Revenger (8 page)

Cecil interrupted. “Many do not want a Scotchman as their king. The Countess of Derby is long in the tooth—or what few she has left—and has no support. Her son is tainted with suspicion of Catholic sympathies. There are those who believe it must, then, be Arbella. She is English-born and has youth and, some say, beauty to commend her.”

“Then Arbella must look most likely to succeed.”

“What would you say if I were to tell you that she is being wooed, secretly, by Essex?”

“I would say that my lord of Essex has a wife. He is married to Frances, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham and widow of Sir Philip Sidney.”

Cecil stood and signaled to a flunky to take their empty glasses. He began to walk again through the gardens, basking in the dappled sunshine and warm air. Shakespeare followed him, studying him intently. Never since his days working for Walsingham had he met a man so utterly in command of himself and his surroundings. It seemed almost that he did not blink without first weighing up the consequences. He would be a hard man to warm to, but an easy man to respect.

“You are not so innocent, Mr. Shakespeare. You did not work for Mr. Secretary for nine years without learning something about the dark heart of man. Do you think this Devereux family is one that cares for such legal niceties as a mere marriage contract? When Essex’s mother, the regal Lettice, married Leicester, was he not already wed to Lady Douglass Sheffield? He tried to claim it was some false marriage, but no one believed that. And what of poor Amy Robsart, Leicester’s first wife, who had a most unfortunate—yet convenient—fall down the stairs to her death while her husband was trying to win himself a queen for his wife? What is one little life against a matter so great? What is a little fall down the stairs? It cured all poor Amy Robsart’s ills and might have won Leicester the crown. Do you think the Countess of Essex will fare better?”

Shakespeare was thinking fast. He was astonished that Cecil should reveal his suspicions in this way.

“A small thing like a wife is but a minor inconvenience to such men, Mr. Shakespeare.” Cecil’s face was hard-set now. This was no jest. “Let me tell you more about my lord of Essex.”

They approached a wooden bench that stood against a wall of the house beneath a peach tree. Cecil gestured for Shakespeare to sit. Sunlight glanced off his shoulder. Cecil perched himself on the arm of the bench, one foot touching the ground.

“I have known my lord of Essex since we were boys,” Cecil said. “He was my father’s ward after his own father died. We were schooled and brought up together. We never liked each other.
Though I was three years the elder, he was always bigger than me and greater at the manly sports. On the tennis court, he was exquisite in his grace and skill, while I could only watch and wonder. And, of course, he taunted me for my physical weakness, as boys will.

“But I also knew that I had advantages over him. He could never hope to match me at the classics, at the languages of our continental neighbors, at law and the study of governance. He lacked rigor. When I was fourteen and he was eleven, he challenged me to a duel. He had made some foul remark about my crooked back being a result of my mother conceiving me at the time of her flowers, and I responded that at least my mother had not poisoned my father. I should not have spoken to him thus, but it was said in the heat of the moment. I tried to laugh off his challenge of a duel, but he insisted and said that it was my right to choose the weapons and the battleground. And so I said, ‘If that is the way it is to be, then I choose chess pieces as my weapons and the squared board as the battleground.’ He became angry, very angry, and said I was a coward. I told him that, clearly, it was he who was afraid to take up
my
challenge, and I went off to fetch the chess pieces and board. We played and I was beating him with considerable ease. He went away and said he would be back anon. He returned with a morgenstern. Are you familiar with a morgenstern, Mr. Shakespeare?”

“Of course I know of them. I have never seen one.”

“They are maces, much favored by the Habsburg troops. The word ‘morgenstern’ means ‘morning star,’ for they have a heavy iron head, spiked like a star. My lord of Essex took his morgenstern and swung it with all his great might down onto the chessboard, which was a fine piece, cut from marble and brought from Verona. The board was smashed into fragments, as were many of the playing pieces. He then kicked the rubble away with his soft-shod foot and said to me, ‘Checkmate. That is what I shall do to you one day, Robin Crookback.’ ”

Cecil paused for effect. Shakespeare knew that there was no love between the two men, but he had no idea it stemmed from such an episode.

“I spotted something in my lord of Essex that day, some dark ambition that even he could not understand, let alone control.”

Again, Shakespeare said nothing.

“My father has seen it, too, Mr. Shakespeare. The Queen will
not
see it, however. She takes pleasure in the attentions my lord of Essex pays her and is beguiled by him. He swoons and affects a swain’s devotion to his maiden love, his Queen. So we must protect her without her knowledge.”

“Protect her from
what
exactly?”

“His dark desire. My lord of Essex would be king. And those around him—his family, his friends—would crown him. Arbella, though she does not know it, is the route, the conduit, to that crown.”

“You have information?”

Cecil paused. “Mr. Shakespeare, please,” he said evenly, “do not ask me to reveal the source of my intelligence. If I were to tell you such a thing, how would
you
ever trust me?”

It was a good point. But Cecil clearly had an informant operating within the Essex circle. Shakespeare tried to recall all he knew of Arbella Stuart, the princess with England’s future weighing heavily on her tender young shoulders. Great-granddaughter of Henry VIII’s elder sister, Margaret, she was the child of the scandalous marriage of the young Charles Stuart and Elizabeth Cavendish (he was nineteen, she twenty); the match was illicit because the Queen had not licensed it, and she erupted in one of her customary furies on hearing of it. For Charles was in line of succession to both the Scots and English thrones, and such a man might never marry without his sovereign’s consent.

So Arbella was born into trouble, and it had followed her like a hungry dog ever since. Her father died of consumption within a year of her birth, and her mother died of a sudden illness five
years later, leaving the little girl an orphan. Her maternal grandmother, the Countess of Shrewsbury—better known as Bess of Hardwick—took on the care of the six-year-old. She brought her up a princess, insisting she be served by kneeling retainers and addressed as “Highness.”

At the age of eleven came the moment to bring her to court, to meet the Queen and her dazzling array of courtiers here, in this house, Theobalds, during the summer progress of 1587. It was a triumph. Elizabeth took the girl under her wing and made much of her, almost—but not quite—seeming to proclaim her heiress to her own throne. Perhaps it all went to the sweet little girl’s head, however, for soon she was breeding resentment among senior courtiers with her haughty ways.

What Arbella had not realized was that the Queen was not affectionate toward her without purpose. Elizabeth wielded smiles and favors to win obedience the way her father used an axe. This was politics on a grand scale, aimed at spiking the planned invasion by a great armada from Spain. Arbella had no way of knowing that behind the scenes of the great theatre of European politics, negotiations were under way for her to marry Rainuccio Farnese, son of the Duke of Parma, Spain’s all-powerful general in the Low Countries. The hope was that the marriage would cause a rift between Parma and his king, Philip II, and wreck the invasion plans.

The marriage never happened and the invasion armada was swept to destruction by Drake. But now, so Cecil said, a new armada was being assembled. Where did that put Arbella? It was an open secret that in the past few months the Spanish wedding plans had been resuscitated. Hilliard the portraitist had painted miniatures of the girl to be carried to Parma and his son. Anyone who knew Elizabeth well realized it was all vanity, signifying nothing; she would rather have cut off her right hand and hurled it into the fire than allow a Spanish claimant to wed a possible successor to
her
throne.

“Sir Robert, these are complex international affairs …” Shakespeare began. “What are you asking of me?”

“Prevent this marriage between the Earl of Essex and Lady Arbella Stuart. Take on this Roanoke investigation and you will have cause to stay close to Essex and his household. Watch what he does, observe every move he makes, worm your way into his circle. Find evidence against him. You must work for him, but in truth you will be employed by me, on behalf of your Queen and country. There is something else, too, Mr. Shakespeare. You will recall Sir Francis Walsingham’s library and his collection of correspondence and charts?”

Shakespeare could never forget it. For nine long years, Mr. Secretary and his library full of secrets had been the center of his world. He recalled the austere, silent room at Barn Elms in Surrey, the Principal Secretary’s country home where he kept so much of his correspondence: hundreds, if not thousands, of papers and documents from Madrid, Paris, Rome, Delft, and Antwerp. Even from the Orient, the Indies, and the New World. But most of all from here at home—intimate information about the thoughts and deeds of men and women in every corner of society: what was said in the taverns and theatres, the prisons and the bawdy houses; who was swiving whom in the palaces and great houses. Who was plotting; who was loyal and who was not. It was a unique collection of information and only one man knew it in its entirety—Walsingham himself.

“I remember it well, Sir Robert.”

“The question is, where is it? When he died, Mr. Shakespeare, it all disappeared. Every last scrap of paper, every nautical chart, every intercepted secret from the Escorial and the Vatican. All gone, spirited away from his house.”

“Surely you do not suspect my lord of Essex?”

Cecil affected an expression of scandalized shock. “Tut-tut, Mr. Shakespeare, ‘suspect’ is a strong word. It seems to suggest a crime has taken place, when nothing could be further from the
truth. I am sure the Earl has these documents—but you may very well think he is entitled to them, for he is married to Mr. Secretary’s daughter. And why should she not inherit her father’s papers?”

“Are you saying that you want me to find these papers and bring them to you? I would need several wagons to carry them all.”

“God’s wounds, no, Mr. Shakespeare. I merely want you to find them and gain access to them, examine them if you can—and find out what information he held about Arbella Stuart and those around her. I would be astonished if there was not extensive and important information to be had. This is a game of chess, Mr. Shakespeare. It is a game we must win. Like chess, it has clear rules, the main one being that the sovereign must be protected at all costs. To that end, we must use every ounce of our wit to best our foe.”

“And what if my lord of Essex should wield his morgenstern and break your pieces, Sir Robert?”

Cecil stroked his unlined brow with the slender fingers of his ungloved right hand. “The morgenstern, Mr. Shakespeare, is an unsubtle weapon. It was effective when I was not expecting it. Now I know he has it and we shall be prepared. And, anyway, you will be with him to make sure no such thing occurs.”

“It will be like working for two masters—and betraying one of them.”

“I understand your misgivings, but that is the intelligencer’s art, is it not? That is what Mr. Secretary saw in you.” Cecil rose. He lifted his head, almost imperceptibly, and his falconer appeared and took the bird and gauntlet from his arm. “Come, let us walk just a little further, Mr. Shakespeare. I am keeping you from your school, but look how the sun shines. Every man must play truant once in a while. I want the sun to shine always on England. Though the times are dangerous, there is much cause for hope, too. We have a new pope in Rome, one that may yet prove more amenable to peace between the old religion and the
new; Henri of Navarre may soon grasp the whole of France and bring peace to his bloodstained country. These are today’s men. They are, hopefully, men like you and me; men who would rather send ambassadors than armadas. But the peace that you and I both crave will not happen by accident, for there are other men, men of a martial bent who would rather kill and destroy than talk. Will you let them hold sway, or will you join me? Do you wish eternal war with Spain, or would you like your daughter to grow up in a world of peace?”

Yes
, thought Shakespeare,
I am like Cecil. In some ways
. “But I have put this life of secrets behind me, Sir Robert.” As he said the words, he knew he spoke without conviction.

“I can be of great assistance to you. I can protect you.”

Even in the heat, a cold shiver ran through Shakespeare’s neck. “Do I
need
protection, Sir Robert?”

“Do
you
think you do?”

He knew he did. He needed protection from Topcliffe, a man whose lust for Catholic blood ran unchecked. And Cecil clearly knew it, too. “Yes, sir, my family does need some protection,” he admitted. “There are those that would harm them. My own safety is of little concern to me, but as for those I love …”

“Then join me, Mr. Shakespeare.”

Spy on Essex? That would bring yet more danger. Why, then, did he nod his head to signify his agreement to the mission? For a moment, he thought that Cecil might clap him on the back, but then he realized that Sir Robert had never clapped any man on the back and had never had a jovial feeling in his life.

“I shall do all in my considerable power to protect you and yours from enemies,” Cecil continued. “We both know who they are. Being in the service of the government again, you will have all the authority that goes with your post. But I do not need to tell you that you—we—must be circumspect in that regard. No one must know for the present for whom you work. My lord of Essex must believe that you are
his
man. He must never know of
this meeting and you must only come to me covertly and in exceptional circumstances.”