The Quality of Mercy

by Faye Kellerman

  “Rebecca,” he said. “We cannot do a thing before the trial. It comes too fast.”

  “He will be arraigned, tried, and sentenced to die.” Her voice was flat. “I have had nightmares about it. I have seen him suffer. Was God preparing me, Will?”

  He hugged her tightly.

  “He’s gone from me,” she said. “Just like everybody I have ever loved.”

  “I’m here, my sweet lover.”

  “For how long?”

  “For as long as thou desirest me, as long as thou needest me.”

  She snuggled against his chest and heard her grandam’s voice.

  Mayhap you need love to see you through….

  A rarity. A wise woman. A wise person regardless of what was between her legs.

  Shakespeare said, “Rebecca, I don’t want to indulge you in fantasy but…” He paused.

  “But what?” she said, raising her head.

  “Tis the Queen’s fashion to make an appearance before her subjects around Lent—a splendid progression. During such time she has been known to bestow a good word upon the commoner. Mayhap…just mayhap our hap will be sweet and we’ll be able to approach her then.”

  Rebecca suddenly brightened. “Do you think it possible?”

  Shakespeare was cautious. “It’s possible.”

  “My God! Shakespeare, you are brilliant! A man far more clever than a man of letters.”

  “I’m not saying it will happen but—”

  “Oh no!” Rebecca said. She turned morose.

  “What is it?”

  “My father will have been sentenced by then!”

  “The Queen has granted pardons in the past.”

  “Not for treason!”

  It was the truth, thought Shakespeare. “Perhaps we can get a stay of execu—a stay. Procure enough time for the Queen to review the case against thy father.”

  “We have to buy time,” Rebecca said. “The longer he lives, the longer we have to prove the charges false.”

  “Yes,” Shakespeare said.

  “Thou will help me?”

  “In any way I can.”

  She embraced him. “I love thee. Dost thou lovest me?”

  “Aye.”

  “Will thou lovest me now and forever?”

  “Aye.” Shakespeare held her and said, “Let us start with the now and work our way to the forever.”

  For the first time in months Rebecca smiled. “Tis a long road to forever, Will.”

  She placed his hand upon her chest. Shakespeare traced the swells of her bosom with his fingertips. Unbuttoning her doublet and shirt, he liberated a breast and kissed the erect nipple.

  “In sooth,” Shakespeare said. “Forever is a long road. But how merry we will be traveling to our destination.”

  Their lovemaking was rough and frantic, bursting forth with pent-up passion. They held no desire to tantalize and tease, they had no patience. Only a burning craving to finish so they could start over again. The sand in the glass slipped away yet time stood still. They had loved but a second. Their minds, their desires, ached for more, more, more but their bodies begged them to stop. They fell asleep entangled about one another—hot and sweaty, pulsating with sensation that bordered on pain. They could have slept for hours had fortune allowed. But it did not.

  They were awakened by the shattering of glass. A cold draft suddenly gushed through Shakespeare’s closet, extinguishing the glowing cinders—remnants of the fire that had warmed them as they loved. It was Shakespeare who assimilated the circumstances first. Someone had smashed his window.

  “Stay down,” he ordered Rebecca.

  The room was nearly dark, but still contained enough light for the eye to see objects in muted color. Shakespeare grabbed his dagger and quickly slipped on a pair of hose and a shirt, cursing as he tied the points.

  “What is it?” whispered Rebecca.

  Shakespeare didn’t answer her. He brushed away the pieces of broken glass and crept about on his belly. He saw the telltale dagger. It was the same type of crude blade that the beast had used against them in the past. Dangling from its handle was a rock. A strong arm had hurled it through the window, a wickedly determined strong arm.

  Rebecca saw him holding the dagger, examining the blade. Her blood froze with fear.

  “Where is he?” she managed to say.

  Shakespeare boldly stood and glared out the window. People, shadows, shades of gray. He could have been any of them. Shadows blend easily into dusk.

  “Probably gone,” Shakespeare announced.

  “He tried to kill you again.”

  “No,” Shakespeare said. “This was a warning, a theatrical ploy meant for my benefit.” He faced Rebecca. “He had left me in peace for a while. No doubt he knew that Mackering had captured me. Maybe he thought that Mackering had killed me. Then I reappeared up North and he realized I was still among the living, still on the hunt for my mentor’s murderer. He followed me back to London. And this time he means to do me final harm.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, Willy,” Rebecca said. “He wouldn’t warn you. He’d just sneak up and kill you.”

  “He wants me to know, Rebecca. He wants me to quake with fright, to turn my head at every sudden sound. My tension amuses him.”

  He began to pace, thinking: Mackering had enjoyed playing tricks with his brains. Maybe the shadow was Mackering all the while, the ruffian planting false trails for play before a final trap was set.

  Rebecca asked in a shaky voice, “What is going on?”

  Shakespeare shot the offending dagger at the wall. The blade sank into the soft-planked cedar, the rock swinging from its handle.

  “I do not know,” he said. “I…do…not…know!”

  With sudden rage he marched over to the wall and pulled the knife free. He stabbed the wood siding over and over, each stick of the blade punctuated by a strangled scream.

  “Calm, Willy,” Rebecca begged. “Calm.”

  He kept stabbing.

  Rebecca walked over to him and touched his shoulder. He whirled around, eyes wild with fury. He threw the dagger across the room, kicked the wall, cursed and stomped.

  Someone was knocking on his door. He didn’t care. He picked up his trestle table and threw it against the wall. It crashed and came apart, falling to the floor in three pieces. Fruit skittered across the floor, rolled about like bowling balls.

  “Willy, stop!” Rebecca pleaded. She didn’t approach him this time. She dared not get in his way.

  He saw his dagger, picked it up, then plunged it into his pallet. Ripped the fabric into shreds. Straw flew about the room like a windstorm. When his mattress was destroyed, he screamed and kicked the wall again.

  The knocking on his door became banging. A female voice yelling from the outside. Rebecca was shouting too.

  The devil with it!

  He spied his desk as if he’d never seen it before. As if it were an enemy to be annihilated. With a single swoop of his arm he swept his quills and inkpot onto the floor and jumped on them. The spilt ink was immediately soaked up by the rushes, turning them black. He grabbed his desk. Lifted it into the air.

  “Stop it!” Rebecca screamed. “STOP IT!”

  He paused a minute, took in her words. He looked at her. She was staring at him, terrified. He was holding his desk. What in Heaven’s name was he doing with his desk of nine stones in his arms? The weight drew his arms downward. He dropped the desk and it fell to the floor with a thud.

  The pounding upon his door continued.

  “What in the devil is going on!” screamed a raspy feminine voice. His landlady—Inus Meadhead. Meathead, Shakespeare called her behind her back.

  “It’s nothing!” Shakespeare shouted. “Nothing at all. Go back to your cell and my apologies for the racket.”

  “I heard a heap of caterwauling, Willy,” Inus said harshly. “Who you got in there with ye?”

  “Mind your own business, buswife!” Shakespeare roared.

  “Up yours,
you bald woodcock!” Inus screamed back. Her footsteps receded and were followed by a slamming door.

  Shakespeare kicked the wall again. He was panting.

  Rebecca stared at him, at the room.

  Shakespeare nudged the black rushes with his toe. He said, “The straw needed changing anyway.”

  “Art thou well?” she asked.

  “A moment of madness was all,” he said. “I’m well…I think.”

  “Sit down,” Rebecca said.

  Shakespeare didn’t move.

  “Marry, what a mess!” Rebecca said.

  Shakespeare ran his fingers through his hair—what little he had left. Bald woodcock! The old harpy! His eyes fell upon Rebecca. She was still naked, her skin studded with goose bumps.

  Gods, she was delectable.

  She broke into a shy smile, her eyes settled below his waist. Shakespeare stared at his bulging hose.

  “Troth, I thought not I had it in me,” he said.

  “How I wish I had it in me,” Rebecca retorted.

  Shakespeare laughed. Quickly, he gathered a pile of straw and covered it with a blanket.

  “Suitable?” he asked.

  Rebecca pushed away grisly thoughts of her father’s imprisonment.

  Grab all the happiness you can, girl.

  “Twill do,” she said.

  He jumped onto the pile and held out his arms. Rebecca lay down beside him, still shivering with cold. He placed her on her back. Within moments he was on top of her, pounding at her. Gods, she was sore. The ends of the straw had poked through the blanket and were scratching her back. But she didn’t say a word about it. She was content.

  Chapter 54

  For an instant Roderigo Lopez understood nothing of what was being said. Then he remembered: they’re speaking in English. So disoriented he was, his thoughts had slipped into his childhood tongue of Portuguese. Happier years.

  Roderigo forced himself back to the present. He was at Guildhall—a Norman stone edifice, the seat of English justice. Countless trials had been held here. But this was his arraignment. The walls of the chamber seemed inordinately tall, the coffered ceiling monstrously broad. From a three-by-five cell to this. Life was on a grander scale. People were bigger, noises louder, the sunlight intensely bright—he’d been squinting since they took him out of the Tower. They’d transferred him in daylight. Daylight! He’d forgotten what that was.

  The Tower—how long had he been confined there? If today was the twenty-eighth of February, he’d been locked up for nearly six weeks.

  Rebecca! Sarah! Benjamin—his only living son. He wept when he thought about him. Sarah and Rebecca were strong. But the boy—his boy! God keep him.

  An auto-da-fé in England. Spitting as they tortured him, spitting the word Jewdog. The thumbscrews, the rack. He screamed. Yes, yes, whatever you say. Yes, stop the torture. Stop the pain!

  He signed the confession. The one that Sir Edward Coke, the Solicitor General, held in his hand. Soon Coke would show it to the commission; it was a damning piece of evidence. The trial was a formality. Lopez had been officially condemned the minute his shaky hand had scratched his signature across that piece of parchment. But Roderigo knew that with an enemy as determined as Essex, he’d been condemned long before his arrest.

  A Special Commission had been called to try him—not one of mere gentlemen, but of peers. They sat in two rows of chairs facing each other, a twenty-foot space separating the rows. It was occupied by a low table on which rested the “evidence” as well as Coke’s notes. Coke was positioned at one end of the table: he, Lopez, at the opposite end, heavily guarded. No spectators, no witnesses, no advocates on his behalf, no family members for support. Just him and the men who would execute judgment upon him.

  Execute him.

  The commission. All were present except the old man—William Cecil. His crookback son Robert was there. He sat next to Essex, who held a gleeful smirk. On the other side of Essex was the Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Spencer. Who was the man to his right? The Chancellor of the Exchequer. What was his name? Sir John something. The surname was Fort something. Something with a Q-U-E or a C-U-E in it. A dozen other lords as well. There were London’s sheriffs—Robert Lee and Thomas Benet. The official recorder, a sergeant of arms, a bailiff. They were wearing their robes. Why wasn’t he, Lopez, wearing his? Why was he costumed as a prisoner? He’d done nothing criminal.

  Roderigo knew the answer only too well—it was all Essex’s doing. The doctor’s defiant eyes confronted Essex’s smiling orbs, then rested upon Coke.

  The Solicitor General was ready to present his official opening speech. An aggressive, ambitious man, he resembled a bird of prey—a beakish nose, a feathery beard, the deep-set colorless eyes. He smoothed his robe with his fingertips, adjusting his mortarboard cap. He cleared his throat, silencing all noise in the chamber. All eyes were upon him. He addressed the commission in a booming voice.

  Roderigo listened to the charges levied against him.

  Muck.

  All was muck.

  Coke, acting in behalf of the Queen’s bench, began to establish King Philip as England’s most fearsome enemy—a foe with whom Roderigo had been conspiring. No matter that Roderigo’s schemes with the Spanish monarch had caused no trouble for England. Collusion with the enemy was grounds for treason.

  Grounds for his death.

  Coke rambled on and on. Roderigo managed to glean from the florid speech that he was being tried for two capital offenses: attempting to take the blood of the Virgin Queen by poison, and attempting to set England’s ships afire on Philip’s behalf. Consistent with what he’d been forced to confess under torture. His hands began to shake. Quickly, he clasped them together. He’d not show fear, he swore he wouldn’t, even as Coke’s words pierced his skin like poisonous barbs.

  Coke pointed to Lopez, announced his name with contempt. Lopez tried to plant his feet firmly upon the ground, but the chair was too high and only his toes reached the floor. God in Heaven, he prayed, let me put up a good face. Permit not the commissioners to see a Jew cower at their feet.

  Coke said, “This…man who calls himself a doctor, a perjured murderer, worse than Judas himself, undertook the poisoning, a plot more wicked, dangerous, and detestable than can be imagined.”

  The commissioners’ heads were nodding in agreement. Roderigo was done in. The challenge: Would he maintain his dignity or fall upon his face and weep for mercy?

  Coke continued to roar, “He was Her Majesty’s sworn servant, graced and advanced with princely favors.”

  Dear God, help me be strong.

  “…used in special places of credit, permitted access to her person…”

  Shma Yisroel, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Ehad.

  “…not so suspected, especially by Her Majesty.”

  So cold! Light of head. Clouded vision. Pray don’t let me faint as a weak woman!

  “…Lopez made a bargain with the King of Spain and the price was agreed upon…”

  Faith! As Daniel was cast into the lion’s den and kept his faith, so will I.

  “…the fact only deferred until payment of the money was assured. The letter of credit for his assurance was sent, but before it came into the doctor’s hands, God most wonderfully and miraculously revealed and prevented it.”

  Bladder suddenly full, bowels about to explode. How could that be? They haven’t fed me more than a half cup of solids in three weeks.

  “It is my intent,” Coke said, “to prove to the commission that Lopez is guilty of the crimes of which I have spoken. Guilty of aiding and abetting the sworn enemy of England, King Philip of Spain. Guilty of trying to poison his mistress, the great Queen of England. Guilty of trying to destroy her navy with poison fireworks. And guilty of committing all these atrocious deeds not for religious conviction, but for advancing his own personal wealth.”

  Coke had stopped speaking. The sudden stillness was worse than the orated lies.

  What came next in their unholy
plans?

  Coke went over to the evidence table, his footsteps measured. He picked up a faded piece of parchment and said: “I hold in my hand a letter from Emmanuel de Andrada—a former courier for the Spanish government. The letter was addressed to Spain’s agent, Bernadino de Mendoza, and was intended for the eyes of the King of Spain himself. Note this is indeed Emmanuel de Andrada’s seal.”

  Dear God, Roderigo had forgotten about that incident—words he’d uttered to de Andrada at the height of Don Antonio’s defeat, in the heat of frustration. Lopez had been so eager to make amends with Philip—to save Jews—that he had said he might do anything to Don Antonio that His Majesty desired. And it was the anything that was now being interpreted as poisoning. De Andrada had written down his impetuous words, had sent them to Philip through Mendoza. The letter was intercepted and de Andrada had ended up in the Tower. Only Lopez’s intervention and his pleas to the Queen had kept de Andrada’s neck whole. To think he had actually saved that worm’s life!

  The Solicitor General handed the letter to Essex.

  “If m’lord will be so gracious as to pass the evidence around. Here is the translation of the Portuguese text.” Coke handed Essex a second piece of paper. “The arraignment took as long as it did because so much of the evidence is written in Portuguese—Lopez’s native tongue—and not in mother English.”

  Essex looked at the letter, immediately recognized de Andrada’s writing and smiled.

  Coke said, “Master Recorder, let it be stated that the letter confirms Dr. Lopez’s willingness to do service to the King of Spain.” Coke bellowed out, “The text proves beyond doubt that Lopez was guilty of item one—aiding and abetting the King of Spain.”

  A faint buzz was heard through Guildhall as the commissioners conferred with one another. Coke waited several minutes, then quieted the men down. Continuing his case, he said,

  “Let it also be stated that the same letter shows Lopez’s willingness to poison Don Antonio, his former master, if the King of Spain so desires it. If in the past Lopez had been amenable to poisoning one master for the King of Spain, would he not oblige Philip and poison another master? I will soon show Lopez guilty of charge two—intent to poison the Queen!”