Revenger (29 page)

“Drink a little wine.”

“The sickness came. The sweat. It pains me grievously to recall
it, even now. It took Mother and Father and my youngest sister, all in the space of a fortnight. That left just Matilda and me. We had no help from our neighbors. Even the almoner called me a dirty maunderer, spat in my face, and said he would not give me so much as a farthing.”

“So what did you do?”

“We took the road to London, as I thought. But it was no such thing. We joined a band of vagabonds for protection and became runagates ourselves. That is no life. You can have no idea of the cold, Mr. Shakespeare. In midwinter the frost bites so deep that the elders and babes amongst us froze where they slept.” She held a hand to her bare throat, as if overcome by the recollection. “There were men there, and women, too, that would kill for half a loaf. I saw them fight until the blood ran freely into the mud over the ownership of a dead hare. We scavenged for anything and everything. Nettles, insects, all the fruits of the forest and hedgerow, cats and dogs and rats, too. Whatever we could find. I don’t doubt there were some that gnawed on human flesh. There were fifty of us in our roving camp and we were unwelcome wherever we went. If we went near towns, the men would drive us away with whips and mastiffs. If the headborough or foreign officer caught a vagabond man, he would be accused of every crime committed within the year and be hanged that day without trial. If they could catch a dell, they would treat her no better than a whore, even though she might be a maiden. And we were flogged without mercy. I have the stripes still.”

“I believe you.”

“We stayed in the open air. But there was always a hamlet nearby, so they would gather all the farmhands to drive us away. Some were Christian folk, a few, and would give us loaves and ale, but they always told us we must be on our way after our repast. There was no money to be had and we slept beneath hedgerows or in byres if we could.”

“How long were you on the road?”

“Two years. Two years that aged me a hundred. I have not even told you the worst.” Her voice broke again. She tried to regain her composure. Tears streamed down her cheeks, yet she did not sob. “My sister …”

“You do not need to tell me this.”

“My little sister, Mr. Shakespeare. Poor Matilda. Eleven years. They took her in the night.”

“The vagabonds?”

“No. Men from a town. It was in the shire of Cambridge. I do not even know the name of the town. They came in the night while we slept. They came with bats and poleaxes and torches to light the way for their foul designs. We rose from our slumber and gathered our few belongings and ran and ran, as we had done many times before. But there was a fog and the night was dark, and I lost Matilda. I lost her, then heard her voice cry out. I think she had stumbled and fallen and the men were on her like ravening animals. I ran in the direction of her voice, but I became tangled in thorns and could not find a path. In the distance, growing fainter, I heard her as they carried her away. She was pleading, screaming, ‘No, please no, in God’s name no.’ Nothing else, just that, over and over. And I could not get to her. We found her body in the morning.”

“I am so sorry.”

She wiped the tears from her face, but still they came. “They had taken all her clothes and left her naked. She was impaled on the prongs of a dung fork. Its handle was buried into the earth like a fence pole, and she was on the other end, five feet off the ground, face-down. One of the two prongs had pierced her breastbone, the other her belly. It was clear to one and all how they had used her before killing her.” She closed her eyes.

Shakespeare watched her in silence. There was nothing to say.

“There,” she said at last, looking up. “That is my story. It is the
first time I have told it, Mr. Shakespeare. It is how I know about men like Charlie McGunn. It is why I know that the slavering and pawing of an evil-smelling Puritan is better than poverty.”

“It is a tale of monstrous cruelty.”

She touched his hand as if trying to break the dark spell she had woven. “Gentle townsfolk do not know what is done in their name. Go to Bridewell one day and see how the vagabonds are treated there.”

“I know Bridewell. I know how they flog the prisoners every Friday for the entertainment of any who would pay to watch. It is not something I like.” He looked at her bowed head. He wanted to reach out and touch her. Instead, with an effort, he asked, “Are you recovered a little, Lady Le Neve? Can I find you a kerchief?”

“It is not important.”

“Your story is not quite finished, is it? You have not told me how you came to your present pass as the lady of a great knight.”

“It was pure chance, nothing more than that. Pure chance, or perhaps an act of God, who decided I had been punished enough for one lifetime. We were by the roadside in Kent, a few weeks after Matilda’s death. The camp had broken up and there were no more than a dozen of us, looking to pick in the orchards. I was sitting alone at the side of the Canterbury road when a troop of a dozen cavalry soldiers came riding our way. In the past, we would have run ten miles at the sight of the soldiers, for we knew what they might do to the women. But I no longer cared whether I lived or died or who used my flesh. And so I sat there and watched them ride along in their shining armor and mail, their pistols and swords flashing in the sun. They rode past and then the officer called them to a halt. He trotted back and leaned from his saddle to me and asked me what I was doing. I suppose there was something in my looks that caught his eye, or in my voice, which was of a more refined timbre than others on the road. He asked me what my family was and I told him I was a Kett. He knew of the history of my family, for it is a famed story. He asked
me whether I could read the Holy Book and play music and dance, which I could. Then he said, ‘Climb up here behind me, mistress.’ ” She smiled. “And so I did, for what did I have to fear? When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.”

Shakespeare was not certain he believed this part of her tale, but it was of no consequence and he let it pass. More than anything, he wanted a name. “And now?”

“Now I will tell you the name of Amy’s murderer.”

Shakespeare looked at her expectantly, his face set.

“It was my husband, Mr. Shakespeare. Sir Toby killed his daughter Amy and the boy Joe Jaggard. He beat them about the head with his war mace. I know this for certain, for I found the weapon in his armory, and it was stained with the blood of his own poor daughter.”

Chapter 26

S
HAKESPEARE COULD NOT SLEEP. HE LAY IN HIS BED
, eyes open, staring into the darkness. Two rooms away, Cordelia Le Neve lay in the single bed usually occupied by Andrew Woode. He wondered whether she, too, was awake.

He thought back to what she had said.

“It was a matter of honor, Mr. Shakespeare. Sir Toby felt she had brought shame on his great name.”

“You think he planned it, the murder?”

“No. On the night of the feast, Winterberry got wind of the state of things and refused to pay the bride price for soiled goods. And so my husband destroyed those goods—his own daughter. He had been angry a long while, but I believe the deed itself was an impulse. He followed them with his mace and bludgeoned them when he saw them naked in the wood. He must have returned later with the poison, thinking to cover his tracks.”

“And why have you not mentioned this before?”

She had finished her wine. Slowly, she put down the goblet. “Fear, Mr. Shakespeare. I feared losing my wealth and standing—and being cast out once again into this bleak land where the nobility and gentry live in splendor, while others sleep in the ice and mud and must forage, starve, and die unmourned. But most
of all I feared McGunn. I know he will take vengeance for the death of Joe. If he knows my husband is the killer, he will kill us both. I thought at first that that was what you were sent for.”

Shakespeare thought back to his last meeting with McGunn. “Find Joe’s killer and I will reward you,” he had said.

“And why have you now come to me?”

“I could not live with myself,” she whispered. “Inside I was raging, for Amy, for Matilda, for every murdered soul whose death goes unheeded, unmourned, unavenged.”

“Where is this mace, the murder weapon?”

“Still among his armaments. Still stained with gore.”

There had been no more to discuss; this was no time for small talk. “We will go there at first light,” he said. “Let me show you to your room.”

He had led the way. At the doorway to Andrew’s room, he handed her a lighted candle. For a moment, their fingers touched as the candle passed between them, then he withdrew.

“Good-night, Lady Le Neve,” he said, and bowed. Time hung between them like that indefinable moment when you chance upon a turning tide and are not quite sure whether it is about to ebb or flow.

She had reached out and touched his hand, held it, as if she would pull him in. But then she withdrew and smiled. “Good-night, John.”

As he turned and left her, he thought he heard her say, “Come to me if you wish.” But he carried on walking to his own room, without looking back.

In the morning, he would have to go with her to Wanstead to bring in Sir Toby for some hard questioning, but now, here, naked in his solitary bed, he was wide awake and doubted he would ever sleep this night. Soundlessly, he rose and padded across toward the door of his chamber. The candle was snuffed, but he knew this room so well that he did not need light. A loose floorboard creaked beneath his bare foot as he reached the fine
oak door. He stood there, listening. He fancied he could hear breathing on the other side. His hand went to the latch and hesitated, as if he would lift it. But he pulled back and reached, instead, for the bolt. Gently he slid the bolt into its slot, sealing the door. He stood there a few moments longer, before returning to the cheerless comfort of his bed. “Come to me,” she had said. He would not. But what if she were to come to him?

T
HEY SAID FEW WORDS
as they broke fast together on ale, three-day-old bread, and some cold hard-boiled eggs. The air was charged between them, like the sky before a dry summer storm.

As they rode out from the stables, he spotted a watcher on horseback a little way along Dowgate. Well, he would just have to follow them, for it would be impossible to evade detection while riding with Cordelia Le Neve at his side. Anyway, such matters were the least of his concerns. What worried him most was what he was going to do about Sir Toby. He had to be arrested and arraigned for murder, of course, but how was that to be effected while maintaining his relationship with Essex? McGunn, too, would have his own ideas about how justice should be dispensed on Joe’s killer.

In the event, the problem of Sir Toby was taken out of his hands, for he was not at home when they arrived at Le Neve Manor.

“I am afraid I do not know where he has gone, my lady,” said Dodsley. “He asked for his horse to be saddled up and rode off an hour since. He had a sumpter with his court attire and other accoutrements. He was riding with a purpose, as if he had a journey to make. I am certain it was not a morning’s hunting.”

“Well, Mr. Shakespeare,” Cordelia said. “What will you do now?”

“Show me the mace.”

A hundred or so yards away, the horseman who had followed
them sat impassively on his horse. Shakespeare stood watching him a moment and then turned to follow Lady Le Neve into the house.

They went to Sir Toby’s private office, where Shakespeare had already seen his clutter of weapons. “Many of these armaments have been in the Le Neve family for generations.” She pointed to a cabinet against a side wall. “It is in there.”

Shakespeare opened the cabinet. Inside, it was dark and dusty. It was packed with old iron—chainmail, a helmet covered in dents, the rusting heads of old halberds and pikes and poleaxes. To the left, barely visible, was a mace. He picked it up by the handle. It was heavy and deadly. The wooden haft was long and ornately carved, the sort used by cavalrymen, who needed longer-handled weapons than the infantry. The head was round and decorated with knobs.