus from the justice. I have seen many such warrants.

You say my men took them?