Revenger

Chapter 43

Shakespeare listened to the tale with half an ear to the wind outside. It was told simply, without embellishment. At last he said, “It was Agnes Hardy’s master, the portraitist William Segar, who told Essex and McGunn of you. When I set Boltfoot to find you, I had no reason to believe anyone intended you harm.”

“It is no fault of yours, sir. I accept that.”

Shakespeare yawned with fatigue from his long hours riding, yet he knew he must stay awake and alert. “Try to sleep,” he said to his wife and Eleanor. “I will keep watch, and with Boltfoot outside, watching in the woods, we will be safe. No man will find us here.”

They had eaten some of the food they had brought and had sipped from the flagon of ale. Shakespeare took very little liquor, for he had to keep his wits sharp. Though he was as certain as he could be that this place was secure, he also understood that McGunn was a man of cunning and unnatural persistence.

Outside the old shepherd’s cottage, the wind lashed the rain into a frenzy. Inside, the two women huddled into their blankets and sat on the floor against a wall.

At the edge of the wood, thirty yards from the cottage, Boltfoot lay in the undergrowth. He was not far from the river, as still as stone. Every ounce of his being was concentrated on the area in front of the house and beyond, toward the ruined abbey. Anyone coming from the highway must cross his path.

Being soaked through was nothing new to him. Many times in the raging gales of the southern oceans, there had not been a thing left dry aboard ship. For days and weeks on end, his clothes had been sodden and his skin cold.

He lay on a carpet of leaves and twigs and mud, his eyes keen in the darkness, sensing movement as a nocturnal animal might. A badger scurried into view, caught his scent, and hastened away. Boltfoot thought of the caliver he had left with Shakespeare. It would have been pointless bringing it out here in this rain. He could have kept the powder dry for some time, but lying prostrate on the earth, with the rain tumbling in torrents, the damp would have seeped through the horn’s lid and rendered it useless.

The rain came and came. Boltfoot did not share his master’s fond belief that they were safe here. Everything he knew, all his experience, told him that McGunn would come for them this night.

He was right. The attack came with terrifying speed and deadly purpose.

The two women had not slept, yet they were heavy-lidded and their senses had slowed. They sat side by side against the wall, out of sight of the gaping window, as Shakespeare had insisted. The way they huddled, Catherine and Eleanor might have been old friends or sisters.

He heard a noise outside. A figure sloshing through the mud. Coming their way.

There was a scream and then an explosion, then moaning.

The two women both jumped to their feet at the sound of the discharge. Shakespeare put his finger to his lips, then patted the palm of his hand downward to indicate they should stay low. He extinguished the candle and doused the little fire. Better to equalize the darkness than allow the light to be used against them.

He picked up Boltfoot’s caliver once more. It was still primed and loaded. He held it in front of him, pointing it at the closed door.

Boltfoot had sensed the man in the darkness even before he began his move for the house. He was coming at a crouch across the mud-slide of open ground. Boltfoot crawled on his belly, then lifted himself a few inches on one elbow and knee. He swung back his right arm and with his razor-edged cutlass cut like a farmhand scything barley at the man’s legs.

As steel struck bone, the intruder screamed and crumpled. Instinctively his finger clenched the trigger of his wheel-lock, firing a ball harmlessly into the ground.

Boltfoot rose to both knees, took his long dagger from his belt, and thrust upward with his left hand. The narrow blade slid through flesh, up into the man’s belly, up under his ribs, until the point cut the heart to bring death. Boltfoot pulled the dying body to him, as a shield, and crouched down behind it. The man moaned-more an outrush of air than a cry-and his body twitched.

Crouching behind the body, Boltfoot knew the attack had been nothing but a foray. The dead man had been a sacrifice to draw him out into the open. Boltfoot was exposed now, and vulnerable. How many more men did McGunn have out there?

There was a little light, just enough to make movement visible. He had to get away from the body, slowly. Flat to the ground, he tried to edge away toward the copse where he had been hiding. A musket shot rent the air and a ball struck the ground where he had been a moment earlier. He let out a scream, to make them think he had been hit. Another shot. This time the ball hit the dead body of the assailant with a sickening whump.

Boltfoot did not halt. He had to move away or the next shot would do for him. But how could he move in open ground when McGunn had his range? As he inched away, Boltfoot resigned himself to death.

Shakespeare peered out of the empty window. He could make out two dark humps on the ground in front of the house. One was moving, one was not. Boltfoot was either dead or in trouble. Shakespeare pointed the caliver in the general direction of the dark-shadowed abbey ruins and loosed off a ball, with no idea where he was shooting.

The recoil knocked him back into the room, just as another shot whipped over his head and struck the far wall, gouging out an uneven wedge of mortar and stone.

He scrabbled up into a crouching position. It was darker inside the room than out. “Catherine,” he whispered. “Catherine, keep down. Lie flat.”

“John, she’s gone.” Her voice was urgent and low.

“What are you saying?”

“It’s so dark. I think Eleanor slid out of the other window into the night.”

“She will die out there.”

“She said something: ‘Futile, futile.’ Then she was no longer at my side.”

They were trapped like magpies in a cage, and the bird they had been trying to save had flown. Another musket-ball struck nearby, dislodging a six-inch splinter of rotting wood from the empty window frame.

Shakespeare raised his head, looked out, and saw a light. A pitch torch cast an eerie glow on the broken walls and archways of the long-dead abbey. A figure crossed in front of the torch. How many men were there? Two? Three? Four? Twenty?

Another musket-ball exploded in the night.

“Catherine,” he whispered, reloading the caliver as best he could. “I am going out there. We must both get out from this house. It is a death trap. You make for the woods, away from the abbey.”

“I know this land, John. Do not fret for me. You do what you must do.”

“Go first. Slip from the window, then run as fast as you are able. Do not go straight, but weave from side to side. Foil their aim. Crouch low.”

“Mr. Shakespeare, I see you are as overbearing as ever. But for once, I shall forget my pride and obey you.”

He could scarcely see her in the gloom, but he could smell her musky scent and feel her close presence. Quickly he took her in his arms and kissed her. Her arms encircled him as she arched her body into his. It was as if there had never been any distance between them.

They moved away, their hands clasping each other’s until it was just the tips of their fingers touching. “Go, Mistress Shakespeare. Go and survive and I pledge that I will never attempt to command you again.”

Catherine was small and slight. She slid over the sill and ran. She knew every inch of this ground and headed with all speed through the teeming rain toward the copse to the right of the house. She thought she saw two bodies to her side, but she paid them no heed. She could do nothing for them, whoever they were.

One musket-ball, two, clipped past her, slapping into the wet ground somewhere beyond her. And then she was in the dripping trees. She went on, catching her dress on brambles, battling through thorny undergrowth until she was sure she was clear of the killing ground.

She sat a few moments on the wet leaves, caught her breath, then moved on toward the abbey and McGunn. Even without light, she would be able to navigate her way through its stones. She had obeyed her husband against her better judgment once before; she had no intention of doing so again. Someone had to see what sort of foe they were up against, and no one was better qualified on this terrain than she.

The sight that greeted her was awful in its horror. When she had encountered Father Robert Southwell, bundled in agony against the wall of the Gatehouse Prison, she had thought there could be nothing more hideous in the world, that she would be haunted by his torment for the remainder of her days. But this… the awfulness of this lay in the very familiarity of the surroundings, this place of happiness from her childhood days, now turned into a scene of unspeakable barbarity.

Covered lanterns had been lit, casting a hellish light on the old, rain-wet stones of the monks’ dorter, where the Cistercian brothers had once slept. From the high wall of this dormitory, a rope had been slung over a projecting beam. It hung down malevolently, with a noose at its end around the slim neck of Eleanor Dare.

A long ladder had been placed against the wall. Eleanor was halfway up the steps, forlorn and drenched, her arms bound behind her back, waiting to be hanged. A man behind her was pushing her ever upward and she scarce seemed to put up any resistance, as though she were resigned to her fate.

Beneath her, two more men stood watching, both of them heavily armed. One of them held the loose end of the hanging rope, tightening it as Eleanor ascended the ladder.

“Come out, Shakespeare!”

Catherine, crouching behind a block of sandstone in the old cloister, did not know the voice but guessed it to be Charlie McGunn’s. It was rough and taunting.

“Come out, Shakespeare. Come and see the show. We’ll do your wife next, make a night of it. Your man Cooper is already dead. Here you are, come and get him…”

With immense strength, the man dragged a short, squat body from the ground and held it aloft over his head. He spun it around, then flung it away as casually as a farmer would toss a sack of turnips into a cart.

The other men with him laughed.

Boltfoot dead! Oh, Jane, poor Jane. Catherine felt utter despair. She had no way of saving this poor woman, any more than she had been able to save Southwell or Anne Bellamy from the foul Topcliffe. John had been right all along. Be wary. Place your trust in cold caution, not faith. While God slept, the powerful held sway and the good died.