The Heretics

by Rory Clements

  Jane hastily delved into her apron pocket. ‘But it was not about me that I came to you, master. It was for this.’

  He looked up and saw that she was holding a large needle.

  ‘A sailmaker?’

  ‘I found it while I was changing your bedding, master. It was beneath the cushions, pinned into the mattress.’

  She put the needle down on the table in front of him.

  He picked it up and turned it in his fingers. In the wrong hands it was a diabolical implement, as his perforated body testified. Had Lucia Trevail and Beatrice Eastley used this to kill Garrick Loake when they suspected he was about to betray their approach to him? Or perhaps it was another needle, just like it.

  The thought of Beatrice and Lucia, killing together, both soaked in blood, sent a shiver to his heart. Poor Loake, deep in debt and a Catholic: he must have seemed a certain recruit to their cause. And, as Shakespeare now knew from his inquiries into Loake’s family connections, he would have been recommended to the conspirators highly, for he had a cousin at Wisbech Castle: a young lay brother by the name of Gavin Caldor, connected to the Theatre just as Loake had been. The nervous young man who had pissed himself with fear at the thought of his own torture and death – surely that callow, terrified youth could not have had the diabolical brilliance to devise such a plot, unless he was a play-actor of uncommon gifts? Yet he was certainly involved.

  That was what Anthony Friday had been trying to tell him with his scratched message: They are cousins.

  ‘Does the needle mean something to you, master?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Had Lucia meant to kill him before changing her mind? Was it a warning, or merely a little farewell gift?

  ‘It is something I mislaid. A thing of no value. Thank you, Jane.’

  He put it to one side.

  There had been no word of Lucia Trevail. None of her friends from the School of Day had any idea where she might be, and all had been utterly shocked and bewildered by the secret side of her that they had never known.

  ‘I simply cannot believe that Lucia had anything to do with those devilish people,’ Lady Susan, the Countess of Kent, had told him.

  ‘Which of you had the idea of putting on the masque for the Queen?’

  The countess had thought for a moment. ‘Why, yes, that was Lucia’s notion.’

  ‘And which of you commissioned Mr Sloth to organise it?’

  ‘Well, I am sure that must have been Lucia, too.’

  Shakespeare had sighed and said no more. Had Father Weston sent Beatrice to Lucia when she fled Wisbech? It seemed mighty probable. They had been partners in treason all along. Lucia had brought her into Lady Susan’s circle, believing she would be protected from suspicion there; perhaps she had even introduced her to Regis Roag.

  And then Lucia and Beatrice had travelled down to Cornwall together to await the arrival of Roag and his men, and to assist them in the initial stages of their mission. But something had happened to unsettle them before they reached Trevail Hall, and they had decided to part and meet again later. Perhaps someone got word to them that Shakespeare was on their trail with orders to apprehend Beatrice. Perhaps one of Lucia’s servants had been watching him? Was it perhaps the same servant who told them later that Ovid Sloth was to be taken by sea to Falmouth? This was all surmise, but it made sense.

  The ladies of the School of Day would come to their own conclusions about Lucia. Cecil had raised a hue and cry, ordering searchers and pursuivants to all her properties and any known haunts. The ports had been alerted. Word had been sent post-haste to Godolphin in Cornwall to seize her and bring her to London, should she arrive at Trevail Hall, but Shakespeare knew she would not be found.

  He would never know the truth about Lucia and Roag. Something told him they had been lovers, but, again, this was nothing more than instinct and surmise.

  Jane was leaving the room. He called her back.

  ‘I will be away for a few days, but when I return, we will have a feast. There will be nine of us – ten including little John. This includes you, Jane. You are to commission the Swan Inn to provide food and servants – and then leave the work to them. All the work. You are to do nothing towards it, is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, master.’

  ‘I want good Gascon wine and fresh beer. There are to be three roasts – a sirloin of beef, a turkey cock and a leg of mutton. There will be salads, sweetmeats, fruit pies and syllabubs. If they can manage a subtlety of jelly, I would like that, too. In the shape of a lion as a tribute to Andrew and his ship. And, remember, their best potboys will serve us. Tell them they will be well paid, so take no disobedience from them. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, master.’

  He wasn’t convinced. He knew Jane too well. She would never relax. The novelty of sitting at table, being waited on, would be simply too great.

  ‘Send Boltfoot to me, if you please.’

  ‘Sit down, Boltfoot,’ Shakespeare said. ‘Light your pipe.’

  Boltfoot looked about him suspiciously, as though someone were trying to gull him.

  ‘I want to thank you for saving me, and I want to ask you once again about Mr Hooft. What did he say when he came to you?’

  Boltfoot limped to the settle and sat down.

  ‘He said he had been following you, master. He had ventured to London, believing you might lead him to Sorrow Gray, the maid he was to have married. That is all he said.’

  ‘Did you believe him?’

  ‘I thought it mighty strange, but most welcome. Without him, I would never have found you.’

  Paul Hooft, short-trimmed beard, fair and austere, smiled stiffly at Shakespeare as he welcomed him to his abbey farm home on the edge of fens. The waters had receded now, leaving dry land where once there had been a sea.

  Shakespeare did not smile back.

  ‘Can I offer you refreshment, sir?’

  ‘No, I am not staying.’

  ‘That is a great shame. I would welcome some company. We have much to talk about. Please, come through to my withdrawing room and sit awhile.’

  ‘No. I will stand here. I owe much to you, Mr Hooft. Not only did you save Mr Cooper and me from the flooded fens, but you led Boltfoot to the place where I was lately held captive. So I thank you twice over.’

  ‘It was my duty and pleasure, sir. For as I have said before, I owe my life and liberty to your great Queen and country.’

  ‘And yet there is much that I find troubling and puzzling—’

  ‘Mr Shakespeare, please, I am a simple soul. I was besotted with that woman and came to find her. I now know how wrong I was to follow you as I did. I should have come to you and told you my business straight. But I must thank the Lord that I was enabled to save your life.’

  Shakespeare raised his hand. ‘Let me speak. I have been thinking long and hard about the role you have played and it seems to me there is only one conclusion to be drawn.’

  Hooft frowned. ‘What are you saying, sir?’

  ‘You know very well what I am saying. When first we met you on the road near Waterbeach, there was a suggestion that you had come from Cambridge, where we spotted you at the Dolphin Inn. At the time we took you for a traveller, like us. Is that still your version of events?’

  ‘Why, yes, I always stay at the Dolphin when I am in Cambridge. I was there for my trade.’

  ‘Yes, you have told us of your business interests. You are a man of many interests. Farming, engineering, trading with the Low Countries.’

  Hooft nodded.

  ‘But, Mr Hooft, I suggest your journey did not start at Cambridge, but in London. What do you say to that?’

  Hooft said nothing.

  ‘I suggest not only that your journey started in London, but that you were following us all the time, and that was the sole purpose of your journey. I suggest, too, that you knew my name even before we met and that you knew where we were heading.’

  ‘Why would I have followed you? I do not unders
tand what you are suggesting. I am a farmer and a trader, nothing more—’

  ‘But you have another interest: you are an intelligencer in the employ of the Dutch estates. You are engaged in espionage, sir. You may not be hostile, but you are still a spy. You are in the pay of a foreign power and have been trained in the role to a high degree. That is why I could never spot you, even though I knew I was being followed.’

  Hooft shook his head, but it was a feeble, half-hearted denial.

  ‘You have not merely engaged in observing and reporting back to your masters, but have actively fomented religious dissent here in the East of England. I say, Mr Hooft, that you have caused unrest in the fens among the more severe Calvinist and Puritan elements. You have stirred up rabble-rousing outside Wisbech Castle and you have undermined public order in the commonwealth. You may have saved my life, but you did so because it suited you.’

  ‘Mr Shakespeare, everything I have done has been in the interests of England and Queen Bess.’

  ‘No, it has been in the interests of the Dutch estates. It is mere coincidence that our requirements correspond with yours at the moment. Whose side would you take in a dispute between our two nations?’

  Hooft rose from his seat, his back stiffened in a pose of defiance. ‘This is preposterous. You come into my home and then accuse me of betraying you! Without me, you would be dead!’

  ‘Betrayal. Yes, that is the word I was looking for. How do you think the Queen or Sir Robert Cecil would react if I told them about your double dealings?’

  ‘They would thank me.’

  Shakespeare snorted. ‘You would be fortunate to be thrown out of the country with your life. Her Majesty likes Calvinists even less than she likes the Church of Rome. Her friendship for the Dutch estates is a mere convenience: two peoples joining forces against a mutual enemy, Spain. Least of all does she like strangers disturbing the peace of her realm.’

  As he spoke, Shakespeare saw something in Hooft’s face that he had not noted before – a sullen hardness. The soft features had been replaced by the ruthless, clever aspect of the assassin. Shakespeare had encountered many such men in his years as an intelligencer. Normally, he could spot the signs. Why, he had even seen them in Lucia Trevail. So why not in this man?

  He stepped forward so that his face was a mere six inches from Hooft’s.

  ‘You are to leave England.’

  Hooft did not back off. ‘This country is my home—’

  ‘No longer. You have two days to sort out your affairs and then you will be gone. I will come for you and accompany you to Tilbury, whence you will depart for the Low Countries aboard a vessel of my choosing.’

  ‘No, sir, this is wrong! I am a friend to England. I can do you much good service. I have already done you good service. I am your friend—’

  ‘Very well. If you are my friend, tell me the name of the man who ordered you to follow me.’

  Hooft was silent. He bit hard at his lower lip.

  ‘If you fight me on this, Mr Hooft, then I shall bring the full force of the law against you.’

  The Dutchman was breathing heavily through his locked teeth, like a dog at bay. ‘You do not know what you are doing, Shakespeare, nor who you are dealing with. I am God’s vessel.’

  Shakespeare had had quite enough of people believing they were God’s instrument. His voice let slip his anger.

  ‘I could have you incarcerated in the Tower and questioned under duress until you told me what I wished to know. But I will not because I remain indebted to you for my life.’

  ‘He wanted you dead.’ The words came out like the rasp of steel on flint. ‘I thought you might have value alive. He was right; I was wrong.’

  Shakespeare’s body went rigid with anger. He might have many enemies, but only Richard Topcliffe, the Queen’s own torturer, a man so severe in religion that he would drain the blood of every Roman Catholic in England – man, woman or child – wanted him dead with such slavering intensity of purpose. The white dog had sworn to destroy Shakespeare and his family. So even behind the dank walls of the Marshalsea, he had wielded power. And now he was out, and free to do his worst again.

  Shakespeare raised his right hand and pointed his finger at Hooft.

  ‘You are not God’s vessel, but Topcliffe’s.’

  A fine pairing of zealots he and this hard-bitten Dutch intelligencer made.

  ‘You said the name, not me. He wanted me to ensure you brought Weston back to the Tower and execution, but you could not stomach it. And he wanted me to be there when you hunted down the papist whore Sorrow Gray.’ He snorted. ‘Mr Topcliffe will kill you rather than lose my services.’

  How had Topcliffe heard of Shakespeare’s plan to go to Wisbech? It must, surely, have been someone from his own office: Mills, perhaps? Or even Cecil himself? It didn’t matter now.

  ‘And what did you plan to do with her when you found her? What would you have done had she not escaped?’

  ‘What do you think? I would have taken her to Mr Topcliffe so that he could extract all her diabolical secrets and the names of every last papist traitor infecting this realm. I should have taken her straight to him – and left you to die.’

  ‘You would have done this to the woman you claim to have loved?’ Shakespeare did not wait for a reply, but strode towards the door, then turned briefly. ‘Good day, Mr Hooft. I will come for you in two days’ time. If you are not here, ready for me, you may consider yourself an outlaw and subject to the law of England.’

  Thomasyn Jade stood alone beside the mound of earth in the churchyard of St Mary-at-Lambeth. The grave was beneath an old yew tree at the very edge of the field, well away from the tombs and vaults of the great men and women who were buried there. It was a peaceful, disregarded corner, set apart from the church and the archbishop’s palace.

  Dean Blague had secured permission for Sister Michael to be buried in this ground. He had not told the incumbent nor the archbishop the truth about her faith, merely saying she was a Christian friend who needed a final place of rest.

  Thomasyn, too, had compromised on Sister Michael’s behalf. She was well aware that, as a Catholic nun, she might not have liked the Protestant prayers that were said over her, but this was a holy place, whatever sect you belonged to. The church was named after the mother of Christ and it would have to do. Perhaps it might have amused the ragged old nun to lie so close to the graves of dukes and duchesses – even the grandmother of Queen Elizabeth. For herself, Thomasyn could not take seriously the doctrinal distinctions so beloved of the clergy. Did Protestants and Catholics not worship the same God and read from the same scripture?

  The day was warm. In her purse, Thomasyn had a great deal of money, given her by John Shakespeare. He would say no more about it, other than that it had belonged to Sister Michael and had been impounded. Thomasyn could do with it what she wished, for he was certain the old nun would want her to have it. She had spent some of it on this funeral, and she had plans for the remainder. And should she need it, there was a promise of more to come, from the family of Father Southwell in Norfolk.

  Bending down, she placed a posy of wildflowers at the head of the grave beside the little stone she had bought. She knelt awhile and said a prayer, knowing that Sister Michael would have liked that. It had been many years since Thomasyn had prayed. Back then, the ritual had been meaningless; her words and thoughts had merely wafted away into empty air, never to be heard. Now she expected no more, but she said the paternoster all the same.

  The way from Waterbeach to Wisbech was a great deal easier than on Shakespeare’s last visit. Now the floods had gone and the sky was clear. Gangs of parishioners were hard at work repairing the causeways and paths. It was a simple, gentle ride through a flat landscape. So this, he thought, is how it will look all year round if engineers such as Paul Hooft ever have their way and dig drainage channels to run off the floodwaters.

  When he arrived at Wisbech Castle a little before dusk, he knew immediately that little
had changed. From deep within the prison walls he heard shouting and banging: the seminary priests and the Jesuit faction were still at each other’s throats.

  ‘Mr Shakespeare,’ keeper William Medley said, the surprise in his eyes evident. ‘I had not expected the pleasure.’

  ‘Is all in order?’

  ‘Indeed, it is. The castle is now run with severe discipline and rigour, as befitting a prison for traitors. And it is a great deal more secure with the guards sent by Sir Robert.’

  ‘What are those shouts I hear?’

  ‘A minor disturbance, I am sure.’

  ‘Well, we will talk of that in due course. For the moment, you will find me food and lodging, then bring Gavin Caldor to me in your rooms in an hour’s time. Let him know he is to appear before me. I would like him to sweat awhile.’

  Before this journey, Shakespeare had conversed again with Will about Caldor: Jesuit lay brother, builder of hiding holes and servant to Father Weston. His brother recalled him as an intense young man who spent more time trying to convert the players than he did on building sets.

  It was clear that Caldor was the man with the connections at the Theatre. He was cousin to Garrick Loake and must have encountered both Lucia Trevail and Regis Roag. It was young Caldor who had given Beatrice papers of introduction to their furtive world of papist intrigue. But was the plan his? Was he the one with the simple idea of how to get a band of armed men into the presence of the Queen and her senior government officers by staging a play?

  While Weston would never talk – and while Cecil insisted he be denied his martyrdom – Caldor most assuredly would. Fear would loosen his tongue.

  Medley’s face creased into a grimace. ‘He is dead, Mr Shakespeare.’

  ‘Dead? How?’

  ‘Hanged himself a week ago.’

  Shakespeare saw again the young man drenched in sweat, pissing himself with fear. He remembered how he had used that fear against Caldor – fear of the Tower, of the rack, of Topcliffe and his devilish irons, of the scaffold – and imagined how terrified he would have been when the news of the failure of the plot at Nonsuch reached him.