Holy Spy

Chapter 4

The Newgate keeper shook his grizzled head. ‘You’re too late, master. He’s gone to Smithfield to dance his jig.’

‘How long?’

‘Half an hour since.’

Shakespeare uttered a curse and ran to his horse. Within moments he was remounted and kicking the beast into a sharp canter northwards along the narrow confines and low overhangs towards Pie Corner. Within two minutes, he burst into the six-acre plain that made up Smithfield, a dusty expanse where men sometimes came for livestock dealing and flesh trading and at other times for the Bartholomew Fair. Today it served another purpose: a place of execution.

He urged on the animal past the ancient buildings of St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Ahead of him a crowd packed the centre of the open land. Traders had set up stalls to sell cakes and ale and hot mead. Some executions brought out the dark humour in onlookers, but this day there was nothing but anger.

All eyes were on the black wooden scaffold, where a figure suspended from a length of rope jerked and struggled in its ugly death throes. The crowd was agitated, shouting and waving their fists, wanting him to suffer. Shakespeare drove his bay stallion onwards, pushing aside men, women and children. People uttered oaths and spat at him as he passed.

He slid from the horse and handed the reins to a bewildered onlooker. Shakespeare was aware that the eyes of the hangman, his assistant, the priest and the law officers were all on him.

The condemned man had ceased his dance. He hung limp, his bound body swaying in the summer breeze, but the noise of the crowd showed no sign of abating. The murderer’s death was not enough; they wanted yet more vengeance, more pain. The officers braced their halberds and pikes menacingly to deter the throng from surging forward: the ugly mood had been anticipated. Shakespeare strode up onto the platform.

‘Is he dead?’ he demanded of the hangman.

‘Aye, dead enough, but we’ll leave him hanging an hour.’

‘It was Will Cane, the murderer?’

‘Yes, master. If you have brought a reprieve, you are too late. And I thank the Lord for it, for this lot – ’ he nodded towards the crowd – ‘would have ripped him apart rather than see him pardoned.’

‘No, no reprieve. I wanted to talk with him before he died.’

‘Then you have had a wasted journey. Who are you?’

‘John Shakespeare. I am an assistant secretary in the office of Sir Francis Walsingham.’

‘What would Mr Secretary want of a common felon like Will Cane?’

‘Did he say anything – make any confession?’

The hangman laughed. ‘He did.’ He nodded towards the clergyman, who stood clasping a Bible at the edge of the scaffold. ‘Ask his confessor or any member of this crowd.’

‘I’ll ask you, hangman. What did he say?’

‘Told it all, about the lewd wife. Couldn’t stop him. Spoke so much he had a coughing fit, and so I cured his cough for ever. And you may now call me Good Doctor Hangman, if it please you.’ He laughed aloud at his own jest, and his sly assistant grinned like a fox.

Shakespeare turned away, revolted, and directed his attention to the cleric.

The well-fed vicar, who wore a black cassock and a black cap on his head, met Shakespeare’s eye.

‘Well? What is your version, reverend sir?’

‘He said he was a poor sinner and commended his soul to God, desiring that he might be forgiven his transgressions, a thing I consider highly unlikely given the monstrous nature of his crime.’

‘Is that all?’

‘By no means.’ The vicar raised his voice and indicated to the assembled onlookers, who roared and brandished fists. ‘As these good folk will all testify, he said he wished to go to his death with no lie on his lips and so he repeated the assertions made in court, that he was a hired killer, and that he had been offered a hundred pounds for the murder. Mr Cane was a wicked, wretched man, but at least in his final moments on earth he named the confederate in the heinous crime. Her turn here will come soon enough.’

‘Whom did he name?’

‘Why, the widow, Katherine Giltspur.’

At the name the crowd howled their loathing. This was a crime that struck at the very heart of all they understood and held dear: a wife murdering a husband. This was a knife to the sanctity of the family and the hearth, God-given things not to be besmirched.

‘You see, sir,’ the cleric continued. ‘The whole of London knows her to be a black-hearted whore, lower than the snakes of the field, more cruel than the scavenger birds of the air. There can be no more unnatural crime before God or man than the killing of a husband by the woman pledged to give him succour.’

Shakespeare looked down at the baying crowd. Half had their eyes fixed on the hanged felon and the other half were watching him, wondering, perhaps, which way to turn their ire. He cursed; a dying man’s confession was sacrosanct. No one would doubt it. Innocent or guilty, Kat’s cause was hopeless.

He strode over to the hanged man and pulled the hood from his head. A pair of bulging, lifeless eyes stared back at him from a blue, bulbous face incongruous above the thin, hemp-encircled neck. He was a man of about forty years of age, dark-haired with a reddish beard. His face was engorged and yet scrawny, as though he had not eaten in a week. His tongue lolled, red and encrusted. Ugly streams of blood dripped from his nostrils and the corners of his grimacing mouth. Shakespeare doubted that he could have weighed a hundredweight. He was a poor specimen. The world would be none the worse for his passing.

Shakespeare turned back to the cleric. ‘Did he say anything else? Did you see him at Newgate before he came here?’

‘No. There was nothing else.’

‘Then say your prayers for his soul.’ And I will pray for Kat’s.

‘No, sir. I will not pray for his soul. I will pray for his eternal damnation, in the fire of pain, for ever, with the she-devil who paid him.’

In the morning, Shakespeare came down from his chamber and discovered a woman with a broom sweeping up the rushes in the parlour. She bowed to him nervously. It was not the maid he had told Boltfoot to hire, but the other, younger woman. He frowned at her, and she scurried away.

‘Boltfoot!’

His assistant limped in from the kitchen, dragging his club foot. ‘Master?’

‘That woman is not Mistress Rymple.’

‘No, master. It is the other one, Jane Cawston.’

‘And yet I told you to hire the Rymple woman and send Miss Cawston on her way with a shilling.’

‘As I recall, Mr Shakespeare, you told me to hire Mistress Rymple if she could start without delay. When I asked her, she told me she would need a week, which I considered to be a delay.’

‘And so you told her the job was not hers? You took this decision on yourself?’

Boltfoot did not look at all unnerved. ‘What was I to do? You were engaged with the lawyer Mr Tort, master. I thought you would not thank me to disturb you with such a trivial matter. And then you raced out as though pursued by the hounds of hell . . .’

Shakespeare wondered for a few moments whether to sack Boltfoot. At the very least he had to be severely rebuked. ‘You have done this deliberately, flouting my authority. You knew very well I wanted the older one. She would know what was required of her and would need no instruction in organising this household.’

‘You are right, master. And yet it did seem to me Miss Cawston had great merits too.’

‘Merits? You mean she was prettier and younger.’

‘But, master, whereas the older one would do things her way, I believe that Miss Cawston will learn to do things our way. Forgive me if I have erred, sir.’

‘You have indeed erred! This is flagrant disobedience. My order was clear . . .’

‘Then I offer my heartfelt apologies, master. But I would say that Miss Cawston will work until Lady’s Day for two pounds all found, whereas Annis Rymple had hopes of five pounds.’

Other men would take a birch rod to a servant who displayed such insubordination, and yet Shakespeare found himself scarcely able to stifle a laugh. He dared not let Boltfoot see the smile playing treacherously around his lips, so he turned his back. ‘Send Miss Cawston to me,’ he ordered. ‘I suppose I had better welcome her to our household.’

Jane Cawston stood before him nervously clutching the handle

of her broom.

‘Tell me once more about yourself, Miss Cawston.’

‘As I said yesterday, sir, I am the eldest of twelve girls. My family lives in the north of Essex near the town of Sudbury. My father is in service to a yeoman farmer.’

‘And what has made you seek work in London?’

‘My sisters are all growing. They need the space – and one less mouth to feed. Nor is it easy for my father without any sons. My wages will help, too, master.’

He guessed her age at about eighteen or nineteen. Her face was round and pretty, framed by soft auburn hair. She was strong enough and healthy and had a warmth and serenity that would add cheer to this house. Boltfoot had probably been right in his choice. She would learn quickly enough.

‘And you believe you can organise this household in the way we require? Floors cleaned, mattresses turned, food on the table, ale brewed, livestock in the yard, our clothes laundered by and by, the front step swept, lanterns lit at dusk, management of the housekeeping allowance?’

‘Yes, master.’

‘And you will be expected to take messages if Mr Cooper and I are not here.’

She nodded hurriedly, like a hen pecking.

He thought she seemed a little uncertain. ‘Miss Cawston? If you are going to live here with two men, you must be able to do these things. And if you have troubles, you must bring your concerns to us.’

‘That is it, sir. Two men. I had expected to find a family with women and girls. I am not used to the ways of menfolk. I have heard stories-’

Shakespeare smiled at her. ‘You have nothing to fear, I promise you. There will not be any beatings in this house, or any other unchristian behaviour. That is my word. Now, what are we to call you?’

‘Jane, if it please you, master. I like to be called plain Jane.’

‘Well, Jane. Perhaps you would make me eggs – two eggs – boiled until hard, with some manchet bread and butter. And some milk, if we have any. I have an important day ahead of me.’