‘John Shakespeare is as good as ours, monsieur. All is in place, as I promised.’
Chapter 33
THEY CAME AN hour before dawn when the camp still slept and snored. Thirty soldiers, armed with longbows and arquebuses and pikes. They had the camp surrounded before anyone even knew they were there.
Provost Pinkney stood in the first rank. He nodded to his drummer boy and a slow drumbeat began to sound in the still morning. Then the trumpeter blared forth. In an instant, the camp stirred to frantic life, like a nest of ants poked with a stick. Some tried to run but were caught. Others huddled together. One vagabond man picked up a stave to defend himself and was immediately singled out for attack. Another swung out wildly with a pickaxe and was killed by the hack of a military short sword to the neck, then a thrust to the belly.
At Pinkney’s side stood Reaphook, smirking in the eerie twilight, his eyes surveying the encampment for his prizes. His honed sickle dangled, menacingly, from his right hand.
‘There he is,’ Reaphook said.
Staffy had risen to his full height. He stood in the centre of his people, ash staff in hand, facing the commanders of the armed group that surrounded them.
Andrew looked on in horror and dismay. He tried to pick out Ursula, but there was no sign of her.
Staffy took a pace forward. ‘Come and get me, Reaphook. Come to me and I will crack your head open like a filbert between stones.’
A petronel fired harmlessly into the gloom, its fire, smoke and boom bruising the crisp air.
‘Wait!’
It was Pinkney who had fired the warning shot and who now spoke. ‘You don’t need to die this day. I will give sixteen shillings’ coat and conduct and a three-shilling pikestaff to any sound man who joins me for the wars. The infirm, small children and women will be left here, in charge of Mr Reaphook. I will hang any man who defies me. Martial law.’
‘I defy you,’ Staffy said. He began to stride through the cowering groups of vagabonds, sweeping his staff before him.
Suddenly an arrow sliced into his neck, then another ripped into his chest. He stepped forward a pace or two, then stopped. He looked down at the arrow protruding from his chest, then looked up. A third arrow hit him in the left thigh. He crumpled at the knees.
As he buckled, men descended on him from all sides, just as a wolf pack falls on its prey once it can no longer run. Spindle was there, so was Reaphook, along with the other men who had deserted the camp. They all had knives – daggers, poniards, kitchen blades, axeheads – and they slashed and chopped at the body of their fallen chief, cutting the very life from him. He made no sound, no howl of pain, nor let out any scream for mercy, but bled to death as stoutly and as silently as he had lived.
Just as the first speck of sun appeared on the horizon, golden and bright, Reaphook stood up from the body, and held the dead man’s dripping heart aloft in one hand and his bloody sickle in the other. His lips were drawn back fully from his mule’s teeth and he roared with the potency of triumph.
‘I am your Upright Man now!’
‘That one is to be pressed, and that one.’ Pinkney eyed the assembled band of vagabonds, all ranged before him in lines. ‘You may take that one and that, Mr Reaphook.’
He was walking along the lines examining the men as a horse trader might look over young colts at the fair. Pinkney ran a hand down the shot-pocked scar that ravaged half his face. One by one, he selected the soundest of the men and let the halt and lame be. He came to Andrew.
‘How old are you, boy?’
‘Thirteen, sir.’
‘Consider yourself a pressed man. You are a soldier now.’
‘No,’ Reaphook said. ‘I want that one. I wish to hang him.’
‘Indeed? What is his crime?’
‘He offends me. You agreed that I could hang one, Mr Pinkney.’
Pinkney looked askance at Reaphook, then turned and counted the men he had set aside. ‘There are only eight there, and not all those likely soldiers. You promised me twelve good men, Mr Reaphook.’
‘I will find you another four, but I want the boy.’
Pinkney tugged at his bristled chin. His cold expression did not change and neither did he look at Reaphook. ‘As you will. But I want sound men. Those that remain would not scare a Frenchie, let alone one of the Spanish troops in Brittany. Find me the men or I’ll have you, Mr Reaphook. What of that one?’ He pointed to Spindle. ‘He looks strong enough.’
Reaphook hesitated a moment, then shook his head decisively.
‘No, he’s mine, one of us. But fear not, Provost Pinkney, I agreed twelve. You shall have twelve.’
Reaphook grasped Andrew by his black gown and pulled him out of the line. He pushed him towards Spindle.
‘You have unfinished business with this thing. Take it. We shall hang it one hour from now, to cheer the company. In the meantime, I want Ursula Dancer. Where in God’s name is she, Spindle? Take men and find her for me.’
Pinkney’s drummer boy beat out his death-slow time with a single stick. Andrew stood with Spindle and Reaphook and the other six men who made up the core of his band. The boy’s arms were bound behind his back. Ahead of them, at the edge of the spinney, a rope and noose hung from the stunted branch of an ancient oak. Below it there was a box, on which the condemned would stand before it was kicked away to leave him swinging.
‘It is time.’
Andrew did not bother to struggle. There was no point. He had seen a hanging before and he knew what was to become of him. A few minutes of panic and pain and then it would all be over. If there was a God, he would ascend to heaven and be once more in the comforting arms of his father and mother and with Catherine Shakespeare, whom he had loved as a mother. He had to believe in this, otherwise there was nothing in the world or in the universe beyond. Endless nothingness.
‘Afraid?’ Spindle rasped in his ear.
Andrew ignored him. His lips moved only to mouth the Lord’s Prayer. He looked straight ahead at the rope.
‘Get on with it,’ Pinkney said. ‘I want no tormenting of souls. This is martial law. We are royal soldiers, not barbarians.’
Reaphook nodded to Spindle. The youth stood behind Andrew and began to push him forward towards the rope, at the edge of the dark wood. Suddenly a figure appeared, ghostlike, beside the rope. She stood there, then her hand reached up and took the rope. She climbed up on the box and put the noose about her own neck.
No one moved. All eyes were on Ursula Dancer. What was she doing? Would she kick the box away and kill herself by hanging?
She smiled, then removed her neck from the noose. She was wearing the gown she had worn when she and Andrew went to rob the man in Faringdon market. She was beautiful. She walked forward towards the assembly of soldiers and vagabonds. Without hesitating, she went up to Reaphook.
‘Unbind him. He is a boy. Give him to the soldiers. It is not his death you want, it is my maidenhead.’ She put her hands around Reaphook’s neck and kissed him on the lips. Then she smiled at him, as a bride smiles at her new-wed husband. ‘Will you let him live?’
Reaphook nodded, dumbfounded.
‘Say it.’
‘Yes, I will let him live.’
Ursula looked towards Pinkney. ‘You heard that? The boy Andrew Woode is now your soldier, to take to the wars or wherever you will.’
Pinkney signalled to his lieutenant. ‘Bring the boy here. He’ll make up numbers. That will leave just three to find.’
Ursula put her hand in Reaphook’s. ‘Come, sir, come with me to the woods.’ Gently, she pulled him forward, bewildered and disbelieving, ‘I have a bed of leaves there. Come and I will be yours, body and soul.’
Reaphook looked at her, then all about him. He was no longer the killer of men, but a gauche and callow fellow, unsure of himself, uncertain that he would rise to the occasion. He stepped forward, looked about him and grinned self-consciously with his protruding teeth.
‘Come, sweet Mr Reaphook. Leave your bla
de here and come with me.’
She took the sickle from his belt and dropped it to the ground, then squeezed his hand and led him away from the crowd. Two soldiers laughed.
Their coarse laughter and jests were drowned by a howl. It came deep from within Andrew’s throat and it seemed to split the air. Just the one word – ‘No’ – carried long and piercing across the downs, like the cry of a dying animal through the warm scented morning.
Chapter 34
JOHN SHAKESPEARE HELD a sealed paper in his hand. He had lost track of time. How many days had he been along these endless paths? How many miles had he trod and how many people had he questioned?
Every two days, he sent a message to Dr Dee in Oxford and, invariably, a message came back saying all was well. Shakespeare gazed at this latest message, brought by Godwit to a tavern in the market town of Wantage. The message was thicker than the usual missives from Dee. Taking his poniard, he broke the seal. Inside, the message was simple: ‘This was sent to you, your faithful servant, Mustard,’ followed by Dee’s own signature, the Greek letter Δ. Inside this message was another paper. Shakespeare unfolded it. This second message was written in a different hand. It said, ‘Mr Shakespeare, I have information for you. Bring two pounds in gold to me. Trungle.’
Shakespeare recalled the yeoman farmer whom he had been inclined to run through. Well, he had better seek him out. Without delay, he took horse and rode for the village where he had met the man. The journey took him an hour and a half, riding north-eastwards on the main track.
At the village, he asked about Farmer Trungle.
‘He’ll be at market in Faringdon this day,’ the landlord of the alehouse said. ‘Always goes there on market day with his meal and flour from the horsemill.’
Shakespeare allowed his horse a pail of water and took a cup of ale for himself, then rode off again, heading westwards towards Faringdon.
On the outskirts of the town, by a crossroads, two corpses hung from a gibbet, their deadweight bodies swaying in the light breeze, rope creaking against rough oak. He stopped and gazed at them. The faces were purple, their death agony frozen in their staring eyes. One of them was old with long white hair that obscured his face; the other was as thin as a stick. He looked away and rode on.
He found Trungle in the market square, hands on hips, ordering his men to load jute sacks of flour on to carts for distribution.
Shakespeare dismounted, tethered his horse and walked over to him.
‘Mr Trungle, you said you had information for me.’
‘Ah, yes, Shakespeare. So you’ve come. Have you got the gold? Two pounds, not a penny less.’
‘I have the gold if you take me to the boy.’
‘I’d want ten pounds for that. But I have information that should help you find him. It’s up to you what you do with it.’ He held out a flour-dusted hand. ‘Put it there, Shakespeare, put it there.’
Shakespeare took out his purse. It was a great deal of money that Trungle was demanding – half a year’s wages for an unskilled working man. He counted out the coins and put them in the proffered hand. Trungle’s fingers curled around them tight.
‘There. Now tell me. If this is some trickery, I will have my gold back and give you sharp steel in its place.’
‘No trickery, Shakespeare. I’m an honest dealer.’ Trungle put the coins in the pocket of his tight-fitting doublet, then pointed across the market square to a squat stone building. ‘That’s the town gaol. There were a couple of thieves in there. I’m Justice of the Peace here and they came before me in court these four days past. I sentenced them to be hanged. You probably saw them swinging at the Gallows Lane crossroads on the way into town. They knew your boy.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I have kept my word to you. I have asked every man I met whether they have seen such a youth as you described. The two thieves told me they knew him. What’s more they told me his name, the name you mentioned: Andrew Woode. They offered to tell me more if I saved them from the rope, but I was having none of that. Great Henry had the right way to deal with rogues. Hanged three score and twelve thousand of them in his reign, so we are told. Would that his daughter’s justices had such stomach, for these vagabonds are vermin along the length of her realm.’
Shakespeare swallowed his distaste. ‘What use is any of this to me if they are dead?’
‘Because there was another one with them – and she is still alive.’
‘Where is she?’
‘You will see her presently.’
‘Who are these people? How do they know Andrew?’
‘The hanged ones called themselves Watson and Spindle, but they may well be invented names. I do not know their true identities, nor do I care. They will now be in hell where the devil can sort out who they are.’
The crack of a whip broke into their conversation. On the street, a cart was being pulled along by an old horse, driven by an equally old-looking man. A young woman, naked to the waist, was tied by the hands to the back of the cart. Behind her a broad, strong man in a leather jerkin raised a lash and brought it down across her pale-skinned back. She cried out in pain and stumbled forward, through mounds of horse-dung, trying to keep pace with the nag that dragged her. A small crowd watched and jeered. Some spat in her direction, others flung stones.
‘There she is. You can speak with her when her punishment is done: whipped around the square at the cart’s arse.’
‘God’s wounds, is this necessary?’
‘Aye, it is. She is a vagabond. Same band as the two swinging. They’ve caused havoc in these parts with their thieving, begging and burning of barns. These three came into town with an eye to cutting purses, but we were ready for them. Pretty little thing. I’d have hanged her, too, but I liked the look of her. She could be put to work. Maybe I’ll take her on as a dairymaid. Not the other two; villains and murderers through and through.’
‘What has she told you?’
‘Not a thing. The insolent hussy will not say a word to me. But the lash will open her mouth wide enough.’
‘I want to talk with her. Let her loose.’
Trungle put up his hand. ‘When she’s been flogged.’
‘Now.’
‘Be very careful the way you talk to me, Shakespeare. I will not be ordered about by you. I know, too, that the boy you seek is accused of a heinous crime, for I have friends in Oxford—’
‘In that case, as an officer of the courts, why have you not taken this information to St John’s College or the city justices? I know why, Trungle: the glint of gold. You are as corrupt as worm-eaten fruit. Now release that girl.’
‘Who are you, Shakespeare?’
‘I think you know that, too, Trungle. If you have friends in Oxford, I am sure you are well aware of who I am. In which case, I am sure you would not seek to antagonise a senior officer to Sir Robert Cecil.’
Trungle scowled, then called over to the man with the whip. ‘Release her and bring her here.’
‘She’s only had the two stripes.’
‘Just do it, Josh.’
The whip-man looked disappointed, but he unbound the girl’s ties and pushed her across the square towards Trungle and Shakespeare. She tripped on a loose cobble and fell at their feet. Shakespeare saw the livid red lash marks angling across her naked back. He bent down and gently pulled her up by her elbow.
‘Cover yourself, mistress,’ he said.
Slowly and with painful care, the girl pulled up her chemise, sliding her arms into the sleeves and anxiously arching her back so that the linen material did not touch her fresh and bloody wounds. She closed the garment around her small breasts and fixed the stays.
‘What is your name?’
‘Ursula. Ursula Dancer.’
Shakespeare turned to Trungle. ‘I wish to speak with this young lady alone.’
‘She is a common trull, a grubby vagabond! If that is a lady, then I am the King of England.’
‘Come, mistress. W
e will repair to the tavern.’
‘You’ll have her back in gaol before the hour is out, Shakespeare.’
Shakespeare fished in his purse and took out a crown. He tossed it towards Trungle, letting it fall short so that it clattered to the cobbles at his feet.
‘That will buy her freedom. She is in my care now. Begone, Trungle. I wish never to see your face again.’
The tavern-keeper was unhappy about letting the girl into his taproom, but a sixpence from Shakespeare put a halt to his grumbling. They were given a booth away from the eyes of the drinking men.
‘You must be hungry, Mistress Dancer.’
She looked at him with contempt. ‘I know what you pigging want and you’re not having it. You won’t buy me with pie and ale.’
‘I have no wish to buy you. I want information from you. About a boy named Andrew Woode, whom I believe you know.’
She looked away, towards the leaded window. ‘Never heard the name.’
‘A lad in a black scholar’s gown. Aged thirteen, but big and strong.’
‘Means nothing to me.’
‘He was with your vagabond band, with the two men hanging from the tree outside town: Watson and Spindle. They knew him.’
‘Well, ask them. You’ll get no more out of me than you will out of them.’
Shakespeare sighed. ‘Do you want money? If you know where he is, I beg you tell me. I am desperate to bring him home.’
She said nothing. Shakespeare signalled to the bar wench, who came over and, with a sidelong glance at Ursula, took an order for food and ale.
‘I ask you again, Mistress Dancer. Tell me what you know of Andrew. I wish you no ill.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Andrew’s father. His adoptive father. He was in some trouble and ran away from college in Oxford. I wish to get to him before the law officers do.’
‘How do I know you’re his pigging father? You could be anyone.’
‘So you do know him?’
She stiffened. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘If you are trying to protect him by maintaining silence, I thank you. But I beg you to trust me. I swear to you that I am his father. We live together in London, but he is presently gone up to Oxford to study.’
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