Pope Sixtus’ other problem was England, the principal Protestant power. In 1570 Pope Pius V had signed a papal bull granting English Roman Catholics authority to overthrow Elizabeth. The focus of those efforts was the placing of Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne. As a result, from the 1570s onwards waves of Catholic priests and sympathisers infiltrated England. Pope Sixtus V would renew the excommunication of Elizabeth of England and encourage his agents to infiltrate the kingdom to sow dissent, to preach the true faith and to prepare for the invasion of the Catholic fanatic King Philip of Spain. Talk of the Armada begins in 1585 and the preparations have started. The Duke of Parma gathers his forces in the Low Countries and the ships are being built. The Pope has promised vast sums in support of the invasion but only after it lands successfully. That success is doubtful for the crossing of the Channel is difficult and the transportation of so many men hazardous. The success of the venture turns on many things and one of them is that England should already be in flames when Parma lands.
William Shakespeare would have been well aware of these machinations. Simon Hunt, probably one of his schoolmasters at the grammar school in Stratford, later became a Jesuit priest. There are also strong indications that his immediate family may have had Roman Catholic sympathies. Cousins of his mother Mary Arden had been executed for treason in 1583.
The renewal of the excommunication of Elizabeth of England by Pope Sixtus anticipated the coming invasion. Its purpose was, at least in part, to encourage rebellion in her lands to aid the Spanish plot. The names of those in England who might aid that cause are carried now by Shakespeare, Hemminges and Oldcastle.
It may be thought surprising that three players should meet with so much violence in their travels but this was a more brutal age. The murder rate in Elizabethan England was about 1 in 10,000; by comparison, it is now 1 in 100,000. More significantly, murder today is often by someone known to the victim: assault by strangers was far more prevalent then. People went armed and did not fear to use their weapons.
Moreover, players and playwrights lived on the margins of society. There is scarce a playwright in Elizabethan England that is not killed or does not kill someone. Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s contemporary, rival and friend, killed an actor in a duel and would have been hanged for it had he not taken the benefit of the clergy. Jonson already boasted of having slain a Spanish soldier in single combat while a mercenary in the Spanish Netherlands. Christopher Marlowe was, famously, killed in a tavern brawl in Deptford. And one theory about how Shakespeare came to leave Stratford revolves around another murder: in 1587 one of the Queen’s Men, William Knel, attacked another actor in the company, Towne, and was killed for his pains with a sword of iron costing we are told ‘five shillings’. Knel’s death left a gap in the company that speculation fills with Shakespeare joining as they passed through Stratford. Unfortunately for the theory there is nothing to suggest the Queen’s Men travelled through or even near Stratford at that time.
And Shakespeare himself was not without the whiff of scandal. In 1596 he was bound over, along with three others, to keep the peace. One William Wayte had accused William of making threats that caused him to fear for his life.
Nor was violence a thing of England only. Among the many remarkable women of sixteenth-century Italy was Caterina Sforza. All that Aemilia tells of her is true and more besides: she was ruled by no man, feared by many and a figure worthy of stories in her own right. If you question Aemilia’s role as commander then you do not know how Caterina Sforza, her city captured, persuaded her captors to let her negotiate surrender with the last remaining citadel defending that city. Her enemies trusted her because they held her children as hostages. Yet Caterina, as soon as she was safe behind the walls of that citadel, mounted them, pulled up her skirt and cried out to her enemies that they should kill her children, she had all that she needed with her to make more. They were so terrified that they did not do so – wisely; imagine her vengeance if they had done!
Fortunate then, amid such violence and intrigue, that William should have Hemminges to protect him and teach him. Fortunate too that he should have been to Venice, whose bridge battles, great public brawls between factions of the city, led to them developing a style of fighting well suited to narrow places such as the galleys of Venetian ships. Venetian sword-masters would travel northern Italy teaching their skills.
He will need those skills for he still has far to go and now he is alone...
There is a challenge for any writer setting his scene in a time when English was spoken but not as it is today – how to honour that speech and give the book the feel of the time without its archaic nature getting in the way by creating a barrier to understanding. That challenge is greater still when we are familiar with the speech of the time, through knowledge of the plays, without perhaps being comfortable with it. I have tried to use only words that Shakespeare would have known, though I have no doubt that some will have slipped through the net. After all, it is no easy task, for even where we have the same words their meaning has changed over the passage of four hundred years. ‘Blurt’, for example, now means to speak something hastily and without consideration but then meant something akin to speaking contemptuously about, as in the line from Pericles, ‘Whilst ours was blurted at, and held a malkin’. ‘Malkin', of course, is unknown to us now (it means wench or slut). Such words too I have tried to avoid; I suspect I already send too many to the dictionary, but learning a new word can be a pleasure, at least I hope it may be so.
Acknowledgements
The writing of a novel is not as solitary a process as one might imagine. That it is done at all, let alone done well, is due to the contributions of many to whom I am hugely thankful: All the team at Bonnier Zaffre, including my new editor Sophie Orme and Rebecca Farrell, for once again producing a beautiful book and for eliminating most of my excesses and errors and calmly tolerating me when I stuck my foot down and insisted we keep some “for authenticity”.
I am particularly thankful for the contributions of the insightful, erudite and disturbingly youthful Joel Richardson: even if the process of helping me over the various stiles on the path to completion proved so exhausting to him that he upped and left Bonnier for pastures new. (For the record: the score in our undeclared game of “was it Shakespeare or the Bible?” was left only marginally in my favour ...)
My agent, Ivan Mulcahy, continues to show great patience with me, even gently explaining to me that my editor was right and I was wrong in a way that left me feeling cleverer despite the evidence to the contrary – truly he is as great a salesman as he is a mentor.
My clerks, and in particular my Chief Clerk, Ashley Carr, (who continues to refer to my novel writing as “time off for your book club” and who will not read them on point of principle) have made juggling a very full diary not just possible but a pleasure.
Above all to my family: my parents, whose inspirational love of language has been passed on to me and given me many of the great pleasures of my life, my wife, with whom I am hopelessly and deeply in love and who has, among many wonders, given me my greatest joys in life – my sons Cornelius and Atticus, who show every sign of being as brilliant, hilarious and dangerously clever as their mother.
Last, but very far from least, I am grateful to the generous people who read my first novel and took the time to write to me with kind words and a desire for more of William’s adventures. I hope I have fulfilled your hopes.
I can no other answer make but thanks,
And thanks; and ever thanks; and oft good turns
Are shuffled off with such uncurrent pay:
But, were my worth as is my conscience firm,
You should find better dealing.
(Twelfth Night)
Go back to the beginning with the very first Will Shakespeare novel Benet Brandreth ...
When he’s caught out by one ill-advised seduction too many, young William Shakespeare flees Stratford to seek his fortune.
Cast adrift
in London, Will falls in with a band of players – but greater men have their eye on this talented young wordsmith. England’s very survival hangs in the balance, and Will finds himself dispatched to Venice on a crucial embassy.
Dazzled by the city’s masques – and its beauties – Will little realises the peril in which he finds himself. Catholic assassins would stop at nothing to end his mission on the point of their sharpened knives, and lurking in the shadows is a killer as clever as he is cruel.
AVAILABLE IN HARDBACK, PAPERBACK AND EBOOK NOW
ALSO BY BENET BRANDRETH
The Spy of Venice
THE ASSASSIN OF VERONA
Pegasus Crime is an imprint of
Pegasus Books Ltd.
148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2019 by Benet Brandreth
First Pegasus Books hardcover edition May 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher,
except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review
in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this
book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or
by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
other, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
ISBN: 978-1-68177-876-1
ISBN: 978-1-68177-942-3(ebk.)
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
The Assassin of Verona Page 35
