License to Quill (6 page)

Shakespeare raised his eyebrows. “Master Francis Bacon?”

“None other. Things have changed since you've been gone. Bacon's working at the Ordnance Office now—the Double-O.” Walsingham set his quill pen aside and looked up at the playwright. “Go to the Tower of London and hand Bacon this document. Also, see to it that you don't give the man any trouble. You're not a blunt instrument or a petty informant anymore. You're a Double-O operative, so start behaving like one; even if it requires some of that famous ‘acting' of yours.”

W placed his seal on the letter and handed it to the playwright. Shakespeare accepted the document with a somewhat unexpected and renewed sense of duty. It seemed like another lifetime since he had last seen Walsingham's seal, never mind received it on parchment. The bard admired W's wax crest as the spy-chief looked the newly minted operative over.

“I must confess this business with the Scottish play sounds troubling,” the spymaster noted, “but that's why I believe you're the best man to handle it. Don't make me proud, master bard. Make me right.”

“I will,” Shakespeare promised.

*   *   *

The bard emerged from Walsingham's office to find Penny writing at her desk. “It looks like I'll be seeing more of you,” Shakespeare teased.

“You will,”
she flirted back. “Good luck.”

Chapter V

The Double-O

A short walk south-southeast from Walsingham’s Seething Lane mansion, Shakespeare was assaulted by the sights and smells of the most magnificent yet menacing structure in London. There, jutting out of the city with all the majesty of a massive tombstone, standing strong as rock and white as bone, was the great and terrible Tower of London.

Erected by William the Conqueror atop the ruins of an ancient Roman settlement, the Tower served as stronghold to five centuries of English monarchs and despots. Located on London’s easternmost perimeter along the Thames, the sprawling fortress was the city’s best defense against an invasion. Its eponymous keep, the White Tower, stretched nearly one hundred feet in each direction and was crowned with four tall turrets atop its four corners. This enormous, boxlike stronghold was reinforced with Caen stone, Kentish ragstone, and local mudstone, and stood in the center of a grassy ward encompassing more than twelve acres of gardens, workshops, and palace buildings. This ward, or ballium, was enclosed by an inner wall fifty feet high and thirteen feet thick with thirteen towers for defense, an outer wall guarded by six more towers and twenty-eight feet thick, a reeking moat that bobbed with centuries of carcasses and human excrement, and a heavily guarded wharf along the Thames riverbank to its south. When viewed in full, the Tower of London was a fortified pentagon that served as the English government’s administrative center: a royal palace, mint, menagerie, armory, treasury, prison, and torture chamber in one.

This particular afternoon, William Shakespeare had business with the Tower’s Ordnance Office.

Colloquially known as the “Double-O,” the Office of Ordnance was tasked by King Henry VIII in 1543 to serve as quartermaster to all the arms and wares in his military. They were the keepers of all the weapons, all the armor, all the gear, and all the gunpowder for the entire English army and navy. Due to the war with Spain and the subsequent surge in military spending, this body was expanded under Elizabeth I into a permanent defense board in 1597. Now empowered with new responsibilities such as research and development, this body remained headquartered at the Tower of London’s Ordnance Office. It was this facility, the Double-O, which occupied the enormous complex of armories, workshops, and laboratories honeycombed throughout the Tower’s inner ward. A scientific revolution was underway within these walls in 1604, and England’s greatest genius was leading it. Francis Bacon, the first scientist in history to receive a knighthood, was now the Double-O’s chief researcher, and his arrival was heralded by the clamor of ravens flying throughout the Tower.

Bacon was in his lab examining astronomical data when Shakespeare interrupted him. “Master Bacon,” the bard greeted.

The scientist looked up from his parchment to see his least-favorite man in the hemisphere. “You…” Sir Francis Bacon gasped from behind his pointy beard. The scientist jumped up from his chair as his piercing eyes bored into the bard. “What are you doing here? This is a laboratory, not a drinking den! Get out of here!”

“He forced his way in,” one of the Tower guards escorting Shakespeare explained.

“Then force him out!” Bacon shouted as he filled his arms with documents and threw a sheet over the enormous blackboard behind him. “This is a government facility, not a bawdyhouse! I will not tolerate this presumptuous pimp! He—”

“He has a letter,” the guard interrupted. “He’s refusing to show it to us.”

“My apologies, Master Bacon, but something tells me this message was intended for your eyes only.” Shakespeare produced Walsingham’s letter from his shirt and offered it with a welcoming hand.

Bacon recognized the seal. “Where did you get that?” he muttered.

Shakespeare smiled at the disbelieving scientist. “From W.”

Bacon dropped his papers and snatched the letter with hasty fingers. As he broke W’s seal and examined the document, Shakespeare glanced at the chalkboard, which the scientist had only partially covered with a white cloth. One section stuck out to the bard if only because it had been a long time since he had seen anything written in Hebrew.

*

Shakespeare considered asking if Bacon was studying for his bar mitzvah, but instead the shrewd actor shifted his eyes back to the scientist just as he looked up from Walsingham’s letter.

“Do you want this man arrested?” asked a Tower guard.

“Nothing would please me more,” Bacon seethed. “Unfortunately, since it appears he is on assignment, I am afraid you will have to leave him with me.” The scientist turned to the guards. “Have one of the stable hands ready Aston.”

“Yes, Master Bacon.” The guards bowed and marched out of the laboratory, leaving the scientist and the playwright in peace. Only one of the two great thinkers seemed to find humor in their surprise pairing.

“This is a comedy of errors if there ever was one,” the bard chirped, referring to an embarrassing case of mistaken identity involving both men and a young lady during a Christmas masquerade ball.
*
“Rest assured,” the grinning playwright moved in and whispered, “I’m going to keep my mask
off
this time!”

With a steady hand, the unsmiling Sir Francis Bacon rolled up Walsingham’s letter and pushed Shakespeare away with it. “This way, please.”

“Walsingham said you had a few toys for me to play with,” the bard mused as he walked through the lab. Somewhat childishly, he ran his fingers across every tool and trinket that caught his eye.

“This is the Ordnance Office, not a toy store,” Bacon scolded as he led Shakespeare into the armory. After walking down a spiral staircase, the bard found himself in a vast corridor lined with innumerable weapons: swords, spears, daggers, axes, pikes, halberds, muskets, and even an eight-shot matchlock revolver. Shakespeare was itching to get his hands on the fine firearm, but instead Bacon picked a freshly forged rapier off the wall. “This will be your primary weapon.”

The bard wrinkled his eyebrows in disappointment. “That’s all?”

“Yes. Standard issue for all Double-O operatives. You simply—”

“Master Bacon,” Shakespeare interrupted, “I know how a sword works.”

“No, you don’t, master bard. Not this one.” Sir Francis Bacon stood up straight and pointed the rapier at a suit of armor. The sword emitted a fantastic explosion that knocked the armor against the wall, sending the surprised playwright jumping backward. Bacon stood tall and proud as the pierced armor came crashing down, as would have any unfortunate soul wearing it at the time. The inventor pivoted on his leather boots and presented the weapon to Shakespeare. “This is for duels you know you can’t win. The rapier’s guard contains two pistols, one on either side of its blade. To fire the weapon, you pull on this trigger built into its finger rings no differently than a musket. The sword only holds two shots, so make sure they count.”

“And if I need more than two shots?” asked the bard.

“In such a scenario, I suggest you use the pointy end of the weapon.” Bacon threw the rapier’s leather scabbard in Shakespeare’s face. “May we continue?”

Shakespeare slipped his old sword off his belt and replaced it with the rapier while Bacon guided the playwright into a large workshop. Its shelves were piled high with jars of powders, herbs, chemicals, and even the occasional body part suspended in liquid. One eyeball seemed to stare at the bard as if Shakespeare had just called out its name. Away from the shelves, a human cadaver lay on a table while eight men huddled around it, one of them dissecting its arm as part of an anatomy lesson. The playwright noticed a nearby copy of
De humani corporis fabrica
by Andreas Vesalius out, which he recognized by its illustrations. The book was open to page 184, which depicted a man flayed of his skin from every inch of his body, save for the top half of his face.
*
The figure’s head was bent back and to the left as if appealing to the heavens for a quick death. His exposed muscles dangled from his body in some places, dripping like candle wax onto the Paduan foreground where he stood. Although Shakespeare was no stranger to such graphic violence in his plays, his imagination ran wild over this image of such an unfortunate fellow; a poor player performing his last hour on the world’s stage while wearing his own face like a carnival mask.

Bacon interrupted Shakespeare’s mental trip by holding something up to his face. “An ordinary deck of playing cards—”

Startled, the bard snapped his head back to the scientist. “Say again?”

Unamused, Bacon stiffened his posture. “
Again
, an ordinary deck of playing cards.”

Shakespeare stared at the deck, curious. “Are you expecting me to cut them?”

“If your life or your mission depends on it, yes.” Bacon tapped the cards against a table and tore one in half, revealing a fine powder inside it. “These cards are rigid envelopes containing matter that should help you on any assignment. The spades contain poisons, the clubs gunpowder, the hearts healing salts, and the diamonds exotic spices worth more than the deck’s weight in gold. Use them wisely. If thrown into a fire, the clubs will cause the deck to explode. It won’t be a fatal blast, but it could burn down a building—or at the very least, cause quite the distraction for you.”

“That should make for an interesting game of one-and-thirty,” Shakespeare joked as he flipped through the deck.

“Your assignments are not ‘games,’ master bard, and your equipment are not playthings.” Bacon then reached into his pocket and presented Shakespeare with an adorable bauble that resembled a small stack of gold coins with a clock face.

The bard had to suppress laughter. “Is it my birthday already?”

Bacon ignored this. “Master bard, what you are looking at is a watch: a portable timekeeping machine small enough to be worn or carried. I believe you are familiar with the story of the late Queen Mary owning a similar device?”

“Yes. It resembled a human skull.” The bard smirked as he examined the elegant clock. “A silver skull. A fitting memento mori considering how she died, wouldn’t you say?”

“If she possessed a watch like this one, it would have had a fatal impact on her. This ordinary-looking device is actually a powerful explosive. Pull out this winding pin here to activate the weapon’s internal fuse. The device is designed to fragment, so make sure you take cover before it detonates.”

“How much time will I have before it explodes?”

“About five to ten seconds after you remove the pin.”

“No more? No less?” Shakespeare teased.

The inventor rolled his eyes. “Just try not to waste our time by blowing yourself up with it! Many hours went into making that machine.”

“Master Bacon, you know I would never waste your time.” The happy playwright pocketed the timepiece. “
Tempus fugit
, as the ancients say.”

“You’re more right than you know,” said the scientist as he led Shakespeare deeper into the workshop. “We’re in the midst of a technological war right now, and every second you bleed from me is time our enemies will use against us. The Double-O is a foundry where the future is being invented unrestrained by the dogmas of Romanism.”

“I see. Just the dogmas of Protestantism,” the bard mused as he leafed through a copy of
Daemonologie
, a book supporting King James I’s witch hunts in Scotland and authored by the monarch himself.
*
The book lay atop a copy of German inquisitor Heinrich Kramer’s
Malleus Maleficarum
, which argued witchcraft was practiced primarily by women due to their innate moral failings and “childlike” feeblemindedness.
†
The latter also detailed how to conduct a witch trial right down to whom to torture and how. Respectively, the two books served as the Protestant and Catholic churches’ solutions to the growing menace of witchcraft.