The Queen's Man (9 page)

‘Where were they kept?’

‘In my chief steward’s office. I have my suspicions . . .’

‘Your steward?’

‘No, Ord. But I have no proof, nor even evidence. Just my own fear.’

‘Then by the blood of Christ where is this man Ord? Indeed,
who
is he?’

Shrewsbury was looking increasingly pained. ‘His family served her mother, Mary of Guise. The Ords are well known in the Highlands. He came with letters. There can be no doubt that he is of noble birth and we had no reason to distrust him. As to where he is now, I have no notion, Mr Shakespeare.’

Topcliffe snorted with derision. ‘Well, I have a notion. He is with the one-armed Frenchie, organising the heifer’s escape with the help of your own maps, George. Finding a hole for her to scurry through. Arranging the murder of her cousin so that she may steal a crown. There will be others conspiring: massing priests, popish gentry and northern nobles. Men who claim loyalty to our beloved Elizabeth and finger sharp daggers behind their backs.’

Shakespeare had had enough. ‘God’s death, Mr Topcliffe, you go too far. This is egregious supposition, nothing more.’ And yet, he could not help wondering whether Topcliffe was correct, that Buchan Ord was indeed with Leloup. For the moment, though, his anger with Topcliffe got the better of him. He turned to the earl. ‘I must tell you, my lord, that this day I witnessed a grievous assault on a member of the Scots Queen’s retinue by this man you call friend. Mr Topcliffe struck a boy – and I call him that for he was scarcely out of childhood – to the ground, without cause.’

Shrewsbury sighed again. ‘Is this true, Dick?’

‘It was not without cause. As he passed he called me heretic.’

‘He said nothing, merely smiled in greeting.’

‘He said heretic! Perhaps you did not hear it, Shakespeare, for it was said low.’ Topcliffe prodded Shakespeare’s chest with his blackthorn. ‘The effeminate maggot was –
is
– a traitor. Anyway, there was no assault. It was a mere slap. A little birching. A chastisement for a schoolboy. I did him no harm. Did he not walk away on his own feet?’

Shakespeare did not flinch, merely brushed the stick aside and moved a step closer to his assailant. His hand drew back, fingers curling into a fist to punch the feral dog’s hard and cruel face. And then just as his muscles tensed to deliver the blow, a gunshot resounded from the courtyard outside.

B
oltfoot was already within the castle walls before night fell. The busy town market had been a source of various items haggled over at great length but which gave him the disguise he required to make his way past the guards. First there was an old knapsack, which had cost him tuppence, then a dozen larks and quails for sixpence. He filled the knapsack halfway with stones, and then topped it off with six of the birds. He tied string around the necks of the other six and hung them from the straps of the knapsack so that they were clearly visible. Lastly he found a stall with items of old clothing acquired from the families of the dead and bought a shepherd’s smock and a poor man’s ragged wool cap with sidestrings to tie it beneath his chin and cover his face.

Before setting off for the castle gate, he left his weapons at the Cutler’s Rest in the care of Kat Whetstone and her father.

‘My master has said I should not go armed in these parts, that I might be taken as a highwayman or footpad when not in his company.’

‘We’ll look after them well,’ the young woman said.

Boltfoot gazed at her with a mixture of suspicion and longing. He had brought the caliver and cutlass from the other side of the world and could not bear the prospect of losing them. But nor could he take them into the castle.

‘You’ll have a penny from me if they are kept safe.’

She laughed. ‘I don’t want your money for that, Mr Cooper. Don’t be worrying yourself. They’ll still be here when you return.’

He grunted a word of thanks and limped off into a side street, where he quickly put the smock over his clothes and pulled his new cap about his face. He then slung the knapsack on to his back and made his way towards the castle gatehouse. His main worry was his club-foot. Would one of the guards recognise him because of it? The gatehouse was no more than two hundred yards from the Cutler’s Rest, but by the time he got there, he was wishing he had put fewer stones in the sack. A guard saw him struggling over the drawbridge and offered him a helping hand.

Boltfoot shook his head. ‘I’ll cope,’ he said. ‘Got larks and quails for his lordship’s table.’ He unslung the heavy knapsack and unstrapped it to reveal the birds.

The guard looked in peremptorily then tilted his long pointed beard at Boltfoot. ‘Not seen you about before.’

Boltfoot sighed with relief. The guard had changed since he left the castle. ‘Helping a friend from the market. A message came to him from the cookhouse that the earl had a taste for the birds and would have them tonight or there would be hell to pay.’

The guard scratched his greasy, lice-ridden hair. ‘Hell to pay? Sounds like my wife. I always know when she’s with child for she demands baked apples and cheese of the dales, whatever the time of year. I’d rather have a pail of turds about my ears than her pecking if I don’t get her what she wants.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose the earl’s due any time soon.’

The guard thrust out his large stomach and grinned. ‘Get you along to the cookhouse then, Mr Birdman. Do you know the way?’

‘To the left and straight along, so I was told. If I get lost, I’ll ask someone.’

‘Right enough. And tell the cooks I said you were to have some ale. For that’s a mighty load you have to carry there with your crippled foot.’

Boltfoot thanked the guard and walked on through. The sky was darkening over the crenellated battlements. He limped on in the direction of the kitchens and then, when he was no longer visible from the gatehouse, he stopped and looked about him to assess his position. A narrow alley led off to the right with a series of low doorways. Ensuring he was not observed, he ducked down into the ginnel and slipped into the first entrance. It was a storeroom for meat. The slaughtered carcasses of pigs, bullocks and deer hung from hooks along ceiling rails. With relief, he removed the knapsack from his back and set it against a wall.

The only light in the store came through the doorway, which he had left slightly ajar. He took off the shepherd’s smock, and then sat on the floor beside the bag of birds, to wait until nightfall. It was unlikely that anyone would come here now; the cooks would already have selected and butchered their joints of meat for dinner.

When darkness came, he pulled himself up, and eased the door open. No one was about. He slipped out into the passageway and walked further into the maze of buildings, avoiding the parts where the lighter of lanterns and torches had done his work. When he saw anyone, he either shrank back into a doorway or walked forth boldly, saluting as he went, as though he were a castle worker.

As he came to the causeway across the ditch to the inner bailey, he stopped. Something was happening. The whole area was lit by wall lanterns, cressets with blazing coals and men holding brands. Above them, at the top of the steps, the doorway to the keep was open and brilliantly lit from inside by candles. A woman stepped out, slowly, like an invalid. She was supported on both sides by women in fine clothes.

She seemed tall, almost six feet, and large of frame. Her hair and face were covered by a black veil. Boltfoot shrank back against the wall and watched as the woman came slowly down the steep steps into the yard and began to walk anti-clockwise in the shadow of the battlements, supported all the time by her companions.

With a jolt Boltfoot realised this must be Mary, Queen of Scots herself. From what the world said, he had believed her to be a woman of stature. But the Mary that everyone spoke of was acclaimed a goddess. This woman was heavy of girth and had the slow gait of a grandmother. Every few paces she stopped, as though to catch her breath.

A dozen or more English guards, easily identifiable by their quilted leather jerkins, watched her and held their hands on the hilts of their swords and pistols. But there were a dozen others, too – her own people – men and women, all mingling around her, like the protective curtain wall of a fort. Boltfoot watched, intrigued. Was this really Mary Stuart? The name itself had acquired mythic status in the long years of her incarceration. Some called her saint; others called her Satan’s spouse and murderess.

In the light of the fires, her perambulation among the two groups was an eerie sight. A curious dance of two disparate parties: the guards and the guarded.

As he watched her, it occurred to Boltfoot that she would be difficult to snatch to safety from this place. It would, however, be easy for someone to put a bullet into her – someone like a carrier of game birds with a pistol secured within his knapsack.

A hand clasped his shoulder. Boltfoot froze, horribly aware that he was unarmed.

‘She is the very queen of pies, is she not?’

Boltfoot’s head went down and he emitted a non-committal noise. The hand rested on his shoulder. It seemed amicable enough.

‘Fat as a sty full of sows, she is,’ the voice continued. ‘I’ll wager her three husbands are pleased to be dead and gone. More pleasure dead than in that lump of suet’s bed.’

Boltfoot said nothing. He felt hot despite the cool of the evening. Every sinew was strained.

Suddenly the hand on his shoulder tightened. ‘Who are you?’

Boltfoot did not answer. He twisted around, wrenching his shoulder free of the clasping hand.

Realising his error, the guard’s eyes registered shock and his fingers flailed to keep a hold on the stranger. But Boltfoot was already gone, loping away from the courtyard, back into the labyrinth of buildings. A whistle blew; then a shout went up.

Boltfoot stumbled onwards. Men were always surprised how fast he could move with his club-foot when he needed to.

All he had on his side was surprise and the darkness of the narrow alleyways, for he knew there was no way out of here. Fearing they would loose a shot or bolt at him, he tried to move from side to side to lessen their target. The only thing that was certain was that he was trapped. The alarm of the whistle meant there was no way through the front gatehouse. In a sudden moment of clarity, he realised there was only one thing for it. The great hall. At the end of the ginnel, he stopped and looked left and then right, desperate to get his bearings.

Behind him there was a shout. ‘Stop!’

Left. It was left. He heard the boom of a pistol and saw a fist-sized chip of brick fly in an explosion of dust from the wall, no more than a foot from his arm. He turned left and ran. The doorway was fifty yards from him. Two halberdiers stood guard outside. They saw him and moved forward instinctively, crossing their weapons to form a barrier. To the devil with them; this was his only chance. He had not survived a sea journey around the globe with Sir Francis Drake to be shot in the back by a squadron of guards in a Yorkshire castle. He ducked low and dived for the triangular gap beneath the halberds.

‘W
hat in God’s name was that?’ the earl demanded.

‘That was a gunshot,’ Topcliffe said.

The door to the chamber burst open, and Boltfoot fell in, sprawling across the floor, two guards close behind him, their axe-pike halberds raised as they moved into position to hack him to pieces.

Shakespeare could scarcely comprehend the evidence of his eyes. But then he pushed forward into the path of the halberds. ‘Boltfoot?’

Boltfoot was scrabbling to gain his feet and put distance between himself and the guards. Shakespeare dragged his assistant aside by the neck of his jerkin, and then raised his hand to the two guards. ‘I know this man,’ he said. ‘Leave him be. He is no threat.’

‘No threat?’ Shrewsbury bellowed. ‘Who is this man?’ The earl grabbed a heavy iron poker from the fire and brandished it. ‘If he is your servant, Shakespeare, what in all the circles of hell is he doing here? Why is he in my hall? And who is firing pistols?’

Shakespeare tried to repress a sudden smile. Whatever else Boltfoot had done, he had clearly succeeded in breaking into the castle. More than that, he had managed to defuse a disagreeable confrontation with Topcliffe. ‘This is Mr Boltfoot Cooper, my lord. He is indeed my man and he was under my instructions to see if there was a way to gain access to this castle. It appears he has succeeded. Handsomely.’

‘And what of the gunshot? Has he killed someone?’

Boltfoot bowed his head. ‘One of the guards tried to shoot me.’

‘I am not surprised. This is an outrage! A damnable outrage! I will have you hanged!’

Shakespeare moved forward in front of Boltfoot. ‘I believe we should be giving thanks to Mr Cooper if he has discovered a hole in your security arrangements. We need to learn a lesson from this. If this man, a friend, could get in, then so could a foe. Mary Stuart is not secure here.’

‘No!’ Shrewsbury was appalled and disbelieving. ‘That man could not have swum the moat and scaled the walls. There is no way in.’

‘How did you do it?’ Topcliffe demanded.

Boltfoot looked to Shakespeare for confirmation that he should answer this man. He nodded.

‘I came in with a knapsack of larks and quails on my back. I told the guards I had been ordered to deliver them to the kitchens.’

‘Then I shall hang the guards, too,’ the earl said, his normally pallid face now red with rage.

‘My lord, might I suggest we take a little time to reflect on these events,’ Shakespeare said. ‘I believe it would be unjust to lay the blame on your guards. The problem lies not with them but with a regime that has become unwieldy. You have so many people and horses here in this garrison that suppliers must bring in their wagons and drays by day and by night. These carts cannot all be torn apart and searched; nor can every poultryman be interrogated and racked.’

‘I have had enough of this!’ The earl clenched his hand into a fist. A vein pulsed at his gaunt temple. ‘I am going to pay my respects to Mistress Britten. Come with me, Mr Topcliffe. And you, Mr Shakespeare, I demand that you remove that
thing
from my hall.’ He pointed at Boltfoot. ‘And then you may do as you please. Carry your reports to Mr Secretary and my wife the shrew. Tell them what you will, for I no longer care about any of it – marriage, Privy Council, my duty as a gaoler. To the dogs with them all. And so I bid you good night. Come, Topcliffe.’ He turned on his heel and was gone. At the doorway, the earl’s white-haired companion looked back over his shoulder and smirked.