Prince

Chapter 22

Cecil’s man Clarkson was waiting for Shakespeare at Dowgate. He was on horseback. ‘I have never seen Sir Robert so agitated, Mr Shakespeare. He awaits word from the Perez faction and none comes. He says you must go to Essex House and bring the Spaniard forth.’

Shakespeare was incredulous. ‘Sir Robert knows well that I cannot go to Essex House. I would not be admitted.’

‘He is adamant that you bring Perez to him. I think he does not care how you do it.’

‘He demands the impossible.’

Clarkson smiled with resignation. He was one of the Cecils’ oldest retainers, having worked for Sir Robert’s father, the Lord Treasurer, Burghley, before being taken on by the son. Shakespeare had always liked him and could not be angry with him; he knew he was only relaying a message.

‘Well, come in and take a little wine with me, Mr Clarkson. Let us think about this.’

‘I fear I must hasten back to Sir Robert to tell him that I have communicated with you.’

‘Tell him my reply, if you will. And tell him, too, that I have apprehended Glebe and have him in safe-keeping. He talks of receiving information from a man named Laveroke. Ask Sir Robert if he knows this name, for I do not…’

Clarkson bowed, shook the reins and was gone.

Shakespeare watched him go, then stepped inside his house. He stayed just long enough to take sustenance, kiss the children and try to reassure Jane that she would be hearing from Boltfoot soon. Then he rode for the Strand.

Ellington Warboys waited outside the Tower. It was almost ten of the clock and the curfew would start soon. At last the constable, fat and plodding, approached him furtively. He looked about to make sure he was not observed, then stretched out his greedy hand. Warboys placed two angel coins in his palm. ‘There’s your pound, master constable. Free passage this night.’

‘Three angels. It’ll cost you three angels. The price is up.’

Warboys had been expecting this. ‘You have no men, constable.’

The constable held out his hand for more. ‘Three. Or do you wish me to call in the provost-marshal and make search of your supposed brandy barrels?’

For a brief moment, Warboys considered whether it might be wise to cut the constable’s throat and be done with him. Instead he formed his scowling mouth into what he intended as a smile. ‘Very well, three it is. But be sure of this: the price cannot go up again.’

‘Well, now, that’s for me to say, ain’t it. Strange coves you’ve got to move your casks. Foreigners are they?’

‘Just do what you’re paid for and keep your questions to yourself.’

‘Aye, well… I don’t like it.’

‘Take the money, constable, for I pledge you this: if I go to the gallows, you’ll be there with me.’

The constable grumbled. His hand folded over the three coins that now adorned it. He glared at the thin figure of Warboys, then snorted and ambled off.

It had been like this for a week now. Warboys’s workers travelled by night when the tide was with them. There were five of them, and they had a small barge at their disposal. This night, as with every night for many days, they transported barrels from the great warehouse in Crutched Friars and loaded the barge at the east side of the Tower. Night after night, they travelled with their deadly cargo, joined the others to do their construction work, and then returned with the tide in the morning, for the next load.

The barrels weighed between fifty and a hundred pounds each. In all they had three hundred and thirty barrels to move downriver, unseen. As in every other ward of London, the watch and the constables were notorious for their idleness and incompetence. All the same, they could never be taken for granted and needed to be fed garnish. That was Warboys’s task. He paid them every evening. In return the constable looked the other way when the carts rolled past with the barrels. Whether or not he believed the casks held brandy or wine from France, it did not matter. So long as he believed this was some kind of smuggling operation, to avoid duty. The garnish had to be generous, for any questioning would quickly reveal the truth of what was going on. Had the constable thought for a moment they held gunpowder, his attitude would have altered sharply.

Warboys returned to the great dusty warehouse. The workers wore dark, sombre gowns. They were Scots and they kept their voices low, for their strong accents would seem out of place in this town. They looked at him apprehensively. He nodded to them and the carts began to trundle. Warboys watched them through his wide, fishlike eyes, and betrayed no emotion. Yet he had worries. This was taking longer than planned. He lifted the flagon he carried at his waist. It had been full of aqua coelestis when he set out. Now there was little more than a mouthful left. He downed it in one.

‘I can go no faster with the workers I have,’ he had told Laveroke. ‘If I am to make more haste, you must let me have the use of two or three of the more trustworthy English lads.’

‘No. None of them can be trusted. Even you…’

‘You know me better than that, sir.’

‘Do I?’

So the Scots would have to redouble their work rate, for the law’s forbearance could never be taken for granted. They had to work with speed as well as stealth. They were willing enough, for they had a hunger for vengeance in their bellies and their hearts. Get the work done. Carry the bricks, carry the powder, carry the iron. Get the Sieve ready. ‘Work hard for me and you will be repaid in the only way you desire,’ Warboys told them. ‘You will have your retribution. You will have justice for those you loved.’

Francis Mills was unhappy. In his dreams, he honed a butcher’s filleting knife and slit the throats of his wife and the grocer who lifted her skirts and took her every day in the back storeroom of his shop. He woke gasping for breath, certain that their blood was drowning him. And then, by morning, he was as irritable and fatigued as if he had not gone to bed at all. How could he do the work required of him by Sir Robert Cecil when all his nights were haunted by death and all his days tormented by visions of their sweat-glistened skins and the dirty sounds of their fevered moans and piglike grunts?

If he could get away with it, he would kill them both. He could smell the grocer on her body whenever he was in the same room as her, smell the man’s seed wafting like the salt stink of the sea up from her cunny. At times he wondered what he believed in. He was no longer sure what was right and what was wrong. The Commandments told him not to kill, yet they also told his wife to commit no adultery. Should the adulterer not face God’s wrath?

In front of him on the table he had the ledgers from the Three Mills gunpowder site. His eyes ached from studying them by candlelight. There was no doubt that powder had gone missing. Sarjent insisted that Knagg was the guilty man, but there was nothing here to prove that. All that was certain was that an amount of powder had been produced and a lesser amount had arrived at the Tower. Knagg’s disappearance did not look good for him, however.

Shakespeare entered the room that served as Mills’s office in Cecil’s mansion on the Strand. Mills looked up at him, something close to pity in his gaunt eyes. ‘John,’ he said, ‘I am sorry for the manner in which I spoke to you earlier.’

‘It is of no consequence.’ Shakespeare gazed at Mills strangely, as if surprised that the man could communicate a normal human emotion. He noted that he was yet more skeletal than usual, his plain, almost Puritan doublet hanging loose about his frame.

‘Your wife, John… I wish I had words.’

‘There are none. Do not say anything.’ Shakespeare walked to the window and looked at the teeming street below. Somewhere out there was the man who had killed Catherine. The thought tightened his sinews. He turned back. ‘Sir Robert wants me to bring Perez to him, or the Cabral woman — or both. She said she would return with the information we need, but of course she has not. Now they are in Essex House and I cannot get to them.’

‘No man’s land. Neither of us is welcome at Essex House. We would be dealt with poorly by the sharp end of a pikestaff.’

‘If we send a servant, he will be ignored. The message will not even reach Perez. As far as Essex is concerned, Don Antonio is his property. He will wring every last drop of advantage from this Spaniard. He will bring him to court and he will take credit for all the tittle-tattle he can get from him about the royal courts of Spain and France.’

‘Which is why I have had another notion. I have spoken with Rick Baines…’

Shakespeare put up a hand. ‘Baines! He is a villainous rakehell. He is Essex’s man. He will do nothing to help us.’

‘You are wrong. Baines is no one’s man. He will do anything if the price is right. I offered him five marks, he demanded ten. We settled on eight.’

‘He will bring Perez to us?’

‘No, but he has told me a way to him.’

Shakespeare was doubtful. ‘Indeed?’

‘Perez will be at the royal races at Greenwich tomorrow. There is to be the celebrated race between Great Henry and this unknown filly Conquistadora. All London talks of it. Essex bruits it about that the Barb will beat the Queen’s hobby, and she threatens to box his ears for speaking thus. There is no doubt she will be in a tempestuous rage if her horse loses. To be beaten by any horse would be bad enough, but to be beaten by a filly named Conquistadora would be beyond bearing.’

‘How can Baines be certain Perez will be there?’

‘Because he has been with him at Essex House.’

Shakespeare was still doubtful. ‘They will be expecting us, though. Baines will have mentioned our interest.’

‘No matter, you will find a way to Perez. And then there is the clockmaker…’

Shakespeare leant forward, suddenly painfully alert. ‘Have you found him?’

‘It is not as easy as it sounds. The clockmakers are mostly members of the Blacksmiths’ Company, yet the names they supply to me are of little use. These men build nothing but the clocks on church towers, working in iron and steel. They tell me we should be looking to the refugees from Holland, France and Germany to build a clock such as the one used in the powder blast, for it had the nature of a household table clock, in which different metals are used. They would be the men experienced in such work, using copper alloys. I am told there are a few in Blackfriars and I shall seek them out. But, in truth, they work quietly and alone.’

There had been a brass wheel among the parts found embedded in Catherine’s body. Mills knew this. Shakespeare looked at him a moment, then strode to the door. It was getting late and he was close to exhaustion.

Mills stared desolately at the opening door. ‘John, I do not know how to say this, but I wish it had been my wife at the Dutch market.’

Shakespeare wavered, his hand on the latch. He knew all about the infidelities of Mills’s wife. It was an open secret in this building. Of a sudden he was struck by the absurd irony of their situations, also by the pathos of Francis Mills, a man who would watch without emotion as a man was racked to the very edge of damnation, yet went home to grovel abjectly before the mocking laughter of his sluttish wife. For all his power and razor wits, he was impotent before her. Shakespeare almost felt sorry for him. He could not find a kind word to say; his spirit was presently too arid to bring comfort to others. Yet he looked across the room and met Mills’s gaze. ‘You do not have time for these domestic grievances. Bring this clockmaker in. Bring every clockmaker in the realm to Bridewell and search their souls. And find me a man named Laveroke.’

‘Laveroke?’

‘Luke Laveroke. Glebe said he was the source of his information. Do you know of him?’

‘The name means nothing.’

‘Well ask about. But mostly, bring me the clockmaker…’

‘I pledge it.’

Shakespeare shook his head. ‘Why do you not find yourself some young maid, Frank? Why do you bother with her?’

Mills emitted a short, hollow laugh. ‘Because I love her, John. Because I love the bitch-whore the way a drunkard loves strong ale.’