Revenger (28 page)

Chapter 25

B
OLTFOOT WOKE WITH A POUNDING HEAD PAIN. HE
tried to look up, but could not focus. He seemed to see beams and an unfamiliar ceiling. Strange sounds all around only made the throbbing of his skull the worse. He was too weak to move.

A woman clothed in a simple gown, with a long white apron and a crisp white coif, like a nun’s wimple, floated across his field of vision. She peered down at him, two warm brown eyes looking into his with concern.

“Where am I?” he managed to say. “What has happened to me?”

“You are in the Hospital of St. Thomas, sir.”

He reached up to his head and found it was bandaged. He winced at the mere touch of his hand. “Why?”

“You have been injured. But it is good to see you have awakened, sir, for we had feared for your life.”

He closed his eyes and it began to come back to him.

“And the day?”

The nurse laughed lightly. She was dumpy, but made pretty by her smile and evident kindness. “You have been here more than twenty hours. A young woman saw you, all bloody in the street, and came here to ask the beadles to fetch you. You were fortunate, for many would have left you there to die, so poor was your
health. If you have more questions, the hospitaller will walk through the ward within the hour, and you may ask him.”

Boltfoot held up a hand from the coverlet. He needed to get out of here. He felt dizzy. He tried to move up onto his elbows, but immediately fell back, fighting for breath. His head felt as though it had been struck by the edge of a halberd. “Please, get word to Dowgate for me,” he said weakly. “Tell my goodwife, who is big with child, that I am here, and my master.”

She smiled. “Do not fret yourself, sir. I will come and talk with you later. If you are good and quiet, I shall try to find you a bed of feathers. And if you are not good, I must tell you that there is a whipping post and stocks in the yard. You will be excused chapel in the morning, though not again.”

She bustled off about the ward, examining bandages, taking away fouled bedding to be laundered. Through the haze of his pulsating head, Boltfoot tried to remember what had happened to him.

He had been in one of the small streets to the west of Long Southwark on the way back to the house of Davy Kerk. He remembered how faint he felt, how his clothes dripped with sweat. Across the narrow road he had noticed a woman, all covered in a hood, watching him, and then, from behind, a shadow and then the blow. And that was all.

If only Jane would come to him.

He drifted off to sleep again, this time proper sleep, not the loss of consciousness, the simulacrum of death, that comes with a crushing blow to the head.

W
HEN SHAKESPEARE
got back to Dowgate, Sidesman was washing down a horse on the cobbles by the stables. He shook his dour head slowly. He had seen neither Boltfoot nor Jack. Shakespeare felt a gnawing, churning terror in his stomach. Neither man would have been out of contact this long.

“But you will find that a lady has arrived to see you, sir,” the groom said.

Cordelia Le Neve was in the anteroom. She was looking through a Latin primer, but put it down on a coffer when Shakespeare entered.

“You are very welcome, Lady Le Neve,” he said, “although your custom of entering people’s rooms without being invited is a little unnerving. I trust this time you come unarmed?” he added wryly.

She was disheveled and dusty from the ride. Her hair was windswept and tangled about her shoulders. She wore a linen kirtle and a close-fitted chemise, open at the neck, where her skin glowed. She might have passed for a serving wench except there was something about her bearing, the tilt of her head, and her fine looks that said otherwise.

“You may search me if you wish.”

He smiled. “I shall leave it to trust, Lady Le Neve.”

“As you will. Do you have refreshment, Mr. Shakespeare? I fear I will perish without a little ale to ease my poor parched throat.”

He went to the buttery, where the keg was kept. She followed him.

“This is a fine school, Mr. Shakespeare. I would say it is new built.”

“The main part is but five years old, originally built as a home for the merchant Thomas Woode, the Lord rest him. I am afraid the bishop has now closed it down, however.”

“I am sorry.”

“Fear not, I am sure we will reopen come All Hallows.”

“It is curious that you run errands for the Searcher of the Dead as well as being high master of a school.”

Shakespeare pulled two pints of ale, handing one to Cordelia. “I have spent many years as an intelligencer and investigator of certain crimes for the late Mr. Secretary. The searcher is a friend of mine.”

“Why do I feel there is something you are not telling me?”

“I could ask the same of you, Lady Le Neve. Your connection with McGunn, my lord Essex, and Mr. Winterberry is most intriguing. Tell me: why have you come here?”

“I have come here to answer your questions.”

“That is good.” He waited.

“And … there are things … things that someone—you—should know.”

“Such as?”

“Let us talk awhile.”

Shakespeare shrugged his shoulders. “As you wish. Start by telling me how much Winterberry was going to pay you for your daughter’s hand.”

“Five thousand pounds, I believe, though such details are men’s business. We have seen none of it, and never will.”

“What did he hope for in return? Did he believe your daughter loved him? He is an austere man.”

“All men are the same when you strip away the attire, be it Puritan broadcloth or courtly taffeta. It is lechery and vanity. He wanted a pretty maiden for his bed and he wanted connection to our family name. He had already been to the College of Arms to see how he might adopt my husband’s armorial bearings. But then he did not know of Amy’s feelings for the boy Jaggard, and nor did we at first.”

“Now he lies buried at the crossroads, for taking his own life and another’s, though the truth is very different.”

“He does not lie at the crossroads. McGunn has taken his body and given him a burial by the church on Essex’s estate of Wanstead.”

Shakespeare paused. The silence hung between them. Then, abruptly, he said, “This marriage, Lady Le Neve, did it not trouble you that you were selling your stepdaughter like a …?” He stopped.

“A
whore
, Mr. Shakespeare?”

If she was offended, Lady Le Neve did not show it. “Winterberry is not a young man,” she said, “and in time Amy would have been left one of the wealthiest widows in the realm, to pursue whatever fancies she desired. I know what poverty is like, and I can tell you that it is a great deal worse than the fumbling attentions of an aging man.”

Shakespeare watched her closely. There was something not right here. The last time he had seen this woman, she had wanted rid of him. “I ask you again, Lady Le Neve, why have you come here?”

She breathed deeply, as if summoning up some inner fortitude. The silence drifted on until, at last, she spoke.

“I have no one else to turn to. I thought you might be that rare thing, an honest man. I am scared, Mr. Shakespeare.”

“You know the name of the killer?”

“I must tell you in my own way. It is a long story.”

“Come. Let us go to my solar. We will be more comfortable.”

They proceeded to the room where Shakespeare most liked to work. Through the west window he saw that the sun was low in the sky. Lady Le Neve, so unlike Catherine in her looks and manner, sat on a settle, and he stood by the cold hearth.

“We are impoverished because my husband likes to gamble,” she said. “He plays cent, primero, and tables. He will hazard money on the fighting skills of a cock or the speed of a horse. He plays with my lord of Essex’s friends: Southampton, Rutland, Danvers, Gelli Meyrick, his brother-in-arms Roger Williams. They all wager more money than is sensible, huge sums. And Sir Toby is the maddest of them all, for his inheritance was poor.”

“And McGunn?” Shakespeare persisted, eager to get to the point, the name.

“Essex told my husband that if ever he needed money, McGunn was the man. There could be no higher recommendation than that. Sir Toby is intensely loyal; he comes from a long feudal line and regards Essex as his liege lord.”

“And why, pray, does Essex keep the company of a man like McGunn?”

Cordelia’s mouth was set. “Gold. Essex lives like a sultan of Turkey, with his vast houses, his legions of retainers, his army of knights all liveried in tangerine. Where does he find the money to maintain these men at his command? The Queen keeps him stretched like a bowstring. McGunn keeps Essex afloat, for he has such a burden of debt, he could sink to the depths of the northern seas.”

“And what does McGunn get in return?”

“Power, Mr. Shakespeare. Control. Overlordship. The same as he exercised over us. But how would I or anyone else know what desires lie hidden in the cold, dark shadows of Charlie McGunn’s mind? Watch his impudent boldness with great men—you would not think that Essex was the premier Earl and that McGunn was the lowly kern from the boglands of Ireland. You would think McGunn the chief of the two.”

“And how has McGunn come into so much treasure, Lady Le Neve?”

“Usury, violence, debauchery. He is as cold-blooded as a snake. He would kill and his heart would beat no faster.”

“You said you had seen such men before?”

She stood up abruptly. “I have said enough.” She turned to go. The sun was close to the roofs toward the west of the city. The sky was darkening.

Shakespeare put up his hand. “No. I want the name.”

“It is late. I should not have come.”

“You say you are scared. Well, you are safe here. You cannot ride back alone to Wanstead this evening.”

“Do you think I have not been out alone in the darkest of nights?” She laughed.

“There is The Swan nearby.” He closed his eyes. “Or there is this house. There are empty beds this night. You may make use of one, but you will give me the information I require.”

Her eyes, unabashed, met his. “Yes,” she said. “I will tell you the killer’s name.” She sat down again.

“L
ET ME TELL YOU
my story, if you have the stomach for it. I am of the notorious Kett family from Norwich in Norfolk. Have you heard of us, Mr. Shakespeare?”

“Indeed.”

“It is a name tainted with treason, but I wear it with pride. Robert Kett was my grandfather and a landowner of wealth. Our family lived well, with landholdings around Norwich and Wymondham. My grandfather’s rebellion, though he would not have called it such, ended all that. When he was hanged in chains from the battlements of Blanche Fleur, all his lands were attainted and given by King Edward to Lord Audley, his captor. My father and his brothers, who had thought they would inherit lands, were brought to impoverishment.”

Shakespeare refilled their goblets.

“By the time I was born in the first year of Her Majesty’s reign, we lived in a small cottage not far from Wymondham. My father worked for Audley’s estate as a common farmhand, a serf, and my mother took in weaver’s work. It was a modest enough life, but we had enough to eat and my parents ensured we were all educated in reading and some writing. They taught us, too, that we were better than the place to which we had been brought by fate. There were three of us, all girls, and I was the eldest. The others in the village thought we were above ourselves; they did not like to see maidens with books and mocked us for it. At the age of eight, we had to work on the farm, milking, churning, reaping, feeding the stock, and collecting the eggs. Then, when I was twelve, we were brought yet lower.” She stopped for a moment, unable to find a voice to speak. “Forgive me, Mr. Shakespeare.”