“No, Mr. Shakespeare,” Drake said. “Save that pleasure for the headsman.”
As Shakespeare stood over the assassin’s prostrate body, Drake went to his wife and helped her from the floor. He took her in his arms with a tenderness Shakespeare would never have thought possible of such a man among men.
“Are you much hurt, Lady Drake?” her husband asked.
“I am sure I shall survive, Sir Francis.” She dusted herself down, then turned to Shakespeare, whose arm was pouring blood. “But I fear Mr. Shakespeare will not-unless he quickly has some assistance.”
Boltfoot arrived with candles to light the room. Servants were drifting back from the fire and one was sent to fetch the constable. Lady Drake staunched the flow of blood from Shakespeare’s arm with a ripped-up shirt of her husband’s, then told a maid to summon a physician to look at the wound properly.
Herrick was beginning to come around, but Boltfoot had already bound him and was sitting on a stool, pointing the octagonal muzzle of his caliver at the assassin’s face. It was not long before the constable and two powerful assistants arrived, all smelling of the fire they had been helping to douse at the Guildhall. Without ceremony, they carried Herrick out and tossed him onto a handcart. As he was hauled off to the town gaol, his face was a mask of bitter frustration.
“Well, Mr. Shakespeare,” Drake said. “Do you have any more Spanish killers up your sleeve to frighten me with?”
“I trust not, Vice Admiral.”
“Good. Then all we have to worry about is the ever-changing tide of our sovereign majesty’s capricious mind. Let us sleep now and sail in the morning. With God’s help, I vow that we will give the Spaniard such a beating he will wish he had never heard the name of Sir Francis Drake!”
The ships of Drake’s fleet sailed with the morning’s tide. He was aboard the Elizabeth Bonaventure, accompanied by three more royal galleons- Golden Lion, Dreadnought, Rainbow -and twenty other vessels. They were manned by three thousand sailors and soldiers, heavily armed and angry, and many tons of cannon and ball. Before weighing anchor, Drake found it in him to say a grudging word of thanks to Shakespeare for his “diligence,” then scribbled a final message for Walsingham and handed it to Shakespeare to carry to him:
The wind commands us away. Our ship is under sail. God grant we may live in His fear as the enemy may have cause to say that God does fight for Her Majesty as well abroad as at home.
There was a new urgency about the mission. The latest intelligence gathered by Walsingham had revealed that the Spanish admiral, Santa Cruz, planned to have his armada ready to sail this spring or early summer. Drake’s task was to destroy the enemy in her ports or at sea and to intercept and capture the Spanish treasure fleet from the Indies. Failure would mean nothing less than the destruction of England.
Shakespeare stood on the shore with Elizabeth Drake, Boltfoot, and thousands of townsfolk, all cheering and throwing their caps in the air as the brave pennants of the fleet stretched out in the stiff breeze. Elizabeth touched his face. “I am sure my husband has not thanked you adequately, Mr. Shakespeare, but please accept my sincere gratitude. Last night you saved both our lives.”
He had thought about it all at length. Despite exhaustion, he had hardly been able to sleep, so fast did his heart beat. The thing that kept coming back to him was that he could have killed Herrick, there and then, helpless on the floor, with one foot on the back of his neck. Like every child, Shakespeare had killed injured birds and hunted squirrels with bows and arrows for their red fur, yet he had never had cause to kill a man and often wondered whether he would have the stomach for it. Well, now he knew.
His left arm was heavily bandaged and supported across his chest in a sling. It was painful, but the cut had been clean and there was no reason to believe it would not heal. A physician dressed it with herbal tinctures to prevent gangrene and told him to drink brandy to counter the loss of blood. The ride back to London would be uncomfortable, but manageable.
Early that morning, Herrick had been arraigned before magistrates and then left to ponder his fate in Plymouth jail until trial, which would be a matter of two or three days; execution would follow swiftly. Shakespeare felt that this was a matter best dealt with locally; Mr. Secretary would not wish to have another Papist martyr paraded through the streets so soon after the execution of Mary Stuart. Anyway, Plymouth butchers could bowel and quarter Herrick as efficiently as the London headsmen.
Shakespeare spent a few hours with the would-be assassin, trying to persuade him to talk. He got little-neither confessions nor denials. Only when Shakespeare mentioned the murder of Lady Blanche Howard did the Jesuit break his silence briefly. Herrick laughed, humorlessly. “You do not think that was me, Mr. Shake speare? Look to your own… look to your own.”
Shakespeare pressed him but all the priest would say was, “My fate is certain, why should I waste what little breath I have left in talking with you?” Then he turned his back on his interrogator and dragged his heavy shackles and manacles into a marginally more comfortable position. For a brief moment, Shakespeare wondered whether to bring torture to bear; Mr. Secretary would undoubtedly approve. The thought did not last long. Torture repulsed him, as it did most Englishmen.
After Drake’s fleet sailed, Shakespeare and Boltfoot took horse for London. On the way, they stopped at the White Dog inn to repay the landlady who had helped Shakespeare when his purse was stolen. He had been handed ten pounds by Drake. “It is a loan, Mr. Shakespeare, to get you home. Not a gift.” Boltfoot had chuckled.
The days were growing longer. In a matter of just forty-eight hours the mist had given way to spring sunshine and crisp, clear nights. All the way, Shakespeare thought of Catherine; every mile they rode brought him closer to her. He clung to their one night together and prayed to God that it meant as much to her as it did to him. He would propose to her, of course. Yet he had, too, some nagging fear. Walsingham would not be best pleased that one of his senior officials intended to marry a Roman Catholic; perhaps he would go so far as to dismiss Shakespeare from his employment. Well, if that was to happen, so be it. His love for Catherine Marvell was paramount.
The riders made good progress and Shakespeare decided to take a short diversion to the Thames near Windsor, where he asked the way to the village of Rymesford.
He found the monk that Thomas Woode had told him about huddled in the remains of one of the drying rooms in the old mill. It was a ramshackle, dilapidated place of ancient rotted timbers, and it looked as though it might soon collapse into the river and be carried downstream. Hundreds of birds had made their nests in its beams and rafters and their noise was a cacophony. The old monk was scarce in better condition than the building. His skin was like yellowed parchment, his eyes hollow sockets without light. His old robe, which looked as though he might have been wearing it at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries fifty years since, was little more than rags, hanging from his gaunt shoulders and tied at the waist with frayed strands of rope.
“Are you Ptolomeus?”
The blind monk shied away at his voice like a beaten dog.
A sheet of paper caught in the breeze that blew through the gaping holes where once windows had been and fluttered past the old man. Shakespeare caught the paper. It was blank but it looked of identical quality to the papers found scattered around Lady Blanche Howard’s mutilated body in Hog Lane, Shoreditch.
“Ptolomeus, I have no wish to harm you. I am come to talk with you.”
The old man’s beard was long and pepper gray, as was his hair. He was encrusted with dirt and grime. He sat on his haunches on the floorboards, beside a worn, cast-away grindstone. At his side was a wooden trencher with a few crumbs.
“Boltfoot, give him some food.”
Boltfoot limped back to his horse, which was tethered outside the mill, and took some bread and meat from the saddlebags. He brought it back and touched the sightless monk by the shoulder. “Here,” he said, less gruffly than usual. “F
ood. Take it.”
The monk stretched out his arms from the folds of his robe and held them together like a tray for the food. He had no hands. Both had been severed at the wrist, and not that long ago, for the scars were fairly fresh. Shakespeare closed his eyes, suffused with feelings of pity and disgust that anyone could have done such a thing to the old man. Boltfoot lay the food on the man’s stumps. “I will bring you ale, too,” he said.
“What happened to you, Ptolomeus?”
“The law, sir, the law.” His voice was surprisingly firm.
“What crime did you commit?”
“Libel, sedition, illegal printing, unlicensed papermaking. What does it matter? My life is done. All that is left me is birdsong and the scraps the villagers bring me. At least they do not judge me. I am content to be judged by God.”
“I am right in thinking that you have made the paper scattered about this place?”
“I cannot see the paper, sir. My eyes have been put out. But if you have found it here, I would hazard a guess that it is my work, poor though that is, as anyone that knows about these things will tell you. It is the water here, you see. Too muddy. That and the sad quality of the rags. The ragmen know their worth, sir.” He laughed drily.
Shakespeare stood quietly a moment and looked at the devastation around him. This broken man sat in the middle of it, still, like the silent heart of a storm. When you have lost everything and there is nothing left to lose but your life, what is there to fear? Ptolomeus ate some of the food Boltfoot had given him, hunching his head down as he pushed his stumps together around the bread and meat and held it up to his mouth. It was obvious the pain of his amputation had not yet dulled, for his body tensed with each movement and his face was set in a grimace.
Much of the panoply of papermaking was still here. The main shaft of the milling machine was attached by levers to mallets for mashing the sodden rags to pulp. Nearby, there were wooden frames with fine sievelike bases from which the water would drain, leaving a thin layer of pulp, which, when dried out, would become raw paper. There was a press, too, to help squeeze the water from the sheets. But there was no printing press. Where, wondered Shakespeare, had that gone?
“Thomas Woode told me he gave you an old press so that you could print Romish tracts on behalf of seminary priests. Where is it, this press?”
“Gone with my hands, sir. Gone with my hands.”
“Mr. Woode told me you would never have printed anything seditious.”
“That, too, is true enough. Or so I thought. Others disagreed. They said that whatever I printed was illicit; Star Chamber has ruled it against the law to print anything without explicit license.”
“Then tell me who did this to you? Was it the town magistrate?”
Boltfoot raised a cup of ale to the old monk’s lips. He drank thirstily, then wiped his mouth with his grubby sleeve. “That is good, sir. That is good. Thank you. No, it was not the magistrate, but one of whom you may have heard. He is named Topcliffe and I do believe him to be Satan incarnate.”
“Topcliffe?”
“He killed my fellow monk Brother Humphrey. Topcliffe cut him into pieces before my eyes and threw his remains into the river. Then he took my eyes and, lastly, my hands. He put my arms together against a log and removed the hands with one blow of an axe. He left me to bleed to death, but God, in his mercy, has let me live a little while longer.”
Shakespeare looked at Boltfoot and saw his own horror reflected. Very little could move Boltfoot, yet the cold brutality of the old man’s tale shocked even him.
“You are silent, sir?” the monk said. “Are you surprised, then, by this demon’s handiwork?”
“No. No, not surprised.”
“A goodwife from Rymesford tended my wounds and brought sustenance. She still helps me, as do others. Burghley and his like cannot kill our faith so easily, you know.”
Shakespeare reached out and touched the monk on the shoulder. Ptolomeus did not flinch. “We will leave you money,” Shakespeare said. “But you must tell us what happened to your printing press.”
“The money would be a kindness, sir. Thank you. As for the press, Mr. Richard Topcliffe took that, too. He said he had some use for it. I did hear him laugh as he carried it off on the back of my own cart.”
Chapter 43
John Shakespeare and Boltfoot Cooper rode in silence. They had passed by the great castle of Windsor and were close to London now. The villages that serviced the city with vegetables, livestock, timbers, and ironwork were becoming more numerous and prosperous. It seemed to Shakespeare that London was the center of a great wheel and that these roads in, with their increasing numbers of hamlets and towns, were its spokes. You could hardly turn a corner without spying another church spire against the skyline.
The fields were different, too, better cared for and enclosed than those he had encountered traveling west. They passed through part of Surrey and Shakespeare collected his gray mare that had gone lame on the way to Plymouth; she was hale and in good spirits and he paid the peasant who had cared for her half a crown for his efforts. It seemed fairer than the sixpence he had promised.
The silence between Shakespeare and Boltfoot reflected their thoughts. Each knew what the other was thinking. Shakespeare broke the spell. “It can mean but one thing, Boltfoot,” he said at last.
Boltfoot nodded.
“It can mean only that Topcliffe himself printed that tract in Hog Lane. But why would he do that?”
“Justification, Master Shakespeare. To show the Catholics as treacherous.”
“Would he go to such lengths?” But Shakespeare knew the answer: what lengths wouldn’t Topcliffe go to in his mission to destroy every Roman Catholic priest and adherent of the old faith? Surely, a man who could commission a rack and torture room for his own home would be capable of printing a tract to justify more arrests. “Yes,” Shakespeare agreed, “yes, he would go to such lengths. The tract was naught but a poor copy of ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth.’ It was without meaning and could have had only one purpose: it was a diversion.”
They rode on a little way in silence. Then Shakespeare turned once more to Boltfoot. “And that leads us on to another certainty…”
“He killed the Lady Blanche.”
Shakespeare flinched at the harshness of the words, then said them, more quietly, himself “Topcliffe killed Lady Blanche Howard.”
Boltfoot issued a low noise like a farmyard animal.
“But why did he kill her?” pressed Shakespeare. “Why pick on a Howard, with all the complications that could bring? She may have been a Catholic convert, but even Her Majesty would not brook the murder of her cousin in that way.”
“I think he killed her by mistake, sir. Then tried to cover his tracks. I think he tortured her for information, but she died. The relic and crucifix were added later, as were the cuts to her throat and belly.”
Shakespeare shook his head. “No. It wasn’t a mistake. He planned to kill her all along. He knew he could not allow her to live as soon as he subjected her to torture; if he had set her free the wrath of the Howards would have destroyed him. He planned to kill her and put the blame onto the Catholics by befouling her body with the crucifix and relic, to make it seem like some debauched Popish rite. That fits in with the Searcher of the Dead’s findings. He said she had been dead three days and that she was killed somewhere else. The wounds that were supposed to have killed her did not produce enough blood, he said.”
And the marks on her wrists, he thought. They could just as eaisly have been caused by manacles as a rope used to tie her. He had seen similar injuries on Thomas Woode after his sessions against Topcliffe’s wall. But what sort of information would Topcliffe be trying to prize from her? The answer was plain: he wanted the same information from Blanche that he was now intent on extracting from Woode-the whereabouts of Robert Southwell. He must have heard of some link between Blanche and the Jesuits; perhaps a servant in Howard of Effingham’s household had passed on
information, or an informant within the Catholic network. Topcliffe was a man possessed when it came to finding the Jesuit priest. Topcliffe wanted Southwell, and he did not care whom he had to ruin or slaughter to get to the priest. Shakespeare spurred his horse. He had been away from Catherine too long.
Topcliffe, Young, Newall, and a force of their ten most hardened pursuivants came to Shakespeare’s house in Seething Lane in the darkness half an hour before dawn.
They tethered their horses a street away, then trod softly toward the ancient house so that none should awake and alert Walsingham. There was to be no alarm, no uproar. This was to be done with precision and silence. Mr. Secretary must awake at dawn or after and be none the wiser of what had happened at his close neighbor’s home.
The plan was to go in at lightning speed. Flatten the door with one blow from the battering tree, then advance without shouting or mayhem, each member of the force to take one room so that no occupants of the house should escape. Topcliffe looked around him. The street was empty. “Where, Dick, is your watchman? Who is guarding this house?” His voice was a gruff, urgent whisper.
Young looked around. “The idle fool must have gone home. I’ll have strong words with him for this.”
“God’s blood, Dick, you’ll flog him raw. Take his skin off. All right, let’s go in.”
Six men held the heavy tree trunk and swung back and forward once, then back again and brought it forward halfway up the door, close to the lock, crashing it down with one blow.
Topcliffe went in first, closely followed by Young. Then they stopped where they stood, mouths agape at the scene that confronted them.
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