Martyr

Chapter 42

The Drakes’house was surprisingly modest compared to his majestic mansions and estates in other parts of Devon and London. It was a tall structure, built of stone to withstand seaborne gales. Above the ground floor, jettied chambers overhung the narrow street. Clearly, the crucial thing to the Vice Admiral was its convenience, being so close to the mouth of the Plym and the dockyards, where he had to spend so much time repairing and provisioning his ships.

Drake stood at the steps to the house. “Well, Mr. Shakespeare, you have brought us safe home. You can tell Mr. Secretary that you have accomplished your task like a true and faithful servant. Good night to you, sir.” He was about to push open the door when Shakespeare stepped in front of him. He addressed Elizabeth: “Might I just ask you, my lady, did you tell the Huguenot, Pascal, about this house?”

Elizabeth Drake looked flustered. “It is… possible. I might have mentioned it. I cannot recall.”

Shakespeare lifted the latch to the door. “If it please you, Sir Francis, I will go first. Boltfoot, come with me.”

Suddenly Drake’s good humor vanished. He thrust Shakespeare angrily aside. “No one but the Queen commands me what to do, Shakespeare. Remove yourself from my way. Lady Drake, let us go inside.” He opened the door for his wife. She hesitated, but knew her husband’s moods well enough to realize this was no time to try disagreeing with him. Smiling sweetly at Shakespeare and mouthing a silent “Thank you, Mr. Shakespeare,” she stepped forward into the house.

Drake followed her and was surprised to find the hallway empty and in darkness.

“I think the staff are out watching the fire, Sir Francis,” Eliza beth told him. “Perhaps we might ask our companions to set some lights about the house for us.”

“By God’s faith, what sort of staff is it that leaves its post to watch a little bonfire, madam? I think you must look to our domestic arrangements before I am next home.”

Taking her cue, Shakespeare and Boltfoot entered the building behind the couple. Boltfoot produced a tinderbox and began lighting candles. Shakespeare pushed on into the house. He had been convinced Herrick would strike at the banquet. And now? If there had been a Huguenot called Henri Pascal who just happened to turn up at Buckland Abbey, why had he not been at the banquet to introduce himself to Drake?

The blow came as Shakespeare entered the Drakes’ private chamber on the second floor. It came out of the darkness, a crack to the back of the head that felled him instantly. He slumped awkwardly to the floor, his head hitting the foot of the bed as he went down. He felt himself losing consciousness, but he fought the sensation and thrashed out wildly with his arm, which still clutched his sword. Dimly, he heard a sound like a grunt or cry. He rolled sideways across the room and felt the reverberation of a heavy blade stabbing down into the boards where, a second earlier, he had been sprawled.

Shakespeare scrambled farther from the assailant, clawing his way to the other side of a large oaken bed. In the gloom he saw a flickering light, a candle flame, and then heard a gasp. Elizabeth Drake had stepped into the chamber. In the dim, shadowy light he saw a face appear: Herrick. It had to be Herrick. In horror, he saw him grab Elizabeth, his muscled arm encircling her neck and forcing her back. The candle fell from her grasp and the room was plunged back into darkness.

Shakespeare jumped to his feet. His clubbed head felt as if gunpowder had exploded within it. He felt blood trickle down the inside of his ruff collar. He still had his sword in his hand, his grasp firm on the hilt.

Another light appeared at the door. Drake. “What is this?” And then he saw his wife, her neck twisted back, the point of a poniard blade at her exposed throat, pressing into her flesh, blood dripping down onto her velvet gown. “My lady?”

Shakespeare was at Drake’s side now.

“Out.” Herrick said the word quietly to Shakespeare. He stood scarcely five feet from Drake. “Out or she will die. Not you, Drake-you stay. But the other one, leave now or you will see such a gush of blood from this woman’s throat as will sink all your galleons.”

Drake nodded to Shakespeare, his face grim. “Leave now, Mr. Shakespeare.”

Elizabeth was breathing fast. Her body was rigid, as if the slightest movement would draw the needle-sharp point of the blade into her throat.

Shakespeare stood his ground. “I am going nowhere. My order is to protect you.”

In one lightning-swift motion, Herrick flung Elizabeth across the room. In the same movement, he lunged at Drake, poniard raised, with all the force of a bull in the ring. As he thrust forward and down with the blade, he hissed, “So die all heretics…”

Drake did not retreat an inch. Herrick’s blow descended hard, slicing through flesh and glancing off bone, but it was Shakespeare’s left forearm that took the blow, not Drake’s body. Shakespeare’s right arm came down behind Herrick’s neck, the hilt of his sword cracking into the base of his skull and pummeling him to the ground at Drake’s feet. Shakespeare stamped his left foot down onto the nape of Herrick’s neck. He raised up his sword, now greasy with his own blood, in his uninjured right arm and held it suspended as if about to drive it down through the would-be killer’s back.

“No, Mr. Shakespeare,” Drake said. “Save that pleasure for the headsman.”

As Shakespeare stood over the assassin’s prostrate body, Drake went to his wife and helped her from the floor. He took her in his arms with a tenderness Shakespeare would never have thought possible of such a man among men.

“Are you much hurt, Lady Drake?” her husband asked.

“I am sure I shall survive, Sir Francis.” She dusted herself down, then turned to Shakespeare, whose arm was pouring blood. “But I fear Mr. Shakespeare will not-unless he quickly has some assistance.”

Boltfoot arrived with candles to light the room. Servants were drifting back from the fire and one was sent to fetch the constable. Lady Drake staunched the flow of blood from Shakespeare’s arm with a ripped-up shirt of her husband’s, then told a maid to summon a physician to look at the wound properly.

Herrick was beginning to come around, but Boltfoot had already bound him and was sitting on a stool, pointing the octagonal muzzle of his caliver at the assassin’s face. It was not long before the constable and two powerful assistants arrived, all smelling of the fire they had been helping to douse at the Guildhall. Without ceremony, they carried Herrick out and tossed him onto a handcart. As he was hauled off to the town gaol, his face was a mask of bitter frustration.

“Well, Mr. Shakespeare,” Drake said. “Do you have any more Spanish killers up your sleeve to frighten me with?”

“I trust not, Vice Admiral.”

“Good. Then all we have to worry about is the ever-changing tide of our sovereign majesty’s capricious mind. Let us sleep now and sail in the morning. With God’s help, I vow that we will give the Spaniard such a beating he will wish he had never heard the name of Sir Francis Drake!”

The ships of Drake’s fleet sailed with the morning’s tide. He was aboard the Elizabeth Bonaventure, accompanied by three more royal galleons- Golden Lion, Dreadnought, Rainbow -and twenty other vessels. They were manned by three thousand sailors and soldiers, heavily armed and angry, and many tons of cannon and ball. Before weighing anchor, Drake found it in him to say a grudging word of thanks to Shakespeare for his “diligence,” then scribbled a final message for Walsingham and handed it to Shakespeare to carry to him:

The wind commands us away. Our ship is under sail. God grant we may live in His fear as the enemy may have cause to say that God does fight for Her Majesty as well abroad as at home.

There was a new urgency about the mission. The latest intelligence gathered by Walsingham had revealed that the Spanish admiral, Santa Cruz, planned to have his armada ready to sail this spring or early summer. Drake’s task was to destroy the enemy in her ports or at sea and to intercept and capture the Spanish treasure fleet from the Indies. Failure would mean nothing less than the destruction of England.

Shakespeare stood on the shore with Elizabeth Drake, Boltfoot, and thousands of townsfolk, all cheering and throwing their caps in the air as the brave pennants of the fleet stretched out in the stiff breeze. Elizabeth touched his face. “I am sure my husband has not thanked you adequately, Mr. Shakespeare, but please accept my sincere gratitude. Last night you saved both our lives.”

He had thought about it all at length. Despite exhaustion, he had hardly been able to sleep, so fast did his heart beat. The thing that kept coming back to him was that he could have killed Herrick, there and then, helpless on the floor, with one foot on the back of his neck. Like every child, Shakespeare had killed injured birds and hunted squirrels with bows and arrows for their red fur, yet he had never had cause to kill a man and often wondered whether he would have the stomach for it. Well, now he knew.

His left arm was heavily bandaged and supported across his chest in a sling. It was painful, but the cut had been clean and there was no reason to believe it would not heal. A physician dressed it with herbal tinctures to prevent gangrene and told him to drink brandy to counter the loss of blood. The ride back to London would be uncomfortable, but manageable.

Early that morning, Herrick had been arraigned before magistrates and then left to ponder his fate in Plymouth jail until trial, which would be a matter of two or three days; execution would follow swiftly. Shakespeare felt that this was a matter best dealt with locally; Mr. Secretary would not wish to have another Papist martyr paraded through the streets so soon after the execution of Mary Stuart. Anyway, Plymouth butchers could bowel and quarter Herrick as efficiently as the London headsmen.

Shakespeare spent a few hours with the would-be assassin, trying to persuade him to talk. He got little-neither confessions nor denials. Only when Shakespeare mentioned the murder of Lady Blanche Howard did the Jesuit break his silence briefly. Herrick laughed, humorlessly. “You do not think that was me, Mr. Shake speare? Look to your own… look to your own.”

Shakespeare pressed him but all the priest would say was, “My fate is certain, why should I waste what little breath I have left in talking with you?” Then he turned his back on his interrogator and dragged his heavy shackles and manacles into a marginally more comfortable position. For a brief moment, Shakespeare wondered whether to bring torture to bear; Mr. Secretary would undoubtedly approve. The thought did not last long. Torture repulsed him, as it did most Englishmen.

After Drake’s fleet sailed, Shakespeare and Boltfoot took horse for London. On the way, they stopped at the White Dog inn to repay the landlady who had helped Shakespeare when his purse was stolen. He had been handed ten pounds by Drake. “It is a loan, Mr. Shakespeare, to get you home. Not a gift.” Boltfoot had chuckled.

The days were growing longer. In a matter of just forty-eight hours the mist had given way to spring sunshine and crisp, clear nights. All the way, Shakespeare thought of Catherine; every mile they rode brought him closer to her. He clung to their one night together and prayed to God that it meant as much to her as it did to him. He would propose to her, of course. Yet he had, too, some nagging fear. Walsingham would not be best pleased that one of his senior officials intended to marry a Roman Catholic; perhaps he would go so far as to dismiss Shakespeare from his employment. Well, if that was to happen, so be it. His love for Catherine Marvell was paramount.

The riders made good progress and Shakespeare decided to take a short diversion to the Thames near Windsor, where he asked the way to the village of Rymesford.

He found the monk that Thomas Woode had told him about huddled in the remains of one of the drying rooms in the old mill. It was a ramshackle, dilapidated place of ancient rotted timbers, and it looked as though it might soon collapse into the river and be carried downstream. Hundreds of birds had made their nests in its beams and rafters and their noise was a cacophony. The old monk was scarce in better condition than the building. His skin was like yellowed parchment, his eyes hollow sockets without light. His old robe, which looked as though he might have been wearing it at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries fifty years since, was little more than rags, hanging from his gaunt shoulders and tied at the waist with frayed strands of rope.

“Are you Ptolomeus?”

The blind monk shied away at his voice like a beaten dog.

A sheet of paper caught in the breeze that blew through the gaping holes where once windows had been and fluttered past the old man. Shakespeare caught the paper. It was blank but it looked of identical quality to the papers found scattered around Lady Blanche Howard’s mutilated body in Hog Lane, Shoreditch.

“Ptolomeus, I have no wish to harm you. I am come to talk with you.”

The old man’s beard was long and pepper gray, as was his hair. He was encrusted with dirt and grime. He sat on his haunches on the floorboards, beside a worn, cast-away grindstone. At his side was a wooden trencher with a few crumbs.

“Boltfoot, give him some food.”

Boltfoot limped back to his horse, which was tethered outside the mill, and took some bread and meat from the saddlebags. He brought it back and touched the sightless monk by the shoulder. “Here,” he said, less gruffly than usual. “Food. Take it.”

The monk stretched out his arms from the folds of his robe and held them together like a tray for the food. He had no hands. Both had been severed at the wrist, and not that long ago, for the scars were fairly fresh. Shakespeare closed his eyes, suffused with feelings of pity and disgust that anyone could have done such a thing to the old man. Boltfoot lay the food on the man’s stumps. “I will bring you ale, too,” he said.

“What happened to you, Ptolomeus?”

“The law, sir, the law.” His voice was surprisingly firm.

“What crime did you commit?”

“Libel, sedition, illegal printing, unlicensed papermaking. What does it matter? My life is done. All that is left me is birdsong and the scraps the villagers bring me. At least they do not judge me. I am content to be judged by God.”

“I am right in thinking that you have made the paper scattered about this place?”

“I cannot see the paper, sir. My eyes have been put out. But if you have found it here, I would hazard a guess that it is my work, poor though that is, as anyone that knows about these things will tell you. It is the water here, you see. Too muddy. That and the sad quality of the rags. The ragmen know their worth, sir.” He laughed drily.

Shakespeare stood quietly a moment and looked at the devastation around him. This broken man sat in the middle of it, still, like the silent heart of a storm. When you have lost everything and there is nothing left to lose but your life, what is there to fear? Ptolomeus ate some of the food Boltfoot had given him, hunching his head down as he pushed his stumps together around the bread and meat and held it up to his mouth. It was obvious the pain of his amputation had not yet dulled, for his body tensed with each movement and his face was set in a grimace.

Much of the panoply of papermaking was still here. The main shaft of the milling machine was attached by levers to mallets for mashing the sodden rags to pulp. Nearby, there were wooden frames with fine sievelike bases from which the water would drain, leaving a thin layer of pulp, which, when dried out, would become raw paper. There was a press, too, to help squeeze the water from the sheets. But there was no printing press. Where, wondered Shakespeare, had that gone?

“Thomas Woode told me he gave you an old press so that you could print Romish tracts on behalf of seminary priests. Where is it, this press?”

“Gone with my hands, sir. Gone with my hands.”

“Mr. Woode told me you would never have printed anything seditious.”

“That, too, is true enough. Or so I thought. Others disagreed. They said that whatever I printed was illicit; Star Chamber has ruled it against the law to print anything without explicit license.”

“Then tell me who did this to you? Was it the town magistrate?”

Boltfoot raised a cup of ale to the old monk’s lips. He drank thirstily, then wiped his mouth with his grubby sleeve. “That is good, sir. That is good. Thank you. No, it was not the magistrate, but one of whom you may have heard. He is named Topcliffe and I do believe him to be Satan incarnate.”

“Topcliffe?”

“He killed my fellow monk Brother Humphrey. Topcliffe cut him into pieces before my eyes and threw his remains into the river. Then he took my eyes and, lastly, my hands. He put my arms together against a log and removed the hands with one blow of an axe. He left me to bleed to death, but God, in his mercy, has let me live a little while longer.”

Shakespeare looked at Boltfoot and saw his own horror reflected. Very little could move Boltfoot, yet the cold brutality of the old man’s tale shocked even him.

“You are silent, sir?” the monk said. “Are you surprised, then, by this demon’s handiwork?”

“No. No, not surprised.”

“A goodwife from Rymesford tended my wounds and brought sustenance. She still helps me, as do others. Burghley and his like cannot kill our faith so easily, you know.”

Shakespeare reached out and touched the monk on the shoulder. Ptolomeus did not flinch. “We will leave you money,” Shakespeare said. “But you must tell us what happened to your printing press.”

“The money would be a kindness, sir. Thank you. As for the press, Mr. Richard Topcliffe took that, too. He said he had some use for it. I did hear him laugh as he carried it off on the back of my own cart.”