Shakespeare's Rebel

by C. C. Humphreys

  Except now, cunning man that he was, he did the opposite. ‘Yet certainly the earl is valiant. His army has been much reduced by the bloody flux, which has struck officer and man and wasted even himself.’ He tutted, shook his head. ‘Perhaps this truce is for the best.’

  ‘The best?’ Elizabeth halted her pacing to screech. ‘The only thing he has wasted is the power I have bequeathed to him. The only thing he has wasted is my goodwill. My love . . .’ She broke off, choking on the word. She turned away for a moment, turned back. ‘This contemptible truce must be immediately repudiated. The Vice-Regent must resume the war and destroy Tyrone with the forces he now has. If he does not, before the winter makes the land impassable – though when is it truly not in a country where the rain it raineth every day? – then he is to take to winter quarters and await the spring and such reinforcements as we can send. Heed me!’ She stamped her foot, her voice rose, and she stooped till her face was a hand’s breadth from John’s. ‘And above all, this. You are not to return here, sir. At no instance are you to return to England, to my court. I forbid it! Forbid it, do you hear?’

  Her voice had risen to a yell. She was staring hard into his eyes. And John could see in hers several things at once. The first, fury; then, close behind it, barely veiled by it, her desperation. Yet what made him lower his was that both were directed not to the man whose eyes she gazed into. She was looking at her sweet Robin himself.

  ‘Your Grace . . .’

  It was the Secretary’s hesitant voice that pulled her fast upright. She flopped on to her chair, turned away, her forehead on one hand. A silence came, tense and awkward. Then Cecil spoke again. ‘You have heard Her Majesty’s commandments. They will be conveyed again in her own unmistakable hand and tone. Yet if he fails in all, disobeys all, dares to return . . .’

  ‘He must not. Will not.’ The Queen looked sharply up, all confusion gone from her eyes. ‘Not when I have ordered it so.’

  Cecil turned, rubbing his hands before him. ‘Aye, majesty, but the earl is rash. Why, only last year Lord Grey prevented him drawing on you . . .’

  John winced. The scandal had swept London, from court to abattoir. Rebuked, the earl had rudely turned his back on her. Furious, Elizabeth had boxed his ear. The earl had then shown an inch of steel and was narrowly constrained from showing more. They sang ballads about it from Brentford to Shadwell and no doubt the length of the realm. But he warranted the Queen was not often reminded of it.

  Her reaction confirmed his thought. ‘You d-dare to . . .’ Elizabeth stuttered, half rising.

  ‘Only to recall to your majesty,’ Cecil continued, hastily, ‘his lordship’s extreme rashness. He may defy you again. He may return. Yet if, against commandments, he does’ – he took a breath, and directed the remainder as much to John as to his queen – ‘he must do so without his army.’

  And there it was, at last, John knew: the heart of it, as Cecil now confirmed. ‘We do not want the people shouting “Bolingbroke”, as they do in this man’s playhouse,’ he concluded.

  The name hung in the air, almost visible, like one of the tower’s martyred ghosts. John could have pointed out that the playhouse was hardly his; while the play that the character of Bolingbroke was from, The Tragedy of Richard the Second, was an old one, upwards of five years, and thus most unlikely to be played again because it would not draw an audience. In addition, the tale was based on the true one of a mighty subject, Henry Bolingbroke, usurping the throne and causing a monarch – God’s appointed – to be murdered. However much Will liked to lance the boil of people’s emotions, as he had put it, he would not be foolish enough to revive that. Not now, in these dangerous times, when an aged queen sat on the throne and people ceaselessly – and at their peril – voiced opinions about her successor. And especially not when, as the Secretary had just observed, the names Essex and Bolingbroke were already being linked, in pamphlets and in whispers on the street.

  Even the maid finally flashed her black eyes at the spectre hovering between them. But it was the Queen who dismissed it. ‘He is not to return . . . in any way.’ She rose once more, shakily now, and faced John, looking at him again, not his sometime lord, her sometime lover. ‘That, Master Lawley, is the message you will take to him.’

  So all his fears were realised. They wished to send him to Essex – the one man in the wide world, save only for the executioner, that he would most avoid. ‘I will, majesty?’

  She took it as a statement, not a question. ‘Indeed you will. You will also bear other commandments – and our written displeasure too. But since you have always had some influence over him, and he is . . . obliged to you, perhaps you will also convey some sense behind the orders.’

  He had to try. ‘Your grace, I have pressing matters of my own . . .’

  ‘More pressing than the realm’s and my own safety? Naughty knave, there are no matters beyond that.’

  He thought of Tess, and of Ned. The palace bell recently striking the eleven. He could still make the play, as he had promised. ‘I could set out tomorrow . . .’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Cecil stepped up to him now. ‘You would do the Queen’s and the realm’s most urgent business at your leisure?’ He shook his head. ‘No. You will depart as soon as the letters are sealed. With fair weather, a calm sea and little sleep, you will be in Dublin in five days.’

  Dublin! The name was a curse. He had another place he needed to be, now. ‘Then perhaps while the letters are being drawn, I can go to Southwark. My business—’

  ‘Southwark!’ Cecil snorted. ‘To let you slip back into the slough you’ve just risen from? No, sirrah. You will be thrown in a cow trough to bathe and issued with clean clothes so that you do not reek, as befits the Queen’s messenger. You will be given a good horse, a purse of silver to hire more, our commissions and a party to accompany you the first fifty miles.’ He glared. ‘And you will ride for Ireland at two o’clock.’

  At two o’clock, Ned would be glancing out wondering if his father might still make it. Yet perhaps he had heard of John’s most recent fall – Southwark was that small, and the Larkspur near its centre; would be thinking, even as he spoke the country girl’s lines, that his father had failed him once again. Will would clap a hand on his shoulder, sigh – and think about a different player for his upcoming Caesar. And Tess? Would Tess have heard of the siren who had lured him to his fall, of her blonde tresses and her sweet, sickly scent?

  He looked up at her now. The black eyes were raised to him. There was a smile in them . . . and the hussy even gave a small wink! He turned from her eyes, to others’ – the Queen’s, her minister’s. There was no pity in any of them. He knew they would not even allow him to send his excuses – for a royal messenger’s departure needs must be secret.

  He looked above them all to the wainscoted walls, those hooks set in them. Only fanatics denied their captors in Lollards’ Tower, and he was not prepared to burn.

  He knelt again. ‘Your servant ever, majesty.’

  Though they expected nothing less than complete obedience, still the Queen and her Secretary of State allowed a moment of brief relief to show. This business accomplished, they set out for the next.

  Cecil went to the door. ‘In,’ he called. ‘Clear away.’

  The servants came. The scribe collected the papers, folded the table, departed. A guard took away the Queen’s chair. Sarah took the pomander and glass from Elizabeth, curtseying as she did, staying down. ‘Majesty,’ said Cecil, also bending his knee in the doorway, gesturing that she should precede.

  But the Queen did not move. She was still staring at John. Now she spoke, softly. ‘I wish a moment alone with my messenger.’

  John, glancing away from the monarch’s piercing regard, saw the Secretary and the maid pass a look. He also recalled Cecil’s shock on his dismissal at their previous meeting, when Elizabeth also wanted to speak to him alone, her anger when he baulked.

  It appeared that Cecil recalled it too. He took a breath, let it out, mur
mured, ‘Your grace,’ and left.

  ‘Sarah,’ said the Queen, ‘follow.’

  Darting him a look, the maid left too.

  And they were alone. When last they’d been, she had prised from him the history of his blood, and of hers, how the two of them were linked through his grandfather, Jean Rombaud, killing her mother, Anne Boleyn. Killing . . . and saving. He hoped it was not that of which she wanted to speak. He was not sure what he could say.

  It was not. It was something of more . . . immediate concern. ‘There is one last message that I ask you to deliver to your lord,’ she said, ‘and only after my anger, my commandments have been fully understood – and obeyed, mark you, sir, obeyed. Then, Master Lawley, you will find the right moment to give him . . . this.’ She reached within her sleeve and drew out a handkerchief. Raising it to her face, she kissed it, then held it out. John rose to take it . . . but she did not release it straightway and they were joined by it.

  Something passed between them along the spun silken threads. He felt as if he had been there before, doing this same thing before, receiving . . . something from a queen’s hand, in a place much like this one.

  Elizabeth swayed, as if feeling the same force, till the cloth was stretched between them, then spoke again. ‘Tell him to bring this back to me in person. Tell my champion to wear it as my favour on his lance and’ – a glint came into her eye – ‘and if he stains it with a traitor’s blood, so much the better.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And tell him, finally, this.’ She sighed. ‘That when he comes to me, bringing this silk woven through the laurel wreath of victory, he shall find me . . . most forgiving.’

  Her gaze held his. He found he could not speak, only nod and lower his eyes. The moment he did, she released the handkerchief and turned swiftly to the door. She opened it wide – to Sarah, on the other side, turned away. ‘Are you spying there, girl?’ the Queen snapped.

  ‘No, no, your grace. I’ – she swallowed – ‘I . . . I waited to help you down the stairs.’

  Elizabeth did not reply, simply seized the arm that was held out. Together the two women descended, the spiral taking them swiftly from view.

  John listened to their descent; knew that before long he would hear boots coming up, men arriving to bathe him, clothe him, supply him with what he needed and hasten him on his way. For the moment’s peace he had, he looked at what he held – a square of richest silk, unblemished . . . except in the corner where there were two initials, monogrammed in orange. No, he corrected himself. In tangerine.

  E and E were entwined, the first E’s lowest bar forming the second’s middle.

  He looked at each one in turn; and though he knew it was not there, yet he thought he could see another letter. An L. L for Lawley. Caught, like him, between the two of them.

  Between Elizabeth and Essex.

  ACT THREE

  The Trouble with Ireland

  They have produced no other effect there than a ship doth in a wide sea, who leaves no longer print or impression in the water than for the very instant, the waves immediately filling the way she makes, so as the same cannot be found . . . It is strange that Deputies are not restrained from running still this wild goose chase.

  Anonymous minute writer to the Privy Council, on Ireland, 1599

  XIX

  What Country, Friend, Is This?

  ‘Put about! I am the Queen’s messenger and I command it. Put about, damn ye!’

  He screamed to be heard above the storm. He would not have been able to understand the reply, for the master of the sloop spoke little English, and Welsh was not one of the languages John had. The mutter and accompanying shrug were easy to translate though: a turd for the Queen and another for her messenger!

  The man bellowed at his three sailors. John doubted that any of the words were to turn the vessel back to Dublin, whose wharves they’d glimpsed just before the surprise storm drove them past its port. Chewing his lips, he squinted into the rain. The shore could still be glimpsed despite the deluge. Yet John was sailor enough, after his time with Drake, to acknowledge that to try and turn about was a risk only a desperate man would take. He was that man. The master, for obvious reasons, was not.

  Pox on him! John thought, his shoulders slumping. To be held up here, at the last, an arrow’s shot from his goal, when the whole journey had hitherto been so easy. The best horses from every stable led out on production of the Queen’s warrant, a hot late summer keeping the roads dry. He’d slept little, and made Bangor in five days, the warrant and a dose of silver securing passage on a fishing boat just about to set out. The sea was calm, the wind set fair, and Dublin in sight within hours. And then this storm from nowhere, and driven before the wind, which could blow him anywhere. What then of his hopes? All of them were centred on reaching the earl, executing his office and returning with as much dispatch as he had come, to Southwark.

  He raised his head into the rain, sniffed. Was there a lessening? A little light in the grey? He strode after the captain, took him by the shoulder, turned him. The Welshman shrugged his hand off, and growled like a dog. ‘Hear me,’ John said, and it seemed to him he could shout a little less, ‘the wind slackens. Put about for Dublin.’

  The master shook his head. ‘Wind bad. Sea bad. Wait.’

  He turned away. John seized his sodden jerkin at the shoulder with a grip that could not be shrugged off, turned him with one hand, drawing his dagger with the other. This he raised into the other man’s sight. It was a language all understood. ‘I can’t wait, you sheep-puddler,’ he said, his face thrust close to the other’s. ‘Now put about or—’ He glanced to larboard. The land was closer again. It was not a long walk to Dublin, surely. ‘Or put me ashore here. Here!’

  The man dragged his gaze from the dagger to look. ‘Here? No port.’

  ‘Then . . .’ John looked around. Lashed to the aft deck was a small skiff. ‘Get me close. I’ll take that.’

  ‘Boat?’ The man’s face eased slightly, and John was close enough to see the thoughts in his eyes. These narrowed. ‘Boat. Money. No get back.’

  John nodded. He didn’t care. He had spent almost nothing on his ride, sleeping in stables, snatched meals in taverns. The Queen’s coin could be used for her service and his own. ‘Money,’ he agreed, sheathing his dagger.

  It did not take long. A foresheet raised and two men leaning on the tiller pushed them shorewards. The skiff was unlashed, oars put in it. It was lowered, tethered to the side in the bucking sea. His purse lighter for the loss of too much silver, his satchel of letters strapped firmly across his chest, John was handed over the side. He nearly lost his balance, for the skiff lurched with waves that were much taller closer to. He sat heavily, suddenly reconsidered, looked up . . . to be slapped in the face with the flung tethers. The two vessels swiftly parted, the last sound John heard, before the wind took all, some raucous Welsh laughter.

  The rain and wind were slackening a little perhaps, but they still drenched and buffeted. The heron’s feather in his cap drooped soaked before his eyes and he plucked it, chucked it, peered. The wind was onshore and the waves were pushing him thither, but along it too. He lifted the oars, wishing he had a paddle and was in something called a canoe, which he’d used with Drake on the western coast of America. The natives there had been skilled in their use and had passed on some of their knowledge – such knowledge useless in this vessel, a swimming cow to the other’s otter. He dipped the oars, lost them from the rowlocks, strove again. He was not making much headway, and that as much sideways as forward – until he suddenly was, for the waves picked up closer in. One large one caught him, moving him fast towards the shore.

  Too fast! He leaned on one oar, put weight behind it . . . it was snatched away, its twin emulating it next moment, gone. Now he had nothing to stop or even slow the boat’s sudden forward speed, could only scrunch down and stare in horror at the fast-approaching land as one wave took the skiff, shoved it, dropped it, another picked it up, bigger, much bigger. Somehow i
t kept straight, did not go side on and flip. He glimpsed a break in the rock face ahead, some lighter colour. Sand, he thought, he prayed, he willed. It was the only control he had.

  ‘Oh. Oh-oh-oh-oh-OH!’

  The boat rode the wave easily. Not so the land, which it struck prow first, and stuck. He was at the back of the boat, which shot up, hurtling him forward.

  He was flying, and he knew he was no bird. But within his body, some tumbler’s instinct – from his early days as a wandering player, when he’d flipped and vaulted to draw a crowd – made him curl. He hit the ground hard but took some of the impact in a roll, which continued through three more before he smacked down, face planted into coarse sand.

  He lay there for a while, only turning his head to spit out beach and take in air. As if it was done with him, the storm slackened, rain diminishing then halting altogether. The sand yellowed with sunlight. He heard seagulls.

  And a voice. Human, though it shouted something incomprehensible, yet akin to the Welsh he’d lately not understood. The words were followed by a sharp jab in his back. He flipped over. Standing above him was a scraggle-bearded man in a plaid cloak. He hefted a pike and he was bringing it hard down again.

  John did not think, just moved; rolled aside, let the pike’s butt drive into the sand, gathered his legs and swung them hard into the man’s, who was not braced and went over fast. In a moment, John was atop him, dagger drawn, point placed close to the man’s eyes. ‘Easy, lad. Do not move.’