They leaned against the tavern wall, beneath the garish painted sign of a fair-haired sea siren. “Are you well, John?”
“Well enough. And you?”
“They have closed the theatres. Some foolish brawl near The Rose gave the Council the excuse they wanted.”
“I am sorry to hear that, Will. I am sure they will open again soon.”
“I fear the worst. This coming plague will close them for longer. I am told the mort bills rise week by week. That is why I slime around the houses of Essex and Southampton like a hungry serpent. I accept patronage where I can get it, for I must eat. And you, John, what takes you to Essex House?”
Shakespeare had been wondering how much to tell his brother; he did not wish to burden him with dangerous knowledge.
“It is complex.”
“John, I do believe you are at your old tricks again.”
The pot-boy arrived with their pitcher and two beakers. After he had poured the liquor, Shakespeare gave him threepence for the muscatel and a drink-penny for himself.
“This is difficult, Will,” Shakespeare said at last, after they had both taken a good draft of the powerful, spicy wine. “I would tell you everything I know, for I trust you with my life, but I do not think it in your best interests.”
“I do not wish to know anything. Your life is not for me, John,” Will said, but suddenly his manner changed. He looked around at the passers-by and the carters in the street and the other drinkers crowding around the Mermaid door. He lowered his voice and spoke close to his brother’s ear. “Because I love you, John, I must tell you things that might change your mind about Essex and those around him. All is not as it seems.”
“Will, I was there at the summer revel. I saw the masque, as did you.”
“Indeed. But that is not the worst of it, brother. I must confess to you that I have traded most perilously in pursuit of preferment.”
Shakespeare tensed. “Was it you that wrote the masque?”
“No, no. I told you, Robert Greene was the coter. I hope I am not that foolish.” He stopped. “You should know, John, by the by, that Greene has died, having been taken ill after a dish of pickled herrings.”
“Perhaps they were soused in poison. He always lived dangerously. But what, pray, are your concerns, William?”
His voice lowered again. “I have composed certain odes of love and correspondence of the heart.”
“Yes? And does Anne know of this?”
“Do not jest, brother. This is not about me. It was a serious error. At first I had thought I was merely pandering to the whims of noblemen. A game of love, if you like. I penned the odes in good faith, believing them to be for the wooing of some young lady’s maid of the court whom my lord of Essex wished to take and ravish.”
Shakespeare saw the way this was going. “But something happened to make you change your mind.”
His brother nodded. “By chance, I discovered for whom they were intended. I was in the picture gallery at Essex House with my lord of Southampton. There were others about, including my lady Rich. She had with her one of my odes, sealed and ready to dispatch. She waved the paper in front of my face and said mischievously that my honeyed words would lure any maid to a man’s bed, but when her messenger appeared and took the missive, he said to her, ‘Another one for Mr. Morley at Shrewsbury House, is it, my lady?’ She looked at him as though she would happily cut the pizzle from his person and thrust it down his throat to silence him. I affected not to have heard a thing.”
Shakespeare was thunderstruck.
“Have you nothing to say, John? You must realize which young lady resides at Shrewsbury House?” Will lowered his voice yet more, to an urgent whisper, and moved closer to his brother’s ear. “A young lady with royal pretensions, even named by some as first in line.”
“I am quite aware who lives at Shrewsbury House, Will. I cannot believe you have got involved in such a thing as this.”
“I told you, I thought it but bawdy sauce.”
“You have no idea how perilous this is.” Shakespeare was angry now, and desperately concerned for his brother’s safety. He had written verses for Essex to woo Lady Arbella Stuart. It was tantamount to treason. It did not seem too great a leap to believe this Morley might be the spy that Walsingham had put in Arbella’s company to watch her. If so, then he had now transferred his allegiance to Essex’s intelligence group, and was passing his letters of passion to the impressionable girl.
“Of course I know the danger,” Will said, sounding as annoyed. “That is why I have told you of it. You must extricate yourself from this circle, as I am doing. And I must tell you that I know this Christopher Morley who receives the letters from Essex. He has been at Southampton House, making cow eyes at my lord there. John, this man Morley is poison. Pure poison. He fancies himself a poet, but he is less than that. Every instinct tells me he is not to be trusted. You would never know which side he was on.”
Shakespeare gritted his teeth. He had met many such men in his years with Walsingham. They were staple fare in the intelligencers’ world: men who sold secrets to both sides and owed loyalty to none. But what had Will got into here, treating with such people? He was not equipped to be embroiled with doubledealers. “God’s blood,” was all he said.
“John?”
“Will, do not fret for me, think of yourself. You do not know this world. What if Mr. Morley has your verses? What if he decides to use them to his own ends? Worse-what if Arbella is found in possession of them? These loving words of yours could bring you to the scaffold. You are the one in danger. You must tell no one else of this. Nor must you let anyone of Essex’s circle realize that you understood what was said. Affect ignorance. Your life may well depend on it.”
J ACK BUTLER WAS a strong man, yet the bonds that held him to the chair were stronger. In the distance, he heard the call of seabirds and the barking of dogs, but no human voices to comfort him. He had no notion of how long he had been here in this forlorn, forgotten place. The hours had drifted into days and the pain into a numb nothingness.
He looked down at the bloody, throbbing mounds that had once been his hands. As he gazed at them, they seemed to be no longer part of him.
When the men had seized him, not far from Dowgate, on his return from Sir Robert Cecil, they had asked him one thing only. “Who gave you the letter?” Nothing else. They had said it once and never again. Then they had brought him here, tightly bound in the back of a cart, and started their diabolical work.
How long, he wondered, before they came to him again-Slyguff with his shears and McGunn with his sword of Spanish steel? “Your twinkly toes next, Butler,” McGunn had said, laughing.
Butler shuddered. His throat was parched. He could not even shout out.
How long before he told them what they wanted to know, that the encrypted message he was bringing to Shakespeare had come from Sir Robert Cecil? Only his silence had kept him alive this long. He knew he would die here and he wished he could endure the pain. But he could not. No man could. He would tell them what they wished to hear, even though the telling would hasten his own death.
S HAKESPEARE RAN through the streets down to the river, where he pushed to the front of the queue for a wherry with the call “Queen’s business! Queen’s business here!”
The watermen who took his fare were a sour-tempered pair of middle-aged men who went about their rowing like reluctant donkeys at the turn-mill.
“Row faster, wherryman,” Shakespeare demanded of the senior of the two, a gray-haired curmudgeon with a mouth that turned down as if eternal winter had arrived.
“If you want faster, it’ll cost you double. What’s the hurry? We’ll all be dead of the pestilence by summer’s end.”
“Aye,” said his mate. “All but the nobility and gentry and merchants, God curse their lily-white livers. They’re all off to their country estates and palaces to dine on dainty dishes and finger each other’s wives.”
It was the best part of thre
e-quarters of an hour, accompanied by a dunghill of complaints about the plight of London and the deceit of foreigners, before the grand edifice of Shrewsbury House finally emerged from the heat haze on the north side of the river.
Shakespeare noted immediately that all the great windows that fronted the Thames were shuttered. He gave the watermen their due but no tip-which caused yet more grumbling-then strode around to the postern gate where he had entered before. The guard recognized him. “Ah, good-day, Master Marvell,” he said. “I am afraid you have missed her ladyship. She departed in haste at midday yesterday.”
“Gone where?”
“To Derbyshire, sir. Hardwick Hall.”
“And is the lady Arbella with her?”
“Indeed, yes, master.”
“And the countess’s staff and tutors?”
“Why, yes, most everyone. The train follows piecemeal. They will go by stages.”
“Is Mr. Morley with them? Christopher Morley, one of her tutors?”
The guard turned to a sheaf of papers and ran his finger down a list with scores of names, reading them out loud with difficulty. “Jas. P, Thom. L, Matt. P… here you are, Mr. Marvell”-he handed the manifest to Shakespeare-“Chris. M, tutor.”
Something jangled in Shakespeare’s brain. Chris. M? And then it clicked into place, like a key into a lock. The warning Catherine had told him about, the one from Anne Bellamy, the embittered woman who had connived in the trap set for Father Southwell: “You will all drown in chrism.” It had meant nothing at the time, but then, that was perhaps the intent. Was it just a grotesque little riddle, the sort of crass humor Richard Topcliffe delighted in? If so, it meant Topcliffe knew something: something, perhaps, that he had learned from an informer inside Southampton House.
Shakespeare walked away. It was clear his brother was hopelessly compromised. Shakespeare breathed deeply. He must steel himself and return to Essex House. He had an appointment with Lady Rich. It was a meeting that filled him with trepidation, for he knew he would have to lie, conceal, and lie yet more to delve into the corrupt heart of the Essex circle so that he might watch the magnificently flawed Earl as closely as one of Sir Robert Cecil’s hawks. And somehow find some kind of evidence against Essex-evidence that would not implicate his own brother and take him to the scaffold.
Chapter 31
P ENELOPE RICH WAS AT HER ABLUTIONS IN HER PRIVATE chamber. She stood naked in front of a copper bowl that rested on a small table, attended by two maids.
As Shakespeare entered the room, the maids were rubbing her arms and legs with a cloth and a soap ball. Her breasts were still well formed despite the birth of six children, and she made no attempt to cover them. She looked up, unashamed. “Come in, Mr. Shakespeare, come in.”
Though the day was hot, a fire of ash wood and sweet-smelling herbs roared in the hearth. “The herbs are to keep the pestilence at bay, Mr. Shakespeare. Dr. Forman tells me I must burn rosemary, bay, and juniper. He gives me much more advice, besides, some of which is not so pleasant. I do not mind sniffing and sucking oranges and lemons to ward off the evil contagion, but I cannot abide the flavor of wormwood in wine vinegar, nor the chewing of garlic and gentian root. In truth, I would rather die than partake of such things.”
Shakespeare stood awkwardly a few feet inside the door. He had never seen anything quite like this room. Her bedchamber was completely draped in black and gold. Even the bedding was black, as were the cypress-guarded curtains that hung from the four carved oak posts around it.
“Water,” she shouted suddenly. A footman came scuttling in with a bowl of clean water, which he exchanged for the bowl of dirty, soapy water. Penelope’s maids immediately proceeded to rinse the soap from her body, splashing water all over the wood floor, then dabbing at her with a large dry sheet of linen. She was, thought Shakespeare, a magnificent specimen of womanhood.
“Bring me a gown.”
One of the maids hastened through an inner doorway and returned immediately with a long linen jacket, embroidered in silver and black, which she held out to her lady. Penelope slipped it on and tied it loosely at the front, so that the soft mounds of her breasts were still visible.
One of the maids began to comb her lady’s fair hair, while the other set to painting her face with powders and brushes. Penelope stood regally between them, accepting their ministrations.
“Now, then, Mr. Shakespeare, my brother has asked me to knock some sense into your head. He would have you as his chief intelligencer, but he is told by Mr. McGunn that you are fluttering about like a silly girl who cannot decide whether to allow a handsome knight to deflower her.”
Shakespeare was sweating, both from the heat of the fire and from a deep feeling of unease. “My lady, I am greatly honored by your brother’s offer.”
“Then, may I tell him you are agreed?”
Shakespeare hesitated. “I had thought,” he said, meeting her piercing gaze, “that my lord of Essex employed Mr. Anthony Bacon in that position.”
“Indeed, he does work for my brother, and you would be required to cooperate fully with him. But your roles will be very different. Mr. Bacon has spent many years on the Continent, where he has built up an unparalleled group of contacts. But he does not have your experience in the day-to-day running of an intelligence-gathering network here on home soil. The Spanish will try to come at us again, Mr. Shakespeare-both at sea and secretly, with dag and blade. So we must strike out and destroy them first. No one knows the ways of these Spanish intrigants better than you. You have smelled them out before; find their stink for us again.”
“My lady, you overstate my worth.”
“Mr. Shakespeare, I believe I know you better than you know yourself. There are those who would sue for peace. Men who would lick the Spanish king’s boots. I know you are not of that ilk, for you were of a mind with Mr. Secretary.”
“Those days are gone.”
“We need men such as you. We have heard much about you and we all admire you greatly. My brother gathers together the best minds in the land to carry on the work of the late Mr. Secretary and wishes you to be part of it. One day he will be Principal Secretary, and those loyal to him will be ministers of the crown. In the meantime, the Spaniard beats at our door, Mr. Shakespeare. He plots to snatch our throne and rule us as once he did with Bloody Mary. He would impose his vile Inquisition on us and burn us all as heretics. Is that not worth fighting against?”
“Of course, my lady.”
She waved her maids away and they scuttled from the room like mice discovered in the cheese cratch.
“Mr. Shakespeare,” she said once the maids had shut the door, “there are those governing this country who feign friendship toward my brother, all the while twisting the knife into his back. They pretend strength against the Spanish, all the while treating with Parma for peace. They speak out for England, all the while offering the crown to James of Scotland. You are no fool; you know of whom I speak.”
She was talking of Sir Robert Cecil and his father, Lord Burghley. Shakespeare inclined his head. He was not about to acknowledge that he understood the gist of what she said.
Penelope sighed, a long weary sigh such as a mother might produce when her little boy fails once again to do his chores. Her voice softened. “Mr. Shakespeare, you are an exceeding handsome man.” She took his right hand in both of hers and held it to her breast, his fingers within the lapel of her gown against her skin. “Do you feel my heart beat in here? Is this not a heart of England, beating for England?”
As once before in the garden of this stately house, he caught the heady whiff of her scent. She tilted her head up until their lips were but an inch apart. She seemed to hover there before him, like a ripe red plum ready to be plucked from the bough. Her black eyes never wavered from his own.
Her lips touched his and their mouths opened and kissed. His right hand stayed on her breast while his other arm encircled her and pulled her soft belly toward him. She moved her body forward at his bidding,
with no resistance.
All the pent-up frustrations of these last days and weeks seemed ready to burst forth, but then she removed her lips from his mouth and held his face gently between her hands and smiled at him. “John Shakespeare,” she said softly, “there is time enough for this. But we have things to talk on.” She stood back.
His yard was hard in his breeches and all too obvious. She touched him there briefly with her perfectly manicured hand. “Well, sir, I see you are, indeed, a man of stout English oak. We must look after you well.”
“My lady-” he began.
“Say nothing. Listen to me, and listen well. Think on this: our beloved Queen is old and declining. She does not have long to live-and then what? She will not name a successor. Would you have a Spanish Infanta in her place, or James the son of Mary Queen of Scots as your sovereign? These are stark choices and imminent.”
“I did not believe the Queen so diminished.”
Penelope went to a console table beside one of the tall windows and, from a drawer, took out a rolled parchment. She handed it to Shakespeare.
He unfurled it slowly. As soon as it was laid out, he saw that it was an astrological chart.
“It is a chart, a life chart,” she said softly, looking at him all the while. “It displays the exact span of a life and reveals the star-divined moment of impending death. The date of this death is September the eighteenth, which is almost upon us.”
“Whose chart is this?” he asked, though he knew very well. At the top of the page he read the words: At what date will a certain person pass from this life.
“Whose do you think it is?”
“I would rather not say. I think the mere sighting of such a piece of work could lead to the scaffold.”
She laughed. “I had thought you a man of oak, hard and strong, Mr. Shakespeare.”
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