The Heretics (44 page)

‘There were two more men . . .’

‘Ratbane and Paget. They were lower than dogs, dredged up by the Spanish from the barrel of the renegade English regiment of the Low Countries. They would do what they were told and would not blink in the face of enemy fire. They spent their days fighting and their nights whoring and drinking. They are better dead.’

Winnow was in great pain. As well as the rack, he had been beaten without pity. He shifted position and groaned.

Shakespeare pressed on. ‘Tell me about the College of St Gregory. Did you meet Persons? What of his assistant, Joseph Creswell? What was their part?’

‘They came to me when I was held by the Inquisition. I could not swear what they knew of the plot, but I can tell you that Roag visited them often. He needed Father Persons’s influence with the
casa.
But though Roag needed him, he did not trust him or anyone else at the college. He thought there were spies in their midst.’

‘Was there talk of one particular spy?’

Winnow looked up at Shakespeare through a watery, blood-lined eye. ‘I heard of one young man, caught writing a coded letter and taken to the Castillo de Triana. Was he yours?’

‘What was his name?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What became of him?’

‘You must know what the Inquisition does to heretics.’

Shakespeare felt sick at heart. Poor Robert Warner. A mere twenty-one years of age, he had been so courageous in agreeing to work under cover at St Gregory’s. Revulsion welled up in Shakespeare at the thought of the Inquisition. It was a perversion of everything that Christ had stood for. And as for the traitor Persons, the Englishman who had blessed the Armada, he
must
have known everything. He had connived at cold murder – the killing of Loake, Trott, poor Ambrose Rowse, Anthony Friday, and the Queen of England herself.

‘Mr Winnow, does the name Garrick Loake mean anything to you?’

‘No.’

‘Anthony Friday?’

‘Yes, I was there at his death. It became clear to Roag that Friday had realised what we intended to do with the play he had written. He had to be silenced.’

‘There was a paper there, one you left. It had three words on it:
They are cousins
. What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What of Wisbech Castle and the priests imprisoned there? Men such as William Weston and Gavin Caldor? Do you know of them?’

As he asked the question, a sudden thought occurred to Shakespeare. He would look more closely into Loake’s family background . . .

‘Again, no. I repeat, Mr Shakespeare, I know nothing of Wisbech nor the origins of the plan. All I know of this is what little I was told in Spain and what we did when we landed.’

‘Ah, yes, the raid on the Cornish villages. What was the purpose of that?’

‘We had to come into England as one and stay together. It was Roag’s suggestion to attack Cornwall as a cover for our landing. The
casa
seized on the idea and provided a small fleet. I think it amused them to burn parts of the west country from where so many of their tormentors hailed – Drake, Hawkins, Grenville, Ralegh. They were astonished by the lack of defence put up against them. Why, we even said mass on the cliff top and the Spaniards promised to build an abbey there when they returned.’

Shakespeare shook his head. He would take this information to Cecil without delay; Cornwall must be reinforced.

‘Who helped you in England?’

‘Sloth again, but also the girl Beatrice. They had everything organised for us. We avoided inns and slept in the open air as we came to London.’

‘Did you stay at a great house in Cornwall? Trevail Hall?’

Winnow shook his head. ‘We had a tent. Sloth provided it for us and made us appear a genuine company of players. He had commissioned a play for us to say, and costumes and masks to wear. He used his influence with certain ladies to arrange our performance before the Queen.’

‘Did you have any contact with Lady Trevail?’

‘No. I know nothing of her.’

The suspicion was like an angry wasp in an enclosed room: impossible to ignore. Perhaps he had been taught too well by Mr Secretary Walsingham. Always looking for
the plot behind the plot.
Shakespeare could not get away from the doubts he harboured. Why did Lucia Trevail go down to Cornwall? Why did she go with Beatrice Eastley? And yet Lucia had been held by Roag at the point of a sword and was now the heroine of the day.

‘What did you know of these ladies?’

Winnow was shackled by neck irons. He shook his head and his mouth opened in a rictus of pain. ‘Nothing. I believe they knew Roag from his days at the Theatre, but we were to meet them only on the day of the performance.’

‘Tell me more. Confess your crimes. Beg forgiveness of your maker before you meet him and hear his judgment. There were two more deaths . . .’

Winnow closed his eyes and grimaced with pain. ‘I heard that a man and a woman were killed. Beatrice told the story to us. She said they were naked in bed together and she laughed. They had been Cecil’s spies, she said. All his intelligencers were to be eliminated.’

‘Their names?’

‘She told us, but—’

‘Mills? Was it Frank Mills and his wife?’

‘Yes, that name sounds familiar. Mills. She told me Mills . . .’

Shakespeare sighed. Mills had indeed been innocent all along. The murders of his wife and her lover had been a matter of mistaken identity.

So much death and pain, and for what? Far from easing the lot of England’s Catholics, these conspirators had probably made their lives much harder. Somehow they all needed to cross the divide, as he had once done, when he married Catherine. They had to realise they shared the same God and the same holy book; only the politics of vain, angry men divided them.

Chapter 44

T
HE
BED
IN
Shakespeare’s chamber was hot and damp with lust. Two bodies sprawled upon it, one tall and angular and adorned with bandages, the other slender and soft. Lucia Trevail turned over on to her front and exhaled deeply. Shakespeare sat up against the bedhead, catching his breath, all spent.

There was no tender dealing here. Their couplings were nothing but wanton greed and hunger. A brutal, desperate collision of bodies. There had been no time for small murmurings and fragrant kisses; they had merely pulled off each other’s clothes in a frenzied tearing of stays and seams.

She reached out her slender arm and touched the bandages that still decorated his chest and shoulders. Her hand was light and warm.

‘The wounds are healing well,’ he said by way of conversation. ‘I have my energy back.’

Food and plenty of water, along with herbal preparations from Dr Forman, had helped him recover more quickly than he might have dared hope.

‘So I see.’

He laughed. She had been showered with diamonds by the Queen and fêted by courtiers. All had expressed awe and wonder at her courage when dragged away at swordpoint by a murderous savage.

‘You know, Mr Shakespeare, you might have saved everyone a great deal of trouble and fear if you had allowed us ladies some intellect. Had you but entrusted us with information about your inquiries – your search for Mr Roag and Mr Sloth – we would have known straightway that there was something rotten about their plans to stage a masque for the Queen. But no, you would not have it, so how were we to know anything was amiss? None of you men will credit us with any wit.’

It seemed that her little group, her School of Day, as Lady Susan liked to call their intellectual gatherings, had been used most cynically by Ovid Sloth. And yet, at the end, it was this very same group that had proved the conspirators’ undoing.

In particular, it had been the good sense of Margaret, the Countess of Cumberland, that had been decisive. There had been something about Roag that had roused her suspicions when they met him rehearsing at his pavilion in the park of Nonsuch.

‘Instinct, sir,’ she had told Shakespeare later when he called on the group at the house in Barbican Street. ‘As a wild animal senses a hunter, I smelt it on him. He had the unholy stench of impending death. That, allied to the fear raised by the powerful military presence, alarmed me greatly.’

The intense feeling had stayed with the countess all day, but she had not acted on it. It was only as the evening drew on, and as fear gnawed at her, that she had confided in Emilia Lanier.

Emilia had known exactly what to do. She had gone straight to Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon and told him of the countess’s fears. By this time, Roag and his group were inside the palace, closeted in the tiring room where they were putting the finishing touches to their costumes, donning masks of gold and checking their weapons in readiness for their blood-drenched performance.

Hunsdon did not waste a moment. He called out the Queen’s Lifeguard. The confrontation between the guards and the would-be assassins had been a moment of high drama: enjoyed immensely by Her Majesty but less so by her chief ministers, Burghley and Cecil.

In the fray that followed, a young Lifeguard had suffered a cut to the ribs from the assault by Roag, but his life was not in danger. The only other blood shed was that of Regis Roag’s mercenaries. All had died on the stage. A hue and cry had immediately been set up for confederates and Winnow had been caught within the hour.

Shakespeare had asked Cecil in vain that he be spared the rack. ‘He will die horribly, Sir Robert. Is it necessary to have Topcliffe break him first?’

‘As squeamish as ever, John?’

‘I would not treat the lowest creature on God’s earth the way he treats his prisoners.’

‘And yet
you
were tortured by this unholy band. For that was what your so-called exorcism amounted to, did it not?’

Shakespeare nodded.

‘Fear not,’ Cecil continued. ‘Topcliffe might be out of gaol, but he is not back in favour. He will be consigned to his country estates where he can devote his energies to his peat and ironworks. Mr Winnow will face the rack, but it will not be Topcliffe who operates it.’

Shakespeare had his doubts. The thought of Topcliffe forgoing the pleasure of persecution was like a swift giving up the air: it would happen only at death.

Here in Shakespeare’s chamber, however, such dark thoughts were very distant. He stretched and yawned. Lucia Trevail nestled closer to him and began to stroke him once again.

He gasped. ‘You are a wanton, Lady Trevail.’

‘Thank you, Mr Shakespeare.’

Again, he wondered about her.
You shoot at Spaniards and you stab a man to death with a dagger to the throat. Your skin is soft, but your heart is steel, mistress.
What was he, John Shakespeare, to her?

‘Am I nothing but a scratching post on which to pleasure yourself as the need takes you?’ he asked her.

‘You are indeed a fine post. Wood, strong and hard.’

He thought back to Cornwall. The way he had gone to Trevail House to spy her out. He thought of confessing the suspicions he still held, but decided against it.
Never reveal more than you need, John.
That had been one of Sir Francis Walsingham’s first strictures.

Instead his hand went between her thighs and he pulled her to him once more.

In the evening, when Shakespeare woke, she was gone. There was no note. He smiled to himself. She was an uncommon woman.

With the sun slanting in from the west through the leaded pane, he rose from the bed, dressed at a leisurely pace and wandered downstairs. He longed for his family to come home from the Cecil mansion; yet the outcome of the conspiracy left many questions unanswered and he could not risk the girls’ lives until all was settled.

The warning had been clear enough: little Grace and Mary would die if Shakespeare did not cease his inquiries. Who remained out there to exact revenge?

One question above all still troubled him: why had they killed the old nun, Sister Michael? He had put the matter to Dick Winnow in Newgate.

‘We found her body at the same time as you did, Mr Shakespeare.’

‘We?’

‘Roag, Paget, Ratbane and me. The body was there, warm and newly dead. Stabbed through the heart. Roag did not seem surprised; he merely laughed.’

‘Did Beatrice do this?’

‘Possibly. She was mad enough.’

And then there was the matter of Paul Hooft. Shakespeare wished to know more about his movements, but that could wait.

He drew a cup of ale from the keg in the kitchen and sipped it, then spat it out. It was stale and foul. It was time for Jane to come home and organise them all; brew some fresh ale and beer, and fetch good food from the market. He was longing to hear the chatter of Grace, Mary and Ursula, and once again turn this house back into a family home.

There was a knock at the door. He opened it, hoping to find Lucia again, but a young woman stood before him. She looked vaguely familiar.

‘Yes?’

‘I want to talk to you, Mr Shakespeare.’

‘I know you, don’t I?’ he said, searching his memory.

‘You should know every inch of me,’ she said and gave him a look of brazen amusement.

Her audacious look brought back his memory. She had been Dr Forman’s bedmate when he had called at the house in Fylpot Street before travelling to Cornwall.

‘It’s Janey, isn’t it? May I ask what this is about?’

At Forman’s house he had thought her rather plain, though full of sensual promise. Now, fully clothed and with her hair untangled and combed back from her face, he found her quite striking. As he looked at her, his eye was suddenly caught by a small mark above her right eyebrow. It was faint, but he would swear it was shaped like a new moon – a crescent moon.

Her hand went to the mark and she nodded. ‘You know about that, I take it.’

Oh yes, he knew about the crescent moon.

He nodded. ‘Yes, yes I do.’

‘Then you must know that my name is not Janey, but Thomasyn.’ She met his gaze, looking for his reaction. ‘Thomasyn Jade. I believe you have been looking for me.’

Shakespeare smiled. ‘I am very glad to make your acquaintance, mistress. I doubt you know how glad, for it enables me to fulfil a promise I made to a good man.’