Traitor (6 page)

By now, Shakespeare was almost asleep in the saddle, but he reined in his mount and took a few moments to gaze on the scene. His eyes alighted on a small encampment of brightly hued tents that dotted the parkland outside the moat, not far from the main drawbridge and portcullis gate. Men milled about, cooked over open fires and smoked pipes. Outside a larger canvas pavilion, a group of half a dozen men were acting out a play of some sort. Shakespeare squinted into the evening sun. Among the players, he thought he spied the upright form and dark, swept-back hair of his brother.

As he steered the flea-bitten horse through the tents and heavy wagons he reflected: after all, why should Will
not
be here? He had often played with Lord Strange’s Men, now, after Strange’s accession to the earldom, known as Derby’s Men. The earl had helped foster Will’s career for many years.

Will held the playbook and seemed to be leading a rehearsal.
When he looked up and saw his brother, he put up a hand for the players to take a break and walked over to him, smiling.

‘Have you come all this way to see us perform, John?’

Shakespeare laughed and slid from the horse. He embraced his brother, then stood back to look at him.

‘I would, of course, go to the Moluccas to see you. But not in this instance. I have other concerns. You appear well, brother.’

‘Well, it is always a pleasant part of England to spend a few days. The theatres in London and Southwark open and then close, then open again, then close. These plague years will do for us. In the meanwhile, my lord of Derby begged a light confection to cheer him, so I have brought a tale of faeries and spells and midsummer in the woods. I hope he will like it well.’

‘When is it to be performed?’

‘It was to have been this evening, here among these trees, but his lordship is indisposed with some sickness, so we must wait another day.’

‘Well, I hope it will be my good fortune to see you play. But for now, I must go and pay my respects.’

The drawbridge was overgrown with weeds, as if it was never raised. Likewise, the portcullis was rusted solid up in its casing. As for Lathom House itself, it seemed out of its time, built for a more elegant age of warfare. Its crenellations, towers and castle keep spoke of knights and chivalry and boulders flung by trebuchet, not this modern era of gunshot and cannonfire. Turreted ramparts could not withstand a barrage of cannonballs. Fortifications now were squat and brutish, with massive curtain walls, twenty or thirty feet thick, and solid bastions to cover against attack from every corner.

Shakespeare led his horse across the drawbridge and through the portcullis gate. A guard glanced peremptorily at his letters
patent and signalled to a fellow guard to escort him in. Shakespeare handed the reins of the post-horse to a groom and followed the guard into the castle grounds. They walked briskly across a cobbled way to a grand doorway, which gave on to a long, handsome hall, to the left of the keep.

A liveried servant admitted Shakespeare to the hall, which was oak-panelled and high, emblazoned with coats of arms on the walls. The most obvious of these, the one that greeted him as he entered, was the eagle and child, like the inn sign at Ormskirk: this was the coat of arms of the Stanleys, the family name of the earls of Derby.

‘I shall bring his lordship’s steward to you straightway, Mr Shakespeare,’ the servant said.

The household steward arrived quickly. A man of thirty or so, he had greying black hair and a clean-shaven face. He was attired all in black, like the lawyers Shakespeare once studied among at Gray’s Inn, before Walsingham took him on as an intelligencer – work far more suited to him than the world of dusty books. The steward introduced himself as Cole and apologised to Shakespeare that the earl was indisposed.

‘I understand you have letters patent from Sir Robert Cecil. My lord of Derby will certainly wish to see you when he is well, but I fear he is presently most grievously ill. In the meantime, I shall try to find her ladyship, Mr Shakespeare, for I know she will wish to receive you and welcome you. I shall have refreshment sent to you while you wait.’

‘Thank you, Mr Cole.’

Wine and dainty dishes arrived. Shakespeare sat on a settle and picked at the food. Outside, through the window, he saw the sky darkening. Twilight. He had been on the move since before dawn and much had happened. Just as his eyelids were growing heavy, the Countess of Derby appeared, followed by three giggling girl children whose ages seemed to range from
about twelve to six, all attired in fashionable taffeta, creamy white with silver threads.

Shakespeare stood up and bowed low. The Countess of Derby was dark-haired with spotless skin and a gracious smile. He had seen her at court before she was married, in the days when she went by her given name, Alice Spencer. He recalled her close friendship with the Queen and their shared interest in plays and poetry. She smiled at him, then looked at her daughters and clapped her hands.

‘Off you go, young ladies,’ she ordered, and they scuttled away. ‘Now then, Mr Shakespeare, I am exceedingly pleased that you have come. Did you know that your talented brother is here?’

‘I have seen him already, my lady.’

‘He has promised me the role of the beautiful Titania in his new masque, if my husband allows me to play her. But I fear we shall have to wait some little while, for the earl is in poor health.’

‘Is it a sickness of long standing?’

‘It came on very suddenly, a vomiting sickness of most violent nature after he returned from the hunt yesterday. I would wonder whether it was something he ate, but no one else in the household is ill, and there are more than a hundred people here, including servants, family, players and guests, so it surely cannot be that. My lord believes himself bewitched, but that is the fever talking. The physicians are with him.’

You must save Strange, sir. I beg you, save Strange
.

Shakespeare tensed once more at the recollection of the priest’s final words. Save Strange from what?

The countess touched his arm. ‘I am sure all will be well, Mr Shakespeare. My lord is always as fit as a hare and will withstand any small sickness. He will be up at the chase again in no time.’

‘Do you think I might see him, my lady?’

She gave him a wan smile. ‘You believe there is some mischief here, don’t you, Mr Shakespeare?’

‘I pray not. But, yes, it was the first thing that occurred to me.’

There was silence between them. ‘I fear I know what you are thinking.’

He tried to keep his face neutral. ‘I had, indeed, heard some suggestion that the earl was threatened.’

Silence again. And then she sighed. ‘Yes. It is true. There was a letter …’ The countess broke off, seeming to think better of it.

‘A letter?’ Shakespeare pressed her. ‘What did the letter say, my lady?’

‘It said … it said my husband would die in the most wretched manner if Richard Hesketh went to the gallows. It seems we are to be cursed by evil letters.’

Richard Hesketh had brought a letter, too. Hesketh, a name that tainted the Earl of Derby and would haunt him for as long as he lived. Shakespeare mentally rehearsed what he knew of him. Hesketh was a Lancashire cloth merchant whose large, extended family had for many years been close friends and retainers of the earl and his forefathers. By all accounts, Hesketh was a stout, yellow-haired fellow, who seemed to have led a largely blameless life. He was probably a Catholic, but that was hardly unusual in these parts. His life changed dramatically in the year 1589 when he became involved in a local dispute over cattle, in which a landowner named Thomas Hoghton died.

Forty men were arrested. Hesketh had been at the centre of the fight, but he had evaded capture and fled to Prague. There he fell in with other English exiles, including Jesuits and renegade members of the Stanley clan, the Earl of Derby’s family. It was a city Shakespeare had never visited, but one he felt he knew well from the reports received by Walsingham and, more
recently, Cecil. The place was thick with Protestant spies and riddled with Catholic plotters from Spain and the Vatican. Into this volatile mix, of course, were added the curious figures of the alchemist Dr Dee and his friend and scryer Edward Kelley, along with a few dozen more of the malign, misguided and beguiled. And now a new name had to be added to the cauldron of Prague intrigants: the mysterious and beautiful figure of Lady Eliska Nováková, friend to Heneage and now a guest of Derby. Who exactly was she and what she was doing here?

Before leaving Nonsuch, Shakespeare had pressed Cecil for more information, but none was forthcoming. ‘I wish you to meet her without prejudice, John,’ was all he would say.

The Earl of Derby must have gone cold as he read the letter Hesketh had brought from Prague, thought Shakespeare. As the earl was a direct descendant of Henry VII, and under the terms of Henry VIII’s will was a prime claimant to the throne, the letter entreated him to become a figurehead for England’s Catholics, and to snatch the crown for God and the Pope.
Become a figurehead for England’s Catholics?
God’s teeth, how could the earl not have recalled the grisly fate of the last Catholic figurehead – Mary Queen of Scots? That proud head had been lopped off at Fotheringhay Castle in a drenching of blood.

The earl did not seem the stuff of such martyrdom. He loved life too much. Poetry, plays, the hunt, gaming, his beautiful wife and daughters: that was where his devotion lay.

But as he read the Hesketh letter, he must have realised he was in an awful trap: if he even talked the contents over with the wretched Hesketh, he would be condemning himself in the eyes of the Queen and the Cecils. If he did not hand Hesketh over to the Privy Council as a traitor, then he, Derby, would be the traitor.

And if he did denounce Hesketh? Then he would make enemies of the whole Catholic world and of Hesketh’s kin.

In the end, Derby had had no option: to have any chance of survival, he handed the letter over to the Queen and had Hesketh taken into custody. Under questioning by the relentless William Wade, clerk to the Privy Council, Hesketh maintained that he never knew the contents of this letter. He had collected it, sealed, from a contact near London and had then ridden for Lancashire. Eventually, however, he confessed his guilt to high treason and was executed by hanging, drawing and quartering at St Albans last November.

Derby had been left badly wounded by the affair. Many Catholics now believed him a betrayer for bearing witness against Hesketh and sending him to the scaffold, while many Protestants were still not convinced that he was not, himself, a Catholic with designs on the crown of England.

Now the earl was on his sickbed. Could any man believe this to be mere coincidence?

‘This threatening letter, my lady … do you know who it was from?’

The Countess of Derby’s proud head did not fall, nor did her shoulders slump. ‘An enemy, of course.’

‘May I see the letter?’

‘It has been destroyed. We have no idea who sent it. One of Hesketh’s family, perhaps, or an enemy at court. Any number of people. Sometimes I think we are hated by the whole world, Mr Shakespeare, and I do not understand why. We are Christians and have led Christian lives, cultivating the arts and literature and learning. Never has Ferdinando strayed into politics or joined a grouping to seek power.’

What was it Sir Thomas Heneage had said to him in Cecil’s chambers at Nonsuch Palace
? Lord Derby has few enough visitors these days
. He did not press the issue, but asked the question he most wished answered.

‘Does the name Lamb mean anything to you?’

The countess hesitated, as the constable had done.

Shakespeare waited for her.

At last she smiled, as if suddenly remembering. ‘Why, yes, I have met Mr Lamb. He came here at Christmas, with some of the townspeople, to celebrate the birth of our Lord. Such occasions are not uncommon. My husband sees it as his duty to provide such entertainments for the local gentry and merchants.’

‘You were not at court last Christmas?’

‘Are you sent to spy on us, Mr Shakespeare? You seem to have a great interest in affairs that cannot possibly concern you.’

He shook his head. ‘No, I am not here to spy on you. But, yes, this does concern me, as I shall explain.’

‘Very well. My husband considered it unfitting to go to court at Christmas, following the recent stir. He was not sure how welcome we would be.’

Shakespeare understood. ‘What do you recall of Lamb?’

‘I did not mark him much, but I do recall I was introduced to him and thought him a pleasant man. He had an easy manner. Why, what makes you ask about him?’

‘He is dead, my lady, shot as a deserter by a provost marshal named Pinkney, who claims to be responsible only to the Lord Lieutenant. His lordship your husband is, of course, Lord Lieutenant of this county.’

The countess was clearly shocked. Her fair skin blanched to a deathly pallor. ‘Father Lamb is dead?’

Shakespeare nodded, noting the title. He had not mentioned that the dead man was a priest. ‘He died with a plea on his lips – a plea that I should save his lordship, though he did not specify what I should save him from.’

Her hand went to her slender throat. ‘Mr Shakespeare, if you are trying to frighten me yet more, I confess you are succeeding …’

‘Would I be correct in thinking that you knew Father Lamb rather better than you have acknowledged?’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘It has long been rumoured that my lord of Derby is of the old faith.’

Suddenly her manner changed. ‘I ask again – are you sent here to spy on my lord of Derby? Shame on you, Mr Shakespeare!’

He shook his head. ‘That is not why I am here. However, I am worried that I may have walked into something of great moment and I would be neglecting my duty if I ignored it.’

‘Tittle-tattle. Assume nothing, Mr Shakespeare,’ she said, almost spitting the words. ‘Assumptions are dangerous, as neighbour Hesketh discovered at the cost of his head.’

‘I apologise if I offended you, my lady. In fact, I am here to see Dr Dee, whom I gather is your guest, that is all, and to request your assistance in protecting him. It is feared he may be in some peril, which I shall explain to you.’