The Heretics

by Rory Clements

  ‘You will drop your weapons!’ a captain called, marching towards them. ‘Drop them now, then fall to your knees with your hands above your heads.’

  Roag looked about him at his five gold-masked companions, all staring at him through the eye-slits in their vizards, desperate for guidance. This was not how it was supposed to be. He drew his thin rapier from the white stick of office.

  ‘Nonsuch!’ he shouted. ‘Attack!’

  He drove forward, sword held out like a lance. Around him he heard the twang and whisper of a dozen crossbow bolts. Beatrice lunged forward at his side and crumpled with a dull gasp, a bolt embedded in her chest. Roag launched himself at the middle of the line of soldiers, roaring and snarling like a great cat of the Africas. The shock and ferocity of his charge tore the soldiers apart at their very heart, and he pushed through, stabbing at one with his rapier and ripping the short sword from his hand. And then he was there, facing his foe, the entire royal court of England, all now standing, looking at him in astonishment. He hesitated, suddenly overwhelmed with the power that lay in his hands.

  Unsheathing their swords, the Queen’s senior courtiers ran down the steps from the royal gallery to confront him. All of them – Essex, Southampton and the rest – were skilled swordsmen, having studied the art since early childhood. He had no hope against any of them. The soldiers at his back had already turned on him. He glanced this way and that, rapier in one hand, short sword in the other. He saw that his band – the Fitzgerald brothers, Paget, Ratbane, Beatrice – had all fallen, riddled with bolts or hacked down with swords. Roag was alone. His eyes fell upon the four women whose pass had gained him entrance to this place. They were but two paces away.

  As a sword-thrust came at him from a soldier, he lurched sideways, dropped the rapier and grasped the wrist of the nearest woman, Lady Lucia Trevail.

  A strong man with the rage of battle in him, he dragged her into the crook of his arm and thrust the short sword at her heart so that it slashed into her damson and gold gown and nicked her flesh. ‘Stay back or she dies!’

  They did hold back and he began to inch away from them. Roag’s only hope now was escape, yet it was slender enough with a dozen or more soldiers and courtiers advancing on him.

  Lucia struggled against him, but his arm was curled tight about her throat. He pulled her back into the outer courtyard, then increased his pace, wrenching her into a stumbling backward run towards the gatehouse.

  As he came over the rise of a hill and steadied his mount, Boltfoot realised that something was amiss. A bugle was blaring and soldiers were streaming in through the main gatehouse. He dug his heels into the horse’s flanks and urged it on towards the avenue of oaks that lined the approach.

  Through the wind at his ears, he heard shouting, then two gunshots and screams from somewhere within the palace grounds.

  Suddenly, there was movement at the gatehouse. A man in a golden mask and lavish robes emerged on foot, stumbling backwards like a stag at bay. He had his arm around a woman’s neck, a short sword poised to strike her, holding a squadron of soldiers at arm’s length.

  Boltfoot slid down from his horse and drew his cutlass. He had no plan, but he saw a man with a sword to a woman’s breast and knew he had to stop him. The man was not looking behind him, so he did not see Boltfoot loping towards him, dragging his club-foot along the soft grassy path.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Boltfoot saw soldiers approaching from the left and right. They halted, uncertain what to do, but Boltfoot did not hesitate. As he came up behind the man and the woman, the man turned and rasped, ‘Get away!’

  Boltfoot slashed down with his cutlass on to the man’s sword arm. The action dragged the swordpoint through the woman’s gown, but the man had already lost his grip. The blade flew up into the air and spun away from him. The man screamed, his forearm shattered by Boltfoot’s crushing blow.

  The woman fell to one side, out of the man’s grasp. Boltfoot was immediately on to him, wrestling him to the ground. ‘Assist me!’ he shouted to the soldiers.

  As he struggled, Boltfoot saw the glint of a blade out of the corner of his eye. Suddenly the woman was on her knees beside him, a dagger in her hand. As Boltfoot held the assailant down, she lunged forward and thrust her dagger deep into the man’s throat.

  Chapter 43

  SHAKESPEARE HAD HAD his fill of Newgate. It was a place of pain, the ante-room to slaughter. He had visited Father Robert Southwell there, and then Frank Mills. Each time the stench of death and ordure grew stronger. Yet now he was there again, to talk with the one called Dick Winnow, the only survivor of the band of assassins. He had been picked up five miles from Nonsuch and after initial denial had confessed all.

  He lay in chains, his body broken by the rack. In the morning he would face the bloody passage to death known as hanging, drawing and quartering – godly butchery, as some would have it.

  Shakespeare looked on him with pity and spoke softly. ‘I believe you are a sea captain, Mr Winnow.’

  ‘I was. Yes.’

  ‘Tell me your story . . .’

  Winnow’s voice was faint but clear. ‘My father was a fisher out of Yarmouth in Norfolk, but he and my mother held to the Catholic way, the true way, and were ever harangued by the parish priest and the justice with fines for recusancy. From an early age – from birth, almost – I was cut adrift from the society of my fellows. After my father was lost at sea, a mocking letter arrived, unsigned, that said his boat had been deliberately holed before he sailed. “So drown all papists,” it said.’

  Shakespeare listened in silence. The tale had the ring of truth; many had been persecuted for their religion. His own family had suffered at the hands of Topcliffe and others. He nodded.

  ‘I inherited money on my father’s death, but I knew that I could stay no longer in Yarmouth without committing murder or being murdered, so I invested it all in a bark to take me away from Norfolk. I desired only to live in peace and hoped to earn my wealth trading between the coasts of England and the countries of Europe. But it was not easy, for my faith seemed to follow me like a slavering dog. Mariners did not like to serve with me, nor pilots. Then I heard tell that money was to be earned bringing sherry wines and tobacco from Andalusia, to break the embargo. But it was an ill wind that sent me there, for I was seized by the Inquisition and condemned as an English spy. That is, until Regis Roag and Ovid Sloth came to my aid. They said I could help them rid England of the Protestant tyranny.’

  ‘What did Roag promise you?’

  ‘He said that many thousands of lives would be saved by a simple act of justice. Good English men and women, now suffering under the yoke of a heretical dictator, would be set free. I knew what he meant, for I saw how my family had suffered. It was not spoken of, but I think I knew all along that my own survival was impossible. Yet it seemed a worthy use of my worthless life.’

  ‘Who was behind the conspiracy?’

  ‘I am not certain of its origins, but Roag was the leader and Sloth had the means. He was desperate for gold. He owed a great deal to Spanish moneylenders and was being threatened. The crafting of those swords of fine, sharp Toledo steel that we concealed within wooden toys: that was Sloth’s doing. He also provided lodging, and assistance for us to perfect our skills as players and swordsmen. But authorisation had to come from the casa de contratación. A man may not fart on that coast without the house of trade’s permission. The casa dithered and debated the matter for many weeks, but their decision never seemed to be in doubt and we departed at the allotted time. I suppose they reasoned that the death of Elizabeth could do nothing but enhance the claims of the Infanta Isabella to the throne of England.’

  ‘Did the conspiracy begin in Spain?’

  ‘No, here in England, that is all I know. I was told no more than I needed to know. None of us was.’

  ‘Who were the others, the men who died at Nonsuch?’

  ‘The Fitzgerald brothers, Hugh and Seamus. Ovid Sloth found them in the Irish C
ollege at Salamanca, where they were training for the priesthood. They were obedient and too stupid to know fear. They wanted nothing more than to fight and kill.’

  ‘There were two more men . . .’

  ‘Ratbane and Paget. They were lower than dogs, dredged up by the Spanish from the barrel of the renegade English regiment of the Low Countries. They would do what they were told and would not blink in the face of enemy fire. They spent their days fighting and their nights whoring and drinking. They are better dead.’

  Winnow was in great pain. As well as the rack, he had been beaten without pity. He shifted position and groaned.

  Shakespeare pressed on. ‘Tell me about the College of St Gregory. Did you meet Persons? What of his assistant, Joseph Creswell? What was their part?’

  ‘They came to me when I was held by the Inquisition. I could not swear what they knew of the plot, but I can tell you that Roag visited them often. He needed Father Persons’s influence with the casa. But though Roag needed him, he did not trust him or anyone else at the college. He thought there were spies in their midst.’

  ‘Was there talk of one particular spy?’

  Winnow looked up at Shakespeare through a watery, blood-lined eye. ‘I heard of one young man, caught writing a coded letter and taken to the Castillo de Triana. Was he yours?’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What became of him?’

  ‘You must know what the Inquisition does to heretics.’

  Shakespeare felt sick at heart. Poor Robert Warner. A mere twenty-one years of age, he had been so courageous in agreeing to work under cover at St Gregory’s. Revulsion welled up in Shakespeare at the thought of the Inquisition. It was a perversion of everything that Christ had stood for. And as for the traitor Persons, the Englishman who had blessed the Armada, he must have known everything. He had connived at cold murder – the killing of Loake, Trott, poor Ambrose Rowse, Anthony Friday, and the Queen of England herself.

  ‘Mr Winnow, does the name Garrick Loake mean anything to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anthony Friday?’

  ‘Yes, I was there at his death. It became clear to Roag that Friday had realised what we intended to do with the play he had written. He had to be silenced.’

  ‘There was a paper there, one you left. It had three words on it: They are cousins. What does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What of Wisbech Castle and the priests imprisoned there? Men such as William Weston and Gavin Caldor? Do you know of them?’

  As he asked the question, a sudden thought occurred to Shakespeare. He would look more closely into Loake’s family background . . .

  ‘Again, no. I repeat, Mr Shakespeare, I know nothing of Wisbech nor the origins of the plan. All I know of this is what little I was told in Spain and what we did when we landed.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the raid on the Cornish villages. What was the purpose of that?’

  ‘We had to come into England as one and stay together. It was Roag’s suggestion to attack Cornwall as a cover for our landing. The casa seized on the idea and provided a small fleet. I think it amused them to burn parts of the west country from where so many of their tormentors hailed – Drake, Hawkins, Grenville, Ralegh. They were astonished by the lack of defence put up against them. Why, we even said mass on the cliff top and the Spaniards promised to build an abbey there when they returned.’

  Shakespeare shook his head. He would take this information to Cecil without delay; Cornwall must be reinforced.

  ‘Who helped you in England?’

  ‘Sloth again, but also the girl Beatrice. They had everything organised for us. We avoided inns and slept in the open air as we came to London.’

  ‘Did you stay at a great house in Cornwall? Trevail Hall?’

  Winnow shook his head. ‘We had a tent. Sloth provided it for us and made us appear a genuine company of players. He had commissioned a play for us to say, and costumes and masks to wear. He used his influence with certain ladies to arrange our performance before the Queen.’

  ‘Did you have any contact with Lady Trevail?’

  ‘No. I know nothing of her.’

  The suspicion was like an angry wasp in an enclosed room: impossible to ignore. Perhaps he had been taught too well by Mr Secretary Walsingham. Always looking for the plot behind the plot. Shakespeare could not get away from the doubts he harboured. Why did Lucia Trevail go down to Cornwall? Why did she go with Beatrice Eastley? And yet Lucia had been held by Roag at the point of a sword and was now the heroine of the day.

  ‘What did you know of these ladies?’

  Winnow was shackled by neck irons. He shook his head and his mouth opened in a rictus of pain. ‘Nothing. I believe they knew Roag from his days at the Theatre, but we were to meet them only on the day of the performance.’

  ‘Tell me more. Confess your crimes. Beg forgiveness of your maker before you meet him and hear his judgment. There were two more deaths . . .’

  Winnow closed his eyes and grimaced with pain. ‘I heard that a man and a woman were killed. Beatrice told the story to us. She said they were naked in bed together and she laughed. They had been Cecil’s spies, she said. All his intelligencers were to be eliminated.’

  ‘Their names?’

  ‘She told us, but—’

  ‘Mills? Was it Frank Mills and his wife?’

  ‘Yes, that name sounds familiar. Mills. She told me Mills . . .’

  Shakespeare sighed. Mills had indeed been innocent all along. The murders of his wife and her lover had been a matter of mistaken identity.

  So much death and pain, and for what? Far from easing the lot of England’s Catholics, these conspirators had probably made their lives much harder. Somehow they all needed to cross the divide, as he had once done, when he married Catherine. They had to realise they shared the same God and the same holy book; only the politics of vain, angry men divided them.

  Chapter 44

  THE BED IN Shakespeare’s chamber was hot and damp with lust. Two bodies sprawled upon it, one tall and angular and adorned with bandages, the other slender and soft. Lucia Trevail turned over on to her front and exhaled deeply. Shakespeare sat up against the bedhead, catching his breath, all spent.

  There was no tender dealing here. Their couplings were nothing but wanton greed and hunger. A brutal, desperate collision of bodies. There had been no time for small murmurings and fragrant kisses; they had merely pulled off each other’s clothes in a frenzied tearing of stays and seams.

  She reached out her slender arm and touched the bandages that still decorated his chest and shoulders. Her hand was light and warm.

  ‘The wounds are healing well,’ he said by way of conversation. ‘I have my energy back.’

  Food and plenty of water, along with herbal preparations from Dr Forman, had helped him recover more quickly than he might have dared hope.

  ‘So I see.’

  He laughed. She had been showered with diamonds by the Queen and fêted by courtiers. All had expressed awe and wonder at her courage when dragged away at swordpoint by a murderous savage.

  ‘You know, Mr Shakespeare, you might have saved everyone a great deal of trouble and fear if you had allowed us ladies some intellect. Had you but entrusted us with information about your inquiries – your search for Mr Roag and Mr Sloth – we would have known straightway that there was something rotten about their plans to stage a masque for the Queen. But no, you would not have it, so how were we to know anything was amiss? None of you men will credit us with any wit.’

  It seemed that her little group, her School of Day, as Lady Susan liked to call their intellectual gatherings, had been used most cynically by Ovid Sloth. And yet, at the end, it was this very same group that had proved the conspirators’ undoing.

  In particular, it had been the good sense of Margaret, the Countess of Cumberland, that had been decisive. There had been something about Roag that had roused her suspicion
s when they met him rehearsing at his pavilion in the park of Nonsuch.

  ‘Instinct, sir,’ she had told Shakespeare later when he called on the group at the house in Barbican Street. ‘As a wild animal senses a hunter, I smelt it on him. He had the unholy stench of impending death. That, allied to the fear raised by the powerful military presence, alarmed me greatly.’

  The intense feeling had stayed with the countess all day, but she had not acted on it. It was only as the evening drew on, and as fear gnawed at her, that she had confided in Emilia Lanier.

  Emilia had known exactly what to do. She had gone straight to Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon and told him of the countess’s fears. By this time, Roag and his group were inside the palace, closeted in the tiring room where they were putting the finishing touches to their costumes, donning masks of gold and checking their weapons in readiness for their blood-drenched performance.

  Hunsdon did not waste a moment. He called out the Queen’s Lifeguard. The confrontation between the guards and the would-be assassins had been a moment of high drama: enjoyed immensely by Her Majesty but less so by her chief ministers, Burghley and Cecil.

  In the fray that followed, a young Lifeguard had suffered a cut to the ribs from the assault by Roag, but his life was not in danger. The only other blood shed was that of Regis Roag’s mercenaries. All had died on the stage. A hue and cry had immediately been set up for confederates and Winnow had been caught within the hour.

  Shakespeare had asked Cecil in vain that he be spared the rack. ‘He will die horribly, Sir Robert. Is it necessary to have Topcliffe break him first?’

  ‘As squeamish as ever, John?’

  ‘I would not treat the lowest creature on God’s earth the way he treats his prisoners.’

  ‘And yet you were tortured by this unholy band. For that was what your so-called exorcism amounted to, did it not?’

  Shakespeare nodded.

  ‘Fear not,’ Cecil continued. ‘Topcliffe might be out of gaol, but he is not back in favour. He will be consigned to his country estates where he can devote his energies to his peat and ironworks. Mr Winnow will face the rack, but it will not be Topcliffe who operates it.’