by J. D. Davies
A few days after Essex went to meet his maker, the turnkey came into my room.
‘A visitor, My Lord,’ he said. He was a surly, bent brute who looked a hundred years old, but insisted he was the same age as me.
‘A visitor? Not another fawning priest, sent to save my soul?’
‘No, husband,’ said my wife, entering the room, ‘your Countess, come to save your body.’
I kissed her heartily, and as soon as the turnkey was gone, I began to lift her skirts -
The Dowager Countess:
Thank you, grandson, I think it is best if I retain that particular fragment.
A little later, as I was rearranging my clothing, I explained how I had managed to obtain access to the prison, after so many months of failing to do so.
‘Howard?’ the Earl said, admiringly. ‘And Burghley, too? Both in one fell swoop?’
‘The one to intercede with the Queen, the other with his brother. And after helping them to force the surrender of Essex, not even Her Majesty nor Robert Cecil could deny my suit with justice or honour.’
He smiled.
‘What an amazon I married! What a – what was the name of that warrior queen who slaughtered Romans? Begins with B. No matter. You are her reborn, My Lady!’
‘I fear not, Matthew. Getting myself into the Tower was one matter. Getting you out of it will be quite another.’
‘Ah. Upon that, my dearest, you may be wrong. I have had ample time to think, all these months. I dared not commit anything to writing, as all the mail is read by the Constable of the Tower, and, if it contains anything of interest, duly copied and forwarded to Master Secretary. But I have a plan. You, my love, must see the Queen.’
‘The Queen? I have written, pleading for an audience, almost daily. The Queen hates you, and she hates me even more. The Queen will not see me.’
‘Oh, she will. Trust me on that, Louise-Marie. At bottom, the Queen is a woman, and like all women, she cannot resist having a dainty trinket dangled in front of her.’ I drew in breath, ready to protest, but My Lord was unstoppable. ‘And I – we – can dangle before her a trinket she has always wanted. One of the most precious trinkets in all these islands.’
‘Then what is this trinket, Matthew? Where do I obtain it?’
‘Ah, there’s the rub. The one slight difficulty. But as I say, I have had ample time to think upon such things, these last few months, and have conceived a way to do it. So are you with me in this, My Lady Countess?’
‘With you unto death, My Lord!’ I said, running to him, flinging my arms about his neck, and kissing him.
With that, he began to disarrange my skirts and silk stockings once again.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nicholas Iles:
This time, no dagger at the ankle would save me.
It was a larger inn, not far from Lambeth Palace; and it was a larger brawl, by far. Twenty or so lusty, drunken lads were set against the same number, and for a far greater cause. With Essex dead, and it being treason to take sides in the names of the King of Scots, the Lady Arbella, or the Infanta, there was only one great bone of contention worth fighting over in the taverns along the Thames.
‘Shakespeare!’ cried the lads toward the door.
‘Marlowe!’ bawled those nearer me.
‘Kit Marlowe’s never going to write another word, you fuck-spittles!’
‘Aye, but he’s still a better writer dead than old Shakeshaft is alive!’
‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends!’
‘Our swords shall play the orators for us!’
A Marlowe man struck a Shakespearean full upon the jaw. The rogue fell back, tripping over a stool and falling against a table, which collapsed under him. Knives were drawn. I saw the latest of Horvath’s spies edge toward the door, while still keeping his eyes on me.
‘Nick Iles, you arse-beetle!’ cried an ugly brute whom I knew to be Stoddart, one of the Globe company. ‘Come here and fight for your precious atheistical Kit Marlowe, then!’
I raised my hands and shouted across the room.
‘Friends, surely we should not be fighting over art? Surely we should all be thankful that England has such great writers, and not taking sides between them? A false division indeed, this between dear Kit Marlowe and fair Will Shakespeare, who have both given us verse and prose to make the angels weep with joy! Come, my dear friends, let us be of good cheer, for we lovers of the theatre should be as one, bound together in fellowship and respect!’
Stoddart looked nonplussed. Then he frowned, thrust out a dagger in front of him, and ran straight for me.
‘Damn you to hell, Iles,’ he cried, ‘what purpose is there in an Englishman being alive if he doesn’t take sides? I’ll show you fellowship and respect, you droning death-token!’
He lunged forward, and I felt the dagger strike my chest. I saw the blood pour down my shirt. The tavern fell silent. I saw Horvath’s man look on in horror, then move swiftly toward the door.
‘I die,’ I said, falling forward.
Laszlo Horvath:
I am summoned to Whitehall again. My master is unhappy, and paces the room, his hands clasped tightly behind his back.
‘Dead. Nicholas Iles is dead. Your second witness, Horvath. Without him, there can be no treason trial.’
‘I – I know that, Master Secretary—’
‘You have failed me. And you do not even have an inkling of how badly you have failed me.’
‘But, good sir—’
‘No, I am not your good sir, for none of this is good. You assured me you had all the papers that Ravensden took from Fast Castle. You gave me that guarantee, Master Horvath. But I find it is not so. The person who studied the papers, the one who had seen the originals before, long ago – that person is willing to swear that, beyond doubt, almost all of them are the same. All of them, except one.’
He walks to his desk, and lifts a sheet of paper. It appears identical to the others: to the letters that Matthew Quinton took from Fast Castle, and that I took from him at Berwick.
‘This one – the most important letter by far – has ten lines missing. The vital ten lines, without which it is worthless, if its contents truly are what they are said to be. It is also a forgery, Horvath. A recent forgery, and a good one. It would be difficult to tell, were it not for the person who saw the letter years ago knowing that those lines were missing. So I had my clerks examine it again, and they identified it for what it is. A very recent, very good forgery. You were duped, Horvath. And you, in turn, have failed me.’
‘Sir, it is impossible – it cannot have been so – the only time Quinton and Iles were out of my sight was when I rode ahead into Berwick, to show your orders to the Governor and to prepare for the Earl’s arrest—’
But even as I say the words, a terrible thought occurs to me. A terrible, impossible thought.
Robert Cecil must see this upon my face, for he says ‘How long would that time have been, Horvath?’
‘Four – perhaps five hours—’
‘More than enough time to make a copy of the letter, leaving out the critical lines.’
‘But Master Secretary, that could only have been so if – if—’
The terrible, impossible thought.
‘If the Earl of Ravensden already suspected that you were false to him. And if he had someone to hand who could both make a convincing copy of the letter, and also take custody of the original in case anything should befall the Earl. You do know, perchance, that the criminal charge laid against Nicholas Iles was that of forgery? No, I thought you did not. He was reputed to be a remarkably skilled practitioner of the art. So I think there is one other question you should consider, Horvath.’ He looks at me from the side of the window, with half his face in shadow, the sunlight striking his deformed back and making him appear, just for one fleeting moment, as a sort of demon. ‘Are you really certain that Nicholas Iles is dead?’
*
Resurrection is a messy business.
>
So writes Nicholas Iles; and even as an eleven-year-old, I realised that dead men do not generally write such things. Nor do they generally write accounts of their own deaths, and of the plunging of daggers into their own breasts. Even so, and despite all the bravado I displayed in an attempt to convince grandmaman that I was not frightened out of my wits, I breathed a deep sigh of relief as I read the next paper in the poet’s unmistakeable hand.
Nicholas Iles:
Stoddart’s stage-blade retracted into the hilt on impact, as it was meant to do. But he had wielded it with rather too much enthusiasm: typical, I thought, of Shakespeare’s crew, who were notorious for over-acting. Thus the pig’s bladder full of blood, concealed beneath my shirt, burst open as if I had been hit in the chest by a three-pound cannonball, rather than stabbed through the heart by a stiletto. Fortunately, though, Horvath’s man was too terrified of the apparent war going on before his eyes – the finest mock-war that some of London’s best actors, bought by the Earl of Ravensden’s gold, could contrive between them – to examine the supposed corpse, or to stay and check that the cadaver being carried off in a cart for inspection by the Southwark coroner was the same as that of Nicholas Iles, the man he was meant to be watching.
But Stoddart’s unduly vigorous play-murder had drenched my shirt and breeches with pig’s blood, so I had to spend the best part of a half-hour scrubbing myself clean and dressing in fresh clothes before I could present himself in the oak-panelled principal room of Ravensden House, my crimson-stained shirt in his hand.
‘Bravo, Iles!’ cried the Countess, applauding me as I entered. ‘You look most healthy, for a corpse.’
‘As you say, My Lady. I hope this proved to be one of my more convincing death scenes.’
‘We should have a little time before Horvath and Cecil discover that you are very much alive. Time to do what my husband wishes to be done.’
I held the bloodied shirt in my hand, went to the left sleeve, and ripped at the fabric. Sewn within was a small purse of leather, undetectable within the generous folds of the cloth. I took it out and handed it to the Countess. She, in turn, opened it, and took out the paper that it contained.
‘The original, My Lady,’ I said, ‘as given to me by My Lord, in an alehouse north of Berwick. Where he told me of his suspicions of Horvath, and assuaged all my foolish doubts. Where he got me to make a copy of that letter – omitting the critical lines – and gave me the original.’
‘My husband is a very shrewd man,’ said the Countess, ‘although he often gives the impression of being quite otherwise. As you know better than I, methinks, Iles.’
‘As you say, My Lady. The Earl told me he had been suspicious of Horvath for some time, and feared he had gone into Berwick to betray us. But he reasoned that Horvath could only know there were a certain number of letters, and that he would not know the contents. So if he believed he was taking all of them off My Lord, he would have no reason to search me.’
‘And he did think he had them all, thanks to the forgery you placed within them.’
‘One of the more difficult pieces of that sort of work I ever undertook, My Lady – and all of that was a long time ago, of course, before I put it behind me for the stage—’
‘You do not need to justify yourself to me, Nicholas Iles. It is as well that you had that skill.’
‘Indeed so, My Lady. For some reason known to God alone, it was an ability I had from my earliest days – I made many friends at school by being able to forge the hands of all the masters. But it was still a difficult task. The inn offered little by way of inks and papers, and my ageing of the paper had to be more rushed than I am accustomed to—’
‘You did well,’ she said, ‘very well. And my husband will reward you generously. I shall see to it that he does.’
She opened the letter in her hand, and read.
Moi, Marie, par la grâce de Dieu, reine d’Ecosse, jure solennellement...
‘Your French is good enough for you to understand this, Iles?’ I blushed, tried to say something, and blushed some more. ‘I see that it is. So, then, you know what this letter is, and why it is so important. Why Cecil wants it, and the King of Scots wants it. And Queen Elizabeth, too.’
‘Yes, My Lady. It is one of the Casket Letters. One of the ten missing Casket Letters – the papers that My Lord took from the cave in Fast Castle.’
‘The most important of them, Nicholas. You have read it. You have copied it. You know what it says. And you know that it can remake the history of two kingdoms.’
‘As you say, My Lady. But what I do not understand is how My Lord came to know of it, and of where it could be found. That day we spent outside Berwick, and he got me to copy the letter – well, he told me something of why we sailed to the Firth of Tay on the very day that the Earl of Gowrie’s plot, whatever it was, misfired at Perth. But not all.’
‘No, he would not. My husband believes that you and I are innocents who should be protected from the consequences of his actions. The less we know, the less we will be able to confess to if he faces a trial for High Treason. But I think we are well past that stage now, Nicholas. And you have risked so much on our behalf that I think you deserve to know the full truth. So sit, mon ami, and let me tell you.’
The Dowager Countess:
So, grandson, you wish to know the contents of the mysterious letter? The one that your grandfather nearly gave his life for, that the Earl of Gowrie died for, and that both Queen Elizabeth and King James were so keen to obtain? You want to know what I said to Iles, all those long years ago?
Not even your uncle Tristram has that knowledge, although I am sure he would very much like to have it. His Lord General Cromwell certainly would, I am quite certain of that. Your father did not possess this knowledge – who knows, perhaps if he had, he would not have ridden to his death on Naseby field. Your brother does not know. And although I have debated the matter these last weeks, since Captain Fensom and his rude troop came to Ravensden, I have come to believe that you should not know either, else the secret will weigh upon you for the rest of your life, as it has weighed upon me these last fifty years. I know you will be disappointed, and will chide me for the old and capricious woman that I am, but –
What is that you say?
Ah. Well, then. That alters the case.
You are a clever lad, Matthew Quinton. Too clever, perhaps. But yes, you are truly worthy to bear your grandfather’s name. I wondered if you would deduce the truth, and it seems you have.
So be it.
But first, young Matthew, I would have you swear upon my Vulgate, here, that you will never reveal what I am about to tell you to any living being. Not to your brother, nor your uncle, nor your wife and children, when you eventually acquire those trying commodities.
Good.
Well, then. As far as I can recall, this is the substance of what I said to Nicholas Iles.
*
As you know, the Casket Letters were copies of papers by Mary, Queen of Scots, that implicated her in the murder of her second husband and the father of her son, namely the drunken peacock that was Henry, Lord Darnley. But the letters that were made public in England after Queen Mary fled here were copies, and ten were known to be missing. The Queen, King James and Robert Cecil all had an idea of the contents of the missing letters from persons who had seen the originals, and they all knew the identity of the man who last possessed those originals – the first Earl of Gowrie, father to the Earl who perished at Gowrie House.
Before his downfall and execution, the first Earl hid the papers at Fast Castle, entrusting the secret to his wife, to pass it on to his son when the time came. So Earl John, when he came into his inheritance, learned of the Casket Letters, and the hold they might give him over King James. But by then, it was obvious that they were even more important, for King James seemed set fair to succeed to the throne of England. Earl John was very young, and badly needed advice. Above all, he needed it from someone who was knowledgeable in the
affairs of England, and from someone he could trust. So it must have seemed like divine providence when both he and my husband, a kinsman, found themselves studying together at the University of Padua, where My Lord went to recover from the wounds he received in the Battle of Cadiz. At Padua, as he told me in the Tower, Gowrie related to him the history of the Casket Letters, and they began to consider what they might do. Gowrie stayed abroad for several more years, but on his return, and unknown at first to my husband, he approached Robert Cecil, reckoning that a scheme as bold as the one he was contemplating needed the support of the most powerful man in England. Remember that Cecil has long been known to be no friend of King James – indeed, some say he is convinced that the King is unstable, a near-madman obsessed with witches, who was likely to invade England at any moment and install Lord Essex as his chief minister. Besides, Cecil wanted the succession of the Infanta, as a union with Flanders would bring greater benefit to the men of money within the exchanges of London. So for all of those reasons, Cecil was more than ready to give his support to a scheme to bring down King James.
In essence, the scheme was this. Gowrie and his brother were to lure King James to their house in Perth, separate him from his entourage – yes, the story of the pot of gold which only the King should view, a tale perfectly designed to appeal to James Stuart’s avarice – and then bundle him onto a boat upon the River Tay, at the foot of the gardens of Gowrie House. Gardens which were full of apple trees in full flower, so the abduction would be hidden from view. My husband examined the tides of the River Tay in great detail, and assured both Gowrie and Cecil that it could be done on certain days, and certain days only. The boat would then sail downstream to meet an English man-of-war in the estuary, and that man-of-war would be his own ship, the Constant Esperance. In her, the King would be taken to Fast Castle, hence that foul villain Logan’s part in the business. The castle was ideal, My Lord told me. Even if forces loyal to the King besieged it, they would never take it; Fast could only be invested from the sea, and the Scots had no men-of-war. And it was ideal in Cecil’s eyes, for it meant that the deed would not be done upon English soil, thus avoiding the mistake his father made with the disposal of James’s mother, Mary, Queen of Scots.
