Revenger

Chapter 38

The ancient church of St. John dominated the fields like a specter in the gray morning light. Its stone walls, five or six hundred years old and first built before the Conqueror came to England, were weather-worn and strangely welcoming. The bells in the square tower were silent this day.

At the head of the wedding procession that traipsed slowly on horseback across the meadow toward the yew-planted churchyard were Essex and his best man, Southampton, richly attired and mounted on caparisoned war stallions.

The rain had gone, but the clouds remained heavy and threatening. A lone plowman gazed over at the wedding party but did not stop his work. He lashed the ox pulling the plow and carried on carving a deep furrow for winter wheat.

Inside the church, Oswald Finningley stood at the altar, a shaking hand clasped to the communion railing to support himself. He could not hold himself still, his head ached, and he was desperate for ale or brandy to take away the shaking and the nausea. Last night was a blur. He had been abducted and locked away in some strange room, and this morning two men had come for him and woken him with a pail of cold water over his face. They had given him a good breakfast, most of which he had puked up, and had then brought a clean cassock and new-laundered, bright white surplice and ruff. It was only as they set off for the church that he realized that he had been held within the servants’ quarters at Hardwick Hall.

The two men had jogged him along mercilessly on the back of a rattling farm cart, which served only to make him feel more sick. He now stood silently, a man at either side to prevent escape.

Essex and his guests entered the church: twenty hard-edged but finely dressed men. The Reverend Finningley looked at them as if they were strange creatures from some far-flung land. He had no idea who they were, nor what they wanted of him. Yet from their apparel and demeanor, he could tell that they were of noble blood, and his knees began to buckle.

The two men guarding him thrust their hands under his armpits to keep him from falling. “Just say the wedding words, minister, and you will be back at the tavern pouring ale down your throat in no time,” one of the men whispered in his ear. “Make a commotion and I’ll pour boiling tallow down your miserable gullet instead.”

Essex’s men found places to sit or pillars to lean against, hands on sword hilts. Essex paced about like a caged leopard, waiting for his bride to appear. He did not have long to wait.

Heralds at the doorway trumpeted her arrival. Two ushers escorted her into the building and indicated the altar, where Finningley fought back an overwhelming desire to bring up the last remnants of his breakfast.

A man in scarlet and gold velvet escorted the lady Arbella along the aisle. He was slender and languid, scarce bearded with a thin, dark mustache.

Arbella was almost skipping with excitement. She wore ivory satin and gold thread, her face covered by a lace net. As she reached the Earl of Essex, she looked up at him from beneath her veil with adoring, besotted eyes. He looked at her distractedly, then, as if remembering that this was to be his wife, he smiled at her.

“Now, Mr. Finningley,” one of the men at his side said. “Do your business, sir. And remember the hot tallow.”

Finningley recognized Arbella and was horrified. He wanted to say that the banns had not been called, that this was most irregular, but he was convulsed by fear. He took a deep breath and began to intone the words of the service in a weak, spindly voice that belied his great bulk.

“Dearly beloved friends, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of his congregation, to join together this man and woman in holy matrimony…”

He droned on through the service as laid down in the Book of Common Prayer introduced during the first year of Elizabeth’s long reign. All the while, Essex glared at him impatiently.

“… and therefore is not to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding-”

“I know all that. Get on with it, man.”

“It is the form of solemnization of matrimony, sir… my lord.”

“Yes, yes.”

The congregation of his friends and supporters mumbled their approval. One or two applauded with clapping of hands.

Finningley sighed. What did it matter? He couldn’t imagine any of this was legal anyway, not without the banns. And so he omitted the next part and got on to the nub. “Will you have this woman to your wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance, in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health? And forsaking all other, keep you only to her, so long as you both shall live?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“You must say ‘I will,’ my lord…”

“I will. I will. Is that it? Are we married?”

“Almost, my lord, almost…”

In the trees, unseen, John Shakespeare had watched the wedding party proceed toward the church. He knew the bride must come eventually and so he waited for her. At last she came with Penelope Rich and a man he did not know, appareled in scarlet velvet, a sword at his waist. His head moved this way and that, slowly, like an adder. Shakespeare found himself half expecting the man’s tongue to flick out and be forked. Some instinct told him the man was Morley.

The ivory bride dismounted. She moved her veil aside momentarily to look about her, and Shakespeare recognized the sad face he had seen at the window in Shrewsbury House, Chelsea. Her eyes were blue and a little too big; her mouth was too severe and her nose large. Now she smiled and her eyes darted. Yet even the smile did not suit her and nor did it disguise her loneliness and unease; she cut a poignant figure, here with these people who wanted everything from her, but nothing for her.

The men at the door helped her from her horse and then Penelope and the man in scarlet took her inside the church. As soon as they had gone in, Shakespeare entered the porch, hesitating at the door as long as he dared. From inside, he heard the words of the minister as the service got under way. He looked about him before turning the latch on the strong old oak door. As he pushed it, the iron hinges creaked loudly, then the iron edge of the door clanged as it swung inward against the stone wall.

Shakespeare stepped inside. Heads swiveled in his direction; eyes bore down upon him as if seeing some apparition. At first there was surprise and curiosity in their expressions, then a gathering rage. The vicar’s mouth hung agape, in mid-sentence.

“In the Queen’s name, I say this wedding cannot proceed,” Shakespeare bellowed in a voice of surprising power and confidence. He was unarmed, for what use would one poor sword or pistol be against twenty war-hardened men? He walked forward along the nave, between the ranks of Essex’s supporters, their fingers suddenly tightening on the hilts of their swords.

Penelope Rich rose from her seat and stepped forward to bar his path. “I am afraid you are too late, Mr. Shakespeare. The ceremony is completed. My brother and the lady Arbella now stand before you as man and wife.”

Shakespeare stopped. He did not believe it; there had not been sufficient time. He turned to the minister, who was quivering like an ash leaf in the breeze. “Is this true?”

Even through the haze of his muddled, befuddled, and panicking mind, Oswald Finningley knew he was caught up in something very bad; this man, whoever he was, had invoked the authority of the Queen herself. To talk to these nobles in such wise must, at the very least, make him a senior officer in her government. Though hopelessly outnumbered and at the mercy of these armed men, he understood that to stand with them might very well result in a traitor’s death, with everything that entailed. He shook his head.

“No,” he said, his voice no more than a whimper.

“They are not married?”

Finningley shook his head again.

“Then I say this wedding will not take place. It is forbidden under the law, not only because it is unlicensed by Her Majesty, but also because the bridegroom already has a wife.”

The gangling figure of Essex moved away from his bride toward the source of interruption. His handsome head was angled forward from his awkward, sloping shoulders. “ Had a wife, Shakespeare,” he said, spitting the words. “I am recently bereaved and am, sadly, a widower. She died of her madness. God’s blood, sir,” he shouted, “what is all this to you?”

Shakespeare suddenly realized what loathing he felt for this man who would sacrifice his wife, the mother of his child, to self-serving ambition. A man who would turn on the very monarch who had raised him to such great power and public esteem.

“My lord,” Shakespeare said coldly, “it is not long since I left Sudeley Castle, and I can tell you your wife was in perfect health, quite recovered from her sickness of mind and body. Your friend Slyguff does not fare so well. He floats in the River Isbourne, feeding the water voles and rats.” He turned to the bride and spoke sharply and with all the authority he could muster. “The lady Arbella Stuart will come with me now, back to the protection of her grandmother. This wedding has not been sanctioned and will not take place.”

Shakespeare brushed past Lady Rich, took two steps toward the chancel, knocked elbows with Essex, then reached out and grasped the arm of the young claimant to the throne. Arbella sobbed, but did not resist. He began to drag her away, back along the nave toward the porch.

Essex was thunderstruck, frozen in indecision. And then he acted. He strode toward one of his heavily armed band and seized a flail that hung loose from his belt. The weapon had a three-foot haft, then a short chain of four or five links, attached to which was a heavy metal ball with six spikes protruding like a bursting sun. As Shakespeare pulled the bride through the center of the church toward the door, he did not see Essex pursuing him like a man possessed, the haft of the flail clasped in both hands as if he would bring it down in a man-killing blow.

Shakespeare pushed on toward the open door, but then his exit was closed off. Half a dozen men-at-arms barred his way, among them Sir Toby Le Neve and the swordsman in scarlet velvet.

Le Neve put up the flat of his hand at Shakespeare’s chest. “Mr. Shakespeare, you have an unpleasant habit of appearing where you are not wanted. Now, hold fast. You will not leave this church.”

Shakespeare pushed the hand aside. “I take no orders from murderers.” He had lost all fear now. “This is Queen’s business, Le Neve. Move aside. I have enough on you to hang you twice over and will deal with you later.”

A three-pound ball of solid black iron, encrusted with short, deadly spikes, came down through the air toward Shakespeare’s head. He had no way to get clear of the blow. All he saw was the look in Le Neve’s eyes-a look of horror and dismay.

Le Neve flung him sideways to the stone-flagged floor of the church, and Shakespeare felt a whisper of pain as a spike of the flail skimmed his temple on its downward trajectory. Behind him, Arbella sprawled forward, tripping over her skirts and collapsing in a sobbing heap at the edge of the aisle.

It was Le Neve who took the blow. The dead weight of the ball and the malevolent spikes crushed through the bottom half of his face, destroying his chin and carrying on into his throat, where it dug through his windpipe, pummeling his Adam’s apple into a mush of gore and gristle. He crumpled at the knees and was thrown backwards to the ground, the spikes embedded in his upper body. Blood gurgled in the remains of his throat and spurted from his demolished mouth. His upper lip moved as though he were trying to say something, but no coherent sounds emanated from him.

Shakespeare should have scrabbled away, for out of the corner of his eye he could see the flail being raised again, but instead he rose to his knees and knelt beside Le Neve. He saw cloudy resignation in the warrior’s eyes, followed quickly by the opacity of death. Feeling a curious pang of sorrow, he was about to close the dead man’s eyes when he looked up to see Essex about to bring down the flail once more and knew that he, too, was about to die.

“Enough!”

Bess of Hardwick was not tall, scarce over five foot, and yet her voice boomed through the echoing chambers of the church like that of a sergeant-at-arms.

The arc of the ball’s swing hovered at its zenith. Essex stared down at this diminutive woman and Shakespeare rolled sideways, out of reach of Essex’s blood-dripping flail.

Bess looked at the Earl with disdain, then stepped forward, past the body of Sir Toby Le Neve, and roughly grabbed the forearm of her young ward.

“Come with me, you foolish girl,” she commanded, dragging Arbella to her feet with astonishing strength. Ignoring the sharp steel that surrounded her on all sides, she turned to the man in the scarlet velvet suit of clothes and gazed on him with stern majesty. “Do you think it wise to pull a sword on your mistress, Mr. Morley? Look outside the church door, if you will.”

Morley, Essex, and everyone else within the church turned to look through the gaping doorway. The churchyard was full of men.

Bess smacked the man called Morley across the cheek. “Return to your classroom, sir. I will have words with you later.” She nodded to two men who had followed her into the church, and they each grasped one of Morley’s arms and dragged him out. She then pulled Arbella with an angry tug of her arm and marched her from the church. Shakespeare rose and followed her.

Men of every size and shape thronged the churchyard: working men with hoes, hammers, hayforks, picks, trowels, and shovels, but also with longbows, crossbows, halberds, axes, and rust-bitten arquebuses. Perhaps five hundred in all, maybe more. They looked like an army ready to do battle and not give an inch.

Some were mounted on farm horses and oxen; some had arrows laid across fully drawn bowstaves, ready to strike a man dead within the blink of an eye. They wore the leather jerkins and aprons of builders and carpenters, stonemasons and farmhands. They were a ragtag bunch, but they were a fearsome sight-and they outnumbered Essex’s men twenty-five to one.

Bess smiled with satisfaction at the sight of all her builders and estate workers, hastily assembled by her retainers this morning. She knew they were all loyal, would kill and die for her, for she had brought prosperity to them and their families with her great building works and with her well-husbanded farmlands and industries. She turned back to Essex, who had followed her to the door. “Well, my lord,” she asked, “do you have any argument with me now?”

Essex scowled as he gazed upon the unexpected army that confronted him and upon the slight figure of the woman who dared defy him.

He dropped the flail, drew his sword, and seemed about to lunge at her, but suddenly two long-handled weapons-an old pike and a dungfork-came across his path, forming a cross that barred his way. An archer stepped forward, close to Bess’s side, and pulled his bowstring taut, the arrow pointing directly at the Earl’s heart.

Penelope Rich touched her brother’s arm. “Come, Robert,” she said softly. “Do not die here at the hands of peasants. Live-and prepare for another day.”

In the confusion, no one noticed the minister, Oswald Finningley, waddling into the vestry, his skirts clutched about his knees for ease of movement. With a shaking hand, he opened a little cupboard and took out a pint-flagon of communion wine, which he uncorked and drank in one draft.