Her Last Assassin (45 page)

Hamnet, distracted by a display of bows and arrows in the window of a shop, glanced at them over his shoulder as though checking his father was still there.

Will smiled, and bent to kiss her on the cheek. ‘I owe you an apology, by the way,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘Now my eyes are cleared of anger, I see that Hamnet is my son. I was wrong to accuse you of that.’

There was relief in her face. Silently, she nodded to acknowledge what he had said. No doubt she was still angry that he had doubted her in the first place.

‘All the same,’ he warned her, ‘we cannot take one of these fine houses yet. Not for another few years.’

Anne looked at him sharply, but did not argue. She was a pragmatic woman at heart, he thought, and willing to wait for what she wanted.

He left his wife in the market square, perhaps calculating how long it would take them to amass enough money to buy one of those expensive houses, and continued to the river with Hamnet. The sky had darkened with a threat of snow, just as his father had said it would. If they did not hurry, snow would begin to fall before they had time to catch a fish.

Will took a rod from Hamnet to lighten the boy’s load, and the two of them marched briskly along in companionable silence.

The air was sharper in Warwickshire than he was used to. He drew his cloak about him, wondering what the weather was like in London, and if his lordship the Earl of Southampton knew yet that he had left town. It felt strange to be so far from the noisy bustle of the London streets. Already Will missed the lazy pace of days when the playhouses were closed: lying abed with Wriothesley until noon, then meeting his friends in the taverns, arguing passionately about plays and actors, and ogling the wenches who brought them ale, then staggering home again in the early hours.

On the way out of town, heading into open countryside, they passed a cart pulled on to the grass verge at the side of the frosty track. Recognizing the man unloading sacks into a barn, Will halted.

‘It’s Master Dun,’ he murmured to Hamnet. The boy looked worried, perhaps thinking they would be delayed by this encounter. Will would have continued, but already the man had heaved his sack into the back of the cart and was straightening. It was too late to avoid him without causing offence.

‘Christopher!’

His friend turned, smiling when he saw who it was. ‘Will!’ He wiped his dirty palms on his tunic, nodded cheerfully to Hamnet, then shook Will’s hand. He raised his eyebrows, gazing at Will’s bruised face. ‘Fell down the stairs?’

‘Vagabonds.’

‘I see.’ His voice was dry. His gaze lighted on the fishing rods. ‘Off fishing? I’d join you, but I must get home before it snows.’

‘Perhaps next time,’ Will said.

Courteous words, that was all. For he had remembered his friend’s pretty wife. Round with child last time he had seen her, and her eyes more inviting than they should be for a married woman. A danger to be avoided in a small Warwickshire town.

But Christopher was still smiling. ‘Sally,’ he called into the barn. ‘Come out here. Look who it is.’

Sally came out, staring and holding a small child by the hand, a boy clad in a coarse brown smock. Her belly was rounded again already. They were wasting no time, Will thought drily, then tried not to imagine himself in bed with pretty Sally Dun. If he was her husband, he doubted whether he would be able to resist filling her again either.

‘Master Shakespeare,’ she murmured, and curtseyed, rising to look at him with a shy smile. ‘I didn’t know you had returned from London.’

‘I only came home last night.’

‘Oh, but your face …!’

Her husband touched her arm. ‘Master Shakespeare was set upon by vagabonds.’ He glanced at Will, and this time his mockery was plain. ‘A large band of them, I presume?’

‘Three only,’ he admitted. ‘But they got my dagger off me, and after that I had no chance.’

Sally shook her head. ‘How dreadful!’

‘That’s London for you.’

She looked at him secretively from under her lashes. ‘Well, I still wish I could visit London. Christopher said he would take me there one day, to see the great bridge spanning the river Thames and all the traitors’ heads stuck up on pikes.’ She caught her husband’s warning glance, and pouted. ‘But little Ned would miss me sorely, even if I left him with my mother. And I shall have another child come the spring, so I suppose I must stay at home.’

‘It is a long journey,’ Will told her uncomfortably.

She smiled. A delicate twitch of her lips. ‘Yet I heard your wife, Anne, travelled all the way to the city last week to visit you.’

And to fetch you back
, were her unspoken words.

Will was suddenly angry, despite the young wife’s loveliness and the bloom in her cheeks. Was this one of the women who had been mocking Anne behind her back?

‘Yes, and then I brought her home again.’ Pointedly, he touched his battered cheek. ‘The city is no fit place for a decent woman.’

There was an awkward silence.

An icy wind whistled past his ears, chilly on the back of his neck where his cap was not pulled down far enough. Snow was on its way, or something even colder. Less forgiving.

He glanced at young Hamnet, then back at his friend. ‘Forgive me, Christopher, but we must get on. The afternoons draw in so early these days, and I do not wish to lose the light.’

They walked on together, again in silence, following the course of the river. The Avon flowed sluggishly past under a darkening sky.

Will found the glassy pool on the bend where he used to fish as a boy, and waited there while his young son slipped like a shadow along the river bank, hunting for worms to bait their rods. Once he had done the same for his own father. Now it was his turn to stand and wait, staring at the river as it rolled inexorably past.

The widening current of the Avon ran greyish-green past the bend, under trees stripped bare by winter. Yet where the water steadied itself against the edge of the pool, it seemed lighter, reflecting stark fingers against a backcloth of cloud. And a man, though his face was unclear.

While they waited for the fish to bite, Will showed Hamnet how to whistle through a blade of grass, making a sound like a wild duck crying overhead.

‘That’s it,’ he said encouragingly, listening to his son’s strangled efforts. ‘Though not so hard. Don’t force the breath. It should come natural.’

It started to snow. Hamnet smiled, gazing upwards as tiny flecks of white swirled down and coated his little cap and shoulders. Then he stuck out his tongue, as all small boys do, and laughed when an icy snowflake landed there, melting swiftly.

‘You will not be able to return to London if the snow becomes too deep for cartwheels to pass,’ Hamnet said after a while, then sat down beside Will on the bank.

‘Unless I ride back,’ Will commented lightly.

His son looked at him for a long moment, all his childish joy at the snow abruptly forgotten. ‘Are you going to ride back, sir?’

How cruel he was. The boy was crestfallen. His dark eyes stared as if in anticipation of a blow. He just wanted to hear that his father would not ride, that he would stay until Christmas, until New Year, until spring …

Or maybe for ever.

‘I have to return to London soon,’ he told the boy gently. ‘You know that I must, Hamnet, that I am needed in the theatre. That is where I earn my keep. And must continue to do so, more so than ever now, since your mother has set her heart on a fine new home.’

Hamnet nodded, then dragged up the rough collar of his jacket against the wintry air. His hand crept into Will’s and bunched there, as though trying to warm itself. He squeezed the boy’s fingers. They were cold as stone.

‘Your hand is frozen. Where are your gloves?’

‘I forgot them,’ Hamnet admitted sheepishly.

Will sighed, then drew off his own sheepskin gloves and slipped them over his son’s hands. ‘Here, put these on.’

His gloves were ridiculously huge on the boy, like cows’ udders dangling from each hand, but at least Hamnet would not suffer the danger of frostbite. He himself could always blow hard on his fingers and clap his hands all the way home, to keep the blood moving so it would not freeze to ice in his veins.

‘Father, will you take me to London one day? To see the big round theatre where your plays are performed?’

His voice was a thin piping against the wind, almost drowned by its chill whistle. The snow was falling more heavily about them now, beginning to whiten the grassy banks of the river. The boy looked down at the gloves Will had given him, studying the stitchwork, as though afraid to meet his eyes.

‘I know you will not take Mother, because she is a woman. But will you take me? Not now, but when I am older? Please, sir?’

‘When you are older,’ he said, ‘I will take you to London with me and show you the world. That I promise you.’

Hamnet’s face lit up with incredulous pleasure, as though the boy had not expected that answer, would never have expected it.

Will smiled down at his son. A promise. Such a simple thing to bring such joy.

‘Now, young Master Shakespeare, how about those fish?’

Six

‘I
T
’
S SNOWING
!’ Cathy exclaimed.

Lucy came to stand at her shoulder, pressing her own cold face into the narrow angle where the window looked down to the river Thames. On the path below, between the high stone wall and the tower that blocked the afternoon light, was a faint dusting of snow. As they watched, flakes began to come more thickly, whirling past the window and whitening the path down to the river.

Shivering, Lucy wandered back to her chair and sat down. The sun would go down soon and there was a brisk wind off the river, whistling through the crack under the door and about the window frame. It was November now. Already her small cell was icy at night. Would she be kept there all winter, she wondered?

Perhaps she would stay here for ever, a prisoner of the grim Tower. Or until the old Queen died and she could sue for pardon from the new monarch.

It was not a comforting thought, and she put it aside.

She drew on her gloves again and clapped her hands together, trying to keep warm. Cathy had brought a book of sonnets with her, and Lucy had discarded her gloves in order to turn the pages. But it was too late for such pleasures now. The daylight was failing. Within an hour it would be too dark to read except by candlelight, and she did not want to waste her candle allowance unnecessarily.

‘Snow makes everything look so pure,’ Cathy murmured.

‘And cold,’ Lucy added, pragmatically.

‘You have no poetry in you,’ Cathy complained, frowning.

‘Sometimes it is better that way. Poetry can be beautiful, I will not deny it. But too much poetry can blind you to the harsh truths of this life. Such as being too cold to think, let alone read a poem.’

‘Perhaps we should build up the fire before it gets dark.’

Lucy glanced dubiously at the low fire, barely giving out any heat, then at their meagre store of logs on the hearth.

‘Mistress Hall will be furious if we ask for more wood.’

Irritable now, Cathy picked up the book of sonnets she had brought and flicked through it. ‘Let us burn poetry to keep warm then. I could read a poem, and then if it is no good, we will tear out the page and burn it. How about this old one by Thomas Wyatt?’ She glanced over the first few lines of the poem, then giggled. ‘This will make you laugh. Listen to how it begins …

‘
They flee from me that sometime did me seek,

With naked foot stalking within my chamber:

Once have I seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild, and do not once remember,

That sometime they have put themselves in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range

Busily seeking in continual change …
’

‘Hush, put it away,’ Lucy warned her hurriedly, for she could hear heavy footsteps on the winding stair. ‘Someone is coming. Besides, that is quite the wrong poet to have chosen, for did not Master Wyatt almost lose his head in this dreadful place? And indeed his son lost his after a revolt against Queen Mary.’

Cathy looked aghast. ‘You are right. I had forgotten.’ She threw the book down. ‘Horrid thing.’

The door was being unlocked, the key being turned, the outside bolt drawn back.

Lucy heard Mistress Hall outside, talking to someone urgently. She sounded almost angry.

A man replied, his voice low and somehow familiar, and the hairs prickled a sudden warning on the back of her neck.

She sat forward in her chair, breathing quickly now, a protective hand resting on her rounded belly. What was it now? She had so few visitors these days, any change to her routine had become a cause for alarm. Every now and then, when the wind was still, she would hear the distant cries of the crowd as someone was whipped or hanged out on Tower Hill, and her blood would run cold. Perhaps one day they would come for her, she thought wildly. Once the babe was born, of course, for no woman in her condition could be hanged. Though the Queen could not hate her that much, surely? Not over a simple case of wanton behaviour. Yet still her mind ran on, unable to rest, fearing the worst of the Queen’s anger.