The Heretics

Chapter 43

SHAKESPEARE HAD HAD his fill of Newgate. It was a place of pain, the ante-room to slaughter. He had visited Father Robert Southwell there, and then Frank Mills. Each time the stench of death and ordure grew stronger. Yet now he was there again, to talk with the one called Dick Winnow, the only survivor of the band of assassins. He had been picked up five miles from Nonsuch and after initial denial had confessed all.

He lay in chains, his body broken by the rack. In the morning he would face the bloody passage to death known as hanging, drawing and quartering – godly butchery, as some would have it.

Shakespeare looked on him with pity and spoke softly. ‘I believe you are a sea captain, Mr Winnow.’

‘I was. Yes.’

‘Tell me your story . . .’

Winnow’s voice was faint but clear. ‘My father was a fisher out of Yarmouth in Norfolk, but he and my mother held to the Catholic way, the true way, and were ever harangued by the parish priest and the justice with fines for recusancy. From an early age – from birth, almost – I was cut adrift from the society of my fellows. After my father was lost at sea, a mocking letter arrived, unsigned, that said his boat had been deliberately holed before he sailed. “So drown all papists,” it said.’

Shakespeare listened in silence. The tale had the ring of truth; many had been persecuted for their religion. His own family had suffered at the hands of Topcliffe and others. He nodded.

‘I inherited money on my father’s death, but I knew that I could stay no longer in Yarmouth without committing murder or being murdered, so I invested it all in a bark to take me away from Norfolk. I desired only to live in peace and hoped to earn my wealth trading between the coasts of England and the countries of Europe. But it was not easy, for my faith seemed to follow me like a slavering dog. Mariners did not like to serve with me, nor pilots. Then I heard tell that money was to be earned bringing sherry wines and tobacco from Andalusia, to break the embargo. But it was an ill wind that sent me there, for I was seized by the Inquisition and condemned as an English spy. That is, until Regis Roag and Ovid Sloth came to my aid. They said I could help them rid England of the Protestant tyranny.’

‘What did Roag promise you?’

‘He said that many thousands of lives would be saved by a simple act of justice. Good English men and women, now suffering under the yoke of a heretical dictator, would be set free. I knew what he meant, for I saw how my family had suffered. It was not spoken of, but I think I knew all along that my own survival was impossible. Yet it seemed a worthy use of my worthless life.’

‘Who was behind the conspiracy?’

‘I am not certain of its origins, but Roag was the leader and Sloth had the means. He was desperate for gold. He owed a great deal to Spanish moneylenders and was being threatened. The crafting of those swords of fine, sharp Toledo steel that we concealed within wooden toys: that was Sloth’s doing. He also provided lodging, and assistance for us to perfect our skills as players and swordsmen. But authorisation had to come from the casa de contratación. A man may not fart on that coast without the house of trade’s permission. The casa dithered and debated the matter for many weeks, but their decision never seemed to be in doubt and we departed at the allotted time. I suppose they reasoned that the death of Elizabeth could do nothing but enhance the claims of the Infanta Isabella to the throne of England.’

‘Did the conspiracy begin in Spain?’

‘No, here in England, that is all I know. I was told no more than I needed to know. None of us was.’

‘Who were the others, the men who died at Nonsuch?’

‘The Fitzgerald brothers, Hugh and Seamus. Ovid Sloth found them in the Irish College at Salamanca, where they were training for the priesthood. They were obedient and too stupid to know fear. They wanted nothing more than to fight and kill.’

‘There were two more men . . .’

‘Ratbane and Paget. They were lower than dogs, dredged up by the Spanish from the barrel of the renegade English regiment of the Low Countries. They would do what they were told and would not blink in the face of enemy fire. They spent their days fighting and their nights whoring and drinking. They are better dead.’

Winnow was in great pain. As well as the rack, he had been beaten without pity. He shifted position and groaned.

Shakespeare pressed on. ‘Tell me about the College of St Gregory. Did you meet Persons? What of his assistant, Joseph Creswell? What was their part?’

‘They came to me when I was held by the Inquisition. I could not swear what they knew of the plot, but I can tell you that Roag visited them often. He needed Father Persons’s influence with the casa. But though Roag needed him, he did not trust him or anyone else at the college. He thought there were spies in their midst.’

‘Was there talk of one particular spy?’

Winnow looked up at Shakespeare through a watery, blood-lined eye. ‘I heard of one young man, caught writing a coded letter and taken to the Castillo de Triana. Was he yours?’

‘What was his name?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What became of him?’

‘You must know what the Inquisition does to heretics.’

Shakespeare felt sick at heart. Poor Robert Warner. A mere twenty-one years of age, he had been so courageous in agreeing to work under cover at St Gregory’s. Revulsion welled up in Shakespeare at the thought of the Inquisition. It was a perversion of everything that Christ had stood for. And as for the traitor Persons, the Englishman who had blessed the Armada, he must have known everything. He had connived at cold murder – the killing of Loake, Trott, poor Ambrose Rowse, Anthony Friday, and the Queen of England herself.

‘Mr Winnow, does the name Garrick Loake mean anything to you?’

‘No.’

‘Anthony Friday?’

‘Yes, I was there at his death. It became clear to Roag that Friday had realised what we intended to do with the play he had written. He had to be silenced.’

‘There was a paper there, one you left. It had three words on it: They are cousins. What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What of Wisbech Castle and the priests imprisoned there? Men such as William Weston and Gavin Caldor? Do you know of them?’

As he asked the question, a sudden thought occurred to Shakespeare. He would look more closely into Loake’s family background . . .

‘Again, no. I repeat, Mr Shakespeare, I know nothing of Wisbech nor the origins of the plan. All I know of this is what little I was told in Spain and what we did when we landed.’

‘Ah, yes, the raid on the Cornish villages. What was the purpose of that?’

‘We had to come into England as one and stay together. It was Roag’s suggestion to attack Cornwall as a cover for our landing. The casa seized on the idea and provided a small fleet. I think it amused them to burn parts of the west country from where so many of their tormentors hailed – Drake, Hawkins, Grenville, Ralegh. They were astonished by the lack of defence put up against them. Why, we even said mass on the cliff top and the Spaniards promised to build an abbey there when they returned.’

Shakespeare shook his head. He would take this information to Cecil without delay; Cornwall must be reinforced.

‘Who helped you in England?’

‘Sloth again, but also the girl Beatrice. They had everything organised for us. We avoided inns and slept in the open air as we came to London.’

‘Did you stay at a great house in Cornwall? Trevail Hall?’

Winnow shook his head. ‘We had a tent. Sloth provided it for us and made us appear a genuine company of players. He had commissioned a play for us to say, and costumes and masks to wear. He used his influence with certain ladies to arrange our performance before the Queen.’

‘Did you have any contact with Lady Trevail?’

‘No. I know nothing of her.’

The suspicion was like an angry wasp in an enclosed room: impossible to ignore. Perhaps he had been taught too well by Mr Secretary Walsingham. Always looking for the plot behind the plot. Shakespeare could not get away from the doubts he harboured. Why did Lucia Trevail go down to Cornwall? Why did she go with Beatrice Eastley? And yet Lucia had been held by Roag at the point of a sword and was now the heroine of the day.

‘What did you know of these ladies?’

Winnow was shackled by neck irons. He shook his head and his mouth opened in a rictus of pain. ‘Nothing. I believe they knew Roag from his days at the Theatre, but we were to meet them only on the day of the performance.’

‘Tell me more. Confess your crimes. Beg forgiveness of your maker before you meet him and hear his judgment. There were two more deaths . . .’

Winnow closed his eyes and grimaced with pain. ‘I heard that a man and a woman were killed. Beatrice told the story to us. She said they were naked in bed together and she laughed. They had been Cecil’s spies, she said. All his intelligencers were to be eliminated.’

‘Their names?’

‘She told us, but—’

‘Mills? Was it Frank Mills and his wife?’

‘Yes, that name sounds familiar. Mills. She told me Mills . . .’

Shakespeare sighed. Mills had indeed been innocent all along. The murders of his wife and her lover had been a matter of mistaken identity.

So much death and pain, and for what? Far from easing the lot of England’s Catholics, these conspirators had probably made their lives much harder. Somehow they all needed to cross the divide, as he had once done, when he married Catherine. They had to realise they shared the same God and the same holy book; only the politics of vain, angry men divided them.