The Heretics

by Rory Clements

  Shakespeare nodded. The only relevance of the debt to this inquiry was that it explained why Loake had his heart set on the specific sum of twenty sovereigns. This death was linked to a conspiracy stretching from Wisbech Castle to the College of St Gregory in Seville. But why would a lowly playhouse factotum hear about such a plot?

  ‘What of a young man named Caldor? Gavin Caldor? Have you heard of him?’

  Friday thought a moment, then shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘He used to work here building sets and props.’

  ‘What of him?’

  ‘He is in Wisbech Castle now.’

  ‘Well, I’ll ask around for you. Your brother should know him if he worked here.’

  ‘What of your orders to infiltrate the Catholic netherworld?’

  Friday ran a hand through his hair where it had been tugged and tousled. ‘God knows, I told Sir Robert I had work to do, but he insisted. A man must make a living. I am also writing a play for Henslowe at the the Rose. Am I supposed to let these people down? This is my livelihood.’ He sighed. ‘I have been trying to fit in some inquiries for Cecil, though.’

  ‘You are trying to fit in some inquiries?’ Shakespeare was incredulous. ‘Would you like to go now to Cecil and tell him that?’

  For the first time, Friday looked ill at ease. He shook his head.

  ‘You will leave this work and go about the business to which Sir Robert Cecil has contracted you. I shall square it with my brother and Mr Burbage. Do you understand? You will go to the gaols and to the inns where the known Catholic agitators gather. You will bring every titbit you hear to me.’

  Friday shook his head more violently, so that his long fair locks swung like barleycorn in the wind. ‘They know me too well, Mr Shakespeare! I have had occasion to search many of their pox-ridden houses when riding with Mr Topcliffe. Now, they slam their cell doors in my face when I go to the gaols. The lackeys will not let me past the gateways to the great Catholic houses. And when I try to overhear them in their drinking dens, they shy away and vanish.’

  ‘Then you had better get yourself a new costume here in this playhouse and find yourself a fine disguise. That is daily bread for players like you, is it not? And when you have done that, you will prepare a report of everything you have told me and all other details you have not said, and bring it to my house at Dowgate by nightfall. Get you gone, Mr Friday. Do what you are best at – or I will have you whipped at the cart’s arse!’

  Chapter 21

  SHAKESPEARE LOOKED ACROSS at the players. He was standing close to the Theatre exit. His brother was on stage, declaiming about an envious worm. He needed to talk with him again.

  His gaze wandered around the assembled throng and his eyes lifted to the second and third galleries. Did anyone here know the secret of Garrick Loake and his death? Suddenly his eyes alighted upon a booth on the third tier. There were two faces he recognised, peering intently at the stage: Lady Susan Bertie, the Countess of Kent, and one of the young gentlewomen he had met at her house in Barbican Street, Emilia Lanier. Shakespeare smiled to himself. Very convenient.

  Lady Susan caught his eye and nudged her companion. They both waved to him.

  He tilted his chin in acknowledgment, then ducked down into the outer passage and found the wooden steps that led up to the gallery where they were seated. In the gallery, the crowd was so dense it had spilt beyond the seating into the aisles, and he had to elbow his way to the front to reach the women. He bowed to them.

  A voice boomed from behind. ‘Get out of the way, you outsized maggot!’

  Shakespeare turned and apologised to the irate spectator, then sank to his knees at Lady Susan’s side.

  ‘Forgive me for interrupting the performance, my lady,’ he said as quietly as possible. ‘I had wished to talk with you.’

  ‘It is quite perfect to see you, Mr Shakespeare. But why should I be surprised? Of course you are here; it is your brother’s play. We are great admirers of Will Shakespeare.’ She turned to her companion. ‘Are we not, Emilia?’

  ‘Hush, for pity’s sake!’ Another angry voice from the row behind.

  ‘I think now might not be a good time to talk.’ Lady Susan’s voice lowered to a discreet whisper. ‘Why do we not meet directly afterwards, if we can find each other in the throng?’

  ‘Thank you, my lady. I shall be behind the scenes.’

  Two hours later, Shakespeare found Will in the tiring-house and complimented him on his play, then apologised as he explained that Anthony Friday would have to be removed from work on the other dramas.

  ‘In truth, I am not worried,’ Will said. ‘The plays he was working on are poor things that have been submitted to us by members of the company. We merely wondered whether Friday could salvage something from them, for he is a fair writer. There is no hurry.’

  ‘There was another thing I meant to ask you. Do you recall a scene-builder named Gavin Caldor?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Why?’

  ‘Did he have any connection to Garrick Loake?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’ He shook his head. ‘No, he could not have done. Loake did not work here in those days. Again, I ask, why do you wish to know? What happened to young Caldor? Always rather indiscreet in his papism, I recall.’

  ‘It’s led him to gaol.’

  Lady Susan, Countess of Kent, and her companion swept regally into the tiring-house and seemed not at all alarmed to find themselves in the company of a dozen or more men in various stages of undress. The brothers turned at their approach.

  Lady Susan beamed a beguiling smile and proffered her hand to be kissed. Will obliged with a flourish.

  ‘Well, well, Emilia, two Mr Shakespeares. What more could any lady ask? You amuse yourself with one, while I talk to the other.’

  Shakespeare did not like this public place. ‘My lady, perhaps we might go to the sharers’ room to talk in private.’

  ‘As you wish, Mr Shakespeare. This is all exceeding mysterious.’

  ‘I hope your brother is safe with Emilia, Mr Shakespeare. She is a very naughty girl, you know.’

  ‘I am sure Will can look after himself, my lady. However, I am here to ask you about Beatrice Eastley. How did you meet her?’

  The countess was wandering around the room, picking up papers and examining them in an idle fashion. She cast a glance over her shoulder. ‘Very naughty indeed. You must know that Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, is father to her whelp.’

  ‘It is generally known. But back to the point—’

  ‘Why would you wish to know how I met Beatrice?’

  ‘Because she is not the person she seems to be.’

  ‘Is that so? Tell me more and perhaps I will tell you what I know.’

  ‘Her real name is not Beatrice Eastley, but Sorrow Gray. She is the daughter of the late keeper of Wisbech Castle gaol.’

  ‘How very interesting. But then, are any of us what we seem?’

  ‘She was an evangelist Puritan, and she was converted to Catholicism by William Weston, the notorious Jesuit. From what I am told she has become a very devout, unyielding Catholic. Those who knew her rather imagined that she had gone off to Louvain to be a nun.’

  Lady Susan stopped her perambulation. ‘Now that does surprise me. I think her a little too worldly to be cloistered away in a nunnery. But nuns are all mad, are they not, and Beatrice has always struck me as not quite of this world.’

  ‘Before her change of heart, she was to have been married to a most correct Calvinist gentleman named Paul Hooft, but she ran away from him and from her family, so successful was Weston in seducing the young woman from her original faith. So you must see, my lady, why I am intrigued to know how she came to be in the company of a group such as yours.’

  ‘Yes, I do see that.’

  ‘I cannot speak for your other friends, but I am given to believe that you and Lady Lucia Trevail conform powerfully to the established English Church.’

  ‘That is true, but I am not so precise in religio
n. For all I care, Beatrice could be a pagan or a Mussulman, so long as she is amusing company. You see, I took her in because I believed that with education and guidance she might become someone of note. It is what happened with Emilia, who had her education in my household and is now a most remarkable poet. We must give young women a chance, Mr Shakespeare . . .’

  ‘I must tell you that I fear this is a matter of conspiracy against Queen and country.’

  ‘Mr Shakespeare, what are you saying?’

  He weighed his words delicately. How much could he trust this charming, beautiful, good-humoured and very aristocratic woman? He decided there was nothing to be lost by being direct and honest with her.

  ‘What I say to you must not go beyond these walls. We fear a great conspiracy coming out of Wisbech. I have no evidence against Miss Gray, or Miss Eastley if you prefer, but we must pursue every possibility. That is why I wish to know how she came to be in your company. Nothing about her makes sense to me.’

  The countess stood facing Shakespeare. She hesitated a moment, then sighed. ‘You seem worthy of trust, so I shall tell you all I know, which is little enough. It may surprise you to discover that it was through this very playhouse that I came to know of Beatrice, as I must still call her. We are all great devotees of the players’ art. It is through this closeness to the playhouses, and your brother’s poetic works in particular, that we came to know Beatrice. At one time she was living with a player, who treated her ill, beat her without mercy and then simply disappeared, taking all her few possessions and what little money she had. When I met her, she was destitute, and so I took her in.’

  ‘Who told you of her?’

  ‘Why, your own dear brother did, Mr Shakespeare. Well, in truth, he first mentioned her plight to Emilia Lanier, who is a good friend to both of us. Emilia came to me with the tale and my heart was touched. How could I resist such a challenge? I consider the schooling of women my life’s work, you see. Emilia was my first. I tried to do the same for Thomasyn Jade, as you well know. There have been others, too, and I am proud of every one of them. I do not ask them their religion, nor do I ask for thanks. My only failure has been poor Thomasyn. Does that answer your question, sir?’

  ‘Who was the man, the player who mistreated Beatrice?’

  ‘You will have to ask Will.’

  Shakespeare pressed Lady Susan for all she knew of Beatrice, but the answers did not help him.

  ‘I fear I did not interrogate her before taking her in, Mr Shakespeare. How terribly remiss of me.’

  He saw that she was mocking him and bowed to her curtly before going off to seek out his brother again.

  Will recalled the girl instantly. ‘Why, yes, John, of course I recall Beatrice. A strange beauty. Intense and troubling. The sort that any man should learn to avoid before they have reached manhood.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Nothing obvious, but those who know to look for the signs might see the touch of madness. An inability to meet the eye, a strange sweetness of tongue for some, long silences with others, and then, on occasion, ferocity in argument, particularly in matters of religion, which I took to be most unwholesome.’

  ‘Papist?’

  ‘Probably. It was difficult to discern. A puritanical papism if that makes any sense. And beneath the surface, something crawls, not quite visible. It is the unspoken threat of violence that jars with the softness of the skin and the paleness of the breast.’

  ‘You seem to know her well.’

  ‘She came to this place frequently and would watch as we rehearsed. That was how she met Emilia, who was here directing the musicians for me.’

  ‘And so Emilia and Beatrice became close.’

  ‘Too close. I thought it unwise of Emilia to befriend such a woman, but I could say nothing. It was none of my business.’

  ‘And the man who beat her? Lady Susan says he was a player and that he attacked her with great force, then disappeared.’

  Will shook his head slowly. ‘I know nothing of such matters, John. That is the story Beatrice told Emilia, but I do not have any knowledge of such a man, and she has given no name to him. Players come and go, for in some plays we need a great cast and our company is small, but I have no idea who this man might be. If he existed at all.’

  ‘You doubt even that?’

  ‘I doubt everything about Beatrice Eastley. In truth, I was delighted when the countess took her in, for that meant she stopped coming here.’

  ‘What of the beating she had? Was she badly injured?’

  ‘Cuts and bruises about the face. She could have walked into a wall for all I know. Emilia might have more to say on the matter. Perhaps she even knows the name of the player who supposedly loved her and left her.’

  Shakespeare drew a deep breath. ‘Then let us talk with Emilia,’ he said.

  He found Emilia with some of the players, all of whom clearly knew and liked her. It was with some difficulty that he prised her away from them and managed to ask about Beatrice.

  ‘I wish I could help you,’ she said. ‘But I fear I know no more than Lady Susan. I became quite friendly with Beatrice, but she never confided in me. Then one day she came to me in a bad state, saying she had been beaten by her lover, who was one of the players. She did not tell me his name and I did not ask. All I know is that he treated her badly and we rescued her. Is she in some sort of trouble?’

  Shakespeare did not answer the question, but pressed on with his own. ‘What is her character? Do you trust her?’

  ‘I would not say a word against her. You have not seen the best of her; perhaps none of us has, for I believe her to have hidden qualities.’

  A large spider crawled up Francis Mills’s leg. By the thin light of a small barred hatch set high in the ceiling of the pit, he watched it without moving. It crawled on up his hose to his doublet, which was stained with his own vomit and his wife’s blood. At another time, he might have squashed the creature in his hand, but he had neither the inclination nor the energy to kill it.

  The cell walls dripped. One of the other prisoners suddenly screamed and rattled his chains against the stone flags, then fell silent as quickly as he had erupted.

  Shakespeare stood and gazed on the scene with pity but no astonishment. He had been inside gaols often enough to know how low the prisoners could be brought. Some pissed themselves and eased their bowels without moving from where they sat, for they did not have the strength nor the care to drag their chains and their skeletal bodies to the corner where the stinking, ordure-thick straw was banked up.

  Shakespeare carried a blackjack of ale and a box of bread and meats. He crouched down at Mills’s side and showed him the box, then held the leather jug of ale to his lips. Mills sipped at it without enthusiasm, then looked up and his dead eyes met Shakespeare’s.

  ‘I am sorry it has come to this, Frank.’

  ‘She is dead, isn’t she? I must have killed her.’

  ‘Do you not recall it?’

  ‘No. All I remember is looking at their bodies, the dagger in my hand. I have dreams . . .’

  Shakespeare put down the blackjack, broke a piece of bread and spread it with butter. He applied a slice of cold beef to it and handed it to Mills, who shook his head. ‘I cannot eat in this place.’

  ‘You have to.’

  Mills laughed. ‘So that I am alive for the hangman?’

  ‘So that you can plead intolerable provocation. There must be hope of a pardon for you have done much service on behalf of the crown.’

  ‘I care not for my life.’

  Mills’s back was bent and the notches of his spine at his bare neck were like stepping stones. He was a carrion crow on an icy midwinter day, sitting alone, waiting for whatever fate might bring him.

  ‘Tell me about your dreams, Frank.’

  ‘I have dreamt of this for two years, slitting both their throats in a great cataract of blood. Now, in this place, I have a new dream. I dream that the house was deathly silent and I was scared.
I drew my dagger, mounted the stairs and stepped into that room, and found the bodies there. But that cannot be so . . .’

  Another man might have held a kerchief or pomander to his nose in this place, but Shakespeare merely endured the stench. The prisoners had no option in the matter, so he would join them in their discomfort.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘that cannot be so, Frank.’

  ‘And yet I cannot recall killing them.’

  ‘You were found with knife in hand and blood on your apparel. It must have been you.’

  ‘She was ugly, lying there, naked and covered in gore. I had to cover her.’

  ‘You must write letters. One to Her Majesty, one to old Burghley and another to Cecil. I will send a lawyer to you to help compose them. They are your best hope.’

  ‘And if I am pardoned, will I not just die here in depravity? A hanging is a quick end to all misery.’

  ‘I will send a lawyer anyway. Tell him everything. Mention your dreams. I will send you a churchman, too, if you wish.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Frank, much has happened since you have been in this place. Were you aware that the letter found in the box aboard The Ruth was bound for Wisbech Castle, to the Jesuit Weston?’

  Mills’s long, crooked frame quaked with what Shakespeare took to be laughter. ‘So the old fraud is at his tricks again. He should have gone to the gallows long before Southwell ever did.’

  ‘What could they be plotting? Garrick Loake is dead, too. His fate and the letter to Weston both lead back to Seville and the College of St Gregory. And yet my man there sends no word. Is he alive – or is he dead? I admit, I fear the worst.’

  ‘Perhaps it is nothing. Loake knew dangerous men. Cutting Ball is not a man to borrow money from if you care for your health.’

  ‘It wasn’t him. Loake died for the secret he offered to sell to me.’

  In a quiet voice, Shakespeare then disclosed all he had uncovered at Wisbech and the truth about Beatrice Eastley.

  Mills appeared to listen, drank a little more ale and picked at some of the food.