Revenger (40 page)

But how, he wondered as he walked slowly back to the celebrations, would he do that
and
save Will? He wondered, too, why Cecil had not displayed more interest in the name Morley.

The sky was suddenly lit up by a dazzling display of fireworks, bursting above the castle like the onset of war between gods. Shakespeare stopped and looked up in awe and wonder; he had never seen their like before—specks of red and gold and silver fire, exploding like flowers in bloom, then fading and dying as they fell to earth. He shivered and wrapped his arms tight around
his body. For the first time in many weeks, he felt a chill in the night air.

Out in the fields where the common people had their fairground stalls, bonfires were lit for miles around and minstrel music was played, all mixing in the night air with the finer melodies played here at the castle.

More fireworks flared up and lit the castle with their brilliance. They also lit the face of Slyguff twenty yards away, watching him unblinking with his one good eye, the other, the left one, dead and opaque.

S
HAKESPEARE DID NOT
sleep. He paced his room, glancing every few moments from the window, not knowing what to expect, but certain something must happen this night.

The room was bathed in shadows from the single candle he burned, casting eerie glimmers on the boxes and chests that belonged to Starling Day and the merchant venturer John Watts. For a long time, he was alert, every muscle and fiber tensed for the noise or sight that would propel him into action. But by three of the clock, he was weary and sat down on the mattress with his back to the sill. He began to feel drowsy, his eyes heavy-lidded. At first he thought the noise he heard was part of a dream, but then he was suddenly wide awake. Somewhere, not far away, he could hear the sound of hooves and horses whinnying. He looked out of the window. It was raining, for the first time in God knew how many weeks. Cool rain, at last.

Shakespeare picked up his sword and dagger and slipped from the room and down the side staircase to the courtyard. A guard stiffened at his approach.

“Can’t sleep. Need a walk.”

The guard eyed his sword.

“There are a lot of common revelers and vagabonds out there, guardsman.”

The guard nodded sullenly, hunched against the rain, hood pulled over his head, rubbing his hands before his brazier.

Shakespeare walked quickly through the main yard toward the lesser court. He could hear what sounded like a large group of horsemen to the west, somewhere in the direction of the little Isbourne River and the town of Winchcombe. Halberdiers, wearing tangerine tabards that denoted them as Essex men, were on guard at the gatehouse. They blocked his way, but he could see past them. A band of twenty or more horsemen was saddled up, ready to ride. Their mounts trampled the ground. The rain came down in torrents.

At their head was Essex, tall and arrogant on a black stallion. He was surrounded by his closest supporters and retainers—Southampton, Danvers, Meyrick, and the rest. They carried a deadly array of armaments: wheel-locks, swords, lances, poleaxes, all glittering wet in the light of burning pitch cressets and torches. Sir Toby Le Neve was there, too; Le Neve, wanted for the murder of his own daughter and Joe Jaggard. Well, there would be no way of plucking him from this group tonight.

Essex saw Shakespeare and their eyes met through the teeming rain. The Earl held the intelligencer’s gaze for no more than two seconds, then tugged sharply at the reins and spun his mount. All his men turned their horses, too, lining up beside or behind him. Then, at a hand signal from Essex, they spurred their animals and trotted forward in a disciplined knot, kicking up splashes of mud and quickly disappearing into the darkness of the night.

Shakespeare watched until they had gone. They were heading vaguely north. So this was it; the plot was under way. Shakespeare ran back toward the state apartments. He had to get a message to Cecil, then take a horse and pray he reached Derbyshire—and Arbella—first.

Something caught his eye. Through the downpour, he saw a movement by a doorway into a side staircase of the state
apartments. Even in the darkness of night, lit only by the guard’s sizzling brazier, he recognized Slyguff. He would know that cruel-hearted, unblinking stoat of a man anywhere. Where in God’s name was he going? Of course. Clarkson had told him all he needed to know about who among the nobility had the prime living quarters. Lady Frances, the Countess of Essex, was billeted in these apartments, on the second floor. A killing to legitimize a wedding.

In the shadows of the banqueting hall, Shakespeare could just make out Slyguff as he handed something to the guard. He had a curled length of rope slung over his shoulder. As the Irishman slipped in through the doorway, Shakespeare emerged from the shadows and followed him. The guard moved away from the brazier to bar his path.

“I saw the bribe you took,” Shakespeare said in a low, hard voice. “I am an officer of Sir Robert Cecil, and if you do not let me pass, you will hang before dawn.”

The guard scuttled out of his path.

Shakespeare went on through the door. He listened for the sound of footfalls, but he knew how softly Slyguff trod from his encounter with him in the turret room at Essex House on the night of the summer revel. He could hear nothing.

He waited a few moments. Then, silently, he stepped forward and walked up the circular stone stairway. His way was lit by beeswax candles in wall sconces, guttering in the cool, rainy draft. Drawing his sword from its scabbard, he held it in front of him. He reached the top step and looked along the corridor. There was no one there.

The rope came out of nowhere. A noose around his neck, the moment he stepped out from the stairwell. His assailant was behind him, twisting the rope with unreasoning ferocity, pushing him down toward the ground with a foot in his lower back. It would be a quick kill.

Shakespeare kept his footing, just, and swung around, desperately trying to stay upright. He was a tall man, but Slyguff’s wiry body had the tight, ungiving strength of twisted cable. Shakespeare shouldered his attacker into a wall, pulling a tapestry down about his head. Slyguff’s grasp slipped for a moment, just long enough for Shakespeare to push two fingers of his left hand under the noose to save his windpipe from being crushed.

But he was already choking for air and knew he had little time left. Dimly, he saw a figure in a doorway further along the hall, in the light of a sconce. It was Topcliffe. Richard Topcliffe, standing there, pipe in his mouth exhaling fumes, a smile on his wicked face as he watched Shakespeare going down to his death.

Shakespeare could not die,
would
not die. It was not merely his own life that counted now. Death was nothing. The thought of Topcliffe’s satisfied smirk gave Shakespeare the rage he needed. With the desperation of a wounded animal just as the predator closes in for the kill, he found Slyguff’s balls with his right hand and crushed them as if squeezing every drop of juice from a lemon.

A guttural sound came from the back of Slyguff’s throat, but he wrenched frantically at the rope even as he curled into himself. Shakespeare knew this was his last hope. He slid his fingers out from under the rope constricting his neck. He barely noticed they were rubbed raw by the rough hemp, or the injuries inflicted on his throat that threatened to do for him. He needed this arm free. With a stab of desperation, he elbowed back into Slyguff’s face. Again and again, beating his temple against the wall, he elbowed the man, bearing down on him with all his remaining power and weight.

At last the rope loosened. Shakespeare fell away, panting. He picked up his sword. Topcliffe was coming his way, his blackthorn in his right hand. The grin had not left his face all the while. Shakespeare pointed the sword in Topcliffe’s direction,
but he did not have the energy to rise and run him through. Topcliffe pushed the blade away with the silver tip of his blackthorn, then knelt down beside Shakespeare and the silent, writhing figure of Slyguff. He put his left hand over Slyguff’s face and pushed him down into the ground. Carefully, he put the blackthorn to one side and picked up the discarded rope, twisting it once, twice, around the Irishman’s neck, then turned the ends in his fist, so that the rope creaked. Shakespeare heard a sudden crack as Topcliffe pulled Slyguff’s head back by his hair, snapping his neck.

The body went limp, save for the occasional jerking of the legs and arms. Slyguff was dead. Topcliffe released the rope, then picked up his stick and held it to the raised weal circling Shakespeare’s throat.

“I was enjoying that,” he said, deliberately blowing smoke into Shakespeare’s eyes. “Better than the bull-baiting, I fancy.”

Shakespeare expected to be killed at any moment. The blackthorn had a heavy head, like a cudgel, and one blow to the temple would do for him. Yet he had no strength left to defend himself; he had expended all against Slyguff. All he could do was put his hands to his own bruised throat and gasp for breath. He was coughing, choking, his lungs were heaving, and his head was pounding as if he had been struck with a six-pound hammer, but he no longer cared.

Topcliffe withdrew the stick. “You’re soaked through, Shakespeare. Mustn’t go out in weather like this without a cape and hat or you’ll catch your death.” Topcliffe laughed at his own black humor. “Come on, you Papist-loving milksop turd, I need your help to carry this dead weight.”

Shakespeare’s breathing began to ease.

“I’m protecting her, you slow-witted worm,” Topcliffe said, as if reading Shakespeare’s thoughts. “You don’t think Cecil would have left the Countess’s safety in
your
hands?”

Shakespeare struggled to his feet and twisted his head from
side to side, all the while rubbing his neck. He knew how near he had come to death.

“Take the legs,” Topcliffe ordered, sliding his hands under Slyguff’s shoulders. “Come on.”

“Why did you kill him?” Shakespeare demanded, his voice rasping and sore. “We could have questioned him.”

Topcliffe snorted scornfully and blew a cloud of smoke from between his lips. He dropped the body and wrenched open the dead man’s mouth. “Look in there,” he said.

Shakespeare looked into a gaping, tongue-less hole.

“Cut out at the root. You could have questioned him, but he would never have answered you. His silence was assured. Come, Shakespeare, you sniveling boy, pick him up and get him away from here. Sir Robert will not want her ladyship’s peace disturbed by the discovery of a dead Irishman outside her chamber.”

Chapter 36

T
HEY DRAGGED THE BODY FROM THE HOUSE UNDER
the terrified eyes of the guard. Topcliffe ordered the man to fetch a handcart and a tarpaulin. The guard dropped his pike, which clattered to the stone-flagged ground, and scuttled like a beaten dog into a workshop.

When he re-emerged, they hauled the corpse into the cart, covering it in a heavy sheet of canvas.

“Haul away, Shakespeare,” jeered Topcliffe. “Put your back into it.”

Topcliffe and Shakespeare took one handle of the cart each and pulled it through a side passageway. It was hard going in the rain over the rough, muddy grass and tree roots as they pulled their burden down through the woods to the west of the castle toward the river. Their clothes were soaking, rain pouring down their necks beneath their flattened ruffs.

“These people piss me off,” Topcliffe growled to no one in particular as they reached the river and hoisted the body out of the cart and dropped it unceremoniously onto the slippery bank.

Shakespeare saw the pair of black shears hooked on the dead man’s belt and shuddered as he thought of Jack Butler. And Boltfoot Cooper? Had they also shorn that loyal man of his fingers?

Topcliffe kicked at the body like a football, pushing it with his
foot into the edge of the slow-running waters of the stream. “Traitors. Agents of the Antichrist, every one of them. What sort of man orders the murder of his own wife?”

What sort of man
, thought Shakespeare,
has a torture chamber in his own house and laughs and jests as he tears men apart?
But all he said was, “An ambitious man.”