He bade his old friend goodnight, then slipped from the room and headed, on silent feet, for Eliska’s chamber.
Chapter 18
SHE WAS NOT alone. Her coachman was standing to attention just inside the door. He stared at Shakespeare, barring his way, until Eliska said something in her native tongue, then he turned and bowed to her before departing, without a word.
‘I was not expecting you, Mr Shakespeare. Solko has quarters in the east wing, but I am beginning to fear that no one in this house is safe so I asked him to stay with me.’
He had noted that the coachman was a powerful, good-looking man. It was no business of his, so he did not pursue the question of what might or might not pass between them.
‘You have no need to explain to me, my lady.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘I want you to help me.’
She smiled. ‘Indeed?’
‘I must visit Richard Hesketh’s widow. She lives a day’s ride from here at a place called Over Darwen. I want you to come with me.’
‘Well, that would be a pleasant diversion, but why me?’
To keep an eye on you, as I have been commanded, he thought.
‘I think a soft woman’s voice might draw more information from poor Isabel Hesketh,’ was what he said. ‘She has clearly suffered greatly from her husband’s misdeeds.’
‘How can I refuse, Mr Shakespeare? When do we leave?’
‘At first light.’
‘And how shall we pass the hours until then?’
She moved towards him and snaked her slender arms around his waist. He was aroused, by the closeness of her body and the heady scent she exuded. She nestled into him so that their forms blended: her lips kissing his throat, her belly pressing against him.
He ran his hands across her shoulders and down the sides of her well-fitted bodice. He tilted her head up and kissed her.
She kissed him back. Her lips and tongue were sweet, as though she had been eating soft, ripe fruit. Her hand slid down and caressed him, then she stepped away, smiled and looked at her large, canopied bed.
He reached down and pulled up the skirts of her gown. His hand was on her smooth calf, then her inner thigh. He was so close, he could almost catch her true scent.
She moaned and moved herself closer to his fingers. ‘Mr Shakespeare …’
He sought her mouth to kiss, but she pulled back, a strange smile on her lips. Suddenly, she pushed him away and laughed. ‘It seems we have a long journey tomorrow. We must sleep tonight. Go to your chamber.’
He did not know what to say. His blood pounded in his loins. There had been no doubt that she wanted him, that her need was as great as his. And now this …
‘Oh, Mr Shakespeare, do not look so despondent. I am sure you can see to yourself.’
For a moment he stood there, unsure. Then he realised she was serious. He felt a fool, stranded. But what could he say? He bowed his head sharply, then turned and, without a word, left the room. Outside, the coachman stood to attention and paid him no heed. Before the door closed behind him, he heard her husky, foreign voice.
‘Until dawn, Mr Shakespeare. I will see you in the hall at dawn.’
Janus Trayne played a poor game of primero and lost money steadily. He was unconcerned. He had come to the Black Moth because he knew that if Ivory was in the vicinity, he, too, would come here soon enough.
Trayne had been to the house in Dowgate where Boltfoot Cooper lived and worked in the service of the government secretary John Shakespeare. But he was not there. He said he was an old seafaring friend and wished to reacquaint himself with Cooper, for he had something of value to him. The Dowgate servants would say nothing to him and sent him on his way.
From there, he travelled downriver to Blackwall, to the shipyards, where he had a contact. This man knew a little of Boltfoot Cooper. He was married to a woman named Jane, whose family hailed from somewhere near Sudbury in Suffolk. It seemed a reasonable guess that this might be where Cooper and Ivory would have gone. It was the sort of place he, too, would choose if he wished to lie low.
The hours ticked by, but there was no sign of Ivory. Was there another game of cards to be had in town? The landlord said no; this was the only game for ten miles in all directions. Take it or leave it.
And so he waited and played by candlelight. And then, almost on the call of ten of the clock, a tall, slender man with flowing hair and a long grey-flecked beard walked into the bar. He was puffing on a pipe – an ornate, long-stemmed pipe that Janus Trayne had seen before. Some sort of native pipe from the Indies. There could be only one of them in the whole of England. It was Ivory’s pipe.
The man smoking the pipe was not Ivory, but he must know where he was.
Before daybreak, Shakespeare went to the chamber of Joshua Peace and woke him. Peace rose from the bed in a single movement.
‘What is it, John? Has the earl—’
‘No. As far as I know he still lives. Forgive me for waking you so early, but I must leave you this day. Try to see the earl again. Try to divine how he was poisoned – if he was poisoned – and how it might have been administered. For God’s sake, find a remedy if you can. Go to Dr Dee if you need assistance or merely company and stimulating conversation. He is under the guard of two men named Oxx and Godwit. I have instructed them to grant you admittance. And here, study this if you will.’
Shakespeare handed him the letter he had taken from the lining of Father Lamb’s jacket. Briefly he told him the story of their meeting on the road – and Lamb’s death.
‘What am I looking for?’
‘I don’t know. I have seen many such letters from seminary priests and Jesuits to their masters in Rheims and Rome. I would think it unremarkable, except for the circumstances here at Lathom House – and the warning Father Lamb begged me to convey to Lord Derby. Perhaps I have missed something in the letter. Perhaps there is a hidden code. I have sent a copy to Cecil; this is usually Frank Mills’s work.’
‘The only ciphers I have ever broken are those contained in the human body.’
‘But you have the mind for it, Joshua. An analytical mind. Show it to no one else.’
Peace ran a hand through his thinning locks. ‘I think you know me rather better than that, John. One other thing—’
‘Yes?’
‘Has it occurred to you to wonder whether Sir Robert Cecil – or anyone else on the Privy Council for that matter – would really want you to investigate the possible poisoning of the Earl of Derby?’
‘As I said, Joshua, you are still the cynic.’
Shakespeare clasped Peace’s hand, then left the room, stepping quickly and quietly down to the hall. Eliska was there, dressed in a riding cape and skirt, with a safegard to protect her clothes. As he gazed at her, he wondered whether he was being honest with himself: was he really taking her along to keep her under observation or did he, perhaps, have a baser motive?
Her monkey was sitting on her shoulder, and her coachman, Solko, was at her side. Shakespeare ignored him, but nodded to her coldly and pointed to the monkey.
‘Do you think it a kindness to bring the poor creature on this journey? The roads will be rough, no more than farm tracks and rocky moorland paths. The weather is foul.’
She smiled warmly, as though the events of the previous evening had never happened. ‘My monkey loves to be with me. She enjoys the fresh air of England.’
Eliska turned to the coachman and said something in the Bohemian language. The man clicked his heels, bowed and departed.
‘There now, Mr Shakespeare. It is just me and you – and my little friend here.’ She stroked the spiky fur on the monkey’s head.
‘Then let us ride. Our horses await us.’
Andrew Woode crept forward through the forest into an open field. His hands and gown were still stained red. He was not certain where he was, nor how he came to be here. It was all a terrible dream. One moment he had been asleep between the fetid sheets of his college bed,
then he was held and accused. Now he was in the woods, running and hiding. He still could make no sense of it: neither the charge laid against him, nor his escape.
A hawk circled above him, then fell into a sharp stoop. The boy’s eyes followed it as it struck its prey.
He watched for a few moments. The bird’s great wings enveloped the animal like a monk’s hood. Its head moved, pecking. Ripping flesh and eating.
Andrew rushed at it, shouting, waving his arms. The bird dropped its prey and flapped away in its languid manner, trying to rise once more into the air.
Like a scavenger, Andrew fell on the new-killed prey. It was a coney, a young rabbit. It lay still, its neck broken by the force of the hawk’s attack. Andrew tore his nails through the fur and skin into the flesh. With all his energy, he ripped away strips of warm red meat and stuffed them into his dry mouth. Barely waiting to chew, he swallowed the flesh and drank the hot blood.
Wet through after four hours of riding, Shakespeare and Eliska stopped to eat at a wayside post-house, the Sheared Fleece. They had already begun the climb up into fell country and the going was hard for both the horses and their riders. The journey could only grow worse.
‘Well, Mr Shakespeare, here we are, working together to unravel a mystery,’ Eliska said, shaking the rain from her hair as they awaited their food in a dark booth that stank of tallow candles and unwashed farmhands.
Her good-humoured remark lightened his mood. ‘But are we really on the same side, madame? Am I right to trust you?’
‘The answer to both questions is Yes.’
‘I asked you before about your connection to the Gentleman of the Horse, Walter Weld. I saw you together and you seemed close.’
Shakespeare was still angry that he had not managed to speak with the man before he disappeared.
‘Mr Shakespeare, you clutch at air. The only time I spoke with Mr Weld was concerning horses. One of my geldings was lame. When you saw us in the hall we were going to the stables together to inspect the animal.’
Shakespeare stared searchingly into her eyes. She did not blink.
At last she sighed. ‘Must I explain myself further? There is nothing to say. I have saved you once, from those two hangmen. And I showed you the earl’s secret chapel. Were those the actions of an enemy? Why should you not trust me? I have also shown you my letters of pass, signed by Lord Treasurer Burghley. What more would you like to see?’
Shakespeare said nothing. He supped the beer and waited for the promised hotpot of mutton and kidneys to be brought from the bakestone.
‘But I forgot,’ she continued. ‘You have already seen that, have you not?’ She formed her lips into a kiss. ‘And you didn’t want it. But now you do. How fickle you are.’
Chapter 19
ISABEL HESKETH WAS slicing the head from a large capon. Clad in a bloody apron, she stood at a wood block at the back of her large manor house. Clumsily, she cut the last gristly tendon, then let the fluttering bird fall to the ground, where it raced around the muddy yard, headless, blood spurting from its neck.
The dark irony was not lost on John Shakespeare. Did the headsman work as inefficiently as this woman when his axe relieved her husband of his head?
He sat at a short distance on his black steed, Eliska at his side, watching Richard Hesketh’s widow at her housewifely task. At last she noticed the two strangers and put a hand to her ample bosom in surprise.
Shakespeare doffed his hat. ‘Mistress Hesketh? I am John Shakespeare and this is Lady Eliska … Lady Eliska Nováková.’
The woman wiped her hands and knife on her linen apron and looked bewildered.
Shakespeare dismounted and walked towards her. The ride to Over Darwen had become even slower and more arduous across the high fell tracks, picking their way past bogs and rocks along craggy, barely discernible paths. At last they had come to the edge of Darwen parish and the steep descent to the village began. The rain had gone and they were drying out as they reined in at this bleak place.
The woman shied away from him, holding the knife defensively in front of her.
He smiled to reassure her. ‘I am not come to harm you, mistress. I just require a few words, if you would.’
‘Who are you? Are you from the Duchy? Is this about the rents?’
‘No, nothing like that.’
Even as they rode up to this hard, cold, stone-built house, he had noted signs that all might not be well. It was an uninviting building, though clearly important locally. There was dilapidation – gatepost timbers rotted, stones cracked and fallen away, gardens untended. The four children he had encountered at the front – aged from about six to twelve, he guessed – were in shabby clothes that looked as if they had been handed down through the generations. They had been startled by Eliska’s monkey, but when they were assured it was harmless, they clustered around, begging to touch it. Eliska let them stroke the animal, then asked about their mother. They said she was around the back, killing a chicken for supper.
Something was amiss. The lady of a large manor would never despatch her own fowl. Such tasks were the work of kitchen drabs. And yet Isabel Hesketh, with her well-rounded figure and her bloody apron, looked more like a farmwife than a member of one of the most important families of the North-West. If this house had servants, as anyone would expect, they were not in evidence.
Mistress Hesketh’s eyes kept flitting from Shakespeare to the animal that sat on Eliska’s shoulder.
Shakespeare smiled at her again. ‘It is a monkey, mistress, a creature from the New World. See how like a Capuchin friar she looks. She is safe enough.’
The woman looked doubtful.
Eliska stroked the animal to show that it was, indeed, merely a pet.
Isabel Hesketh adjusted her shoulders and bosom, as though standing on her dignity. ‘Well, you can scare me all you like with such things, but I tell you we’ve got no money. It’s all gone. There are mortgages on the property and estates. We have nothing left – you have it all.’
‘I am not from the Duchy, Mistress Hesketh. Please, we have ridden a great distance to see you today. If we could perhaps go inside and talk to you a while …’
The knife lowered and became less threatening. She was a short woman with a large belly and heavy breasts, her face lined with worry. Shakespeare wondered whether she had smiled these past five years.
The capon had stopped running and lay dead, close to the block where it had lost its head. Isabel Hesketh picked it up by the talons.
‘You had better come indoors then … whoever you are.’ She pointed at the monkey with her knife. ‘But that stays outside. I’m not having godless beasts and gargoyles in this house.’
The inside of the building was spacious and surprisingly well tended, despite the obvious lack of servants. Mistress Hesketh might have lost her husband and her wealth, but she retained her pride. Eliska left the monkey tethered to the saddle and followed Shakespeare and Mistress Hesketh into the kitchen.
‘We are brought so low, this is where we spend most of our time,’ she said, with a sweep of the hand to indicate the pots and old crockery that remained. ‘That way we need only the one fire. And all because my fool of a husband brought disgrace and ruin upon us.’
‘That is what I wish to talk to you about, mistress.’
‘He always had more kindness than sense, but I loved him so. And I know that he loved me. Why did he not stay with buying and selling of cloth, which was what he knew? Always had to get involved with someone else’s business, and look where it brought him. I do pray that he did not suffer too greatly. Well, it’s over now.’
Shakespeare looked at her and suddenly realised that she was not so much fat as big with child.
She caught his glance. ‘Another two months. I know the date well enough, for Mr Hesketh was here only three nights. It was between the twenty-second and twenty-fourth of September last.’ A tear appeared and she dabbed at it with the corner of her blood-stained apron. ‘It’s the babe I feel for,
waiting to come into the world when his father has already left it in disgrace. He’ll have no father, the poor mite. Nor have any of the others, only the scorn and jeering of their fellows. I do not know what’s to become of us, for no one wishes to be seen to help us, stained as we are with Richard’s treason.’ She breathed deeply, trying to regain her composure.
‘Can you tell us about your husband’s last days here in Lancashire?’ Eliska asked.
Isabel Hesketh was taken aback by her husky accent.
‘Lady Eliska is from the eastern lands,’ Shakespeare said by way of explanation. ‘She is my companion today. I am here on behalf of the Privy Council investigating certain matters pertaining to your husband and his tragic dealings with my lord of Derby. I promise you, there is nothing to alarm you in any way. Anything said here today is private, between the three of us. Your husband has paid his penalty and no more is required of you or your family.’
‘So you’re not sent by that brother of his?’
‘Thomas, the attorney? No, we are not sent by him. I say again, I am John Shakespeare, an officer of the crown, in the service of Sir Robert Cecil.’
A look of distaste crossed her mouth. In other, less cruel times, her lips would have been generous and warm. Now there was an edge of bitterness that might never be erased.
‘There was no love between my Richard and his brother, nor any of the other Heskeths. You will find a Hesketh in most every parish of south-west Lancashire, but none came forward on behalf of my husband, God rest him.’
Shakespeare let her expend her quiet bile, then questioned her further. ‘Tell me, you must have been surprised when he turned up last September, for he had been gone four years, had he not?’
‘No, Mr Shakespeare, I was not surprised, for Mr Hesketh was always a loving husband and communicated with me often by letter. He told me he was coming. My only wish is that he had never gone away to Prague and those filthy, hateful places, but had remained with me and kept away from all the troubles he always fell in. Fighting court battles over property, arguing over cattle, then that murder of Thomas Hoghton, which he swore to me was none of his doing but which drove him into exile.’ Her eyes misted again. ‘He was my third husband, you know, but the only one I ever loved.’
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