Shakespeare's Rebel (50 page)

The sparkle in the Irishman’s eye was more than reflected torchlight. John smiled. ‘I thank you, sir,’ he replied.

St Lawrence shrugged – then both men started as a scattering of gunfire came from the direction of the courtyard. ‘Each man to his duty, then,’ the captain said.

‘Aye.’ John raised two fingers to his brow and flicked a salute. ‘I will see you in the breach, sir.’

‘You will.’

Shaking his head, John left. The sounds of a fight were growing ahead of him, yet he did not untie his buckler, nor draw his sword. He would kill no Englishmen this day unless he could not help it. All he could do was strive to give his lordship the time he needed to burn all incrimination – though he suspected it would do him little good when evidence of treason could be picked up on every corner between Charing Cross and St Paul’s pulpit. But even as he went to check on gates and flimsy barricades, John knew he was rendering the earl a last service; for after today, if tragedy played out its regular course, there would be no earl to serve.

XXXVII

Despair and Die

John went first to seek his lord. He was not hard to find.

No skulking in a cellar or kneeling in a chapel now for Robert Devereux. He was in the dining hall, raging – and burning. Papers were scattered round him, in sheaves, leaning towers, chests. Men were bringing more all the time, threading through the clutch of women – his wife, his sister, their maidservants – and the dejected nobles who’d sallied with him. The room was filled with weeping, imploring, arguing, the maniacal earl ignoring all, flinging handfuls of paper and whole ledgers into the fireplace. Flames rose high and swiftly. ‘Come, William!’ Essex yelled, pausing to drag Mounteagle forward, the nobleman who’d been dunked in the Thames as they fled. Flinging him down, he laughed. ‘Dry yourself before my hearth, why don’t you?’

John stepped a little into the room, watching as both the earl and the fire roared. If only he’d been in this mood this morning – and used it to storm the palace, John thought.

The flames grew higher, the room uncomfortably hot. Then, underneath the crackling of paper, there came another, and one of the stained-glass windows exploded inwards.

The screams redoubled. Essex paused, papers held on high. ‘Guns!’ he cried. He looked above the heads of the women surrounding him. ‘Master Lawley,’ he commanded, ‘defend me! Gain me another hour, I pray you. We are not warm enough yet!’

‘My lord.’

At the door, John looked back. Essex was scrabbling at his throat, as if he was choking, which was possible considering all the smoke. But then he pulled a string from around his neck, a velvet purse at its end. ‘And we consign the King of Scotland to the flames,’ he cried, flinging the purse into the hearth.

Shaking his head, John left the house and made for the courtyard.

On the instant, he could see that any delay would be far short of an hour. Yet the flimsy wagon drawn across the gates could be ballasted with books – Essex House might not possess much gun-powder, but it had an abundance of leather-bound volumes that could resist a bullet better than any fascine.

‘You men,’ he called to the swordsmen loitering near, ‘with me.’

He broke one of the library’s large windows on the side of the building, organised a line of men to run from it to the gates, passed books out. They filled the wagon and it occupied men who otherwise would just stand about and fear. But when it was done, he knew it would make little difference. From his vantage on the terrace he could see over the relatively low walls of the courtyard into the Strand beyond. It swam with troops. Various flags flew – he recognised the ensigns of Lord Burghley, the pygmy’s elder brother; of the earls of Cumberland and Nottingham, the latter also being Lord Admiral of the Realm. There were others. The court had mustered its factions, far outweighing the puny ones within the walls.

He had a thought: to get the earl to boat and thence downriver to Gravesend and a ship bound for the Continent. But craning from the sentinel’s perch at the side gate, he saw the enemy had now plugged the gap that had, he hoped, allowed Tess and Ned through. Flame light now glimmered on spear tip and helm down each of the side paths and throughout the gardens that filled the space between wall and water. A sudden sally of determined men might clear them away, but then what? John could think of no wherryman, howsoever desperate for a fare, who would come to the stairs to pick up the Earl of Essex this day. And what of the rest of them if one did? He did not desire another February swim. No. John shook his head. Cecil and his party had their rabbit trapped in his hole. Now they were going to dig him out.

The voice came from so near his ankle it made him start. ‘Any hope there, Lawley?’

John looked down . . . at the quivering face of Sir Samuel D’Esparr. ‘None,’ he said, stepping down, and continued, as bluntly, ‘Prepare yourself for what’s to come.’

He set off up the path, the knight at his elbow. ‘But what is that to be, sir?’

He glanced at the man. With his watery eyes and his jowls aquiver, Despair looked as he must have done when the Irish set about him with farm implements. Piteous. But John had no time for pity. ‘It may come to a fight. There’s lords in the house who declare they would rather die sword in hand today than on a scaffold a week hence. And we, their servants, will be expected to die with them.’

‘A fight?’ The large lower lip began to tremble. ‘You know, sir, it is not truly my . . . my . . .’ He swallowed. ‘What else may come?’

‘Surrender, though I doubt we’ll get terms. The lords will have relatives on the other side who may help them ’scape the axe.’

‘And their ser . . . servants?’

‘Newgate to start, and then . . .’ John shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

Their walk had taken them back to the main courtyard. John mounted the terrace, till he could see again over the walls to the forces there, which, even in the short time, had close to doubled. Lords were mustering to display their loyalty and a dozen new banners flew. ‘Prison?’ Sir Samuel’s eyes overflowed now. ‘I cannot go to prison. I could not bear it.’

‘S’blood, man,’ John hissed, ‘master yourself, pray.’

But the knight’s watery gaze and his attention were now fixed over the walls, to the ranks of the enemy. And hope suddenly chased despair from his eyes. ‘Over there!’ he gasped, clutching at John’s sleeve. ‘The ensign of Lord Compton.’

‘What of it?’ said John, trying to shake the man off.

Like a terrier, he held, even pulled John close. ‘Get me to him, Lawley,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll see you well rewarded for it. He is my wife’s cousin. He is bound to help us.’

‘Your . . . wife’s cousin?’

It took a moment for Sir Samuel to realise what he’d said. He released the sleeve on the instant. ‘She . . . she is an invalid, sir. Uh, immured in the country . . . She . . .’

He broke off, mainly because John had stepped close and seized him by the throat. ‘You already have a wife? And yet you were going to marry my Tess?’

He loosed his grip just enough for words to dribble out. ‘I was going to say . . . wife at death’s door . . . going to tell . . . before the final . . .’

A shout came. ‘Captain Lawley!’ John did not instantly turn, but instead leaned closer. ‘If we both outlive this day,’ he said, ‘I will see you in Newgate Gaol, Despair. And you and I will have a reckoning.’

‘Captain Lawley!’

Throwing the man off, he turned now to see St Lawrence running towards him. ‘Look out there, sir!’ the Irishman shouted.

John looked, saw soldiers wheeling out a wagon laden with barrels, a timber lashed to the front of it like the bowsprit on a ship. The apparatus was dragged to a position opposite the gates of Essex House.

John vaulted the balustrade, crossed fast to the barrier he’d caused to be erected, St Lawrence at his elbow. Men with the very few muskets and pistols the defenders possessed were readying themselves. ‘Captain,’ he cried, ‘books or no, this will not hold! Back to the terrace. Rally there.’

The Irishman did not hesitate. ‘Back!’ he cried, dragging the men closest to him away from the wagon. And indeed no one seemed reluctant to leave, running pell-mell backwards. John sent one lingering lad on his way, just as he heard the shouted command beyond, and the immediate sound of iron-rimmed wheels clattering over cobbles. Halfway to the terrace, he glanced back . . . and saw that one man had remained behind, indeed had scrambled over the barrier and was now tugging at the gate bolts

‘Despair!’ John cried, taking a step. Just the one, before the gates exploded.

The barrel-laden wagon smashed through the flimsy doors, destroying them in a moment and overturning the book-filled one beyond. Through shrieking wood and flying books, John sought . . . and saw Sir Samuel, or at least his neck and shoulders, sticking out from the wreckage. When momentum stopped, he ran forward, pulled smashed timbers aside . . .

He had seen enough dead men to know one instantly. D’Esparr’s neck was twisted over at an impossible angle, and blood gouted from the chest, where a snapped spar had driven through. There was nothing to be done, and no way of extricating the corpse from the carnage. John rose, and walked back to the men mustered on the terrace.

‘Did you know him?’ St Lawrence jerked his head towards the destruction.

‘Not really,’ John muttered, and turned his attention to the enemy.

Their objective had been achieved; the gates were broken in. However, the combined smash of vehicles had erected an obstacle more impenetrable than John had managed to create. Still, soldiers were rushing to drag the wreckage back and the few shots were not dissuading them. Indeed, a far greater number of bullets were flying over the wall, striking the house, ricochets whining off stone. Glass smashed, allowing out a burst of female shrieking.

‘Hold! For Christ’s mercy, hold!’

Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, had regained the lower register of his voice – and mustered what courage he had left. He stood at a cabinet that gave on to the roof, waving the white flag of parley. He ducked as a tile exploded near him. Then a countering voice bellowed on the other side, echoed by many, gunfire eventually ceased and there came a near silence. Into it, the earl shouted again. ‘Who is there who speaks for Cecil’s party?’

John climbed on to a window ledge beside one of the shattered windows. A glance back showed him the hall – women and some men weeping, others still frantically feeding the flames with paper, though Essex himself was not one of them. Before him, over the wall, he had clear sight of a man stepping forward from the ranks. He was dressed in black armour, wore a Spanish-style helm upon his head. ‘I speak for no party, sir. I am the Lord High Admiral, and I speak for the Queen. You are traitors all, and I demand your immediate surrender.’

Southampton did not have to answer – for Essex did. John saw that he had changed his suit, was no longer wearing smirched black but a dove-grey doublet with matching hose. He leaned out of the window beside his friend, his appearance cheered by the large number of spectators crammed into every space not occupied by soldiers. He acknowledged it with a wave before shouting, ‘No traitors here, my lord, but only the most loyal and God-fearing of her majesty’s subjects – unlike the atheists and caterpillars who have dispatched you on your mission. However’ – he swept his arm grandly over the enemy forces – ‘if you will but leave us some hostages here, a deputation that will include myself will happily go before my sweet Queen and make our case to her in person.’

‘Hostages?’ roared the Lord Admiral. ‘Saucy knave! Your only choice is whether to surrender forthwith or be blown to pieces. We have cannon being brought up from the Tower e’en now for that purpose.’ A man came forward and pulled at the Lord Admiral’s sleeve. He argued sotto voce, shaking his head vigorously until finally he gave a brief nod. ‘Listen, ye dogs. Though I am all for the fight, yet here’s Sir Robert Sidney, an avowed friend of yours, who would talk of peace. He is willing to enter into the house and discuss terms. Will you admit him?’

‘We will. The brother of the nation’s hero and our good friend Sir Philip Sidney, whose sword I have here’ – with some difficulty Essex drew his sword and waved it above his head, to more cheers – ‘is more than welcome in my house.’

It sounded like an invitation to supper. Nevertheless, it was accepted, and the late poet’s brother was allowed to scramble over the higgle of wrecked wagons and books that blocked the gates. He was escorted into the house and the earls descended from the roof to parley.

John sat upon the window ledge to listen through the smashed glass. Decisions were to be taken that would concern him. So he heard everything that was not conducted in whispers. There were many oaths, much vowing, as he suspected, to die fighting today rather than be butchered in a fortnight. Sir Robert Sidney left, conferred, returned.

St Lawrence joined him on the window ledge. He had somehow managed to scrounge a half-loaf of stale maslin and a flagon of sourish wine. John happily shared both with him and told him the news.

‘It’s surrender, then?’ the Irishman enquired, drawing his cloak tighter around himself.

‘Certain. The lords to be taken to some better-appointed prison, the soldiers to . . .’ John shrugged.

‘To the Clink, the Fleet . . . or worse, to Newgate.’ The captain shuddered. ‘Still, I doubt we’ll remain there long. It’ll be “whoops” and the Tyburn jig within the week, I warrant.’

‘Perhaps not. The law comes hardest on those who lead not those who follow. It may cost you a hefty fine, though. Have you the money to pay it?’

The Irishman had half a grin. ‘Do you think I’d be here on this fool’s escapade if I did? Sure, all the boys from across the sea are here because it’s the earl’s larder or starvation.’

‘Well, we can but await the outcome. Though I would not be him for all his red hair.’ John was pointing at Gelli Meyrick, who had been in the negotiations and was just now accompanying Sir Robert Sidney back through the smashed gates

They watched the two men reach the huddle of officers stamping feet against the cold across the road. Words were spoken . . . and Gelli Meyrick returned alone. ‘This is it then,’ said John, descending from the ledge, stretching his cramped limbs. ‘Will the earls be blown to the sky and us with them? Or is it prison for us all?’