Not what it says, I think. The constable and bellman could not read. Topcliffe turned up; he had heard of it, but by then I had burned the others. I did not tell him of this.
Why not, John?
I considered it to be for your eyes only.
Walsingham looked gravely at Shakespeare. His dark, molten eyes could see into men’s secret corners. Your cloak is muddy and your clothes torn. If you are not careful, you will be dressed as dully as me.
Shakespeare laughed at Walsingham’s typically self-deprecating humor. It was pointless dissembling; Mr. Secretary always knew everything. I was pulled from my horse.
By Topcliffe?
Shakespeare nodded.
There is bad blood between you, John. I won’t tolerate that. The farm that is riven will fall into disarray; its crops will fail and its beasts sicken and die. We fight a common enemy. With the Spaniard beating at our door, threatening us with her ships out of Lisbon and Parma’s armies out of the low country, we have no time to fight one another. England’s survival depends on our diligence.
I know that…
But you don’t like each other’s ways. Topcliffe thinks you weak. He doubts your commitment to the cause of Christ and England. You think him cruel. Well, I know he is wrong. I know that you are not weak, merely… earnest. But I say this to you, John: needs must in these times when we face a cruel enemy. Topcliffe is effective and the Queen honors and admires him and he will be allowed to go about his business in his own way. If you cross him, it will be at your peril. As for your man with the caliver, I think he has made an enemy for life…
Shakespeare smiled almost imperceptibly. I don’t think that will cause Boltfoot Cooper too many sleepless nights. A man who has gone around the world entire with Francis Drake and has fought and bested hunger, tempest, and the Spaniard is unlikely to fear the likes of Richard Topcliffe.
Walsingham’s voice did not rise, but the tone stiffened. Perhaps not. But you will take care to obey my wishes. Answer me this, John: why do you think I chose you as my assistant secretary and chief intelligencer?
Sometimes, I confess, I do wonder.
I chose you, John, because I saw something of myself in you. Not that we are the same; you have less… rigor… in religious matters. But you are diligent, John; you are fiercely loyal. And, most important, you worry a lot. It is your anxiety-our anxiety-that leads us to take care of the detail of the work we do. And it is the detail that will achieve results. This is not a task for those who think to solve matters of state with an impassioned speech and a grand gesture. We must toil away in the dark like moles. Each inch of the way through the tunnel will be torment to you, John. If it is not, then I have greatly misjudged you. And remember this always: what we fight for is worth fighting for. The enemy would destroy everything we both believe in.
Shakespeare was left in no doubt as to the serious purpose of what the older man said. He bowed low once more to the Principal Secretary of State in acknowledgment. I understand, Mr. Secretary. But I must protest that I have never disagreed with your methods. I realize that when the security of our sovereign and realm are at stake, extreme measures are necessary. And if that includes torment of the body to obtain information, then so be it. But I cannot stomach a man who breaks men-and women, at times-for the pure pleasure of it.
Walsingham silenced him with an angry wave of his hand. Enough. I will hear no more concerning your feelings on the subject of Mr. Topcliffe. He signaled for Shakespeare to sit and his voice eased. There is more, John. I wish I had endless funds to hire an army of true Englishmen to fight this war of secrets, but these are straitened times and we must live within our means. You will continue your inquiries into the affair of Blanche Howard. I fear that far more is at stake here than the death of one woman. Discover her familiars. Had she turned Papist? Who has done this to her and why? What is the meaning of the text and who was behind it? Jesuits? Get Slide involved; use his network. He owes his neck to me and he’ll likely know who’s behind this. Find this Robert Southwell, too. He’s dangerous. Is he responsible for the death of Blanche Howard? I hear Topcliffe thinks so. It would not be the first time a Southwell helped do away with a Howard. Did not this Southwell’s father, Sir Richard, come forward as chief accuser against Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, and bring him to his death? There is no love between these families, John.
But this is different.
Is it? Let us find out, shall we? Within weeks, God willing, the Scots devil will lose her head and then we shall see a reaction. Then the powder will ignite. We must all be prepared. Every scrap of intelligence, every disloyal word in the ordinaries and inns of London and beyond, must be scrutinized. There must be no more attempts on the life of our sovereign Majesty.
Shakespeare felt his stomach knotting like cable around a capstan. At times it felt as if the whole future of Elizabeth and her subjects rested on his shoulders alone. How could he, one man, stand against the threat of the so-called Enterprise of England-Philip of Spain’s growing armada of ships now being assembled with the aim of invasion of England and destruction of the Queen?
The enemy was everywhere: London and the counties seemed to be awash with priests sent from the seminaries and colleges of Rome, Rheims, and Douai. Their aim? Sedition, insurrection, and the perversion of men’s souls. The common or garden priests were a poor lot. It was the Jesuits, disciplined and determined though few in number, who threatened the stability of the realm: the Devil’s army of the Counter-Reformation.
There is another matter, John, Walsingham continued, his voice quiet, as if the walls would hear him. The matter of Sir Francis Drake.
What of him?
Walsingham sipped sweet Rhenish from his small silver cup. His face was half in shadow in this weak wintry light. There was a fire in the hearth, a single small log glowing without enthusiasm; it did little to dispel the chill. He rose and fetched a paper from a pile near one of the tables, and handed it to Shakespeare, who saw instantly that it was encrypted in a Spanish code.
Berden waylaid that in Paris. It was on its way from Mendoza to the Spanish King.
Shakespeare was aware that any communication between Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador to Paris, and King Philip was of extreme importance. No one had done more to undermine Elizabeth and the English state than Don Bernardino de Mendoza; he had been expelled from England three years earlier for his endless conspiracies, and even as he left under armed guard, he turned to one of the Council and taunted him that he would return as a conqueror. As for Berden, Shakespeare knew of him as one of Walsingham’s top intelligencers in the field. There would be no reason to doubt the authenticity of this intercept.
I assume you have had it deciphered?
It is a subject close to your own heart, John. Phelippes has broken the code and finds this message: ‘The dragon slayer has been dispatched to England.’ It goes on to ask for funds of seventy thousand ducats to be made available in the event of a successful outcome. This note is a warrant for murder, John. It tells us an assassin has been sent to England to kill Drake. We have no way of knowing when he was sent, how long he has been here, or how far his plans are advanced. But there is no question as to the import of the message and the seriousness of the position.
Shakespeare nodded assent. He knew that Thomas Phelippes, Walsingham’s cipher expert, would not have made an error in discovering the meaning of such a paper. It was his breaking of the Queen of Scots’s intricate code that had convicted her of treason. And now, if this encoded message was to be believed, a killer had been contracted to murder Sir Francis Drake. All Spaniards feared Drake and called him El Draque, meaning Dragon. His title was Vice Admiral of England and yet his repute far exceeded mere titles. In a country of superb mariners-Walter Raleigh, Martin Frobisher, Thomas Cavendish, Humphrey Gilbert, Richard Grenville, John Hawkins, and Howard of Effingham-Drake was peerless. And he was driven by hatred of the Spanish. It was a loathing born of the cruelties meted out to his friends and comrades-a
t-arms long ago, in 1568, when they were taken by the Inquisition at the debacle of San Juan d’Ulua in the New World. The names of those men still gnawed at Drake’s soul, and he thought of them often: fellow Devonian Robert Barrett, burned to death in the auto-dafe at Seville; William Orlando, dead in the same town while festering in a dungeon; Michael Morgan, tortured, whipped almost to death, then put to the oars as a galley slave; George Ribley of Gravesend, garroted and his body burned at the stake. This was what infused Drake with feral courage and kept hot his bitter enmity for the Spaniard. It was a hatred that was fueled by every Spanish outrage that occurred: the 1572 massacre of men, women, and children in the Dutch town of Naarden; the slaughter, rape, and sacking of Antwerp. These events seared themselves into Drake’s memory and kept his rage burning like molten iron. His enmity was returned in kind by King Philip II, who had long since decided Drake must die.
All in England knew that no single man was more important than Drake to the survival of the realm. If anything could prevent an invasion by the rumored armada, it was the fighting skills and strategic brilliance of the Vice Admiral. During twenty years at sea, he had proved his courage and seacraft time and again, capturing scores of Spanish galleons and storming ports with irresistible ferocity.
No one was in any doubt that Spain’s invasion fleet must be beaten at sea-for if it disgorged its battle-hardened troops on English soil, all would be lost.
England’s land forces were woefully ill-prepared. They would be swept aside and slaughtered within days. And then the terror would begin: the dread Inquisition.
Soon, villages, towns, and cities would be ablaze with the burning bodies of tens of thousands of Protestant heretics. No one would be safe from torture and execution.
Shakespeare shuddered at the prospect. He knew what was at stake from his own experience.
As a junior intelligencer in Walsingham’s service five years earlier, he had helped break another Spanish plot against Drake. The money on offer to kill him then was twenty thousand ducats. Shakespeare had worked to identify the conspirators. It was a simple and amateurish plot: Pedro de Zubiaur, the Spanish agent in London, had recruited a merchant named Patrick Mason to persuade an old enemy of Drake’s to kill him. This enemy was named John Doughty, the vengeful half-brother of Thomas Doughty, who had been executed before his very eyes by Drake on his round-world voyage. A little judicial torture and Mason had named names. As far as Shakespeare knew, Doughty was still rotting in the Marshalsea prison.
And now King Philip was raising the stakes. Seventy thousand ducats would tempt desperate men.
Walsingham continued: Philip plods with feet of lead across the world’s great stage. It is easy to make merry at his expense when he complains like a girl child about Drake and Hawkins and the rest plundering his treasure. But though he plods, he does have weight behind him, thanks to his riches from the New World. And he can crush. I would say that, at sea, my good friend Drake is more likely to die of scurvy than fall to the sword or pistol of a hired killer, but now that he is on land, fitting and supplying the fleets in the reaches of the Thames, he is an easy target. In the shipyards by day he is vulnerable, John, and at court by night he can scarcely be safer. He’s in danger, just when we need him most. Santa Cruz, King Philip’s admiral, is like to sail with his fleet this spring or summer. My spies tell me he conspires to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s armies in the lowlands and carry and protect them as they cross the sea to England. With Drake out of the way, their passage would be a thousand times easier.
Shakespeare hesitated. Everything he knew of Drake by repute suggested he would not need anyone’s help to survive. He had been fighting and defeating Spanish fleets for nigh on twenty years now. Surely Drake can look after himself, he said at last.
Can he, John? At sea, yes, of course. But on land, in the teeming shipyards, full of foreigners of every hue and creed? Who will spot one man with an arquebus or crossbow among the hundreds at work? Drake needs protection-and you will provide it.
Shakespeare ran a finger around his ruff He felt hot, despite the lack of warmth in this cheerless room. And Lady Blanche Howard?
And Lady Blanche. And all your other duties. We are all stretched like bowstrings. That is the way it is. Anyway, it seems to me you have the perfect servant to assign to Drake-your former sailor, Mr. Boltfoot Cooper. I believe he already knows Sir Francis rather well.
Shakespeare almost laughed. There was nothing to be gained from arguing. Walsingham must know that Boltfoot had parted on bad terms with Drake, having protested that he had been cheated of his fair share of the colossal plunder taken aboard the Golden Hind from the Spanish treasure ship Cacafuego. He had also said that after three years at sea in Drake’s company he would never board a ship again and certainly not one of Drake’s. No, Boltfoot would not be happy to be in the Dragon’s company once more.
Chapter 4
Night had come and gone when Rose Downie was startled awake. Topcliffe was standing over her, prodding at her with his blackthorn. She scrabbled to her feet, heart pounding. Her hands were stiff with cold, clutching the baby. The child chose that moment to wail; its piercing, monotonous cry, like the howl of a cat, sent shivers down her spine, but Topcliffe merely smiled.
Is it baptized in our church? he asked, and touched its strange face, with its curious, un-human eyes.
Rose Downie felt fear in her heart but she needed this man. Her friend had told her that he knew everything about everyone in the city, that he would help her as he had helped others, but that he would demand much in return. My own baby was baptized, sir, by the Bishop of London himself, but this is not my baby.
Then you have stolen this one.
No, sir, mine has been stolen. This… creature… was left in its place.
Let me see its face by the light. Topcliffe bent down toward the face of the child in the gloom. He pulled back the swaddling bands from its head and looked intently at it. The child’s face was small and round, its eyes spaced widely. Too widely. There seemed to be no chin to speak of and the ears were curiously low. Any mother, Topcliffe thought, would want to disown such a thing. Come in with me. My boy Nicholas tells me you have had a long vigil here. I’ll beat his arse raw for leaving you out in weather like this.
He pushed back the oak door to his home. Rose hesitated, fearing to enter. The hallway was lit by the flame from a candle, which cast strange shadows in the breeze from the open door. She stepped forward into the unholy gloom.
On a dark-stained coffer lay a large gilt-bound book, which, though she could not read, she recognized as a Bible. Topcliffe took Rose Downie’s right hand from the baby and held it down hard on the book, as if to ensure there was solid contact. Do you swear by Almighty God that the baby you are holding is not yours?
Rose felt colder inside the house than outside in the winter wind. There were strange smells in this place; it held the chill and smell of a slaughterhouse. I do swear, sir; it is not my baby. My baby, William Edmund Downie, has been taken from me. Please help me, sir. I believe that only you can help.
Where is your husband, Mistress Downie?
He died, sir. He was out with the trainband at Mile End Green by Clement’s Inn after church a month past, and his hagbut did explode.
Topcliffe touched her arm with seeming compassion. His hand remained there, keeping her close to him. I am sorry to hear that, Mistress Downie. England has need of such men. Such a thing should not befall a pretty wife.
Tears welled up in Rose’s eyes at the memory but she refused to weep. She had been heavy with child and he was late home from practicing firing his arquebus and wielding his pike. He, like thousands of other good men, had been doing his duty, she knew, training week after week out in the open countryside or within the brick walls of Artillery Yard. He had volunteered himself for service as part of the Carpenters Company contingent. It was men like her husband who would stop the Spaniard. That day, she had waited for him on the road, but instead of his jaunty st
ep and broad smile coming toward her, she saw six other members of the trainband approaching, pulling a handcart with what, at first, she took to be a dead animal. Then she saw that it was his bloody remains and she collapsed fainting. Later, they told her his arquebus had misfired and exploded in pieces, ripping open his throat. They had been wed less than a year, by the Bishop who would later baptize their child. Her husband’s name was Edmund and she called him Mund. He was such a fine man, a yeoman carpenter with shoulders as wide as his smile. On the day of their wedding, they had scarcely been able to wait for the Bishop to give his blessing before retiring to their room to tear the clothes from each other’s backs. When Mund died, she felt that her life was over. She hungered each night for his body over hers. But instead of the joy of him, she had nothing but tears. And then the baby came a week after his death and she began to find a little life again. He was a boy and he was perfect in every way. His name was William Edmund, but she called him Mund, like his father. He would be the new man in her life.
Come further into my home, Topcliffe said, his arm moving around her shoulder, and have a draft of beer, for you must have a thirst to slake.
If she had been asked to tread through the portals of hell, she could not have been more scared, yet she could not say no to this man. She knew his repute as a brute, but she also knew that he had power. Her friend Ellie May from the market had told her she must go to him, for he was reputed to know all there was to know in London; he could see into souls and was privy to dark secrets that no one else could know, Ellie had told her.
In his teeth, stained mottled amber, Topcliffe clenched a long wooden stick, which he drew on every so often, and then blew out smoke. She looked at it astonished, as if he were breathing sulfur from the fires of Satan, for she had never seen such a thing. He laughed at her bewilderment. It is a pipe of sotweed, from the New World. He called in a servant to bring drink, then another to stoke the fire in the hearth and-as the man crouched to the grate with bellows and logs-cursed him for letting it go so low.
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