Revenger

Chapter 16

The entrance to Hogsden Trent’s Brewery and cooperage in Gully Hole, Southwark, was littered with hoops and staves. The thick walls of the old stone building were permeated with the smell of fermenting barley and the bitter tang of hops. It was a scene that would never cease to give Boltfoot an uneasy feeling. He had spent many years as a cooper, both by land and sea, and had no desire to return to that life.

Boltfoot looked about him. There was some good craftsmanship here; he would have been proud of this work himself in the old days when he sailed the world. A couple of men wandered past in open-necked shirts and rolled-up sleeves, with leather tool-aprons about their waists. One of them stopped.

“Can I help you?” He was sixty or so, with short-cropped white hair and welcoming eyes. “I’m Ralph Hogsden.”

“I’m looking for a man called Davy.”

“Davy Kerk? Dutch Davy? Yes, he’s here somewhere. Come in and I’ll find him.”

They found Davy in the yard, sawing long staves for puncheon casks. Boltfoot watched a moment, admiring the work. Davy finished his cut, ran his palm along the edge to feel the smoothness, then looked around at Hogsden and the newcomer.

“Davy, this fellow was after talking with you.”

The cooper dusted down his hands. “And why would that be?”

Davy was a man in his mid-forties, but well kept. He stood an inch or two taller than Boltfoot, his face partially obscured by a long carpet of graying hair that hung about his head like a helmet. He had the same salt-weathered lines to his face as Boltfoot-the look of a man who has been to sea for many years. His nose-or what you could see of it beneath all that hair-was long and hooked down sharply at the tip. His ears, which protruded through his mane, were large and festooned with bristly hair like a man twice his age. It seemed to Boltfoot that if the man ever bothered visiting a barber, he might be fair-looking. His accent was broad and foreign, but his voice betrayed no animosity. He met Boltfoot’s eye and held it.

“My name is Boltfoot Cooper. I’d like to talk with you awhile, about a voyage.”

Boltfoot thought Davy stiffened, but the man said evenly, “A voyage? I’ve been on a few voyages in my time; what voyage would that be?”

“Aboard the Lion to the island of Roanoke in the New World.”

“And why would you be interested in that?”

“Do you want to speak here?”

“I’ve got no secrets.”

“As you wish. I am here on the orders of Mr. John Shakespeare, an intelligencer working for the Earl of Essex.”

Davy put down the saw. “You’ll have to tell me more than that.”

Ralph Hogsden was watching the proceedings with a keen interest. “Well, Mr. Cooper? What exactly is the great Earl’s interest in Davy’s seafarings?”

Questioning wasn’t what Boltfoot did. He was good with his cutlass and deadly with his caliver, but he had always been a man of few words; interrogation was for men like Shakespeare, not him. But he had never shirked a task in his life. “All right, I’ll tell you true,” he said brusquely. “There’s one as says that a so-called lost colonist has been spotted, here in Southwark. I’m looking for her on Essex’s orders. Don’t ask me why. I do what I’m told. And I do believe you were on the voyage that took them all there.”

Davy Kerk frowned, then he looked toward Hogsden, and both men broke out laughing as one.

“Is it true or isn’t it, Mr. Kerk? Were you on the Lion?” Boltfoot persisted.

“Well, Dutch Davy,” Hogsden said, “were you?”

“Yes, course I was. So were a hundred others. What’s any of this faffling nonsense got to do with me?” Kerk had stopped laughing and was starting to look angry.

“Tell me about it, then. Tell me about the voyage and the people on it. Or come with me to John Shakespeare at Dowgate and tell him.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Mr. Cooper. I have work to do to put food on my table.”

“Then tell me what you know. Answer a few questions and that’s it.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Then I shall return with a warrant.”

Kerk did not look concerned. “And what charge would that be? Refusing to talk to a stump of a man with a clubfoot asking me questions that mean bugger all to anyone, with some cat’s-piss notion of lost colonists turning up? Is that a new crime in England?”

Boltfoot felt the weight of the caliver slung about his back and the cutlass at his belt. Something in the movement of his body gave away his thoughts.

“Shoot me, will you? Or cut me down?” Davy Kerk bared his teeth aggressively, but then softened as quickly as the heat had risen in him. “Come on, then, Mr. Cooper, let us have done with it. Of course I remember the Lion. ”

“Thank you, Mr. Kerk. I am most glad to hear it. Now, as I have been told, the settlers were mostly Puritans, and given to sermonizing.”

“God’s blood, but that was a voyage of the doomed. They preached and ranted and got in the way of good, honest privateering. Made us travel away from the Carib Sea up the coast of Florida to that forsaken lump of land Roanoke. It is a place I would not have stayed for all the gold in the Spanish Main, a place of murder and evil. Bleaker than the Waddenzee in winter.”

“Murder?”

“Aye. Poor George Howe, cut down by Indians with arrows and axes while fishing. He was one of the better fellows. When you were there, on the island, you found yourself thinking those savages were behind every tree. Standing there or crouching, watching you, waiting until you crept out to the pit for a shit in the night. Never have I seen darker nights.”

The three men stood silent as if imagining a black night on the farthest of shores, knowing that you were observed by a hundred eyes. It was a feeling Boltfoot remembered all too well. There had been times ashore, on coral strands and the coast of Peru and in the Spice Islands, when he, too, had felt open to sudden death.

“There was one name,” Boltfoot said, breaking the spell. “Eleanor, daughter of John White, wife of Ananias Dare. Do you recall her?”

“Of course. She did give birth to the first child there, named for your virgin Queen. If the child is alive, she must be nigh on five now.”

“ My virgin Queen, Mr. Kerk?”

“I am not English, Mr. Cooper. She is no Queen of mine.”

“So why is a Dutchman here in England, Mr. Kerk?”

“Escaping, Mr. Cooper, like every other stranger in this city of strangers.”

“So you’re a Protestant, are you?”

“Would I be here if I were not?”

Boltfoot noted that Davy spoke good English, probably better English than most Englishmen spoke, albeit with a Dutch accent. There were plenty such men here in London, fugitives from the horrors of war in the Low Countries, a conflict that seemed to have been raging forever.

“Tell me more. What do you recall of Eleanor?”

“She was fair, blue-eyed, I’d say. A pretty young lass. Wasted on that sanctimonious Ananias Dare.”

“It is said she is alive and here in England.”

“Then that is good news. Did someone find her and bring her home?”

“Not that is known. But she was seen, not far from here in Southwark.”

“If she is here, then someone must have brought her. Or perchance, the settlers built a boat and sailed home. Either that or she sprouted faerie wings and flew the Western Sea.”

“You sound doubtful, Mr. Kerk.”

He rubbed a hand across the back of his tousled mane of sand-gray hair. “You are making merry at my expense, Mr. Cooper. Yes, I have heard the tales and the gossip the same as you about what happened to those settlers. The truth? She’s dead. They are all dead, done for by the savages. What chance do you think they stood-a hundred or so men, women, and children surrounded by thousands of natives who had fallen out of patience with them? We didn’t like leaving them there, for we all feared that they were to have a miserable fate in that godless land. On the last day, when we said our goodbyes, there was many a tear shed, and not just by the womenfolk. The settlers’ faces on the shore as we pulled away were drained and terrified, Mr. Cooper. They looked at us as a man on the scaffold looks at the block, for we were leaving them to a dreadful fate and everyone knew it.”

“So you do not believe she is here in London?”

“No, Mr. Cooper, I do not. Is that enough for you? May I now return to the sawing of my staves before Mr. Hogsden deducts a groat from my pay for idling the day away in chatter?”

“One last question, sir, and I will myself give you a groat for your time.”

“Go on, Mr. Cooper.”

“Do you know of anyone else now in these parts who was on the Lion voyage with you, someone else with memories that I might inquire of?”

“And why would I tell you if there was such a one? I do not think any man would thank me for it.”

Boltfoot said nothing; Davy was right. As he turned to leave, however, the Dutchman stayed him.

“There is one, though-a Portuguese gentleman, by name of Fernandez, commander of the expedition. And for that groat you promised me, I shall tell you where you might find him.”

U SING The Profitable Art of Gardening, Shakespeare scraped a short coded message with quill, ink, and paper and handed it, sealed, to his servant Jack Butler. He instructed him to take it to Greenwich Palace and place it in the hand of Sir Robert personally, and to no one else. No one must see him going there, no one must ever know that he had gone.

Jack Butler had been with Shakespeare five years. He was a big man, six inches taller than his master, with strong arms beneath his frieze jerkin. Now, high on his large bay steed, he towered over Shakespeare.

“You have the letter safe, Jack?”

Butler patted his pack-saddle.

“Wait to see if there is a reply. And God speed.”

Butler grinned. “Have no fears on my account, master.”

Shakespeare slapped the horse’s flank and watched Butler disappear. He thought of the message he had written and wondered how it would be received by Cecil. It contained two points: one was the confirmation that the Countess of Essex was being poisoned, almost certainly with wolfsbane, and was probably now at a critical stage; the other was the mysterious death of Amy Le Neve, the daughter of Essex’s aide-de-camp and associate, and the worrying possibility of a connection to McGunn.

With Butler gone on his mission, Shakespeare headed for Essex House.

In the intelligencers’ turret, he eyed the shelf of papers he wished to examine. Nearby, Thomas Phelippes peered through his thick-glassed spectacles at a coded document and seemed to take no notice of anything else. Arthur Gregory was not here today, but Francis Mills was, and it seemed to Shakespeare that his narrowed eyes followed him like little torches.

He had already encountered McGunn this day, and it had not been pleasant. “You are too slow,” he had growled. “We’ll all have left London before long. Get on with it, Shakespeare. Find this woman.”

“And what if she does not exist?”

“Find her.”

Now he reached up his hand, close to the papers he had seen during the summer revel. Instantly Mills was at his side, his fetid breath smelling like pig manure. “You’ll find nothing of interest there, Shakespeare, nothing about the colony.”

Shakespeare’s hand hovered. “I am trying to discover where to look, Mr. Mills.”

“Not there. You will find nothing there.”

“I think I will decide for myself where to look, Mr. Mills.” Shakespeare gave Mills a hard look. Their mutual dislike went back a long way. How could he search this place with such a man always in attendance, a man he knew would betray him without a flicker of concern? He reached for a package of papers.

Mills touched his arm to stay him. “There is no need, Mr. Shakespeare. Mr. Gregory has collected some more documents for you.” Mills indicated a pile of papers on the floor. “There. Take them away and look at them at your leisure.”

The package was already in Shakespeare’s hand.

“You certainly won’t need that,” Mills said, taking it from him. “That is ancient correspondence from Stafford in Paris. There”-he nodded once more toward the papers Gregory had collected-“that is what you want.”

Shakespeare clenched his jaw, trying to contain his fury.

Mills gave him a curious look. “There is a great deal of interest in you in this house, you know, Mr. Shakespeare. The Bacons keep telling Essex that information is power. And someone has said that you are the man to help them acquire it.” He laughed mirthlessly. “I cannot imagine where they got such an idea.”

Shakespeare collected up the papers and charts Mills had indicated. There was no more to be done here today. Cecil had set him an impossible task.

Back at Dowgate, George Jerico asked for a word. He complained that the workload was become too great with Rumsey Blade departed and Shakespeare engaged on other matters. Shakespeare said he sympathized, but that it would not be for more than a few days, for he had decided to close the school for the summer, before the plague took hold.

Catherine and Jane were in the nursery, sewing. Jane immediately rose from her stool to scurry away. Shakespeare let her go. He wanted Catherine for himself. At other times, he would have embraced her. This day, he stood his distance and spoke briskly, like a stranger. “So, you went to find the Bellamy girl?”

“Yes.” Catherine was mending her best kirtle. Her needle stopped in mid-stitch.

“And?”

“And she was not there. Gone to Topcliffe’s at Westminster.”

“Which means she was part of a plot to snare Southwell. And to trap you.”

“No. It is not as you make it seem. I believe her to be as much a victim in this as Father Southwell and her family. Those creatures have brought her to this. If she has done anything wrong, then I believe her an innocent dupe. It is all Topcliffe.”

Shakespeare’s face was set. “You won’t see it, will you?”

“I see that you still make apology for this foul and corrupt council of heretics.”

His mouth fell open. She had never said such words to him. “Is that your considered opinion of me?”

She did not reply. Instead she continued her interrupted stitch and stabbed her finger. She winced but let out no sound. A spot of blood seeped onto the kirtle. She put the bleeding finger in her mouth.

“Well?”

Momentarily, she removed the finger from her lips. “I have nothing further to say to you.”

“It were better you had not said as much already, mistress. But I have something to say to you.” His voice was cold and businesslike. “I am closing down the school before the pestilence worsens. We will leave London in a few days, so prepare yourself.” He said they would take Jane, the late Mr. Woode’s children-Andrew and Grace-and any other members of the household who wished to accompany them to Stratford, where they would stay with his mother and father, while he returned to London. “It will be safer for you and the children there, away from the city.”

She shook her head slowly, from side to side. “No, I am not going to Stratford, and nor are the children.”

As he looked at her, it occurred to him that he had lost her. She had contempt for him; that was clear now. She saw him as a heretic and as an enemy to her and her faith. There was no love left. Nothing.

He turned on his heel and left the room. His head throbbed. Everything crowded in.