His Dark Lady

by Victoria Lamb

  As any she belied with false compare.

  Will left the Three Tuns in the early evening, drunk and intending to head home for a sleep. Instead, he found himself threading his way through the narrow city streets as though on some vital errand. As he headed west, bathed in the warm, summery light of the setting sun, he turned over the plot of a new history play in his head, forming a plot from an excellent story he’d found in Holinshed. It would be a chronicle play concerning King Henry the Fourth and the aptly named Hotspur, with several good battle scenes to test Burbage’s new cannon. Only when he came to a halt outside the dark, shuttered house in which Lucy lived with her guardian did Will realize what he intended.

  He knocked but there was no answer.

  Tentatively, he pushed at the door, and it swung open. Going inside, he found the downstairs room empty, the fire unlit.

  Will hesitated, then crept unsteadily upstairs, not knowing whether Lucy was at home but determined to look.

  She was lying on the bed in the upstairs chamber, her eyes closed in sleep, wearing a day gown and stockings but with her shoes and cap removed. One bare forearm dangled towards the floor, her hair fanned out around her head in luxurious abundance like a black halo.

  There had been no sign of Master Goodluck downstairs. Perhaps he was dead. The fellow had looked half-dead the last time Will had seen him. Perhaps he’d been arrested again and taken back to the Tower. Or perhaps he had tried to make love to Lucy and she’d told him to get out.

  Still a little drunk, Will stood at the foot of the bed for a few moments and stared down at her body. Lucy was dreaming. He watched her eyelids shift restlessly from side to side, and the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Apart from those tell-tale movements, this was how Lucy might look if she were dead.

  The macabre nature of his thoughts disturbed him. Will knelt beside her. ‘Lucy?’

  She stirred, then sat up, suddenly alarmed. ‘Will? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Hush,’ he said, and leaned forward to kiss her.

  Lucy struggled, but he held her down, anchoring her strong thighs with his own and bearing down on her wrists to keep her safely beneath him. Her body arched as she tried to wriggle away, exposing her warm black throat. He kissed her there too, with slow intent, all the way down to her bodice.

  ‘I need you more than the ripe wheat needs the sun,’ he muttered against her throat. ‘Don’t fight me, Lucy. You kill me with your coldness.’

  ‘Let me go!’

  ‘Where is your guardian?’

  ‘He will be back any moment. Let me go. If Goodluck catches you here—’

  ‘Goodluck was in no fit condition to fight when I saw him last.’

  She was begging him. ‘Please, Will. I cannot do this.’

  He drew her wrists together above her head and reached down with his right hand, slowly raising her skirt. ‘Can you not?’

  Lucy closed her eyes as he stroked between her thighs, as if to shut out the truth of what they were doing. But it was impossible to hide her readiness from his searching fingers.

  Desire flooded him like a dark well, bringing him swiftly to erection, and it was all Will could do not to mount her there and then, like a tethered mare. But he forced himself to go carefully, leaning forward to take her mouth again, his fingers working inside her as they kissed.

  She groaned.

  It was the sound he had been waiting for. Releasing her wrists, Will knelt between her thighs, loosening his clothing. A moment later, he pushed inside and groaned himself, thrusting swiftly and urgently as he began to take his pleasure.

  To his surprise, Lucy did not lie passive this time but moaned and rocked with him, raising her buttocks off the bed and rolling her hips to his rhythm.

  She was such a beauty. All woman, too. Pleased by her response, he dragged down her bodice and sucked on her breasts. They felt fuller than he remembered, ripe like dark fruit and eager for his mouth. Her hips rose to meet his, and she moaned his name. She wanted him!

  Throwing back his head, Will drove into her, the cot creaking beneath them, his body demanding, and hers answering just as forcefully.

  He looked down and found her eyes open, her face shining with sweat. ‘I love you,’ he gasped.

  It was true, too. Not just words to keep her heart willing. He did love her. Yet saying it made it somehow more true than ever before. It was a revelation and one which lifted him swiftly towards the end.

  Dazed, he repeated, ‘I love you,’ and renewed his thrusts.

  Lucy did not reply but groaned and locked her powerful thighs behind his back, grinding herself greedily against him. At last she gave a wild cry, her body suddenly stiffening, and he knew she had reached her peak.

  His own desire could not be held back any longer. Will buried himself inside her, crying her name as he filled her. It was only afterwards that he realized whose name he had cried.

  She sat up as soon as he rolled away. ‘What did you call me?’

  His eyes had been closed in ecstasy as his body climbed slowly down from that high mountain, but now Will opened them. Anne. He had called her by his wife’s name. What kind of fool was he?

  ‘What?’

  Play for time, he thought. It was possible she had not heard exactly what he had said. All things were possible in love. Which poet had said that? He wiped his hot forehead with the back of his hand and shifted on the bed, wondering how to explain his way out of this mess.

  Lucy was standing now, tidying her bodice where he had dragged it down, her gown already hiding those beautiful thighs again. Such strong sturdy legs, made for a man to climb up and lose himself between.

  ‘Who is Anne?’

  He felt his cheeks flush, just as though he were a small boy caught stealing from the pantry by his mother.

  His lie was instinctive. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You called me Anne!’ Lucy half-screamed, then backed away from him as though he was somehow poisonous. She came up against the wall and stopped there, staring at him. A moment later she had snatched up her discarded cap and run down the stairs.

  ‘Lucy, no!’

  Will stumbled wildly to his feet and went after her, losing his footing on the narrow stairs and ending up on his hands and knees at the bottom.

  Both hands clasped to her cheeks, Lucy was staring at the man, his face scarred and battered under a dark cap, who stood watching from beside the fire.

  It was Master Goodluck.

  Seventeen

  LUCY’S FEET REFUSED to move. She saw the anger and disappointment in her guardian’s face and shrank from it. Goodluck had come home while the two of them were upstairs, and must have heard everything. And she had sworn to him that she would never lie with Will Shakespeare again. What must he think of her now?

  Goodluck had seen her despair as soon as he was well enough to sit up in his bed, and she had told him what she could, hot-faced and stammering. That Will Shakespeare had come to court and tried to seduce her, that she had refused at first, then allowed him into her bed, that little by little she had fallen in love with Will, and still he had not married her.

  Goodluck walked past her and looked her lover in the face. ‘You are Will Shakespeare,’ he said flatly.

  ‘I am, sir.’

  ‘Lucy has spoken of you. You were only a boy when she met you at Kenilworth. Is your father still living?’

  ‘When last I saw him, yes.’

  ‘Then, by Christ,’ Goodluck exclaimed bitterly, ‘he should have whipped you as a boy to teach you the difference between good and evil. You have shamed my ward without making her the slightest promise of marriage, and not once, but many times. Now that game is at an end, and you will marry her.’

  Will looked at him steadily. ‘I cannot.’

  ‘How dare you defy me in this? You have had your way with Lucy and now you must—’

  ‘I cannot marry her,’ Will interrupted him, ‘because I am already married.’

&nbs
p; Lucy drew her breath in and turned to look at Will. Already married? He was already married?

  She said nothing though, her gaze dropping before the violent intensity in his face. What was there to say to him? She had begun to suspect weeks ago that Will was not free to marry, but by then it had been too late. Already desperately in love with the man, she had lied to Cathy and even to herself, imagining other reasons why he could not marry – but never the most likely one. And now she would pay the price for her blind and trusting faith, as many women had paid it before her.

  Will took a hurried step towards her but stopped, finding Goodluck barring his way. For a moment she thought Will would attack Goodluck, and wondered feverishly where her dagger was. No one would attack her guardian again, not while she still drew breath. Then he stepped back and sighed.

  ‘I’m sorry. It was wrong of me not to tell you of my marriage when we first met again at Whitehall. But I could not help myself. I knew you would never consent even to speak with me if you knew that I was married. Nor was I lying when I said I was in love with you.’

  ‘You called me Anne before. Is your wife’s name Anne?’ she asked doggedly.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed dully.

  ‘You have children by her?’

  ‘Two daughters and a son.’

  ‘Oh, three children! He has a wife and three children at home!’ She gave a cracked laugh. ‘How foolish of me to think I could at least bear you an illegitimate heir. Instead, I merely bear a fourth to add to your tally.’

  Will stared at her like a fool.

  ‘I am with child!’ she shouted, tears of pure fury in her eyes, and saw Goodluck turn to her in horrified disbelief.

  Her nerve broke at the sight of his expression. She could have faced Will’s coldness a thousand times, met his wife in the street and had her hair pulled or her face slapped by that rightly offended woman, but to have Goodluck look at her like that …

  Lucy turned and ran from the house, still in her stockings and without shoes, her hair unbound. The sun had gone down and a smoky dusk was falling through the city. Men in tavern doorways turned to shout and stare at her running figure, but Lucy paid them no heed. She did not know where she was going, but knew she could not stay under that roof a moment longer. The river, she thought. The river. And let her feet take her downhill, slapping through the muddy stink of the open ditches, running helter-skelter for the rolling Thames.

  She had not gone further than the new Angel tavern on the corner when her path was blocked by a cart turning slowly up the narrow street. The horses reared up as she came running out of the twilight, and the driver swore at her for ‘a fool of a whore’.

  She fell backwards into one of the ditches, and lay there in the filthy water, in the shadow of the overhanging houses.

  When she looked up, a man had descended from the cart and was holding out his hand. It was Sir Francis Walsingham, his face troubled as he bent towards her.

  ‘Come,’ he insisted. ‘You are hurt and must let me help you home, Mistress Morgan.’

  ‘I have no home,’ she managed hoarsely.

  Sir Francis helped Lucy to her feet. His brows were raised, yet he made no comment about her wild and unkempt appearance. ‘Then I shall continue on foot alone and you must return to my house in Seething Lane in the care of my man.’ Walsingham seemed preoccupied, indicating that she should climb up into the cart next to his secretary. She did so, too much in despair to bother that her skirts were badly stained or to take offence at the disapproving look on his secretary’s face. Let the man think what he liked. She was past caring. ‘I would escort you there myself. But I must speak to Master Goodluck on an urgent matter that cannot wait.’

  Walsingham gave the driver his instructions, smiling reassuringly up at Lucy.

  ‘Don’t look so sad, Lucy,’ he told her. ‘I have worked hard on your behalf and the Queen has agreed to grant you a place at court again, if your voice is still as sweet as it was.’

  Eighteen

  The woods near Uxendon Hall, Middlesex, August 1586

  ‘HOW MANY MEN are there, would you say, and how long have they been in there?’ Goodluck asked, turning to the boy who had led them silently and unerringly through the woods. They were crouched now behind the ancient, fallen trunk of an oak, its bark mossed and crawling with flies in the summer heat. He wished he was still in London, but when Walsingham cracked the whip, he had no choice but to run. And this time it seemed he had run straight back into the arms of his former conspirators. Well, their time on this earth was nearly done. And then he could return and see that his ward was properly cared for.

  His blood was up as soon as he thought of Lucy. Don’t dwell on it, he told himself. Lucy is a distraction. A weakness. You will not help her by getting yourself killed today.

  ‘Five, sir,’ the boy offered. He scratched his head, the lice in his short yellow hair clearly visible. ‘Three days now, belike. The cloaked one comes and goes, the other four remain.’

  ‘He brings food?’

  ‘Aye, sir, and walnuts.’

  The boy laughed, as though this was a great jest.

  Goodluck frowned. ‘Walnuts?’

  ‘For the juice, sir. It stains th’ hands and face, so’s gentlemen may pass as country folk.’

  ‘Where does this “cloaked one” find food hereabouts? We must be five miles from the nearest town.’

  Tentatively, the boy held out his scab-covered palm. ‘I … I forget, sir.’

  Goodluck placed another shilling in his hand. ‘He must have friends nearby. Where?’

  The coin disappeared under the boy’s ragged jerkin. ‘Uxendon Hall, two mile east. They keep the old ways there.’

  ‘Catholics, you mean?’

  The boy shrugged and spat on to the leafy floor. Either he had come to the end of his knowledge, or the word ‘Catholic’ was enough to strike dumb fear into him. Probably the latter, Goodluck thought. With farmers back to being hanged in the marketplace again for saying the wrong prayers on a Sunday, they knew when to fall silent, these close-mouthed country folk.

  ‘I see.’ Goodluck glanced at the captain and four guardsmen who had accompanied them through the dense woodland. ‘Well, it appears we outnumber them, which is good news. But only by one man.’

  ‘We have a musket, though,’ the captain pointed out, ‘and enough shot for them all, if Ned can reload quickly enough.’

  ‘What, deprive all London of a public execution?’ Goodluck said drily. ‘No, better let me go in first. Then threaten to shoot if they run. But only shoot over their heads to scare them into surrendering. My orders are to have none killed who could have been taken alive and brought to trial.’

  The captain seemed astonished. ‘You are going in alone? If they suspect you, they’ll kill you.’

  ‘Let’s hope it will not come to that, then. I have a good story to spin, and they may trust me enough to tell me where the others are. No, I am determined.’

  Much to the amusement of the boy, his mouth agape and eyes wide, Goodluck took up a handful of dirt from the woodland floor and rubbed it well into his hands and face, then smeared his shirt with it too, wincing when he inadvertently brushed against the tender flesh below. For good measure, he ran his sleeves along the rough green-mossed trunk of the oak and casually ruined them.

  ‘There,’ he said, pushing his hands through his hair to dishevel it. ‘Now I could pass as a fugitive too. Five traitors holed up here in the woods, but as many yet unaccounted for this side of London. Sir Francis Walsingham has charged me with finding them all, and what I need more than dead men is information.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ A note of respect in his voice, the captain fell back. ‘You heard the man. We wait for the signal as arranged, and no discharging your muskets except over their heads.’

  The captain sent two of his men round to the back of the narrow glade where the traitors had been camping, then nodded to Goodluck.

  Crouching slightly to protect his injuries, Goodl
uck slipped between the creeper-thick trunks as soundlessly as he could, loosening the dagger at his belt as he crept nearer the men’s hiding-place. It was nearly two weeks since his arrest at Pooley’s house. He had a story ready to explain his escape from the Tower. He had been beaten by Walsingham’s men for information, then released when nothing could be proved. As stories went, it was far from convincing. But these were men on the run for their lives. Any story would be suspect, however sound, and he only had to keep their company an hour or less.

  It was a hot August afternoon, a breeze occasionally stirring the leaves above the long dried-up bed of the old stream. A young fox cub foraging in the heaped detritus of leaves under a giant beech stopped to turn a curious eye on him, then vanished quickly into its hole in the bank. Birds sang clear-throated in the branches overhead.

  He thought uncomfortably again of Lucy, his own songbird. It hurt that she was no longer innocent, but unmarried and with child. He had failed her as a guardian. He had failed her as a man. Now he could not even be there to help her through her confinement. Walsingham had reassured him that she would be kept safe at his house in Seething Lane, but he could not help his dark thoughts when he considered how Lucy had been used and abandoned by that good-for-nothing whelp of a player, Will Shakespeare. Though his feelings about John Twist’s personal betrayal were even more violent. One day that bastard would pay for what he had tried to do to Lucy.

  Through the trees ahead, an invisible bird repeated a single sharp note of warning, its call breaking the silence.

  Goodluck paused to listen to the bird then put all thoughts of Lucy aside as he identified it as a man.

  Lifting his boot over a briar patch, Goodluck moved more carefully. Within another moment he saw the rough lean-to of leafy branches and sticks they had constructed for shelter. The ground was scuffed before its narrow entrance. A fire had been lit there recently, then hurriedly disguised with earth and leaves.

  Goodluck cupped his hands to his mouth and gave the low wood-pigeon coo they used to recognize each other: three haunting calls, then a pause, then two more, followed by a single note.