Revenger

by Rory Clements

  Finningley recognized Arbella and was horrified. He wanted to say that the banns had not been called, that this was most irregular, but he was convulsed by fear. He took a deep breath and began to intone the words of the service in a weak, spindly voice that belied his great bulk.

  “Dearly beloved friends, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of his congregation, to join together this man and woman in holy matrimony…”

  He droned on through the service as laid down in the Book of Common Prayer introduced during the first year of Elizabeth’s long reign. All the while, Essex glared at him impatiently.

  “… and therefore is not to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding-”

  “I know all that. Get on with it, man.”

  “It is the form of solemnization of matrimony, sir… my lord.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  The congregation of his friends and supporters mumbled their approval. One or two applauded with clapping of hands.

  Finningley sighed. What did it matter? He couldn’t imagine any of this was legal anyway, not without the banns. And so he omitted the next part and got on to the nub. “Will you have this woman to your wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance, in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health? And forsaking all other, keep you only to her, so long as you both shall live?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  “You must say ‘I will,’ my lord…”

  “I will. I will. Is that it? Are we married?”

  “Almost, my lord, almost…”

  I N THE TREES, unseen, John Shakespeare had watched the wedding party proceed toward the church. He knew the bride must come eventually and so he waited for her. At last she came with Penelope Rich and a man he did not know, appareled in scarlet velvet, a sword at his waist. His head moved this way and that, slowly, like an adder. Shakespeare found himself half expecting the man’s tongue to flick out and be forked. Some instinct told him the man was Morley.

  The ivory bride dismounted. She moved her veil aside momentarily to look about her, and Shakespeare recognized the sad face he had seen at the window in Shrewsbury House, Chelsea. Her eyes were blue and a little too big; her mouth was too severe and her nose large. Now she smiled and her eyes darted. Yet even the smile did not suit her and nor did it disguise her loneliness and unease; she cut a poignant figure, here with these people who wanted everything from her, but nothing for her.

  The men at the door helped her from her horse and then Penelope and the man in scarlet took her inside the church. As soon as they had gone in, Shakespeare entered the porch, hesitating at the door as long as he dared. From inside, he heard the words of the minister as the service got under way. He looked about him before turning the latch on the strong old oak door. As he pushed it, the iron hinges creaked loudly, then the iron edge of the door clanged as it swung inward against the stone wall.

  Shakespeare stepped inside. Heads swiveled in his direction; eyes bore down upon him as if seeing some apparition. At first there was surprise and curiosity in their expressions, then a gathering rage. The vicar’s mouth hung agape, in mid-sentence.

  “In the Queen’s name, I say this wedding cannot proceed,” Shakespeare bellowed in a voice of surprising power and confidence. He was unarmed, for what use would one poor sword or pistol be against twenty war-hardened men? He walked forward along the nave, between the ranks of Essex’s supporters, their fingers suddenly tightening on the hilts of their swords.

  Penelope Rich rose from her seat and stepped forward to bar his path. “I am afraid you are too late, Mr. Shakespeare. The ceremony is completed. My brother and the lady Arbella now stand before you as man and wife.”

  Shakespeare stopped. He did not believe it; there had not been sufficient time. He turned to the minister, who was quivering like an ash leaf in the breeze. “Is this true?”

  Even through the haze of his muddled, befuddled, and panicking mind, Oswald Finningley knew he was caught up in something very bad; this man, whoever he was, had invoked the authority of the Queen herself. To talk to these nobles in such wise must, at the very least, make him a senior officer in her government. Though hopelessly outnumbered and at the mercy of these armed men, he understood that to stand with them might very well result in a traitor’s death, with everything that entailed. He shook his head.

  “No,” he said, his voice no more than a whimper.

  “They are not married?”

  Finningley shook his head again.

  “Then I say this wedding will not take place. It is forbidden under the law, not only because it is unlicensed by Her Majesty, but also because the bridegroom already has a wife.”

  The gangling figure of Essex moved away from his bride toward the source of interruption. His handsome head was angled forward from his awkward, sloping shoulders. “ Had a wife, Shakespeare,” he said, spitting the words. “I am recently bereaved and am, sadly, a widower. She died of her madness. God’s blood, sir,” he shouted, “what is all this to you?”

  Shakespeare suddenly realized what loathing he felt for this man who would sacrifice his wife, the mother of his child, to self-serving ambition. A man who would turn on the very monarch who had raised him to such great power and public esteem.

  “My lord,” Shakespeare said coldly, “it is not long since I left Sudeley Castle, and I can tell you your wife was in perfect health, quite recovered from her sickness of mind and body. Your friend Slyguff does not fare so well. He floats in the River Isbourne, feeding the water voles and rats.” He turned to the bride and spoke sharply and with all the authority he could muster. “The lady Arbella Stuart will come with me now, back to the protection of her grandmother. This wedding has not been sanctioned and will not take place.”

  Shakespeare brushed past Lady Rich, took two steps toward the chancel, knocked elbows with Essex, then reached out and grasped the arm of the young claimant to the throne. Arbella sobbed, but did not resist. He began to drag her away, back along the nave toward the porch.

  Essex was thunderstruck, frozen in indecision. And then he acted. He strode toward one of his heavily armed band and seized a flail that hung loose from his belt. The weapon had a three-foot haft, then a short chain of four or five links, attached to which was a heavy metal ball with six spikes protruding like a bursting sun. As Shakespeare pulled the bride through the center of the church toward the door, he did not see Essex pursuing him like a man possessed, the haft of the flail clasped in both hands as if he would bring it down in a man-killing blow.

  Shakespeare pushed on toward the open door, but then his exit was closed off. Half a dozen men-at-arms barred his way, among them Sir Toby Le Neve and the swordsman in scarlet velvet.

  Le Neve put up the flat of his hand at Shakespeare’s chest. “Mr. Shakespeare, you have an unpleasant habit of appearing where you are not wanted. Now, hold fast. You will not leave this church.”

  Shakespeare pushed the hand aside. “I take no orders from murderers.” He had lost all fear now. “This is Queen’s business, Le Neve. Move aside. I have enough on you to hang you twice over and will deal with you later.”

  A three-pound ball of solid black iron, encrusted with short, deadly spikes, came down through the air toward Shakespeare’s head. He had no way to get clear of the blow. All he saw was the look in Le Neve’s eyes-a look of horror and dismay.

  Le Neve flung him sideways to the stone-flagged floor of the church, and Shakespeare felt a whisper of pain as a spike of the flail skimmed his temple on its downward trajectory. Behind him, Arbella sprawled forward, tripping over her skirts and collapsing in a sobbing heap at the edge of the aisle.

  It was Le Neve who took the blow. The dead weight of the ball and the malevolent spikes crushed through the bottom half of his face, destroying his chin and carrying on into his throa
t, where it dug through his windpipe, pummeling his Adam’s apple into a mush of gore and gristle. He crumpled at the knees and was thrown backwards to the ground, the spikes embedded in his upper body. Blood gurgled in the remains of his throat and spurted from his demolished mouth. His upper lip moved as though he were trying to say something, but no coherent sounds emanated from him.

  Shakespeare should have scrabbled away, for out of the corner of his eye he could see the flail being raised again, but instead he rose to his knees and knelt beside Le Neve. He saw cloudy resignation in the warrior’s eyes, followed quickly by the opacity of death. Feeling a curious pang of sorrow, he was about to close the dead man’s eyes when he looked up to see Essex about to bring down the flail once more and knew that he, too, was about to die.

  “Enough!”

  Bess of Hardwick was not tall, scarce over five foot, and yet her voice boomed through the echoing chambers of the church like that of a sergeant-at-arms.

  The arc of the ball’s swing hovered at its zenith. Essex stared down at this diminutive woman and Shakespeare rolled sideways, out of reach of Essex’s blood-dripping flail.

  Bess looked at the Earl with disdain, then stepped forward, past the body of Sir Toby Le Neve, and roughly grabbed the forearm of her young ward.

  “Come with me, you foolish girl,” she commanded, dragging Arbella to her feet with astonishing strength. Ignoring the sharp steel that surrounded her on all sides, she turned to the man in the scarlet velvet suit of clothes and gazed on him with stern majesty. “Do you think it wise to pull a sword on your mistress, Mr. Morley? Look outside the church door, if you will.”

  Morley, Essex, and everyone else within the church turned to look through the gaping doorway. The churchyard was full of men.

  Bess smacked the man called Morley across the cheek. “Return to your classroom, sir. I will have words with you later.” She nodded to two men who had followed her into the church, and they each grasped one of Morley’s arms and dragged him out. She then pulled Arbella with an angry tug of her arm and marched her from the church. Shakespeare rose and followed her.

  Men of every size and shape thronged the churchyard: working men with hoes, hammers, hayforks, picks, trowels, and shovels, but also with longbows, crossbows, halberds, axes, and rust-bitten arquebuses. Perhaps five hundred in all, maybe more. They looked like an army ready to do battle and not give an inch.

  Some were mounted on farm horses and oxen; some had arrows laid across fully drawn bowstaves, ready to strike a man dead within the blink of an eye. They wore the leather jerkins and aprons of builders and carpenters, stonemasons and farmhands. They were a ragtag bunch, but they were a fearsome sight-and they outnumbered Essex’s men twenty-five to one.

  Bess smiled with satisfaction at the sight of all her builders and estate workers, hastily assembled by her retainers this morning. She knew they were all loyal, would kill and die for her, for she had brought prosperity to them and their families with her great building works and with her well-husbanded farmlands and industries. She turned back to Essex, who had followed her to the door. “Well, my lord,” she asked, “do you have any argument with me now?”

  Essex scowled as he gazed upon the unexpected army that confronted him and upon the slight figure of the woman who dared defy him.

  He dropped the flail, drew his sword, and seemed about to lunge at her, but suddenly two long-handled weapons-an old pike and a dungfork-came across his path, forming a cross that barred his way. An archer stepped forward, close to Bess’s side, and pulled his bowstring taut, the arrow pointing directly at the Earl’s heart.

  Penelope Rich touched her brother’s arm. “Come, Robert,” she said softly. “Do not die here at the hands of peasants. Live-and prepare for another day.”

  In the confusion, no one noticed the minister, Oswald Finningley, waddling into the vestry, his skirts clutched about his knees for ease of movement. With a shaking hand, he opened a little cupboard and took out a pint-flagon of communion wine, which he uncorked and drank in one draft.

  Chapter 39

  I T WAS OVER. THERE WOULD BE NO PITCHED BATTLE between men-at-arms and common men, no civil war on a muddy field in Derbyshire beneath lead-gray skies. Where Essex saw only a mist of blood, his elder sister saw things with sun-bright clarity. She knew that Bess would say nothing of this and nor would John Shakespeare. She understood the workings of their minds. She left the church with her head held high. With fortune, there would be another day for the Devereux clan. She would consult Dr. Forman.

  On the porch, John Shakespeare stood face-to-face with Essex. “My lord, you will disband and hasten from this place, for if you do not, I vow that a royal militia will be raised against you that will hunt you and your band down to all your deaths.”

  Essex ignored him. He looked down at the flail where it lay in the mud, its round head covered in the thick, coagulating blood of Sir Toby Le Neve. He seemed to study it, as if he would find some answers there, in its unforgiving iron. He shook his head slightly, perhaps suddenly realizing what he had done. “Toby…”

  Shakespeare gazed on the strange, poignant tableau with a mixture of feelings. Le Neve had saved his life, had deliberately put himself in harm’s way and had taken the lethal blow intended for his foe. It was a difficult thing to comprehend, that a man guilty of such a heinous crime should sacrifice his own life for a near stranger; perhaps there was a conscience in that heart, a need to find redemption. “He died in honor, my lord. Take him and bury him with military honors.”

  If Essex had words, he did not utter them. He looked at Shakespeare for a moment without expression, then strode away, across the face of Bess’s army, followed in dribs and drabs by his supporters. Four of them lifted up the body of Sir Toby Le Neve and bore him on their shoulders; they would take him away from here and bury him in their own way.

  Their horses were tethered in the trees at the edge of the churchyard. Essex threw himself into the saddle of his black charger and kicked it into motion with unnecessary ferocity, galloping off southward in the direction of Hardwick Hall, his disorganized contingent trailing in his wake.

  Shakespeare watched them go until only Lady Rich was left.

  “What will you do now, Mr. Shakespeare?”

  “That is not for me to decide.”

  “The Cecil crookback has snared you.”

  Shakespeare was silent.

  “But you can do nothing, can you? You cannot touch us without condemning your own brother. And I know you, Mr. Shakespeare-I know that you would never do that. Nor can Bess say a thing. If one word of this ever reached the Queen’s ears, she would bar Arbella from the succession-writ in law-and would likely demand her head.” Penelope touched his arm with something akin to affection. “You have been grievously in error this day, sir. You have handed the throne of England to a malodorous Scotch garboil-or perchance a simpering Spaniard. You have seen the chart. The Queen will die within days and the Cecils will arrange everything to their own gain and England’s loss.”

  Shakespeare said nothing. The matter of the succession was not his to decide; nor was the fate of Essex and his sister and the rest. His task was the defense of the realm and the life of the monarch.

  Penelope laughed lightly. “McGunn was right to distrust you. Your silence tells me everything. You have sold your soul.”

  Shakespeare still said nothing. Essex and Lady Rich had thought to play him like a fish, knowing that if he did not swim with them he would end up fried on their platter.

  “Well, Mr. Shakespeare, it seems you have chosen your path. And it is a path of burning coals. You have made powerful enemies this day. My mother has the towering rage of the Tudors, and she will want your blood. Do you think your choice will have been worth it? Does the crookback pay you well?”

  At last he spoke, his voice clipped and expressionless. “I have been loyal to my sovereign.”

  Penelope laughed. “Today’s sovereign. What of tomorrow’s? What will become of you
when the sovereign dies and the crookback’s star wanes and falls?”

  “As you say, my lady, I have chosen my path. I will live with it.”

  “Or die…”

  Shakespeare began to walk away, behind Bess’s great artisan army, now proceeding at a steady pace toward Hardwick Hall. Bess was with them, marching her deflated granddaughter home.

  Penelope took the reins of her horse and rose into the saddle. She trotted up toward Shakespeare. “Wait,” she said, her voice softening.

  He stopped. His head had survived the glancing blow of the flail but his neck was still mighty sore from Slyguff’s rope. “My lady?”

  “There was something between us, was there not? For a while, for a moment, I did wish… Our timing was crossed.”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps. But I am a married man, and you are wed to your brother’s cause.”

  “Take care, Mr. Shakespeare. I wish you no ill.”

  She turned her horse and, without another look back, spurred on and rode south.

  I N THE LIBRARY OF Hardwick Hall, Bess scolded her granddaughter as though she were a kitchen maid. The girl sat on a plain three-legged stool, her wedding dress askew and muddy from the mile-long walk back to the hall. She alternately sulked and sobbed, but did not utter a word.

  Shakespeare looked on as Bess paced the room, cuffing the girl’s head or boxing her ears with hard blows each time she passed her. Arbella let out a cry of pain each time she was hit, for Bess struck her with venom.

  “You behave like a common drudge, so you will be treated like one. From this day forward, you will stay indoors unless accompanied by me. You will sleep in my room by night. You have no idea what you have done. Everything I planned for you might now be brought to ruin by your foolishness. Did you not once ask yourself why the Earl of Essex should wish to marry you? Did you really think you had the womanly charms to lure a man from his wife? You knew he was married-and, more important, you knew that a woman of the blood royal could never wed without her sovereign’s consent. You might still end your days in the Tower for what you have done this day. Have you learned nothing from the fate of your cousins Jane Grey and Mary Stuart? Are you grown so tall that you would wish to be a head shorter?”