Traitor

by Rory Clements

  TKBWILTHENEAGEUSEDMDENB

  IATHTOPOISONLDFORERLDAD.

  The letters seemed to have neither sense nor reason, except for one word that stood out like the back-end of a boar among sows.

  ‘I see the word poison in there, nothing more. Explain to me, Dr Dee.’

  Dee shifted close and placed his long forefinger on the paper, smudging the wet ink.

  ‘At the beginning and end there are nulls, blanks – letters that mean nothing. That is why Mills could not see it. Reading from the H, the first two words become clear – Heneage used. You then have four sets of initials for names: MD, EN, BI and TH. After that, it clearly says to poison LD.’

  ‘LD – Lord Derby.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And the four sets of initials?’

  ‘You know them as well as I do, Mr Shakespeare.’

  ‘Say the names to me. I wish to hear you say the names.’

  ‘Very well. MD, Michael Dowty; EN, Eliska Nováková; BI, Bartholomew Ickman; and TH, Thomas Hesketh.’

  EN. Eliska Nováková. Evil nightjar.

  ‘Then it was as I thought. They were all in it, working together.’

  ‘On the orders of Sir Thomas Heneage, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.’

  ‘Political murder.’

  If this letter had succeeded in reaching Lamb’s Jesuit masters in Rome, the enemies of England would have spread it abroad with glee and rejoicing. No more could England claim moral authority over King Philip of Spain and his despised political assassinations.

  ‘My question, Dr Dee, is how you were able to see this so clearly from a rag-tag scrawl of letters?’

  ‘Because I already knew of the conspiracy, Mr Shakespeare. And Father Lamb heard it from my lips.’

  ‘You told Lamb? In God’s name, why?’

  ‘Because I wanted to stop it. I wanted to save the earl. I had already done far too much harm, and I was overcome with guilt and remorse. I still am, Mr Shakespeare. That is why I am here today. I seek to expunge my sin. I am an old man. I do not have long to find redemption.’

  ‘So you were part of the conspiracy, but had second thoughts: is that what you are saying?’

  ‘No. No, I never meant murder against any man.’

  ‘What, then, was your sin?’

  Dee sighed deeply and his tight jawline throbbed. For a moment it occurred to Shakespeare that he might weep.

  ‘My sin, Mr Shakespeare, was my involvement in the original plot to ensnare the earl, the plot that ended with poor Richard Hesketh’s cruel death on the scaffold. Richard was my good friend of many years’ standing, and I used him most foully.’

  Shakespeare threw a questioning glance.

  ‘You wish to know why I betrayed my friend. It was not intentional. It all began when Heneage invited me to dine with him in the early summer of last year. The talk turned to my time in Prague and he asked me who I knew there. I mentioned several names, including Richard. Heneage seized on the name and questioned me about him.

  ‘I thought no more about it, but Heneage called me to his home at the Savoy again a few days later and told me about the Privy Council’s fears that Lord Strange – Lord Derby as he would become – was a crypto-Catholic, and that he was manoeuvring secretly against the Queen. Heneage told me the Council wished to compromise him, bring his plans out into the open and thus dash his hopes of ever succeeding to the throne. To this end, they had conceived a scheme. A letter would be brought to him from Catholics in Prague, begging the earl to be their figurehead. If he did not reveal the letter to Queen and Council, he would be proved a double-dealer, just like Mary of Scots before him. It was suggested that Richard Hesketh should bring the letter to the earl, as if it had come from exiles. Heneage needed my assistance, though, for Richard would trust me above all men. If he did this thing, all former charges against him would be dropped, I was told, and he would be allowed to live unmolested with his family once more. As for me, in return for my small help, I would be offered a living, perhaps Winchester or the collegiate church of Manchester.’

  ‘Did you have no misgivings at this stage?’

  ‘Of course I did. But Thomas Heneage is a charming and most persuasive man. He told me that I would be helping England and my sovereign. I persuaded myself, too, that I would be doing Richard Hesketh a great favour.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘On Heneage’s instructions, I sent a letter to Richard, explaining that I had been assured he would be forgiven past misdemeanours and would be allowed safe passage back to his wife and children in Lancashire. All he had to do was pick up a certain package at the White Lion in Islington and take it to his master at Lathom House. The letter was sent and I hoped for the best. Three months later, I heard that Richard had been arrested and was to be executed for treason. My blood ran cold, Mr Shakespeare, for I was responsible. Then, to compound my guilt, I discovered that the incriminating package had been handed over to Richard by Bartholomew Ickman, my former scryer, and I realised I had involved myself in something evil. Ickman would have known of my friendship with Richard Hesketh. I began to believe that he was behind the whole plot and gave Heneage the idea of using me …’

  Dee hung his head.

  ‘Please continue, Dr Dee. Allow me to guess. You were so overcome with remorse that you vowed to look after Isabel Hesketh and her family with donations of money. You even went to her husband in his cell at St Albans, begged forgiveness and vowed that you would do this for them. You were the noble gentleman of whom she spoke to me.’

  ‘Did she tell you that?’ He nodded. ‘Yes, that was me.’

  ‘And you will be pleased to know that when I saw her, she was big with her husband’s child. It must be born now, so her need of money will be yet greater.’

  Dee sighed heavily and shook his head with something approaching despair.

  ‘I still have no money for her. Heneage has not given me the living I was promised. That was why I was reduced to digging in a field in quest of Roman gold. That was why I was in Lancashire. My meeting there with Ickman was entirely coincidental. He was there on a mission to poison. Knowing the depth of my involvement, he happily boasted as much to me. “If we can’t get the traitor one way, we’ll do it another,” were the words he used. He told me more. He was full of it, how clever the plot was, how pleased Heneage and the Privy Council would be, what riches would be bestowed upon the Ickmans. I could bear to listen to it no more. That was when I went to Father Lamb and begged him to save Lord Derby. But it was too late by then, as you know. The earl had already been poisoned.’

  ‘What part did Eliska play in all this?’

  ‘We were friends in Prague. The next I knew of her was when she appeared at Lathom House. It was Ickman who told me how she had helped soften up Richard Hesketh to bring the earl his fateful letter. She had come to Lancashire, he said, to finish her work. She knew all my sins. On the night of your brother’s play, she was berating me. She suspected I had communicated something to Father Lamb.’

  Shakespeare eyed the old doctor coldly. For a man of intellect, he was dangerously foolish. Not a man to trust with your friendship if he could be so easily swayed by designing men – and women. Poor Richard Hesketh must have been easy meat to the likes of Ickman and Eliska, and his own ambitious brother Thomas Hesketh.

  And what of Michael Dowty, soon to be a Cecilian member of Parliament? His role was obvious: he fed his master the dish with the deadly mushroom, having pretended to taste it himself. Was this the England that Shakespeare had fought for all these years? He felt befouled by the whole dirty conspiracy.

  ‘You have great reason to feel shame, Dr Dee.’

  ‘It is true. I have nothing to say in my defence. No penitence or contrition will ever expiate my sin.’

  Shakespeare was thinking hard. What was to be done about any of this? He stood up and began pacing, then stopped and nodded slowly.

  ‘You have done the right thing in coming to me this day. Will you sp
eak all this in a court of law?’

  The light drained from Dee’s eyes. He shook his head violently. ‘I cannot, Mr Shakespeare. No man could.’

  ‘Your immortal soul—’

  ‘No, not even for that. There is worse. Look again at the secret code in the verse.’

  Shakespeare picked up the paper. ‘What, pray, am I looking for?’

  ‘It says, “Heneage used MD, EN, BI and TH to poison LD …” and then there are nine more letters, though only the first five of those need concern you: FORER.’

  Shakespeare saw it straightway: for ER. For Elizabeth Regina. Her Majesty the Queen. If the letter was true, then the conspiracy could not go higher.

  No, this could not be brought to a court of law. It had to be settled by other means.

  Chapter 52

  SIR THOMAS HENEAGE, son of a Lincolnshire landowner, was a man of immense charm. Some said he was the only courtier who managed to be friends with everyone from the Queen downwards. He even got on with Ralegh and could bridge the divide between the most bitter of rivals so that he was as much at ease in the camp of the Cecils as he was with Essex and the Bacons.

  But above all, he was known as the truest friend of the Queen. Fiercely Protestant, he had caught Elizabeth’s eye in the earliest days of her reign and had remained close to her ever since.

  He stood in the hall of Lancaster mansion at the Savoy to welcome John Shakespeare. His smile was warm and genuine and his words of praise for Shakespeare’s efforts on behalf of Queen and country were undoubtedly heartfelt.

  Shakespeare had come here to this bend in the Thames by Westminster with deep antagonism in his soul. He had been ready to do violence to Heneage. Instead, he smiled back and thanked Sir Thomas for receiving him so quickly.

  ‘Sir Robert said you wished to see me. He has told me everything. Your fears and your suspicions. Let me tell you, John – if I may call you that, in friendship – that I am delighted to meet you again so that I may explain my side of the tale to you. You may not like me for it, but I believe you will respect me.’

  ‘Sir—’

  ‘Please, John, hear me out. I wish to say at first that I know the affection in which you were held by Eliska. If she loved you, as I believe, then I too must hold you dear.’

  Shakespeare tried to interject again. ‘Sir Thomas, I have questions—’

  ‘And I have answers. What I tell you here in this room will explain everything to you, but you will never repeat it to any man or woman, and neither will I. Even Sir Robert Cecil does not know what I will tell you, for it would be unfair to compromise his integrity with such knowledge. You and I will maintain silence to death, for our sovereign, her realm and her Church. I will not ask you to make a promise to that effect, for I know it is unnecessary.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I know you are a man of courage and honour. As I recall, we spoke before of the Bond of Association. Surely you signed it.’

  Shakespeare shook his head. It had been placed in front of him by Walsingham but he had refused to sign it, for it was the rule of the mob. All those who signed the bond – and there were thousands, including the whole Privy Council – had made an oath to take instant vengeance on anyone conspiring to harm the Queen. No trial, just instant death. Summary justice. The bond had been drawn up by Walsingham and Burghley in 1584 in the aftermath of the Throckmorton plot and a year later was encoded into the law of the land. Walsingham had not been pleased by Shakespeare’s stance, insisting that it was his patriotic duty to sign, haranguing him in that cold, relentless way that broke so many men’s will. Shakespeare would have none of it.

  ‘Well, I did, John,’ Heneage said. ‘As did many others, some with no more than a cross of ink to signify their mark. But in 1586, when Mary Queen of Scots plotted against her cousin’s life, the Bond proved worthless. The Scots devil’s gaoler, Amyas Paulet, refused to kill her for her sins, though he himself had signed the Bond in seeming good faith and though Walsingham wrote begging him in such wise to do his duty as a man. It would have been the easy way out for all concerned. A drop of poison in her food or wine, an unfortunate accident out riding. It would have been the decent, manly thing to do. But Paulet was squeamish and cowardly. “God forbid that I should make so foul a shipwreck of conscience,” he wrote back. So, instead, the whole burden was laid on Her Majesty. She had to sign the warrant of death and suffer the onslaught of venom from the world outside England. I believe the beheading of her cousin did age Her Majesty ten years.’

  Shakespeare was not convinced. Being monarch came with responsibility as well as privilege.

  Heneage sensed his doubts. ‘She may be our sovereign, yet she is a woman, too, and a virgin. She has no husband to protect her, so we must. On bended knee, I vowed to her then that she would never be placed in such a position again.’

  ‘So you had the Earl of Derby killed, believing him a traitor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you are a murderer.’

  ‘Executioner.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this? Do you not fear what I might do with such information?’

  Heneage smiled. ‘I am telling you because there is no reason not to. We are both on the same side, Mr Shakespeare, a fact that Mr Ickman forgot, to his great misfortune. Besides, I am sure you would not flatter yourself that you pose any threat to me.’

  ‘And does Her Majesty know of your part in Lord Derby’s death?’

  ‘No. She must never know. It was done for her and for England, but I could not place such mortal sin on her slender shoulders. I am a loyal subject and a man. Derby was a traitor. As I was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, it fell to me to deal with him. He came under my jurisdiction. It was my duty to judge him and see sentence carried out. My responsibility.’

  ‘Do you have proof of his supposed treason?’

  ‘He was plotting with the Jesuits to be king. You yourself saw the hiding place he kept for the priest Lamb. Harbouring a Jesuit? That is enough to have any common husbandman or goodwife, yeoman or burgess, taken to the scaffold. His followers and retinue were almost all Catholic; the whole palatinate of Lancashire is a very pestilence of recusancy. My Duchy attorney Thomas Hesketh, who also signed the Bond, swims against a great floodtide of rebellion. Even his own brother was a betrayer.’

  ‘You should have had Derby brought before a court and tried.’

  ‘Then we would have had to ask the Queen to sign the death warrant for yet another cousin. What sort of man would require that of his sovereign lady? We are at war, Mr Shakespeare. Did Throckmorton or Babington or Parma or Philip of Spain demand a trial for Elizabeth before doing their utmost to assassinate her? If I am morally wrong, then God will punish me and I will accept His judgment, as we all must. But even faced with the eternal fire, I will not repent, for I know I did the correct thing. I did my duty.’

  ‘Then there is nothing more to say. Everything in the Lamb letter was true. Here.’ Shakespeare took the letter from his doublet and handed it to Sir Thomas. ‘You should have this. Do with it what you will.’

  Heneage took the letter and laid it aside. A fire was burning in the hearth, but he did not place the letter in the flames.

  ‘Thank you, John. It is better in my hands than the Pope’s, that is certain.’

  Heneage put out his hand. Shakespeare looked at it, but did not take it.

  ‘It is the hand of friendship, John. I never meant you harm. I accept that I erred in using the services of Ickman. What he put you and your family through was beyond enduring. But he will trouble us no more. He has paid the price.’

  What was it the sergeant, Cordwright, had said while he awaited death in Weymouth gaol? When we are not a-soldiering, Provost Pinkney and me do little tasks for a certain great personage, a man whose word is his bond. Perhaps they, too, had signed the wretched Bond of Association.

  Heneage’s eyes met Shakespeare’s. His hand waited, but Shakespeare did not take it.

  Instead he turned away a
nd walked towards the door. He liked Heneage. He found much to respect in his unquestioning love and loyalty for his monarch. Yet he could not admire the man, and he would never shake his blood-stained hand.

  Shakespeare and Andrew reined in beside a field in Cambridgeshire. The day was cold. Flurries of snow were in the air, though none of it was settling on the ground.

  They looked across a bleak field of beet that had failed and fallen to weed and rot.

  ‘Over there,’ Andrew said.

  A thin trail of smoke rose from a small fire at the other side of the field, near a spinney. A horse was tethered to a tree and a piece of tarpaulin had been stretched across a lattice of branches to make a small shelter.

  They kicked on across the field. A figure rose from beside the fire and edged towards the horse as though about to mount up, ride away and escape. But then the figure stopped.

  They could see her clearly now. Her fair hair and pinched face, her slender arms and waist. And she could see them, for she started walking towards them. Andrew slid from the saddle and walked towards her. Shakespeare held back and watched from twenty yards’ distance.

  Ursula had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She hunched into it.

  ‘Andrew pigging Woode,’ she said. ‘Fancy you being alive.’

  ‘Thanks to you, Ursula pigging Dancer.’

  She laughed. ‘Soldier, now, are you?’

  He nodded and glanced across to Shakespeare, who shrugged his shoulders. He had other ideas.

  ‘So what are you doing here?’

  ‘Looking for you. Reaphook told me where you came from. I thought you’d come looking for your family.’

  She laughed again, but without smiling this time. ‘Shouldn’t have bothered, should I? Knocked at the door of their great manor house and this old servant told me to go away. I said I was family, long-lost kin. He looked at me as if I was a dog turd and went away. Then he came back with this evil old woman with a walking stick. Well, she stared at me and it was as if she’d seen a pigging ghost or something. Staffy always said I looked like my mother, so I suppose she thought I was her. I think the woman was my grandmother, but all she did was start hitting me with her stick. Beat me around the head with it, and she could hit hard for an old one.’