“Did he say anything religious? Did he have any religious symbols? Crosses, beads, that kind of thing?”
“If he did, I didn’t see them.”
“And what did he talk about?”
Starling was getting bored. She was also sobering up. “This and that. He asked me questions.”
“Like what?”
“Like where I came from. I told him Strelley. A pit village full of men like my husband. Mr. Flagellant asked me if I knew Devonshire and Plymouth. Now, why would I know fucking Plymouth?”
“Did you get the idea he was going there?”
“Well, what do you think? You’re supposed to be the cunning man around here. I tell you this, though: he kept asking about post horses and suchlike.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“Nothing. What could I tell him? I don’t know nothing about post horses. Why should I? I’ve never been on a nag in my life. Shank’s mare does for me. I walked to London.”
So Herrick was making for Plymouth. And sooner rather than later. But would he get there by horse or try Drake’s own route: by horse to Dover and take ship from there? The Dover route might be quicker, but that would depend on the winds. If the weather was inclement, he could be holed up in Dover for days. Shakespeare reckoned he would have gone the more certain overland route. Whichever way he went, the highways were likely to be bogs of mud at this time of year, but Shakespeare decided he would have to follow him, riding fast across country. He had to leave immediately; there was not even time to go home. Herrick probably had two or three hours start on him, but with good fortune, he could be caught.
Jack Butler arrived back with the constable, a lumbering oaf with the dead eyes of a cod.
“I want this place closed down with immediate effect,” Shakespeare told the constable. “These two women will be held in custody while I decide what to do with them. Keep them in the Clink, but tell no one they are there. And I mean no one. I promise that you will answer to Mr. Secretary Walsingham himself and suffer for it if a single word of this gets out. And when you remove Mr. Slide’s body to the coroner, you will treat it with honor. Do you understand? You, Mr. Butler, find me a quill, ink, and some pieces of paper, for I must write urgent messages which you will deliver, in person. The one to Mr. Secretary at his home in Seething Lane, the other to my own home in the same street. There is to be no delay.”
Chapter 36
Drake was in an ebullient mood as his small party took the barge from Greenwich Palace to Gravesend early in the morning. The Queen had wished him God speed during a short private meeting in the presence chamber. Now, with a salty cry as if he were weighing anchor and setting sail for the Indies, he waved his hat and urged the rowers forward like a knight spurring his destrier at the tilt.
At Gravesend they took horse and settled into a goodly trot on the well-trodden road that would take them south and east through Kent toward the Channel port of Dover. Diego took the lead on his bay, followed by a band comprising Drake; his wife, Elizabeth-sidesaddle on a beautiful gray palfrey-her maidservant May Willow; Captain Harper Stanley-his mustaches bristling-two servants of Drake; and the deputy lieutenant of Devon, Sir William Courtenay, returning home to Powderham Castle. The group was accompanied by two of Drake’s most trusted mariners, men known to be handy with wheel-lock and sword. The rear guard was taken by Boltfoot Cooper, his caliver primed and his hand ever close to the hilt of his cutlass.
Drake settled in the middle of the group, between his wife on the right and Courtenay, whom he knew to be a Roman Catholic, on his left. “Well, sir,” Drake said, “have you said confession today for all your manifold sins?”
Courtenay laughed wearily. He was used to jibes at the expense of his religion. “I am afraid, Sir Francis, they are too many for the priest to reckon with at one sitting. I have a seven-week rotation: lust one week, gluttony the next, then greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride, in that order.”
“And which is it this week? Lust?”
“Of course, Sir Francis. I could not possibly travel without a goodly helping of lust to boost my spirits.” Courtenay was a dark-haired man in his mid-thirties, of exceptional good looks, fit and strong. While he made mockery of his sins, he had a reputation as one of the court’s most ardent ladies’ men. He was said to have brought two serving girls with child before he was fourteen years old and had scattered several other children around Devon since then.
“Hah! What do you make of it, Lady Elizabeth? Will Sir William go to heaven? Or hell?”
Elizabeth looked across at Courtenay and smiled at him. She looked sweet and demure, her face glowing beneath a fashionable French hood of black velvet that controlled her hair in the mighty wind that assailed them. “Possibly hell, and most certainly Devon. I would not hazard gold on heaven, though.”
“By God’s faith, Sir William, I think I shall have to look out for my wife in your company! I fear she does hold a little piece of her heart in store for you.”
“Indeed, Sir Francis. But how will you keep me from her when you are at sea? And tell me this, as a land-shanks, how do you sailor men care for your requirements in the middle of the ocean, sans ladies, sans whores, sans pleasure itself?”
Drake scowled. He glanced at his wife irritably, then at Courte nay. “There are other pleasures, sir. Putting Catholics to the sword foremost among them. And oft they deserve it for their base cruelty. Your list of sins, Sir William-where does cruelty fit into that? Or does your church not require you to confess it? Perhaps cruelty is considered a virtue by the apostolic Antichrist. For certain, you do belong to the cruelest religion in the world.”
The banter, half in jest, half meant with severe intent, continued along the miles down into Kent. At times Drake fell back to talk with Captain Stanley about provisioning and naval strategies; at those times he watched in silence as his wife moved closer to Courtenay and engaged him in conversation.
Boltfoot’s eyes were constantly moving, watching Drake one second, scouring the countryside for dangers the next. This road was known for its banditry, though he could not imagine anyone would dare attack a group this well armed. Hunger, however, could make men do desperate things. And there was much poverty in England.
They had taken an early lunch at Gravesend and did not stop again until they came to a halt soon before six of the clock at a post inn close to Rochester. Boltfoot stayed with Sir Francis and Elizabeth while the servants organized the horses and Harper Stanley and Diego ordered some supper and wine for them all in a private room.
They ate well and Drake regaled the company with tales of his adventures when he lived within two or three miles of this inn as a child. The family had come here from Devon, he said, because his father, a Protestant preacher, had been persecuted during the burnings of Queen Mary’s reign. The Drakes had ended up living poverty-stricken in a rotting hulk stranded on a Medway mudbank. “Back then, I foraged for oysters and blackberries to stay alive. And look at me now, as rich as a Musselman potentate, with the world and all its seas at my feet! And all thanks to gold supplied by that same King Philip who shared the bed of murdering Mary.”
Boltfoot Cooper snorted loudly. He didn’t believe a word of the story of religious persecution of Drake’s father any more than had anyone else around their hometown of Tavistock. The word there was that Drake’s father, Edmund, had left in a hurry having been convicted of horse theft and assault and robbery on the highway.
“Something wrong with your nose, Mr. Cooper? Can someone lend him a kerchief?” Drake clapped his hands, then smacked them down with a thud on the table. “And now, let us drink our fill that God give health and long life to our sovereign majesty Elizabeth. Long live the Queen!”
They ate and drank too much, as travelers will. As the serving wenches cleared away the last of the dishes and brought more flagons of wine, Drake picked up a book that was on the table at his side. “Charge your cups, for I shall now read to you, as I have read to my officers and gentlemen aboar
d ship on many a long night in the great Pacific Ocean, which, I must tell you, is the worst-named sea that ever mariner sailed; there was nothing pacific or tranquil about her or her depths when we did enter her. We were wracked by tempests for weeks without end. But all waters are stormy and I would have it no other way. Soon we shall be at sea again. Soon I shall have the salt spray in my face and, beneath my feet, six hundred tons of English oak and blazing cannon.”
He tapped the book and continued. “With that thought, it seems apt that I should read ‘The Shipman’s Tale’ of Geoffrey Chaucer, for we do go the pilgrim’s way through Canterbury, then down to the sea. And in the instance that any of you do not understand, I shall first explain it to you, for the well-loved Mr. Chaucer did not write English as now we know it. It is right that I do commend this tale to my good lady wife, Elizabeth, for her pleasure and nothing more. For I know her to be nothing in the way of the faithless goodwife of Mr. Chaucer’s tale. And I trust that none here present shall think her otherwise than a chaste companion to me.”
Drake raised his golden-pointed chin to his wife.
She smiled back at him guilelessly. “Why, my lord, I cannot think you even need to defend me so. For certain, none here could think me other than a loyal and loving bride.”
“Quite so, by God’s faith! But perhaps Sir William Courtenay might look out for himself in this sorry tale. It is the tale of an adulterous wife and of a cunning monk who pretends friendship of her husband-and then beds his lady. Do you see anyone you know in there, Sir William?”
Boltfoot Cooper was not listening. His eyes were fastened on the face of Sir William Courtenay, which was a mask of rage.
“But enough!” Drake continued. “It is naught but a story. I cannot believe any man would betray another like that, for they would surely be gelded and run through the heart for such foul dealing. That is nothing less than any husband would do, would you not agree, Sir William? You are a married man, I believe?”
Courtenay hesitated. His eyes strayed to Elizabeth’s, then back to Drake. “You must know it, Sir Francis.” He had not an ounce of humor in his voice.
“You would not allow any man to make a monkey of you, would you, sir?”
Suddenly Courtenay rose from the table, his sword already half-drawn. “Of what do you accuse me?” He lunged forward, scattering goblets and flagons and knocking the large table to one side. “You insult my religion, sir, and now you insult me.”
The room was immediately in an uproar. The armed mariners leapt forward but were slow off the mark. Both Boltfoot, from one side, and Diego, from the other, were on Courtenay in an instant. Boltfoot had his cutlass at Courtenay’s neck. Diego had the point of his dagger beneath the young courtier’s rib cage, ready to thrust upward into the heart. Courtenay looked wildly around those present in the room.
“Will no one take my part? I have suffered calumny here.” He looked again at Elizabeth Drake. “Madam, will you not call your husband to order, for I think he does accuse us of some liaison, of which I know nothing.”
Elizabeth laughed lightly. “Oh, Sir William, it is just my master’s way. Pay him no heed. I think he likes to make merry with men’s sensibilities. It helps to pass the long days and nights at sea when the breeze has dropped and the sails will not billow.”
Diego and Boltfoot took Courtenay by the arms and pushed him back down into his chair.
“More drink for Sir William Courtenay!” Drake roared. He had not retreated an inch in the face of the onslaught, and his broad chest was puffed up like a fighting cock’s. “God’s faith, make the man mellow before he slaughters us all.” And then he reached into his doublet pocket and took out a piece of blue velvet, all wrapped like a present. “Here, madam,” he said, offering it to his wife with a flourish. “A necklace of gold, pearl, and ruby, each one harvested from the great continents and oceans of the world. Please do me the honor of accepting this humble offering as a mark of my respect for your fidelity and loving goodness.”
Elizabeth put her hand to her mouth in mock surprise, as if she had not already received a hundred such rich trinkets from her besotted husband.
“Well, that’s one way to keep her from going off with any carnal monks,” Diego muttered into Boltfoot’s ear.
Boltfoot smiled grimly. There was something that interested him rather more: for he had noted just which men among the assembled company had leapt to the defense of Drake, and which had not.
Shakespeare’s ride west was dogged by ill chance from the outset. Riding along a highway rutted with holes that a man could fall into and mud deep enough to drown in, his gray mare went lame ten miles into the county of Surrey. He left the animal with a peasant farmhand, with the promise of sixpence if he took good care of it, then walked on toward the nearest village to find another mount. He had come in the clothes he wore that morning: bearskin cloak, doublet, breeches, hose, and a fur hat. He had no baggage or panniers to carry, just a purse with more than enough coinage for the journey. Trudging alone, he knew he was vulnerable to attack by highway thieves. Even spattered with mud, his clothes were clearly of a fine cut. With so much hunger in the land, there were bands of vagabonds and robbers roaming everywhere.
The walk to the village took two hours. His boots became clogged and the dampness soaked through to his skin. Wind howled around him and every now and then he was forced to clamber over fallen trees that had come down in places across the road. By the time he arrived at a ford across a river, just to the east of the village, he was hungry, weary, short-tempered, and keenly aware that he was losing time in the pursuit of his elusive quarry.
The ferryman was in his riverside hut eating lunch and did not bother to look up as Shakespeare approached. Without any preliminaries, Shakespeare snapped, “God’s blood, ferryman, I am on Queen’s business and must cross this river straightway and find a horse.”
The ferryman looked up languidly from his meal, then raised a tankard of ale to his mouth and drank slowly, sieving the ale through a hedge of whiskers.
“Well, sir, get a move on!”
Putting down his ale, the ferryman looked around as if Shakespeare were not there. “Did someone say something? Or did my old dog just fart?”
“This is Queen’s business!”
The ferryman at last met his eyes. “And I am on the business of my luncheon, which I consider of much greater import than your business or that of the Queen or anyone else you may wish to mention. You can either wait until I have finished or you can swim.”
Fuming, Shakespeare settled down to wait. The ferryman, a curly-haired man of forty with as many chins as he had years, balanced his platter on his fair belly, lingering long over his mutton stew. Finally he belched, put his arms behind his head, lay back on a straw palliasse, and closed his eyes to sleep. Shakespeare drew his sword and thrust it down until it touched his throat. “You will take me now , ferryman, or I will see you lose your license. Or worse.”
The ferryman betrayed no concern. “I do not like your manner, sir, and so I have made a decision. I will not take you today. The wind is up too much and I fear it would not be safe, so tomorrow it is. If you’re lucky. And I must tell you that my brother has the livery stable, and I believe he may not be able to supply you with a horse once you do cross to the village. But there is another ford twelve miles upriver if you prefer to walk there.”
Shakespeare realized his threats were doing no good at all. Ignoring the sword, the ferryman turned over on to his side as if to go to sleep. Gritting his teeth and sighing, Shakespeare pulled the sword back from his throat and re-sheathed it. This called for a change of tack. He looked at the man for a minute. It was hard to admit it, but he had not approached the situation well; his anger at losing the horse to lameness had clouded his judgment. He took a deep breath. “Mr. Ferryman,” he said painfully, “if perchance I have offended you, it was not my intent and I must apologize. Let me throw myself on your mercy, because the life of one of England’s greatest heroes is at stake
. If I do not get across this river and take horse in short order, I will not be able to save him.”
The ferryman turned back and raised himself from the straw on his elbows. He cupped an ear with his hand. “Did I hear you say sorry just then?”
“Yes, if you so wish it, you may believe that I said sorry.”
“Was that exceeding sorry?”
“It was indeed.”
“I suppose that could change things. Tell me more: who is this hero you would save?”
“Sir Francis Drake himself. His life is in grave danger and I must ride to Plymouth to warn him. I am Mr. Secretary Walsingham’s man.”
“Drake?”
“Yes, Drake.”
“Sir Francis Drake, the greatest Englishman that ever drew breath?”
“The very same, ferryman. Even now, he is heading for Plymouth by sea, unaware that a Spanish murderer is sent to kill him.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? Come on, let’s get you across. And my brother will give you his finest horse.”
“Thank you, ferryman, you will be well rewarded with gold.”
“No, sir, I will not take your money. You can pay me by killing the Spaniard with your fine sword. Make it slow and painful, sir, slow and painful. Relieve him of his hazelnuts first, if at all possible. And I shall play my part by serving you some of my wife’s mutton stew as we cross, sir. It is goodly fare.”
The ferry was little more than a sturdy raft of aged oak, pulled across the river by means of thick hemp cables attached to deeply embedded posts on both sides. It had room for a heavy dray, half a dozen farm horses, and some cattle. Now there was just Shakespeare and the ferryman, who gave him a portion of his mutton stew. As they made the brief crossing, Shakespeare tucked into the food with relish. He had had nothing to eat all day. The food was good. When he finished, he thanked the ferryman and asked whether any single horsemen had crossed the river in the past few hours.
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