‘They’ve taken Lucy. Snatched her away. That Frenchie, the one who came before, marched in with two other men and took her, bound and gagged, off into the night. I saw it, John. I saw it and could do nothing.’
‘You say a Frenchman came before?’
‘Yes, very fine and elegant. A nobleman. Claimed Lucy as his slave.’
‘The Vidame de Chartres, Prégent de la Fin.’
‘Lucy told me all about him.’
‘Do you know where he has taken her?’
‘No.’ Her full, plump lips closed then parted, as if she would say something else, but then she closed them again and shook her head.
‘Beth? Tell me all you know.’
She sighed. ‘I did not want to come here, John. You have suffered grievously enough without hearing the concerns of others. But I did not know which way to turn. The constable would have laughed and said he could find plenty of trugs to take her place. The justice would have ordered me whipped at Bridewell for whoring.’
He squeezed her hands, then released them. ‘You did right to come to me. This is not to be tolerated in a free land. If the vidame has taken her, then I think he will try to remove her from England as quickly as he can. We must move with speed.’
Francis Mills could not sleep. He sat on a stone bench in his small back yard, drinking brandy and listening to the sounds of the summer night. Every so often his head slumped forward, hanging before him like the miserable vulture-bird encaged at the Tower aviary. He could not bear the thought of going indoors to his empty chamber. His wife was not home. She was with the grocer. The dream of the filleting knife and the slitting of their throats came in his waking hours now, not just in sleep.
Shakespeare’s hammering at the front door to his modest home was a welcome relief from the reverie.
‘Forgive me for the lateness of the hour, Frank, but I need your help.’
Mills allowed Shakespeare the benefit of a haunted smile. His face became more cadaverous by the day. ‘It is my pleasure, John,’ he said. ‘I was not going to sleep this night, not until she returns.’
Shakespeare did not need to ask who she was, nor did he wish to engage in talk of Mills’s blighted marriage bed. ‘I have come to find whether you have intelligence on the whereabouts of the Vidame de Chartres. Is he still at Essex House? Or is he with his father at the embassy?’
‘Neither, John. The French have acquired a country property in Surrey and he has fled there with his horses. Whores, too, I am sure. We have kept a close eye on this Frenchman in recent days …’
Shakespeare was tempted to say, Well I am glad you have been doing something of value, Frank, but instead merely nodded his head. ‘Good.’
‘A fair-sized old hall by the village of Molesey, a little way south of the Thames, not far from Hampton Court Palace. His father, the ambassador, has visited and Don Antonio Perez has travelled there also, but I know that he has now departed. No one else of note.’
‘Is this hall watched?’
‘Indeed, night and day. Sir Robert Cecil insists on it. Sawyer and Shoe are the men.’
‘And what activity has been noted apart from the arrival and departure of Perez and the Seigneur de Beauvoir-la-Nocle?’
‘Nothing but the comings and goings of everyday tradesmen.’
‘Thank you, Frank.’
‘We are on the same side, you know, John.’
‘So I am told.’
Shakespeare rode through the quiet early hours. Against his initial judgement he had Beth Evans with him. They talked little. The road was poor and pitted and the night was dark; they could demand no more of their mounts than a cautious walk. A twenty-mile journey that might have been completed in two to three hours in daylight took them six hours, so that they arrived at the village of Molesey soon after dawn.
He had taken Beth because it made sense. ‘How will you gain entry to the hall, John?’ she had said. ‘If it is a property of the French embassy, you will not be able to march up to the front door and demand that Lucy be produced. I could be of assistance. My … profession. I know how to coax a man with guile and caresses.’
‘What? You will go the the hall and offer your services? Come now, Beth.’
She had smiled the smile that had once won his heart in the meadows of Warwickshire. ‘Do not mock, sir. There may be ways. You have nothing to lose by taking me.’
It had been true enough. An uninvited intrusion into the house would be resented as much as an invasion of France. And what harm could there be in taking her? She could ride a farm horse well enough in the old days; she could probably manage a night’s ride now. She’ll have the thighs for it, he found himself thinking, and straightway reproached himself for the unkindness of the thought.
From the village, Shakespeare and Beth rode out westwards in the bright early morning light. In the distance, to the north, they saw the towers of Hampton Court, the palace built by Wolsey and purloined from him by Great Henry.
The Old Hall at Molesey was more modest but a goodly house nonetheless. Shakespeare reined in his mount half a mile away and considered his options. This had to be done with stealth. There would be guards here, as at the French embassy in Hackney. After a minute or two observing the house, he wheeled his horse’s head and they rode back to the village.
At the Silver Stag inn, Shakespeare ordered breakfast for Beth and himself: boiled eggs, gammon slices and small ale. He also asked for a loaf of manchet but had to make do with heavy black ryebread. They sat in a partitioned booth, at a table that still stank of last night’s ale.
As they ate, he asked her why she lived the life she did with all its perils. ‘Why do you not return to Warwickshire?’
‘I don’t care a pail of slurry for them and their parish ways, John. What would I do? Work my backbone bent over a loom or milking cows. If I had never come to London, I would never have tasted fine spices or sipped French wine.’
‘But you won’t be able to carry on this life many more years.’
Beth smiled that sweet smile that had once captured him. ‘Am I losing my looks, sir? Is that a way to speak to a lady?’
She could make him laugh still, which was something in this dark, empty time when it seemed his soul had been torn from his chest.
After eating, he left her and went in search of Jonas Shoe. He found him, asleep with a whore, in a small first-storey room of the inn. Shakespeare shook him awake.
‘Get up, Mr Shoe. You have slept long enough.’
The man was groggy, but managed to swing his thin, hairy legs from beneath the bedcovers. The woman at his side snored on unawares.
Shoe was one of Mills’s hirelings, a foot soldier willing to do anything demanded of him so long as he got booze, beef and a shilling a day. He was short, bald and undistinguished. You would not note him in the crowd at the bear-baiting or among a field full of harvesters, a fine attribute in a man whose work involved following others unseen.
‘I have done my hours of work, Mr Shakespeare. Sawyer’s been out on the late shift, watching since two in the morning.’
‘I don’t want Sawyer. I want you. Have you seen a black woman out at the Old Hall?’
‘A blackamoor? In Surrey?’ Shoe laughed, then coughed as though his lungs would come up through his windpipe. He reached for his pipe and tobacco.
‘Well, Mr Shoe, could such a woman have been taken there?’
‘No. Impossible. We have seen nothing and our watch is constant, night and day.’
‘But you are here, Mr Shoe. How can your watch be constant?’
‘Because Mr Sawyer is there.’
‘Can he watch back and front at the same time?’
‘There is but one approach road to the hall, a half-mile avenue to the front of the house. Anyone visiting the property comes that way.’
‘Are you saying that at night, when there is only one of you watching, that it would be impossible to smuggle someone in unseen through a postern door?’
Shoe looked un
easy. He was trying and failing to strike a light with his tinderbox. He shook his head. ‘No, Mr Shakespeare, I am not saying that, for you are right. It would be possible to smuggle a person in unseen by night, if they approached the back of the house by way of the woodland path. Mr Sawyer and I would not see them under such circumstances. But we have not been looking for such a thing. Our charge was to note all visitors, not to besiege the hall.’
‘I understand, Mr Shoe. You have performed your duty well, I am certain, but we have established that the woman could be there. In which case, I come on to my next question: what are my chances of gaining access to the hall? Unseen.’
‘Poor. There are guards. Frenchies.’
‘How many?’
‘Outside, there are six. They work three on, three off. Day and night, like us. But I am sure there are more indoors.’
‘And do they know about you and Sawyer?’
‘Of course. They expect it. Even if they never saw us, they’d know we were there. But they do see us. It’s a game, Mr Shakespeare. Same at the embassy itself, where I have passed many a long hour. They know we dare not intrude on their property, for it would spark a brabble between nations. So their guards are always lax; they know they have nothing to fear. Sometimes, we have even been known to share a drink or two, here at the inn.’
‘So what do you suggest? How do I get in?’
At last Shoe succeeded in firing a spark into the tinder. He blew on the smoking glow and managed to light a taper. Shakespeare looked at him impatiently.
‘Well, Mr Shoe?’
‘I’m contemplating, Mr Shakespeare, contemplating …’ He lit his pipe of tobacco and drew deeply of the pungent smoke. ‘That’s better,’ he said, and promptly resumed his coughing. He smacked himself on his chest, then sat back on the edge of the rank, over-used bed, satisfied that his morning ritual was done. ‘You know what I’d do, sir? I’d walk straight in. Do it in broad daylight. Don’t wait for nightfall, that’s when they would be alert for intruders. In daytime, though, people come and go all the while to a big hall like that – traders bringing wares, gardeners, estate hands, builders.’
‘How do you suggest I do it?’
‘You need to dress yourself as a tradesman, Mr Shakespeare. Ride up, slow as you like, pulling a cart behind you, with produce. Sort of delicate stuff Frenchies like.’
Shakespeare looked at him as if he were mad. ‘You have just told me that they have three guards on duty all the time, Shoe. Why would they not stop me, and then either throw me off the land or call in the sheriff’s men to have me arrested?’
‘Because you will have created a diversion, Mr Shakespeare. Some manner of distraction that will make the sight of a common trader with his cart the last thing on their minds.’
‘A diversion? What diversion?’
‘Ah well, sir, that’s for you to think on, isn’t it. That’s why I earn but a shilling a day and you live in a grand house by the river.’
At Shoe’s side, the whore stirred and turned over. A soft, unwashed aroma wafted Shakespeare’s way from her body, and he suddenly smiled. That was how to do it. The oldest trick there was.
Chapter 43
SHAKESPEARE STOOD IN the woods with Jonas Shoe and watched. It was mid afternoon and the guard had changed. The three pickets who had been there protecting the Old Hall in the morning had gone off to sleep or drink or eat.
The new watch took up their posts. Two were at the main gate, the other one at the front entrance to the house. They were good positions from which to observe and stop any newcomer. The guards had Swiss pikestaffs, as well as swords. Their role was not exactly ceremonial, but nor was it arduous or dangerous. No one really expected an attack on French embassy property. They were there to let the English observers know that they, too, were watched. Also to greet visitors and to deter poachers.
‘The vidame will be taking his afternoon ride soon,’ Shoe said. ‘Always goes out alone after his midday repast. I pity the horses because he rides like he is pursued by a demon. Lashes the beasts to the bone.’
Shakespeare said nothing. He knew the vidame’s liking for speed, but knew, too, that he had a great affection for his horses and would do nothing to cause them harm.
‘Here they come, Mr Shakespeare.’
Three women were trudging through the woods, not fifty yards from them. They were moving in a strange way, as though they were trying to be stealthy, but instead they merely seemed to stumble and giggle. Their dress was awry and they carried flagons.
Shakespeare’s eyes shifted to the two guards at the gate. Their eyes were following the women, too. They grinned at each other, glanced around furtively, then one of them began walking, quickstep, in the direction of the three women. As he neared the woods he gestured with his hand to the guard at the house, who immediately leant his pike against a wall and walked with purpose to join his comrade.
The new sentries had enjoyed a good midday break at the Silver Stag. It was, Shoe told Shakespeare, the place they always went for their daytime meals. They had a weakness for English ale and seemed to have an eye for the local girls, whom they flattered and courted with a singular lack of success. Until today. This had been their lucky day. Three willing wenches had been there at the inn. Happy-go-lucky peasant girls who had accepted the Frenchmen’s wine and fumblings with enthusiasm.
The girls had suggested a walk in the meadows, where the men would be rewarded with whatever they desired, for it was a fine summer’s day and who could not wish for a roll in the grass on such a splendid afternoon. But the three French guards had run out of time. They had to be at their posts by two of the clock.
Beth Evans had perched herself on the lap of the eldest of the three watchmen, a prematurely grey man in his thirties, who had consumed twice the amount of wine he normally drank. She whispered in his ear, then nibbled at the lobe. Beth had the sort of open, cheerful face and womanly body that always promised bliss and joy. She knew the way to draw any man from the righteous path, and today she was using every ploy she knew. The other two girls – Shoe’s companion of the night and a friend of hers – were performing their own tasks well, too, for Shoe and Shakespeare had offered them a silver pound apiece and had coached them in what was required. The three Frenchmen were in their thrall. They would have sold the King of France to have their way with these three women.
And now here they were, in the woods. Hands caressed breeches. Smocks rode up thighs to reveal flesh. Mouths kissed and moaned.
It was time for Shakespeare to make his move.
Shakespeare bent forward as though he were a man of sixty as he pushed the rickety barrow up to the front gate.
The solitary guard glanced at him, then his hungry gaze returned to the woods where his two companions were swiving with delirious, drunken abandon. The lone guard could not take his eyes away. Why did Jacques and Michel not hurry up? It was his turn. There were three women there; one was for him.
Shakespeare let the legs of the barrow come to rest on the ground and stood up, rubbing his back as if it ached from long hours of work. ‘Songbirds and sweetmeats, master.’
‘Quoi?’
‘Delivery of songbirds, fresh berries and sweetmeats. To the kitchens.’
The guard threw up his chin with indifference and waved him through. Slowly, Shakespeare wheeled the cart up the avenue towards the house. He kept his eyes in front, ignoring what was happening away in the woods and trying not to attract the attention of anyone who might glance from a window.
The house was large and wide-fronted, built of brick and stone with high, ornate chimney stacks. Shakespeare skirted the west wing, following a well-worn path that Shoe had assured him went to the kitchens by way of a walled garden.
The door to the garden was shut. Shakespeare hesitated, then lifted the latch and pushed it ajar. He peered in through the gap and his eyes instantly met the startled eyes of Ana Cabral. He tensed, his hand on the latch. Then he opened the door further and stepped through t
o the walled garden, leaving the barrow behind.
‘Mr Shakespeare,’ she said, quickly regaining her composure. ‘You seem to be on private French property. Are you invited?’ Her eyes, without the black patch, seemed to sparkle with good humour, but Shakespeare sensed an undertow that was far from humorous.
‘I have been looking for you.’
‘Indeed. And why would you want me? I am nothing to you.’
Suddenly, Shakespeare realised there were others in this garden. A trestle table was laden with meats and wines, much of which had already been consumed. There were armed guards, four of them, with hands at the hilts of their swords. And there was an old woman and a young man at the table, staring at him. The old woman was the nun from Gaynes Park Hall. The young man was quite beautiful. His skin was flawless and almost translucent. His eyes were dark and distant. He had the aspect of someone Shakespeare had seen before, but he could not think where or who. The young man stared at Shakespeare without expression as a tiny child might look at a butterfly, with interest but little understanding.
The old half-blind nun rose from the bench. Her gnarled left hand clasped the knob of her walking stick. On the knuckle of the ring finger, sunlight reflected from a gold and diamond band. In her other hand, she gripped the rosary he had seen before. She gazed at him as if through gauze, with haughty loathing. She tapped her stick on the ground impatiently.
‘Do you not genuflect in the presence of royalty, Mr Shakespeare?’
And then he understood where he had seen the face before. The young man was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. He had her looks in every detail. Shakespeare had seen her once, at Tutbury Castle in 1585, while delivering a message to her keeper from Sir Francis Walsingham. This was her flesh and blood, and yet more striking, more beautiful than his mother, whose beauty was marred by her sharp nose, her too close eyes and her dark soul. There could be no doubt in any mind that this perfect boy (Shakespeare could scarce find it in him to think of him as a man, even though he must be twenty-five years) was the Prince of Scots.
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