Prince

Chapter 35

Shakespeare fell back into the mud, his feet in the water. He panted for breath. Boltfoot lay beside him, still as death. He had been far lighter to carry here through the waves than Shakespeare would have imagined. It was no effort at all, but now all his energy was expended.

Had he really lost Catherine and Boltfoot within the space of a week? The two people, apart from his children, that he loved best in the world. He could not let it happen. With a force born of rage, he struggled to his knees, then turned Boltfoot on his side.

‘You are going to live, Mr Cooper,’ he said. ‘I order you to live.’

He pulled back his right hand, full swing, and slammed it into Boltfoot’s back as if he were a midwife determined that an uncrying newborn should utter its first wail and take its first breath. The back arched at the blow and a terrible scream broke forth from somewhere inside. Boltfoot spewed out water, then retched and howled again.

‘Boltfoot!’

Shakespeare tried to turn Boltfoot over, but he fought against it, spluttering, gasping for breath, coughing up water.

‘Help me, Boltfoot,’ Shakespeare ordered, once again trying to turn him over.

Boltfoot let out a yell of pain, the noise of a dying animal, the scream he had refused to emit even when he lay long hours in the coffin and when he was passed across the fire. Now it came from him, as if from the ravines of hell.

Shakespeare stopped trying to move Boltfoot and he flopped forward, taking in great aching breaths.

‘I thought you were dead.’

‘Blood of Christ, Mr Shakespeare! My back…’

Shakespeare examined Boltfoot’s back and saw the tatters and flaming crust of red blisters. He looked out across the creek. The bark was just disappearing around the low headland, its sails unfurled and billowing with the breeze that came up the Thames from the North Sea. He tried to gauge whether it would head up the river towards the bridge or down to the open sea, but could not tell from here.

‘Boltfoot, I see your terrible injuries, but we have little time. Are you able to walk?’

Boltfoot turned on to his front, on all fours. Slowly, he rose to his knees. Shakespeare got up and stood before him. He reached out and took his hands, lifting him to his feet. ‘What has happened to your back? What did they do?’

‘Those madpike Scotch witches roasted me like a suckling pig. Nine times they held me over the fire.’ Boltfoot winced as he spoke.

‘I say again, can you walk, or shall I leave you here and go for assistance?’

‘I’m coming, master. I wish to drown those black-clad drabs as they tried to do for me.’

Shakespeare was about to turn away, inland, when the fishing boat hove into view, drifting in on the tide.

‘I think assistance has arrived, Boltfoot.’

‘Did you see the bark, master fisher?’

‘Indeed, sir. Driving upriver with the tide, and with the wind for the moment. But it will soon change against her and she will have to tack, even though the tide’s swell will give her a ride. She did look a mighty cumbersome vessel, lumbering low in the water.’

‘She carries a heavy burden of death. Can we catch her?’

‘Given time, aye. But then what will you do? I don’t believe a broadside from your pistols will cause them much consternation.’

‘We’ll fetch Gulden, then head for Gravesend.’

Shakespeare settled back beside the fisher. Boltfoot sat with his back over the low bulwark, his burns soothed by the wind. Shakespeare had inspected the scorching and realised there was nothing he could do but get him to an apothecary. ‘You smell like roast pork, Boltfoot, but I fear you will survive.’

Boltfoot tried to smile, glad of Master Shakespeare’s disrespectful jesting. The last thing he wanted was sympathy.

Gulden lay, bound, in the bottom of the hull, soaking in fish-stinking bilge-water. Shakespeare had tossed him there, saying he would serve as ballast.

In the distance, as they rounded the cape of Blythe Sands, they could make out the sails of a bark, three miles distant. Was that the Sieve?

The harbour-master at Gravesend was a straight-backed former mariner named Winch. He looked at the fishing smack and its occupants with undisguised scorn.

‘Look what the tide brought in today, Mr Adam,’ he said to the man at his side on the dock. ‘Never have I seen such miserable flotsam.’

‘I’d throw them back, Mr Finch.’ James Adam was about forty. He was a man of middling height, with the weathered forehead of a mariner, though the cut of his clothes suggested he was a ship’s officer rather than an ordinary seaman.

‘We need help,’ Shakespeare said, stepping unsteadily from the boat. ‘This is Queen’s business.’

‘And I’m the King of France,’ Winch said.

‘A plague of toads, I know that dismal face,’ Adam said suddenly. ‘I’d recognise that face and that excuse for a foot anywhere. Why, it’s Boltfoot Cooper!’

‘Mr Adam,’ Boltfoot said grimly.

‘Aye, Cooper, I’m your master. Finest ship’s master you ever served under. How in England’s name have you landed here? Are you shipwrecked?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I will explain,’ Shakespeare said, taking Adam’s arm and holding it unnecessarily tight, ‘if you will be silent a minute or two…’