Revenger

Chapter 36

They dragged the body from the house under the terrified eyes of the guard. Topcliffe ordered the man to fetch a handcart and a tarpaulin. The guard dropped his pike, which clattered to the stone-flagged ground, and scuttled like a beaten dog into a workshop.

When he re-emerged, they hauled the corpse into the cart, covering it in a heavy sheet of canvas.

“Haul away, Shakespeare,” jeered Topcliffe. “Put your back into it.”

Topcliffe and Shakespeare took one handle of the cart each and pulled it through a side passageway. It was hard going in the rain over the rough, muddy grass and tree roots as they pulled their burden down through the woods to the west of the castle toward the river. Their clothes were soaking, rain pouring down their necks beneath their flattened ruffs.

“These people piss me off,” Topcliffe growled to no one in particular as they reached the river and hoisted the body out of the cart and dropped it unceremoniously onto the slippery bank.

Shakespeare saw the pair of black shears hooked on the dead man’s belt and shuddered as he thought of Jack Butler. And Boltfoot Cooper? Had they also shorn that loyal man of his fingers?

Topcliffe kicked at the body like a football, pushing it with his foot into the edge of the slow-running waters of the stream. “Traitors. Agents of the Antichrist, every one of them. What sort of man orders the murder of his own wife?”

What sort of man, thought Shakespeare, has a torture chamber in his own house and laughs and jests as he tears men apart? But all he said was, “An ambitious man.”

“He was going to hang her, make it look as though she had taken her own life in her madness. Lucky I was there, eh, boy?”

The body floated out into center stream, caught the current, and began to drift away. They watched it for a few moments until an arm became tangled in some roots protruding from the far bank, and the body twisted around.

“They’re all the same. Essex and his mewling, dissembling ilk. Noble blood? I’d stick their ancestry up their treacherous arses. Southampton is the worst. Thought he could keep the vile Southwell from my pretty chamber of iron and fire.” Topcliffe barked a laugh. “No one bests Richard Topcliffe-and certainly not girl-boys like Southampton and Southwell. Who’ll fondle the Earl’s little pizzle now Southwell is in my grasp? Your brother, I fancy. He’ll rub him up and down, up and down with a handful of sweet chrism, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Shakespeare stiffened with contained fury. Now the carcass was dumped, he just wanted to get back to the castle as quickly as possible and talk with Cecil. He was breathing easier, but his throat was bruised and he would have a neck as rough as birch-bark for days. He started marching back up the bank into the trees.

“You next, Shakespeare,” Topcliffe spat after him through the rain. “You and your Papist dog-wife and Romish puppies. I’ll have you all swimming like Mr. Slyguff here. I’ll be dancing when your severed parts are parboiling merrily in the Tyburn cauldron.”

Shakespeare turned back, half-sliding, half-stepping down the muddy incline. Taking the powerfully built Topcliffe by surprise, he swung a wild punch at him, catching him on the side of the head. Topcliffe stumbled and sprawled into the mud.

“Your threats have never scared me, Topcliffe, but no one calls my wife a bitch. Learn some manners as you grovel.”

Topcliffe floundered and slid, grasping at nettles and briars as he tried to rise. Shakespeare turned on his heel. Topcliffe lashed out with his arm to trip or catch his retreating foot, but he kicked free and ascended the bank once more into the trees, then strode back toward the dim, flickering lights of Sudeley Castle through the rain-drenched night.

Cecil was awake, pacing his bedchamber in his night-clothes. Clarkson had brought him news of Essex’s departure.

“There is no time to lose, John,” he said when Shakespeare entered the room. “You must be gone to Hardwick straightway.”

Shakespeare told him of Slyguff’s intent on the life of the Countess of Essex. “He now floats in the River Isbourne, the air choked out of him and his neck cracked by Topcliffe.”

“Good.”

“I confess, Sir Robert, I was surprised by Topcliffe’s role in this.”

Cecil shrugged off the implied criticism of his secret dealings with the brutal torturer. “Suffice it to say that whatever you think of him, no one is more loyal to his sovereign. He is the Queen’s servant: his only loyalty is to his Protestant God and his monarch. And he has assisted me in keeping the Countess of Essex alive. We will talk more of it later; there is no time now. But I thank you for your work-you have confirmed all my fears.” He handed Shakespeare a letter, with his seal of office as Privy Councillor. “Now carry this letter to the Countess of Shrewsbury at Hardwick. Ride like the wind.”

Shakespeare’s brow furrowed. “Do you not think I need to take men with me, Sir Robert? Essex’s band is twenty strong men-at-arms.”

Cecil did not smile. “Do you think I want another Battle of Bosworth Field, Mr. Shakespeare? What would happen if I sent you with twenty men, a hundred men? You would start a civil war. Subtlety is required here, sir, subtlety. That is why I want you and not Topcliffe. Arrive before Essex and you can spirit the girl away to a place of safety, which would be the best solution for all concerned. Ride fast. You must stop a wedding.”

Penelope Rich stirred in her black sheets and looked at the man on the bed cushions beside her. She ran her elegant fingers through the dark curls that flowed across the pillow. She loved him and wanted more of his children.

The man beside her on the bed at Blithfield Hall in Staffordshire was Sir Charles Blount, a kinsman of her mother’s husband Christopher Blount. Charles had been her lover for two years, their passion all-consuming. At the age of twenty-nine, she had already done her duty by the husband forced upon her by her family and her sovereign, bearing him five children; now, in her prime, she had had her first with Charles.

She smiled in the early evening light and thought of the other man in her life: her younger brother, Robert. She wanted the world for him. His heart was strong but he was so easily-so infuriatingly-distracted. He needed her steel to drive him on to the goal he deserved. It was her life’s work, her great project. One day he would be king, and she would guide his hand.

Three years earlier, she had made an error; she had courted the Scots King, James, with sweet letters and flattery, hoping for preferment if they could raise him to the English throne on Elizabeth’s death. She had nearly come unstuck when word of that emerged. But the close call made her think: Why hand the throne to James Stuart? Why not this family? Her great-grandmother was Mary Boleyn, beloved of a king. Could anyone doubt that Great Henry himself was her great-grandfather? That his royal blood flowed in their veins?

Elizabeth knew it. That was why she scorned them. Penelope’s mother had been banished from court; so had her sister. And was Robert chosen as the Queen’s toy-dog for any reason other than to rub their noses in the Queen’s shit?

The Devereux women had seethed at the injustice of it-every slight, every snub, every humiliating plea for money that her brother had to issue. Why, he had to woo the old hag like a girl to win preferment; it was worse than any degradation endured by a common whore.

And then Penelope had seen a way to repay her; a way to raise the Devereux family to the position that was rightfully theirs. It was the arrival at court of a rather plain, lonely girl who would not be noticed in any room were it not for one thing: her undoubted claim to the succession.

Her name was Arbella Stuart, and many believed her right to the crown to be greater than that of her cousin James Stuart.

Penelope had observed her. She saw the way the awkward young girl looked at her brother, gazing on him adoringly, like a hound-pup stares up at its master-wide-eyed, waggy-tailed, and longing to submit. That was when the plan took shape in Penelope’s clever head. If Robert were to marry Arbella, the union of their bloodlines would be too powerful for any to gainsay, even the Cecils.

But wooing the girl under the watchful gaze of her guardians alone was difficult, so Penelope had had another idea. Robert must court her from afar, with words. And she knew just the poet to pen those words: young William Shakespeare. His verses dripped passion, and he was desperate for patronage.

It had worked. This night, the girl would be lying awake in her bedchamber at Hardwick Hall, her mind full of Robert Devereux, her bold Earl of Essex, her love; wet for him, breathless in her desire to be taken.

A wedding was but the start. It had to be followed through with conviction or it would merely consign both Robert and Arbella to the Tower, just as Ralegh now languished there with his new bride.

They needed a protective circle of men. A Round Table of the greatest in the land; men to stand with them. Southampton and Rutland for their nobility; McGunn for his endless stream of gold; Thomas Phelippes, Francis Mills, Arthur Gregory, and Anthony Bacon for their secret ways; Francis Bacon for his political instincts; Meyrick, Danvers, Williams, and Le Neve for their military prowess.

With meticulous care, wiles, and flattery, she had drawn them in. At last the group was complete: twenty or thirty of the most formidable men in the kingdom, all utterly loyal to her brother. Men whom even the Cecils could not resist.

There would be no arrest warrant issued while these noble warriors, along with their host of retainers and knights, stood together. And if there was resistance, if the issue was forced… well, the throne would come to Robert all the quicker.

There had been one minor hurdle to overcome: Robert’s wife, Frances. Though she was dull, Penelope had always rather liked her. Her instinct was merely to ignore the marriage, have it annulled as unlawful at a later date. That would be easy enough, especially once the crown was theirs. But others felt it might be better if she was out of the way before the wedding.

The last part of the puzzle had been John Shakespeare. Mr. Mills had been insistent that there was no better man in England to organize the vital work of intelligence-gathering. With his brother so deeply involved, it was better that he stand with them, too. And such skills as he possessed would be critical once the crown was theirs. If anyone could protect the fledgling regime from usurpers and rebels, it was a man of his anxious diligence-a man who, like Walsingham, had worked so tirelessly to protect his Queen for so many years. Shakespeare was such a man. Shakespeare would be their Walsingham.

Her brother had not been sure of John Shakespeare; he told her that McGunn had doubts. She had her own doubts, though: doubts about McGunn. Though they had needed his riches, she understood the danger of selling him their souls. McGunn would want much in return, yet the nature of that reckoning had never been clear.

Penelope turned toward Charles and curled her body around his. He was warm. She wrapped her arms around his waist and her hands found his yard, which stirred at her touch. She would like him to take her now, but it hardly seemed fair when he slept so peacefully after their long afternoon of lovemaking.

The rain beat against the walls.

She fancied she heard horses in the distance, but she had imagined that all day long. They would come, she was sure of it. This night, they would come to her on the first leg of their momentous journey.

She sat up. Even through the howling rain, she could hear the trample of hooves on heavy ground. Suddenly there was a clatter as the first horses came through onto the cobbles in the courtyard. Penelope nudged her beloved. “Charles, they are here.”

He turned to her. His face was severe in the cloud-darkened light. As a soldier, he was used to waking to instant alertness without the groggy interlude of ordinary mortals. “I am not coming. I will not see them.”

“But, Charles…”

“No. I shall smoke my pipe and read a few verses until they are gone.”

He would not countenance her plans. It had been a running battle between them, the only point of disagreement in an otherwise intense and devoted relationship. She had explained her thinking: the absolute certainty that the Queen must soon die-“We are all mortal, Charles, and she is old and fading fast”-and the need for a strong man to take the crown, not Scottish, nor Spanish, but English.

Even when she had shown him Dr. Forman’s astrological charts, he had refused. “You may well be right, my alderliefest, but I will err on the side of caution in such matters,” he had insisted. Yet, while he would not join them, she knew that he would not betray them either.

She rose and kissed his face, then stepped to the window to see the four-man vanguard sitting astride their steaming horses, drenched and muddy. She rang a bell to summon her maidservant, who assisted her to dress in a gown of black satin with gold edging.

Penelope arrived in the courtyard just as her brother cantered in at the head of the main body of horsemen. Their mother stood on the steps of the great hall, regally attired in a French gown of cloth of silver, embroidered with little scarlet wolves, with small cuts to the arms revealing gold threads. Her bodice descended in dramatic fashion to a sharp-pointed stomacher and, to protect her from the rain, she wore a black taffeta cloak and hat. The effect, in the darkening sky and against the mellow brickwork, was quite dazzling. She looked every inch the queen she believed herself to be.

Lettice opened wide her arms to greet her beloved son. He walked his black stallion forward to the steps until he was beside his mother, then leaned over and kissed her proffered hand. All his companions, still high in the saddle, roared their approval.

Penelope purred with pleasure. It occurred to her that anyone who did not know better might have thought these men were hailing their God-ordained king.

She looked around the group and saw all the familiar faces: louche Southampton, still managing to look elegant in the saddle, despite being mud-caked, with his hair all in rats’ tails; Rutland, a wicked glint in his eye; Le Neve, stiff and soldierly as ever; Danvers, sneaky and thin; Meyrick, staying close to his master, for whom he would happily sacrifice his own life if need be.

Servants carried trays with silver goblets of wine and brandy to the assembled horsemen now crowding out of the courtyard. When all had their cups filled, Lettice held up her own goblet and the horsemen went silent. “A toast,” she said, “to a wedding.”

“To a wedding,” they all shouted in unison, then downed their drinks in one, tossing their empty cups to the cobbled stones.

Penelope held up her hand to silence the group, then spoke quietly to her brother, though all could hear. “And where, pray, is Frances?” she asked, in a voice of beguiling innocence.

“She is indisposed, madam,” came the reply, and the horsemen all erupted in laughter. “Now, let us take supper. We ride again with fresh horses in one hour.”

And I shall ride with you, thought Penelope, for I do love a fine wedding.