The Heretics

by Rory Clements

  Shakespeare thought wryly of the decision to imprison the priests in Wisbech Castle. That had been the work of the late Mr Secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, back in the 1580s. The wily old fox had chosen well, for it would surely be easier to escape from the Tower of London than get away from such a remote and desolate place.

  The guests ate well in ill-fitting attire lent them by Hooft while their own clothes dried at the hearth. Shakespeare dismissed his initial doubts about his host’s zealotry and began to see that his ambition could, indeed, bring great wealth to this part of England. There might be something barnacle-like in the way he had fixed himself upon his guests, but then the truth struck Shakespeare: the man was simply lonely. Shakespeare found himself speaking his mind.

  ‘Do you not think you might be a little happier here if you were to take a wife?’

  The sadness in Hooft’s eyes told the story. ‘There was someone, Mr Shakespeare, but it did not end well. I do not like to talk about it . . .’

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Hooft. I should not talk in such a way on first acquaintance.’

  Hooft tried to laugh. ‘Well, I am sure we will be better acquainted by the time we reach Wisbech. But you are right, it will never be easy for me living here. Though I speak English as a native and have lived here most of my life, yet I am still a stranger. People are not welcoming, unless they are one in religion. And many of those here have little or no faith. You did well to find me, for they will not help you either. They are a breed apart, living mostly by fowling, fishing of eels and common thievery. They think no more of traversing the floodwaters than you or I would think of walking along a city road. They resent all strangers and see them but as prey to be robbed.’

  Shakespeare turned to Boltfoot, who had remained silent. ‘I think Mr Hooft is telling you to keep your cutlass honed and your powder dry.’

  Boltfoot grunted dismissively. When had he not been prepared for a fight?

  After supper, they sat before the fire with cups of wine while Hooft read them some verses he had composed; Shakespeare thought them rustic but fair and thanked him, then they retired to their beds.

  Before sleep took him, he wondered again about Lucia Trevail, but her face vanished and was replaced by the grim visage of the old Marian nun, Sister Michael. He had worried that he was wrong to imprison her; now he was concerned that he might have made a worse error of judgment in having her freed. He had made a similar mistake in letting Loake go away instead of extracting his secret first. Two errors, both of them bad. Was he losing his way?

  At last, he descended into a dreamless sleep.

  The morning was crisp and chilly. On the bank of the Thames at Richmond, Annis Farrier was walking her dog. This morning, like every other, she threw sticks for the mongrel. It was the time of day she liked above all others, for she would slip out of the house and let the children fend for themselves; they were old enough now and she needed a little peace for herself. The remainder of her day would be given over to backbreaking work in the palace laundry.

  One of the sticks landed in the river. The dog jumped in to fetch it, but instead of bringing it ashore, he began tugging at something caught in the roots of a tree. Annis called the animal to come out, but it would not. Edging carefully down the muddy incline she saw that the dog was pulling at something pink with blue, spidery veins. She recoiled in horror. It was flesh that she saw, something very much like a hand, with rings on all the fingers. She gasped. It was a hand, and it was attached to a body . . .

  Chapter 13

  JANE COOPER WALKED to the Stone House in Fylpot Street with hope and fear in her heart. Her son John was already over the worst of the sickness and was up and about again. She had left him with Ursula so that she could come here alone.

  The serving boy John Braddedge opened the door, looked at her and said, ‘Oh it’s you.’ He held out his hand for money.

  ‘You had a farthing before. I’ll tell Dr Forman you have been demanding money.’

  Braddedge snorted. ‘Why should I care what old Hairy Balls thinks? He can’t sack me – I know enough of his little secrets. He was up the skirts of a bishop’s wife yesterday, and you won’t be the first one he’s swived this day, mistress.’

  Jane wanted to slap the boy for his lewd impertinence, but simply pushed past him into the hallway. Braddedge shrugged indifferently and closed the door. With ill grace, he trudged up the stairway to his master’s rooms, then reappeared a minute later.

  ‘You can go up. He’s waiting for you.’

  Jane was relieved to find Forman looking businesslike. He was fully dressed and the bed was unruffled.

  ‘Good morrow, Mistress Cooper,’ he said cheerily. ‘Have you not brought the little one? How does he fare? Sit down, sit down.’

  Jane took a seat. ‘He is a great deal better, thank you, Dr Forman. He has his vitality back.’

  Forman smiled. ‘I knew all would be well with the boy. It is good. But, pray tell me, what of you and your husband? Have you increased the frequency of your congress?’

  She shook her head hurriedly. ‘He is away at the moment.’

  In truth, she was pleased he was absent, for she had dreaded making some excuse to come out today to see Dr Forman. Above all else, she could not bear to think of betraying Boltfoot by deceitful dealings, even in a good cause.

  ‘Well, when he returns, mistress, make sure he couples with you each day, for it is certain that the more a man occupies his wife, the more potent is his seed. Wait here if you will, for I have cast your horoscope and that of little John.’

  He went through to the next room and returned with charts, full of circles, lines and astrological symbols that Jane did not understand. He laid them out carefully on the floorboards.

  ‘You see here,’ he prodded an area of the paper with his stained yellow finger. ‘This tells me that you will experience new life, which I believe to mean a healthy baby.’ He smiled at her briefly, then pointed again at the chart and his eyes betrayed concern. ‘But there is death also, someone close to you.’

  ‘A death?’

  ‘Not a child. More than that I cannot say. I am certain of this because I have your son’s chart here.’ He indicated the second paper. ‘It shows a healthy line and prosperity. The heavens say he will live to a good age and bring you great pride.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘I cannot say, Mistress Cooper. I am sorry.’ He hesitated a moment too long. ‘Did you bring me Mr Cooper’s time and place of birth?’

  ‘He does not know it. Do you think he is the one in danger?’

  ‘No, no, mistress, I did not say that. Now tell me, did your month arrive?’

  ‘Yes, two days since.’

  ‘Then you must engage in congress four days from the last day of flux. Do not fail in this.’

  ‘But I do not know if Mr Cooper will be returned by then.’

  He jabbed his finger once more at the chart. ‘It is not my rule; this is merely what the stars tell me, Mistress Cooper.’ He shrugged. ‘Next Tuesday at noon. It must be done if you would get great with child and come to term.’

  Jane averted her eyes. She could not bear the way he looked at her, nor the unwanted churning she felt inside as he spoke. She rose from her seat. ‘I must pay you,’ she said, still looking away. ‘How much do I owe you, Dr Forman?’

  ‘We will talk of that anon.’ He handed her a ring, a twist of metal in which were trapped fragments of coral. ‘This is a sigil that I have made for you, with symbols of fecundity from the warmer regions of the earth. Wear it close to your wedding band. Return to me next week and we will discuss money then. I can see that you are not wealthy, mistress, so I shall ask a pittance from you, nothing more.’

  Jane hunched her head into her shoulders and scuttled to the door, clutching the ring tight in her fist. She hurried down the stairs, horribly aware that the boy Braddedge was leering at her. She did not wait for him to open the front door, but bolted past him into the street, as though she were escaping f
rom the abyss.

  Simon Forman watched the woman go, with interest. He closed the door after her, then picked up the charts, rolled them neatly and took them into the adjoining room, where he kept his immense collection of books and cures. Here was his life’s work. It was here that he had divined his cure for the plague and it was here that he wrote the encoded diary of his work. He knew that men derided him, particularly those fools from the College of Physicians, but he knew, too, that he was in the right. He was the true man of science and none of them understood the significance of the stars as well as he did.

  He put down the charts on a bench with dozens of others. They told men whether or not to propose marriage, whether to invest in a voyage and whether they would live to old age. They told women how to find love, what name to give their newborn son for good fortune, and whether they would be found out if they went to bed with a handsome servant.

  Beside the charts, there were many more papers and books. There were, too, glass vials small and large, and earthenware pots, copper pans for heating substances and glass jars for examining them, and the curious dead bodies and foetuses of animals from the Africas, the Indies and the Russias.

  There was, too, a woman in the room. He gazed at her thoughtfully and scratched his beard.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘I say she is genuine.’

  ‘But you say, too, that she is a servant at Shakespeare’s house.’

  ‘That is by the by. You have nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I am not so certain. Indeed, I am not certain at all.’

  At the front of Ovid Sloth’s ancient farmhouse, his grooms assisted the two moneylenders to mount their horses. They were sober-looking, dressed in black and dark brown, with no evidence on display of their vast wealth. Their retinue of twenty-two armed men waited motionless on their mounts. Sloth stood before the great door and watched them. Their meeting had not been easy, but he was relieved that he had bought some time.

  The quieter of the two creditors settled himself into the saddle, clutched the reins of his steed and leant towards Sloth. ‘Remember, Señor Sloth,’ he said, without anger or any other emotion in his voice, ‘if you do not repay at least half of the twenty thousand ducats by summer’s end, all your goods and properties will be seized. Everything you possess in Spain.’ He nodded towards his expensive attire. ‘Even the clothes you wear.’

  Sloth nodded in acquiescence and his immense bulk shook. ‘You will have your gold.’

  ‘If we do not, then there will be yet worse,’ the other moneylender said. ‘We will have not only your vineyards and houses, but your eyes.’

  Sloth smiled at them. They gazed back at him for a moment, without expression, then wheeled their horses’ heads and kicked the animals into a trot with their retinue around them. He watched them go, along the dusty path to the nearby port town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, from whence they would take the river ferry to Seville. At last, his shoulders slumped.

  The meeting had been deeply unpleasant. He had promised them everything they asked, and more. He had boasted of his new ventures with expansive optimism, but they had not been mollified.

  Their words were spoken in soft voices, but Sloth knew that the moneylenders meant what they said. They would, indeed, pluck out his eyes. Now, like a top-heavy galleon, he turned away and waddled on splayed feet through the courtyard of his palatial farmhouse. It was built in the Moorish style, with light walls, a large square patio with cool cloisters on three sides. All this and more would be lost to him if trade did not improve, and soon.

  He stopped beneath a mature olive tree and supported himself against the trunk while he caught his breath. He had a thirst that ate at his soul. A breeze blew the leaves above him; nearby, a fig and an oleander swayed. A central fountain sparkled in the sunlight.

  The crack of a musket-shot broke the still air. A vein in Sloth’s neck bulged, but with an effort he moved on across the courtyard and out through the arched entranceway. Before him stood a large outhouse with white walls, thick and strong to keep the interior temperature as constant as possible throughout the year. Through the dark doorway he could just see the immense barrels of manzanilla ranged before him, comfortingly dark, rich and timeless.

  Sloth shambled into the bodega with a ponderous, awkward gait. The cellarman stiffened and bowed low at his approach, but Sloth ignored him. He ran his white bulbous fingers along the staves of a fine oak cask. This, above all, was his love. He breathed deep, separating the scents he knew so well into their constituent parts, imbibing the intoxicating aromas of fermented grape and salt from the sea. It was said he could tell the quality of wine by sniffing the air in the cellar, while the wine was still in the cask. He signalled to the servant with a curt tilt of the chin. The servant knew what was required of him and instantly produced a long-handled ladle, dipping it through the bunghole of one of the casks. With a flourish, he proffered the cup to his master. Sloth gulped down the wine, then gasped and wiped his sleeve across his dribbling lip and his beardless chin. He ran his hand across his glistening bald head.

  The conversation with the creditors spun through his mind. ‘Go and live in England with your own kind, señor,’ the smaller of the two had said with a sneer. ‘Leave all this for us.’

  ‘I am Spanish, damn you.’

  ‘Your mother may have been Spanish, but you are English, like your father before you.’

  ‘You will be paid. In full.’

  ‘Time is running out.’

  He could not believe that England had not fallen yet. When it did, his coffers would fill again like the incoming tide. It should have fallen in eighty-eight, the year he had borrowed so much, certain that Medina-Sidonia’s Armada would triumph. He could not possibly go to live in England; his debts there were, if anything, deeper even than they were here and his business interests, such as his investment in the playhouses, were simply inadequate to cope.

  Like a dripping tap, every day that passed without resolution emptied his coffers a little more, brought his affairs closer to ruin. His family had been trading wines from Sanlúcar to England for more than a century. These last eight years of open warfare had brought an embargo and put an end to legal trading. Sloth needed this war to end. He needed Spain and Catholicism to gain power over England. He needed the trade routes to London and the west country to reopen – and fast.

  A second musket-shot split the peace of the morning. Sloth swore, then threw the long-stemmed cup to the floor. He waddled out of the bodega and stood in the cool air. The last miles of the Guadalquivir river stretched before him, flowing from right to left to spew into the Atlantic. They were just east of Bonanza, the riverside docks from which both Magellan and Columbus had once departed on momentous voyages.

  Sloth glared into the bright morning light. Hugh Fitzgerald, one of the pretty brothers he had found at the Irish College in Salamanca, was engaged in swordplay with three Spanish soldiers in armour. He was working with his short sword, cutting at the left side of the neck of the first man, then back into the right side of the neck for the second, before bringing the blade forward again for a thrust into the belly of the third. His skill was impressive. The clang of metal blade on metal armour rang across the plain. The whole sequence – step forward, cut, cut again, thrust – took less than four seconds. Had the three Spaniards not been heavily protected by chain mail and steel, they would be dead by now.

  Hugh Fitzgerald’s brother, Seamus, was working with knives. He stood, arms outstretched, a knife in each hand. Opposing him was a Spanish soldier with a short sword. Seamus was weaving and thrusting, evading the Spanish sword and jabbing with his own blade, like a prizefighter. Nearby, the diminutive Dick Winnow was powdering his wheel-lock, preparing to take another shot at the waterfowl that lived on the river and in the wetlands beyond.

  ‘No more, God damn you!’ Sloth shouted. ‘It is like a circle of hell! You disturb my morning peace.’

  The Irishmen stopped their training and looked acr
oss at him, then made a face at each other. Seeing this, Winnow approached them with his pistol and, though they were a head taller than he was, pushed them hard in their chests with the butt. ‘Move away,’ he said, an edge to his voice. ‘If he says stop, then do so. Do not rile him for he is a boiling kettle.’

  The Spanish soldiers retreated towards their encampment. But the Irish brothers and Dick Winnow stayed. Winnow was no more than five feet tall, yet he was afraid of no man, least of all these two callow Irish gentlemen with their jewelled swords and knives, their gentry airs and their tutored swordplay. He gazed at Ovid Sloth and wished to God that Roag would return soon. Surely they could wait no longer.

  ‘Come on, move away,’ Winnow repeated, pushing Hugh and Seamus Fitzgerald out of Sloth’s line of vision.

  ‘Why should we pay heed to the slimy fat sodomite?’ Hugh said. ‘What can he do to us?’

  Winnow grasped Hugh Fitzgerald’s balls in his left hand and with his right thrust the muzzle of his gun up into his jaw. ‘Because without him, none of this will work, Mr Fitzgerald. Make it easy. Come away.’ He squeezed the balls. Hard. ‘He is indispensable. You may not be.’

  Hugh Fitzgerald let out a small howl. His brother pulled him away, laughing.

  Winnow released his grip. ‘Go to the other side of the farmhouse and rehearse your moves there. You will need them, sure enough. Just as you may need your balls one day.’

  Just then, Seamus Fitzgerald held up his hand. In the distance they heard the sound of horse’s hoofs on the hard, dusty earth. Dick Winnow and Hugh looked towards the east and there was a palpable easing of tension. Roag had returned.

  Roag reined in to a walk. He did not dismount, but rode right up to Ovid Sloth. Leaning from the high-pommelled saddle, he clasped Sloth’s naked head between his dusty hands and kissed his brow.

  ‘Pax vobiscum,’ Roag said. ‘I just saw some friends of yours on the road.’