Revenger (38 page)

T
HE MASTIFF SNARLED, ITS TEETH BARED, SALIVA
dripping from its gums into the dust. Crouching low, it inched nearer the bull, then dashed in from the side and snapped at the bull’s hind legs. Despite its immense strength and size, the bull was quick and nimble and spun round, its head lowered. The beast met the dog full-on. One of its horns thrust upward into the smaller animal’s soft underbelly and tossed it into the air.

The dog yelped in pain as it flew upward, a deep gash in its belly raining blood, before smacking down clumsily onto the ground. Snorting and trampling the dog under its hooves, the bull spiked it once more on its horns and tossed it again. The bull tried another charge, but was brought up short by the eight-foot rope that tethered it to a post in the center of the dusty ring. The crowd roared approval, and another mastiff was brought in to try its luck.

All eyes were on the bloody spectacle. All eyes but those of John Shakespeare. He was watching Essex, who was just taking his leave of Her Majesty in the royal viewing box, bowing low to her before strolling off to meet up with a group of a dozen or so spectators. Among them were the Earl’s closest associates: Henry
Danvers, Gelli Meyrick, and the Earls of Southampton and Rutland.

The word
conspirators
came to Shakespeare’s mind. Were these men all in on the deadly game on which Essex was embarked? There could be little doubt of it. He took a deep breath and strode toward them.

It was a muggy afternoon. For the first time in weeks, there were dark clouds on the horizon. There would be rain before the three-day celebration was done.

The aging Queen fanned herself as she watched the entertainment beneath a canopy of green and gold stripes. She was as enthusiastic as any of her subjects in her applause. After the bulls, there would be bears, horses, and monkeys to delight her with their flowing blood. As he studied her animated face, it occurred to Shakespeare that the Queen looked mighty healthy and spirited for a woman supposedly destined to die within a few days.

A beautiful black woman in fanciful Roman battledress—gold breastplate and helmet and short fringed war-skirt—strolled past, her hands straining to contain two chain-link leashes with a large spotted wild cat at the end of each. Shakespeare stepped aside.

All around, refreshments were to be had. A fountain rained Rhenish wine; a hogshead hidden in a bush of roses had a faucet to dispense claret. Waiters offered trays of little delicacies—pastries with the breasts of peewits, sugar cakes with saffron, salted potato from the New World. Shakespeare helped himself to a portion of finest tobacco leaves and placed them in a pouch.

At the welcoming pageant, dozens of the most artful jesters and tumblers of England had clowned and bounded about. In the fields all around, there were fairground stalls with oxen roasting and casks of free ale for the commoners and townsfolk.

It was a perfect setting. This castle, Sudeley, had been Elizabeth’s own home when, as a girl in her teen years, she was cared for by her stepmother Katherine Parr, the last of Great Henry’s
six wives. Elizabeth had memories of happy days in these gardens with her young cousin Jane Grey. But those days were too short-lived, for Katherine Parr had died soon afterwards, in childbirth, and Sudeley had passed into other hands. Poor Lady Jane’s own fate had been no happier, ending on the block at the age of sixteen after ambitious men had thrust her unwillingly onto the throne in a vain attempt to keep it from Catholic Mary.

Shakespeare bowed to Essex. “My lord.”

“Mr. Shakespeare, you have arrived.”

“Your sister was most persuasive, my lord.”

Essex laughed loud and waved away his companions. “The idle wench is irresistible, is she not? She can certainly rule me, and I am her own little brother.”

Shakespeare breathed a sigh of relief. His welcome indicated that Essex—at least for now—knew nothing of Shakespeare’s secret dealings. “I am delighted to be of service to you.”

“And that you shall.” His voice lowered a tone or two. “Did my sister give you an inkling of the great matter on which we are engaged, Mr. Shakespeare?”

“An inkling, sir, yes.”

“And were you daunted by the enormity of our momentous task?”

“No, my lord. I was not daunted.”

“Then we must set you to work, Mr. Shakespeare, for there is naught more vital than the safety of our realm. It is by winning the war of secrets that we shall be kept safe.”

“That is why I am here.”

“Do you have lodgings? I fear there is little space at Sudeley.”

“I will look around.”

“Be patient. I will call on you soon enough. Know that when you perform a task for me, you do it as a true and loyal Englishman. Do you see that proud bull in the ring, how mastiff after mastiff launches itself at the beast, and yet it impales them all? I am that bull. I shall repel the Spaniard and the Scotchman and
every other foreign potentate that covets the throne of England. Be ready, John, for I shall call on you at a moment’s notice. We must seize the day—
carpe diem
!”

“And the case of Eleanor Dare, my lord?”

Essex brushed the topic aside. “Think no more of Roanoke for the moment, John; we have great affairs of state at hand.” He patted Shakespeare’s arms and was gone with a sweep of his white, gold, and tangerine cape, a group of friends and followers trailing in his wake.

Shakespeare watched them a moment, then his eyes strayed across the bullring to the royal box, where he saw that Elizabeth’s eyes were following the perambulations of her handsome favorite. Essex made her feel a girl again with his flattery and fluttering and swooning. Did she have any idea what treachery he was embarked upon? At her side now was the small, insignificant figure of Sir Robert Cecil. He caught Shakespeare’s eye and acknowledged him with an almost imperceptible nod of the head.

Starling Day hove into view on the arm of John Watts, London’s richest merchant. Watts was weighed down with jewelry and gold: diamond earrings, brooches, neck-chains, and enormous pearls. Starling’s attire was magnificent in its awfulness, a vast and garish confection of silver and blue satin and silk, with a ruff the size of an October moon. Her hair was piled on her head beneath a silver-thread caul that almost obscured her face. She continually tugged at the caul with her plump, heavily ringed fingers so that she could look about her properly.

“Mr. Shakespeare, see, I am at court! And at the finest merriment the world has ever seen. For lunch I ate cygnet and snipe, subtleties of jelly dressed as great roaring lions, oyster pies, dotterels, godwits, and every manner of songbird, marchpane meats, figs, and little sweet things from the far lands of Turkey. I really don’t know what else, Mr. Shakespeare. There were foods the like of which I have never seen. Am I not come a long way, sir?”

“Indeed, you have taken a remarkable journey, Mistress Day.”

She introduced him to Watts, who nodded in bored acknowledgment, then took advantage of Shakespeare’s presence to leave his mistress and go off in search of better entertainment.

“Have you found good rooms, Mr. Shakespeare?”

“I shall sleep beneath a hedgerow, Mistress Day.”

“Mr. Watts has procured one of the best apartments for us, here in the castle itself. Can you imagine, Starling Day will sleep in a royal castle this night? Of course, that assumes Mr. Watts allows me any sleep. But you cannot sleep beneath a hedge! There is a room with our luggage a little way from our bedchamber that would suit you well. It overlooks the main courtyard and is in a prime spot.”

“That is very gracious of you, mistress.”

“Then that is settled.”

B
OLTFOOT LIMPED
through the streets of London down toward the Thames and Dowgate. He had his caliver primed and loaded, slung loosely in his arms.

He slowed to a crawl, looking about him all the while as he neared the school. There was a man, in leather jerkin and leather cap, on watch, close to the main entrance. He was gazing elsewhere and did not spot Boltfoot, who immediately stepped back and went around to the rear of the house to the stables, where he found the groom, Sidesman, bringing nosebags to the horses.

Sidesman looked as if he had seen an apparition. He stood back from Boltfoot and stared at him, his gaze shifting uneasily toward the house, then back to Boltfoot and his caliver.

Boltfoot lunged forward and put the muzzle of the weapon to the groom’s throat. “Where is Jane?” he whispered in a raw, low voice. “Is she here or gone?”

“She’s gone, Mr. Cooper. With a troop of militia to the north. A place called Masham, to the family of Mistress Shakespeare, by York.”

“Someone is watching for me, yes?”

Sidesman froze and did not speak.

“Is it McGunn?” Boltfoot demanded. “Tell me, Mr. Sidesman, or die now.”

The groom’s eyes slid sideways. His body was rigid with fear. An explosion rang out and Sidesman fell, half his face ripped off by a volley of balls. Boltfoot ducked down and scrabbled on hands and knees from the stable forecourt. He looked back at the bloody pulp that had been Sidesman’s head. Something told Boltfoot the shot had hit its intended target. He, Boltfoot, was wanted alive. He was the route to Eleanor Dare.

Another shot rent the air close to Boltfoot’s body. He was up now, caliver in hand, shielded by the edge of the wall. He loosed off a shot of his own, but it was unaimed and without hope of hitting home.

Boltfoot scuttled off up Dowgate. He was not the fastest of movers at the best of times, but now he was weaker than usual. His heavy foot scraped through the dust as he ran. As he crossed over the road eastward, he stumbled in the stinking sewage kennel that ran down the center of the thoroughfare. Scrabbling clumsily to his feet, he heard the sound of running footsteps behind him. He stopped and knelt down on one knee, quickly reloading the caliver with expert speed, dropping none of the powder corns he poured from the horn that hung at his belt. McGunn was no more than thirty yards away from him, coming on fast. Boltfoot lifted the caliver and pointed its intricately engraved octagonal muzzle directly at the oncoming pursuer.

McGunn stopped and dived to the left, behind a cart.

Boltfoot cursed his luck. Too slow. He did not fire, but rose to both feet and backed away, his weapon trained on the cart. A young woman in a barley-colored dress walked by with two small children, one at each hand. When she saw Boltfoot with the weapon clutched in front of him, backing past her, she screamed
and huddled down, cradling the children close to her breast. There was a puff of smoke from the side of the cart, then balls tore past Boltfoot’s ear and slammed into the brick wall of the long hall that fronted the road. Boltfoot dodged into a small alleyway at the side of the northern end building; he could hear the woman still screaming, accompanied by the wailing of her children.

He turned and lurched on down the alley into Cousin Lane, then heard another sound behind him. Looking over his left shoulder, he saw McGunn and another man, the one in the leather jerkin and cap from outside the school. They each had a pair of heavy petronel pistols, slung on straps about their chests, with one held out in front like a monstrous funnel of fire. He was hopelessly outgunned.

Boltfoot stopped in a doorway and dropped again to his knee. McGunn was the man. He lined up his caliver on McGunn. They were twenty yards from him now and he knew he could get McGunn, even if the other one took him.

“We don’t want to kill you, Cooper.”

“Then put up your weapons.”

“We want the woman. Give us the whore’s arse of a woman and you’re a free man.”

Boltfoot ignored them and kept his caliver trained on McGunn.

“There’s no way out for you, Cooper. Drop your weapon and I pledge you will be safe. We can follow you all day, if needs must.”

The door behind Boltfoot swung open. A woman with an empty basket, all done up in her pynner and light worsted cape as if she was going to market, stepped out and stopped, looking with astonishment at Boltfoot.

He struggled up and, bent double, pushed past her into the house. A shot exploded behind him and took the basket clean from the woman’s hand, tossing it thirty feet along the street.
She stood frozen, mouth agape. Behind her, the door was slammed shut by Boltfoot. He pushed home the heavy bolt, locking her outside.

Boltfoot found himself in the spacious stone-flagged anteroom of a solidly built new-brick merchant’s house. He took in his options at a glance. There were two doors leading further into the building. Take the wrong one and he might be trapped. He took the one on the left and found himself in a kitchen. A young, scar-faced malkin dropped the copper pot she was scouring and it clattered to the floor at her feet. Boltfoot sidestepped past her.

“Is there a postern door?”

Wide-eyed, she pointed behind her to another door from the kitchen. Boltfoot went toward it. From the front of the building, he could hear the smashing of glass. They were stoving in a window to get into the house.

He pushed on through the door into a buttery. There were shelves of preserved fruits, baskets of eggs, kegs of ale, and a churn for butter. There was another door, wide open, leading to a large backyard. He plunged through it without hesitation.