Traitor

Chapter 51

DR JOHN DEE was waiting when Shakespeare arrived back at his brother’s rooms in Shoreditch. Shakespeare glared at him with angry disdain.

The old alchemist was dressed in his flowing gown once again. He stood rigidly, with his back to the window, and looked nervous. Shakespeare wondered why he was here. He did not wish to see this man; he had enough problems of his own to contend with.

‘I was told I might find you here,’ Dee said tentatively. ‘Your Dowgate neighbours.’

‘Why are you here, Dr Dee?’

‘I heard about your home. The blaze … a terrible mishap.’

‘It was no mishap. The fire was deliberately set. It was arson, attempted murder of three adults and four children. It was a monstrous act.’

‘I know. That is why I am here. I can keep silent no longer.’

Will was out at the playhouse. Andrew and the children were in the other room with Jane. Boltfoot was here, though, eyeing Dee with wary curiosity. Shakespeare turned to him.

‘Boltfoot, please bring Dr Dee some wine. I think I wish to hear what he has to say. Sit down, Dr Dee.’

‘Thank you.’

‘But I must warn you to be straight with me. I have little patience today.’

Dee sat on the hard wooden settle. His beard was growing again and he looked much like his old self. He folded his hands in his lap, his voluminous sleeves draped across his thighs. He closed his eyes, as if summoning up some divine energy to enable him to say what had to be said. Shakespeare watched him closely, and waited.

‘Here.’ Boltfoot handed Dee a beaker of sweetened wine.

Dee opened his eyes, took the beaker, sipped it, then put it on the settle at his side.

‘What I am about to say does not come easy, Mr Shakespeare. But at the hazard of my immortal soul, I must tell you certain things.’

Shakespeare watched and listened, but said nothing.

Dr Dee produced a paper from his sleeve. ‘This is the letter you found about the person of Father Lamb. When I was at Chevening, Mr Mills showed it to me, for it meant nothing to him. He thought to try whether my intellect would fare better.’

‘And did it?’

Dee nodded his head gravely. ‘I told Mr Mills that I could not understand it, that it was all about birds and seemed meaningless. But that was a lie. In truth, I saw instantly what it meant. It was an acrostic of sorts, and the words leapt from the page at me. Look now, examine the initial letters of the verse you uncovered.’

‘Hand me the letter.’

Dee leant across and placed the paper in Shakespeare’s hands. He gazed at the hidden words that had been revealed by heat.

‘The killing birds wait in line. The hawks edge nearer, even as golden eagles under soaring eyries dive. Malevolent dove, evil nightjar, baleful ibis and twisted hoodcrow toss overhead, preying on insects, shrews or newts. Let dogs fester, orphans rot, ere rooks lay down and die.’

Shakespeare took a quill from his brother’s table and dipped it in an inkhorn. He scratched the initial letters of the message on a piece of blank paper, then examined what he had written:

TKBWILTHENEAGEUSEDMDENB

IATHTOPOISONLDFORERLDAD.

The letters seemed to have neither sense nor reason, except for one word that stood out like the back-end of a boar among sows.

‘I see the word poison in there, nothing more. Explain to me, Dr Dee.’

Dee shifted close and placed his long forefinger on the paper, smudging the wet ink.

‘At the beginning and end there are nulls, blanks – letters that mean nothing. That is why Mills could not see it. Reading from the H, the first two words become clear – Heneage used. You then have four sets of initials for names: MD, EN, BI and TH. After that, it clearly says to poison LD.’

‘LD – Lord Derby.’

‘Indeed.’

‘And the four sets of initials?’

‘You know them as well as I do, Mr Shakespeare.’

‘Say the names to me. I wish to hear you say the names.’

‘Very well. MD, Michael Dowty; EN, Eliska Nováková; BI, Bartholomew Ickman; and TH, Thomas Hesketh.’

EN. Eliska Nováková. Evil nightjar.

‘Then it was as I thought. They were all in it, working together.’

‘On the orders of Sir Thomas Heneage, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.’

‘Political murder.’

If this letter had succeeded in reaching Lamb’s Jesuit masters in Rome, the enemies of England would have spread it abroad with glee and rejoicing. No more could England claim moral authority over King Philip of Spain and his despised political assassinations.

‘My question, Dr Dee, is how you were able to see this so clearly from a rag-tag scrawl of letters?’

‘Because I already knew of the conspiracy, Mr Shakespeare. And Father Lamb heard it from my lips.’

‘You told Lamb? In God’s name, why?’

‘Because I wanted to stop it. I wanted to save the earl. I had already done far too much harm, and I was overcome with guilt and remorse. I still am, Mr Shakespeare. That is why I am here today. I seek to expunge my sin. I am an old man. I do not have long to find redemption.’

‘So you were part of the conspiracy, but had second thoughts: is that what you are saying?’

‘No. No, I never meant murder against any man.’

‘What, then, was your sin?’

Dee sighed deeply and his tight jawline throbbed. For a moment it occurred to Shakespeare that he might weep.

‘My sin, Mr Shakespeare, was my involvement in the original plot to ensnare the earl, the plot that ended with poor Richard Hesketh’s cruel death on the scaffold. Richard was my good friend of many years’ standing, and I used him most foully.’

Shakespeare threw a questioning glance.

‘You wish to know why I betrayed my friend. It was not intentional. It all began when Heneage invited me to dine with him in the early summer of last year. The talk turned to my time in Prague and he asked me who I knew there. I mentioned several names, including Richard. Heneage seized on the name and questioned me about him.

‘I thought no more about it, but Heneage called me to his home at the Savoy again a few days later and told me about the Privy Council’s fears that Lord Strange – Lord Derby as he would become – was a crypto-Catholic, and that he was manoeuvring secretly against the Queen. Heneage told me the Council wished to compromise him, bring his plans out into the open and thus dash his hopes of ever succeeding to the throne. To this end, they had conceived a scheme. A letter would be brought to him from Catholics in Prague, begging the earl to be their figurehead. If he did not reveal the letter to Queen and Council, he would be proved a double-dealer, just like Mary of Scots before him. It was suggested that Richard Hesketh should bring the letter to the earl, as if it had come from exiles. Heneage needed my assistance, though, for Richard would trust me above all men. If he did this thing, all former charges against him would be dropped, I was told, and he would be allowed to live unmolested with his family once more. As for me, in return for my small help, I would be offered a living, perhaps Winchester or the collegiate church of Manchester.’

‘Did you have no misgivings at this stage?’

‘Of course I did. But Thomas Heneage is a charming and most persuasive man. He told me that I would be helping England and my sovereign. I persuaded myself, too, that I would be doing Richard Hesketh a great favour.’

‘What happened next?’

‘On Heneage’s instructions, I sent a letter to Richard, explaining that I had been assured he would be forgiven past misdemeanours and would be allowed safe passage back to his wife and children in Lancashire. All he had to do was pick up a certain package at the White Lion in Islington and take it to his master at Lathom House. The letter was sent and I hoped for the best. Three months later, I heard that Richard had been arrested and was to be executed for treason. My blood ran cold, Mr Shakespeare, for I was responsible. Then, to compound my guilt, I discovered that the incriminating package had been handed over to Richard by Bartholomew Ickman, my former scryer, and I realised I had involved myself in something evil. Ickman would have known of my friendship with Richard Hesketh. I began to believe that he was behind the whole plot and gave Heneage the idea of using me …’

Dee hung his head.

‘Please continue, Dr Dee. Allow me to guess. You were so overcome with remorse that you vowed to look after Isabel Hesketh and her family with donations of money. You even went to her husband in his cell at St Albans, begged forgiveness and vowed that you would do this for them. You were the noble gentleman of whom she spoke to me.’

‘Did she tell you that?’ He nodded. ‘Yes, that was me.’

‘And you will be pleased to know that when I saw her, she was big with her husband’s child. It must be born now, so her need of money will be yet greater.’

Dee sighed heavily and shook his head with something approaching despair.

‘I still have no money for her. Heneage has not given me the living I was promised. That was why I was reduced to digging in a field in quest of Roman gold. That was why I was in Lancashire. My meeting there with Ickman was entirely coincidental. He was there on a mission to poison. Knowing the depth of my involvement, he happily boasted as much to me. “If we can’t get the traitor one way, we’ll do it another,” were the words he used. He told me more. He was full of it, how clever the plot was, how pleased Heneage and the Privy Council would be, what riches would be bestowed upon the Ickmans. I could bear to listen to it no more. That was when I went to Father Lamb and begged him to save Lord Derby. But it was too late by then, as you know. The earl had already been poisoned.’

‘What part did Eliska play in all this?’

‘We were friends in Prague. The next I knew of her was when she appeared at Lathom House. It was Ickman who told me how she had helped soften up Richard Hesketh to bring the earl his fateful letter. She had come to Lancashire, he said, to finish her work. She knew all my sins. On the night of your brother’s play, she was berating me. She suspected I had communicated something to Father Lamb.’

Shakespeare eyed the old doctor coldly. For a man of intellect, he was dangerously foolish. Not a man to trust with your friendship if he could be so easily swayed by designing men – and women. Poor Richard Hesketh must have been easy meat to the likes of Ickman and Eliska, and his own ambitious brother Thomas Hesketh.

And what of Michael Dowty, soon to be a Cecilian member of Parliament? His role was obvious: he fed his master the dish with the deadly mushroom, having pretended to taste it himself. Was this the England that Shakespeare had fought for all these years? He felt befouled by the whole dirty conspiracy.

‘You have great reason to feel shame, Dr Dee.’

‘It is true. I have nothing to say in my defence. No penitence or contrition will ever expiate my sin.’

Shakespeare was thinking hard. What was to be done about any of this? He stood up and began pacing, then stopped and nodded slowly.

‘You have done the right thing in coming to me this day. Will you speak all this in a court of law?’

The light drained from Dee’s eyes. He shook his head violently. ‘I cannot, Mr Shakespeare. No man could.’

‘Your immortal soul—’

‘No, not even for that. There is worse. Look again at the secret code in the verse.’

Shakespeare picked up the paper. ‘What, pray, am I looking for?’

‘It says, “Heneage used MD, EN, BI and TH to poison LD …” and then there are nine more letters, though only the first five of those need concern you: FORER.’

Shakespeare saw it straightway: for ER. For Elizabeth Regina. Her Majesty the Queen. If the letter was true, then the conspiracy could not go higher.

No, this could not be brought to a court of law. It had to be settled by other means.